Chapter Text
Time seems to stop when Ilya answers the phone.
“Ilya, Ilya, you fucking asshole, did you hear me? Dad is dead. You need to come home.”
He says something back to Alexi. Enough to get him yelling at Ilya again, so he hangs up and walks out of the locker room to find his coach. His skates and uniform were still on. They organise for Ilya to leave, tell him to take a few weeks, and look awkward when Ilya says he’ll only need one.
Even though Ilya knew it was coming, he still feels numb. He answers Marley’s questions with something that must be enough when he drives Ilya home. Svetlana is there waiting for him, and he falls into her arms. Falls into her constant comfort as he lies on the sofa with his head on her lap, her fingers gentle in his curls as she makes arrangements for them to fly home. He doesn’t cry. Doesn’t have the energy to. All he feels is numb.
//
Russia is Russia. His brother is still awful. Alexi’s wife is just as dramatic in ways Ilya had mostly forgotten about, seeing as he interacted with her only when making time for his niece. All they want is money under the guise of giving their “beloved Papa” a proper send off - and as always, Ilya is the one who pays. So it's a nice crypt, full honours, and a handshake or three from ministers Ilya doesn’t know. It’s the current head of the police taking him aside, asking Ilya to sign a fucking jersey because his son watches Ilya play.
It leaves Ilya feeling gross, and he comes close to starting something with his brother, but Svetlana takes him aside and calms him down. The vodka is at least good, and he drinks more than he should, but it keeps his mouth busy, and he doesn’t have to answer anyone. By the end of the wake, he’s sending Svetlana home with her father so that he can breathe on his own. He hates it here. He’s never really loved coming back home - no, not home. It hasn’t been that in the last few years. Not when his heart was always back an ocean away. In his stupid perfect Cottage in the summer. Doing stupid yoga on a stupid deck, looking stupidly sexy, and bending into positions that Ilya constantly dreamed of fucking him in.
He looks at his phone and thinks about texting Shane back. Thinks about calling. Hearing his voice. He misses Shane with a visceral ache under his ribs, and he knows that he’s too drunk to keep things back. After he signs this apartment over to a trust he’s set up for his niece, he’ll be free of this place. Free of a family that has never wanted him. Free of a country that only loved him when he won. Free of what he can’t have if he still has ties here.
Yet ultimately, he feels so desperately, desperately alone. He pulls the last of the vodka from the freezer and doesn’t bother with a glass. If this is the last time he’ll have access to really good vodka, he’ll not sully it with ice. He drinks, and he lies on the thick rug he picked out three or four years ago that still smells like it did when he rolled it out of the plastic. That’s how often he has spent here. Even the carpet doesn’t hold a part of him. There’s really nothing here for him anymore.
Ilya lies on his back, soaking up the quiet of the night, and blinks and blinks against the muted light coming from high above. He drinks some more and then opens his clock app on his phone, checks the time between Moscow and Buffalo. Shane will be on the ice. He flicks through to that one folder that he keeps password-protected. The one he’s made again and again over the years just to keep a set of photos that mean more to Ilya than anything else. He stares at Shane in his tuxedo. Flicks through and can see when his touch affected Shane’s eyes. His stupid freckles darkened with the ruby flush on his cheeks as Ilya’s hand lingered on Shane’s ass.
And what an ass.
Ilya sighs and thinks about texting. He could write something. Anything. But anything might come out more honest than he wants. Than he’s prepared for.
“All I want is you,” he whispers, zooming in and tracing the freckles on Shane’s face. “It’s always you.”
The picture blurs, and Ilya blinks, hot tears spilling over his cheeks.
“I’m so in love with you, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
//
“What is that fucking sound?” Ilya curses, opening one eye and then the other and closing them twice as fast.
Fuck. As comfortable as this rug was to lie on the night before, it is not built for a full-grown man who beats the shit out of his body for too many months a year to fall asleep on. The noise continues and seems, if anything, to get louder.
Cука блять! Ilya sits up and eyes the window. There was a family who lived in the house opposite that often took their screaming baby out for walks when Ilya supposed it wouldn’t shut up inside. Maybe he left one window open, but when he stands up to look, he remembers. He’s not in Boston. He doesn’t know any of his neighbours here. He definitely has no idea who lives around him, or if they have children.
It doesn’t explain the sound, though. He stumbles forward to where he thinks the noise is coming from, kicking his toe on the empty vodka bottle he’d left on the floor. He’s cursing as he walks and isn’t paying all that much attention when he opens the front door. There’s no one in the hall, but the cries are definitely louder, and when Ilya looks down, it’s to see a basket and a little bundle in a yellow blanket. Their round face is red and wet, and Ilya wastes approximately three seconds before his brain catches up to his eyes and he picks the baby up.
He rocks them in the crook of his arm and holds them close, making the shushing sound he’s seen some of the wives on the team do to their babies. The crying starts to settle, and that’s when Ilya notices them.
Freckles.
From cheek to cheek, right over the bridge of a very tiny button nose.
He knows these freckles. Knows them better than he knows the backs of his own hands, probably.
Which, really, combined with the basket and the blanket and the fact that this happens at least once a season to someone in the league, Ilya’s heart races, then settles as he holds the baby close.
“Well, hello there, my little one.”
SHANE
ONE WEEK EARLIER
“Did you hear about Rozanov?”
Shane stops untying his skate and looks at the bench across from him. Comeau and J.J. are gazing down at Gilbert’s phone, speaking in French.
”What about Rozanov?” Shane asks quickly, in their native tongue.
Comeau keeps scrolling while he answers. “He didn’t fly to Nashville with the rest of the team today.”
“He flew separately?” Shane asks, sitting up a little straighter, something like worry tightening in his gut.
” No,” Comeau answers in English, looking up at Shane like he’s a little bit dumb, so he's had to switch languages. “He’s just not in Nashville.”
“He didn’t get hurt last night, did he?” Hayden pipes up as he enters the room, face mostly hidden as he towels off his hair.
” No.” Shane answers, possibly too quickly.
J.J looks up, a surprised quirk of his brow, his dark eyes a little too focused on Shane.
Shane feels his face heat as he quickly adds, ”Not that I noticed.” He drops his head back down and focuses on tugging at the strings of his skate to loosen it up.
”Sick, maybe?” Hayden says, sitting in his usual spot beside Shane, their shoulders brushing.
“I don’t think so.” Shane finds himself answering without thought again, at least keeping his attention on his feet and not looking like he’s as invested as his quick replies make it sound
”Well,” J.J. starts, swiping Comeau’s phone, knocking it on Shane’s knuckles to hand it to him. “ESPN is just saying he didn’t go to Nashville. I’m sure we’ll find out.”
Shane nods, swiping up to the top of the page and clicking refresh, hoping for more answers, that feeling in his gut tightening when there’s nothing else.
//
When the locker room starts to clear, and Shane’s had a chance to shower and has his towel wrapped tight around his waist, he picks up his phone.
S - Are you okay?
He hovers facing his cubby and waits for an answer. Seconds feel like hours, and he jumps when the sound of a door shutting nearby echoes through the room.
It’s okay, he tells himself. Ilya is probably busy. He’s sick, like Hayden thought. Throwing up in the bathroom or something gross.
He puts his phone down after logging in and out of his messages app once more and throws his shirt on. He’ll call if Ilya hasn’t answered by the time he gets home.
//
It’s been an hour, and his phone still hasn’t buzzed with a text, call, or anything from Ilya.
Shane’s been pacing his kitchen, looking at the thing on the dining table for the last - at least - thirty minutes of that hour, and he’s probably worn a path in the floor.
He pulls a soda out of the refrigerator and stares back at his unlit phone while he pops the cap. Maybe the battery is dead? Maybe Ilya’s phone isn’t getting texts? Maybe he… maybe he could call? He puts the drink down on the bench, and his feet have taken him to where his phone lies dormant before he can overthink things. Shane’s picking it up and finding Ilya’s contact before he can talk himself out of it, holding the phone to his ear as it calls.
”Hi, this is Ilya. I will never listen to your voicemail.” Shane finds himself starting to grin, but hits end before it gets too far. Leaving a message isn’t… who knows who could listen on the other side.
It’s okay. Ilya will get back to him.
He always does.
//
A week passes, and Shane’s sitting up on his bed at their hotel in Buffalo, checking his phone.
“Can you call me?”
Hayden snorts. “From here? Yeah, bud.”
”No, I mean on my phone. I think there’s something wrong with it,” Shane hears Hayden sigh, and the room lights up a bit more as he taps the screen on.
”You answered in the group chat just before, you know,” Hayden grumps, but his face and Shane’s with the cup the first time they won come up on Shane’s phone.
“Was it just on silent, you dummy?”
Shane ends the call, that pit in his stomach deepening as he forces a laugh, “Yeah, it was.”
//
“Whatever happened with Rozanov must be serious, hey?” J.J. says as he drops down beside Shane on the ice, stretching one leg behind him as he looks out at Toronto’s barn.
Shane stills for a beat and then forces himself to change legs before answering. “Why, what’s ESPN say now?”
“Ostie qu’il m’énerve!” J.J. spits as that fucker Dallas Kent skates past them a little too close to their shared blue line. Shane hears Kent laugh and say something gross in return.
“J.J.,” Shane admonishes but only slightly, “Rozanov?”
”LTIR,” J.J. answers, still focused on Kent. “Doesn’t say how long or what for, though.”
Shane’s head spins. LTIR means something serious. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t heard from Ilya? Maybe whatever it is means he can’t use his phone? Maybe he’s concussed, or maybe he broke both his arms falling out of bed, or something that would make more sense than that for an adult. Definitely one more balanced and coordinated than a six-foot-three hockey player whose job it is to fly around on ice with blades on his feet…. There has to be an explanation. Something more. Not after all these years. Not after what they sort of said to each other in Florida. Not after the phone calls and the first names.
”Anyway, one less asshole in Boston to worry about, cher!”
“Right,” Shane shakes himself and answers, swallowing the lump in his throat. “For sure.”
//
S - I hope you’re ok.
*delete delete delete*
S - I heard about the LTIR and
*delete delete delete*
S - Why won’t you pick up your fucking
*delete delete delete*
//
A clean hit by Marleau in the last game before Playoffs sends Shane home with a broken collarbone, a concussion, and the Metro’s out in four before the second round.
He leaves the hospital with his Dad driving and his mom in the back seat, her hand a warm presence on his good shoulder in front of her. It’s not like he wants to be alone now, and he would have gone up to the cottage whenever the season was over. It just isn’t what he thought he’d be doing right now. His mom is now a concussion expert. She spent far too much time thoroughly researching everything online, then questioning the team’s doctors and the few she sought out herself just to make sure. So it’s no screens, a dark room, and no contact with anyone unless they call.
Hayden does.
JJ calls from somewhere loud, like a club, and Shane ends the call quickly with the migraine the noise brings on. It takes time, and it's kind of depressing, but everyone gets their bell rung at least once. It’s part of the game, Shane knows. He’s finally cleared for screens in time to watch the Raiders get knocked out of their playoff run, but there’s no 81 on the ice, so it doesn’t really matter much at all.
He’s sat on the sofa with his mom watching fucking San Francisco in the final moments of their run at the Cup. Shane has a week or so until he can take the sling off, and it’s annoying to keep wearing, but his mom is adamant that it stays on. Even if Shane is literally just sitting still.
”Are you sure you won’t stay here for a few days longer?” Shane’s mom asks, with that same concerned look she’s had since he woke up in the hospital.
”Yes, Mom,” Shane whines. He’s been with them for weeks now and he desperately needs some time alone.
He paws at the ache in the muscle underneath his now mostly healed collarbone and concentrates on the screen. He does not look at his phone.
He’s looked at his screen as much as he can lately and it still doesn’t change that Ilya hasn’t called. Texted.
Not a single get well soon.
”I might go lie down in my room for a bit.” Shane finds himself saying, his head not aching but maybe his heart just a little.
” There's barely half a period left?” His mom says pointing to the screen where they line up for a faceoff.
The thing is? Shane doesn’t actually care about the final. Who’ll take home the Cup. He’s never liked playing either team and even worse, he’s especially never liked it when Ryan Price was on the ice. Dude was a goon.
The thought has barely processed when something happens on screen and he can see the defenceman dropping gloves with Patrick Le Fleur on the ice. It’s over fairly quickly, Le Fleur going down with one good hit from Price.
He doesn’t get up.
Medics are there within seconds and Shane’s mom makes some pained sound, hand covering her mouth before leaving the room. Shane looks back at the screen and they’re bringing a stretcher out. It’s one of the worst parts of the game. The moment when one tiny move can go completely wrong.
”You hate to see it, even more so in the Playoffs. The announcer is speaking quietly, all the energetic frisson from earlier is absent from his tone.
Le Fleur still isn’t moving and Price looks white as a sheet where he’s standing off to the side. The captain from Frisco is talking to a referee and everyone else is sort of hovering near the benches. Stick taps have never been so loud in Shane’s ears as they start to move Le Fleur off the ice.
A woman wearing a jean jacket covered in sparkles is at the side doors when they open. She’s got her hand in La Fleurs and the other covering her mouth. The camera captures where tears are rolling down her cheeks.< /p>
”He’s lucky she’s in the building,” Shane’s dad says with a tremor in his voice. “I can tell you, son. It’s completely different, an out-of-body experience, really, when you’re watching something like that happen to someone you love and get a phone call to-“ his Dad pauses and lets out a shuddery breath.
”I’m just going to check on your mom.”
Shane’s dad leaves the room while the announcers replay the one punch that La Fleur threw, losing his balance and hitting the ice hard before Price had even got a proper swing in. It looks like nothing, but even Shane knows a nothing can be a something from the wrong angle. Can be anything to do with the times before that all add up. La Fleur isn’t that old but he has always liked to fight and that can’t be good for anyone’s body, especially getting your bell rung so many times.
La Fleur is lucky his wife is there. Someone who loves him by his side. When Shane went down he only had one person on his mind. One person he wanted to know he was alright.
There’s only one person Shane would want someone to call.
He finds his fingers hovering over “Lily’s” name, but ….
Realising that he hasn’t heard from Ilya even now, when something like this is happening. Or before when it was Shane and he could have been really injured and no one would have been able to tell Ilya anything. He’d have to learn it all online and through the ridiculous gossiping that all hockey players liked to do. Marleau had come to see Shane at the hospital and apologise so maybe he asked him? Yet surely, he’d be aware of concussion protocol. He could have left something in a text even not this… nothing. And after all this silence between them? Maybe they never had anything at all.
Shane holds the phone to his chest and breathes deep in and out just for a second. He walks back into the kitchen, where his parents still are. If he did have a person in his life that wasn’t able to be out in the open like La Fleurs wife, he’d want them to be able to call someone. To find real details. He’d want his family to know them. This at least, is something he can do for a potential not-Russian-speaking asshole. Maybe. This probably isn’t the best time, and it isn’t as if he has anyone to take this next step for other than himself, but….
”Mom, Dad? I have to tell you something….”
//
Shane tells Hayden next. Takes him out for lunch and orders himself a beer to go with his steamed salmon, quinoa, and broccolini on the side. Hayden looks at him funny, but Shane needs something, even if he thinks Hayden will be fine with what he has to say. At least he hopes.
Hayden’s reaction is as Hayden as it can be.
”Thanks for telling me, bud, can you pass the salt?”
So Shane says it again. “You know what gay means, right? I like men. I’ve probably always liked men and I want to -“
Hayden waves his hands in Shane's face with a loud, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I get it, okay, I’ll wrap my stick in Pride tape, and I’ll go to the parade with you. I just don’t need to know where any of the dicks go.”
Shane laughs, “Dicks? How many guys do you think-“
”Well, I don’t know! I’ve only ever watched straight porn before!”
The rest of the meal is normal, only the hug Hayden gives Shane before he gets into his car is longer and has more back pats than Hayden usually gives him.
“I’m proud of you, man. You deserve to live your life in the way you want to. You deserve to be happy, and if that’s with a man, then that’s with a man.”
Shane hugs him back harder, his words a little caught in his throat.
“Just as long as he doesn’t play for Boston, though,” Hayden adds, slapping Shane one last time before he lets Shane go.
Well…. Not anymore.
The team is another thing altogether. Some of the guys are fine with it. Others, he thinks, won’t shower with him after warm-ups anymore. J.J. offers to take him out clubbing and be his wingman. Even though they're super quiet and weird as only they can be, goalie Benoit says he’ll come along.
It’s fine. No one is outright awful, and as Captain, Shane will just rely on his hockey talk for him. Which it will, when the season officially starts. Shane doesn’t put the games against Boston into his calendar this year. He wants that third cup and nothing, not even being ignored or whatever it is Rozanov has chosen to do will make a difference.
Shane’s done with it, once and for all.
//
“So you end it with Boston Lily?”
“What?” Shane answers, looking up from where he’s lying on his bed, reading a book on the art of war.
“You and Boston Lily. This is our second game down here, and you haven’t left me alone once. Kinda miss having the room on my own.” Hayden says, throwing himself on the bed next to Shane’s, wiggling his brows.
Shane shakes his head and blinks a bit more than he feels is normal. “Boston Lily wasn’t-“
Hayden groans, rolling onto his back and covering his eyes with his forearm. “Dude, you definitely were going out and getting laid with ‘Lily’ anytime we were here in Boston. You did say you’ve always kind of liked guys, and I figure Boston Lily was one because you never introduced her to us, so, like… what happened?”
Shane puts his book down and takes off his glasses, rubbing at his eyes.
Fucking Lily. Ilya. Fuck them both.
”It ended. I don’t know. It just isn’t anything anymore.” Which is as close as Shane can put into words. Even now, his chest tightens, his eyes well up.
Hayden is silent, and the air conditioning hums into life before he speaks again.
”You wanna -“
”No. Nope.” Shane answers quickly, wiping his eyes and putting his glasses back on.
“Good. Okay. Good talk.”
//
The third time they play in Boston, they come in early from New York. Hayden’s on the phone with Jackie because one of the twins has brought home head lice, and she’s on her own, delousing the whole house. It’s not anything Shane wants to listen to, so he finds himself heading out.
He wanders and ends up getting stared at in a way he knows means someone has clocked him, so he hails a cab. He doesn’t mean to say it, but when the driver asks where to, he’s giving them an address on Beacon and....
Now he’s standing here in front of Ilya Rozanov’s door, raising his hand to knock. There were no cars out front, and the street was empty when the cab pulled up. It was all too easy, so maybe that’s why he’s not hesitating when he knocks.
The door opens in a few seconds, and all the words Shane has thought about saying to Ilya when he eventually sees him die in his throat.
”You’re not Svetlana,” Ilya says over the sounds of a very unhappy baby propped on his hip.
Shane stares, and Ilya keeps bouncing this baby, this little loud thing tucked in tight to his body with one arm. His eyes roll, and he turns, saying something in Russian that sounds terse - but what would Shane know?
He hasn’t heard Ilya’s voice in months.
”Do I take off my-“
”Yes, yes, this time. Svetlana has thing about germs,” Ilya calls back from where he’s walking deeper into the house, the light coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows making Ilya’s curls glow. They’re longer than Shane has seen them in a while, but before he can focus too much on that, he remembers to take his shoes off and tuck them in the pile of sneakers and slides by the door.
He follows the sound of the baby and Ilya’s shushing, interspersed with more Russian, and he finds them in the kitchen. Ilya’s trying to put the lid on a bottle one-handed, and as the bottle tips and milk spills, he curses loudly in a word Shane definitely recognises.
“Here, make yourself useful,” Ilya says, handing the baby to Shane without meeting his eyes.
Shane has no choice but to take the baby. He remembers to tuck one hand under its bottom and the other pressed gently at its back as he immediately starts rocking side to side, jiggling the baby as he goes. It’s like muscle memory from all of Hayden’s kids he’s done this to. Most of the time, just like now, without a choice.
He watches Ilya as he finds a cloth and cleans up the spill. He’s quick and efficient at opening a plastic container with other bottles inside, pulling one out. The baby's cries start to soften as Shane tucks their head under his chin and sways, jiggles, and shushes just like he heard Ilya do. Ilya is shirtless, Shane realises, and isn’t that something to only just notice when you’ve been standing inside someone’s house holding their baby for minutes now.
He looks good, a little more golden than he would normally be this far into a season. Still looking strong and lean as he stretches up into a cabinet above the stove for what looks like formula in a tin. Shane’s body reacts like it always does to a half-naked Ilya, a hum that he can almost hear, but the baby has a hand in his hair and tugs, ending whatever that thought was. He looks down, turning his head, and their little eyes are open. Snot bubbles under a button nose that has tiny freckles already showing. Or maybe they’re milk dots. God…. The things Shane now knows thanks to fucking Hayden.
The baby isn’t crying all that much as they stare back at Shane, and he finds himself grinning as a hiccup shakes through their tiny form.
“Here,” Ilya’s voice breaks through whatever moment Shane was sharing with this baby as he shakes the bottle in front of Shane’s face. “She likes to be fed in the rocking chair, two doors down the hall. Spit cloths are there, too.”
Shane takes the bottle and looks up, a frown already forming as he watches Ilya walk off, stripping his joggers as he goes.
”What, I mean, Ilya-“
”I’m showering. Is your turn now.” is all he gets from Ilya before he disappears out of sight.
The baby is making that sound like she’s going to cry again, so Shane wanders after him down the hall. He counts the doors, and it's obvious when he gets to the room Ilya has directed him to. It’s like a baby store threw up over every surface. Teddy bears and soft toys, a large white cot to one side of the room, and a bookshelf overflowing. The walls are a deep green, broken up by framed prints of bears and forest animals. It’s not easy to see, even with the warm light of the three different lamps in the room. Even the windows have curtains with animals printed on them, but not in an over-the-top way. They’re soft and muted, and as Shane steps inside, headed to the rocking chair, he notes they’re interspersed with hockey sticks, which is more perfect, Shane supposes. He shushes the baby - her - more as he settles on the chair, it's padded and comfortable, and he tucks her into his left arm, nudging her little arm down as he props the nipple near her mouth.
Shane laughs as she almost throws herself forward onto the thing, like a shark.
“You were just hungry, weren’t you?” Shane says softly as her dark brown almond-shaped eyes gaze up at him through lashes so long, and she nearly tugs the bottle out of his hand with how she’s sucking the milk down.
Shane finds himself chuckling again as she takes a moment to breathe around the nipple in her mouth. Her little nose is still snotty, which makes her sound like a pig with each snort. Shane swears she frowns at him. It's a look that makes him think of Ilya all the times he’s told Shane off for saying something stupid like “the sheets are all messed up,” but it does make him bite his lip on his next laugh.
He sets the rocker in motion as he watches her resume eating and hums a song he always seems to find himself singing whenever he’s holding Hayden’s kids. Something that his mom always sang in words, Shane doesn’t speak as fluently as he should.
He gets through two rounds of it before she’s finished, her eyes blinking shut more often than they’re open. He sits her up on his lap as she quietly grumbles, grabs a cloth he assumes is clean from the pile on the little table beside him. Shane holds her face under the hand he’s draped the cloth on and rubs in steady circles on her back. He congratulates her on a job well done when his back pats and rubs get two big burps. Her eyes are mostly closed now, and he can still hear the shower running, so Shane leans back. Might as well help out some more and get her to sleep.
Which means he also gets himself to sleep if the shock he has waking up to a pair of hands lifting the baby from his arms is anything to go by.
He recognises her face. He’s seen her in photographs of Ilya online. Some that line these walls.
Svetlana.
”So,” she says, holding the baby to her chest, talking more to her sleeping form than to Shane. “He told you afterall.”