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"Do you ever think about what you would do if you didn't play hockey?"
Shane's brow furrows and Rose quickly course corrects.
"I mean, we all know it's nothing but hockey for you, Shane. But Ilya, have you ever thought about what you would do?"
"Trophy husband."
The words roll easily off his tongue, a lighthearted joke made because Ilya's never really had any other options. Not in the way Shane has. Shane could have thrown himself into anything he wanted and Yuna and David would have been right there behind him cheering him on. Ilya's just lucky Shane's interest was hockey and not something like baseball, because then he wouldn't be sitting in this stupid cafe with his husband and his husband's ex-girlfriend. Ilya, on the other hand, plays hockey because he doesn't know how to do anything else.
"I would be happy to be nothing more than my beautiful husband's trophy husband."
It's a joke, but something unfurls in Ilya's chest even as he laughs with Shane and Rose about it. Something about it feels right to say. He's always played aggressively, roughly, and he feels every second of it. Not in a regretful way. He's proud of what he's accomplished. He's loved every goal, every chirp, every fight. But he hurts in ways that only old men hurt, and he's not even forty. Sometimes he wakes up and looks at the gray that has started to show on Anya's muzzle and thinks, I don't want to miss any more time with you, and then he gets up, grabs his gear, and drags his aching corpse to practice. They could replace every part of his body, he could feel brand new and eighteen again, and he still would be ready to be done, he thinks.
Trophy husband.
It sits on his tongue and rattles around his brain over the next few weeks. He knows that he's never felt the same way about hockey that Shane does, but he doesn't know what to do with that now that the reality of it is staring him down in the face. Shane still stays up late watching tape, taking notes, eager to get to practice every morning. After all these years of playing smart—smarter than Ilia has—he's not hurting in the way that Ilya is. Hockey still consumes him in a way that it's stopped consuming Ilya, even though he can't quite pinpoint when that changed for him. Ilya missed the start of last season recovering from a surgery he put off for too long, and when he was finally able to get back on the ice he found that he missed being off it in a way he never had before, but he thinks it maybe started before then. He's just not sure when.
He remembers being thirty and thrilled to be playing hockey on the same team as his husband. Now, not even a decade later, Ilya is beginning to think that maybe he just wants to give it all up. Shane will play hockey until they have to drag him off the ice and cut the skates off his feet, but Ilya thinks he can happily surrender his skates now; could have done it sooner than it now if he'd bothered to take the time to consider it.
He thinks he must be growing sappy in his old age. He wants a family—not that he and Shane and Anya aren't already a family—but he wants something domestic. Something more than long days of travel and nights spent in hotels on the road. When they travel, he misses his own bed more often than not, and the more he thinks about it, the more he finds that he doesn't mind the idea of sitting on the sidelines as long as it means he still gets to support Shane.
The first person he tells, of course, is Shane.
"Is it your knee again?" Shane worries because, of course, there has to be an obstacle to continuing, because otherwise why would Ilya want to stop? Ilya loves him for that, for his single-minded passion for the ice, even if it isn't true for him. "You should make an appointment to see—"
"It is not my knee. Or my back or my shoulder," he adds for good measure. Shit, he really does sound old. "It isn't anything. I am just done. Ready to be done."
He can see that Shane doesn't understand, but Ilya didn't expect him to, so it doesn't change anything. Shane doesn't understand, but he loves Ilya and wants him to be happy, so there's no argument from him, no attempt to try to persuade him to change his mind even when Shane hates change so much. If this is what makes Ilya happy, then Shane wants it for him even if what Ilya wants is incomprehensible to him.
It strikes Ilya again just how much he loves this man.
It's still early in the season, but he doesn't wait to tell the team. Leaving them in the dark seems cruel somehow, especially when Ilya knows just how much not having time to say goodbye can cut at a person. He has a quiet meeting with Wiebe and the rest of the coaching staff, and then after their next game, high off a home win against Toronto, he tells the team.
He waits until just before playoffs to make his official announcement, and the stands are packed with fans for every home game afterwards. The playoffs this year feel different. Ilya feels different. He's hungry for it in a way he hasn't been since his first Cup win with the Bears. But he's not hungry for himself. He's hungry for the men on the ice with him, for the fans cheering in the stadium and at home and in the bars. He wants to give them one final, sweet goodbye before he goes. Another Cup for the place that's become his home.
The Centaurs are knocked out in the second round.
Luca cries as he hugs Ilya in the locker room afterwards. "We wanted to win it for you."
Ilya thinks about losing seasons and the work of building up a team from scratch. He thinks about the Centaurs clawing themselves up from the bottom, young and hungry and full of potential. He remembers the first time they hoisted the Cup above their heads and how it felt doing it all over again last year. He wants to tell them, you already did, but his throat is thick and his eyes are hot and his face is wet as his team piles around him in the locker room for the last time.
He may have moved to Ottawa for Shane, but he loves this team and this city. They've become a part of him in a way the Bears and Boston never did. He's going to carry them all in his heart even when he walks away. Most people only ever have one family, but between Shane and Anya and the Hollanders and the Centaurs, Ilya is absolutely rich with family in a way he never thought he would be.
It doesn't feel any different at first, being retired. He and Shane still go to the cottage over the summer. They have dinner with Yuna and David. Shane and Yuna talk brand deals and publicity while he and David bend over a puzzle together, Anya curled up at his feet. There's still the youth camps and date nights and walks around the neighborhood with Anya and sex so mind-blowing it leaves him speechless in two languages.
He doesn't really think about it at all until the first morning when he drives Shane to practice. He starts to pull into the parking lot before he catches himself and course corrects, hoping Shane didn't notice. But of course Shane noticed, and he gives Ilya's hand a small squeeze. As he watches Shane walk into the building, he knows that Shane can't even begin to understand it, but there's a rightness in Ilya for the first time in a long time. This is how it's meant to be. He feels good. He feels settled. He gleefully buys a Hollander jersey and wears it to Shane's games and then keeps it on while he fucks Shane into their mattress. They fall into a comfortable rhythm, and Ilya wonders at how good his life has become.
The first time Shane plays too far away for Ilya to follow, that good feeling shifts and makes space for something...else. He's at the Hollanders' every night for dinner, and still, he feels the loneliness eat at him as he lies in bed missing his husband. He stays up late each night, drowning in it, and then he finds himself staying in bed later and later each day to make up for it. Now that he no longer has to follow the familiar rhythm of Shane's routine, he finds he doesn't really care about making his own.
Anya licks his face, and he holds her sweet little head and tells her, "You are not a very good substitute for our Shane."
Then Shane comes home, and everything is good and right again. Ilya makes sure to get out of bed first each morning so he can make Shane his disgusting smoothies and pack a meal plan approved lunch for him. He writes Shane little notes on his napkins, just like David used to do when Shane was a child, and Shane calls him sputtering saying, "You can't just draw dicks on my napkins, Ilya. I think I traumatized the rookies." He drives Shane to practice and picks him up and kisses Shane's bruises and massages his aching muscles. He lays with his head on Shane's lap as Shane dissects tape of the next team he'll play.
When Shane goes on a longer road trip, Ilya finds himself pacing around the house like a caged animal. He feels high strung, like he wants to crawl out of his skin. He calls Harris, who's busy because just because the team isn't at home doesn't mean there isn't work to do. He calls Bood who's out of town with his family. He could clean the kitchen or the living room, but Shane is the only one who cares about the crumbs on the counter or the nonexistent dust gathering on their furniture, so there's really no point in doing it if he's the only one home, he thinks. He ends up at the Hollander's, sitting in Yuna's home office as she pours over various paperwork, interrupting her with questions about Rolex and Reebok. He can tell by the set of her mouth after a while that he's in the way, so he makes an excuse that he has to let Anya out and goes home.
The day before Shane returns, Ilya goes on a cleaning spree, throwing out trash, mopping the floor, doing laundry. He gets the house just how Shane likes it and then lays awake all night in anticipation, feeling something almost like happiness again.
Everything is good again when he picks Shane up from the airport.
A few days after he gets back, Shane asks Ilya how he's been in the careful way that tells Ilya, I know something is wrong and you're keeping it from me. When they were younger, when being together and in love was new, Ilya would have shrugged him off out of fear of not being good enough. But he doesn't have to be afraid anymore even when something is intimidating and more than a little embarrassing.
"It is harder than I thought it would be, when you are gone," he admits.
After all their years together, Shane can read Ilya like no one else. He takes in the cadence of Ilya's voice, the drop of his shoulders, the twist of his mouth. He factors in all of the bad days Ilya has had, the pills he takes everyday, the ghost of his mother that still hangs around his neck. He takes in everything he knows about Ilya and knows what Ilya doesn't say, understands what he means, even though he'll never know how it feels.
"Oh, Ilya," Shane says, as Ilya tucks himself into his husbands arms. They stay there like that, until Ilya falls asleep and then in the morning Shane sits him down and makes a plan.
It starts with Shane suggesting he talks to Galina about it, which makes so much sense when Shane says it that Ilya feels more than a little stupid about the whole situation. Ilya makes an extra appointment with Galina, and she tells him he's too obsessed with his amazing husband. She also tells him to get a life. Nicely. Using big fancy therapy words. What she actually says is that it's normal to struggle after making a big life change and that he needs to find a new purpose outside of hockey and to look for other things to things that make him feel fulfilled. But Ilya knows that she means he needs to get a life.
Which is how he finds himself back in Yuna's home office, pouring over paperwork for the Irina Foundation with her. He's always been involved with the Foundation, of course, but now that his days are no longer taken over by training and flying across two continents for games, he can take a more active role in the everyday aspects of running it. He likes it, he thinks. He likes the way that he can still be connected with his mother, likes to think that maybe there is a twelve-year-old boy somewhere who won't have to live the life he's lived.
It becomes a habit, even when Shane's home, working with Yuna a few times a week. Sometimes they work together on things for the Foundation, sometimes they work separately—Yuna on whatever magic she's cooking up for Shane and Ilya on Foundation things. It's nice. Ilya has always felt closer to David, and he enjoys having something he can finally share with Yuna that isn't just a love for Shane.
Harris adds him to the Spouses and Partners group chat, and Ilya is quickly welcomed into the fold. Despite the many jokes he's heard over the years about both him and Shane being WAGs, hockey kept them too busy to really spend time with the Centaurs' loved ones except for team gatherings like barbecues at Bood's. Ilya is surprised at how good it feels to hear Hazy's wife talk about how much she misses him, to listen to Harris complain about Troy coming home too tired to help with the laundry. Ilya joins them sometimes to watch games, when he isn't with David and Yuna, and it feels like he's found a new kind of team to be a part of.
Galina also suggests that he and Shane find ways to stay connected when Shane's on the road. Ilya points out that he and Shane have lots of practice being apart only for Galina to remind him that it's been years since that was their lives and that what worked for them before might not work now.
It's something the two of them have already discussed. There used to be so much more distance between them—figuratively and literally—but now that Ilya's used to having Shane near him, he suddenly finds himself feeling it more than he ever has before. He misses the intimacy of having Shane around, and it has nothing to do with the sex. Well, it has a little to do with the sex, but it's also the feeling of Shane's drool on his shoulder in the morning, the feeling of his hands in Ilya's hair as he applies Ilya's favorite curl cream, the sound of Shane moving around the house while Ilya's in the other room.
They establish a routine of morning and nightly calls and texts sent throughout the day, not quite scheduled but definitely more regular than they've been in the past. Ilya's schedule starts to follow Shane's again, his waking and sleeping hours shifting as Shane crosses time zones. He sends Shane pictures of produce in the grocery store, before and afters of him doing the dishes, and selfies of what he's wearing each day. Shane's bad at it at first, the way he's always bad with change, but he tries and slowly his routine adjusts to make time for videos of team breakfasts, pictures of bruises, detailed lists of all the things he thought of while on the plane or bus.
By the All-Star Break Ilya feels more like himself, or rather, a more settled version of himself. He tags along and lounges around the pool and cheers on Shane in the stupid little contests the league has thought up. He signs autographs and does interviews where he gets to talk about how great Shane's season is going and how good Shane looks and how well he's scoring and how Shane deserves to win all the awards again. On the flight home he gets an idea, knows immediately that Shane will hate it, and starts scheming with a passion.
"Anya wants a sibling," he murmurs into Shane's skin a few nights later, after he's spent several hours making his husband forget how to think.
Apparently he didn't do a good enough job fucking his brains out though because a "No, Ilya," rolls easily off Shane's tongue like a well-practiced habit even though Shane's boneless and mostly asleep.
But the next morning over breakfast Shane makes his smoothie and then says, "I think Harris said his parents are expecting another litter. Maybe we can go and meet the puppies after they're born?"
Ilya thanks him right there in the kitchen, so thoroughly that they knock over Shane's disgusting smoothie and Shane makes him clean it up naked, which leads to Ilya pretending to be a very sexy maid and so they don't really get anything done for the rest of the day.
A few months later they bring a little mixed breed puppy home that Ilya names David, because he looks like your father, how does a dog look like my dad? There are a few days where Anya isn't sure of what to make of him, when they panic and worry that they've destroyed their family, but Anya is such a good, sweet girl, and David is such a cute little baby, that it doesn't take long for her to accept him.
They survive the season, Ilya welcoming Shane home after the team gets knocked out of the playoffs. Shane spends several days swallowing back something he's trying to keep hidden from him before Ilya finally bullies it out of him and it turns out that Shane just wanted to talk hockey but wasn't sure if Ilya would. As if Ilya could ever fully be done with the thing that brought them together. They spend the summer tossing around what ifs and analyzing plays. Shane jokes that the Centaurs should hire Ilya, but then he says it again more seriously. Ilya's good at playing the game, but he's not really made for analytics, not like Shane is. He's asked to commentate a game once, and then again and a third time. It's not as weird as he thought it would be, talking about it from the outside.
He gives the rookies tips when the Centaurs get together in bars and backyards. They look at him with wide eyes and an awe that never really goes away since they don't really get to know him, not like they get to know Shane. He gets on the ice a few times, pleased when he's still able to skate circles around them even though Shane laughs and tells him he's rusty.
He picks Shane up from practice and games in an ugly, practical SUV, Anya and David curled up in the backseat and overhears the rookies whispering as they walk by. I always forget Cap's married to Ilya Rozanov. He says Ilya Rozanov like Ilya is a memory, a story, a legend. He likes the idea of that, of being gone but not forgotten. Like there's a part of him still on the ice with Shane.
His jersey hangs from the rafters, number retired, and he knows one day Shane's will join it. It won't be Shane's choice; not like it was his. Shane isn't made for this kind of stillness, and that's okay. Ilya used to think he wasn't, back in the days when he drank too much and had too many women to bother learning their names. Now, he puts shoes on his children so their little paws don't get cut up by the hard ground outside. He cooks his husband his nutritionist approved meals for dinner. He wears a jersey that says HOLLANDER on the back as he watches the games from the stands or on TV at home.
And when someone doesn't know who he is, he introduces himself as Shane Hollander's trophy husband, as if he doesn't have a trophy case at home and a Wikipedia page listing out all of his accomplishments. He's just an extremely handsome man who happens to be married to the best hockey player in the league.