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It was a week after their second Cup run, their second Cup win, and Ilya knew he had reached his end.
His thirty-ninth birthday was in three days, doubling too as his Cup day, and he was sure he wouldn’t be able to get out of bed and enjoy it. This morning, Shane had come into the bedroom with a breakfast tray — loaded with orange juice, a basket of sweet jam-filled pastries, and an icepack almost as big as his head. Ilya’s knee, which he’d played on fractured from the third round onward, was tender, and swollen to the size of a grapefruit. He could barely fucking move.
The celebrations after his Cup win with Boston was a blur of drunken shenanigans he could only half-remember these days. He’d been exhausted, sure, he’d ached all over, but back then those were troubles easily soothed with the high of the win and truthfully, his younger body’s ability to bounce back. This time, the high was as sharp as the pain in his knee. Ilya braved a constant general sense of wrongpainfuck all over his body that’s kept him in bed since the parade.
Ilya sipped from the glass of orange juice with tired hands, willing them not to shake under the eye of his watchful husband.
“I’ll call the doctor again,” Shane said when Ilya was finished. Ilya only managed to eat a third of his food, which even he knew was a bad sign for his overall health. Ilya could put away three times what most people ate.
He waved at Shane, who was already half-way out the door, typing furiously on his phone. Shane, of course, had weaseled the personal cell number out of Ilya’s knee surgeon. .
“No, no. Shane, come here.”
“You’re hurt, Ilya. It shouldn’t be this bad, we can move the surgery date up. Don’t be stupid,” Shane snapped.
His lovely lips were pursed into a thin line. He was beautiful even when he was pissy, maybe especially so. His little nose all scrunched, mouth twitchy like he’d swallowed a lemon. How Ilya managed to tie this man down for life, for forever, was something he tried to not to question and just be grateful for.
“The doctor will not say anything new. Surgery is scheduled. Come cuddle with me.”
As they’d aged, Ilya bore time more visibly. Stress-lines on his forehead, a beard more salt-and-pepper than honey-gold, bumps and bruises that took a month to fade rather than weeks. The first time Ilya found a gray hair at his temple, he locked himself in the bathroom for an hour, fighting off a panic attack.
Shane looked just as he did fifteen years ago, all but for the crow’s feet at his eyes. Ilya liked to joke that Shane inherited all of Yuna’s good genetics, she was past retirement age now and looked about twenty years younger. The truth of it was, they were both aging, and Ilya was the first to crack under its whip. It wasn’t about strength or willpower. It was a simple fact, and he was having trouble accepting it.
Ilya put on his best pout, all puppy-dog eyes, and Shane, a sucker and a sap, was back on the bed in a second snuggling into Ilya’s side.
“Yes, I am hurt. Is hockey, why you surprised?” Ilya asked, running his pointer finger along Shane’s cheek. There was a laugh line creased just under his nose. Or no, maybe it was a trick of the light.
“I’m not surprised, I just don’t like it,” Shane mumbled.
Ilya thought of Shane, laid out on the ice by Cliff Marlow, motionless, his eyes hazy, slurred his words. The fear sitting tight and panicked in Ilya’s mouth, as he watched them take Shane away on the stretcher. How that fear had lingered for days after, weeks even, if he was honest. Shane never suffered a hit as bad again, but they were hockey players, they suffered more physical abuse in the past twenty years of their careers than most people did in their entire life. Each and every time Shane was injured, Ilya wanted to pummel whoever was responsible, then cry his eyes out. Looking at Shane, his head carefully curved into the crook of Ilya’s shoulder, his eyes dark and shiny — he knew the feeling was mutual.
Still, he didn’t want to say any of that. Instead he booped Shane’s nose with his finger. “So finicky. Like a cat.”
Huffing, still beautifully pissy, but calmed enough to stay in bed, Shane carefully pushed the breakfast tray aside to sit in Ilya’s lap. He went gently, hovering just above Ilya’s thighs — like he was afraid to sit down.
“Come on,” Ilya said, grumpily, pushing at Shane’s hips until he was sitting flush with Ilya’s groin. Shane was hard, because when he was not, Ilya could breath in his direction and he’d be stiff as a flagpole, but Ilya was stubbornly, stupidly soft. He hurt all over. He wanted to cry.
“I love you,” Shane said, face in Ilya’s neck, his voice watery. “I want you to be ok.”
“Of course, I’m ok. We won,” Ilya whispered, trying for cocky and fucking it all up. There was no hiding the shakiness in his voice, all his pride and grief battering at the battlements.
“ You won,” Shane insisted, and it didn’t really make sense, but he pressed desperately closer. Shane wasn’t talking about the Cup anymore. Ilya would go down as one of the all time greats. There were hockey players who would kill for half of what he’d achieved, but it was hard for him to feel grateful for any of it when the end of his career stared him in the face, teeth bared, unabashed in the curtailing of his feelings.
Ilya was done. His last season had come and gone. The Centaurs might offer him another contract, if he asked, but they knew he wouldn’t. Stubbornness was one thing, being willfully blind another. Ilya would, in fact, like to retain his ability to walk. Carry his future children around. Play at the dog park with Anya. Fuck Shane into the mattress when they were old and saggy and falling apart. This required sacrifices.
It was an ending of the most spectacular fashion, but an ending nonetheless.
~
Off-season, (summertime, it was just summertime now) was not all Italian vacations and spear-fishing in the Bahamas as players liked to pretend on Instagram. It was house-hunting, a dozen different weddings, family reunions, and a fuck-ton of medical appointments.
Frankly, Ilya would never like to see the inside of a hospital ever again.
Ilya had not, as predicated, been able to get around on his birthday. He’d forgone his tradition of bringing it to the hockey camps in favor of throwing a summer send-off barbeque — with Bood at the grill, Ilya was prideful but not stupid — for all their neighbors and teammates. He’d spent the barbecue lounging on their eye-wateringly expensive patio furniture, the proud captain of the children’s face-painting table. By sunset, all the Centaur kids were running around the lawn, cheeks painted with glittery butterflies and bright tiger stripes.
It was a good day, but one he had tried not to pretend was pulling double duty as his own retirement party. Almost every player had come to sit with him, and not-so-subtly pay their respects. A hard look and a hand on the shoulder from Troy. Luca, all wet and wide-eyed, finally grown out of his baby-face. Bood, who’d retired a few years earlier, soft launching himself as a potential pickleball partner. A hobby, he swore, was essential while the season was on. What the fuck even was pickleball?
Despite the good food and company, Ilya had been snappy and irritable by the end. He was retiring, not going off to war. Shane would still be playing for fuck’s sake. Another two years at least, and it’s not like they were moving. Ottawa was home, despite the freezing cold and the lack of big city nightlife which younger Ilya would have abhorred. Ottawa had plenty of other virtues.
Ilya’s piss-poor mood carried on into late July, when the surgeons went in on his knee. The lead-up was an absurd amount of medical appointments and preventative physical therapy Ilya barely tolerated. Shane summoned the patience of a saint from God knows where to deal with Ilya’s bullshit, and even through the first arduous 48 hours of post-op managed to keep a calm composure in the face of Ilya’s bed-bound bitchiness.
Until they got a Zoom invite from upper management.
“Do you know what this is?” Ilya asked, blissfully pain-free thanks to a cocktail of drugs and the first sign of reduced swelling in his knee. He’d even managed to hobble downstairs this morning with Shane’s help, and made himself the king of the living room couch, plied with peanut butter cup ice-cream and Anya, grey-whiskered as he was now, who curled up at his flank while he binge-watched sitcoms.
“Oh. Um. It’s about the captaincy I think,” Shane said from the kitchen.
Ilya jerked upwards. He couldn’t help it. He jostled Anya, who yelped, and fled to her dog bed by the fireplace. Her betrayed look was not lost on him.
“Already?” Fuck the knee-pain, it felt like a goddamn elephant was sitting on Ilya’s chest.
“Yes,” Shane said softly. His face was a careful mask of neutrality. “We set it up a few weeks ago. They want to talk about candidates.”
Ilya snorted. “No candidates. It is yours.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Bullshit. I am not a reporter, Hollander.”
The reporters had asked Shane about the captaincy at locker cleanout. With Ilya’s age, his injuries, and the end of his contract where the C was going was media catnip . Shane, characteristically, gave them nothing.
I’m not going to speak for Ilya. He wears the C and who he, and management, chose to pass that on to is not for me to say.
Shane slapped his phone on the counter, and eyes narrowed said, “Ok. Fine it’ll be me. Do you want me to turn it down?”
The idea of someone else, someone younger probably, with the C on their chest made Ilya want to vomit. “What? Fuck no. You are crazy.”
“I’m crazy? You’re pissed at me for doing what you want!”
“I’m not pissed!” Ilya lied, but winning an argument right now felt more important than dissecting why he wanted to win it.
Shane threw his hands up. “You’re literally yelling at me right now!”
“You are being weird with me for forgetting a meeting! Important Centaurs meeting, what a shame I miss it. I am retired, yes? Not my job to manage team of whiny children anymore. Apparently it is your job. Good fucking luck.”
Shane was shaking his head open-mouthed. “I don’t understand you.” Then he stalked away. From the foyer Ilya could hear car keys jangling.
Ilya couldn’t resist, and snarled, “Ah, leaving, are you? Very mature, captain .”
Shane didn’t answer. He slammed the door. The garage door clicked open and the roar of Ilya’s new Porsche echoed down their street. Ilya loved that car. He hadn’t driven it in a month.
What a dick.
Ilya, who couldn’t move until Shane got back, rubbed the meat of his palms over his eyes and willed himself not to cry. He’d become very good at it.
~
“Retirement is great,” Ilya said for the third time. He wasn’t looking at Galina, but instead at the furled brown tip of the houseplant on the shelf behind her. It needed water. Or less of it. Bood would know. He was gardening now too. Another retirement hobby.
“What’s great about it?” she asked.
Damn her, and her patience.
“I can do whatever I want. Play video games. Watch TV. Jerk off. Who cares? No one is around to tell me no.”
She didn’t so much as flinch. “These things all sound familiar. These are all things you did before Shane came to Ottawa.”
Well, he did all that when he was depressed. Unmedicated and depressed. She was not subtle.
“I still do these things, and I am fine,” he said sharply.
“You’re right. You can do whatever you like. Video games or television are great, in moderation, but if that’s all you’re doing with your time I suggest you think about how that makes you feel. How it makes Shane feel.”
He switched to Russian. Holding back tears and trying to articulate his thoughts in English was a near-impossible task. “What does it matter what I do when Shane is gone? He will be playing. He should be focused on that.”
“When Shane lived in Montreal, how well did it go when you hid what you were doing and how you were feeling from him?
“I don’t—” Ilya stopped. His argument tasted like ash on his tongue. It felt like his life was stuck in a never-ending personal hell and no one noticed.
For the past week the house had been eerily quiet. They’d had their Zoom meeting. Shane would get the captainship next season. Ilya probably congratulated him, but truthfully couldn’t recall when or how. At night, he and Shane curled into one another in bed after a long day of not talking, mule-stubborn, but not enough to deny each other skin-on-skin comfort.
They woke up touching, and Ilya’s knee, chugging along slowly day by day into usefulness, thrummed with the tension of a long healing journey. Without fail, and without speaking, Ilya would turn to his husband and Shane’s lips opened petal-like, sighing sweetly, and he let Ilya make love to him. Afterward, Ilya wiped him clean, and still they said nothing, looked not at each other, but at other points in the room to avoid having to apologize. Shane went about his day, double the errands, double the time, because Ilya still couldn’t walk for too long or risk opening his stitches.
Ilya was thirty-nine years old. He retired with three Stanley Cups to his name. He will be a Hall of Famer. He is no doubt married to a Hall of Famer. He is as sickenly in love with Shane as he was when he was seventeen. He had good friends. He had a sweetie-pie of a puppy-dog. He had his health, for the most part. What was there to be fighting about?
“I don’t know what I want. Only that, I don’t want to be a burden to anyone,” Ilya whispered.
Galina smiled. “People are simple, Ilya. Habitual. We like our patterns and our routine defenses because maybe they worked for us in the past. But often, what worked in one situation, doesn’t work in another. It takes hard work to realize this pattern, and it usually takes a couple tries to break it.”
~
“I called the housekeeper for the cottage,” Ilya announced over dinner, rather proud of his carefully thought out olive branch. “It will be ready before the weekend.”
Shane stopped mid-chew, swallowed then, “Oh.”
He said nothing else, instead focusing on the salmon fillet he’d spent the past ten minutes sawing into pieces rather than talking to his husband.
Ilya’s heart sank. How much damage had he truly done to their marriage if Shane didn’t want to go to the cottage? Their happy place. Ilya told Shane he loved him there. There was an unspoken mutual understanding between them, that when they both retired, that’s where they’d go and spend the rest of their days. Or at least, they’d think about it. How bad had it become that Ilya wasn’t sure of that anymore?
“Do you not want to go?” he asked quietly.
“No! I want to go, I do. It’s just. The owners wanted to meet with me that Saturday. For lunch, or brunch, whatever it is. To celebrate the captaincy."
Before Ilya could say anything, Shane added, “You’re invited too.”
“I do not need a pity invite,” Ilya snapped, an instinctual knee-jerk reaction he immediately regretted. God, when he came to Ottawa the owners took him to the most expensive steakhouse in town, visibly hysterically baffled that Ilya Rozanov had come to captain their rinky dinky team.
“It’s not a pity invite, you dick . You’re invited too, check your damn calendar.’
Ilya unlocked his phone. There was, in fact, an invite in his calendar. The location was set to a new trendy restaurant downtown Ilya was obsessed with. One of those trendy TikTok famous places with neon store front signs and overpriced mimosas. This restaurant had raspberry jam stuffed waffles. He told Shane about it months ago. No one else.
Ilya clenched his jaw. No more fuck-ups.
“Okay. I will go,” Ilya stood, slowly, so Shane didn’t have a heart attack watching him hobble across the floor and took both of their plates to be washed.
He stopped to lean in and kiss Shane on the cheek. He lingered, with his lips hovering over Shane’s ear, just to feel him shiver, and whisper, “On Sunday, the cottage, yes?”
Shane nodded, and the kiss he leaned in for felt like forgiveness.
~
They settled into the cottage in a tenuous truce. Ilya was still grumpy, still eyed every phone notification like a live bomb, expecting another email from the admins about his retirement. They’d confirmed it over brunch that morning. Ilya would get a send-off ceremony opening day, and Shane would get the C. They’d announce his retirement on socials in two weeks.
Ilya only had so long before Harris sent an email titled something like “Ilya’s batshit crazy farewell tour extravaganza!” with a dozen party-related emojis. A small part of him wanted to chuck his phone in the lake, but then who would take cute pictures of Anya for Instagram?
Ilya was familiar enough with his mental illness now to recognize the rumblings of a depressive or anxious episode. Sometimes he could pinpoint which one was coming and how bad it would be, but this time he just felt exhausted, no doubt exasperated by his healing knee. Still, he was thinking about his mother a lot — which was never a good indication of where his head was at.
He was beyond wondering what she’d think of him marrying a man. She was a good person, and he decided she wouldn’t care. She’d love Shane, his competitive nature, his adorable persnicketyness, his level-headed steadiness to Ilya the wild-child.
Now, Ilya was thinking of the inevitable empty space on the ice meant for mothers at the number retirement ceremonies. She would have looked dazzling, in a colorful dress, her fine bright hair swept over her shoulders. She’d kiss the cheek of whatever player skated her way with an over-the-top flower bouquet. No doubt, Harris would have coaxed proudly sweet soundbites out of her for socials. She’d go viral. It was in their genetics to peacock about and draw attention.
Ilya was thinking of her puttering around their house. Their dining room table dusted with flour for making pelmeni . Her elegant hands folding over the ground meat, smiling while Ilya teased (flirted with) Shane for his single-minded focus while crimping the dough. Long family dinners into the evening, Yuna and David included, chattering happily by the fireplace or outside on the patio. Whispering together about ridiculous Canadian half-politeness while David and Shane sniped at one another over the Monopoly board.
He was thinking of her holding his child, oh, what a grandmother she should be, singing softly in the face of a baby with Shane’s dark shiny hair. She would move-in with them, for the first few months at least, vehemently and loudly outspoken about the hiring of any nanny.
“ Iluysha ,” she would scold, fixing a pastel-pattered bucket hat over the downy head of the baby. “I will not let just anyone be responsible for my grandchild.”
Ilya was crying. Silently, but still. Maybe he was not in the best headspace. He wiped his tears and made the slow, gingerly-treaded trek downstairs.
~
Shane was making lunch, spreading mayo over a slice of multigrain. Already there were two sandwiches on the counter piled with deli meat. Next to it was a plate of pasta salad, a tray of veggies and cheese, and a bowl of summer-ripe cherries. Enough food for four people, or rather, two hockey players.
(Former hockey player).
Ilya sauntered over to him, ignoring the shakiness in his knee and his tight throat. He hid his distress well, at least he thought he did, because when Ilya splayed himself over Shane’s back, kitten-licking at the sensitive spot behind his ear, all Shane did was shiver. A few more licks and Shane leaned back into his tongue, laying the dirtied butter knife onto the counter.
He was good and beautiful and Ilya loved him, it was hard not to smile into the kiss Shane craned his head backwards for. What did Ilya ever have to worry about but this? Kissing Shane breathless, focusing all his energy on coaxing soft and breathy noises from him. Ilya bit at his jaw, dedicated a solid minute to sucking kisses on his neck, before sliding down to his knees.
“Ilya wait—”
“No, let me,” Ilya said, breathing through a pop in his knee he hoped Shane didn’t hear. Shane was hard, duh, and in a moment Ilya had him unzipped. He was already dripping at the head and Ilya leaned in for a taste, relishing the heft of Shane in his mouth, and tugging down the rest of Shane’s shorts to grab at his ass.
“Are you sure?” Shane asked, breathy. He was wide-eyed and flushed. He bit at his lip, a nervous tick, and Ilya knew if he didn’t get moving now there would be questions and pestering and bullshit he was so fucking tired of.
Ilya winked and licked a long stripe up his cock before swallowing him down. Shane groaned, and then came the tell-tale grasping of his fingers in Ilya’s curls. Ilya relaxed, and allowed Shane a few shaky thrusts, fucking his throat.
This. This was it. What Ilya needed. The smell and and feel of his husband, muffling all the other bullshit in the world.
Ilya popped off briefly, and licked shamelessly over his thumb until it was wet and shiny. Then he tugged Shane toward him, and crept his hand over Shane’s ass until he could press his spit-slicked thumb over Shane’s hole.
“Ilya, please ,” Shane whined, pushing back, then forward. He was so desperate . Unsure if he wanted to be fucked, or if he wanted Ilya’s mouth. Hazily, Ilya wondered when was the last time they used one of their toys. Before the playoffs for sure. Before his knee. A shame, really. One of Shane’s best looks was Ilya’s cock in his mouth, and a toy in his ass.
Later.
Ilya’s held Shane steady, and fucked him slowly with his thumb while he licked, sloppily all over his cock. He alternated, between this slow indulgent pace and taking Shane down to the root, then fingering him sharp and quick. He wanted this to last , he wanted to forget everything else but Shane begging him for more.
He brought Shane to the edge, once, twice, and by the third time Shane was shaking. Fine little tremors running up and down his legs. Ilya pressed wet sucking kisses at the junction of his thighs.
“You’re so good, so beautiful,” he cooed in Russian, already smug. He knew how hot Shane got for his voice when he sucked his cock, raspy and rumbling. Even more so when he was speaking Russian. “You can hold on for me, can’t you? Be good, baby. Let me suck you.”
Like clockwork, Shane gasped high in his throat. He was somehow both squirming away and closer to Ilya’s mouth, currently occupied with licking over the bruises he’d bloomed into Shane’s thighs.
Instinctively, when Ilya took Shane back into his mouth, Shane fucked forward, shifting his weight. Ilya was used to this, he’d been sleeping with this man for almost two decades, and braced himself to take Shane’s weight.
Only, his knee was not cooperative.
He felt it give, and Shane yelped when Ilya let him slip from his mouth. Ilya barely caught himself from falling, sprawling into an awkward half sprawl on the tile, one hand caught awkwardly on a cabinet handle. Christ, his knee hurt. There wasn’t any blood on the tile though. Small blessing that his stitches were still in.
“Ilya, oh my God. Are you ok?” Shane was already crouched on the floor. His cock was still out, and he’d gone half-soft.
Hurt spread ink-like in Ilya’s gut. He couldn’t help it. This should be easy . Even when they had nothing else they had sex. There was something so suddenly vulnerable about being crouched on the floor of their kitchen, clutching his busted knee, half-wondering if he should make a call to the doctor about it. Hey, doc! I tried giving my husband a blowjob in the kitchen and may have made my career-ending injury even worse! Yes, yes, I know we are not young anymore. What a silly thing to be doing, sucking cock on reconstructed knees. I am made up of styrofoam and spite at this point.
What the fuck was his life right now.
Ilya swatted Shane away, who hovered looking very not-horny.
“Go away,” Ilya growled. He managed to stand, and Shane somehow managed to do what he was told, mouth agape, and scrambling to tuck himself back in his pants. How romantic.
Ilya might cry. He blamed that for what he said next. “Guess you’ll have to wait to have your dick sucked. Or find someone else to do it.”
Shane flinched. His devastated face was impossible to bear. “Are you fucking kidding me? Ilya—”
Ilya didn’t stay to listen. He hobbled out the backdoor, head buzzing, and managed to keep it together until he knew he was out of earshot. Then crumpled to the ground under the shadowy drape of a pine tree by the lake, and muffled his cries into the crook of his elbow.
~
On FaceTime, Svetlana lounged in a white beach-chair sipping a frosty pink cocktail. What tropical island she was on, Ilya could not say. Only that it was light outside, she was tipsy before noon, and she was a good friend to interrupt her vacation to listen to him rant about his marital problems.
He was hiding in the basement, squished in the corner between the washer-dryer and a box of old hockey gear. Shane was upstairs, asleep. Probably. Ilya didn’t know for sure. Their bedroom door was locked when he went to check. That hurt more than anything else that had happened in the past few weeks.
“You are a fool,” Svetlana said in Russian when he finished, lips half-pursed on the straw in her cocktail.
“That is what you have to say? I pour my heart out, and my friend is calling me an idiot. That is not helpful,” Ilya hissed.
“Yes it is. You just don’t like what I’ve said. What did you expect me to do? Soothe your wounded ego? I did not do that when we slept together, and I definitely am not doing it now. You are acting like a child. Talk to your husband.”
“He locked me out of our bedroom!”
She put the drink down, and adjusted her phone in her hand just to point a perfectly manicured accusing finger his way. “I don’t blame him!”
When Ilya said nothing, he couldn’t really, he felt pinned in on all sides, she sighed.
“It seems to me, like all Shane has been doing is trying to help you,” she said. “He’s trying to be courteous of your feelings, and do not deny you are having them. You are having big feelings about your retirement. You can’t keep denying they exist. You also can’t give a blowjob with a fucked up knee.”
Ilya swallowed. When he’d finally come back into the house after he’d stormed out, it had been hours later. Shane was already upstairs, but he had left a plate on the fridge with Ilya’s sandwiches in the fridge. Wrapped up on a plate and carefully covered in saranwrap. Even after what Ilya had said, Shane had done that. It made him feel sick.
“I have been… thinking a lot lately,” Ilya said. He knew she understood what he meant. While he was not as candid with Svetlana about his mental health as he was with Shane, she knew enough to be aware of his depressive spells.
She smiled, reassuring. “I am not surprised. Anyone would be in your situation, but you know bottling it up will do nothing,”
“Yes. I just. I don’t know, I feel like I make the same mistakes over and over. I want him to notice I am sad, and know exactly what my problem is, without me saying it,” Ilya said, which he knew made no sense but it was how he felt. “Sometimes, I don’t even know what the problem is — only that there is one.”
“Still, I think there are some problems you do know about. Retirement. The captainship,” Svetlana said.
“My mother,” he added softly.
“Oh, Ilya,” she said. “You’re a good man. She would have been so proud of you.”
His eyes burned, but he was tired of crying. Besides, if he started up again he wouldn’t stop and he was bone-tired. He’d sleep like shit in the guest room, but passing out here would do his body no favors.
“I hope so. She would be yelling at me for how I’ve been acting. Shane deserves better.”
“No, he deserves you. A version of you that communicates."
“But what if he’s angry forever?” Ilya whispered. He sounded like a child. Fucking felt like one too.
“He is angry now. He has a right to be, but it will not last, because he loves you.”
She paused, and looked over her shoulder.
“Oh. Alexei is back,” she said. She’d been with Alexei for just over a year now. He was a decent guy. Ilya and Shane met him last year after a game in Boston. He was a literature professor Svetlana met at a Bears fundraising event with the local colleges. Shane loved him. An Armenian, who spoke impeccable English, Russian, and French. Ilya approved of him well-enough. He was quiet, but kind, and he could hold his liquor.
“Fine, yes, go. Abandon me for your much less attractive boytoy.”
“The boytoy whisked me away to the Maldives on a whim. I planned nothing, I did not lift a finger. I imagine he already has my ring ready, sized to perfection.”
“You are ok with this?” It was the first Ilya had ever heard of it. Svetlana, married. God, life flew by so quickly.
“Yes,” she said, simply, as was her way, but she looked pleased. “I am excited.”
Ilya nodded his head. “Good. Tell me more about it later. I want to hear.”
Then because he was an asshole, “For your wedding I will wear the tightest shirt, the most see-through, so he remembers the competition.”
“You are, again, a fool.”
“Yes, but I am the hottest always.”
She laughed her bell-like laugh, winked at him, and flipped him off. Ilya still felt like shit, but it was less the over-bearing wave he’d nursed for weeks, and more so the feeling of a chastised child who knew they were wrong, and begrudgingly set themselves to fix it.
~
In her old age, Anya had lost none of her enthusiasm but certainly some of her speed.
Ilya dragged himself out of bed (he had in fact, slept like shit, maybe 2 hours total) and slowly led Anya down the path to the lake. He ignored the tree he cried under yesterday, and plopped himself in one of the fancy lawn chairs by the fire pit. He trusted Anya not to run off, she was always a good girl, eager to listen and learn. She chased dragonflies up and down the shoreline, barking when they disappeared into the reeds beyond her reach. When she was younger she’d snap one up, and come trotting back to Ilya with a glittery wing folded over her lip and dropping it at his feet like a prize. Now, she went back and forth for maybe ten minutes before giving up. She returned, panting, and Ilya tugged her into his lap cooing Russian endearments and thumbing the edges of her soft floppy ears.
Back at the house, all was quiet.
It was long past dawn when Shane usually would be up, but Ilya hadn’t seen him. Ilya hadn’t tried for the door, he didn’t want to know if it was unlocked. If Shane wasn’t there, if he slept perfectly fine, and maybe when Ilya went to go check in the garage the car would be gone and that would be it.
What would he do? Find a new house, and a new neighborhood, some part of Ottawa that didn’t hurt his heart to live in. Going back to Russia wasn’t an option, not that he would want to anyway. He was a Canadian citizen, even without his marriage in the picture. Technically he could go anywhere in the country he wanted, but why would he? His life was here now. He’d walk around Ottawa, haunting its riverwalk, the grand museums, the Tire Centre and Shane’s face plastered all over its many walls in a great final taunting. It was the single most impossible city to live in when trying to forget Shane Hollander, not that he could, or wanted to, but God it would hurt, it already did . Ilya’s head was in his hands, and his breaths came in short bursts. Anya tapped her cold nose against his knee, whining.
“Ilya?”
Shane was by the shoreline in his workout clothes. He wore a tight blue t-shirt and one of those itty-bitty shorts that showed off his ass. He looked so delectable it was ridiculous, with his face flushed, his hair dark with sweat and fanned over his forehead, his pink lips parted as he panted. He’d clearly been on a run.
Oh, how the universe loved torturing Ilya.
Ilya started laughing. Great, belly-busting laughter. He curled over at the waist, barely able to get a breath in.
Shane’s face was a mish-mash of baffled concern and flinty anger. He crept toward Ilya like he was a spooked horse, until he hovered by the side of the armchair.
He put a hand on Ilya’s shoulder. “Ilya, what the fuck is going on?”
“Shane,” he croaked. Ilya’s skin tingled where Shane held him. Ilya moved his own hand up, until he could lace their fingers together. He squeezed, and tried to summon a beginning to all he had to say — but it wasn’t there. He wasn’t strong enough yet. He squeezed, and Shane squeezed back, and Ilya choked on a sob, then broke.
Shane was in his lap in a split second. Settling himself as close to Ilya as he could, wrapping his arms around Ilya’s neck and pulling him in, until Ilya’s forehead fell flush with his chest.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Shane murmured over and over as he cried. His sobbing was ugly and undignified, he was smearing snot onto Shane’s shirt, and a small part of Ilya cared about the messiness but he was surprised that a larger part of him didn’t. He was just relieved he didn’t feel like fighting, and that Shane felt like being forgiving. Holding him close, and feathering kisses against his hair.
~
They went back to bed. They’d both slept like shit last night.
When they woke it was dinnertime, but Ilya didn’t want to get up, and Shane didn’t either. He was plastered against Ilya’s back, nose at the nape of his neck, breathing deep and even. The only sign of his wakefulness was the back and forth scratch of his fingernails, gentle on Ilya’s arm.
When Ilya turned over to face him, Shane’s hands crept up to his cheeks. He held Ilya like that, forehead to forehead, studying him before leaning in for a kiss. It was soft, and it didn’t last long, more of a reassurance than anything.
After, against Ilya’s mouth he breathed, “You’ve scared me these past few days.”
“Days?” Ilya asked doubtfully. They’d get nowhere without being completely honest with each other.
Shane sighed. “Months. Since you blew your knee. I know you’re in your head about it, but it’s not just the knee is it?”
Ilya shifted to lay flat on his back. Shane followed him, curling up on his chest with his head propped up on his hands. He had his serious face on, and this was not going to be a fun conversation but at least they were having it. And Shane wanted to touch him, and love on him. That gave Ilya courage.
“I’m sorry,” Ilya said. “I have been mean, and I have not told you why. I don’t even know why sometimes. It is the knee. It is the “C”. It is everything. My body hurts all over, all the time, and it is not fixable. I am old. I have been for a while, but I could play hockey. Now…”
His voice cracked, and he stopped. He was tired of crying, but it threatened again. He pressed his fist hard over his eyes. He needed to get through this first before breaking down. Shane hadn’t moved, but he was making soft shushing sounds, like one would for a baby. It was ridiculous to be doing for a grown-ass man, but Ilya found it soothing.
“What good am I now?” Ilya continued once he composed himself. “I can barely walk. How could I skate? I don’t want to, I’m done, you know this. But I have played hockey for so long I don’t know how to do anything else. I can’t burden you with this bullshit.”
“Please burden me with it,” Shane insisted. “I’m your husband. We’re supposed to go through these things together. I know you can’t tell me everything. Some things you tell Galina, or whoever, but I want to help.”
Shane shuffled backwards until he was sitting back on his heels. There were crease lines on his shoulders from the sheets. He looked so soft and vulnerable, Ilya’s heart pounded hard enough to burst. He loved him so much. There weren’t enough words in Russian or English or stupid Québécois French to say it properly.
“Do you hate me?” Shane asked. He could have hit Ilya and it would hurt less.
“Sweetheart—”
“No, don’t do that. I won’t get through this if you start with the petnames. Let me talk.” He took a deep breath. “Summer is my favorite time of year. I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you this. When I was young it was autumn, because—”
“Because hockey,” Ilya interrupted. He couldn’t help it. What else would be the reason? Shane sucked his teeth at him but he was smiling, even if it was teary.
“Yes. Hockey. Shut up. But it’s not my favorite anymore. Summer is, because I get to spend all my time with you. When we first got together, it was the only time we could see one another. I know it was rough, especially for you all alone in Ottawa, but I couldn’t imagine being happier. I didn’t even consider it, I thought that was all I could have. But I could have it, and we do. We’ve been on the Centaurs together for years. It’s our team, I’ve never known it differently and I’m so scared to lead it without you.”
This was not what Ilya expected him to say. The last thing really. He’d gritted himself for some more therapist-like “I hear you and understand you” talk. It was a shock to realize Shane was hurting too. God, Ilya was a shitty husband.
He took Shane’s hands, and Shane sighed, a little breath of relief. The same noise he made after sex in the afterflow, when he was loose and content to be cuddled.
“For years now, I got to play hockey with you, and love you, openly,” Shane said. “That’s fucking crazy. You’re not playing anymore but I still want to include you. It just… seems like you don’t care.”
“Of course I care. Was my team.”
Deadpan, Shane said, “You haven’t been acting like it.”
“Well, sometimes I can be stupid. Stubborn.”
“You should tattoo “stubborn” on your forehead,” Shane mumbled.
“Yes, I should. Would be easy advertisement.” Shane was less tense, so he pulled him in for a hug. Ilya held him close and murmured Russian endearments in his ear. Shane wasn’t quite crying, but there were fine little tremors racking his body. Overwhelmed. Relieved.
“I could never hate you. Even when I was young and I thought I did, I didn’t. You are my whole world. More than hockey. Hockey would not put up with my moodiness. My dumb brain."
“Stop it. Don’t call your brain dumb,” Shane scolded, voice half muffled where his face was smushed into Ilya’s neck. “I love your brain, and I love you. I’m still so stupidly in love with you. God, we did nothing but fight and fuck for ten years. We could still be fighting, and I’d follow where you go.”
“Glad that is not the case,” Ilya said, tipping Shane up with a finger under his chin for a kiss. Shane opened so easily for him, sighing as Ilya licked at the corner of his mouth, sloppy and indulgent with a slow undercurrent of heat but no desperate need to flare it up.
“Include me in team stuff,” Ilya whispered. They were too close to talk properly, but neither of them wanted to pull away. “Tell me about all the stupid captain things. All the management bullshit. I will come to the games with my crippled leg. I will be the best WAG. I will adjust. I just need time.”
“For you,” Ilya said into a kiss, “I will do anything.”
~
A few days later, Yuna and David arrived at the cottage with an obscene amount of meat to grill for four people, and three bags of crab-seasoned potato chips. It was the imported kind from a Russian specialty store on the other side of Ottawa, run by the old married couple who liked to sneak Ilya candy across the counter when he visited. Shane must have told his parents where it was, as he was the only one who knew Ilya liked to go.
“Shane said you are having a rough time,” Yuna said to him one evening. They were out on the patio, and Shane and David had been quietly bickering for an hour over control of the grill. Yuna, because she was a smart and wonderful lady, left her boys to their squabbling and joined Ilya and Anya on the lounge chairs with a couple of drinks.
“My knee is bad. Long recovery. I am sad also about leaving the Centaurs. More than I expected,” he admitted.
“You have people in your corner,” she told him, a comforting hand on his knee. With her other hand she snuck Anya little pieces of crab-chips. She was just as bad as Ilya.
“You’re a Centaur for life. You can’t escape us!” she continued, laughing. “Shane would never exclude you from the team, even with your retirement, if you want to be included.”
He nodded. “I do.” His knee felt a bit better today, he was not walking with a limp. Baby steps. Literally.
It was a good day. Pleasantly warm and not too humid. They ate their fill of ribs, steak, kabobs, and when the sun went down, squatted by the firepit with marshmallows for s'mores. Shane spent the entire time curled under Ilya’s arm, chatting, laughing, and a few times tilted his head up with a begging eye for kisses. He was shameless, and Ilya was a proud sucker. They went to bed with full bellies, happier than they’d been in weeks.
Then, Ilya dreamt of his mother.
He couldn’t remember much, only a hazy recollection of childhood sensations. Her bright happy face. Her sweet laughter. Her soft hands on his face, tugging him close. He woke up with tear-tracks on his cheeks and a pit in his stomach. Shaking, he untangled himself from a sleeping Shane, who did nothing but sigh when displaced and wiggle his head onto Ilya’s pillow.
Ilya resigned himself to breathing through it. The grief, the sickly fluttering in his chest. He went down to the dock by the lake and stuck his bare feet over the edge, focusing on the cold water, the occasional scream of a loon. That, at least, made him smile through his sniffling.
Shane found him not long after.
He didn’t say anything, just cuddled under Ilya’s outstretched arm and sighed. He was still sleep-warm and smelled faintly of his fancy seaweed shampoo. No matter the day, Shane smelled best in the mornings. Clean from last night’s shower, but something still purely him. Ilya would pay an obscene amount of money to whoever could manage to bottle that scent, if he wasn’t so possessive of having it to himself.
“Hm. No morning sex?” Shane said after a while, nuzzling at Ilya’s shoulder.
“Morning is not over,” Ilya purred and kissed him firm and sure. He went to deepen it, but Shane stopped him.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, his eyes bright and determined. So brave, his Shane.
He turned back to the lake. “My mother.” It was never easy to admit, and this was shameful too. His mother had been gone for so long, people expected him to be over it, he expected himself to be over it. That wasn’t how grief worked. It came in waves, often sneaking in under the wake of something else, and it clung to him like a ghost — not evil, not particularly good either, but overbearing.
“Have you been thinking about her a lot?” Shane asked.
Ilya heard what was unsaid. This has been bothering you too.
“I wonder what she would think of me. If she would be proud. I think so, but I will never know for sure.”
“That’s hard to deal with. So hard.”
“It is,” Ilya croaked. He squeezed his eyes shut, and a few tears slipped out. He hid his face against Shane’s shoulder. He felt raw, like an exposed wire. Every time he thought he had his shit together, another part of him snapped.
Ilya breathed through a sob. “I want her here. She would help me and she would help you. It would make everything better.”
Shane nodded, the smooth skin of his jaw brushing over Ilya’s forehead. “I want her here for you so badly. I want to meet her. I want to eat her food, and look at your baby pictures together. All the stereotypical mother-in-law stuff.”
But he couldn’t. She was dead, and had been for twice the time that Ilya even knew her. He was older than she ever would be. Old and gray and crying on a dock in Canada with a busted knee and a handsome husband. This was a life he would not ever have imagined for himself. A better life than she had, but God, sometimes it was still so hard to get up in the morning.
But it was worth the effort of trying.
Ilya sniffled and pulled away. Shane sat criss-cross, his posture perfectly straight. It was all that yoga and core-work. He was in phenomenal shape. Shane would play hockey for another five years at least. That was another conversation to have, but not now.
“I got boogers on your shirt,” Ilya observed.
Shane plucked at his neckline, where a dark spot lingered. Then wryly he said, “You’ve left worse fluids on me.”
“You love it.”
Shane kissed him, “I do. Every day of my life, I do.”
~
Ilya untied his shoes, and retied them for the third time. A Shane-type habit.
Shane was already ready, and had been for the past half-hour. Around them the locker room hummed with the energy of a new season. Even in his skates, and full gear, Ilya was still taller than Shane, but he looked good, hale and healthy. The “C” was stitched on the left side of his jersey in Ottawa red.
“Are you ready?” Shane asked. Ahead of them the team was lined up in the tunnel, and beyond the arena shook under the roar of the crowd. The Stanley Cup champs were returning to the ice, and their long-time captain, now retired, was to be awarded a ceremony befitting his great deeds. Ilya had asked that there be pyrotechnics involved.
“Ready Freddie!” Ilya said grinning, and smacked an obnoxious kiss on Shane’s visor.
“You must have learned that from one of Hayden’s kids.”
“Of course I did. I am the best babysitter. It is good practice for me.”
Shane shook his head, laughing and kissed him. A rare treat for Ilya in the locker room. Even now, when they’ve been together for so long Shane was still Shane. Shy and sweet and stubborn and competitive all at once.
“You are going to do great,” Ilya told him.
“The best captain ever.”
Ilya swatted him on the ass. “Let’s not get crazy.”
He watched Shane go, the last in their lineup as Ilya had once been. Ilya waited patiently under the shadow of the tunnel in his best suit, until they called his name.