Archive of Our Own

Ilya’s rookie year is the best year of his life.

He’s barely an adult when he moves to a strange city where he doesn’t know anyone, in a country whose language isn’t his own, with the weight of being the first overall draft pick on his shoulders.

But Ilya is strong. He has been working hard for this since he was twelve.

His shoulders can bear the weight. He has made sure of it.

Boston and his teammates are nice enough, but it’s the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean and the fatness of his bank account that make all the difference.

Ilya makes money now, real money. More money than he ever dreamed of. More money than he knows what to do with, though his relatives back in Russia sure seem to know what to do with it.

He ends up buying the largest, most modern and luxurious house he can find. He hires an interior designer who fills it with art and makes new friends who fill it with laughter.

By the end of the season, he can barely recall what it was like to live in the dark and dreary house he grew up in.

He dreads going back there.

The dread grows until it’s all he can feel. It sits in the pit of his stomach, reaching black tendrils up his windpipe.

Smoking is the only thing that helps him breathe easier, and that’s how Hollander finds him on the rooftop at the MLH Awards.

“I don’t know if it’s worth jumping over,” Hollander quips.

Ilya is not so sure.

Shane Hollander is another reason why Ilya’s rookie year has been the best year of his life. He doesn’t know which he enjoys more—playing against Hollander, or playing with him.

It’s just so much fun to get a rise out of Hollander. Every glare, chirp, or postgame jab Ilya manages to tease out of him feels like a victory in itself.

Ilya loves catching Hollander’s hungry eyes on him from across the ice. He loves it when Hollander checks him against the boards, snarls a cute little insult in his ear.

He especially loves watching Hollander’s interviews and knowing what it’s like to have those pretty lips wrapped around his dick. It’s something he often thinks back to.

Ilya likes to fantasize about Hollander sucking him off right there in those showers after the CCM ad shoot, where anyone could’ve walked in and seen hockey’s golden boy on his knees for Ilya. It’s one of his go-to jerk-off fantasies.

Other favorites include Hollander fucking himself on his boring beige dildo while Ilya watches, and Hollander begging Ilya to fuck him in that hotel room at the All-Star Weekend. God, Ilya would’ve made it so good for him. They would’ve kept Scott Hunter up all night, and Hollander would’ve been too cock-drunk and blissed-out to care.

Right now, though, Hollander is angry with Ilya. No—disappointed in him.

Hollander doesn’t understand why Ilya isn’t downstairs, drinking to the Rookie of the Year. He doesn’t get—and how could he?—that for Ilya, going home isn’t nice.

He can’t see the dread choking Ilya from within. He can’t see the fog Ilya has been sinking deeper into with each passing day.

“I thought maybe we…” Hollander says, voice thick, and Ilya looks out over the glittering city below and lets himself imagine it.

He would follow Hollander to his hotel room. Take the time to work him open until he’s writhing on Ilya’s fingers, wet and pliant, trembling with need. Fill him up slowly, on his back, to watch it all play out on that handsome face, so beautifully expressive if you know where to look: anticipation, wonder, bliss.

Ilya would drink it all in and then lock it away somewhere deep inside his chest, where the fog can’t reach.

“Never mind,” Hollander says—angry, disappointed.

He turns to leave, but Ilya can’t let him walk away like this.

One kiss. One kiss to soothe Hollander’s hurt feelings. One kiss to see Ilya through a summer in Russia.

It’s selfish, and stupid. Ilya knows that Hollander will push him away the second he remembers they’re in public. He knows there’s a good chance it will only upset Hollander more.

He knows, but he’s selfish, and stupid, and he kisses Hollander anyway.

For a brief moment, Hollander kisses Ilya back like he’s starving for it, and it’s that part Ilya carries with him to Moscow. He keeps it carefully tucked away like the rocks he used to collect as a child, taking it out to admire it and turn it over and over in his hands only when he’s alone and it’s safe.

No one would believe it now, but Ilya Rozanov was a shy kid, prone to tears. Small for his age. An easy target.

Sensitive—that’s what his mom sometimes called him. She would hold him close and whisper it into his hair. My sensitive little boy.

She made it sound like it wasn’t a bad thing.

His father gave her hell for “mothering him too much,” and when Ilya was still very little, he didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean. Who else but his mama was going to mother him?

After her death, he threw himself into hockey. He hit a growth spurt. He started lifting weights, became big and strong. Not as big and strong as his older brother, but big enough to make Alexei and the other bullies think twice. Strong enough to fight back.

A couple of years after that, he threw himself into sex. Sometime after that, he started hooking up with Sasha, and sometime after that, he was robbed and beaten on his way home from school.

His bigger, stronger body was no match for four guys in ski masks, all Alexei’s age and size. They took his money and broke his jaw, several of his ribs, and most of the bones in his hands.

For a few terrifying months, he was afraid they’d also crushed his dreams of going pro, but he only came back stronger.

Everyone knows that Ilya Rozanov always comes back stronger.

Ilya Rozanov is always running his mouth. Ilya Rozanov doesn’t take shit from anyone. Ilya Rozanov is a grade-A asshole who doesn’t give a damn what anybody thinks of him, as long as they think he’s one of the two best hockey players in the world.

And Ilya Rozanov sure as hell never cries.

Sochi is a shithole.

Ilya doesn’t flinch when his father approaches him with two tumblers of vodka. His father can’t stand it when he flinches. He wants his son to take it like a man.

Ilya’s father doesn’t throw the vodka in his face. He doesn’t hurl the glass at Ilya’s head. He doesn’t drop it and order Ilya to take off his shoes and socks and stand barefoot in the shards until he’s learned his lesson.

He just hands Ilya the drink, and Ilya takes it and sips from it even though he feels sick to his stomach.

After Russia lost to Latvia—of all fucking countries—Ilya’s father struck him hard across the face, once, in full view of his team, and walked away without saying anything.

All day long, Ilya’s cheek burned with the humiliation of being unworthy of a proper beating.

Ilya doesn’t flinch when his father reaches for him with both hands to straighten his bow tie. He doesn’t step back or shrink in on himself. He tips his chin up, just a little, to give his father better access to his throat.

He can feel himself sinking.

The gala is a blur.

At some point, Svetlana reaches into the fog and pulls him along. She has a gift for him: oblivion.

Ilya considers it. Snorting a line of coke off the back of Sasha’s hand and chasing it down with half a bottle of wine. Letting Sasha bend him over and fuck him. Mark him. Make him hurt.

It’s tempting, but it already takes so much effort just to stand here.

Sasha bites Ilya’s bottom lip, gropes his crotch, and Ilya, in the fog, thinks back to the day when four masked men his brother’s age dragged him into an alley, beat the literal shit out of him, and, as he lay cowed and broken in a pool of his own blood and worse, dug his wallet out of his school bag like an afterthought. None of them said a single word; they just laughed. One spat on him before running off.

Then, incongruously, he thinks of Shane Hollander. Kind, sincere Shane, who seems to be under the impression that he can just walk up to Ilya and essentially say, Hey there, I care about you.

Like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Hollander would have listened to Ilya, if Ilya had talked to him. He would have hugged Ilya up there in those empty stands, if Ilya had been foolish enough to let him. He might even have pressed a tender kiss to Ilya’s forehead the way he did after they fucked in his apartment in Montreal, on a perfectly clear night.

Ilya is pretty sure he would’ve fallen apart if Hollander had so much as touched him. He’d been so close to cracking already, and he couldn’t crack. He can’t crack.

Not here. Not ever.

The fog trails him back to Boston.

On some level, Ilya knows he has nothing to prove to his father. Svetlana is right—he needs to stop giving a fuck what that asshole thinks. He’s old enough now to realize that his father will never be proud of him. Hell, the guy might not even recognize him six months from now.

Still, Ilya throws himself into winning the Cup.

Ilya Rozanov always comes back stronger.

He stops being lazy. He stops smoking. He stops drinking. He stops going out. He stops sleeping with people. He stops talking to anyone outside the team aside from Svetlana.

He has only one goal now, and he will die before letting it slip through his useless, ungrateful, disgusting fingers.

He works out more than ever before, pushing his body to its limits. He rides his team so hard he can hear his father’s voice in his own words.

Time skips and stutters.

Svetlana seems to move in with him for a while. She’s often there when he wakes up or comes to himself, in his bed or on the couch or sitting in his car in the driveway.

She brings him food and bullies him into eating it. She ushers him from the car to the couch, or the couch to the bed, or the bed to the couch, or the couch to the car.

“I’m unworthy of you,” he tells her.

“No, you’re not,” she says.

He is, but he’s too tired and in too much pain to argue.

The day they win the Cup is a bright blaze that burns off the fog.

Ilya holds the trophy in the air and cheers. He shouts, “For you, Mama,” and thinks, Fuck you, Papa.

He thinks, Surely I’ll be happy now.

They all go out together that night. Ilya gets drunk and high and has what Shane Hollander would probably refer to as an orgy.

He spends the next two days puking his guts out, unable to stop staring at the bedroom wall with burning eyes.

If it were up to Ilya, he’d skip the awards show in Vegas this year. But Svetlana wants to go, and she hasn’t asked him for anything over the past six months, so he pulls himself together for her.

He regrets it the second he sees Shane. The anger and disappointment and hurt in Shane’s eyes. He—

When did he start thinking of Hollander as Shane?

They present the award for Most Sportsmanlike together. Afterward, Ilya follows Shane into the bathroom.

“What the fuck do you actually want from me?” Shane shouts, and Ilya thinks, I’ll take anything you want to give me.

What he wants is more than just a few ignored texts and longing looks and stolen moments each season. He wants to know what it’s like to wake up next to Shane in his own bed, and fuck him during the day with the curtains open. He wants Shane to kiss his forehead again, maybe.

He wants Shane to call him Ilya.

But he can’t tell Shane any of that. He needs to keep as much distance between them as possible.

Ilya is barely holding it together as it is. He can’t let Shane get close enough to see the cracks.

He says, “I want you to suck my dick.”

“You suck my dick,” Shane snaps, and Ilya tells him to ask nicely, and Shane does. He looks up at Ilya with wet eyes and begs for it.

Shane Hollander, who famously keeps a tight rein on himself, wants it—wants Ilya—so bad his whole body is swaying with it. He needs this, craves this, and despite everything, he trusts Ilya to be the one to give it to him.

Ilya is powerless to resist. He isn’t strong enough to say no to this.

Most Valuable Player. What a fucking joke.

In the penthouse, Shane is so brave for him. Submitting to him. Putting on a show for him. Crawling naked across the bed to press his face into Ilya’s crotch and inhale deeply like he’s been thinking about it all evening.

Ilya takes him from behind, roughly, and Shane laps it up. Ilya puts a hand between Shane’s shoulder blades, pushes him down to the mattress, and Shane arches into the touch and pants for more. Ilya holds Shane’s hips in place with both hands as he fucks into him, and Shane moans louder than ever before.

After, Ilya lights a cigarette.

Maybe this will do the trick. Maybe this will make Hollander understand that Ilya is worthless, and Hollander is better off without him.

Shane doesn’t even complain about the smoke.

He tries to talk to Ilya. About Sochi. About Russia.

Ilya knows Shane means well, but the fog has returned, closing around him like a vise. He didn’t even realize it was gone until it came rushing back in.

He just barely manages to get Hollander out of the penthouse before it swallows him whole.

Ilya doesn’t look out the windows at the glittering city below. He doesn’t consider going out onto the terrace. He doesn’t even have the strength to lift his fucking lighter to his mouth.

He just sits, in the fog, among the damp and rumpled sheets, in the room that smells like sex and sweat and smoke and Shane, with an unlit cigarette between his lips and Shane’s earnest question running through his mind on a loop.

Do you even like it there?

By 2016, Ilya’s father doesn’t recognize him most of the time.

It’s one of his nicest summers in Russia.

Alexei, glad to be off the hook for a couple of weeks, doesn’t even swing by to ask for more money. Polina—whom Ilya has never, not a single day in his life, thought of as his stepmother—treats Ilya the same way she always has, with polite detachment.

Ilya’s father mostly mistakes Ilya for his own long-dead brother, or a nurse, or a burglar. Sometimes he gets paranoid and attacks Ilya, but he has grown so frail that Ilya can easily keep him from harming anyone until he calms down.

Being able to overpower his father isn’t nearly as satisfying as he used to imagine when he was a kid.

One afternoon, when Ilya is handing him his pills and a glass of water, his father pats his cheek and says, briskly, “You are a hard-working boy. I wish my son was more like you.”

Nicest thing he ever said to me, Ilya texts Svetlana. She’ll see the humor in it too.

When his father dies, Ilya cries for the man he knew who never knew him. The man who drove his mother to kill herself, and beat him every day of his life until Ilya was old enough to put an ocean between them. The man who, by the end, was too weak to hurt a fly.

The man who, in the end, was just a man.

At the wake, Ilya gets into it with Alexei. Alexei comes at him, and just like that, Ilya is a little kid again, hiding from his older brother in his bedroom closet; he is a teenage boy lying in an alley, choking on his own blood, too terrified to try to scream for help.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he yells, and he hates himself for sounding so scared.

Alexei’s fingers dig into the flesh of his shoulder in some kind of nerve pinch. Minimum effort for maximum payoff—that’s always been the Alexei way.

It’ll hurt for days, a sharp, nauseating pain, and every time Ilya feels it, he will be reminded of the hatred in his brother’s eyes. Of looking into them and realizing, once and for all, that Alexei will always despise his faggot little brother, no matter how much money Ilya throws at him.

And, right on the heels of that thought:

Ilya doesn’t owe Alexei anything. If he ever did, he has more than paid that debt. He just buried the last person he had any obligation to in this country.

His filial duty died with his father. He’s an orphan now, with no family to speak of.

The realization is a punch to the gut and a weight off his shoulders all at once. It sends him reeling, but it leaves him feeling like he can breathe a little easier.

Before flying out, Ilya visits his mother’s grave one last time and begs for her forgiveness.

Shane’s cottage is spacious and bright. It feels homey.

Ilya likes it a lot.

Shane is… different. A weight has been lifted off his shoulders, too. Ilya first noticed it at the All-Star Weekend in Florida, but it’s even more obvious here at the cottage. He seems less tense, more comfortable in his own skin.

He even suggests they both be honest about their feelings these next two weeks, and Ilya—God help him, he’s so far gone for this guy—agrees to try.

They fuck during the day, with the blinds open. Shane makes burgers. They sit by a fire and Ilya talks about his mom for the first time in years, while Shane strokes his hair and listens. It doesn’t hurt as much as Ilya thought it would.

They wake up in the same bed, their limbs entangled. They have lazy morning sex; Ilya makes Shane come twice. They spend some time kicking a ball around, just because they can.

It all feels so nice and natural that it takes Ilya way too long to realize something is wrong.

They’re watching some random sports documentary (what they’re really doing is snuggling on the couch, but Shane insisted on putting something on in the background) when Ilya notices how tightly Shane is holding himself.

“What is the matter?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Shane says, too quickly.

Ilya sits up. Shane’s face is pinched, his freckles standing out against his pale skin.

Ilya’s stomach drops. “Shane.”

“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“It is okay if you’ve changed your mind about—”

“No! It’s definitely nothing like that.” Shane threads their fingers together. “My head hurts. That’s all.”

“Concussion headache?”

“I guess, yeah. I still get them sometimes. It’s not a big deal.”

It’s kind of a big deal, judging by the tension around Shane’s mouth and eyes. And the way he avoids looking at the screen.

“Then why did you want to watch TV?” Ilya demands.

Shane drags his free hand down his face. “I just didn’t want you to get bored.”

“Bored? Around you?”

Shane shoves him, then grimaces in pain.

“Come, Hollander,” Ilya says, squeezing Shane’s hand. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“I don’t wanna,” Shane mumbles, but he lets Ilya lead him to the sun-warmed bedroom and lies down as Ilya closes the blinds. The sun is still out in full force, so they don’t do as much as he hoped.

“You need blackout shades.”

“I like to rise with the sun,” Shane says from where he is lying on his back on top of the covers with his arm draped over his eyes.

“Of course you do,” Ilya mutters. “Do you want blanket?”

“No, thanks. Too hot in here.”

Ilya drapes the blanket over the foot of the bed just in case. “What can I do?”

“Um, actually, could you get my sleep mask from the fridge?”

“From the what?”

“Shut up. The cold helps.”

Ilya goes to get the sleep mask that lives in Shane’s fridge.

“Fuck, that’s so much better,” Shane groans as he tugs it down over his eyes. “Thank you.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Ilya grumbles, settling next to him.

“I just don’t want to waste any of the time we have together.” Shane says it plainly, without hesitation.

Something twists in Ilya’s chest. Something warm, and just this side of painful.

“Hollander,” he says in a teasing tone. “Since when do you think time we spend together in bed is wasted?”

“Well, I didn’t know you were gonna be in here with me.”

Ilya says, quietly, “Where else would I be?”

Shane hums and pulls him closer.

They cuddle in silence for a while. Ilya almost dozes off with his head on Shane’s chest, but he can tell that Shane is still wide awake.

He pushes up on one elbow. Shane’s jaw is clenched, his mouth a tight line. There’s a fine sheen of sweat on his upper lip.

Ilya gently rubs his thumb over Shane’s cheek to make him unclench his jaw. “I think I know how to help you feel better,” he says as he watches Shane’s lips part.

“Yeah?” Shane perks up.

“But you have to promise something.”

“What’s that?”

“You have to promise to stay very calm and relaxed for me. Can you do that?”

If there’s one thing Ilya knows about Shane Hollander, it’s that he will never back down from a challenge.

And, sure enough:

“Bring it, Rozanov.”

Ilya bites back a grin. “I don’t know,” he says, tracing a fingertip along the top edge of the sleep mask to smooth Shane’s brow. “I think maybe you need some help to stay still.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Shane agrees eagerly. “What’d you have in mind?”

“Do you keep any ties here?”

“Fuck,” Shane says under his breath. “Yeah. Back of the bottom drawer. Not one of the striped ones, please.”

“Be right back. You be good and take off those clothes for me, yes?”

“Fuck off, dude.”

When Ilya returns to the bed after a quick detour to the en suite, Shane is completely naked except for the sleep mask now perched on his forehead. His already hard cock twitches when he sees what Ilya is holding: a light-blue silk tie, a box of tissues, and a bottle of lube.

“You gonna fuck me raw?” Shane asks breathlessly.

Ilya raises his eyebrows. “Don’t I always?”

“No, I mean, as in, without a condom. Bareback.” Shane’s cock gives another twitch, precome beading at the tip.

Ilya dumps his spoils on the foot of the bed. He strips off his tank top, just to watch Shane’s eyes darken with lust, and then picks up the tie and runs it through his fingers. “I am not going to fuck you.”

Shane deflates a little. “Oh. Okay.”

“Hollander. The point here is to make you nice and relaxed so you can sleep off headache. Remember?”

“It’s pretty much gone already. Surely—”

“Put the mask back on, you idiot,” Ilya says fondly.

Shane reaches for the sleep mask with both hands and tugs it down over his eyes again. He leaves his arms there, on either side of his head, palms up, fingers slightly curled.

He looks stunning, all splayed out and ready for Ilya. His cock is rock hard, leaking precome.

“You are too excited,” Ilya chides, like his own cock isn’t straining against his shorts. “Maybe this is not such a good idea.”

“Rozanov, I swear to fucking God, if you—” Shane cuts himself off and abruptly changes tack, visibly forcing his body to go slack on the bed. He lets his legs fall open. “See? I can be good for you, Ilya.”

Ilya chokes on his own breath.

Shane flashes a tiny, vindictive smile.

Enough of this. Ilya kneels on the bed in the space Shane has made for him, bending down to kiss the tip of Shane’s nose peeking out from under the mask. Shane starts at the contact, but his smile melts into something soft and sweet.

Carefully, Ilya pulls Shane’s wrists closer together above his head and loops the tie around them in a loose knot.

Shane is breathing shallowly. “Tighter,” he whispers when Ilya lets go and sits back.

“No. This is not to restrain. Just to remind you of your promise.”

Shane frowns beneath the mask.

Ilya decides to throw him a bone. “But maybe next time I will tie you to the bed and have my way with you. We’ll see.”

“Fuck, Ilya.” Shane’s whole body shudders.

Ilya hasn’t even touched Shane’s cock yet. This was probably a really bad idea, medically speaking. But he’s pretty sure Shane would strangle him with the tie if he tried to cut this short now.

Not that he wants to. Ilya would make this moment last forever if he could.

As he drinks in the sight, it hits him that this is the first time he’s had Shane spread out before him like this. In daylight, in a safe place.

And for once, the clock isn’t ticking.

There’s no one around. They have nowhere to be. Ilya could keep Shane like this for hours, if he wanted to.

They have hours.

They have days.

For the next two weeks, they have all the time in the world.

Ilya’s throat has gone tight. His eyes feel hot.

“Everything all right? Ilya?”

Ilya has promised to try to be honest. But how honest is he supposed to be, on a scale from deflecting to confessing that he’s afraid he might accidentally-on-purpose wrap his Porsche around a tree driving home from the airport two weeks from now because he can’t stand the thought of being alone in his house after this? That he knows two weeks is better than nothing, and more than he deserves, but still—selfishly, stupidly—Ilya wants more, more, more? That he wishes they could wake up together every morning for the rest of their lives?

Better to err on the side of deflection.

“I am just thinking that you are beautiful.” He slides his hands up the inside of Shane’s calves and thighs, pausing when Shane shivers. “Have I told you how beautiful you are?”

“You’ve definitely told me that I take your cock beautifully,” Shane says in a strained voice.

“Yes, you take my cock very beautifully.”

“I know. You’ve told me.”

“And you are,” Ilya says. “Very beautiful.”

He ignores Shane’s poor twitching and leaking cock for the time being. Instead, he leisurely traces the jut of Shane’s hips, the ridges of his abs. Every time Shane arches up into his touch, Ilya waits patiently for him to go limp again before continuing.

“More, please,” Shane murmurs.

Ilya can’t tell if Shane’s asking for more talking or more touching. Probably safe to assume both.

He leans down to kiss Shane’s belly button. “And your skin is so lovely and smooth.”

“My skin? That’s a little creepy, Rozanov. Is this the part where I find out I’ve invited a serial killer into my home and let him blindfold me and tie me up?”

“You lured me to cabin in woods,” Ilya points out. He strokes the muscled planes of Shane’s chest, the firm curves of his biceps. Goose bumps rise in the wake of his touch.

“It’s a cottage,” Shane gasps. “Oh fuck, please touch me.”

“Hmm, more like mansion. I am touching you.”

“You know what I mean. Please, Ilya.”

“And you always beg so very prettily.”

“Please touch my cock. Please.” Shane rocks his hips up.

Ilya lifts his hands and sits back on his heels. “Remember your promise.”

Shane straight-up whines as he forces himself to relax. “I can promise you that I’m gonna lose my goddamn mind if you don’t touch my cock right now. How’s that for a promise, huh?”

He is getting a little too worked up. It can’t be good for his headache.

“Shh,” Ilya says soothingly, hooking his hands behind Shane’s knees.

“Don’t you fucking shush me, Rozan—”

Ilya folds Shane’s legs up to his chest and licks a broad stripe over his hole.

“—oh, yes,” Shane moans.

After all these years, Ilya knows Shane’s body as intimately as his own. He knows exactly where and how to touch him to bring him to the edge without pushing him over it.

Shane is so wet that Ilya doesn’t even need to bother with the lube; he just loosens him up with his tongue, strokes Shane’s cock until Shane is more or less whimpering, and then slides two precome-slick fingers into him, easily finding the spot that makes him shudder and cry out.

He keeps going until Shane is trembling all over, grinding against Ilya’s tongue and fingers, too lost in pleasure to remember either his promise or—hopefully—his headache.

Then, Ilya deep-throats Shane while fucking both fingers in and out of him, and Shane comes with a moan that Ilya feels all the way down his spine.

“Holy shit, Ilya,” Shane pants as he melts into the mattress, chest heaving. His sleep mask is a little crooked. The tie has slipped off one of his wrists, but his hands are still up by his head.

Ilya straightens the mask, takes away the tie, tickles Shane’s armpits to make him move his arms, and retrieves the box of tissues from the foot of the bed.

He’s almost done cleaning up when Shane suddenly stirs and slurs, “Wait, let me… I wanna…”

“I came already.” A while ago, actually, rutting against his own hand with Shane’s heels digging into his shoulders and his tongue buried in Shane’s ass. His shorts are soaked.

Worth it, though.

“You what?”

“This was about you. Your headache.”

“My what?” Shane sounds dazed.

Ilya smiles vindictively.

He wads up the tissues, peels off his shorts, and rolls over to drop everything on the floor next to the bed. Shane can’t see what he’s doing anyway.

“Ilya?”

Ilya looks up guiltily. “Yes?”

“Nothing,” Shane mumbles. “Just making sure you’re still there.”

Ilya rolls back to Shane’s side and presses a kiss to his shoulder. “I wouldn’t leave you.”

I never want to leave you ever again.

Ilya’s chest constricts at the thought. He shakes his head to clear it.

Shane sighs. His breathing slows, deepens.

I love you, Ilya mouths against Shane’s warm skin. In Russian, just to be safe.

That night, he finds out that Shane loves him back.

The next day, he finds out that Shane Hollander is a liar, and they did have to worry about his parents showing up at the cottage.

It could’ve been worse. It’s not like Shane’s dad walked in on, say, the two of them raw-dogging it for the first time, or Shane sandwiched between the window and Ilya’s cock, or Ilya enthusiastically rimming a tied-up, blindfolded Shane.

But still. It isn’t great.

Shane is—understandably—very upset, and at first his parents are too taken aback to be warm and supportive. In Ilya’s inexpert opinion, they’re more like… lukewarm and not unsupportive.

Then again, maybe this is what warm and supportive looks like for Shane’s parents. Ilya wouldn’t know. He only just met them.

And to be fair to them, he wouldn’t recognize parental warmth and support if it hit him in the face.

Either way, once they start getting over the shock of their son coming out as gay by revealing that he’s been sleeping with the slutty Russian enemy for the better part of a decade, Shane’s parents seem like pretty nice people. They clearly love Shane a lot. Ilya likes them.

Sadly, they clearly don’t like Ilya.

Ilya comes to this conclusion several hours after they get back to Shane’s cottage. Shane has channeled all his leftover nervous energy into chopping wood and building another fire. His adrenaline is finally wearing off, leaving room for Ilya to realize he’s having one or two feelings of his own. Which he is now having out loud, as per Shane’s request for honesty.

“They do like you,” Shane insists. “Dad made you pasta! And he got out the good vodka for you and everything.”

Ilya shakes his head, staring into the crackling flames.

Shane’s parents were kind to him—that’s true. But in their eyes, Ilya saw that they know what he has known all along. What he tried to get Shane to understand on that rooftop at the end of their rookie season all those years ago, and up in those stands in Sochi, and in that bathroom and penthouse in Vegas, and in that hotel room in Tampa a few months back. What he would have made Shane understand if he’d been stronger. Less selfish. Less stupid.

Shane’s parents know that Ilya isn’t good enough for Shane.

“Your mother thinks I am traitor to Boston,” Ilya points out. “Your father thinks I am not a nice man.”

“That’s not what—”

“They think I am promiscous.”

“They don’t think you’re promiscuous. They were just—”

“They probably think I will give you some terrible disease that will make your penis fall off.”

“I don’t—”

“They probably think I will cheat on you with lots and lots of women.”

“Hey! Can you have a little more faith in my parents, please?”

“And I ate all the Parmigiano,” Ilya says miserably. “I should not have eaten all the Parmigiano.”

“Are you spiraling? Because it kind of sounds like you’re spiraling. It’s just, you usually have all your big feelings off-screen and/or in Russian, so I’m not sure.”

Ilya puts his head in his hands. “It was very rude of me to eat all the Parmigiano.”

Shane slides off the couch and crouches in front of Ilya, pulling Ilya’s hands into his own. He’s been in high spirits ever since they left his parents’ cottage; even now, he’s still bright-eyed with relief and disbelief and tentative hope. It’s a good look on him.

“Listen,” Shane says, “I know my mom, all right? If she really didn’t like you, trust me, I’d know. And so would you. My mom is a lot of things, but subtle isn’t one of them. And Dad was just ribbing you.”

Ilya looks away.

“They may need some time to get used to the idea of you, that’s all. And to get to know you. The real you—not the Ilya Rozanov they’ve made up in their minds with a little help from the media.”

“Real me did not make very good first impression, I think.”

Shane shrugs. “I disagree. Honestly, I feel like everyone did pretty well under the circumstances.”

Still, Ilya resolves to do better next time.

They end up going back to Shane’s parents’ cottage for dinner the next evening. Ilya makes sure to tame his curls and wear a plain T-shirt this time.

Dinner goes well. He remembers to wait to eat until everyone has been served. He asks questions and pays attention to the answers. He smiles at jokes and doesn’t make too many himself. He’s careful not to talk too much, period. He helps clear the table and clean the kitchen even though Shane’s parents keep telling him to go sit down already.

He says yes when Shane’s dad asks if he likes wine, which seems to be the right answer: David nods approvingly and disappears for a few minutes. He returns with an unopened bottle he proudly holds out to Ilya, saying something about “unique red” and “rare vintage.”

Flustered, Ilya stands up and takes it. The only thing he knows about wine is how to drink it. He stares at the label, turns the bottle around in his hands for what feels like an appropriate amount of time.

“This looks very nice,” he says, to say something, and holds it out to David again, but he’s exhausted and kind of woozy from the stress of being on his best behavior all evening, and his palms are a little sweaty, and before David can take the bottle back, it slips from Ilya’s fingers and smashes on the tiles.

It doesn’t seem to happen in slow motion, the way these things sometimes do. It happens in a sudden, violent explosion of glass and wine. The bottle is there one moment, gone the next. From whole to shattered in the span of a breath.

Ilya doesn’t flinch. His father can’t stand it when he flinches.

“Ilya,” Shane says, horrified, at the same time as Yuna sharply says, “It’s okay,” and David lets out a startled laugh, scratching the back of his neck as he takes in the situation.

The floor, the nearest wall, Ilya’s bare feet, David’s shoes—everything is covered in jagged shards of glass, drenched in blood-red wine.

It looks like a fucking murder scene.

Ilya stands, frozen, in the mess he has made. All his muscles have locked up. He couldn’t have flinched even if he wanted to.

For a long, awful moment, no one says anything. The sound of glass shattering echoes in Ilya’s head, growing louder instead of fading.

“Careful there, son,” David says, with a glance at Ilya’s feet. “Don’t move. Just let me clean some of this up first, all right?”

Something cracks in Ilya’s mind. Splinters like the glass, floods his skull with pressure.

“I’m sorry,” he says mechanically, and then his muscles unlock and he’s moving, walking out the door and into the woods.

Time skitters and skips.

A wolf howls in the distance.

There’s a rushing in Ilya’s ears, like he’s underwater. Like maybe he has walked into the lake and now he’s drowning.

Shane’s voice cuts through the fog, thick with tears: “—Ilya, you’re scaring me, sweetheart, please—”

Ilya’s body grinds to a halt.

Shane appears in front of him like a mirage. One moment he’s not there, the next he is.

Ilya says, with difficulty, “‘Sweetheart?’”

Shane laughs wetly. “Yeah, I thought that might do it.”

His hands are on Ilya’s shoulders, like he’s afraid Ilya will run off the second he lets go.

Ilya won’t run off. He’s just walking.

“Just walking,” he says. His mouth feels numb. He can barely get the words out.

“I know. You’ve been saying that.”

Has he?

Shane’s eyes are huge and shiny in the dark. Ilya reaches for him. He doesn’t realize how badly his hands are shaking until he tries to wipe away Shane’s tears and can’t get his thumbs to cooperate.

“Ilya, I love you, but you’re gonna put my fucking eye out.”

“Sorry.” Ilya lets go of Shane’s face. “I did not mean to scare you.”

“I know,” Shane says again. His hands are still on Ilya’s shoulders. “It’s okay. Let’s just go back to my parents’ cottage, all right?”

Broken glass, scattered across the floor. A pool of red wine, spreading like a bloodstain.

“No.”

“Ilya, it’s really okay. They—”

“No. I can’t go back.”

Fuck, what has he done?

Dropping a bottle of David’s prized wine isn’t even the worst part. The worst part is walking away from it, wandering off into the woods like a pathetic idiot having some kind of mental breakdown.

Ilya’s father must be turning in his grave.

A hot coal of shame ignites in his gut. He almost gags.

If Shane’s parents didn’t already know how wrong he is for their son, they definitely do now.

“Hey,” Shane says, searching Ilya’s eyes. “They’re not, like, mad or anything. Accidents happen, right?”

“Not to me.”

When Ilya was about eight years old, he dropped a plate at home. His mom had to take him to the hospital the next morning, after his father left for work. The official story was that Ilya had fallen down the stairs. No one ever questioned it.

He learned to be more careful after that.

“Okay, well,” Shane says, “anyway, it’s real dark out here, don’t you think? And too chilly to be out in a T-shirt. How about we go have this conversation in—”

“Shane. I am not going back.”

Ilya knows he’s being unreasonable. He should go back, apologize for his behavior, clean up the mess he made. Try to salvage the situation. Save face. But the thought of seeing Yuna and David again tonight makes him feel sick. He’d rather be torn apart by wolves.

A breeze rustles through the trees; a branch snaps somewhere nearby. In the hushed silence of the night, the sound is as loud as a gunshot.

Ilya shivers under Shane’s hands.

“Let’s just walk back to the car, then,” Shane says pleadingly. “You can stay outside. I’ll get our stuff and tell my parents you’re not feeling well and then we can go home and talk about it there. Okay?”

Ilya doesn’t want to talk about it anywhere. His stomach hurts, and his teeth are chattering, and the soles of his feet are on fire.

“Okay.”

“And please put this on.” Shane pulls off his sweatshirt and thrusts it into Ilya’s hands.

They walk back to the house in silence, Shane lighting the way with his phone. Ilya’s feet hurt more with every step. By the time they reach the driveway, he’s limping and leaning heavily on Shane, drawing in sharp, shallow breaths.

Shane leaves him propped against the passenger-side door with a kiss on his cheek and a whispered promise to be right back.

Ilya pulls up the hood of his sweatshirt, rests his forehead against the car. He closes his eyes. A loon calls in the distance.

Shane is not right back. Ilya has no idea how much time has passed when he finally drags his eyes open at the sound of approaching footsteps.

But it’s not Shane.

It’s Yuna.

Yuna, holding her hands out in front of her like she’s approaching a spooked horse, or appealing to a crazed gunman.

Ilya is going to throw up. He spilled red wine all over Shane’s mother’s kitchen, and now he’s going to throw up all over her sandaled feet and perfectly painted toenails, and he will never, ever be able to show his face here again.

He’ll have to break up with Shane and move back to Moscow. He will die there, and be buried next to his asshole father, and be haunted by him even in death.

“Ilya,” Yuna says softly, “honey, come here,” and she wraps her arms around him and pulls him into a motherly hug.

Ilya swallows bile. He clings to her. How could he not? It’s the first time since he was twelve that he’s been held like this.

Shane materializes, looking a little sheepish. Together, he and Yuna help Ilya into the house. Ilya doesn’t know where David is and doesn’t ask.

Someone has been cleaning up the crime scene. The tiles are spotless (Ilya wonders how long he was walking for, Shane hot on his heels, trying to get him to snap out of it) but there are still red splatters on the wall.

Time skips.

He is stretched out on the couch with his head in Shane’s lap and his feet in Yuna’s. She is tweezing shards of glass and pieces of gravel and pine needles out of his shredded feet, antiseptic and bandages at the ready.

Ilya puts his hands over his face and keeps them there, like a child hiding from the monster under the bed. It’s not as if he can sink any lower tonight anyway. He focuses on the pain, swallowing mouthfuls of bile. Shane strokes his hair and doesn’t try to get him to talk.

This is fine. Ilya won’t have to go and die in Russia after all. He can just hide his face in his hands for the rest of his life.

He wakes up in Shane’s bed, in Shane’s cottage, with Shane’s snoring body sprawled out beside him. Summer rain patters against the windows.

For a moment, Ilya almost manages to convince himself that it was all just a bad dream; that nothing went wrong yesterday; that he didn’t make a complete fucking fool of himself in front of his boyfriend’s parents he was supposed to impress.

But he appears to be wearing a Montreal Metros hoodie, and his feet are bandaged.

Ilya doesn’t panic. He can contain this. Control the narrative, as Shane would say.

First things first. He takes off the Metros hoodie.

Next, he grabs his phone from the nightstand and shoots off a quick text to Yuna and David: I apologize for my shameful behavior. It will not happen again.

Then, he hobbles to the bathroom, pukes, pisses, brushes his teeth, and crawls back into bed to go down on Shane.

Shane sleeps like a fucking log. Ilya had no idea. There’s so much they don’t know about each other yet. They are finding out so many new things about each other! Ilya is finding out that Shane sleeps like a log, and Shane is finding out that Ilya is unfortunately very deeply insane and should probably be put down like a rabid animal to save everyone further embarrassment.

In Ilya’s defense, he didn’t know that about himself yet either. He’s familiar with the fog and the time skips, but not with… whatever that was yesterday. It almost feels like it happened to someone else, which is likely the only reason why Ilya’s chest hasn’t caved in under the crushing weight of humiliation.

Shane moans wantonly above him, uninhibited in a way that makes Ilya think he might still be asleep. Ilya has just set himself the challenge of making Shane come without waking him up when Shane suddenly goes rigid, buries both hands in Ilya’s hair, pushes his head all the way down, gasps, “Oh fuck, Ilya, fuck,” and comes down Ilya’s throat.

They make out lazily while Shane jerks Ilya off. Ilya wipes himself with the Metros hoodie and tosses it off the bed. Shane curls around him from behind, trailing his fingers up and down Ilya’s forearm.

Ilya lets his eyes drift shut.

Maybe it was just a bad dream after all.

“Hey,” Shane says, voice rough with sleep. “Has anything like that ever happened to you before? Like last night, I mean.”

Ilya’s stomach clenches painfully.

But he doesn’t panic. He can contain this.

“‘Good morning, Ilya,’” he says. “‘How did you sleep, Ilya.’”

“Ilya.”

“‘Thank you for nice wake-up blow job, Ilya.’”

“I’m serious. You were, like, full-on dissociating. Has that happened before?”

“Am very sorry, Mr. Shrink. I thought you were my boyfriend. I must have wrong cottage. Please forgive me for getting in your bed and sucking your dick in your sleep.”

Shane knocks their shoulders together in a flagrant violation of spooning etiquette. “That’s Dr. Shrink to you. And I wasn’t asleep. Answer the question, Rozanov.”

“Mr. Dr. Shrink, I am smart, but I am not smart doctor like you. You will have to use smaller words for my smaller brain.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

Ilya relents. “No. I was… in bad place, for a while. After Sochi. But not like this, no.” His vision blurs. There’s a lump in his throat that is probably not Shane’s come. He swallows. “I don’t know what happened. I am sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I embarrassed you.”

“I look embarrassed to you?”

“Usually at least a little, yes.”

“Ilya,” Shane says. “I’m trying to have a genuine fucking conversation here. Can you please meet me halfway? You promised to be honest.”

Ilya is starting to regret his decision to come to the Cottage of Emotional Availability. In Russia, no one ever made him talk about his feelings.

“Think I liked it better when we just fucked,” he mutters.

“No you fucking didn’t,” Shane scoffs. He kisses the top of Ilya’s head. “Do you remember how we got home last night?”

Ilya’s stomach wavers. He racks his brain. He vaguely remembers sitting in the passenger seat, staring at the dark road ahead, which means he must’ve stopped covering his face with his hands at some point. “A little. Not really. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

Ilya’s stomach wavers again, more insistently this time. He feels himself break out in a cold sweat.

He jerks upright. The room spins.

“Ilya?” Shane sits up as well. “Hey, I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t take this personally,” Ilya manages, and he leans over the side of the bed and throws up Shane’s come onto Shane’s Metros hoodie.

“Hi Ilya,” Yuna says, perching on the arm of the couch.

“Hello,” Ilya says weakly. “Good news. Am not crazy, just sick.”

Yuna presses the cool back of her hand to his forehead. “Well, you’re burning up, that’s for sure. Why aren’t you in bed?”

“Shane put me on couch to change sheets. I did lots of sweating today.” Her hand feels nice on his hot face. He closes his eyes. “Did you get my sorry text this morning?”

“Yes, honey,” Yuna says after a pause. “I got your sorry text.”

“Okay. That’s good. David too?”

“David too. He’s in the car, actually. We brought you boys some dinner. Do you mind if he comes in?”

Ilya squints at her. It’s an odd question to ask him. There’s a lot to unpack here, but Ilya won’t be doing any unpacking anytime soon. His head feels like someone stuffed it with cotton wool and then doused it with gasoline and set it on fire.

“Why would I mind?” Ilya asks when he realizes Yuna is waiting for an answer.

Yuna flashes him a rueful smile. She ruffles his hair before disappearing from view.

Ilya drifts. He hears David puttering around the kitchen, humming tunelessly to himself. Yuna and Shane, meanwhile, have a whispered argument about the bedsheets; apparently Shane’s corners aren’t tight enough.

After remaking the bed, Yuna brings Ilya some kind of broth with rice and lots of ginger and vegetables. “Just in case you feel up to eating something,” she says.

The soup is delicious. Two bites in, Ilya already knows he’s going to throw it all back up.

He finishes the entire bowl to be polite.

Ilya draws the line at throwing up the food Shane’s mother cooked for him while she’s still in the house. It’s the last shred of dignity he has left, and he will cling to it if it kills him.

He manages to keep the soup down until Yuna and David go home. It leaves him sweating and shaking and he can feel his pulse pounding in his back teeth and his skin is crawling and there are black spots dancing in front of his eyes and Shane won’t stop asking “Are you all right?” in an increasingly anxious voice, but he keeps it down. He keeps it down.

While Shane is walking his parents out, Ilya makes a beeline for the bathroom.

He makes it to the bathroom, but he doesn’t make it to the toilet in time. He throws up all over the floor. It’s not pretty.

Shane will not be happy is Ilya’s last thought before everything goes black.

When he comes to, he’s back in bed. The sheets have been changed. They’re tucked very tight.

Yuna is back, too, sitting on the edge of the bed. She appears to be petting Ilya’s hair with a wet cloth.

“No,” Ilya moans, turning his head away. “I did not want you to see this.”

Yuna firmly guides his head back down to the pillow. “Listen,” she says, “Shane threw up all the time as a kid—”

“Not all the time!” Shane protests from somewhere behind her.

Ilya can only hope that Shane hasn’t seen the bathroom floor yet. He will clean it later, when his head stops hurting so much.

“—and I was young once, too. I can assure you, this is not my first time cleaning vomit out of someone’s hair.”

She’s doing what?

As soon as he feels better, Ilya is going to drown himself in the lake. After cleaning the bathroom floor.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Yuna, “I really liked your soup,” and then, making everything infinitely worse, he bursts into tears.

He’s pretty sure he has cried more since coming to the Cottage of Emotional Availability than in the past ten years combined. Must be something in the private well water.

Some of the cuts on Ilya’s feet have reopened. He didn’t notice when he was running to the bathroom earlier, but he can feel them now—angry little slashes of pain, pulsing with his sobs like they’re laughing at him.

As soon as Ilya feels better, he’s going to ask Shane to start another fire so he can hurl himself into the flames. After cleaning the bathroom floor. And drowning himself in the lake.

“That’s it,” Yuna says, still cleaning his hair. “Just let it all out.”

Ilya cries harder. He’s dimly aware of the mattress dipping behind him. Shane just puts a hand on the small of his back, nothing more, and thank fuck for that. Ilya feels like an exposed nerve, scraped raw by the emotions of the past few days—the good and the bad. If Shane tried to hold him right now, he might never stop crying.

As it is, he quickly wears himself out, weak from not being able to keep anything down all day. He doesn’t even have the energy to feel embarrassed.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Yuna says.

Ilya sniffles, nods.

“David made the soup. All I did was heat it up for you.”

“Oh,” Ilya says in a wobbly voice. “Okay. Then I will stop crying over it now.”

“I heard that!” David yells from the living room.

The next few days pass in a gross, painful blur.

Everything hurts—Ilya’s head, his skin, his muscles, his joints. Even his ribs are aching again. Maybe from when he passed out in the bathroom. Or just from all the puking.

Ilya is officially the worst house guest ever.

Shane doesn’t seem to mind. He changes the sheets every day. He brings Ilya glasses of water and small amounts of bland food. He tucks an extra blanket around him when the chills hit and presses a cool washcloth to the back of his neck when the fever spikes.

The days are tough, but the nights are worse.

One night, Ilya dreams that he’s lying in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor here at the cottage. Alexei stands over him, holding a broken bottle, eyes full of hatred. It’s not until Ilya tries to call out to warn Shane that he realizes his jaw is wired shut.

He wakes up in a pool of sweat, rigid with pain and terror, Shane’s name trapped behind his teeth. There’s a metallic taste in his mouth.

Shane changes the sheets again.

In another dream, Ilya and Shane sit quietly at the kitchen table while Yuna and David list everything that’s wrong with them and their relationship. It’s a long list. When Ilya reaches for Shane’s knee under the table, Shane jerks away from his touch.

He dreams about the day he found his mother, her hand dangling over the side of the bed. This time, her skin is warm instead of cold. She smiles and wraps her arms around him, whispers something in his ear, but his father comes in and drags him out of the room before he can make sense of it.

Ilya wakes with a jolt. He’s curled on his side, shivering. An extra blanket has been tucked around him.

Shane is sitting up against the headboard reading, glasses on. A small light clipped to the book in his lap casts a warm glow across his face. He is the only bright spot in the dark; the rest of the room—of the world—feels distant, nebulous, like Ilya’s still dreaming.

Maybe he is.

“Hey,” Shane whispers. “Another nightmare?”

Ilya shrugs.

“You all right?”

Ilya nods, head aching dully.

“You were talking in your sleep.”

Great. “What did I say?”

“I don’t know. You were speaking Russian.” Shane hesitates. “I only caught one word.”

The look on Shane’s face tells Ilya exactly which one. “I dreamed about the day my mama died.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Ilya shrugs again. “She was alive,” he says. “But so was my father.” Another shiver ripples through him.

Shane smiles sadly.

“What time is it?” Ilya asks, though “What day is it?” might be a better question.

“Like ten-ish.” Shane presses a hand to Ilya’s forehead. He’s been doing that a lot. By now, Ilya finds himself leaning into the touch. “You don’t feel as hot. Maybe your fever’s breaking.”

Ilya sincerely fucking hopes so. This isn’t what he had in mind when he figured they’d be spending most of their time at the cottage in bed.

Shane’s phone lights up. He picks it up, frowns at the screen. “My mom keeps asking how you’re doing,” he says. “I guess she’s worried I’m gonna let you starve to death or something. She thinks I’m way out of my depth here.”

Ilya watches Shane smooth out a wrinkle in the sheets. “You care a lot what she thinks.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shane bristles. “Of course I do. She’s my mom.”

Ilya puts his hand on Shane’s arm. “I’m not saying is a bad thing.”

“Then what are you saying?”

Dumb shit he shouldn’t be saying. Blame it on the dreams about dead parents, and disappointed parents, and dead and disappointed parents. Blame it on the fever, and the headache, and the fact that Ilya still isn’t entirely sure he’s awake.

Blame it on the fact that even in his dream, his mother’s smile hadn’t quite reached her eyes; his father had looked down on him with contempt and disgust.

“Just must have been scary, growing up with so much love to lose. That’s all.”

“Holy shit,” Shane says, gaping at him. “Who’s the fucking shrink now?”

Ilya should’ve kept his big mouth shut. “Sorry. I don’t know what I am saying. Ignore me.”

“No, you’re good.” Shane swallows. “I… Thank you. For saying that.”

Ilya adds, “Obviously I beat you in Sad Childhood Competition, like I beat you in everything else.”

Shane huffs. “That’s not even true and you fucking know it.” He takes off his glasses, presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. “Hey, I think I’ve changed my mind. How about for the next week, we don’t tell each other what we really think and how we really feel?”

Has Ilya been here a whole week already?

Fuck, he’s going to be sick again.

He twists around and makes a grab for the bucket by the bed.

Shane switches on his own bedside lamp. “What are you—oh shit, fuck, Rozanov, not again—” He scrambles sideways out from under the covers like a panicked crab, dropping his book on the floor.

Ilya hugs the bucket to his chest for a minute. Nothing happens. His fever has spiked, though.

“I need to go,” he says, putting the bucket down. “You should call cab, please.”

“What the fuck?” Shane says with feeling. “Last I checked you could barely stand. Like hell am I sending you off to Boston like this. Seriously, what’s wrong with you?”

“I should not be here.” Ilya slumps back against the pillows. “What if I get sicker and need to go to a doctor? I can’t be here.”

“I’ve already thought about that. I’ll just have to let you die and bury your body in the woods. It sucks, but I can see no other way.”

“Shane.”

“Ilya.” Shane sits on the bed, close enough to touch. “I’m sure you’ll start feeling better soon. You probably just caught something on the plane.” He peels a damp curl away from Ilya’s forehead. “Or maybe you’re allergic to home-cooked meals.”

“Hollander, this is meanest thing you ever said to me. I am impressed.”

“Yeah, you’re rubbing off on me.”

“I wish.” Ilya throws his arm over his eyes and groans. “I am ruining our time together. I am ruining your time off.”

“No you’re not,” Shane says. “Are you kidding me? I’ve basically been fantasizing about this.”

Ilya lowers his arm. “About me puking all over your favorite place on earth?”

“No, you asshole. About taking care of you.”

Ilya stares at him.

Shane says, defensively, “What?”

“I fantasize about you fucking yourself on boring beige dildo,” Ilya says, voice cracking, “and you fantasize about me being sick at your cottage so you can take care of me?”

“It’s not beige. And—well, no, not like that, obviously, just… Hold on, you fantasize about me?”

Shane seems genuinely surprised and pleased to learn that he features in his boyfriend’s spank bank. It’s cute, and under ordinary circumstances, it would turn Ilya on.

Unfortunately, the dull ache in his head has turned into a splitting headache.

“Let’s…” Ilya closes his eyes, waves a hand. “Later.”

“Yeah, we’re definitely coming back to this when I’ve nursed you back to health.”

“Nurse Shane,” Ilya mumbles. “I like.”

“Better than Mr. Dr. Shrink?”

Ilya wrinkles his nose. “No more shrinking, please. I am sick and also Russian.”

“Doing a lot of talking for a sick Russian.”

“Hmm. Enough now, I think. Head hurts.”

“Want me to kiss it better?”

“Yes.”

Shane’s lips brush Ilya’s forehead. “Does that help?”

It does, actually, which means Ilya must’ve been dreaming all along. That makes sense, he guesses—more sense than this being real.

“Yes,” he murmurs, already half asleep. “It helps.”

Shane was right: Ilya’s fever breaks, and he starts to feel better.

By the next time Yuna stops by to check in on them (and remake the bed again, to Shane’s loud protests), he feels well enough to sit out on the deck, freshly showered and shaved. The afternoon breeze off the lake feels nice on his face.

“How are your feet healing up?” Yuna asks, settling in the chair next to him.

Ilya cringes at the memory of that evening. By now, it feels like yet another fever dream. “Feet are fine,” he says. “Spent like four days in bed, so.”

Yuna nods. “So,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about this idea of you moving to Ottawa for Shane.”

“I would not be moving for Shane.”

She arches an eyebrow.

“Not just for Shane,” Ilya adds.

“Ilya.” Yuna touches his hand. “You’re at the peak of your career. Are you really ready to walk away from everything you’ve built in Boston to play for one of the worst teams in the league?”

“I built Boston. Can build Ottawa, too. Will be fun challenge.”

“You were nineteen years old when you started building Boston,” Yuna points out.

Ilya pulls his blanket tighter around himself. He’s glad he’s wearing sunglasses.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. All I’m saying is that you need to think long and hard about what you want before making a decision like that.”

“Is simple,” Ilya says. “I want to be with Shane.”

Yuna tilts her head a fraction, and Ilya has the uneasy feeling he’s just failed some kind of test.

“Just give me some time to come up with some other ideas before you start burning bridges,” Yuna says. “That’s all I ask.”

“Okay.” Ilya clears his throat. “Thank you, Yuna.”

“The charity’s a good starting point, I think.”

“It was Shane’s idea.”

“Rose Landry is very fond of Shane,” Yuna muses, tapping her lips. “And your friend Svetlana sounds like an incredibly smart woman. How does she feel about this?”

“I have not told her.”

“About the Ottawa plan?”

“About anything.”

Yuna gives him a sharp look. “Your best friend doesn’t know that you’re…?”

“Oh, no, of course she knows I f—” Fuck. “—fall for men too. But she doesn’t know about me and Shane.” He pauses. “I think she has figured it out, maybe. But I have not told her.”

“Where does she think you are now?”

A two-week fuckathon with Jane. And look how that turned out for him.

“Yoga retreat,” Ilya deadpans.

“Well, you should tell her,” Yuna says matter-of-factly. “You need someone to talk to. God, I can’t believe—” She looks away, shakes her head. “Anyway, if she and Rose are up for it… Nobody would think twice about two MLH stars being out together with gorgeous women on their arms.”

“Even archrivals?”

“Charity cofounders,” Yuna corrects him with a small smirk. “And then maybe, in a couple of years… I mean, who knows what impact Scott Hunter’s coming out will have? I really think we have options here.”

Ilya shifts in his chair. “Did you already talk to Shane about this?”

“Why would I talk to him first? He’s not the one considering torpedoing his hockey career.”

Ilya winces.

“Talk to your friend, Ilya. See what she thinks.” Yuna gets up. “Oh, and if you do end up transferring to Ottawa, David would like a list of your favorite foods.”

She squeezes his shoulder before going back inside.

Ilya stares out at the lake. It’s a beautiful clear day, sunlight glinting off the water. On a whim, he snaps a picture. He might send it to Svetlana later, after collecting his thoughts. And talking to Shane.

He jumps a little at the sound of the door opening again.

“Good talk?” Shane’s voice comes from behind him. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Come sit on my lap,” Ilya says. “I want to hold you.”

Shane sits on Ilya’s lap with his back to Ilya’s chest. Ilya snakes his arms around Shane’s waist, Shane’s hands coming to rest on his.

“Do you think Rose Landry would be okay with being your fake girlfriend?” Ilya asks, nuzzling Shane’s shoulder.

“Dude, are you kidding? Rose is dying to be my beard. She won’t shut up about it.”

“Would you be okay with it?”

Shane snorts, rubbing his own jaw. “The better question is, would you be okay with it?”

“I asked first.”

“Wait, is that what you and my mom were talking about?”

“And other things, yes.”

“Seriously?” Shane laughs. “My mom and my boyfriend conspiring to get me a beard. Is this what my life is gonna be like from now on?” He lets out a contented sigh. “I think I could get used to this.”

Ilya holds him close, breathes him in, thinks, So could I.

Ilya wakes from a dreamless sleep to the lovely sound of birdsong and the even lovelier sight of Shane’s broad, muscled back.

He inches closer, lifts his head to kiss the top of Shane’s shoulder. Shane’s hands are tucked under his pillow, eyelashes long and dark against his freckled cheek. The sheets are pooled around his waist.

Shane doesn’t stir when Ilya molds himself against his back, or when Ilya slips an arm around him and tweaks his nipple. He only mumbles something in his sleep and twitches a little, melting back into Ilya’s embrace with a sigh.

Shane’s cock is half hard. Ilya just holds it for a while, enjoying the familiar weight and feel of it in his hand. He runs his fingers along the length, lightly rubs his thumb over the head, coaxes it into full hardness with gentle strokes.

It doesn’t take much. Shane has always been so responsive to him, right from the moment they met.

“Good,” Shane groans. His hips rock forward, chasing Ilya’s touch. “Ilya.”

Ilya wonders briefly what Shane is trying to say. Good morning, Ilya? Feels good, Ilya? Good Ilya? All good options.

His own body is too exhausted from fighting off the flu to get in on the fun. Still, he’s perfectly happy where he is, his mostly soft cock nestled in the cleft of Shane’s ass as Shane grinds idly against him.

Ilya can’t believe this is what he was missing out on all those years. He loves eager Shane, snippy Shane, man-on-a-mission Shane. All Shanes, really. But this Shane, warm and sleepy, lax and unguarded—Ilya never dared to dream he’d get to see this Shane. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough of it.

“Tell me you love me,” he says, feeling greedy.

“I love you,” Shane murmurs, “I love you so much, I can’t stop thinking about you, I want your cock inside me all the time, it drives me fucking—”

He wraps one hand around Ilya’s, tightening his grip.

“Moan my name, Hollander,” Ilya whispers against the shell of Shane’s ear as Shane’s thrusts grow sloppier. “I want to hear you moan my name when you come for me.”

Shane’s hips stutter to a stop. “Ilya,” he moans as his come spurts between their fingers.

To Ilya, it feels almost as good as having an orgasm himself.

“God, I love waking up like that.” Shane sags back against Ilya. “Wish I could wake up like that every morning for the rest of my life.”

Ilya hides his smile in the space between Shane’s shoulder blades.

They’re pressed so close together that he can feel the exact moment Shane’s guard goes back up—Shane tenses as if embarrassed, like his brain is catching up with his mouth.

Ilya gives Shane a reassuring squeeze. “Me, too.”

“Did you just give my cock a reassuring squeeze?”

“Did it reassure you?”

Shane is silent for a second. “I guess?”

“Then yes.” Ilya kisses the nape of Shane’s neck.

Shane wriggles onto his back without putting any space between them. “You know, I think this was one of the best weeks of my life.”

“Most pukey week of my life,” Ilya says mournfully.

“Yeah, I could’ve done without that part, to be honest. But still. I love having you here. I love taking care of you.”

He’s so goddamn earnest, gazing up at Ilya with those beautiful brown eyes. Each word feels like a tiny little punch to Ilya’s breastbone, but in a good way. Mostly.

Ilya doesn’t know what to say, so he leans down to lick his way into Shane’s mouth.

That’s a lie—he does know what to say. The truth is right there, blooming in his rib cage as Shane’s lips part for his tongue, easily opening up to let him in. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Ilya has thrown up in front of Shane, sweated through all his bedsheets, cried at his mother. What’s a little honesty after all that?

He pulls back. “This was one of the best weeks of my life, too,” he admits. And then, because old habits die hard, “Despite puke.”

Shane smiles. It’s one of Ilya’s favorite Shane smiles—soft, sweet, barely there but lighting up his whole face anyway.

“Fuck it,” Shane says, carding his fingers through the curls at the back of Ilya’s head. “Two weeks won’t be enough. We should stay longer. You wouldn’t even have to lie—just tell them you caught a bug and need more time to recover. And I can push back a few things and blame the concussion or whatever.”

“Your sponsors won’t like it,” Ilya says, already mentally rearranging his own off-season schedule. “And your trainer.”

Shane’s manager won’t like it either, but Ilya isn’t about to mention Shane’s mom to him while they’re cuddled up naked and Shane is absently combing his own come into Ilya’s hair.

“They’ll get over it,” Shane says. “I don’t give a shit.”

“Liar. You give a thousand shits.”

Shane elbows him. “My sponsors can deal. And I have a fully equipped gym right here. I’ll make it work.”

“You don’t have to do that for me, Hollander.”

“I wouldn’t be doing it for you. I’d be doing it for us.”

Us. The word burrows deep into Ilya’s chest, makes a warm and cozy home for itself there.

“Stay a little longer,” Shane whispers. “Please. Let’s just see if we can make it work. Even just a few days. Hell, even just a—”

Ilya kisses him again. “We will,” he says, and finds he believes it too. “We will make it work.”