Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Why did we let Harris rope us into this?” Shane mutters as he fidgets with the unbuttoned collar of the shirt underneath his half zipped jacket, and then fiddles with the first button for a bit. “Should I button it up?”

“If you want to look like a boring accountant, sure,” Ilya replies, taking Shanes’s hands into his own and kissing his knuckles. He looks up at his husband through his lashes, playing coy, and is satisfied to see a dusting of pink on his cheeks as he looks down at their hands. Ilya keeps his lips pressed to Shane’s hand as he says, “We let Harris do this because he is smart and amazing at his job, and because Yuna says it is ‘good for our public image’, makes us seem ‘approachable’.”

There’d been more than ‘seeming approachable’, of course: with the specialized media in a frenzy over Shane leaving the team that drafted him and that he’d captained to not only back-to-back Stanley Cup wins but to a third one just the season prior following his being outed as both gay and being involved in a long-term relationship with Montreal’s public enemy n°1 on top of that, they had needed to do something to control the narrative, to sway the public in their favor.

The broader plan was fairly simple: give people their side of the story. Let them get a glimpse of the truth, so they wouldn’t buy into the scandalous bullshit pushed by fucking Man In the Crease or Deadspin or Spitting Chiclets or fucking Top Shelf with their fucking #TakeBackHockey hashtag—that Roger Crowell probably jerked off to daily—, or whoever was riding their ass that week. And both Yuna and Farah had pitched them some ideas for that—press conferences, long-form interviews with allied journalists and publications. At one point a short documentary series about their life off-season coaching the charity hockey camps was on the table.

Shane had sort of spiraled about all of it for a few days, and they’d had to sit down and do a lot of talking about it; talking about what they wanted to do, how they wanted to do it, how much they were willing to share, how much was definitely off bounds.

Shane had always been the more fiercely protective of his privacy between the two of them—other than that brief stint with Rose Landry that had his face plastered all over every single gossip mag cover for a while, he’d always kept to himself; even his previous documentary (that he’d gotten an Emmy nomination for, according to Svetlana, however that worked) had been pretty much everything that had already been on his Wikipedia page with a hot slice of real estate porn and Shane twisting himself into different yoga poses on the side. So Ilya had sort of let him set the pace, and they’d taken it from there.

They had both been on the same page regarding the documentary, at least: pass. The Irina Foundation meant too much to both of them to see it dragged into this mess (more than it had already been). Maybe one day they would actually shoot that series, show all the good they were doing, all the ways they were trying to leave something great and meaningful and lasting behind. But not now. Not like this.

It had actually been Shane who’d suggested going with the Centaurs social media over the other, ‘stuffier’ options.

(“I mean, you trust Harris, right? He’s a good guy. He’s probably not gonna ask probing questions, or make digs or—I don’t know, deliberately try to make us uncomfortable. And I—I don’t know how ready I am to give a random journalist a 40 minute interview about this—about us.”

And they were doing so much better communicating these days, and Ilya was getting a lot better about not getting in his head about things, but that had still burned a bit. Shane must’ve seen it in his face, though, because he’d automatically climbed into his lap, legs bracketing him tightly, and he'd held his face firmly in his hands, eyes trained on his.

“Hey, hey—it’s not because I’m ashamed, Ilya, okay? I’m not ashamed. I could never be ashamed of you. Of us. I chose you that time with Crowell, and I still choose you now, and I will choose you every day until I die, okay? It’s not that. It’s just—” He made a face and leaned his forehead briefly on Ilya’s shoulder, frustrated at himself. “Sorry. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Ilya got it, anyway.

“Is too intimate,” he’d said, cupping Shane’s face with one hand and tilting his face back up, so he could place kisses on Shane’s cheeks, his forehead, his eyelids when Shane’s eyes slipped closed. “Too ours.”

“Yes,” Shane had whispered and then sighed when Ilya kissed the corner of his mouth, chasing his touch with half-lidded eyes.

And then they hadn’t really talked about anything for a while.)

Shane hadn’t been the one to pitch the format, though. Knowing his husband, he probably isn’t even aware of current social media trends, eternally and willfully stuck on the early 2010s internet. For better and for worse.

Ilya is suddenly overcome with love for this man—for his husband, so he kisses his knuckles again, this time with lips slightly parted, with a hint of scraping teeth against knuckles.

Shane’s breath hitches and he squirms and Ilya kisses his knuckles once more, one last teasing touch followed by a playful, hot puff of air.

“Ilya, not—”

“You guys are positively adorable! I’m gonna need you to save some of that for the cameras,” interrupts Harris in his booming, good-natured voice as he walks past them and sits on a bench while sipping from a frothy Starbucks cup with his eyes trained on his phone—but still sporting his friendly, wide smile. “We’re beginning the shoot in five minutes, and then we have the rink to ourselves for two hours!”

“Two hours?” Shane asks, and his hand in Ilya’s twitches once before giving Ilya an apologetic smile and dropping it back to his side. “Isn’t that overkill? It’s just a couple of Tweets, right?”

“For a definition of ‘a couple’, yeah!” Harris says that so brightly Ilya can’t help but laugh. “But then we have the skills too, and that takes longer to prepare for and shoot, so really, we are running on a tight schedule here.”

The slightly worried face Shane makes in return makes him laugh harder, even as his husband bumps into him grumpily on his way to the bench so he can put his skates on.

Ilya follows Shane, the way he always would if it were up to him, even through the laughter.

Shane had expected it to take Harris at least a couple of days to get back to them after shooting, but both he and Ilya get emailed a link to the final cut of their video the morning after, and if Shane’s gut hadn’t begun twisting itself into knots the second he’d seen the email, he would’ve probably spared more than a couple of seconds to be impressed at Harris’ commitment and insane work ethics because it's obvious he had to seriously burn the midnight oil to have this ready for them this soon. There'd been a lot of raw footage to go through.

As it is, the moment he gets the email with the link, with his mom and Farah CC’ed, and the subject line ‘Hollanov Skill Competition (working title) for YT-Final cut’ Shane needs to put the phone screen down on his nightstand for a moment and just breathe.

Ilya stirs next to him, nosing at the junction between shoulder and neck, dropping a soft, sleepy kiss there that tickles just enough for Shane to let out an involuntary huff, grinning as he turns to bury his face into the mass of Ilya’s curls, the smell of sweat and musk and Ilya’s shampoo untangling some of the anxious knots in him. He noses at the curls, and then drags his lips down to Ilya’s forehead, planting a lingering kiss there, closing his eyes and letting himself just be, in this bedroom where there’s only them and the rays of light intruding upon them from half open curtains.

“You think so loudly,” Ilya says, and Shane smiles, lips still pressed to his forehead. “Better alarm than my phone.”

He brings his fingers to the crevices of Ilya’s hips at that and digs into them a little meanly and whispers, “Oh, fuck you.”

Ilya’s sleepy, gruff laughter is one of the best sounds Shane’s ever heard—better than a crowd going wild when he scores in OT, better than the final countdown when they’re one up on the third period of the seventh game of the series, better even than that golden final horn, and he never gets tired of it.

Screw morning breath, he thinks as he trails soft kisses down the side of Ilya’s face, feather light, until he reaches Ilya’s parted lips, and he presses his own against them hungrily.

The kiss is slow and warm, with sleep still clinging to them; it’s Ilya’s mouth opening up against his, pliant; it’s Ilya’s teeth catching his lower lip and tugging; it’s a flick a of tongue after the bite, and Ilya rolling them over so he’s on top of Shane, bodies plastered together, their morning wood separated by the thin, stretchy fabric of their underwear.

The kiss is Ilya claiming him with lips and tongue and teeth as his big, hot hands cup his face sweetly for a second before dragging down to his neck—thumbs pressed slightly to Shane’s pulse-, then to his chest, then down to his waist and then his hips, and then finally to the underside of his thighs, grabbing into the meat of them firmly and parting them so Ilya can fit himself between them snugly like he’s a puzzle piece slotting neatly into place.

He bites into Shane’s lip again and starts rocking against him—slow and steady and hard, all of his weight on Shane because he knows Shane can take it, Shane wants to take it, loves it when Ilya holds him down and makes him take it.

Shane moans and Ilya’s lips coax the sound out of him, and then his fingers dig into Shane’s thighs and Ilya stops kissing Shane just so he can lick a strip up the side of Shane’s neck and bite. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough that Shane will have to worry about covering it up for a few days, and fuck, fuck it’s so hot, he feels himself leaking as Ilya keeps rocking against him, harder and harder.

God, Shane wants them skin-on-skin, wants Ilya’s cock bare and slick against his own, but he also wants Ilya in his mouth, maybe pushing it past his lips while he’s lying down, fucking his throat just like this, holding Shane’s hands above his head so Shane can’t touch Ilya, can’t touch his own cock, can’t do anything but take whatever Ilya gives him.

Ilya fucking thrusts, teeth still on Shane’s throat, warm spit trailing down Shane’s neck. God, Shane wants him inside, always wants him inside, wants to be full of Ilya’s cock all the time, wants to wake up to the tip of Ilya’s cock catching on his rim as Ilya goes all the way out, fucking him on his stomach, wants to keep Ilya’s cock warm all day long, he wants Ilya to fuck into him just like this too—face to face and so sweet, so slow, just like this, fuck.

“I’m close,” he pants, but he’s so sure Ilya can tell. Ilya knows Shane’s body better than he does, he always has, like he was made for Ilya to use, like he was made to be Ilya’s fucktoy. “Fuck.”

“Come,” Ilya whispers into his ear, and his voice—fuck, his voice. Rough and barely restrained. “Come for me, Shane.”

Shane nods, and his legs wrap around Ilya’s waist as he tries to get the leverage to buck up to meet Ilya’s thrusts with his own, tries to set a faster rhythm. Ilya doesn’t let him, though. He tightens his hold around Shane’s thighs (he’s gonna have bruises in the shape of Ilya’s fingers for days) and keeps his pace maddeningly deep, hard, slow—God, if they were naked just like this maybe Ilya would rub against his hole and his cock would slip in, maybe his hips would stutter at first, but then he’d fuck him just like this, all his body weight on Shane, making Shane take everything he wants to give him; and then he’d come—he’d come in Shane, and he’d make Shane take that too, wouldn’t pull out until he’d emptied his balls inside him, and then he’d pull back and maybe push that come back inside Shane with his fingers, just to keep Shane full of him, and—

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He comes so hard he closes his eyes and sees fucking stars.

“Good, yeah, just like that.” Ilya keeps rocking against him and everything is slicker and wetter with Shane’s come, and he keeps going until Shane’s almost too sensitive for it but he wants Ilya to come like this, against him.

One of his hands grabs the back of Ilya’s neck so Shane can press a searing kiss against his lips and then put his lips to Ilya’s ear and murmurs, “Ya tebya lyublyu.”

Ilya’s hips stutter once, twice, three times, and Shane smiles against Ilya’s ear, and says it again and again, as Ilya keeps rocking against him through his orgasm, grunting and groaning, and cursing in Russian.

God, he loves this man. He loves this man so much.

Ilya lies back down next to him once he’s done putting both their underwear and the wet towel he’d used to wipe both of them down in the hamper, and kisses his shoulder.

“Feel better?”

Shane nods and closes his eyes, taking a deep breath through his nose.

Ilya doesn’t magically make the anxiety disappear—if only it were that simple, if only Ilya could fuck the worry out of him. But he always makes everything easier, every load lighter when they’re bearing it together. He makes Shane realize it’s not him against the world. There’s always someone in his corner.

“Want to talk about it?”

“It’s the thing we shot yesterday. Harris is done with it. He sent us the final copy for review this morning, it just…”

“Freaked you out?” Ilya supplies when Shane just trails off.

“Yeah, yeah, it freaked me out a bit.” He bumps his head lightly against the bed header. “I don’t even know what I’m freaking out about here. It was… good. Some of the tweets were,” he feels himself make a face, and feels Ilya’s lips stretching as he snorts into his shoulder. “Weird. Maybe.”

“We were great,” Ilya reassures him. “And the tweets were not so bad, right? Most of them were sweet. Happy for us. And the weird ones were part of the plan, yes? To make us look ‘approachable’.”

Shane smiles, and leans his head against the top of Ilya’s.

“You really like that word, huh?”

“I like you,” is Ilya’s soft reply as he presses another kiss to his shoulder. “Let’s have breakfast—real breakfast, I will make it—and then we watch the video together and write back to Harris.”

“You’ll never let that diet go.”

“Never,” says Ilya with a smirk as he disentangles from Shane, patting his thigh, and then gets off the bed.

They both know how much it means to Shane, to be able to joke and be lighthearted about that now.

Neither of them mention it. They don’t need to.

Shane just smiles at Ilya’s retreating back, scrunching his nose a little when Ilya scratches his balls on his way out the door.

“You are so gross!” He yells at his retreating back as he climbs off the bed. “You better wash your hands before getting started on breakfast!”

Shane hears his husband’s yes, yes in Russian coming from down the hall, and the smile on his face gets so wide it’s a wonder his cheeks don’t hurt.

He follows.

After breakfast (where Shane reminds Ilya to take his pill as he’s feeding Anya and calling her the most ridiculous pet names in Russian, a few seconds before Ilya’s own alarm goes off) they take quick showers—separate, because they get easily distracted when they shower together, and they want to get back to Harris (and Yuna and Farah, who’ve already emailed them signing off on the video, leaving it up to them to decide whether it goes up or not) as fast as possible—and then they set up to watch the final cut of the video on their living room TV, Anya following them to the couch with a wagging tail and an excited bark before lying down on their feet and promptly nodding off.

“Ready?” Asks Ilya as he picks up the remote from their coffee table, resting his other hand on Shane’s thigh.

Shane takes an audible breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and nods. Ilya squeezes his thigh, and presses play.

The video opened with a wide shot of an empty rink and a countdown from a bubbly Harris off screen, and both Shane and Ilya hit the ice as soon as he reached zero, racing each other around the rink, skating hard. They came back around less than half a minute or so later, Ilya beating Shane to the finish line.

“I won,” Ilya said, winking to the camera. “Fastest skater in the NHL now.”

Shane shoved him playfully and rolled his eyes.

“For a tenth of a second, maybe.”

“Is all it takes to be the best,” Ilya said, smirking at Shane as he leaned against the boards casually.

“Oh f—ck off,” Shane said with his lips stretched into a smile, eyes following Ilya as he also leaned against the boards. As soon as the words were out he looked at the camera, blushing and a bit contrite, and said, “sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it! This channel’s heard much worse. Mostly courtesy of one Zane Boodram.

“Now that you’re all loosened up, though, let’s do some quick introductions!”

“I’m Ilya Rozanov, best captain of the best team in the league. And now the best husband in the league, too.”

Shane, who had started looking a bit uncomfortable, snorted at that and gently hip checked Ilya, “Best husband, huh? When did you get that award? I wasn’t invited to the ceremony.”

What followed was a second or two of Shane and Ilya staring at each other, both smiling flirtatiously.

Just watching that is enough for Ilya to wonder how the hell they managed to fool so many people for such a long time. It’s a bittersweet thought, though, so Ilya lets it go.

Harris cleared his throat off screen noisily, and Shane straightened up like he’d been caught sticking his hand in the cookie jar. Harris chuckled delightedly in response.

“Um, I’m Shane Hollander,” he said then, and for a second it seemed like that was all he was going to say but Ilya was the one to hip check him this time and Shane went on to add, a bit bashfully, “I’m Ilya Rozanov’s husband and I play centre for the Ottawa Centaurs. I’m hoping to see you all during the opening game.”

On the couch, Ilya’s heart does a somersault when he hears Shane introducing himself as Ilya’s husband first, and as a player second.

“Such a humble guy!” Harris chirped Shane with his booming voice, and Shane blushed a bit as Ilya let out a snort, even though his eyes were embarrassingly soft where they trailed Shane’s every move.

“That said,” Harris clapped his hands off camera. “Let me tell you two newlyweds what we’re doing today, okay? “So, as we all know—these two are not just complete hunks, but also some of the best of the best at what they do. The stuff of legends!”

There’s a short video montage, then, of highlights of Shane and Ilya’s careers: World Juniors, the Prospect Cup, the Stanley Cups, some of their prettiest goals and passes. The last clip is Shane scoring off of Ilya’s pass at the 2017 All-Stars, and Ilya kissing the side of Shane’s helmet with an audible smack.

“So we want to put you to the test with a skill competition. But! We also want our fans to get to know you better—without sitting you down for talking head interviews! Because even though we love a good-old Q & A, we like to spice it up around here. So we’re killing two birds with one stone and having you comment on some fan tweets in between challenges: so you can shed some light on things fans are curious about, give us some context to fan theories, that kind of stuff. Sounds good?”

On the screen, both Ilya and Shane nodded.

There was a cut, then, to Shane and Ilya standing on center ice, this time holding their sticks, a little table with a fishbowl half-full of neatly folded pieces of paper between them. Ilya was leaning on his stick a bit, and Shane was standing straight next to him, holding his stick one-handed.

“We have five different skills for you to compete in,” began Harris, and there was a little pop-up on the bottom of the screen, reading Centaurs Skill Competition! and listing five blurred out skills. “After each round you’ll both pick a tweet from the bowl, with the winner going first.”

The first blurred out skill revealed itself to be Speed Challenge, and next to it, in parentheses, it said winner: Ilya, followed by his time.

“Sorry Shane, but that means Ilya’s going first as the newly minted fastest skater in the NHL.”

Shane snorted at that and rolled his eyes, bumping into Ilya, who looked straight into the camera and said, “He’s a bad loser. Everyone should know this.”

“Just pick your tweet, Rozanov,” Shane said in turn, bumping into him again.

“You see?” Ilya said, still looking at the camera, but he did shove his stick under his armpit and reach for the fishbowl, picking a folded piece of paper at random.

He took his time unfolding it and Shane watched him do it, eyes fixed on Ilya’s hands as he did it.

“What’s it say?” He asked, as soon as Ilya was done.

“Impatient,” Ilya said, faking annoyance as he looked into the camera once more before looking back at the piece of paper in his hands.

A tweet with pictures of both Ilya and Shane seen from behind, in sweats, appeared in a corner of the screen.

“@alainastime says ‘sometimes I look at players like Hollzy and Roz and think about how hard it must be shopping for pants with,” Ilya stopped here and made one-handed finger quotes, “‘Dat a—s’.”

When he was done reading the tweet he looked back up at the camera to give it both a smirk and a wink, turning around so the camera could zoom in on his ass for a second, in nicely fitted pants.

Then the camera cut back to Shane, looking straight into the camera and blushing a bit. He cleared his throat and said, “Um, well, we get a lot of tailored clothes? As for jeans, there’s, uh—there’s some brands now that cater to hockey players, and other athletes with our same problem.”

“The problem of our huge butts,” Ilya clarified, putting the piece of paper down on the table, and Shane’s blush got darker.

Shane, being the earnest man he was, and probably needing to say something, anything, to stop feeling so awkward, kept going, “Actually, my friend Rose sent me this ESPN article some time ago about this issue. I guess people are more interested in our butts than I’d, uh, expected.”

At that, Ilya looked at Shane with a raise eyebrow and poked his ribs lightly with the butt of his stick, “Your friend Rose, huh?”

Shane rolled his eyes and batted Ilya’s stick away.

“Yeah, my friend Rose. The same Rose who took a redeye from Los Angeles to attend our wedding, you jerk.” Shane bickered, no heat at all. He winced when he looked back at the camera. “Sorry again. Uh, anyway, it’s my turn, I guess.”

Shane’s stick got shoved under his armpit as he reached for the fishbowl. It took him a bit longer to choose, hand lingering over all the neatly folded pieces of paper. Finally, he grabbed one from the bottom.

He unfolded it and read it silently, eyebrows going up as he did, with Ilya leaning in to read it over Shane’s shoulder.

Another tweet went up on the corner of the screen, this time with a slowed down gif of a closeup of Ilya kissing the side of Shane’s helmet—Shane’s face slightly downturned and trying to hide a bashful smile, Ilya’s face openly beaming—during The All-Stars game.

“@guywhowrites09 says ‘I said they were in love when this happened and y'all called me crazy. How the turntables.”

There were a few seconds of silence after Shane read the tweet, both him and Ilya's eyes on the piece of paper.

On the couch, Ilya grabs Shanes’s hand and kisses his knuckles.

On the screen, Ilya grabbed the paper from Shane’s hands and put it over his on the table before saying, “Is funny. David—Shane’s dad—thought the same thing. He said that to us when we told him and Yuna—Shane’s mom—about us. Said we had insane chemistry. Is true. We are unstoppable together.”

Shane’s hand twitches nervously in Ilya’s hold and Ilya kisses his knuckles again as they watch themselves. Shane melts into the touch, and they keep watching—knowing what comes ahead.

“All-Star games are always interesting. Playing with all these guys you never get the chance to, and getting to try out crazy formations, and just going out on the ice and have fun,” Shane said, ever the media trained guy always ready with the perfect sound bite. He stopped himself there though, frowning, and seemed to get a step closer to Ilya before adding with his voice laced with some hesitance—posture still ramrod straight, eyes steely and trained on the camera, “But this one was—special. Getting to play with Ilya, instead of against him, for the first time. To play on the same line as him and get to be on the same side as his fast thinking on the ice. I was buzzing all the way throughout that game, and I guess it showed on my face—I guess all of it showed on both of our faces. And I guess some people are just really sharp.”

There was a compilation, then, of Shane and Ilya’s highlights from the All-Star game. Ilya had watched the game a couple of times already, had already committed to memory the way their line had dominated—because Ilya knew that nobody really did their best during an All-Star game, but Shane had probably never gotten that memo before, and Ilya had always been easily spurned on by Shane on the ice. Now, though, he can easily see how they were both always a bit too close during each other’s cellys—even when they hadn’t fed the other the assist. He can see the way his own face looked so nakedly proud as he pressed that sloppy kiss against Shane’s helmet when Shane did score off his assist, and the way Shane’s eyes had closed for a second at the contact with a smile so sweet it could’ve belonged in bed, underneath Ilya.

Ilya has to pause the video for a second there to drop a kiss on his husband’s cheek. Shane’s skin is soft under his lips, and Shane presses his hand to Ilya’s own cheek, fingertips brushing against the stubble there.

“I love you so much,” Shane says, and with his lips still pressed to Shane’s cheek, Ilya can feel the vibrations everywhere as he speaks, deep inside him. “I love you so much and it scared me to death for so long that anyone would find out but it was all out there anyway, huh?”

Ilya is a scholar of Shane Hollander so he can feel the guilt pooling under those words.

“Was scared too, for so long.” He kisses Shane’s temple, feels the fluttering of Shane’s eyelashes on his chin and smiles. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

Ilya kisses his temple once more and then touches his forehead to Shane’s and closes his eyes, breathing in deeply.

They spend a few minutes like that, surrounded by the sounds of the cottage—the low hum of the fridge, the morning birds outside— and just existing with one another.

“We need to watch the rest of the video,” Shane says at some point, a hint of humor in his voice.

“We do?” Ilya asks, lips curling up in a smile. He loves the way Shane’s voice gets in moments like this, playful and flirty and only for Ilya to hear.

“Mhm. Harris worked hard on it. Probably pulled an all-nighter to get it to us this fast.”

“We don't want to upset Harris,” Ilya agrees, affecting seriousness, as he presses one last kiss to Shane’s forehead, and then a fast one to his lips. “Knows too much. Has too many embarrassing pictures. And Troy would kill us.”

Shane chuckles, pushing forward to kiss Ilya one last time before grabbing the remote from him and pressing play.

The next section of the video is the accuracy shooting contest. Shane had fun recording that—he always had fun competing against Ilya. It always got his blood pumping, them pushing each other to go harder, to be better, together.

On the screen, you could see one of their nets with little targets with the Centaurs logo attached to the posts on the four corners, and then a much smaller one on the five-hole. There was also a title card with the name of the challenge. It looked nicer than the ones in both Metros’ stuff and official NHL videos—the whole video so far looked far nicer than anything he’d shot before for the Metros’ or the official NHL’s socials, so hopefully Harris was getting paid properly.

“You can go first,” Ilya said in the video, smiling winningly at Shane and pointing towards the net.

“How sportsmanlike of you,” Shane replied, drily, but skated towards the little mound of pucks with four of them neatly lined up between the face-off circles.

The stopwatch on the top left corner of the screen came all the way up to 10.12, and Ilya made a show of being obnoxious about it on screen, but when it was his turn he put a hand on Shane’s lower back and let it linger for a charged second while skating by him.

Shane feels himself grow hot all over at the sight, just as he'd done during recording when feeling the width of Ilya's palm on his lower back in front of Harris and the camera crew.

“Now I will show you how it's done,” said Ilya.

“In your dreams, maybe,” was Shane's retort.

10.56—mostly thanks to a first shot targeting the five-hole going wide and throwing Ilya off his game for a beat. He muttered obscenities in Russian (some of which Shane was quite familiar with, some that he'd have to ask the meaning of later) when Harris told him what their times were for that challenge but Shane had competed with him long enough to tell when his heart wasn't in it, when he was playing it up for the crowd.

“This round goes to our newest, hottest center Shane Hollander,” Harris declared off-camera, and a little title card with a funny animation came on screen declaring him winner of the second challenge.

‘Hottest?” Ilya repeated, eyes wide in mock outrage.

“According to Cosmopolitan. Three years in a row,” Shane joked with his face open and his eyes creased at the corner from the width of his smile, in a song and dance that he and Ilya had performed countless times before—just. Never for an audience.

Ilya’s eyes went even wider for a second—and as Shane buries deeper into his husband’s side on the couch he can’t help but wonder if at least some people would be able to tell that that one was genuine and that it had nothing to do with Cosmo’s 20 Hottest NHL Players listicle and everything to do with Shane being willing to share one of their nonsensical little rituals, if they’d see it just the way they’d watched two rivals shooting the shit during an All-Star game and seen all their love for what it was.

A part of him is terrified of the possibility, but another one—growing bigger and bolder and so much braver by the day, wants it. So badly.

“The Cosmopolitan staff are obviously insane,” Ilya said after a second and a cleared throat, giving the camera an indignant look. “They put me fifth. Three years in a row.”

“Well now boys, you’re both studs,” Harris interrupted from behind the camera. “And more importantly: now that we have our winner for the second challenge, it’s time for some more tweets!”

There was another title card, showing them the list of challenges with only two of them unveiled and their score so far on each of them, and when that was gone they were back again on center ice, with the little unassuming fishbowl on its little table.

Shane reached for it, picking another one from the bottom and taking his time to carefully extract his hand from the fishbowl so the other pieces of folded paper wouldn’t accidentally fall out.

Ilya leaned on Shane as he unfolded the piece of paper, and read it over Shane’s shoulder. He was smiling a little as he did.

The tweet appeared on the corner of the screen as Shane read it out loud, “@tcentguy2323 says, ‘I'm a puck head with puck for brains, I know, but all I can think about is how insane that household has to be. You have the two best players in contemporary history under one roof? Holy s—t. I can’t help but wonder how that works for them.’”

“Is fun,” said Ilya.

“It is,” Shane added. “As you might’ve noticed we’re both competitive, so we always spur each other on when training during the off-season. So that’s cool.”

“And we are both the same type of competitive so we don’t hurt each other’s feelings.” Ilya had a lopsided smile as he said this. “Is important. We understand each other, we work with each other, not against each other.”

Shane smiled at that, taking a step closer to Ilya.

“Yeah, that bit’s important. We’re… really lucky, I guess. We both have a partner that can fully understand where we are and what we need and everything that comes with this career: the crazy schedules, the diets and the workouts, the rituals, the superstitions—”

“—The pressure,” Ilya added, a bit more sober. “Is good to have a partner who understands the love of the game, but also the expectations that come with.”

Shane nodded to that.

After a bit, Ilya smirked and gave a lewd eyebrow waggle, adding, “Makes celebrations more fun too—”

“Oh-kay,” Shane shut that down fast, putting a hand on Ilya’s shoulder and squeezing hard. “Your turn.”

Shane’s gut tightens uncomfortably seeing that and he has a hard time trying to figure out whether it’s kneejerk anxiety at the idea of people getting a glimpse into their sex life, or if it’s arousal, at the idea of people getting a glimpse into their sex life.

Another tweet popped up on the corner of the screen as both Ilya and Shane read from the slip of paper in Ilya’s hand, with Ilya angling it slightly so Shane can do so comfortably.

“@4ever24 says ‘these two aren’t gonna start a family, they’re gonna start a franchise, lmao. Just a team of little hockey playing machines that will one day take over the NHL. And I love that for them.’”

Both Shane and Ilya stood silently for a second, looking at the piece of paper in Ilya’s hand. Then they looked at each other briefly but so intensely, it felt obvious that they were communicating non-verbally.

Shane feels the sweat all over his body, suddenly—feels how sweaty his hand is where it’s holding Ilya’s, feels how tacky his thighs are on the couch, feels the fabric of his shirt sticking to his back.

“I think it’s too soon for us to start thinking about—uh, about kids,” Shane said after clearing his throat and looking away from the scrap of paper in his husband’s hands to fix his gaze on the camera, ears so red they could probably be used to stop traffic. He kept going, as though he physically couldn't stop, “With both of us on the road so often and our schedules, and our crazy routines—”

“Maybe not an entire franchise. Sounds like too much work. We can start with a team of six.”

That effectively put a stop to Shane's somewhat panicked rambling. His face transformed too, from vaguely overwhelmed to a soft, sappy mess of a too-big grin and crinkled eyes.

“Ilya, we can't have six kids,” Shane admonished then, turning to face Ilya instead of the camera and trying for a stern tone but so very obviously landing on charmed instead.

“Why not? Is nothing wrong with having a big family.” Ilya said it with such aplomb too, like it was the most normal thing in the world and it was Shane who was being ridiculous by curtailing the idea, turning to face Shane too, with his mouth set in that particular stubborn pout of his that Shane always itched to kiss, even in the middle of heated arguments. “We are good coaches, we'll be even better dads.”

“You give Hayden s—t over his four kids all the time,” Shane noted, pointedly, but his smile was still too big to be anything but deeply fond. The next bit came out softer, more hesitant. “And how can you know that we'll be good dads? How can anyone know that?”

Ilya folded the piece of paper and put it down on the little table, on top of Shane’s, before cupping Shane’s face with both of his hands and squishing his face and shaking him a little. Shane tried to bat his hands away, but it was a half-hearted gesture at best that ended with Shane loosely holding Ilya by the wrists and Ilya’s hands remaining on him, holding him firmly and making Shane meet his gaze.

“I know that because I know you, Shane Hollander. Better than anyone.” The smile on his face as he said that was sweet and light and boyish, but his tone brooked no arguments, a finality to the words that could be heard even by the most oblivious of people. “Even if you are not great at something from the beginning, you never give up until you become great at it. Not when it matters. Is what I love most about you.”

It’s a humbling experience, seeing the way he melts for Ilya’s words and for his touch, the way he leans into his husband’s palm and looks up at him from under his eyelashes like some high schooler with a crush.

“You really think that?”

Ilya hummed his agreement as he nodded, thumbs tracing the freckles on Shane’s cheekbones.

“I know our children are going to be the happiest. They’ll have the best parents and the best grandparents… and when they’re old enough, the best coaches.”

Shane chuckled at that, eyes so fucking honest and tender that anyone could tell he was thinking about just that—about raising the happiest kids with Ilya, about putting toddlers in little skates and playing shinny with them on a pond.

God, has he always been this easy to read?

“What if they don’t want to play hockey?” Shane asked, almost a murmur, as if he’d forgotten there were cameras trained on his every move.

(He had, for a moment. For a moment there, it’d just been Ilya and him and their future stretching out in front of them, endless and full of possibilities.)

Ilya looked frankly offended by the mere idea.

“Then we disown them, obviously.”

When that startled a bout of laughter not only from Shane but also from everyone behind the camera Ilya smiled roguishly, and slapped Shane’s face lightly twice before finally letting him go.

“Ready to lose the next challenge?”

“Too much?” Ilya asks, uncertain, squeezing Shane’s hand as another title card comes on screen to explain the third challenge—stick handling—, with some cute little diagrams and animations explaining the drill. “We can tell Harris to cut that part.”

They had talked about boundaries after agreeing to shoot the video, for hours on end. They’d gone into how much they were comfortable with everyone and their mother knowing about them, and how much they wanted to keep safe and private and just for themselves and their loved ones. It hadn’t been an easy conversation. Both of them too raw from everything that’d happened in the past few months—in the past year; but God, they’d tried so hard to make it easier for each other. Ilya had tried so hard to communicate the way Galina kept reminding him he needed to. He tried so hard to lay all his cards on the table, to not just try to please Shane at the expense of whatever he was feeling—to not give in to anything Shane proposed out of fear that Shane would just… think he wasn’t worth the trouble. And he knew Shane had tried so hard too, pushing past discomfort, pushing past anxiety, pushing past an entire lifetime of conditioning himself to letting certain things go unexplored because doing so could potentially throw his life off balance.

Shane had reassured him again—he wasn’t ashamed, he wasn’t afraid anymore, and he loved Ilya (so much that I don’t know what to do with myself, you have no idea, good God). He wanted them to have what anyone else had a right to—wanted them to be exactly who they were, nothing more and nothing less, anywhere and anywhen. Wanted them to be grossly in love if they wanted to, whether at a presser or in the locker rooms, or even in front of a camera. Wanted that for them every day of their lives; no ifs, no whens, no buts.

Ilya remembers all that—remembers that entire conversation word for word, beat for beat, like it’s been ingrained in him— but he still finds himself holding his breath as he waits for Shane’s reply.

Shane takes his hand as the title card disappears on their screen and a shot of them holding their sticks with their backs to the camera and staring at the obstacle course in front of them replaces it, and he’s the one kissing Ilya’s knuckles tenderly, then.

“It’s fine. It’s—funny. Sweet. We can keep it in.” He takes a deep breath. “I want us to keep it in.”

Ilya has to kiss Shane at that, can’t not kiss him, and so he does, right as the third challenge begins.

The obstacle course’s layout was pretty similar to ones from past All-Star games—only on a smaller budget, because even with the Centaurs having a historically deep playoffs run last season and not looking into either rebuilding or retooling for the first time in forever, they still probably couldn’t blow All-Star kind of money on personality piece videos for their socials—even if it was for their stars.

Ilya went first this time, making quick work of the quick dribbling and the figure 8 sections, and then going on to do some neat backhand cutbacks around little cardboard cutouts of Dykstra and Chouinard. His own speed ended up working against him and making him lose control of the puck for a fraction of a second while he was completing the last of the cutbacks, so he cursed once loudly in Russian and Shane could be heard chirping him about being a bad loser off-camera as Ilya buried the puck in the net top shelf.

The stopwatch on the screen blinked a couple of times, marking 25.54, and when Harris told him that was his time Ilya made a couple of disgruntled noises which only served to make Shane smirk at him wide and smug as he skated past him to take his place at the start line.

Shane was always beautiful on the ice—he didn't have the flashiest of playing styles, but he was fast and the puck stuck to his stick like he had velcro on the blade instead of tape.

Ilya loves watching him—even in the very beginning, when there were so many other feelings tangled up in their hockey and every other sports outlet kept pitting them against each other like fight dogs, Ilya loved watching him on the ice. Loved how economical his movements were, and how he was always ten steps ahead of everyone else. He loved the rare spinorama and the filthy dangles that got him into more than one D-men’s shit list.

The stopwatch on the corner of the screen blinked on 25.34.

As soon as Shane's shot found the back of the net he was skating back, and the smirk on his face said he knew he'd beaten Ilya in this particular challenge.

“Shut up,” Ilya said, hitting his shins lightly with the blade of his stick as he approached. “You got lucky.”

“That's slashing, ref!” Shane called to Harris and the camera crew as he batted Ilya's stick away.

“That's two minutes in the sin bin for you, Rozanov,” called Harris in mock reproach and the camera followed Ilya as he rolled his eyes and skated off towards the empty penalty box.

There was a short cut to a title card, then, showing the results of the third challenge, and then they were both back on center ice, with the table and the fishbowl with its folded pieces of paper.

“I guess I'm going first again,” Shane said as he picked another tweet from the bottom, his eyes never leaving Ilya's as he did, all smirks.

Ilya rolled his eyes again as he bumped Shane's shoulder with his own and called him a showoff in Russian, to which Shane (already quite familiar with the word) only replied with a raised eyebrow that Ilya read as Shane wordlessly calling him a hypocrite as he unfolded his tweet, eyes never once leaving Ilya's.

As Shane and Ilya read the tweet, it came up on the screen.

This one featured both a screenshot of Ilya and Shane's joint Instagram post and then the accompanying pictures that Ilya had so painstakingly chosen.

“@lilriley87 says ‘what kind of star-crossed lovers BS is this? Ok, no, for real now: a girl’s gotta wonder how this happened.”

Ilya chuckles at the serious way in which Shane read that particular tweet, the words so at odds with his facial expression and his tone, and the camera zooming in on him to capture every second of it. It was pure comedy.

“It's not that funny,” his husband says, slapping his thigh.

“Is a little funny,” Ilya replies, not at all apologetic, squeezing Shane's thigh.

“Oh my God, shut up.”

Ilya on the screen was also grinning at Shane, eyes soft and terribly endeared.

“Is a little like a fairytale, yes,” Ilya began, eyes still on Shane. “First time we saw each other during the 2008 World Juniors was already electric—even though Hollander had the ugliest haircut back then and didn't know how to start a conversation—but I was young and foolish and ready to hate him—for things that had nothing to do with him. Is still embarrassing. But I think even then I knew that it was always going to be us, chasing each other.”

Shane's tongue went to lick at his lip as he returned Ilya's gaze. Ultimately he cleared his throat and looked away as he folded the piece of paper again and placed it on the table in neat little movements.

“I… didn't know myself that well, in the beginning. I just knew that I wanted to win the championship for Canada and then I wanted to be drafted so I could play the kind of hockey I always wanted to play—the kind they play on the NHL, and I wanted to beat Ilya so badly—I wanted to beat everyone, but Ilya the most. I was obsessed.”

“He was always like this, you see, very competitive.” He looked at the camera as he said this. “A bad loser but also a bad winner.”

“Shut up, like you're not just the same. You egged me on at every chance you got back then.”

“Ah, can't deny that. Was fun, seeing your murderous rage when you came second.”

“Well, it was fun seeing you come second too,” Shane retaliated, mulish.

“Hmm, yes, a pity it happened so rarely.” Ilya faked a pout to the camera, and Shane rolled his eyes with a huff.

“Anyway,” he said, pointedly, ”um. It took me a while. To understand what I was feeling. I just knew that I loved hockey and though I always enjoyed the game, playing Ilya was always special, it was—”

He stopped there, seemingly at a loss for words and frustrated by it.

“Playing Shane made me feel the most alive,” contributed Ilya.

“Yes,” Shane agreed. “Playing Ilya just made me feel alive. In all senses of the word.”

“Took us both a long time,” Ilya continued. “Years. Even when we were already in love, was hard with hockey and roadies and our teams and the media and—”

“Ourselves.”

“And ourselves,” Ilya agreed. “That part was the hardest. But eventually we both stopped being so young and so foolish.”

“We did, huh?” The fondness was back in Shane's voice as he reached a hand out to Ilya's and gave it a fast squeeze.

Ilya pretended to think for a moment, and then said, “Mostly.”

“@jordymetros1267 says ‘Hollander and Rozanov are both class acts in my books. That said: what about Worlds? What about the Olympics?’”

Ilya folded back the piece of paper as soon as he was done reading, looking at his hands as he did, mouth set in a straight, severe line.

Ilya remembers feeling the question like a punch to the gut. What about Worlds? What about the Olympics?

Shane’s hand covered Ilya’s own where it lingered on the table after putting the piece of paper down, his thumb stroking Ilya’s knuckles a couple of times until Ilya turned his hand so Shane could lace their fingers together. Ilya hadn’t noticed how overt that display of affection was at the time, mind stuck on a single thought.

I’m a man with no country.

Ilya is—he’s still stuck in a limbo. He can’t go back to Russia anymore. He’d always known that was where he was headed. He’d made his choice when he’d walked into this with both eyes open. But knowing something in the abstract wasn’t really the same as seeing it happen in front of your eyes, feeling the fraying tether finally snapping.

As soon as that FanMail video started making the rounds, the last of the remaining ties that bound Ilya to Russia had been effectively cut.

Ilya’s pretty sure if he gave the Minister of Internal Affairs a call right now (his number still lived in the depths of Ilya’s phone log from after his father’s death, when the man had called and offered him his condolences, stiffly, before callously inquiring into the Raiders’ chances of winning the Cup as Ilya stared at a brochure describing a funeral home’s services), it would go unanswered.

Or worse—he’d be faced with the same bullshit they’d gotten from Crowell, only infinitely more perverse. The government probably able and willing to try and use whatever connections Ilya still had in Russia to browbeat him back into obedience with cajoling and condescending tones.

Ilya doesn’t want to call that man.

And Canada—he loves Canada. He loves Canada for giving him Shane and the Hollanders, for giving him the Centaurs and Anya. Fuck, he loves Canada for giving him the chance to be himself, open and unafraid.

But Canada’s not home yet. Not legally, at least.

So Ilya’s kinda—stuck.

At the end of the day, though, Ilya might be a man with no country, but he’s a man with integrity; and more importantly, he’s a man with a home. As corny as it sounds.

“Do you want to—” Shane gestured with their joined hands at the paper.

“No. Is fine.” Ilya took a deep breath and then looked back at the camera resolutely, and stopped for a second before switching to Russian to say, “I have always loved my country—enough to get that love tattooed on my skin. I’m proud of my roots and my culture, of my people. But the person I am is not compatible with the person our country wants me to be; actually, maybe it's the other way around: what my country has become is no longer compatible with the country I believed it and wanted it to be. The choice of telling the world on my terms about who I am might have been taken from me, but I did make the choice to be myself and to love and be loved freely. And I stand by it.

“I’m coming from a place of immense privilege, being able to make these choices when so many others can’t—but I think that’s even more reason for me to do this on behalf of those who can’t. To stand by my choice and to tell all of you who, like me, feel unloved and unwanted and reviled by a country you love and to which you’ve given so much, that there's nothing wrong with you, and that you are not alone.”

He stopped to take a shaky breath, and Shane turned to him, leaning in close and murmuring quiet reassurances that the mic couldn’t catch.

Ilya remembers. Shane had called him brave, his love, his sun. All in his lovely, accented Russian. It had broken his heart into so many pieces, being loved like that by a man so good.

It still does now, so he leans heavily against his husband, burying his nose into the crook between neck and shoulder, leaving a feather light kiss there as one of Shane’s hands comes to rest on top of his curls.

“There'll be official announcements about this coming out soon, but I feel like I need to say this myself at least once, to people who might care about hearing it from me: I have taken the decision to no longer represent Russia in any future international events.” Here he stopped to let the statement sink. Then he switched back to English to add, “I would be honored to be part of Team Canada with my husband when I become a citizen. But Canada is a country full of talented players, and I will only be slightly disappointed if I don’t make the cut.”

Ilya knows his odds of making Team Canada for the coming Olympics are slim to none, with all the feathers he and Shane have ruffled these past few months, but that had been—a statement, yes, but mostly an olive branch. More for Shane’s sake than his. Yuna and Farah would probably make noises about the wording, but they’d get it.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Shane said, finally letting go of his hand to squeeze his forearm. “There’s no world where you don’t make the cut on any team that’s worth playing for.”

—And that had been Shane’s own statement. Made so clearly even the most stubborn of GMs and coaches, and the most bigoted and concussion-riddled of Team Canada hopefuls would get it.

Ilya watches his unmovable husband looking into the camera with all his own intensity and stubbornness for longer than is probably comfortable for anyone watching that isn’t married to him, and feels that familiar surge of adoration again.

… He also can’t help but want to hear what Yuna and Farah will have to say about that.

Shane grabs the remote and hits pause before the next challenge, and the only sound that can be heard through the cottage for a while is Anya's snuffling at their feet, and then the soft thumping of her tail against the wooden floor when Ilya bends a bit to reach out a hand to pet her soft coat.

“Are you okay?” He knows better than to ask whether Ilya wants that in the final cut.

Of course he does, he doesn't do things by halves. He knows that better than anyone.

“Good subtitles,” Ilya comments, tugging at one of Anya's ears playfully and getting even more enthusiastic tail thumping for his efforts. “Very…”

“Accurate? Faithful?”

“Faithful, yes.” He gives Anya's ear one last playful tug before he straightens up and leans back against the coach, face tilted up and eyes closed.

“Is strange,” he starts, voice almost a whisper. “Is like when my father died. Is upsetting, yes, but it feels like I'm upset about the wrong thing, the selfish thing. And mostly I feel… free. Is complicated.”

Shane can't say that he gets it, because he doesn't. He probably never will.

What he can do is open his arms when Ilya opens his eyes and turns his face towards him, and he can let Ilya melt into his embrace. He can make sure his hands hold Ilya tightly, that he's always there to remind Ilya there's always somewhere he'll belong, always somewhere he'll be welcomed and loved.

Ilya pulls himself away from Shane's hold muttering about Shane distracting them from their work and being naughty, which makes Shane's face grow hot and his gut burn even hotter.

“Shut up, asshole.”

Ilya chuckles and grabs for the remote, pressing play.

The video cut to a title card explaining the next skill—a sauce challenge, with three mini nets stacked neatly in a straight line behind a pass rebounder, no ramps. Each mini net worth a different amount of points—one for the closest one, two for the one in the middle, three for the one furthest away from the rebounder. Each of them had six shots to score up to eighteen points in the best time possible.

“I like this one.” Ilya sounds so infuriatingly smug as he says that that it makes Shane want to do something about it.

Ride him until the smugness melts into needy grunts and Shane's name, mostly.

“You only say that because you won that one,” he says, putting that image into his mental backburner and focusing instead on the last of the explanation.

“Maybe,” Ilya says, unapologetic. “Don’t act like we don’t both know how much you enjoy winning, Hollander.”

Shane doesn't have anything to say to that, mostly because yeah. He's probably the most cutthroat person in his immediate circle—second only to, like, his mom. Maybe.

Shane went first this time around, scoring 15 points total (9 off the furthest net, 6 off the one in the middle) in 36 seconds.

Ilya, the asshole that he was and probably incensed by the two losses in a row, scored 16 (12 off the furthest net, 4 off the one in the middle) in 34.5.

“You’re insufferable,” Shane complained off camera, loud enough for Ilya to hear him and let out a delighted laugh while he was off doing an over-the-top celly.

The title card with their scores and standings came after a close up of Ilya beaming at Shane as he skated back towards him, all gloating and gorgeous with his cheeks flushed from his excitement and his clothes slightly rumpled from the celly.

Tied 2-2, with the one last blurred challenge.

Ilya took his time picking his tweet this time around, teasingly picking up one piece of paper before putting it down and picking up another one only to put it back down again. This went on a couple of times, until Shane got visibly fed up with him, groaning and looking up at the ceiling before facing him again and going, “Do I need to pick it?”

“I won the last challenge so I get to pick the next tweet, yes?” Ilya was looking at him with exaggeratedly raised eyebrows, eyes as wide as he could make them go in command, the smarmy asshole, hand still in the fishbowl.

“Then pick it already, oh my God.”

“Pushy.” His smile gained a bit of a suggestive edge as he said that and Shane’s face and the tips of his ears went pink as Ilya finally picked his tweet, never taking his eyes off Shane as he did it.

Then Ilya unfolded it and raised his eyebrows as he read it. Shane tried to read it over Ilya’s shoulder, like he’d done with the previous one, but Ilya had held the tweet above his own head and winked at Shane. He got a light jab with the butt of the stick in his armpit for his trouble, but Ilya seemed hardly upset about it as he batted Shane’s stick away.

“Is a long one,” Ilya warned Harris as he held the tweet out of Shane’s reach, like Harris hadn’t been the one who picked the tweets in the first place.

The tweet on the screen was accompanied by a set of pictures: one from their very first face-off against one another, back in 2010; another from the 2017 All-Stars, from the warmup before the game where Shane and Ilya had been caught on camera smiling at each other as they went through their warmup routines; then there was another one taken from the Irina Foundation socials, with Ilya and Shane in their summer training camp shirts, heads bent over a clipboard, probably discussing drills, as they stood on center ice waiting for the kids and the other coaches to show up. The last one was taken from Ilya’s own Instagram account: the two plastic heart rings on Shane’s dresser.

Shane brushes his fingers against Ilya’s thigh, throat getting a little dry as he sees the pictures, the story they tell.

Ilya’s hand comes down next to his on the sofa, and his pinky and ring fingers trace Shane’s own delicately, stopping over Shane’s wedding ring to give it a light tap before he curls his fingers over Shane’s.

Ilya cleared his throat dramatically and read.

“@hockeyjesus21 says 'Y’all are SO obsessed with points per season and who has the best backhand (Hollzy, let’s not play here),” Ilya stopped here to raise a single judgmental eyebrow at the camera before going back to reading, “and who has the hardest slapshot (Roz, who are we kidding? That man is a menace, he can probably hit 100mph on a bad day, no cap),” here he stopped just to waggle his eyebrows at Shane.

“Oh-kay, Mr. Hardest Shot, keep going. Any day now.”

Ilya faked a pout but went on, “—and if being together will make them worse (some of you need to watch the PWHL, if anything it might make them better), that you’re not asking the real questions: who is a better cook? Who is more into pet names? Who has the crazier superstitions? Who is better at Chel? What kind of dates do they go on?'”

The tips of Shane’s ears were slightly pink again, but he was smiling a bit as he said, “um, that is a long one, yeah. Lots of questions, too. Don't know where to begin. Ilya?”

“Is not true that Shane has the better backhand,” Ilya complained, and when Shane seemed to be about to interrupt him—eyebrows furrowed but lips trying to contain a smile, he started talking again, bumping their shoulders together companionably, “Is true that we make each other better, though, on and off the ice. We make each other better players and better people.”

Shane returned the bump and lingered there—shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm—as he was finally allowed to read the tweet for himself.

After Shane was done reading the tweet for himself he looked back up at the camera and said, “I also believe more people should tune in to the PWHL. It’s full of amazing players like our friend Leah Campbell, who’s kind enough to help us run the Game Changers camp when she’s not busy winning gold medals.”

There was a short clip there of Leah during the finals of the Sochi Olympics against the United States, with her blocking a shot by basically dropping into a full split in front of the net, and then getting up in less than a second to cleanly catch a shot from the rebound on her glove, on the other side of the net, aiming for top shelf.

“That is also true,” Ilya agreed, leaning into Shane’s touch. “About the questions—when we have the time, we cook together. We are both pretty good cooks.”

Shane hummed at that agreeably and added, “You are better at stews. But we only get to have those during the off-season. I think I make a better salad.”

Ilya made a face at that, nose scrunched.

“You’re such a big baby about leafy greens,” Shane chided, so affectionately that the words held no edge at all. Pure flirtation. He also seemed to realize that because he looked away from Ilya, flush creeping up his cheeks again, like it had never left in the first place.

He coughed once and asked, “What was the next question?”

“Pet names,” Ilya reminded him, but he wasn’t looking at the paper. His eyes were on the pink tips of Shane’s ears. “Who uses more.”

“Neither of us is very into those, but—” Shane met Ilya’s eyes here, and there was a moment of silent communication that ended with a nod and an encouraging smile from Ilya, “Ilya likes using different Russian nouns as pet names, sometimes, to test me—things like,” he switched to heavily accented Russian here, “moya yabloko, moy pomidor, moya gazonokosilka.”

He switched back to English to add, “Lately it’s been a lot of public transportation—moy avtobus, ​moy poyezd.”

“Important words to know,” Ilya noted wisely and Shane chuckled.

“You’re ridiculous. The next one is about superstitions, right?”

“Yes,” Ilya nodded, checking the tweet. “Crazier superstitions. Everybody knows the answer, yes? We have all seen the many, many videos.”

“I don’t have that many—they are not superstitions. They are rituals. There’s a difference.”

“Oh yeah? How are they different?”

“I don’t actually believe if I don’t do them before games I’m gonna lose or get injured, or whatever, I just—I just really like having a routine. Don’t be an a—hole.”

“So you would be okay if somebody touches your stick after you tape it?” Ilya’s eyebrows were raised. “You wouldn’t mind if you had to pass by the visitor’s locker room before the game? If you don’t wear the same tie to every game during playoffs? If you don’t do the same stretches to the same playlist before every game? If you don’t bounce your puck off the boards three times during warmups?”

Shane frowned.

“Don’t act like you don’t have your own superstitions. You put on your left sock first every game day. You have that dangle routine that you do during warmups in the same corner, and you always have a Coke between the second and the third period.”

“Is not a superstition. Is a tradition.” Ilya looked so absurdly affronted by Shane calling those superstitions that Shane’s lips twitched involuntarily as he contained an amused smile.

“You do it every single game, Ilya.”

They both looked at each other with matching intense expressions until Harris burst out laughing from behind the camera and they both turned to glare at him.

“Okay, I think maybe you’re both crazy superstitious, guys.”

They both looked ready to argue that, but then Ilya deflated and admitted, “Maybe. Is not so bad. At least we don’t eat mustard on the bench.”

“Or drink pickle juice,” Shane added, scrunching his nose.

“Makes the bench smell like a sandwich shop. Disgusting.” Ilya shook his head, like he was trying to get rid of the sensory memory. “Next question is ‘who’s better at Chel?’ Is an easy one. Me.”

“Not when you don’t f—ing cheat you are not.”

“How can you f—ing cheat at Chel, Hollander?”

“How about when I’m winning and you—” He cut himself off abruptly, and when he didn’t seem like he was going to finish that thought Ilya gestured with the hand not holding his stick for him to go on, nodding along like a little shit, with that crooked grin of his.

“Nevermind. You aren’t better at Chel, you’re just a cheat.”

“Whatever makes you sleep better at night, sweetheart,” Ilya pinched a loose strand of Shane’s hair between two fingers and gave it a coy little tug.

Shane’s stomach swoops as he watches Ilya openly flirting his way out of his cheating accusations, and slips his hand fully underneath Ilya’s own, needing that skin-on-skin contact as he bears witness to the way that Ilya is with him—so cheeky and so ready to sweep Shane off his feet. It’s fucking crazy. It drives him fucking crazy, every time—like he’s still that seventeen year old, sweaty-palmed kid leaning against a brick wall in a winter jacket and trying to play it cool in front of the only guy who’d ever made his heart race that painfully.

“What kind of dates do we go on? That’s the last one,” Shane eyed the piece of paper for confirmation and nodded to himself. He paused and said, a little awkwardly, “We haven’t had—we haven’t really had much opportunity to go on a lot of dates in the past. We’ve gone to a couple of bars, like the one Scott Hunter owns in New York—the Kingfisher. Sometimes we have dinner at Hayden Pike’s.”

“Is not a date,” Ilya disagreed. “Hayden makes us babysit. He’s too cheap to pay for a babysitter.”

“Makes us babysit? You love babysitting Hayden’s kids.”

Ilya didn’t reply to that but he was smiling too fondly to be complaining in earnest.

“Jackie raised good kids,” he relented. “But maybe we can go on more dates where we don’t have to look after them now.”

Shane chuckled in amusement, but his eyes were crinkled with the force of his dumb ear-to-ear smile as he said, “Yeah, maybe.”

Ilya folded the piece of paper and finally placed it on the table as Shane picked his own from the bottom of the fishbowl.

“This one’s shorter,” Shane said, and as the tweet appeared on the screen he read, “@2016wasntreal says ‘All I want for Christmas is for the Centaurs to win the Cup and for our GOATs hollanov to use one of their Cup Days to bring the Cup to Pride.’”

“I like that. We can have a… what’s it called? The car with the decorations on the parades?”

“A float?”

“Yes! A float. We could have a Centaurs float, with the Cup and Chiron. Would be fun.”

“That would be nice,” Shane said, folding back the tweet. “We could use one day for Pride, and the other one for the Game Changers camp opening day.”

Talking like that’s probably bad luck, Shane thinks as he watches himself and Ilya give each other wide, affectionate smiles as they plan their Cup Days together, parades and camps, and Ilya trying to convince Shane to let Anya eat off the Cup (he won’t—not if he also wants them to drink from it, it’s one or the other, and Shane’s not fucking budging on that). Like touching the Cup before winning it. Lord Stanley probably won’t like that.

The thing is—Shane feels so light and so full both at once, that he could probably beat any weird Cup curse right now, so he doesn’t really care.

“We are bringing out a special guest to help us with our last challenge!” Harris announced excitedly as Ilya and Shane stood facing each other on center ice. “Our very own artist, on and off the ice, Luca Haas—better known to fans and friends as Haasy!”

The camera turned to show a faintly flustered Luca—his blond hair neatly combed, his baby face pink, and his eyes a bit wild looking behind a pair of glasses—giving less of an impression of being one of the most talked about rookies in the NHL during the last season, and more of an impression of just being a very awkward college kid who’d somehow wandered into a shoot in the way to the library.

“Hi!” He waved at the camera, and then seemed to recoil a bit in embarrassment, and said, “Hello, everyone! Um, I’m Luca Haas, and I play right wing for the Cens.”

Ilya remembers wanting to tease Luca right then, but the guy always looked a bit like a spooked horse or a deer caught in the headlights in front of a camera that wasn’t from Sports Center or TSN (and sometimes even by those—especially after a losing game), and something in that always triggered a certain protectiveness in him.

In the video it came out through Ilya pulling Luca into a half-hug and reaching to ruffle his hair roughly, messing up his so-very-carefully-coiffed ‘do while Luca burst into laughter as he tried to stop him in vain.

In front of them, Shane just smiled as he leaned on his stick a bit, letting Ilya lovingly harass the kid until Harris humorously reminded them they still had one last challenge to shoot, and they’d need Luca in one piece to do it. Ilya let him go with one last, loud, smacking kiss to the top of his head.

The title card came up with its cute animated explanation—a seven series face-off challenge, with Luca dropping the puck for them. Fairly simple and clear-cut. They’d toss a coin to decide who went where and then they’d just switch after each puck drop.

Luca took his duty way too seriously, standing between them with the air of someone given a truly transcendental task, and trying to get them to stop from getting too chippy with their sticks before the first puck drop—Ilya stopped only because Shane looked slightly mortified at being called out by a kid, slipping into his game face.

Ilya got mouthy, instead.

“Ready to lose, Hollander?”

“I'm gonna destroy you, Rozanov.”

Ilya remembers feeling fluttery at the words, a heavy stone of want dropping into his stomach the way it’s been happening since he was seventeen when faced with Shane’s intensity, with the way his world narrows until there’s only them and the puck and nothing else when Shane’s narrowed eyes meet his at center ice.

Hell, he feels fluttery now, watching it happen as some sort of voyeuristic third party invading the moment.

The puck dropped, and Shane got it from under Ilya’s blade, and he met Ilya’s gaze again, lips tilted in a lopsided, smug grin.

It didn’t last long, though, because Ilya got the next two.

On the fourth drop Shane was vicious and he had the puck rebounding off the boards with enough force and at such an angle that it slid all the way down to the goal line. Shane looked slightly embarrassed at the ensuing hoots and hollering, but only until Luca was ready to drop a new puck and he was locked in again.

The fifth one went to Ilya, the sixth one to Shane.

The seventh one was a close one, close enough that Luca hesitated before making the call.

It went to Ilya.

Shane, media darling that he was and perfect sportsman that he strived to be, took the loss with visible grace—squeezing Luca’s shoulder and telling him he did a good job.

Ilya, however, knows Shane better than he knows himself. He knows all the good, all the wonderful, all the deepest. And he also knows the weird, the ugly and the unexpected.

“You were mad.” Ilya rubs his thumb over Shane’s knuckles to soften the words, to let Shane know they’re mostly in jest.

Shane grunts but then admits, sheepishly, “A little. Hard call, though.”

Ilya leans heavily into him, endeared to the point of wanting things he can’t even name by how seriously his husband takes everything in life.

On the screen, a title card declared Ilya the winner of the skill competition and went over each of the challenges and their outcomes.

When that was done, the video cut back to Luca waving everyone goodbye as he left the rink for the locker rooms, presumably. And then it was back to them on center ice with their table and their slightly emptier fish bowl again.

Ilya didn’t tease Shane this time around before picking his tweet. He just plucked the one sitting on top and leaned against Shane as he unfolded it, so Shane would have an easier time reading it.

The tweet came up on the screen as they did, accompanied by a gif of Shane sitting in his locker room stall in his athletic underwear and jock combing through his long, sweaty hair with his fingers as he talked to somebody off-camera.

“@mcdreams10 says ‘I need the Cens to do one of those corny ‘who has the best flow in the team?’ videos every other franchise in the league has.’” Ilya read, lips tilted in a lopsided smile as he did.

“It’s true that we haven’t done one of those yet,” Harris agreed. “How about you guys give us your Top Five?”

“Well, I think Ilya has the best hair in the team, probably?” Shane looked pensive as he said that, truly giving the task at hand his serious consideration. “With the curls and the volume. It’s—very nice, I think.”

“Your hair is prettier,” Ilya argued before adding, slightly tongue-in-cheek, “Pretty enough for advertisements.”

That got Shane lowering his gaze, all shy and candy sweet.

(Yuna had been in talks with L’Oreal over the past few months to net them both a joint brand ambassador deal—Ilya isn’t much aware of what those kind of talks entail because he’s always stayed relatively clear of that side of business, letting his agent handle it, but he knows it involves a lot of phone calls, paused Yahtzee games to reply to emails, and prodding at Shane to get him to actually talk about what he’s comfortable endorsing and what he’s comfortable with doing for ads.

The L’Oreal thing had been one of those things where Yuna had prodded and Shane hadn’t given much beyond his go-ahead; later, in the privacy of their own bedroom and with his head resting on Ilya’s chest, and Ilya’s fingers carding through his hair, he’d admitted to always being a little embarrassed with the brands that banked on him being personable and charming when he felt he was neither.

Ilya had chuckled, but he’d dropped a kiss to his forehead and reassured him that he was charming—the most charming man on Earth as far as he was concerned.

Shane hadn’t seemed convinced, but he’d hummed in fond amusement and dropped a kiss onto Ilya’s pec before drifting off to sleep in Ilya’s arms.)

“So you guys would be one and two, then? What about the other three?” Harris encouraged.

Shane raised his gaze then and went back to looking deep in thought. Eventually, he said, “Troy has really good hair. Very glossy.”

“Uses lots of products. Is very vain,” Ilya told the camera, in faux confidentiality. “Hazy has nice hair too. His curls are very… what’s the word, nicely shaped?”

He made a curling gesture with the index finger of his free hand.

“Defined?” Shane supplied.

“Defined, yes.” Ilya agreed. “What about number five?”

“Maybe Luca?”

Ilya nods along, says, “Yes. He has a good haircut. Stylish.”

The ranking appeared on screen with the names of the players, and their faces next to them. Number one and number two read ‘Ilya/Shane (Undecided)’ and ‘Shane/Ilya (Undecided)’, with both of their faces.

Shane picked his last tweet the same way he’d picked all the others—from the bottom of the fishbowl, with lots of care.

Shane also leaned slightly against Ilya as he unfolded the paper, and they both took a silent moment to go over the tweet as it came up on screen.

When they were done, Ilya looked at him with raised eyebrows. Shane didn’t return the look, eyes still fixed on the piece of paper, lips pursed, and a dusting of pink high on his cheeks.

Soon enough, Shane caught himself and his face went blank, and then gained a lopsided smile that looked entirely too self-conscious as he read, “@gktsharks says ‘okay but: now that we know what we know, I’m dying to know what went down that one time Hollander and Hunter (two of the guys with the lowest PIMs per season and the fewest fighting majors in the league) got in each other’s faces after the game ended. You just know that tea was scalding hot.”

Ilya made a little amused sound, deep in his throat, as Shane read the last sentence. Shane retaliated by digging a finger into his stomach, but it only helped in making Ilya cackle out loud instead, pushing his finger away and leaning on his stick instead of against Shane.

“I don’t know what ‘the tea’ is either,” Ilya said, eyes half closed with how hard he was grinning at a Shane who looked more and more self-conscious by the minute.

“It was—nothing,” Shane said, finally, glancing at his hands as he refolded the slip of paper meticulously and laid it on top of Ilya’s. He dragged his hands down the length of his pants—awkwardly, with his stick stuck in his armpit—before looking up at the camera again. “Neither of our finest moments, I think. It’s just—sometimes that happens during a game when there’s a lot at stake, and you’re in your own head. You say things you regret, and then you gotta answer for them because that’s just the nature of hockey, I guess. But—Scott’s a great guy.”

Ilya made a somewhat reluctant noise of agreement there, added, “He is. Brave, too.”

“Yeah, he’s—he’s a really brave guy. One of the bravest guys I know, probably, and we… We owe him a lot, Ilya and me. More than we realize, probably. I don’t know that there’s any ‘tea’ in there, sorry. We were just two stressed out guys yelling out incoherent s—t at each other in the heat of the moment. I don’t think I even remember what I said.”

Shane gave the camera an apologetic smile, said, “Sorry.”

“I’m sure the fans will forgive you,” Harris said, cheerfully. “Now, I know I said those were the last two tweets, but—”

He paused here dramatically and both Ilya and Shane looked at him with identical raised eyebrows.

Harris laughed behind the camera, loud and contagious.

“Now, don’t look at me like that, guys. I’m not gonna have you do bag skates or anything.” His voice turned serious when he went on to say, “We know the past couple of months have been tough for you with everything that’s happened and everything that’s being said at the moment by… unsavory agents, but we here at the Centaurs want to make sure you know we’re thrilled to have you be part of our family, and that we couldn’t be prouder to be part of your legacy.”

Both Shane and Ilya looked struck at hearing that, completely unprepared for Harris’ earnestness.

And Ilya, on the couch, feels the words like a punch in his gut again, even though he knew they were coming in the first place. Shane’s hand twitches in his, so Ilya imagines he’s going through the same, stomach churning just like Ilya’s. “That’s why we wanted you to read one last tweet, this one from one of our own little family.”

Harris came on screen for the first time in the entire video, fashionable and larger than life even while being shorter than both him and Shane, and he handed them one last folded piece of paper before retreating.

Ilya and Shane bent their heads towards one another to read the tweet. It took them longer than any of the others had, and their expressions became softer and softer the more they read, until they were both wearing smiles that were maybe a bit too wobbly.

They looked at each other once they were done, and there was nothing but silence as they just held each other’s gaze—no words, no gestures.

Shane was the one to look away first, clearing his throat and smiling wide enough that his eyes were half closed with it as he looked down at the piece of paper in his hand.

“This last tweet is from Caleb Morris.” Shane darted a glance at the camera before looking back at the piece of paper, smile still warm and wide on him. “Caleb plays for our AHL affiliate team, the Belleville Centaurs.”

“He’s come up to play a couple of games,” Ilya added, the soft smile on him gaining an edge of pride at talking about one of their own. “Is a well-rounded player. Good hands—good dekes and good puck protection too.”

“Caleb’s tweet says ‘A few months ago the hockey world (and maybe the sports world at large) was shaken by the news of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov being involved in a relationship. Unfortunately, this news wasn’t willingly shared by them. “When it happened, I was reminded of nightmares I used to have back in Juniors. I was reminded of waking up covered in cold sweat and convinced that somebody had seen something and said something to so and so and that my time playing was up. It never was. Nobody saw anything, nobody said anything, and I lived to play the game I love another day. But my heart grew heavier every day too, full of fear and guilt and secrets and lies.

“When this happened to these two future Hall of Famers I started sweating like it happened to me. I kept thinking of what they’d do now, if they would deny it, if they would sweep it under the rug. But they didn’t. These two men with so much to lose and so many people expecting so much from them didn’t take the easy way out. They did the thing that I always wanted to feel brave enough and strong enough to do, they told the world the truth.

“And I wish I could say the whole world embraced them with open arms, but the world is slow to change and some people slower still. What I can say is for every person tearing them down, there are many more showing their support.

“The world is slow to change but it gets better a little faster with every Scott Hunter and every Troy Barrett, with every Max Riley and every Leah Campbell, and every Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov.

“I don’t want to keep waking up in a cold sweat anymore. I don’t want to keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don’t want this shame and I don’t want these lies, and I don’t deserve them. And more than that, while I still don't feel brave and I still don't feel strong, I want the world to change faster, for the kids waking up in a cold sweat today.

“My name is Caleb Morris, I play defense for the Belleville Centaurs, and I’m gay. And I want people to know #HockeyIsForEveryone’”

It took them a minute to react after that, a minute of silence and glancing at that piece of paper, until Shane finally said, “You are a brave man too, Caleb Morris. Thank you.”

“And you are right.” Ilya looked straight at the camera as he spoke, determined. “No matter what some a—holes say hockey is for everyone.”

Shane folded that last piece of paper as meticulously as he did the others, but instead of placing it over the other two on the table when he was finished, he unzipped his jacket and put it in one of his shirt's pockets.

The video wrapped up shortly after that, with Ilya and Shane shaking off the intense emotions of the moment by slipping into puck talk with Harris—the training camp and the new prospects, the upcoming season—and soon enough Harris was thanking them for their time and then it was over.

Neither of them says anything as the video comes to a stop.

Shane is—Shane is feeling too many things at once, is in too many places at once. He’s back in that rink with Ilya and Harris and Gen and whoever else and here on this couch with Ilya’s hand over his and waking up to find that FanMail video had gone viral and back at the WHJC.

Ilya’s thumb sinks between the knuckles of his middle and ring finger, bringing him back to the present—to the noises of the cottage, to Anya’s soft and warm fur between his toes, tickling him when he flexes them.

The video is still frozen on the TV screen and Shane releases a sigh that he can’t even understand. There’s a jumble of emotions in him at the moment, all tangled up and painful to tug at, tender.

A lifetime of leaving things well alone tells him to ignore them.

The past year of pushing past his boundaries for the things that matter tells him to tug.

So he does.

Suddenly there’s a knot in his throat, and he feels the heat building in his chest, up his neck. Feels tears pricking at the corner of his eyes.

The video is—it’s barely twenty three minutes long.

And it’s somehow all Shane had secretly hoped that stupid documentary about their rivalry could’ve been. It’s the best parts of them, and the funniest ones, and maybe even the weird ones and the boring ones and the awkward ones. It’s everything he wanted everyone to see, everything he wanted to show, and it’s—God, it’s so good.

But it’s also so overwhelming.

A tear slips down his cheek.

“It’s good,” he mumbles, and his voice is so embarrassingly wrecked, even to his own ears, that he feels the heat build up into a raging fire, and he’s sure he’s red all over, and he just has to turn around and bury his face in Ilya’s neck, getting him wet with the tears that he can’t stop—that he doesn’t want to stop.

“Is really good,” Ilya mumbles, his voice barely any better than Shane’s, and he leans his cheek on the top of Shane’s head.

Shane closes his eyes and breathes in deep, surrounding himself with Ilya’s scent and grounding himself in it, and in the sounds of the cottage around them, with the unraveling skein of emotions in him, and lets himself sink, heart so full that it’s a miracle it’s still beating.