Archive of Our Own

Moments before disaster always seem clearer in hindsight.

Shane sees the hit coming a millisecond before Drapeau makes contact. It’s not early enough for him to give Ilya any meaningful warning. Not that he would, he’s playing against Ilya after all. This is just part of the game, he tells himself, even when his heart lurches with fear at the cracking sound of Ilya’s helmet hitting the boards, and his stomach drops as abruptly as Ilya’s body does, crumpling to the ice in a heap.

Shane knows he shouldn’t linger, knows the cameras are trained on him and the commentators are already making a big deal about it. Somewhere, dimly, he’s aware of Marleau tackling Drapeau onto the ice, he feels someone, maybe Hayden or a ref, tug him away by the back of his jersey.

“Is he okay?” Shane asks the blur next to him, his fist is clenched in his glove, trying to stave off the full body tremor that threatens to overtake him. “Please, can you tell me if he’s okay?”

The ref, or Hayden, or some distended voice, hums noncommittally, “I don’t know but they’re taking him off the ice. I think there’s an ambulance.”

“Fuck, an ambulance? What happened?”

“Didn’t you see it?”

“Fuck.”

“It was a clean hit. It’s just a part of the game.”

For the first time in his life, Shane thinks yeah, well then fuck the game. The world feels askew, and Shane is off-balance, disassociated for the rest of the match. After they watch their captain carted off the ice in a stretcher, the fire of vengeance is lit in the Bears left playing. Marleau is particularly heated, making five shots on goal in the final period and sinking two of them. With Miitka out on IR, Voyageurs rookie goalie, pulled fresh from the juniors, barely stands a chance. They lose 5-2.

Even though it means Montreal has officially been knocked out of the playoffs, the loss barely registers, its devastation dwarfed by Shane’s obsessive worry over Ilya. He sits quietly among the jeers and hollering in the locker room, escaping media duty using every favour he’s accumulated. With a bunch of muttered desolées to Anne-Marie and the rest of the comms team, Shane rushes out to the parking lot without even a backwards glance at his team. Since it’s a home game and they lost, the guys know better by now than to expect him to come out for drinks, themselves irritated at the loss, no one even bothers asking.

What his team don’t know can’t hurt them, and what Shane will never tell them is that he’s going to spend the evening tracking down exactly what hospital they took Ilya to and then he’ll obsessively refresh the visitation hours as if that might magically make them start now.

In the morning, Shane wakes up, not even a little bit rested since he never managed to fall asleep in the first place. He just lay in bed all night scouring every sports news outlet, and looking up extremely unhelpful questions about the realities of hockey injuries. No one calls him, no one even thinks to let him know, and why would they? To the world, Shane and Ilya are nothing to each other. To Shane, since he admitted it in Tampa, Ilya is essential. Without him, without even word of him, Shane is unmoored. He’s not going to be able to do anything, go on with his day or his week or his life until he knows for certain that Ilya is okay.

He drives to Montreal General as soon as they open. A little bit of sweet talking and a slightly guilt-tinged leveraging of his well-earned reputation in this town gets him past the nurse’s station, Ilya’s room number in hand.

Shane catches a glimpse of him through the window, swaddled and made minuscule by the hospital apparatus. Various tubes thread along his arms and monitors beep in a steady, life-signalling rhythm.

Ilya catches sight of him as soon as he walks in. His eyes widen, then narrow.

“Shane… Hollander?” he mumbles, blinking rapidly. He tries to clumsily bring one arm up to rub at his eyes, but it causes him to tug on one of his tubes, which sends a monitor into a frenzy. Shane rushes over, panicked that Ilya’s somehow managed to hurt himself. He almost calls a nurse but the beeping stops as soon as Shane nears, and gently takes Ilya’s hands, holding them softly, steady against the cool hospital sheets.

“Hey,” Shane says, checking quickly that they’re alone before gently running one of his hands along Ilya’s hairline, softly fluffing up his curls where they’ve matted slightly. “How are you feeling?”

“They tell me I have fractured collarbone,” Ilya says, his accent thicker than usual, “And concussion.”

“Fuck,” Shane hisses in sympathy, “Does that mean you’re out for the playoffs?”

Ilya narrows his eyes suspiciously, “Why do you want to know?”

Shane furrows his brows, confused until he realizes Ilya is talking about hockey, “No, dude, fuck you. I’m not asking you for intel to beat Boston, you know that.”

“Why not? Is that not why they draft you second? So you always try to beat Boston?”

“Ilya, what are you talking about? The draft was fucking years ago.”

“Is last thing I remember.”

Shane’s knees wobble. Or maybe the room wobbles. Was it an earthquake? Does Montreal even get those? Before his mind can spiral into a completely unhelpful rumination on plate tectonics, he wisens to his most immediate problem, which is that his legs are rapidly failing at holding him upright. He scrambles behind himself until he finds a chair, dragging it over, careful not to tangle in any of Ilya’s IV cords, he collapses into a seat.

“Fuck… you really don’t remember anything?”

Everything he can’t ask wells up like a sob in his chest: You don’t remember me? All those years of stolen nights, the hookups that were anything but casual even from the start, the years of denying our feelings until Tampa… I thought we were finally getting somewhere and now you’re telling me I’m back to square one? That’s not fucking fair.

“No,” Ilya says, and when Shane hazards a glance at him, he finds a look of distress in Ilya’s expression that he’s never seen before, along with a healthy dash of confusion. That’s reasonable, given he’s looking at the man who to him is just his hockey rival seemingly have a nervous breakdown at his hospital bedside. Not good.

Shane’s not sure he has the wherewithal to lie himself out of this situation, nor does he know where honestly will get him (kicked out, he’s afraid), so the last and best and only option he has right now is to flee. Too bad his legs have stopped working.

“Are we friends, now?” Ilya’s voice is small, his question so tentative that Shane’s head snaps up. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. “Or you are here as Captain? Are you Captain for Montreal now? Yes, probably, they tell me I am and you always copy me.”

“Yes, Ilya, we’re both captains, obviously. We…” Shane sighs, there’s no point in lying, he’s no good at it anyway, “We are friends. Sort of. Secretly. There’s still the rivalry and all.”

“Ah,” Ilya nods a little too hard, his hand coming up to press a finger messily to his lips he talks in an exaggerated stage whisper, “Shhh… I tell no-one.”

Shane can’t help but laugh. It startles out of him, and Ilya smiles as soon as he sees it, smug and satisfied like that was just the reaction he was trying to get out of him. Shane realizes, from the soreness in his cheeks, that he hasn’t smiled since looking at Ilya during that face-off earlier.

“I can keep secret, Hollander, I was KGB spy in Russia.”

“They’ve got you on the good drugs, eh?”

Ilya laughs now too, “Only the best for best hockey player.”

“Second best.”

“Oh, do they draft second best first in this country, then?”

Shane rolls his eyes, “Ugh, I forgot how insufferable you were about this.”

“What? Why you forget? Did I stop?”

“You didn’t,” Shane scoffs, “You just got other things to gloat about.”

Ilya smiles wider, “Oh so I beat you a lot, then?”

“We beat each other basically an equal amount okay, we’ve been pretty evenly matched our whole careers.”

“How many cups?”

This time Shane smiles, “I have two. You’ve got one.”

Ilya’s expression sours so quickly Shane bursts out laughing. It only serves to make him madder, though Shane can see the telltale twitch in the corner of his mouth betraying his effort not to smile back. “Hollander, you cannot lie on purpose to make me mad, I have concussion!”

“I’m not lying! When you’re better, you can look it up.”

“And why should I trust— ow!”

In his comical outrage and indignation, Ilya tries to sit up. It’s instantly a bad idea, Shane can see where his collarbone twinges and he winces in pain.

“Hey, hey, stop that, sit still,” Shane scolds, but Ilya wriggles defiantly, even as each shift sends him groaning in pain.

He only calms down when Shane gets up and firmly pushes him back against the bed. It forces him to move closer, and when their gazes lock, he realizes they’re just inches apart, Shane sees Ilya’s eyes spark with dangerous ideas. He knows, because he’s thinking the same thing, thinking about tipping over the line and falling into the kiss he’s been wanting since Ilya’s plane landed in Montreal yesterday.

Shane finds his body drifting closer to Ilya without his permission, like the puck on a Ouija board guided by some invisible magnetism. He gets close enough that he can feel the warmth of Ilya’s breath against his lips, the temptation reaches a critical juncture and Shane feels close to failure, total implosion.

Then, a distant clattering sound in the hospital shakes him out of his spell, reminding him emphatically that this is not the time or place. Ilya doesn’t even remember him for God’s sake! He pushes himself up and out of Ilya’s orbit, putting a much more publicly appropriate amount of space between them.

“Mm, Hollander, you are no fun,” Ilya pouts as Shane moves back to his seat, his head slumped against his pillow like a petulant child.

There’s a tense silence, and Shane realizes he’s the only one lucid enough to ease it, “Look, I’m genuinely not trying to sabotage Boston by asking you how you are. Anyway, what good would any intel do me now when Boston just knocked us out of the playoffs?”

Ilya smiles, then just as quickly it disappears.

“What? I thought you’d be happy about that.”

“I am,” Ilya shrugs, smile still not reaching his eyes, “Just… disappointed I can’t be there.”

Shane’s heart pangs, “I get that. But hey, you worked your ass off to even get them this far. Anything they do beyond this point will be building off of your leadership and the groundwork you laid down. And you’re gonna be up against the Admirals in the conference finals anyway. Scott Hunter is a dinosaur, your guys’ll send him back to the museum where he belongs.”

Slowly but surely, Ilya’s true smile grows back, little by little, until he’s beaming so hard it rivals the golden spill of sunshine coming in through the windows.

“You pay very close attention to my team?”

Unforgivably, Shane blushes, “Well, you’re our division rivals so it’s kind of my job.”

“You pay even closer attention to me, hm? I’m your personal rival, no? Is your job to study me, too?”

Beet red with an unforgivable mix of irritation and arousal, Shane grits out, “Rozanov, can we not do this here?”

“You are the one who comes to see me!”

Well. That much is undeniable. “I needed to know that you’re okay. Now that I know you’re not too hurt to be an asshole, I’m going to leave.”

He gets up and makes it about two steps to the door before Ilya yells, “Wait!”

Shane turns around instantly, “What?”

“Since you watch me so closely and know everything about me, you should help me with my memory, yes?”

“Help you with your memory? Isn’t that what the doctor is here for?”

Ilya rolls his eyes, “Yes, I know this. That is not what I mean.”

Shane gives up, he sits back down and props his chin in his hand, “Okay, Ilya, what did you mean?”

“Like that! You call me Ilya?”

Shane pushes up against the nausea of dishonesty and once again chickens out, “Yes, and you call me Shane.”

“We are good friends then,” Ilya decides, “You will help me catch up what I missed.”

“Ilya,” Shane tries to think of the gentlest way he can phrase this, “We um, it’s not like we hung out a lot. Just whenever we were playing each other.”

“That is fine, it will give me контур,” Ilya says, gesturing wildly with the hand that isn’t in a sling, “I don’t remember the word.”

Shane thinks for a second then remembers that he’s seen this word in his Russian lessons, which he started after Tampa so he’s not particularly good yet. But Shane remembers this one because his professor is making them write a контур to prepare for a short essay. His delight at remembering it supersedes any hesitation before he offers, “An outline?”

Ilya snaps his fingers, smiling wide, “Yes! Exactly, an outline.” Then in a flash, the smile falls off his face. “Why do you know Russian?”

“Fuck,” Shane says, for the millionth time, okay, he can think of an excuse that isn’t necessarily a lie, and which doesn't involve explaining long, emotional phone calls from Moscow that Ilya would have no context for yet, “Um. I don’t, really? Just a few words here and there.”

“You learn this from me?”

“Well it’s not like I’m hanging out with any other Russians.”

“Good,” Ilya sniffs, “And is not a weird question, MHL is full of Russians.”

“Yeah, and out of all of them I got saddled with you,” Shane says, with a chuckle and a shake of the head. When he looks up, though, he realizes his joke did not land. Ilya’s looking away now, smile gone, shoulders hunched a little inwards.

“It’s— it’s not a bad thing. I didn’t mean it like that,” Shane says quickly, trying desperately to revive the light mood in the room, but it might be hopeless.

Ilya continues to pout and lifts one forlorn shoulder. Unfortunately, it’s the side he hurt his collarbone on so instantly he winces, which propels Shane forward again, hovering over him and fussing. “If you hurt yourself trying to throw a temper tantrum, Ilya, I swear to God.”

“Go away, Hollander, you come, you see I’m okay, you are good friend. So go now.”

The thing is, he really should go now. He should have gone a while ago, pretty much as soon as he realized Ilya was okay (memory notwithstanding). Anyone could have come in by now, nurses, Ilya’s teammates, hell, maybe even his family. Visiting hours only just started, after all. Yet, stubbornly, Shane stays.

“I don’t think you really want that,” Shane says, with more confidence than he feels, “You’re just saying that because you’re butthurt and grumpy.”

Ilya wrinkles his nose. It’s unfairly cute. “Butthurt? What is this? No my butt does not hurt, my head hurts.”

“It’s an expression, Ilya,” Shane says, voice uncontrollably fond. When Ilya shrugs, Shane just looks at him for a long moment and savours it. The way the sunlight is making the fuzzy, unkempt curls in his hair glow, the way he looks so soft and rumpled in his hospital gown, how vulnerable with his arm cradled carefully to his chest to protect his collarbone. Shane follows Ilya’s gaze to the door, and realizes he might as well ask. “Are you expecting anyone? Friends, or family?”

“Mm, probably coach,” Ilya avoids eye contact assiduously “Maybe alternate captain.”

“You know who that is?”

“Marleau,” Ilya guesses, and smiles a little when Shane nods, “He started on Bears a few seasons before me. He is my friend?”

“Yeah, I mean, I think so. You’re always clubbing together.”

“Aw, so I don’t go clubbing with you?”

Shane laughs, “Not really my scene, no.”

Ilya gives him a long up and down look, lingering in enough places to make Shane blush, then he mutters, “That is too bad. Now that we are both out for the season, I could have taken you.”

“Yeah I’m sure you can really bust a move with that sling,” Shane jokes, but at the same time, he’s earnestly imagining it: him and Ilya at a club again, but this time he wouldn’t be staring across the dance-floor while Ilya kissed a girl. He’d be the one Ilya’s kissing. Shane shakes himself out of that fantasy quickly, the impossibility of it aches.

“So, you say no more playoffs for Montreal, then what will you do all summer?” Ilya asks, toying with a loose thread in his gown.

“Um well, there’s training camp but before that I’ll usually spend some time in Ottawa with my parents and then um, I’ll go to my cottage.” The cottage where I wanted to take you, where I still want to take you, if only you remembered.

“Cottage?”

“Yeah, it’s like a summer house out in the woods. It’s on a lake. I had it built,” the more Shane says, the more confused Ilya seems to be, “It’s a Canadian thing.”

“Sounds boring,” Ilya says.

“Okay, then what are your exciting plans?”

Ilya’s teasing smile disappears so suddenly, Shane jolts. He doesn’t know what his own expression is doing, but Ilya looks away. The silence holds for a moment, then, he speaks, his voice hushed, “I will go back to Russia. My father, he is very sick and he needs me to go back and take care of him.”

Fuck. Oh shit. No one told him.

“Ilya,” Shane tries to gentle his voice as much as he can, but that just makes it come out shaky, “I’m really sorry to have to tell you like this, but you should know, your father passed away recently. Just last month. This was the first game you played since coming back from his funeral.”

Ilya’s expression crumbles, his eyes instantly welling up with tears. He wrenches his head to the side, in some futile hope Shane won’t see him, but it’s far too late for that. Shane rounds his bed, until he’s facing him again, and cups his precious face in his hands. He wipes the tears that roll down Ilya’s cheeks with his thumb, and without thinking, places two soft kisses on either cheek.

“Hey, hey, Ilya,” he mutters nonsense syllables and Ilya’s name, hoping to reach through Ilya’s panic and sorrow and remind him that Shane is there, he’s not alone. Ilya starts crying in earnest and Shane hugs him gingerly to his chest, mindful of his injury. Ilya rests his head against Shane’s heartbeat while Shane strokes his hand through Ilya’s curls, and he whispers, “It’s okay, Ilya, you’re okay, I’ve got you.”

“I didn’t even like him,” Ilya chokes out, “And he always hated me.”

“He was still your dad,” Shane says, “It’s okay to miss him.”

“I can’t remember him,” Ilya whispers, “Last time I see him, he is normal, maybe forgetting a few things. What happened at the end?”

Shane has no idea what to say. Ilya only ever told him the bare minimum, and he doesn’t want to suggest Ilya call his brother, who Shane figures, from what little Ilya has let on about him, is the absolute fucking worst. So he just holds Ilya closer. He wishes he could squeeze Ilya with all his might, as if that might wring all the tears right out of him, but he’s mindful of his injuries and keeps his grip light. He compensates by smoothing his hands over every bit of Ilya he can reach. His beautiful broad shoulders under the papery hospital gown, the proud column of his neck, and the golden forest of curls on his head. Shane’s fingers tangle themselves in that hair and comb it through, fluffing it beyond all hope, but uncaring because the touch makes Ilya’s tense muscles slowly melt deeper into Shane’s embrace.

“Ilya,” Shane says then, having decided right then and there, “Will you come to my cottage? Maybe just for your recovery, or maybe longer?”

Ilya pulls back and looks up at him with wide, watery eyes, “You want me there?”

Ilya’s voice is soft with hope, and Shane would do anything to protect each and every tender emotion in Ilya’s heart.

“Yeah, I can’t think of anyone else I’d want to spend my summer with.”

“Is not just charity because I have no memory and nowhere to go?”

“Well, I mean, you do have a mansion in the Boston suburbs but I figured the cottage might be more fun.”

“Fun? You know how to have fun?”

“I have jet skis,” Shane says, trying and failing to contain his smile, “If you’re good and get the all-clear from your doctor, we can race them on the lake.”

“Okay, you win,” Ilya says, his good hand coming up to cradle the side of Shane’s face, his thumb stroking along the freckles on the tops of his cheeks, “I will come to the cottage.”

Shane’s resolve cracks and finally gives way, his elation is a flood washing away the usual scaffolding of his anxiety. Uninhibited, he leans in close to Ilya until their noses brush, with every intention to kiss him, memories be damned, they can make new ones.

Of course, that’s when the door creaks open. Shane’s head turns instinctively to see who’s there and his eyes meet the wide, shellshocked expression of Bears alternate captain Cliff Marleau.

“Shit,” Shane whispers, but he pushes down his instinct to jump out of Ilya’s arms, instead, disentangling them as gently as he can.

“What?” Ilya whines, but then his eyes follow the line of Shane’s gaze and land on his teammate. He instantly sobers, leaning back against his pillows, still a little too loose from the morphine to pull off being totally nonchalant, but getting there.

For his part, Marleau doesn’t say anything, “Uh, hey Hollander.”

“Marleau,” Shane greets back with a tight nod of his head.

“Roz, are you crying? Hollander what did you say to him?” 

Shane rolls his eyes, “I just gave him the news about his dad.”

Marleau instantly sobers, turning to Ilya, he asks, “You doing okay, Roz?"

Ilya sniffs and stares evenly at Marleau.

“I am fine.”

Cliff turns to Shane then, “Decent of you to stop by.”

“Least I could do.” Shane tries to wave away the compliment.

“Don’t sell yourself short, brother, it’s a little more than that. I’ll say on behalf of the team, we appreciate it. You’re a good sport.”

“Don’t speak for me,” Ilya grumbles, but when Shane looks back at him, he’s wiped away all evidence of tears and even has a bit of his usual mischief about him as well. Shane tries to look an appropriate amount of happy about that, and turns to Marleau.

“Were you all informed about his memory loss?”

Marleau winces, “Yeah, it’s been a fucking trip, actually, we’re trying to figure out who’s around to take him home but around the time of the draft he was on his own. His emergency contact’s in Russia for work right now, she won’t be back til the end of the month. But we’re seeing if she can arrange his plane tickets…”

“Plane tickets?” Shane interrupts, “Like… to go back to Boston? Wouldn’t the team just handle that?”

“Uh, no, to go back to Russia. I mean, I assume that’s what Roz wants to do. It’s what he does every summer.”

“Can he even fly in this condition?”

“Yeah the doctors said he should be fine once they discharge him.”

Shane hesitated. If the doctors were saying it was okay… then they must be right. But flying with a concussion is never fun, the changes in the air pressure always give Shane the worst malingering migraines. He doesn’t want Ilya to go through any more pain if he can help it.

“I am not going to Russia,” Ilya says.

Shane and Cliff both turn to face him. He has his non-sling-bound arm crossed haughtily over his chest. “My father is gone. There is nothing for me to go back. And I don’t want to see my brother.”

Shane’s heart twinges even though Ilya doesn’t appear to be in danger of crying anymore, he still sighs heavily, weighed down by grief and, thankfully, acceptance. Shane can’t in good conscience let him go home alone like this.

“Okay,” Cliff nods, as easy as anything, “So back to Boston, then? Coach can let Svetlana know.”

“Actually,” Shane cuts in, seeing his chance, his heart beating wildly in his throat, “I, uh, I wasn’t just here for sportsmanship?”

Cliff looks at him askance, “Okay…?” Ilya is just as confused.

“Jane sent me,” he blurts out, frantically catching Ilya’s eye and begging him silently to play along. He must be confused enough that he doesn’t object, but Cliff’s eyes are wide and alight with wonder. “Ilya’s going to stay with her while he recovers.”

“No fuckin’ way— the mysterious Montreal Jane? You know her? So she is a Voyageur’s fan! That’s why he never wanted us to meet her!”

“Um, yeah, sure, we know each other,” technically true, “and she actually wants Ilya to come stay with her and get better.”

“Oh, yes,” Ilya says with an all-too-knowing smile, “She is bringing me to her cottage, yes?”

“Yup, I’m, uh, all set to drive you there once you’re discharged.”

“That’s really nice of you, Hollander,” Cliff says, snatching Shane’s attention away from where his gaze is still lingering on Ilya’s, “You really live up to the “Golden Boy” image, y’know? Putting yourself out there for your rival? Mad respect, bro.” And to Shane’s horror, Cliff approaches him for one of those hand-clasp back-pat boy hugs, the kind for which Shane has never mastered the exact choreography. He fumbles his way through it, much to Ilya’s delight. When he hears him giggling at Shane’s awkwardness, he earns himself a sharp glare from over Cliff’s shoulder.

When they part, Cliff rounds Ilya’s bed and offers the same strange hug. It’s infinitely more graceful when Ilya does it. Shane watches with naked envy; he’s perfect even with one arm in a sling and vision blurred with morphine.

Before Cliff goes though, he catches Shane’s eye one last time and Shane is surprised to find concern there. He gnaws on his lip for a second as if deciding whether to say what he says next, he leans close, voice low, “Does Roz, like, remember Jane?”

“Yeah,” Shane says, “His last memory is of the draft.”

“They knew each other before the draft?”

Oh no. Shane said too much.

“Um,” he stammers, he knows his face has turned an incriminating shade of red.

Before he can shove his foot any further into his mouth, however, Ilya intervenes.

“I have many secrets, Cliff Marleau, did you know I am also former KGB spy?”

With his uninjured arm, he makes an exaggerated finger gun which he shoots with a theatrical flourish at his teammate’s head. As he watches Ilya make the same stupid joke he made five minutes ago, Shane has the brief and terrifying thought that he might love Ilya more than anything in the world.

Cliff laughs, “Nice try, Roz, Boston public school system was good enough to teach me you were an infant when the Iron Curtain fell. George Bush didn’t leave this kid behind, no sir.”

Ilya rolls his eyes, “Whatever, go away Marly, you are getting between me and my Jane.” Ilya very deliberately makes eye contact with Shane, then, and winks. Shane feels a burst of heat in his stomach, his pulse noticeably picks up its pace.

Thankfully Cliff is too busy throwing up an affectionate middle finger and making his way out of the room to notice Shane’s uncanny impression of a tomato. When the door closes behind him, Shane turns slowly towards Ilya, his ire suffused in the tense line of his body. And Ilya has the audacity to lie there and look at him with his robin’s egg eyes, sporting an impish smile that would drive lesser men to madness.

“Why are you Jane?”

Shane doesn’t know how much he should be revealing right now, or how much Ilya’s already inferred. He thinks for a long moment, then says, “It’s because of the stupid rivalry stuff. We text each other using code names. You’ll see when you have your phone again.” And by then I’ll have had enough time to come up with a better excuse… or is it an explanation, technically?

He resolves to tell Ilya more when he’s not actively drifting off into morphine-induced torpor.

With the image of Ilya in his cottage now a real possibility for the near future, Shane becomes restless. Resolving to find a doctor who can tell him when he can take Ilya home, he backs up towards the door. Ilya’s face immediately falls as he assumes Shane is leaving. Just for a moment, Shane reassures him, “I’m going to go ask about your discharge, then I’ll bring the car around so we can wheel you right in. Sound good?”

All the worry melts off of Ilya then, and Shane’s heart bounces with delight to see that beautiful smile emerge once more like daybreak, “Sounds good.”

In no time, Shane has his belligerent Russian loaded into his Land Rover, and after ignoring copious comments about how boring and a waste of Shane’s exorbitant wealth the vehicle is, they’re on their way to the cottage.

“It’s just outside a little village near Gatineau. That’s the town that’s on the border of Ottawa and Quebec. Technically it’s on the Quebec side, the decision came down to a property tax thing, since all the other property I own is in Quebec too, I don’t know how to explain it, really, it was boring even for me. But the upshot is we’re not crossing provincial lines driving there from Montreal, but I usually go there from Ottawa cause my parents’ cottage is nearby, but it’s on the Ontario side. What’s funny about that is the bylaws for their municipality—”

“Hollander.”

Shane turns to Ilya then, and after a second, sets his eyes back on the road. “What?”

“You are nervous?”

“What? No. Why would you say that? I invited you.”

“Yes, but you are rambling. Being extra boring, too. I lose many years of English learning and I did not understand even half of that.”

Shane winces, “Sorry.”

“Not to mention I have concussion too.”

“Alright already, I get it, I’ll shut up.”

“No, don’t,” Ilya whines, “Is okay, I was just poking.”

“Well I got it, poke received.”

“What does this mean?”

“It means I hear you,” Shane smiles, “I’ll be quiet. Do you wanna listen to Tchaikovsky? I think I have a playlist on my phone, or there’s the classical station. I can put it on really soft unless you think it’ll give you a headache?”

Ilya just smiles at him until Shane groans and slams his head back against the headrest. “Sorry, I did it again, didn’t I?”

“Why are you so nervous, Shane? Is only me. We are friends, you said, right?”

“Yeah, Ilya, we are, of course we are, we just haven’t ever done this before.”

“What, go to your cottage?”

“Spend any meaningfully long stretch of time together? I think the longest before this would have been that nap I took at your house in Boston before— well, fuck. I probably shouldn’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“The doctor said not to overwhelm you. This memory is kind of… maybe we can talk about it when I’m not driving?”

“Okay,” Ilya sulks, “I can wait.”

“Anyway, what I was trying to say is I’m nervous because this is a big step for us.”

“We are making a new memory?”

Shane’s heart melts, and he can’t help himself, he reaches his hand over and rests it gently on Ilya’s knee. He leaves it there for the rest of the drive, even when Ilya drapes his own hand over it, twining their fingers together. Those fingers have played him like a piano, plucking out symphonies of pleasure, building to a divine crescendo. Shane fantasized about just those fingers sometimes, about having them in his mouth. It’s torture to have him physically so close and, yet, with Ilya’s memory gone, more distant than ever.

By the time they roll up the long winding road to park in the driveway of Shane’s cottage, Ilya has fallen asleep. His head rests adorably against the window and he snores a little, a steady trickle of drool descending from the corner of his lips. It’s that perfect balance of disgusting and cute that Ilya always seems to strike.

It takes a gentle nudge to his arm, but then he’s gasping awake. Shane holds onto his bicep to make sure he doesn’t slam his already delicate head against the roof of the car.

“We’re here,” he says softly.

He watches Ilya take in the building in front of them, secretly satisfied to see him unable to hide a look of awe at the place. Shane's not too humble to say it's an impressive fucking house. Floor to ceiling glass walls, warm wood beams laid out in perfect symmetry, just as Shane had approved. He’d built this cottage in all ways but physical. From reviewing blueprints, to picking the materials, he’d even tried decorating it himself (with his go-to interior designer on call) and the result was this: the first home that ever truly felt like it was just Shane’s, not his parents’, not his family’s, not the MLH’s, but Shane’s. The fact that he gets to share it with Ilya now only makes the place even more sacred.

“I can carry my own bags,” Ilya complains as Shane leads them out of the car, a duffel in either hand and Ilya’s backpack strapped to his shoulder.

“With a busted collarbone and concussion, yeah, no I don’t think so.”

Ilya grumbles something under his breath but Shane is too focused on unlocking the door to feign annoyance.

When Ilya walks in, Shane watches him carefully evaluate the interior. His mop of curls tilts up to gaze at the high ceilings. He wanders through the open concept first floor, lingering on the wall of windows looking out onto the lush green backyard as it slopes down into the glittering lake.

Shane is momentarily distracted putting away their bags so he lets Ilya explore, but as soon as he’s done, the nervous jitters possess him once more. He hovers next to Ilya as he stares out the window.

“I had some groceries delivered, so there’s Coke in the fridge for you, it’s caffeine-free ‘cause of the concussion, but you should probably stick to water for now, too much sugar won’t be good for you. I have a well outside so the water’s really good,” Shane trails off as while he was nervously rambling about beverages, Ilya takes the opportunity to step closer and closer until he’s right within kissing distance. He feels every centimetre of that distance, his heart wrenching at his inability to close it. Maybe Ilya wouldn’t mind if Shane kissed him right now, he’s certainly been flirting, but something in Shane balks at the idea, like he’s taking advantage of Ilya in a vulnerable state. Shane forces himself to take a step back, “I’m rambling again.”

“No,” Ilya waves him off, “Is nice. I like your cottage.”

“You do?”

“Is very beautiful here, um, thank you for inviting me.”

“You’re welcome, of course!”

An awkward silence descends over the room. Ilya, always the more adept one out of the two of them, once again takes it upon himself to break it.

“I think maybe I have fancy well water later. I need to rest now. Your car was so boring that I fell asleep but so lame that it was not good sleep.”

“It’s a normal car,” Shane huffs and grabs Ilya’s hand to lead him towards the bedrooms.

Specifically, he leads Ilya towards his bedroom. It’s a cozy little space, despite being the master, and it’s tucked away on the opposite wing to the kitchen and living space. Like most of the cottage, it’s got floor-to-ceiling-windows, but what’s extra handy about the bedroom is that Shane has rigged blackout shades to descend from the ceiling at the click of a remote. He plunges the room into darkness now, and leads Ilya to his bed. Ilya sheds his joggers and t-shirt. Shane politely averts his gaze, until he realizes that Ilya is caught in it, the sleeve tangled in his sling and smothering his face. Bracing himself, Shane reaches forward and helps Ilya the rest of the way out of his shirt. And he’s only human, he can’t help but stare at the warm naked skin and toned muscle and gold-spun body hair revealed to him. The only thing that stops him from burying his face between Ilya’s pecs right then and there is the full-body yawn that wracks Ilya. Thoroughly charmed by the boyish way he rubs at his eyes after, Shane gently ushers him into his bed and tucks him in under the covers.

“Thank you,” Ilya mumbles again, and Shane blushes. Before he can think of a way to get Ilya to stop thanking him, Ilya’s mouth has fallen slack and open and soft snores are already starting to rumble out of him like a big hibernating bear.

Shane takes advantage of the opportunity Ilya’s sleep provides and decides he should get started on dinner.

The groceries he’d ordered while they waited for Ilya’s discharge from the hospital were more or less in alignment with Shane’s strict performance diet with the exception of the Cokes and some bags of Doritos for Ilya. Those are the only things he can remember Ilya liking. Shane realizes, looking at the fridge now, that he doesn’t actually know what Ilya’s favourite foods are. Would it be some sort of Russian food? Shane isn’t sure if he can name any dishes from Russian cuisine. He deeply regrets not researching in hindsight, though he’d only had a couple of hours between his impulsive invite and Ilya’s hospital discharge.

Maybe he can learn something useful while Ilya sleeps.

He pulls out his phone and scrolls through several recipes online, trying to find something he has the ingredients for. After a bit of searching, he settles on a simple soup with potatoes and mushrooms and onions and dill, it looks hearty (and starchy) but it might be just the thing Ilya needs as he heals, to fortify himself or whatever. His dad always used to make him chicken noodle when he’s sick. Maybe Ilya ate this as a kid too, when he’s up, Shane will have to ask.

He’s glad that Ilya at least remembers his life in Russia. He knows now with his father gone, Russia feels even farther and more foreboding. He’d confessed as much on their Skype calls. In hindsight, and after looking up the Russian government’s penchant for surveillance, those had been extremely risky. If anyone happened to be listening in, or god forbid recording, there would have been some pretty incriminating scenes. Not just sexual, but intimate. Something about the screen, about the ocean between them, had lowered their guards. Shane had never seen Ilya be so honest with him, so tender. He felt like he was burrowing down to the very marrow of Ilya and realizing that he’d never so at home before.

So he makes Ilya soup, hoping it will remind him of something, even if it’s not exactly what Shane needs him, a little desperately, to remember.

In an effort to distract himself from spiralling about Ilya’s memory while he cooks, Shane turns on whatever hockey game is playing on TSN right now (a western conference playoff game by the looks of it) with the volume low so as to not disturb Ilya. He starts cooking and quickly loses himself in the process. The soup comes together really easily. He cooks the potatoes and the mushrooms with plenty of chicken stock. And because he can’t help himself, he adds a bunch of shredded up rotisserie chicken to plus-up the protein.

By the time the soup is done, the whole kitchen is fragrant from all the fresh dill. The aroma conjures Ilya, who shuffles into the kitchen his hair a fluffy mess. He’s still shirtless and shamelessly clad in just a pair of Shane’s boxer-briefs. The strap of his sling is twisted and he’s rubbing his eyes to wake himself up. He sniffs the air like a cartoon dog as he sidles up to the counter next to Shane.

The sun has set and the forest is inky black outside. Shane has flooded the house with the warm light of his many lamps, all controlled by an app on his phone. Ilya is hard to look at in this lighting. It turns him soft and hazy and domestic, like he belongs here forever. Ilya is the most beautiful thing Shane has ever seen, even when he’s wiping his nose with his hand and smearing it on his underwear, which are actually Shane’s underwear. Shane wants to kiss him so bad he's crawling out of his skin for it.

“You make mushroom soup?”

“Yeah,” Shane says, weirdly shy, “It’s probably not authentic or anything, and I added chicken, but I looked up a recipe online um, grib-noy, right?”

Ilya laughs, “Yes, is Russian word for mushroom.”

“Oh.” Shane is a little embarrassed but he can tell Ilya wasn’t trying to make fun of him. Instead, his laughter is more of that same surprised delight Shane had seen the first time he’d showed off his Russian.

“Come on, you must be starving.”

“Mm, yes, hospital food was… bleh.”

Shane ladles up a healthy portion of soup for Ilya, making sure to get plenty of potatoes in his scoop, and one for himself. It won’t hit all the macros he needs for his diet, but it’s close enough. He’ll blend in an extra bunch of kale into his smoothie in the morning, he bargains. He sets the bowls up for them at the breakfast bar in the kitchen. They sit side by side on the tall bar stools, elbows brushing as they eat.

Though he wouldn’t call himself a chef, Shane’s pretty damn good at following instructions. To his delight, the soup turned out amazing. It’s just salty enough, hearty from the deep mushroomy flavours, and heavy on the dill. But it isn’t Shane whose opinion matters the most. Without looking up from his bowl, Shane shyly asks, “How is it?”

Ilya doesn’t say anything for a second and when Shane looks up, it’s because he’s basically inhaled half his portion already, barely stopping to take a full breath. Shane watches the exact moment he becomes aware that he was supposed to be answering a question and he puts his spoon down a little guiltily.

“Ah, is good.” He gives Shane a terse nod and goes back to eating.

Shane frowns, sensing Ilya’s a little off, he tries to defuse the tension by being a little bratty, “What just good? It seems like you like it.”

Ilya finishes his last bite and sets his spoon down with a clatter. He takes a shaky breath. Shane’s eyes widen, that joke could not have landed worse, it seems. But then Ilya looks at him and his smile is so fond and real that it instantly settles all the panic forming in his chest.

“Tastes like something my mama used to make.” Then, the smile slips off of Ilya’s face so fast it’s a little scary, and he goes a little grey.

“Ilya?”

“I miss her.”

Ilya looks away quickly, but not before Shane can catch the sparkle of tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. Hopping off his stool, Shane sidles up to Ilya and gathers him into his arms. Shane gently guides Ilya’s face into the crook of his neck and lets him breathe there and feels the shoulder of his t-shirt slowly saturating with tears.

“She would be so proud of you,” Shane murmurs, rubbing a soothing hand up and down the broad expanse of Ilya’s back, trying to calm his sobbing, “I remember watching, when you won the Stanley Cup, you dedicated the win to your mom.”

“You were watching?”

“Yeah, um, with my team. I mean, they all got up as soon as it was clear you’d won but I couldn’t look away from the screen, from you. I actually went a little teary-eyed, it was weird.”

Ilya screws his eyes shut tight and burrows even further into Shane’s neck.

“Shane?” he calls, his face still hidden, but his voice soft and sweet. “How did we become friends? Will you tell me? I will not… overwhelm.”

Sighing, every last scrap of his resolve dissolves, utterly mesmerized as he stares into Ilya's sparkling blue eyes, “After the draft we played each other at the Junior Championships in Ottawa. Canada won this time.” Ilya scoffs, but Shane plows on before he can interrupt, he knows the conversation will go nowhere if they fall into the trap of bickering about hockey.

“I thought that the next time I’d see you would be when we played each other that fall, but you had a different idea. That summer, I book this CCM commercial in Toronto, and two days before I’m set to go, my mom gets a call. It’s CCM, and they let us know that they’ve had a change of plans and that instead of being featured alone, I'm going to be in this campaign with none other than incoming Boston Bears center, Ilya Rozanov.”

“Funny coincidence,” Ilya says faintly.

“Nope, not a coincidence, it was all you.”

“You make it seem like I am obsessed with you, Hollander.”

“You are. And that’s alright,” Shane presses a smile into the bare skin of Ilya’s shoulder, an almost-kiss, “I’m a little obsessed with you, too.”

Ilya pulls back then, and Shane jolts when he feels one of Ilya’s hands come up and grab his chin. Shane melts into putty the second Ilya touches him. With his rough grip on Shane’s jaw, Ilya maneuvers him so that he has no choice but to make direct eye contact. The hunger in Ilya’s eyes has deepened. His voice is a growl when he speaks.

“Shane, I think I remember something.”

“What?” Shane breathes, and he feels the heat of his breath bouncing back from Ilya’s skin, they’re so close, and the distance between them keeps getting smaller as Shane swoons and melts.

“I think I remembered we kissed.”

“Really? You remember that? Wait, which time?” Excitement judders through Shane’s body, something outside himself puppeteers his hands, making him gather up Ilya’s face and pull him close. But then, Ilya gasps, and stops Shane with a hand to the chest. Mixed messages are making his head spin, so Shane tries to decipher Ilya’s expression but it’s to no avail. He’s making a face that’s somewhere between devastated, guilty, and horny and Shane has no idea how to parse through any of that.

“No, actually, was just a guess. But good to know I was right.”

Shane manages one shocked, choked, “Ilya!” before Ilya is pulling him roughly back in and kissing him, finally setting the world back on its axis. Shane kisses back, or at least, he tries to keep up, with a gentle hand holding the back of Ilya’s neck steady while Ilya attempts to devour him. Ilya kisses him with the perfect balance of push and pull, expertly doling out pressure and sweetness until Shane melting into his arms, desperate to take him to bed.

They make it as far as the couch. It’s a long enough sectional that they can stretch out on it. Shane takes advantage of having the full use of both of his arms to maneuver Ilya until he’s laying back comfortably against the mountain of throw pillows— a lesson from his interior designer that Shane had taken and run with until it started to feel like a therapeutic ritual. Sometimes after bad losses Shane would just buy as many throw pillows as he could without raising any alarms at his bank with concerns that he’s been hacked.

The purpose of this pillow-purchasing obsession is clear to him now: they were waiting to have Ilya Rozanov nestled in amongst them like a dilettante Russian prince.

“God, you’re so beautiful,” Shane breathes, as he climbs up and straddles Ilya. He rests his hands on the sharp lines of muscles along his hips, cushioning the bow of his iliac crests, the perfect V shape Ilya’s body makes here had driven him mad in that locker room in Toronto. Ilya had flaunted his body on purpose, and Shane was always powerless to resist. “You know, I only realized this later, but at the CCM shoot, you fully fucking cruised me.”

“What does this mean, cruise?”

“It’s a term to describe like men publicly showing interest in other men like without making it obvious. To like, cops or whatever.”

The mention of cops makes Ilya’s shoulders stiffen slightly, involuntarily, “Ah, yes, I understand. How did I do this?”

“We were in the showers together after the shoot. I saw you, your insane body, and fuck, I got so hard, I— I couldn’t help it.” As Shane tells the story, he starts peppering gentle kisses against the tender skin of Ilya’s neck, moving down to kiss along the bruise, featherlight so as to not disturb the healing bone. “You caught me, before I could turn away. You got hard too. And then you— fuck.”

As Shane talks, his voice a low rasp of arousal, he feels himself getting hard. He presses his erection deliberately onto Ilya’s crotch, where he feels him stiffening up too. His whole body shivering with arousal, Shane grinds down harder, panting as he tries to keep talking, despite Ilya’s best efforts to make him lose his mind. 

“You started stroking yourself in front of me or like at me, fuck it was the hottest thing ever I’d ever seen. I was this close to getting on my knees right then and there. I wanted you in my mouth so bad. I had never felt that way before. Not once in my life. Never with… with women.”

“Then what?” Ilya pants, grinding back up on Shane just as desperately, the pressure mounting, “You would not be satisfied to just look and never taste, yes? When did you kiss me? When did you first suck my cock?”

Shane’s body, hissing with steam like a sauna stone, propels him to pull Ilya’s mouth to his for an extended, thorough kiss. Ilya moans into his mouth, his hand drifting down to Shane’s lower back, guiding his thrusts as they get faster and faster. Shane breaks free of their kiss with concerted effort, but he needs to breathe. He catches a glimpse of Ilya’s reddened lips, plump and tender,  his skin flushed all the way down to his chest and it’s futile. He’s so gorgeous Shane can barely catch his breath. He can only pant harder and draw closer and wait for his racing heart to calm. Shane rests his head against Ilya’s pec, thumb idly playing with his nipple, he figures he should probably answer Ilya’s question.

“It was later that same night. I gave you my hotel room number, and you came to see me. I was so fucking nervous.”

“Afraid of big, bad, Russian?” Ilya thrusts his hips up into Shane for emphasis.

“No, asshole,” Shane grunts, even as his eyes flutter from the rush of pleasure and he grinds down in kind, but slower, sweeter, “I could see through your reputation, even then.” Shane presses a kiss to the freckled skin over Ilya’s heart, “I was scared you were going to tell me to fuck off or something.”

“You really didn’t think I liked you back then?”

“It’s not like you made it obvious!”

“I think jerking off at you is a little obvious.”

“Well, maybe to a normal person but not to me. I need to hear things exactly like you mean them or I get confused. I never understood how people could tell when someone was saying one thing but they meant something else.”

“Oh, Shane,” Ilya pouts, “I am sorry. You know, you make me nervous too.”

“What, how?”

“Ah, maybe because you are cute boy with most beautiful freckles I have ever seen who I very much want to kiss since we shake hands in Canadian hockey rink parking lot.”

“Holy shit, you liked me then?”

“I like you always.”

Always. Shane’s brain stalls and stutters on that word. But what about all those years you’ve forgotten. Surely I’ve done something to make you sick of me, you just don’t know it yet. But when you remember, and you leave, how will I survive it?”

Bereft, Shane can do nothing but pull Ilya back into a kiss. Shane plants his forearms on either side of Ilya’s head, and hovers in a plank over his body. At the sudden removal of pressure from his dick, Ilya’s hips jolt up to try and re-establish contact, but Shane dodges him, never breaking the kiss, even when Ilya starts to make distressed little whining noises against his lips.

When they finally break for air, Ilya is ineffectually pushing down on the small of Shane’s back to try and bring his hips back down, but Shane uses all of the core muscles his years of yoga have helped him refine and stands steadfast and resists collapse. Instead he sucks on Ilya’s tongue until he’s smiling too much at the whining, squirming mess he’s turned Ilya into underneath him. It’s a rush of power straight to Shane’s head, and it makes him get cocky.

He should know by now never to underestimate Ilya Rozanov.

“Come on, Hollander, I remember we fucked.”

Shane freezes, going stiller and even more rigid above Ilya, “Really? When—”

“No,” Ilya grins, “Was just a guess. How many times was it?”

Shane groans, hanging his head, heavy with frustration.

Playing against Ilya all these years, Shane has still never learned to anticipate his next move. This time, maybe he can blame the way Ilya sucks his bottom lip for his failure to see it coming. Hampered by his arm, Ilya hooks both legs around Shane’s hips, crossing them at the ankle, he uses the leverage to force Shane to collapse out of his plank and finally, finally their hips meet again. Shane moans against Ilya’s mouth, and Ilya moans back, the relief of contact washes over them like high tide.

Shane is supposed to be in control, but it’s a lost cause. He grinds his hips into Ilya’s lap to the rhythm of a song only he can hear. It’s the orchestra of their groans and gasps, the staccato of their breathing is the percussion, and the woodwinds are the high-pitched whines that come out of Shane unbidden when the tension builds just right.

Ilya’s hand slides beneath the waistband of Shane’s pants, and he grabs Shane’s ass and squeezes it. He syncs up each grope with the thrust of his hard dick against Shane’s. But when that hand starts exploring, fingers dipping lower, and Shane feels the dry brush of two digits against his hole, he seizes up. He comes so hard his vision narrows to a fine point. He tenses so sharply, his hole twitching against Ilya’s fingertips as he presses harder and harder, riding out Shane’s orgasm while ratcheting up the intensity.

He’s still rock solid against Shane’s abs after Shane has collapsed onto him in utter exhaustion and satisfaction. He takes a moment to catch his breath, but then, as if on autopilot, he slides down Ilya’s body until his mouth is hovering over the tent in Ilya’s shorts. Shane ducks down and presses a kiss to the wet spot growing along the grey gusset, tonguing the damp fabric there, Shane coaxes an ungodly moan out of Ilya, one that makes his whole body shudder to release. Shane gets lost in oral exploration, happily sucking on the clothed tip of Ilya’s dick until the wet patch has grown with a mixture of Ilya’s precum an Shane’s saliva. When Ilya does this to Shane, this is about the time that Shane starts getting antsy and wants everything off, but glancing up at Ilya, he seems perfectly blissed out, head thrown back against the couch cushions, golden curls all a-splay. He’s been clenching his right fist, the one connected to his arm in the sling, from the second Shane touched him. His free hand is still shoved down Shane’s pants and fondling his ass. Shane’s sure that Ilya could go like this for hours. Of course, he wouldn’t come, his stamina needed a little more doing to break, but he would stay hard and Shane would keep at it until Ilya slowly began to fall apart, until he was completely red and sweating and shaking and begging for it.

Another time.

Just the thought of that fantasy has Shane hard again, but he has to ignore that for now. He’s got a more important mission at hand.

He pulls down Ilya’s borrowed boxers, and all nine impossible inches of Ilya’s dick pops out, slapping against his stomach and splattering precum into his chest hair. Shane leans up to lick up the mess, and then he follows Ilya’s happy trail with kisses until he’s reached the head of Ilya’s cock. He rolls it onto his tongue like a piece of hard candy and starts sucking on it like it’s what he was made to do. Ilya is uncut and Shane finds a little too much pleasure in rolling his foreskin onto the tip of his tongue then closing his mouth over the head of Ilya’s cock and sucking as hard as he can. It’s something he’d tried once in a hotel room after a particularly brutal game against Boston a couple years ago. Just like it did then, now it makes Ilya come instantly, with a full body shock to the system. Ilya shakes like a leaf, moaning loud and shameless, pumping his release into Shane’s eager mouth. Shane moans at the taste, swallows everything that he can. He chases with his tongue the rivulets of white that leak out of his mouth and roll down Ilya’s dick like melting candle wax.

“Fuck Hollander, who taught you to do that?” Ilya says between wheezes as he tries to catch his breath.

“You did, asshole.”

Ilya lies back heavily against the pillows, free hand coming up to pet Shane’s head. Shane lies there for a little longer, his cheek smushed up against Ilya’s abs, before he thinks about tending to his second erection. Ilya would probably take him in his mouth, but Shane wants to avoid that this close to a concussion. Taking in just how much that orgasm has worn him out, Shane thinks for a minute, idly twirling his fingers in the hair of Ilya’s happy trail. The best course of action for Ilya’s own health is if Shane just takes care of this erection in the shower by himself, but Ilya’s not going to let him do that without a fight, which Shane will inevitably lose. To avoid that, Shane’s going to have to be a little smarter.

He stands with herculean effort, and pulls Ilya up after him.

Of course, he notices Shane’s dick. Raising both his eyebrows, he asks, “You need any help with that?”

“I do,” Shane smirks, “But I want something specific. It’s in the bedroom.”

Ilya reaches down and twines their fingers together. “Okay, take me there.”

Shane gladly obliges, pressing one last kiss to Ilya’s lips before tugging him through the cottage, up the stairs, and finally to his bedroom.

The blackout curtains are still drawn, so they stumble in the dark, relying mainly on Shane’s muscle memory to make it to the bed. There, Shane reaches over and flicks on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in that same diffuse, amber glow.

Ilya Rozanov is a combination angel-puppy-supermodel and right now he’s got his perfect face squished into Shane’s pillow.

“Show me what you wanted, Shane,” Ilya mutters, but it’s half muffled, half slurred as exhaustion takes him over and his eyelids droop, heavy with sleep.

“I wanted,” Shane says, carefully moving the duvet up over them, “To get you in bed.”

“To fuck?” Ilya asks, so hopeful his head actually lifts off the pillow a little, his eyes still half-lidded, but sharper now in their focus.

“No, dummy, to sleep.”

“You call me dummy? Shane! Is not nice, I have concussion.”

“Exactly, so you’re working with limited brain capacity.”

Ilya makes a petulant scoff of offence and digs his arm out from under the blanket to flip Shane the bird. Once Shane finishes changing into clean lounge pants, he ambles over to the bed and swats his finger out of the air. Tumbling into bed, Shane straddles Ilya and grabs a fistful of Ilya’s hair. Gently tilting his face up, Shane kisses him once, twice, thrice for good measure, then without another word, he reaches over and shuts the light. Then he nestles himself against Ilya’s side, wrapping his uninjured arm around his back, he tucks his head into the crook of Ilya’s neck, and counts Ilya’s breaths until they even out into the perfect rhythm of slumber.

In the seconds before Shane wakes up the next morning, he remembers wishing very hard that Ilya would wake with all his memories back. Of course, it doesn’t come to pass. Pulling up the blinds to let the gentle morning light douse the room, Shane watches Ilya sleep for an amount of time he wouldn’t admit to under pain of torture. When Ilya finally snuffles into consciousness, there’s a brief moment of panic in his gaze, of total disorientation as he tries to figure out where he is, and if he’s safe. Bewildered gaze travelling from the ceiling, to the trees rustling in the early spring wind outside, finally, to Shane. He swallows his disappointment and tries on a smile, it’s clear his memories have not magically returned overnight.

“Good morning,” Shane says, unsure of how else to begin today’s series of excruciating yet inevitable conversations.

“Hollander? You sleep in my room?” Ilya rasps, his voice like gravel from disuse.

“I had to monitor you! You have a concussion! And this is technically my room.”

“You put me to sleep in your bed?”

“Is that surprising?”

Ilya snuggles closer into Shane’s embrace, Shane welcomes him readily, hugging him tight while remaining gentle and mindful of his sling.

“I know you told me how we became friends,” Ilya whispers, as if confessing, “But I still can’t believe you don’t hate me, after the draft.”

“Why would I hate you?” Shane’s face scrunches up in sheer confusion, “‘Cause you got first pick?”

“You don’t?”

“I mean, I was a little jealous, yeah. And, I mean, I was thrown off ‘cause I was kind of expecting it. But Montreal would always have been a better fit for me. I mean, can you imagine me playing for Boston?”

“Why? Is Boston not good?”

“No, no, I mean, from what you’ve told me your teammates sound great. You’re really close with Marleau.”

“But why would you not want to be a Bear?”

“Um, I don’t know. The Voyageurs are my mom’s favourite team. She’s from Montreal, originally. So it was nice, really, that I got to be a part of something she loves so much. I mean there’s always some part of me, and everything I do on the ice, that I dedicate to her, you know?” Shane is sure Ilya has seen how he scrawls his mom’s name on his stick tape before every game, “And leading her favourite team to two Stanley Cups felt like, I don’t know, a great way to make her proud.”

Shane realizes he’s rambling, picking at the loose threads in his duvet, in fact creating loose threads where there were none to begin with. He looks up self-consciously at Ilya only to get stuck on his expression. Ilya’s eyes are shiny with tears but there’s a soft smile on his face. Shane’s never been the best at reading expressions, but he knows from the way Ilya sighs, and stays quiet, and gently adjusts the crucifix around his neck that he’s thinking about his own mom, missing her in that desperate, fathomless way that makes Shane want to tuck him away in his arms and never let anything ever hurt him again.

“I want you to meet my mom someday,” Shane says, smiling, “She’ll love you.”

Ilya rolls his eyes, which has the effect of dislodging one of his tears. Shane watches it run down the side of his face, his fingers itch to reach over and wipe it away. But Ilya flops onto his back with a huff before Shane gets the chance.

“She will hate me,” Ilya says, resigned. Shane furrows his brow, a sinking feeling in his chest, he knows Ilya’s not wrong. But it’s only because his mom only knows Ilya by his reputation, not who he actually is. Shane knows that if she could just see behind the artifice, meet Ilya over a quiet lunch at the cottage, she and his dad would fall in love with him just as quickly and irreversibly as Shane did. Ilya is Hollander kryptonite, they just don’t know it yet.

The seed of a plan takes root in Shane’s mind. Maybe he can orchestrate a meeting while Ilya’s here. It’ll take some explaining, to both Ilya and his parents, but it’s only their second day together. Ilya’s still got a ways to go in his recovery. It gives Shane time to set up the dominoes, lay the groundwork for their meeting, help it go as smoothly as possible. Shane will never be thankful that Ilya is injured, but he is grateful for the circumstance because it’s giving them what they’ve never had before — time.

Even if Ilya doesn’t remember the last seven years, Shane has more than enough time to remind him.

“I’ll prove you wrong,” Shane whispers, leaning over and pressing a kiss to Ilya’s lips, morning breath be damned. “You’ll see.”

“Is that promise or threat?”

“Can’t it be both?”

Shane smiles and kisses Ilya again, pulling away before Ilya can turn it into an involved makeout. This makes Ilya pout adorably until he catches on that Shane’s ultimate plan is to lure him into a shower. Never has a more willing victim been led into a trap.

Ilya grins indulgently as Shane carefully takes his arm out of the sling, and he’s surprisingly obedient, as still as a statue when Shane makes him hold it in position to not jostle his collarbone. Shane checks that the water is warm enough before gently guiding Ilya under the spray. Brokering no argument, he takes a handful of his own shampoo and massages it into a lather in Ilya’s curls. Ilya rests his good arm on Shane’s hip, his fingers gently stroking the stretch marks there, his thumb coming around to burrow into the dimples on his back.

“Don’t start,” Shane reprimands, as he rinses out the shampoo, sluicing away the suds so they don’t sting Ilya’s eyes, “This is a purely functional shower, and if you don’t like it, blame your collarbone.”

“Hate collarbone, why do I even have.”

Shane ducks down quickly and presses his lips softly against the hollow of Ilya’s throat, “So I can kiss you there, duh.”

Ilya’s smile goes gooey and if not for the steam providing a perfect cover, Shane would have sworn he blushed.

Shane washes his own hair quickly, then, as he applies his conditioner he realizes, “I don’t have any specific curl stuff for you. Is there any in your bag?”

Ilya tugs Shane close and kisses him sweetly, smiling into it, “Yes, Sveta showed me this thing, leave it in conditioner? Don’t have to rinse it out.”

Shane grins back, “It’s just ‘leave-in,’ I think, but okay, that’s good. Let’s towel off.”

Pulling out an extra terrycloth robe he wraps them both up nice and cozy. He digs out a black leather bag full of toiletries and deposits it in the bathroom. He is about to leave Ilya to his curl routine when he catches sight of him struggling to get the bottle of leave in conditioner open with one hand. First he tries to unscrew the cap with his teeth, then he tries squeezing it in his armpit. The sight of his struggle is cute enough that Shane waits just a second too long watching it before he intervenes. Then of course he has to help squeeze some product out. And while he’s at it, can he rub it between his hands to warm it up? And while it’s already on his hands can he thread it through Ilya’s hair? Like a frog slowly boiled alive, Shane finds himself doing Ilya’s whole routine for him, guided by Ilya’s murmured instructions. As he wrings the excess water out of Ilya’s hair with an old cotton t-shirt, applies the warm amber and teak scented cream through the damp locks, and attaches the diffuser head Ilya brought to his own hairdryer (they both did a brand deal with Dyson a while ago which serendipitously meant they had the same model), Shane feels a delightful tingling throughout his whole body. It’s the bone-deep, primitive satisfaction of tending a garden. 

Shane has been enchanted by Ilya’s curls, ever since he saw them dark and sweat-matted against his forehead on blurry game tape. He remembers a restless ache in his stomach seeing Ilya’s hair squished under helmets and toques, it developed into a perpetual itch in his fingers to pull his headgear off. At the MLH awards one year, he’d seen Ilya’s curls combed back and neat. It made him look like a prince, and Shane had tried hard not to stare, and failed. That night, in Ilya’s hotel room, he’d fought with his natural instinct to thread his fingers through that beautiful hair, messing up the handsome coif, but it had fallen into chaos anyway by the time the two of them were done with each other. So yes, Shane loves Ilya’s curls in all their varieties, but his favourite state will always be when they’re wild and unruly, sitting like a pile of freshly-shorn golden fleece. He loves the way his curls bounce when Ilya throws his head back and laughs. He loves the silky feeling of them between his fingers. He loves burying his nose in them, breathing in the warm aroma that reminds him of cottage campfires. Knowing that the scent comes from a sleek black bottle with gold writing, he makes a mental note to add it to his shopping list.

Deeply pleased at his handiwork, Shane rakes his fingers through Ilya’s freshly washed, dried, and moisturized curls, soft from the leave-in conditioner, and glistening under Shane’s warm bathroom lights.

“All done!” He says, with a proud smile which vanishes as soon as he looks up into the mirror.

Shane’s been so focused on his hair, that this whole time, he’s totally neglected to watch Ilya’s face. When he looks now, he regrets not looking earlier. Ilya is rapt in pure ecstasy with his head tilted back, his eyes closed, his jaw relaxed, and his face flushed with arousal.

It’s a perfect opportunity for Shane to get a good look at him, the fact of him living and breathing and here. Sometimes Shane feels like the only distance he can bear to be away from Ilya is no distance at all, sometimes even touching isn’t close enough. Shane nuzzles his face into Ilya’s neck, presses kisses to all the moles he can find.

The kisses make Ilya stir, leaning back, he captures Shane’s mouth and they lose themselves into another kiss, which is a conversation. This one’s a little resigned, an acknowledgement that they’ll leave the steamy oasis of this bathroom and go back into the real world, a microcosm of what it will be like when they have to leave the cottage. Shane shakes himself, he can’t catastrophize now or mourn the end of this when they’re still basically on the first full day here. Shane needs to do this right, he needs to take his time.

Time itself marches on with no regard for how much one might want to stay cooped up in one’s bedroom making out with a beautiful boy, and instead reminds them with insistent growling stomachs that it is in fact time for breakfast.

Some scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast for Ilya, a protein shake (with extra kale) and a couple turkey sausage patties for Shane, eaten side by side on Shane’s bar stools with their ankles hooked together. It’s as close to paradise as Shane has ever been.

As the salad days at the cottage pass, Ilya demands more memories. By the end of their second full week there, Shane has managed to dodge many of his enquiries by taking his dick into his mouth, or feeding him his own dick, but they haven't gone any further. Shane is very maturely giving in to his caution about Ilya's injuries over his desperate, carnal need to get fucked by him. 

Ilya might be catching on to his tactics. 

Shane thinks this might be the case when, sometimes, Ilya poses questions about his memories just when he knows Shane will be the most agitated, and consequently looser with his words.

Like now, during a routine lounge on the couch, with the playoffs playing on mute on the TV. Things have grown heated as they are wont to do when it comes to Ilya and Shane. After an indeterminably long makeout session, they’ve shifted and ended up with Shane splayed out on his front, having lost his shirt at some point, with Ilya laid over his back, his hand down the back of Shane’s sweatpants. Ilya is ever so idly playing with Shane’s asshole, passing a dry index finger back and forth and round and round its perimeter. It's causing a slow trickle of arousal to build and build into an urgent itch but instead of taking it further, Ilya pauses, and hums contemplatively.

“When was the first time you let me fuck you?”

“Seriously?” Shane groans, brattily pushing back into Ilya’s finger by arching his hips, trying to nudge Ilya inside. “You want to talk about this now?”

“Yes, before I fuck you again I need to know how I did the first time.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Is not fair, Hollander, you know everything I like already but I don’t know what you like yet.”

“You know what I like, you’ve made me come like a hundred times already.”

Ilya rolls his eyes and then he breaks out his secret weapon: pouting. On most people pouting just looks like they’re pulling a sour face, but the way Ilya does it, that kissable bottom lip jutting out, the twist of his eyebrows, the flutter of his golden lashes against the periwinkle blue of his eyes. Shane finally understands the phrase “puppy dog eyes” as they cast their wicked spell on him and he relents, flopping onto his back so he can look up at Ilya properly. Ilya shifts to accommodate him, a pleasant and grounding warmth as his body covers Shane’s like a 200-pound weighted blanket.

“It took us a while to get to that point.”

“Really?”

Shane blushes, avoiding Ilya’s curious gaze by staring the stroke of his thumb across the top of Ilya’s shoulder, “It was kind of my fault?”

Ilya blinks in confusion but doesn’t say anything, waiting for Shane to continue.

“Um, so after the CCM shoot, the next time we hooked up was at our first All Stars.”

Ilya gets an evil grin on his face, “Was Scott Hunter there?”

“He had the hotel room next to yours, and the reason I know that is because you invited me there to fuck right in front of him.”

Ilya laughs, his shoulders shaking with mirth. Shane groans and swats at his chest.

“Fuck you, Ilya, I’m still not convinced he didn’t hear us because he was chirping me about sounding just like you like a few months later— it was mortifying!”

“Aww, poor Shane, is difficult for you when people think you have hot sex?”

“It is when I’m having hot sex with my supposed rival.”

“What does it mean, ‘supposed’?”

“Like everyone assumes we hate each other. That’s the story the MLH sells, right? Like how many millions of dollars do you think are wrapped up in this fucking nonsense narrative? It’s total bullshit, but if we ever said that the whole world would implode.”

Ilya scrunches his nose in an unfairly adorable way, “Too many long English words for my concussion brain, explain how we fucked at All Stars.”

“We, uh, didn’t.”

“What? You just said Scott Hunter heard us?”

“Well he probably heard you fingering me and me blowing you but we didn’t um, we didn’t go all the way that time.”

“All the way? Oh, Hollander, you are so cute. You cannot say penis.”

“Shut up, I can say penis! Look I just fucking said it!”

“Okay then when did you take my penis for the first time if it was not at All Stars?”

“It was in my house in Montreal, um, two years later.”

Ilya shoots upright, dislodging Shane from his position, “Two years?! You make me wait two years for your hole?”

Shane swats at him, “Don’t say it like that!”

“You are cruel mistress, Hollander.”

“Where the hell did you learn that from? I’m not your fucking mistress.”

“Why did we wait so long?” Ilya ploughs on, insistent, “Did I do something wrong, make you not want to?”

“No! No, it was nothing like that but. You know. We both knew what we were doing, hooking up, was a really bad idea. I mean, it still is. If anyone caught us, it could be devastating for our careers. You’d never be able to go back to Russia again.”

“I don’t need to go back. There is nothing left there for me.”

“I know, but we still have to figure out how to get you permanent residency or citizenship or something in the States, or maybe Canada, so if anything does happen, they can’t deport you somewhere you’d be unsafe.”

“I wanted to talk about sex, Hollander, why are we discussing immigration?”

“Because this isn’t just sex!” Shane blurts, and then he clamps his mouth shut. Ilya is frozen, stunned and Shane blows out a deep, exhausted sigh. Well, he’s in it now, and the only way out is through. “I mean, I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t bring someone I’m just fucking to my home and nurse them back to health.”

“So are we boyfriends then? Is this what I cannot remember, still?” Ilya looks devastated at the prospect of that, eyes twinkling with tears.

Shane has to look away from him in order to gravely say, “No, we aren’t. I mean, we never said anything like that or decided.”

“Do you want to be?”

Shane scoffs, “I mean, yeah, of course. Do you? Is that even a fair question when you don’t remember the last seven years? What if at some point you realized you hated me and you’ve forgotten that now but then when your memories come back maybe you’ll remember and hate me again.”

“Hollander,” Ilya says, his voice stern and his body pushing down even harder, forcibly grounding him and forcing him to match Ilya’s even breaths, “Shane, calm down, you are having panic attack.”

Shane breathes, rasping and choppy, “I’m not, I’m just— fuck. Do you want to be my boyfriend, even? You barely know me.”

“I know enough,” Ilya says, and he leans in for a quick kiss, deliberately keeping it shallow before he pulls away, “I know that you like me enough to want me in your special cottage. I know that you suck my dick like you need it to breathe. I know that you are beautiful with freckles that make me crazy.” He punctuates every sentence with a kiss, “And I know that I would like to fuck you, so please, tell me about the first first time. I’ll make this second one even better.”

“You’re like a dog with a bone, you know that?’

“Not familiar with this,” Ilya mutters, kissing Shane’s jaw and earlobe and neck.

“It means you’re really goddamn fucking persistent.”

“Is it a bad thing?”

“No, it’s kind of the best thing. It’s why you texted me for two years even though I dodged you every time we were in the same city. I still looked forward to your texts. They made me smile, and laugh, and think about you, what you were doing right at that moment, what you might say next.”

“Very romantic.”

“Not really, I mean a lot of those texts were pictures of your dick.”

“And you jerked off to them, yes?”

Shane blushes and doesn’t dignify that with an answer. Unfortunately the pinched expression on his face is all the confirmation Ilya needs.

He laughs, “Okay so I finally wear you down one day, and you bring me to your apartment in Montreal?”

“You fucking sexted me before the game, you asshole.”

Ilya raises his eyebrows, unimpressed, “Wow, it took me that long to try that?”

“I was hard the whole fucking time. It drove me crazy,” Shane confesses through gritted teeth. This earns him the biggest goofiest grin in Ilya’s arsenal, “You know you shouldn’t do that.”

“But, it worked,” Ilya says, irredeemably smug. The way he runs his hands down Shane’s body can only be called proprietary, tweaking his nipples and dipping into his bellybutton on the way to grip onto his hip bones like they’re bicycle handles. Ilya’s eyes trace the line of his torso, his pink tongue darting out to wet his lips, “You finally let me fuck you.”

“I told myself I was inviting you over to yell at you about the sext, but the minute I watched you take your shoes off and slot them next to mine in the doorway, I knew I’d lost.”

“Ironic, yes, because you won the game?”

Shane smiles into a kiss, pulling away slowly, “Is it bad if I admit that beating you turns me on?”

“Hm, now who is trying to tamper?”

Shane swats at Ilya’s chest, but Ilya grabs his hand and holds it up close to his heart. “I was good to you? It was your first time, yes?”

“First time with a guy, yeah,” Shane admits, suddenly breathless, “First time I ever felt what it was supposed to feel like.”

“And what did it feel like?”

How can he even begin to describe it? It was like discovering gravity. The same forces that acted on everyone else in the world did not in fact skip over Shane, something he’d always feared and had finally been put to rest. Shane was built for companionship, and he was capable of expressing desire, but it took sleeping with Ilya for him to truly believe it.

“Really fucking good,” is what Shane lands on, a little dazed even from the memory, “Like I didn’t really understand why people were so into sex before you fucked me. Like I’d had it and I didn’t understand the big deal. That’s when I realized I had a whole human need I’d been neglecting. Maybe because you’re the only one who could meet that need, and I hadn’t met you yet.” Shane confesses it almost idly, as he presses a thumb against the mole on Ilya’s cheek, following the touch up with a kiss.

“Tell me what we did.”

“Well, after I yelled at you about sexting me during the game, which I still don’t like by the way,” Shane frowns as Ilya rolls his eyes, “we raced up the stairs to my apartment.”

“I won,” Ilya supplies, earning himself a glare.

“The fuck you did,” Shane retorts, bullshitting just to rid Ilya of his smugness, “I actually remember it and I got up the stairs first.”

“Okay,” Ilya concedes, taking Shane’s chin in his hand he carefully angles Shane for a deep kiss, his body pressing a delicious pressure all over Shane’s body, making him melt into the sofa. “But I got to fuck you so I was maybe real winner.”

Shane rolls his eyes, but it’s difficult to look truly disapproving while he’s basically purring. Ilya smiles at him, and Shane knows its particular shape: it’s the one that directly precedes him getting called an angry kitten in Russian. He’s looked it up and has yet to confront Ilya over it. Maybe it’s because he secretly likes it, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Aren’t you going to fuck me now?”

“I will,” Ilya says slowly, reaching up to take off his t-shirt, which is really one of Shane’s that he’s pilfered. Shane is instantly distracted by the bare skin at his disposal, the swell of Ilya’s pecs are hypnotizing, the blush pink nipples, the golden dust of chest hair. “But you will tell me exactly how you liked it, from that first time, we will… recreate.”

“Fuck, okay, just touch me already,” Shane is panting now, practically in heat. His fingers trail down Ilya’s happy trail and dip tantalizingly underneath his waistband. “You were naked the first time we did it.”

“Okay,” Ilya says, tugging off his shorts. Shane takes his momentary distraction to sit up, tugging out of Ilya’s clamouring grip as he shifts. Ilya pouts, “Where are you going?”

“Um, bed? If you want this to be a faithful recreation, it’s gotta be in a bed.”

“Oh I see,” Ilya says, complying with surprising ease, he gets up and tangles his fingers with Shane’s letting him lead them through the cottage to the king-sized bed in Shane’s room. “Hollander does not treat his hookups so cheap, he fucks them in his fancy cotton sheets.”

“I fuck you on my fancy cotton sheets,” Shane corrects, falling backwards onto his soft bedding, pulling Ilya down on top of him, his voice goes low and serious, “I’ve never brought anyone else here.” Ilya grins as they settle down on their sides, carefully tucking Ilya’s sling against a pile of pillows so he doesn’t put too much pressure on it, his other hand free to roam down Shane’s back

“So I am special.”

“The most special.”

Ilya’s face twists in a momentary look of anguish before he’s kissing Shane so deep and thorough it feels like Shane’s melting into his bed, reduced to a puddle of pleasure, even as he tries his best to keep up, kissing and licking into Ilya’s mouth, giving as good as he gets.

When they finally pull apart, Shane takes Ilya’s hand in his and guides it carefully between his legs.

“You touched me here,” Shane whispers, “Just played with it dry at first, warming me up to the sensation before you added lube.”

“Where is lube?” Ilya asks, his finger working on muscle memory to ring the tantalizing circles around Shane’s hole that make his brain start to melt.

“In the drawer,” Shane gasps, as Ilya presses the tip of one finger in. He has just enough wherewithal to realize Ilya’s one arm is out of commission and his other one is currently occupied, “I’ll get it.”

Shane extricates himself from their embrace regretfully, and rolls over to paw open his drawer. He sees the half-full bottle of lube and nothing else. Shit. “I, um, don’t have any condoms.”

Ilya grunts and pushes himself upright too, taking his hand back from under Shane’s clothes. “Maybe I have in my bag.”

Shane gets up and dutifully searches successfully pulling out an unopened box. “Optimistic, are we?”

“Should I not be?” Ilya counters, one eyebrow raised.

Shane huffs and throws the box on the bed, leaving Ilya to fumble it open one handed until he takes mercy on him and opens one up. Ilya points suggestively to his erection where it stands tall and proud and mouth-wateringly engorged. Shane slides the condom on with practised ease. Then he flops down on his back.

“So, the first time we did this, your arm was not in a sling, so feel free to improvise here, but we started with me on my back while you opened me up. You um, kissed me a lot, which I really liked.”

Shane’s honesty is rewarded with a kiss, and then another, and another until they’re making out heavily, Ilya propped up on his good arm. Shane runs his hands worshipfully down the muscles of his broad shoulders and his back, digging his fingers in hard enough to bruise as Ilya kisses him and kisses him and kisses him until he starts to fear his amnesia is contagious, as he starts to forget his own name.

When they finally part, Shane blinks dazedly up at Ilya, whose lips are red and swollen from kissing, and whose eyes are similarly blown black and unfocused.

“Um,” Shane says, with a glance to Ilya’s arm still in its sling, he furrows his brow and feels his inner planner come through, “So this might not be a perfect recreation with you in this state. You fucked me on my back, um, and we stared into each other’s eyes while you entered me for the first time and I think we both really got off on that eye-contact so doggy’s probably a no… can I ride you instead?”

Ilya gapes, his cock gives a mighty twitch. He nods frantically, curls bouncing so violently it makes Shane worry about his concussion. Shane grabs either side of his head to still it, and pulls him into a kiss while he’s at it.

Gently, without breaking the kiss, Shane turns them so Ilya is lying comfortably on his back, nestled agains the pillows. Shane shifts his own weight on top of Ilya ensuring that there’s no undue pressure on his collarbone or any of the bruises still purpling across his torso.

Ilya’s erection has stayed faithfully alert throughout all of this and so Shane gives it an appreciative few tugs with his hand. It makes Ilya’s hips buck up and his back arch as he lets out a deep, guttural moan of pleasure. It makes Shane’s brain go fuzzy and next thing he knows it, he’s kneeling above Ilya, thighs snug on either side of Ilya’s torso, pushing the lubed head of Ilya’s cock against his barely-prepped hole. The stretch is delicious as he sinks down onto it, though he gasps and his eyes water at the slight burn, the lube helps ease the way deeper and deeper.

Ilya looks like he’s being raptured.

His back is arched and taut and he’s got a white-knuckled grip on Shane’s hips. He’s holding on for dear life as Shane starts pulling up along his shaft, clenching his hole as he slides slowly back down. He’s so fucking beautiful that it’s hard to look at him directly, so Shane shuts his eyes. With the world blocked out, Shane can only focus on the feeling of the fat head of Ilya’s cock, as it passes back and forth, a steady pressure against his prostate. Pleasure burns him from the inside out, but he feeds the fire, grinding relentlessly on Ilya’s dick.

“I have,” Ilya pants, “Created… a monster…”

Still bouncing, Shane gasps out a hysterical, euphoric laugh. He’s too monomaniacally focused on chasing his pleasure to say anything, so he rides Ilya harder in response, periodically adding more lube, getting increasingly turned on as Ilya becomes less and less coherent. Still mindful of his collarbone and tender head, Shane makes sure to bear down most of his weight on Ilya’s hips, leaning back on his hands clamped on Ilya’s strong, taut thighs. Shane feels Ilya’s legs start to shake in his grip, a telltale sign he’s close. Shane could let up, let Ilya catch his breath, and make this last a little longer, but he can’t wait, watching Ilya fall apart from the best seat in the house means that Shane’s bound to come too, any second now, they’re going to come together. Shane chases that feeling like it’s a puck on the ice, faster and faster with an unrelenting focus set towards his goal.

With a final filthy grind, Shane shoots. And he scores.

The orgasm rips through him like lightning. Shane throws his head back and moans to his heart’s content, echoed by Ilya who sounds similarly lost in sensation, slurring out unintelligible Russian words, half-choked sentences and most of all Shane’s name. Over and over again, like he’s begging, and Shane bears down on the warmth spilling inside of him, giving as much of himself away as he can, losing himself in Ilya’s grasping embrace.

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya says after a long moment where the only sound in the room was the marathon-panting as they tried to catch their breath. Shane just barely manages to pull himself off of Ilya, wincing at the oversensitivity around his tender hole, he falls heavily onto his side, mashing his face into Ilya’s shoulder, barely able to keep his eyes open.

“Fucking hot, right?” Shane pants.

“Hottest fuck of my life, Jesus fucking Christ, I taught you how to ride like that?”

“I guess you were like my practice pony, so… yeah.”

“Fuck,” Ilya says, with an emphatic groan.

Shane groans as he feels his shoulder-pillow move and get replaced with a much inferior real pillow. To his dying day he’ll deny whining, “where’re you going?”

Shane watches with one eye half open as Ilya pulls off the condom with his good arm. Unable to tie it off in his state, he just twists it and deposits it gently into the little waste-bin that Shane always keeps near his bedside table. Until now, it’d only ever been filled with tissues. Shane smiles as he hears the satisfying thump of the full condom land, cushioned by the crunch of the plastic lining. Then Shane loses track of him as he shuffles over to the ensuite bathroom. Or so Shane guesses based on the fact that he hears the water turn on and off. He’s getting hazy pieces of his surroundings right now, drifting in and out of fucked-out sleep, so he’s not entirely sure of anything. That’s why he flinches when Ilya runs a wet washcloth down his abs wiping away the come, and then further down, carefully getting rid of the excess lube, extra gentle where his touch makes Shane hiss from oversensitivity.

When he’s satisfied with his work, Ilya deposits the washcloth in Shane’s laundry hamper and then collapses into the soft pile of pillows next to Shane with a sigh.

“You are insane,” Ilya says, half-slurred with sleep. “Trying to kill me.”

“Fuck off, you said it yourself, you made me this way. You can’t fuck someone like that the first time you ever fuck them and not expect them to become obsessed with you.”

“Yes, I think I understand now.”

Shane smiles, satisfied he leans over and presses a smacking kiss to Ilya’s slack lips, then he cuddles up to his side, the slight sweatiness of their naked skin making them stick together in a way that approximates how close Shane would like to be to Ilya at all times. They fall asleep not long after that, safe in each other’s embrace.

The next day Ilya gets his phone privileges back. Shane watches over his shoulder as his first course of action is to open his text thread with Jane. Groaning, Shane flops dramatically over the back of the couch, landing beside Ilya in a heap of tangled limbs.

“Seriously?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, not looking up, but scooting so that Shane is nestled comfortably against his side. Resting his head against Ilya’s shoulder, Shane watches him scroll and plots a way to snatch the phone out of his hands when he sees the slight wince in his expression as the blue light hits his still-tender brain. He resists only because he thinks Ilya might actually bite him if he tried anything.

“Hm,” he finally says, after long, torturous moments of scrolling, long enough that Shane is tempted to try playing the concussion card to get him to stop, but Ilya looks up just before he has the chance, “We don’t really talk.”

“What?” Shane asks.

“You and me, these texts. Is just room numbers and sexts, why do we not talk?”

Shane is thrown for a loop. He supposes that is true, their texts had never been terribly personal, mostly because of Shane’s own paranoia about being caught. It seems silly in hindsight, even though Hayden was notorious for looking over his shoulder and teasing him about always texting Lily. Shane’s not sure what he would have done had the texts been to Ilya. Sure they could have texted more with the fake names still in place, but somehow they'd created a distance that Shane had never been brave enough to cross.

“Um,” Shane says, “I don’t know.”

“You do not like me? Just my body?” It has the cadence of a joke, but Shane can sense the insecurity behind it. He rushes to correct Ilya’s assumption.

“No, that’s not it at all. It’s just… we’re public figures, right? And leaks happen. And I guess I’m just paranoid.”

“Hm,” is all Ilya says before going back to scrolling. It’s clear this excuse has not satisfied him.

“Are you actually mad at me about this?” Shane can’t hide the incredulity in his voice, “You don’t even remember any of this so maybe you can trust me when I tell you I know what I’m talking about? All your teammates, and fuck, even mine, they all read our texts over our shoulders.”

“Why are they so nosy?”

Shane sighs, “Well, I don’t know if it’s the same for you but Hayden always told me he got curious about who I was texting because I would… I don’t know, smile at my phone all the time. Like a goofy kind of um,” Shane swallows the word lovesick, “A bigger smile than I normally do, I guess.”

“Like lovesick smile?”

Shane frowns, “Who taught you that word?”

“American movie where hot woman and hot man fall in love? I don’t know which, Sveta always makes me watch.”

“Jesus Christ, she makes you watch romcoms too? Rose does that to me every time we hang out and there’s not enough pink wine in the world that makes them better.”

“I like them sometimes— wait, who is Rose?”

“Um,” Shane hesitates. Then he figures he’s bad at lying on a good day, and Ilya might recover his memories still, at least Shane is holding out hope for it, “Well, it’s kind of a long story, but she’s my ex-girlfriend.”

Ilya says nothing for a long moment, a pout forming on his perfect puppy face that is equal parts adorable as it is irritating. Finally, he grumbles, “You still hang out with her? You cheat on me.”

Shane laughs, it’s the wrong reaction because it makes Ilya pout even more and shift away from him on the couch so they’re no longer touching. His head thumping against empty pillow, Shane is not to proud to admit he whines, “Ilya, come on, how can I cheat on you if we aren’t dating?”

Ilya looks genuinely confused at this revelation, looking at Shane like he’s never seen him before. “We are not?”

Shane blinks. “I mean, I know you don’t remember but no, we’ve never really talked about it.”

“So we fuck like that and just call it casual?”

Shane groans. “Yeah, Ilya, we do. I’m not saying we’re not idiots, I’m just telling you that’s what we were when you lost your memory.”

“So this Rose person, you love her?”

“No, Ilya, I’m gay.”

Ilya furrows his brow, just like the first time Shane told him, and once again defuses the tension bomb in Shane’s chest from uttering those two words, “I think I knew that.”

Shane huffs and rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning all the while, “It means I don’t like girls like that.”

“And does your girlfriend know?”

“She’s the one who told me.”

Ilya’s mouth is a flat line. “Explain, Hollander.”

Shane sighs dramatically, flopping back against the couch cushions. He screws his eyes shut and figures he should just tell it from the beginning, any clumsy half-truths would only make Ilya more annoyed.

“We used to meet up, right? Any time we had a game in the other person’s city. Usually in hotel rooms.”

“And we would fuck?”

“Yes.”

“Was it always that intense?”

“Usually, yeah.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, so you’d been to mine a couple times after Montreal games, but the first time I went to your house in Boston was only last year. We landed in Boston a day before the game so you asked me to come over.”

Ilya has his eyes screwed shut as if he’s seeing the memory as Shane describes it. “You rode me?”

Shane gapes, “Memory or guess?”

“I don’t know, memory, probably, right? Maybe guess.” Shane lets out a frustrated sigh. “Keep talking, it is helping, I think.”

“So yeah, okay, I rode you. It was hot. But then, it got really weird. You made me food. Tuna melt sandwiches.”

“Tuna is weird?”

“No, you cooking for me was weird. We never really did that.”

“Oh so you found girlfriend who would?”

Shane scowls, “We’re never going to get to the end of this if you don’t stop interrupting, you know.”

Ilya rolls his eyes and pinches Shane’s side, earning him a playful smack across the belly. This results in him grabbing onto Shane’s arm and pulling him in close until they’re cuddled together once again, limbs a tangled pile, Shane’s head nestled carefully on Ilya’s tender shoulder.

“The sandwiches were great. And you had ginger ale in your fridge. It’s my favourite drink, but I didn’t think you liked it.”

“Mm, I definitely don’t. Probably I bought to impress you.”

“Totally normal thing to do for someone you’re just fucking,” Shane deadpans. Ilya, not missing the sarcasm dripping from his tone, rumbles a small, embarrassed laugh.

“I’m surprised I kept telling you that for so long.”

“Well, I was probably just as bad.” Shane’s starting to feel too-hot under the collar. He rushes the rest of the story out, half mumbling it into Ilya’s neck. “Anyway, you fed me, we hung out on your couch, you got a call from, um, your dad, I think, and it made you really upset.”

“I was mean to you?"

“What? No!” Shane sits up, concern put on high alert at Ilya’s tone. Taking Ilya’s chin between his fingers, like Ilya’s done to him a million times before, Shane gently tilts Ilya’s face towards him until their eyes are forced to meet. “Ilya, you weren’t mean to me. You’re not mean to me. You were just— I don’t know, sad. Quiet. Like how you got in Russia.”

“When were you in Russia?”

“Oh, in 2014, the Winter Olympics were in Sochi. I mean, you can probably look it up if you’re curious. Canada got gold for hockey, it was fine.”

That makes Ilya outright scoff.

“Fine? You did not like winning gold medal?” Ilya says with a sardonic raise of both eyebrows, “You Mr. I-Win-Everything say it was just fine?”

“Shut up,” Shane says with a too-fond roll of the eyes, “The Olympics were… weird. I mean, I hope the NHL lets us go again someday but I don’t know, I hope it’s in a different country this time. I didn’t like how sad you seemed in Russia. You’re different there. Quieter, smaller, almost, I don’t know. It was different from how I was used to seeing you.”

Ilya is quiet for a long time. “Russia is… difficult for me.” 

“I know,” Shane says, voice gentle, “You barely told me anything about your life there until recently. You used to just shut down anytime I brought it up so I just stopped after a while.”

“So that’s what happened that day, in Boston? I shut down?” The self-consciousness and shame is so clear in Ilya’s voice it makes Shane gather him up closer, as if he can shield Ilya from his own self-criticisms.

“No, you just got a little sad. It’s okay, you know? To be sad? To tell me when you’re sad? I don’t think any less of you for it. I just want to be there for you. I know it’s probably a lot and you don’t owe me any explanations but I hope you can see me as someone to lean on, you know, when it starts to feel heavy.”

Devastatingly, Shane feels Ilya sniffle. The collar of Shane’s shirt slightly dampens with tears. True to his word, Shane makes himself steady enough to lean on. He carries Ilya's weight, it's not too heavy, Shane's strong enough, and he squeezes Ilya tight to try and make him realize that. One of Shane’s hands comes up to bury itself in Ilya’s hair, he combs the curls through his fingers in a soothing rhythm, his nails bearing down to gently massage his scalp. In his embrace, Ilya shivers, and he burrows closer, leaning into Shane’s affection like a cautious foster dog.

“What happened next?” Ilya whispers.

Guilt burns like acid reflux in Shane’s throat. He takes a deep breath, his need to give Ilya anything he asks for superseding his fear of self-recrimination, “You pretended you weren’t sad anymore after I asked you if you were okay. I didn’t want to push, because we were having a really nice time, so I just cuddled up to you on the couch and we watched a hockey game together. Buffalo and Ottawa I think.”

“Lame,” Ilya grouses, and Shane smiles, encouraged to talk more if it coaxes Ilya’s humour back out, though he dreads the part that comes next.

“Cuddling with you was really nice. I mean, it is really nice.” Shane laughs at the state of them, all twisted up in each other, Ilya practically digging himself a den in the lining of Shane’s shirt. “But it wasn’t something we really did before, not unless it was right after sex. So I thought I should probably kiss you, and I mean, your pecs and your abs were right there. So I kissed you and I um, blew you as well.” Shane blushes furiously and steadfastly ignores the grin he can feel spreading against his skin, “Then I climbed into your lap and we like rubbed our dicks together until we came. Um. But then when you came you said my name for the first time. You called me Shane. And then I called you Ilya. Um, but then, this is when I started freaking out.” Shane takes a shaky breath. “I’m kind of weird. You know that, right? Like… you’ve noticed?”

Ilya pulls his face out from his hiding spot to look at Shane head-on, a confused pout on his face. “What you mean, weird?”

“Like I’m really neurotic. I get really caught up in rules. They call it a high hockey IQ, and yeah, it’s probably why I’m so good at hockey but it’s always made it hard to understand other people. I don’t understand other people, in general, but if I follow the rules then other people don’t really notice. Or they don’t look at me like I’m an alien. But that doesn’t always work. Sometimes the rules change and I’m not good at handling that and it makes me… basically, um, freak out. Panic.”

It’s long been what Shane considers his most unattractive quality. Girlfriends and teammates and even friends in the past had called it out. God Shane would it kill you to skip your routine for one day? So what if it’s not the brand you always use, you’re an adult, you can just use what we have. No Shane I don’t want to go to the same restaurant for the fifth time this month, can’t we be a little more spontaneous? Of course it wouldn’t kill Shane, he knows this, because he’s survived sudden changes countless times in the past. What it does do is make Shane’s chest feel tight to bursting, like an allergic reaction he needs to get a handle on in seconds or else he’ll die. And there is no EpiPen for this particular affliction, instead it’s only ever been cured by distance, privacy, the ability to not be perceived for a good long period of time, long enough that he can gather the courage to pick up the act once again, follow the new rules now.

“This is not weird, Shane,” Ilya says, as gentle as can be, “This is just you. There is nothing wrong with this.”

Shane outright laughs, “Everything is wrong with this, Ilya, don’t you get it? I freaked out at you. I— I hurt you. I fucking left. I fed you some bullshit obvious lie about forgetting a team meeting and I ran out still wearing your clothes. I went back to my hotel room with Hayden and cried and told myself I could never see you again. A couple weeks after that, I went to a party that my teammate invited me to. Rose was there. We got to talking and I really liked her and I thought that maybe a relationship with her was what I needed to um, I guess not be so hung up on you anymore.”

Ilya’s face has gone utterly and terrifyingly blank. Shane stares at him, eyes flitting desperately over the stilled crests and valleys of his expression, searching for any hint as to what Ilya is thinking. Shane could spend his whole life looking, but he’s not sure he’ll ever find the answer he’s looking for if Ilya doesn’t tell him. That’s just when Ilya decides to get up, wrenching himself out of Shane’s arms in a way that makes Shane’s heart and stomach plummet. Without looking back, Ilya stalks away from the couch and slides one of the big glass doors open, Shane watches, tears welling in his eyes as Ilya walks all the way to the dock, eventually losing sight of him as he tucks behind some trees.

“Fuck,” Shane says, burying his face in his hands. It was too much, too soon. The phone coupled with this fucking conversation, the last conversation Shane wanted to have when he’d finally gotten Ilya in his cottage. He groans at himself, grinding his palms against his eye-sockets, punishing himself for having to wipe his teary eyes. “Goddamnit, I fucking ruin everything.”

Panic propels him to his feet, hastily following after Ilya, though he must look a mess with tears and snot streaking down his face. None of that is more important than making sure Ilya doesn’t hate him right now. The first time, in Tampa just a month ago, Shane had apologized three times before the guilt of leaving that day in Boston had eased even a little, this time Shane doesn’t care how many times he says it, he’s going to make sure Ilya understands he’d never do something like that ever again. He just hopes he’s not too late.

Ilya is cast in gold, bright even against the perfect blue sky, perched on the edge of the deck with his long legs dangling, toes skimming the surface of the water. Shane approaches cautiously, he’s been enough of a bull in a China shop, and gingerly eases himself down beside Ilya. To his relief, Ilya shifts closer until their sides are pressed up against each other, a grounding touch from the tip of Shane’s shoulder to the line of his thigh.

“I am not mad at you,” Ilya says, easing the first notch of tension in Shane’s chest. But his voice is still too flat and dulled at the edges with misery, “I just… it was a lot. I don’t remember it, but maybe I remember how it felt and I needed...” Ilya makes a vague gesture but Shane opts not to press it any further.

“I’m really sorry,” Shane says, voice a miserable croak. “As soon as I left that day I knew I fucked up. It makes me sound so fucking shitty when I say it but that’s one of the main reasons I pursued Rose, because I figured I ruined everything with you. I figured there was no going back. But everything with her— I was trying so hard to make it something it wasn’t ever going to be. All because I was so fucking scared to be gay.”

Ilya reaches over and grabs Shane’s hand, without saying a word or even looking at him, he brushes the thin skin of Shane’s wrist, pressing his thumbprint against Shane’s pulse. It’s a bizarrely calming touch, and Shane feels himself sinking into Ilya, limp with relief and comfortable in the silence, comfortable to wait until Ilya breaks it.

“You could never ruin anything with me, Shane,” Ilya says, finally, a rueful smile playing on his lips. Shane has a sense that Ilya doesn’t really mean to smile, or that this smile means something Shane’s not understanding, because he doesn’t think Ilya is particularly happy with him right now. “You can always come back to me.”

“Does that… does that mean you forgive me?” Shane squeezes Ilya’s hand.

Ilya shrugs, squeezes back, “It is hypothetical for me right now, no? Can I forgive you for hurting me if I can’t remember that it happened?”

“Wow, hypothetical.”

“I know English, Shane, I studied with a tutor in Moscow for many months before coming to Boston.”

“I never knew that. I wish I could have helped you practice.”

“I am missing seven more years of practice, so you still can.”

“Even though I left you?”

“You came back, right? Rose is ex-girlfriend, you said.”

“She is, and I’m never getting back together with her. She’s just… a friend. I didn’t realize I don’t really have any friends that aren’t my teammates so…”

“You have me,” Ilya says, shrugging slightly, “Maybe you do not have to be Jane anymore in my phone. Maybe I can be Ilya.”

“You’d want that? To be friends?” Shane holds his breath as he waits for Ilya to answer.

“You have better offer?”

Shane’s breath gusts out of him in a helpless chuckle. “Oh fuck you, asshole. A free summer vacation at my cottage with all the sex you could want isn’t enough?”

“Oh well, I didn’t realize unlimited sex was on table.”

Shane slaps Ilya playfully, stomach hurting from how hard he’s laughing now. “Come on, Ilya, be serious.”

“I am serious! I want better offer. I think I am more than just your friend.”

Still breathless with laughter, Shane says, “Oh what, so you actually want to be my boyfriend or something?”

But Ilya doesn’t laugh. His face has gone still and serious again. But this time, it’s not a distant stillness, it’s an expression set with intensity, and a gaze levelled at Shane that makes his own smile slip off his face and his gaze lock with Ilya, almost in a trance.

“Yes, Shane, I want to be your boyfriend.”

Shane gets so giddy all of a sudden he feels lightheaded. It’s all that he can do not to pounce on Ilya as he climbs into his lap and lays him back along the deck, Shane drapes his body all along Ilya’s and purrs, tucking a kiss against the crook of Ilya’s neck, kissing up higher to the line of his jaw, then finding his lips, claiming them in a long, lush taste.

When they part, Shane takes Ilya’s face carefully in his hands and makes sure to look in his eyes when he says, without a hint of a joke, “I want to be your boyfriend, too.”

“Then you are, solnyshko, it is done deal.”

“Should we shake on it?” Shane says, grinning like a fool.

“Mm,” Ilya gets a dangerous glint in his eye, “I have better idea maybe.”

With that, Ilya carefully manoeuvres Shane onto his back, the wood of the dock solid against his back. Ilya leans over him, propped up on his good arm and presses another luxurious kiss to Shane’s lips, and then another, and another for good measure. The kisses are deep and drugging and all the blood in Shane’s body is being redirected downwards making him loopy and high off of Ilya’s touch. Once Shane is thoroughly dizzy and kiss drunk, Ilya sees fit to part from his lips with a slick smacking sound, and trail his spit-shiny lips down Shane’s neck.

Halfway through pressing a hickie into Shane’s neck, Ilya pulls back, sitting up on his haunches, but straddling Shane now. Shane thinks, dimly, hey what gives come back here, and then he has the actual non-animal hindbrain thought that he should probably get them to a bed. Before he can say anything, Ilya’s shrugging off his sling like he’s going to fuck Shane right here on the deck, outside, where, sure Shane doesn’t have any neighbours that might see him but, Google Earth, surely, is still a concern.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Shane grabs the sling from where Ilya drops it carelessly on the deck beside them and shoves it back towards Ilya, “I don’t want to do this if you’re planning on getting yourself hurt.”

“Relax, Shane,” Ilya says, wrestling the sling away with surprising ease and tucking it carefully next to Shane’s head. He follows it up with his shirt, and while Shane is distracted by the wall of abs freshly on display, Ilya just smiles, unbearably smug, shifting until his weight is leant on his good arm, and his head is hovering over Shane’s crotch.

“I will be fine. I will not hurt myself. Anyway, doctor said sling can come off today,” Ilya says, flicking a hand in a classic dismissive European gesture. He trails his newly freed hand gently down Shane’s torso. “Besides, collarbone is feeling fine. I will not put weight on this arm, promise.”

Before Shane can even begin to formulate a reply to that, Ilya pulls his erection out of his shorts and with no preamble sucks the tip into his mouth. Immediately, he pulls on it like he’s trying to get the last sips of a milkshake, then he’s lolling his tongue out, rolling the head of Shane’s dick around on his tongue, and oh God, the pre-come is leaving a white residue on his pink tongue.

“This is a new memory for you Shane,” Ilya pants, “First time your boyfriend sucks your dick.”

Ilya goes back down, taking Shane all the way down to the root, sliding him deeper into the hot clutch of his throat, Shane gasps when he can feel Ilya’s nose nuzzling his pubes. Shane has been thus far dutifully been holding his hands up, pinned to either side of his head, but he has to fist them both in Ilya’s hair as a matter of urgency.

“I’m going to come— fuck, Ilya, I’m going to come in your mouth.”

Ilya nuzzles impossibly closer and despite his iron-clad grip in Ilya’s hair, Shane is still cognizant enough not to shake his head around as he comes down Ilya’s throat. Moaning his voice raw, Shane feels Ilya’s throat working around his cock. Ilya is swallowing Shane’s load like it’s a life-giving elixir. It’s the hottest fucking thing that has ever happened to Shane. Finally, the need to breathe comes reckoning, and Ilya pulls off. He’s resting his cheek against Shane’s abs, taking massive, gasping breaths, and staring at Shane with pupils blown black, eyes red rimmed with tears, two shiny trails down his nostrils, his mouth sinfully pink and swollen. He’s the most beautiful thing Shane has ever seen.

“Come here— fuck.”

Shane wasn’t expecting to be bent over on this deck with his boyfriend’s dick down his throat when he first designed it, but he’s extra appreciative of his foresight to apply splinter-resistant coating to the top of it. His knees slide harmlessly in their pools of sweat on the slightly waxy surface. He’s braced himself on his forearms, one hand idly combs through the hair on Ilya’s belly as he bobs his head rhythmically, keeping pace until Ilya’s abs clench beneath his fingers. That’s when he knows to pull up and pay special attention to the head, sticking his tongue underneath the foreskin there, just playing with the sensitive skin there, suckling and kissing and swallowing him whole. Finally, Ilya rewards him with a laugh broken on a moan, and burst after ecstatic burst of thick white bitter across his tongue, catching his cheeks and chin and jaw. Shane tries to catch it all in his mouth like the foam bursting out of a shaken soda, but much of it dribbles down his lips and chin, making a mess of Ilya’s abdomen, his borrowed shorts. Ilya pulls him in for a thorough kiss, cleaning Shane’s face with his tongue, but Shane is too fucked-out to be grossed out by it.

“Oh my god that was so fucking hot,” Shane pants, instead, once Ilya moves on to leaving wet suckling kisses on his neck.

“Fuck, yes I am enjoying this unlimited sex very much. Five stars I will recommend this place to everybody.”

“Fuck you,” Shane laughs, “You’re the only guest with the unlimited sex package. It was one of one, sold out, no one else can get it anymore.”

“Mm, yes good, this is a very good deal.”

They collapse into each other in helpless giggles and exhausted sighs. Shane tolerates a few minutes of Ilya kissing his own cum off of Shane’s body before it officially gets to be too much and he’s pulling Ilya to his feet maybe a little too-hard, and herding him into the ensuite bathroom.

After a long, steamy shower, with their sweat-soaked clothes crumpled into the laundry basket, Shane dresses his boyfriend up in his own clothes like his own personal Ken doll, drooling at the places his muscles bulge and stress the seams, his broader shoulders, his taller torso making all Shane’s shirts cropped enough to flash his muscled abs anytime he moves. After a generous application of mosquito repellent he herds his boyfriend back out onto the patio, and he makes sure he’s nice and cozy, lit golden by the setting sun, nestled among the blankets and pillows. Satisfied with Ilya’s comfort, Shane sets himself to the task of starting a fire.

The sun is slowly setting, and a chill is starting to settle in. Soon, Shane’s old flannel will not be enough to keep the delicate prince Shane has chosen to bring home warm.

Ilya smiles Cheshire-wide as he watches Shane bustle around. He ogles Shane’s muscles bulging from carrying armfuls of firewood. He leans forward in his seat, paying close attention to the way Shane sparks the flame with a flint on tinder shavings he’d created right then and there with a Swiss army knife.

“Mr. Lumberjack,” Ilya purrs when the fire is stoked to Shane’s satisfaction and he finally cuddles up alongside him on the patio sofa, pulling a big Hudson’s Bay blanket over their laps.

“You’re the one wearing the flannel.”

“You are the one taming wilderness for me,” Ilya smiles, sniffing the woodsy scent clinging to Shane’s body, and clutching him close,“You are my big, strong man.”

“I can’t believe my basic boy scout skills get you so hot and bothered.”

“I like it. It makes me feel safe. You are always so… reliable.”

“You think?”

Ilya nods enthusiastically, though he’s suddenly shy and looking away. “I always wondered what it would be like to play on the same team as you. How easy it would be to know where you are on the ice. Since I always block your shots, I imagined what would happen if you were sending them to me on purpose. I bet our passes would always connect.” Ilya mutters it all fast and quiet like a secret and stares resolutely out onto sunset gilding the glittering lake.

“I always wondered that too,” Shane says, grinning at the memory of their near telepathic connection on the ice, and grinning wider at Ilya’s wide-eyed disbelief, and blushing hope, “It was just as good as I thought it would be.”

“Really?” Ilya looks over at him now, grinning, “When did this happen?”

“Pretty recently, um, the beginning of this year at the All-Stars game. The league decided to go for an Eastern Conference versus Western Conference thing. We were incredible.”

“You were okay playing wing?”

“Ha! You were winging me, motherfucker.”

“Hm, this is not the way to treat number one draft pick,” Ilya grumbles for a second, then he tilts his head with a sardonic smile, “I can’t believe we were not rivals for once and the league did not explode? This is something to consider.”

“What do you mean?”

Ilya shrugs, looking away again, he sniffs, "Next year I am free agent.”

When Shane says nothing for a long moment, Ilya turns to him and raises his eyebrows pointedly. It takes a second, but then Shane finally realizes what he’s implying and he can’t help the way his jaw drops in utter shock. He shakes his head, refusing to believe it.

“You want to leave the Bears?”

“I want to play with you.”

“Ilya,” Shane sits up fully now, “What are you talking about? Where did this come from?”

“These have been the best days of my life here, at the cottage, with you.”

“Me too, but what does that have to do with moving teams?”

“I want to be close to you all the time. Not just summer. Always. I want to wake up with you every day. I want… I want a future, Shane, with you.”

Shane is stunned silent. Only because Ilya, with seven years of memories still gone, has somehow found the courage to say what Shane has been hoping for all along, but which he’s never had the courage to say out loud. His shocked silence is heavy, and he can see it weigh on Ilya the longer he goes without saying something, his shoulders drooping and his eyes shifting away.

“I want that too,” Shane says, unable to keep the tremble out of his voice. “I want that so badly sometimes it’s all I can think about.”

A relieved sigh breathes life back into Ilya’s statue-still posture and he slumps against Shane, strong arms wrapping around him, kisses landing everywhere they can find purchase. A long string of kisses up Shane’s neck until Ilya reaches his mouth and pulls him in for a long, slow, thorough press of their mouths,

“I think I remember something,” Ilya says, pulling away, he pauses for a long moment, looking deep into Shane’s eyes, practically through to his soul, “I am in love with you.”

Shane gasps against Ilya’s lips, pulling him in for another kiss, he tries to press every ounce of the love he feels back for Ilya into it, holding him close in his arms, wishing he could keep Ilya there forever, absorb him into his own body so that they’re never apart. He knows Ilya would never joke about something like this, can feel the sincerity in his touch, but his paranoid hindbrain still has to check.

“Is that really a memory or a guess again, Ilya? Answer carefully.”

“Mm, educated guess. So sure it might as well be a memory.”

“Fuck you, seriously?” Shane pulls back.

“Does it matter if I remember for sure I feel it now?”

Ilya lifts one eyebrow, half-grinning with a tension in his expression that Shane aches to soothe.

“I love you too, you know.”

“I know, solnyshko, you brought me to your cottage and nurse me to health, not even Canadian Prime Minister is that nice.”

Shane giggles so hard he collapses into Ilya’s side. Ilya takes the opportunity to tighten his grip, humming in satisfaction as Shane snuggles closer. Shane feels the safest he’s ever felt, warm and protected in his cottage, finally in his private space without the spectre of loneliness that has always haunted him before.

“No all that nice stuff is just for citizens,” Shane grouses, half-joking.

But Ilya makes a thoughtful hum, “Maybe I become one then. Come play for a Canadian team.”

Shane frowns, “Montreal doesn’t have the budget for a new center right now.”

“Maybe I play wing. You said we did that, right?”

“My line is solid,” Shane says, shaking is head ruefully, but then an idea strikes him, and he lifts his head out of Ilya’s embrace, “You could play for Ottawa?”

Ilya’s expression flickers, too fast for Shane to read, “They are good team?”

“Well, no,” Shane winces, “But they need a star center, you could turn them around. You did that with Boston, you won them a Stanley Cup.”

“You think I could do it again for Ottawa?”

“Take it from a two-time Stanley Cup champion,” Shane says, with a sly grin growing wider at Ilya’s affronted look, “If I can do it, so can you.”

“Fuck you, Hollander, you are the real asshole,” Ilya says through a laugh. Shane laughs too, before he realizes how far they’ve strayed off topic.

“But seriously, Ilya, Ottawa. Would you consider it?”

“I will consider it,” Ilya says, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “We would be much closer, yes?”

“Only two hours away. It’s the closest we can get without being on the same team.”

Ilya huffs, his irritation plain in the stiff way he pulls his arms back, shifting on the sofa until he’s no longer touching Shane. Cold air douses Shane in his absence, and he instantly sobers out of the warm, love-drenched haze he’d just been in.

“What’s wrong?” Shane asks, careful to keep his voice level.

“Two hours? This is the best we can do? Why can we not be on the same team?”

Shane blinks. He’s thrown for a loop, and he doesn’t know what to say. Imagining Ilya in a Voyageur’s jersey, his 81 in red and blue, makes Shane’s heart melt and the talons of desire sink into his flesh, so painful that it’s almost euphoric. “I just said the Voyageurs won’t take you.”

“Why don’t you come to Boston? Or we both go to Ottawa?”

“Ilya, I’m not leaving the team that drafted me.”

“Oh, but it’s okay that you ask me to do this?”

Ilya’s words land like a slap. Shane’s jaw drops, chest clenching so hard he can’t take a full breath, just a horrible, shallow gasp. Something trying so hard not to become a sob. Ilya must notice, there’s a hairline crack in his anger that crumbles under the pressure of Shane’s next laboured breath.

Between one blink and the next, Ilya is crowding back into Shane’s space. He cups Shane’s face in both hands, looking absolutely devastated at whatever he finds on Shane’s expression. Shane doesn’t know what his own face is doing, he’s never sure how his emotions are conveyed, he only knows that his eyes are burning and welling with frustrated tears.

Ilya’s running his thumbs across the tops of Shane’s cheekbones, then he’s tracing his index finger down the line of Shane’s nose, that same finger runs the outline of his lips, as if on autopilot, Shane opens his mouth.

Mercifully, Ilya slides his index and middle finger inside. As soon as Shane suckles on them, the clenching panic in his chest releases at last, and he can fill his lungs to the brim, complete with a yogic exhale through the nose.

Ilya sighs, “How will I ever win argument if you will just look at me with these eyes?”

Shane huffs, he’d say something petulant if his mouth wasn’t full. He tries to express his annoyance with a long suck on Ilya’s fingers, taking them down as far as the second knuckle. It makes Ilya’s pupils dilate even more, until there’s only the thinnest trace of blue.

Shane’s eyelids flutter as he slowly pulls Ilya’s fingers out of his mouth, and he replaces them with Ilya’s mouth, pressing a long apology kiss to his lips. Ilya kisses back, soft and moldable in Shane’s hands like melting wax.

“There’s nothing to win here, Ilya,” Shane says, softly as he pulls away, “All I want is for you to be happy. And if that means staying in Boston, that’s okay with me. I don’t want you to do anything that would ever make you resent me.”

Ilya shakes his head, interrupting, “I won’t resent you.”

“You don’t know that,” Shane says, as gentle as he can be in the face of Ilya’s indignation, “And not just because you don’t remember all your years with Boston, okay, you can’t make a decision like this without thinking about what would make you happy too.”

“It would make me happy to be closer to you.”

“Then we'll find the best way to make that happen,” Shane promises, trying to quell the fear and panic at the thought in his chest, he summons his bravado because clearly this is important to Ilya. It might be a bigger argument they have later. In that case, Shane has his secret weapon, it turns out: his big teary doe eyes. Shane knows they’ve gotten him basically anything he’s ever wanted from his parents so he’s not new to weaponizing them a little bit. But he knows that will mostly be for frivolous arguments, decisions on where to eat and what detergent to buy. For big stuff like this, Shane knows he can’t shy away when the conversations get difficult. “We don’t have to make any big decisions right now.”

“Maybe after my memory comes back,” Ilya shrugs, seemingly placated and staring into the fire. Underneath the sarcasm, Shane can tell Ilya’s feeling hopeful about it.

“Do you want another story?”

A description of the first time Ilya made Shane come four times in one night quickly leads to a historic reenactment. The next thing Shane knows, he’s out of breath, sprawled naked on his outdoor patio furniture, which he’ll have to power wash tomorrow to get the stains out. Ilya is collapsed on top of him equally naked. Though he’s got the citronella candles burning, as Shane floats back into consciousness, his first identifiable thought is worry about becoming a feast for mosquitoes. With concerted effort, he herds Ilya into the cottage on his own two feet, fucked-out enough to actually obey Shane when he tells him to go ahead and get into bed while Shane puts out the fire pit.

When Shane walks into his bedroom, he sees Ilya cozied up in his soft cotton sheets and feels the acute thumping of his heart in his chest. He wants this image burned into the backs of his eyelids, this perfect portrait of belonging, he wants to keep Ilya this close forever.

As Shane climbs into bed beside Ilya, he settles into Ilya’s snuggling embrace but he doesn’t fall asleep right away. Though the rise and fall rhythm of Ilya’s breathing is a soothing metronome, lists and plans still swirl in Shane’s mind. Now that his need to have Ilya for the long haul has presented itself, it won’t go away, nagging at him until Shane has at least an outline of what he wants to do.

Ottawa. Boston. Montreal. New York. All the options swirl around in his head. He’s never once in his life considered leaving his team. It’s his home. He’s won two cups with this team and has dreamed about seeing his jersey in the rafters there one day among all the legends whose legacy he carries. Of course, as much as Shane idealizes the entity the Voyageurs, as people they’re not perfect. He’s really only close with Hayden and J.J., the rest of the guys see him as their no-fun sober taskmaster of a captain, grudgingly respecting him possibly only because of how many goals he scores. Shane has no proof of this, but it’s a feeling he gets, of always being made the outsider. It’s possible, Shane thinks for the first time, that other teams don’t feel like that.

He wishes he could ask his mom about this, she'd know what to do, she'd be full of good ideas. But that's another sleep-terminating thought spiral in and of itself. As he looks at Ilya snoring peacefully beside him, he feels undeniably that any future in which he has any hope of being happy has got to have Ilya in it. He needs Ilya in his life, and that means the most important people in his life, his parents, should know about him too. It's killing Shane to keep him a secret from them, and he knows it all comes down to him. He can choose to tell them. He wants to tell them. It's just... he loses sleep. 

After a fitful night tossing and turning in bed, Shane still gets up at his usual time. As gently as he can, he pulls himself out of Ilya’s arms. Ilya doesn’t wake up all the way, but in Shane’s absence he steals Shane’s pillow, burying his face into it as he falls back asleep. Shane smiles and has to force himself to go for his daily run along the forest trail on his property. When he gets back, Ilya’s up and making coffee with Shane’s dad.

Wait. Alarm bells start ringing in Shane's mind. Flashes of red. 

Shane’s dad is here.

“Um,” Shane says, freezing halfway in to the kitchen. They both turn to look at Shane, then, the confusion plain on his dad’s face, the nervousness even clearer on Ilya’s. “Dad. Hi.”

“Hi,” David Hollander says in that placid, unflappable tone of a Canadian public servant. “I’m sorry to barge in, I left my charger here the last time your mom and I came over and it’s the old kind of USB, but um, sorry I didn’t know you had a guest.”

“It’s okay Dad, I didn’t tell you,” Shane winces. “This is Ilya, um, Rozanov, but I guess you two met already?”

“We did,” David nods to Ilya then, “We were just saying that it’s not Ilya’s first time in Canada, obviously, but it’s his first time out in cottage country.”

“Yup,” Ilya smiles, adorable even in his stiff awkwardness. It doesn’t help that he’s shirtless and in a pair of Shane’s Voyageurs sweatpants, the logo obnoxiously prominent where it’s screen-printed across Ilya’s thigh.

The silence stretches on between them until Shane can feel it like a physical itch under his skin. He knows he should just fess up and tell his dad what he’s probably already picked up. Rozanov is not just a friend. He’s Ilya, he’s Shane’s boyfriend, Shane is gay. These are all facts. Another fact, held completely certain in Shane’s mind, his dad loves him. His mom loves him too. They’ll never be anything less that totally accepting when he tells them so why does it feel so impossible to get the words out? He just— he was planning on doing it properly, sitting his parents down to dinner. Maybe he still can, maybe there’s enough plausible deniability, maybe he can just quietly panic until one of the other two people in this room gives him an out.

Then his dad answers Shane’s silent plea, “Look, I won’t bother you two much longer but I know your mom and I would love to have you both for dinner.” He turns to Ilya then, “We love meeting Shane’s friends.”

“Dad, it’s okay, you don’t have to—” Shane starts.

“Nonsense! Look, it’s the Stanley Cup finals tomorrow, Shane’s mom and I always go all out. You boys should stop by! Not every day that you throw a Stanley Cup party with two actual Stanley Cup champs in attendance.”

Shane rolls his eyes, “You just want to impress the Websters because their son won an Oscar. It wasn’t even for anything that impressive. Documentary Short? No one even watches those.”

Ilya’s smile has gone fond and gooey as he watches Shane, you’re cute when you’re a little bitchy, he’d once said, much to Shane’s consternation. The effect was the same, Ilya got to see the pinched little expression Shane makes when he gets annoyed and Shane sobers, realizing he’s probably making it now. Because his dad is watching Ilya watch Shane and he’s sure he’s putting the pieces together. His dad’s never met a puzzle he couldn’t solve.

“Okay, we’ll go. Can we bring anything?”

“Just your impressive selves,” David grins triumphantly, and he reaches over to Ilya for a handshake, which Ilya gives with only a slight stumble. “Very nice to meet you, Ilya, I hope you like a clam bake.”

Shane rolls his eyes, “He’s Russian, he likes all the ungodly things people think of to do to fish.”

Ilya makes an affronted little scoff and Shane cracks a grin. With that, his dad takes his leave and once Shane hears the definitive click of the front door latching behind him, his knees give out. Ilya rushes forward to catch Shane, lifting him by his elbows and propping him up on the counter.

“Shane, what is wrong, you are okay?”

Shane breathes, though it’s shaky he’s not hyperventilating, “Yeah, it’s um. It’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting that.”

“It went okay, though, right? He did not suspect anything?”

Shane shakes his head, feeling a lump in his throat as Ilya words, and his terrified tone, register. Shane remembers what Ilya had confessed to him about his own family, how dangerous it would be for Ilya if they ever found out about him and Shane. He feels sick now thinking that Ilya is assuming the same would be true of his family. Grigori Rozanov was a poor excuse for a man and an even worse example of a father, so Shane can forgive Ilya for making assumptions, but now he regrets and resents his own cowardice even more. He should show Ilya that he deserves to be embraced by a parent, even one that isn’t his own, because he’s never deserved the cruelty his family dealt him. He should tell his parents about them, to show him that they’d be embraced and loved.

Determination takes root in Shane’s chest. If he can’t be brave for himself, he can do it for Ilya.

“Don’t worry about hiding or anything in front of my parents,” Shane says, when he finally finds his voice, his terror has been successfully dispelled by the righteous mission of love he’s given himself, “When we get to my parents’ I want to introduce you to everyone as my boyfriend.”

“Everyone?”

“It’ll just be my mom and dad and a couple of their friends. The Websters have a gay son too, he’s the documentarian. Thank God he’s not going to be here, he’s in Indonesia filming insects or something. His parents are nice, no idea why he turned out so weird.”

Ilya laughs, “You really hate this kid?”

Shane rolls his eyes, “No, I have nothing against him.” He shoves at Ilya when he makes a face at that, “Anyway, the only other people that’ll be there are the Singhs, they’re my parents neighbours, and the Thompsons, their squash buddies. They’re all card-carrying Liberals who’ve walked in pride parades. They won’t do anything to endanger us or our careers if we tell them.”

“You are okay with this?”

“They’ll be fine.”

“No, not them, you. Are you comfortable with this? Do not force yourself if the answer is no.”

Shane sighs, a knot of terror loosens in his chest. “Okay, maybe I’m freaking out about it a little.”

“So then we don’t have to tell everyone, okay? Maybe just your parents, after, when everyone has left.”

Shane doesn’t know why he’s crying, but he pulls Ilya closer, wrapping his arms up in a massive hug he sobs into Ilya’s shoulder. “God, I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Shane, ya lyublyu tebya.”

Warmth spills through his body as everything narrows to the point of a kiss. Ilya’s lips on Shane, gentle yet firm, the soft brush of Ilya’s tongue makes Shane want to open his mouth wider, accept Ilya inside, never close enough to him. Shane’s hands cling, white-knuckled, to Ilya’s strong shoulders as he desperately tries to keep up with Ilya’s devoted and devouring kiss. When they part to catch their breath, Ilya is gazing down at Shane with love so clear in his eyes, Shane’s now certain his father wouldn’t have missed it.

This might be an easier conversation than he thinks.

The next day, Ilya lets Shane dress him in a white linen shirt. Shane wears a matching one in blue, explaining that his mom had ordered him one in every colour, but the white one only came in a size larger. The fabric stretches comfortably over the breadth of Ilya’s shoulders, so Shane is confident Ilya is comfortable in it, if his giddy comments about looking like such a couple weren’t enough of an indication.

Ilya insists on stopping to buy a bouquet of flowers from a farm stand on the side of the street as they make their way to Shane’s parents’ cottage. Shane indulges him, though he knows Ilya won’t need much more than his personality to win over his parents.

Yuna Hollander opens the door smiling, instantly drawing Shane in for a hug before ushering both of them in. In the hallway, Ilya nervously presents his bouquet which Shane’s mom takes with a delighted laugh.

“Oh you didn’t have to,” Yuna chides Ilya, but Ilya stands firm.

“Is the least I could do,” Ilya says, “To thank you for raising such a fantastic son.”

Shane rolls his eyes at the way his mom laughs, “Alright, already, does dad need any help in the kitchen?”

“Ooh, yes, he could probably use a couple of extra hands to bring out the canapés.”

“Oh god, you guys went overboard again, didn’t you?”

“It’s the Stanley Cup!” Yuna argues back, making Ilya throw his head back and cackle.

He turns to Shane with a massive grin on his face which breaks Shane’s concerted effort to be annoyed, he smiles back as Ilya claps him on the shoulder, “Listen to your mama, zaychik, let’s go, I will help.”

“You’re a guest!” Shane argues, but it’s fruitless.

Ilya just ploughs on through his parents’ house, eyes snagging on childhood photos of Shane as he walks down the hall. Entering the kitchen, Ilya greets Shane’s father like they’re old friends, despite only meeting him yesterday. It works a charm and soon David is sneaking him bites of the honey roasted ham that’s supposed to be resting before dinner.

Shane takes in the image in front of him with a baffled sort of glee. None of the guests are over yet, so it’s just his parents bustling around in their space, perfectly orbiting each other like they’ve done for decades, his mom arranging Ilya’s bouquet as David checks the temperature on the oven. Now, there’s the technicolour addition of Ilya, passing his mom the garden scissors from the drawer she points him to, arranging stuffed mushrooms on a tray under his father’s direction. Shane in contrast stands uselessly in the corner of the kitchen watching this all play out, feeling so happy he could burst.

He could just tell them now.

He should.

What’s stopping him?

Shane takes a breath, and he’s so certain he’s going to say it, but then the doorbell rings.

“Oh, that’ll be the Websters. Shane, can you get it?”

Shane nods and turns to open the door, biting down on his frustration for now. He greets the Websters as warmly as he can, a feat made simpler by the fact that their odious son isn’t with them. He shakes Todd Webster’s perpetually clammy hand, and holds his breath as he hugs Tanya Webster, a habit he’d formed since her perfume always makes him sneeze. They share pleasantries as he takes their coats and the bottle of wine they brought his parents. Longtime visitors, they make their own way to the sitting room to greet his parents.

Shane’s putting their coats away when he hears the house descend into silence. He fumbles the hanger— they’ve seen Ilya. Shane holds his breath as normal conversation picks up again, he trusts Ilya to soothe any social situation but most of all to schmooze older people, Shane’s been to enough stuffy MHL events to know that that is one of Ilya Rozanov’s specialties. Still, he rushes to join everyone in the kitchen again.

“Oh Shane,” Tanya coos, “You didn’t tell us you were bringing a treat!”

Shane laughs awkwardly, his shoulders relaxing as he gazes up at Ilya who is looking right back at him with a grin, bright and alive and in his element.

“Ilya, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to hear what happens next,” Todd interrupts, “So you got the puck back from Nilsson and you propelled yourself backwards towards their net and then…?”

“I shot it into the top left corner with the back of my stick-blade,” Ilya says, “I hear they are calling it ‘The Rozanov.’”

A realization sparks in Shane’s mind, “Wait is that how you scored the winning goal when you won the cup?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, his smile getting wider.

Shane gasps, “You remember that?”

Ilya nods vigorously, beaming back at Shane, “I think so, yes.”

“Well, it was only a couple of years ago,” Todd chimes in, his brows furrowed.

Shane blinks and schools his expression as quickly as he can, pressing his lips together to not smile as he watches Ilya do the same. 

Soon, Yuna ushers them into the living room to watch the pre-broadcast with the fleet of appetizers David had made. In quick succession the rest of the guests arrive and after an initial burst of surprise seeing Ilya among them, everyone quickly recovers and falls under Ilya’s spell over cocktails and hors d'oeuvres.

As the game starts, Shane subtly yet strategically ensures the spot next to Ilya is always his, taking every opportunity to plausibly brush past him or touch him in some way. From the way Ilya chases those touches, as he develops the prettiest pink blush along the tops of his cheeks, Shane knows these are affecting him, and Shane might get a delicious punishment for it later. He’s working overtime to ensure that is the case.

Everyone watches the Admirals put up an impressive lead against San Francisco. All this talk about San Francisco specifically has caused a rush of memories from 2014 to flood back into Ilya’s head and he’s rattling off stories about beating San Francisco in their arena and Boston’s in sheer amazement and elation that they’re there, something in place of the terrifying blank spaces there were before.

During an early commercial break, David dishes out dinner and, as per tradition, they all eat in front of the TV, finishing up as the final period begins. Shane and Ilya begged away to help wash the dishes as everyone else at the party was more invested in the outcome than them. Shane’s glad for the excuse to talk to Ilya alone, voices lowered to a murmur as he checks in.

“I am good, solnyshko, they do not suspect anything because I have been distracting them with my stories— there is no need to worry.”

“I’m not worried about that, Ilya,” Shane rolls his eyes, furiously rubbing the already-dry plate in his hands with the dishcloth, “I’m worried about you. I want to make sure you’re okay, and you’re not overwhelmed?”

“I am okay,” Ilya says with an indulgent smile, “And I am not overwhelmed.”

“Even with all the new memories coming back?”

The smile slips off of Ilya’s face and Shane whirls towards him, something is wrong, his terrified mind supplies.

“I remembered something else from that year. From after the MHL awards.”

Shane furrows his brow, “You mean... the penthouse?”

“Yes. I remember I did not kiss you.”

Shane’s mouth opens on a gasp, the memory seeping into his body like a chill.

“I desperately wanted to,” Ilya continues, sounding unsure in the face of Shane’s silence, “I knew that if I did I would never want to stop. And I was still pretending this was casual, I was trying to pretend, at least, that I hadn’t thought about you all those months I didn’t answer your texts.”

Shane looks stalwartly at the dishcloth in his hands, which he’s currently wringing around his knuckles so hard it’s starting to hurt, but he can’t stop, the pain and pressure soothing him in this unmoored moment, his parents and all their neighbours are just in the next room. He can’t crash into Ilya now and kiss him with all the fury and the sorrow he’d pent up all those months. Shane wants to kiss him like he wanted to kiss him when he saw Ilya hoist the Stanley Cup, baptized in sweat, unbearably beautiful in triumph. His hand twitches around the dishcloth again.

“I was cruel to you,” Ilya whispers, “You did not deserve that. I hope you can forgive me.”

Shane screws his eyes shut, “Of course I forgive you, Ilya, I promise, I do. I’m sorry I can’t look at you right now because all I want to do is kiss you until we faint from lack of oxygen but there are a bunch of middle aged Canadian government officials in the next room that I’m not prepared to scandalize like that.”

Ilya laughs, and Shane can hear the relief ring clear in it. “Okay, kotik, we will go back and finish watching the game. Then after Scott Hunter wins and goes home right away because it’s past curfew at the senior centre, we will go back home and you can kiss me as much as you like.”

Home, Shane thinks, utterly dazed by it, Ilya thinks of the cottage as home. He can only nod dreamily, accepting it easily when Ilya pulls the dishcloth from out of his hands and lightly massages his knuckles. So full of love he can’t stand it, when his mom calls them back in to catch the last moments of the game, Shane takes Ilya’s hand, intertwines their fingers, and leads him into the living room. They claim their spot on the sofa, still holding hands, an acceptable risk, as they settle in to watch the Admirals take it all home.

“What has gotten into Hunter this season?” Tanya Webster says, shaking her head, incredulous as Hunter nets another goal, bringing the admirals up 4-2 against San Francisco with just a couple minutes left in the game. Having all but won, the Admirals don’t cut any slack as the clock counts down, diligently keeping the puck in San Francisco’s zone making their poor rookie goalie’s head spin with the way they pass it around, from Hunter to Vaughn to Wilson, and back to Hunter, the puck pinballs between them like a taunt.

“I’ve been telling you all, it’s his year!” Yuna chimes in, “Haven’t I been telling them, David?”

“Yes, my dear,” David says, smiling indulgently, ”It has been noted in the record that once again, you called it.”

The game ends and the room gives a hearty cheer for the Admirals, even Shane and Ilya join in, raising their beers. The conversations scatter throughout the room as the post-win celebrations play out on the ice. Shane is only half-watching, focused on the secret thumb wrestling game he and Ilya are playing with their hands squished between their thighs.

“Look, this is my favourite part. I love it when all the confetti falls on the ice,” Mr. Singh says, nudging Mrs. Singh towards the TV.

“I like seeing all the families come down,” Mrs. Singh counters, “Look I think that’s Carter Vaughn’s movie star girlfriend.”

“Is… Is Scott Hunter calling someone down from the crowd?” Todd leans closer to the TV, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

“Is that a relative of his? Does anyone know?”

“Oh, he’s going on the ice and wait— whoa.”

“They’re saying that’s his boyfriend?”

There's a brief silence, before all at once Shane's parents, the Websters, the Singhs, and the Thompsons all start speaking at once: 

“Aw, that’s amazing.”

“Good for him!”

“What a hero,” chimes in Shane’s dad, “it takes a lot of courage to be the first, but I know there’s a ton of kids out there now breathing a sigh of relief that he’s done it.”

“A true trail blazer.”

“A game changer!”

Shane feels the excited chatter around him get dimmer and dimmer as the world narrows to every point of contact between him and Ilya sitting on this couch right now. Shane hasn’t even looked at Ilya for his reaction yet, nor has Ilya turned to him, their eyes both glued to the TV.

Scott Hunter is kissing a man on the ice of the Stanley Cup Finals. Scott Hunter is kissing a man. Shane squeezes Ilya’s hand so hard he sees Ilya wince from the pressure, but he can’t make himself stop. His jaw is on the ground, as he looks around, finding his parents mirroring his expression exactly. Scott Hunter has just come out. There’s officially one out queer hockey player in the MHL. It doesn’t have to be Shane, or even Shane and Ilya alone, but maybe someday soon it can be. He wants it, though he knows it’ll require careful planning and extraordinary bravery, now that he’s got his heart set on it, he knows he won’t give up until he and Ilya have it too.

He can start now.

Or soon, rather. Shane still waits until his parents’ guests politely filter out, all of them shaking Ilya’s hand and doting on him and going on and on about what a polite young man he is. Shane stands beside him, watching him accept it all with pink-faced embarrassment, feeling so in love and so desperate to say it. Still he bides his time as the door shuts on the last guest and his dad passes out steaming mugs of peppermint tea.

When all four of them are seated around the TV, Shane sneaks his hand into Ilya’s once again and clears his throat.

“Um, Mom, Dad?” Shane says, making eye contact with both of his parents with more bravado than he really feels, “I think what Scott Hunter just did was really amazing. It was…brave, but more than that it was honest. And I think it made me want to be more honest too.” He sneaks a quick look at Ilya who is already looking back, eyes warm and hand squeezing tight, he nods once, giving Shane the courage he needs to speak his next words, “I’m gay. And Ilya’s my boyfriend. We’ve been together, um, on and off, since before our rookie season.”

The news lands heavily in the silent room. But then, both of Shane’s parents get up from their seats and crowd Shane and Ilya pulling them both into a big hug. Shane laughs, startled, as does Ilya, but they wrap their arms around Shane’s parents back, making the hug pile last until they’re all a mess of laughter.

“Oh Shane,” his mom says, pulling away and discreetly wiping a tear off her face, “I love you. We love you. More than anything. And nothing will ever change that. Thank you so much for telling us when you were ready.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Shane sniffles, body suddenly exhausted from all the tension he’s just released. Ilya rubs a soothing hand up and down his back.

“You know we’re both so proud of you,” his dad adds, “It takes real courage to be true to yourself, to stand up to people who have a problem with that. I hope you know your mom and I will be behind you every step of this fight. You won’t be alone,” then David turns to Ilya, “Neither of you, okay? You’re part of this family now too, Ilya.”

Shane smiles as Ilya chokes up, smiling to try and hide his tears, though a couple roll out of the corners of his eyes anyway. His voice is just a croak when he says, “Thank you. I will not disappoint you.”

The tremble in his voice is too much, Shane wraps Ilya back up in as tight a hug as he dares, pressing his precious face into the crook of his neck. Shane cradles Ilya for a little bit, while his sniffles subside. In the meantime, his dad gets up and pours them all but Shane a generous helping of the special Russian vodka he has his diplomat friends import for him. Shane steals a small sip from Ilya’s glass and feels warm all over, and he watches, pleased, as Ilya makes his adorable surprised face at the smooth taste of the liquor.

“So you said you’ve been together since your rookie season?” Yuna asks, the question bursting out of her like she just couldn’t hold it back anymore. Shane grins as he watches his dad put a placating hand on her arm but he’s unwound enough that talking about this doesn’t feel so scary anymore.

“Yeah, since the summer before, actually,” Shane says, smiling as he feels Ilya’s intent gaze, “It was after that CCM photoshoot we did together in Toronto. We had so much fun and got to talking after, and well.”

Ilya smiles, chiming in, “We would meet up any chance we would get. When Boston would play in Montreal. Or when Montreal played in Boston. I think we fell in love a little bit each time, but we were still scared to admit it. Or at least I was.”

“When you dated Rose…” Yuna says, “Was that real?”

Ilya grumbles, but seems placated when Shane grabs his hand, running a soothing thumb up and down the meat of his palm.

“Yes, Ilya and I were ‘off’ then. But um, we reconnected at the All Stars Game this year in Tampa. And then when Ilya got hit, I took him to the cottage and I’ve been looking after him as he gets better.”

“That was a nasty hit,” Yuna says with a sympathetic frown, “Are you feeling better now?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, smiling proudly at his progress, “Shane has taken very good care of me. My collarbone is feeling much better and my concussion is getting there too. And best of all, my memory seems to be coming back.”

“Your memory?” Shane’s parents ask in unison, looking over at Shane in bewildered concern.

“Ilya had a bit of retrograde amnesia,” Shane says, parroting what the nurses had told him at Ilya’s discharge. “The last thing he remembered was the draft but I’ve been helping fill in some of the gaps and we spoke to Ilya’s doctor on the phone the other day, and she thinks he’s making great progress.”

“But that was before your relationship,” Shane’s dad points out with a confused furrow in his brow.

Mom finishes the question, "You still trusted Shane enough to come home with him, even when you didn't remember what he was to you?" 

Shane looks over and is surprised to see the intensity with which Ilya is blushing, his cheeks are practically glowing, and he can’t make eye contact when he says, “I was maybe already very… interested in Shane. Since before the draft. When we met in World Juniors.”

His heart cracking open, Shane laughs, “The parking lot? All the way back in Saskatchewan?”

“Now Shane," Yuna chides, "You were just as bad! Wasn't that when you made us wait in the car so you could go introduce yourself to the great Rozanov? You know you drove your coach crazy with how many times you asked to watch his game tapes.” Shane’s mom teases, and now it’s Shane’s turn to blush as Ilya turns a blinding grin on him.

“Yeah, and I remember telling you I thought he was a bit of a dick and to never meet your heroes,” Shane says, a teasing smile on his face. It does nothing to dim Ilya’s elation, and he can’t help but laugh too as he’s pulled into a one-armed embrace, squished up against Ilya’s side with kisses being pressed to his forehead and his eyelids, down the bridge of his nose, and then loud and smacking on his lips. Mwah!

It turns Shane into a giggling mess, totally unselfconscious in front of his parents, totally safe and surrounded by all the people he loves most in this world.

Shane takes the moment in and realizes he couldn’t be happier than if he’d won the Stanley Cup himself.

Eventually, they beg off to drive back to the cottage, even though Shane’s parents would keep them there forever if they could. Shane makes the solid argument that apart from a minuscule sip of Ilya’s vodka, Shane is sober and so he can safely drive them home where all of Ilya’s nighttime medication and sling are all still needed. Shane’s parents press a pile of Tupperware full of leftovers into their hands, and make sure Ilya is added to a new family group chat, and then they’re bundled off with kisses and hugs and admonishments to drive safe.

That night, once Ilya has been sufficiently medicated and stretched and cleaned with Shane right along with him, they find themselves in bed once again. This time, with the full use of his arms, Ilya pins Shane down to the mattress on his back, and makes love to him while staring deeply into his eyes.

“Fuck,” Shane babbles, made blissfully incoherent by the feeling of Ilya's dick so hard and so deep inside him, “You’re so perfect for me, Ilya, you’re the only one. The only one that makes me feel like this, oh my God, right there, please Ilya, please, fuck, please.”

Ilya gives him everything Shane could ever ask for, even the things he can barely articulate. He reaches deep into Shane’s very core with every thrust, going harder as the pitch and desperation of Shane’s moans gets louder and louder.

He’s mumbling Russian into Shane’s mouth as he also approaches his peak, “Ya lyublyu tebya, ya lyublyu tebya, ya lyublyu tebya,” he keeps chanting over and over. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Sex feels like a revelation every time in Ilya’s arms. This time, Shane and Ilya invent coming at the exact same time while looking deeply into each other’s eyes. It feels so amazing it must be the first and only time in human history it’s ever been done. Ilya’s just a sex god like that, and Shane is the luckiest person in the world to have lured him into his bed, for the privilege of worshipping at his altar.

Shane falls asleep with one of Ilya’s fingers in his mouth, he figures it’s a sort of sacrament.

But then— moments later, Shane is awoken from his post-orgasmic slumber all too soon by the jagged sound of stifled sobbing. He jolts awake once he realizes it must be coming from Ilya, and when he jumps up to turn on his bedside lamp, he floods the room with orange light, illuminating Ilya curled up on his side, facing away from Shane, shaking and in tears.

Quickly rolling over until he can wrap himself around Ilya’s trembling back, Shane tries running a soothing touch down the expanse of Ilya’s shoulders, down his arms, and his back. Slowly he pulls deeper breaths out of Ilya, and attempts to coax him to talk, his voice as gentle of a rumble as he can make it, murmuring softly into Ilya’s ear.

“Hey, hey, wake up, Ilya, talk to me, please, what’s going on?”

Ilya turns around then and Shane sighs in relief as Ilya tugs him into an embrace, the two of them on their sides but tangled together, Shane’s legs notched around Ilya’s hips, Ilya’s arms looped around Shane’s waist. Ilya brings their faces together and presses several firm kisses to Shane’s lips, leaving behind the traces of his teardrops on Shane’s cheeks.

“I remembered something,” Ilya finally mumbles into Shane’s shoulder, and presses a kiss immediately after as if in apology, “It made me sad.”

“Tell me?”

“That game,” Ilya sighs, tilting his head up to look at Shane, his eyes glitter with tears, “When I got injured. We were going to see each other after, right?”

“Yeah,” Shane says, threading a hand into Ilya’s curls and brushing them back with a whisper-gentle touch, “I was gonna ask you to come to the cottage. I mean, I guess I did it anyway.”

“I was going to break up with you,” Ilya says, a single tear escaping.

“What?” A cold, hollow feeling spills through Shane’s chest, making his fingers tingle with numbness. Still, as if possessed, his unfeeling hand comes up to loosely caress Ilya’s cheek, to wipe away the tear rolling down it.

“I’m so sorry, Shane,” Ilya sobs, turning his face into Shane’s palm.

“Sorry for what, baby? It’s okay now, you’re here,” Shane tries to soothe Ilya, rubbing his other hand up and down Ilya’s back, but he can’t stop trembling. “You don’t— you don’t still want to break up with me do you?”

“No,” Ilya says before Shane can even finish his sentence. “No, never, Shane I— I’m so sorry I tried to leave you at all. I will never do this, I promise.”

“Good, you’d better not,” Shane holds Ilya tighter. Ilya squeezes him back. “I want you around forever.”

Ilya pulls back, he looks stricken, blue eyes full of tears, “Forever?”

Shane feels shy, suddenly, under the force of Ilya’s devoted gaze, but he won’t back down, not from this, “Yeah, forever, as long as you’ll have me.”

“You took me to your house, you nursed me back to health, you held me and loved me when I woke up and thought I was alone in the world. I think I would be an idiot to keep you for anything less than forever, no?”

“Well, when you put it that way, you’re just handing me an excuse to call you an idiot.”

“Since when do you need an excuse?”

“What, is that another memory?”

“Mm, more like a guess.”

Summer stretches out ahead of them. Eventually, they’re going to hit the end of this road, and they’re going to have to make the hard decisions that will make a future together possible. Shane’s prepared to face it, brave when he’s doing it for Ilya, braver when Ilya is by his side.

“Forever,” Shane vows, “We’ll always make new memories.”