Chapter Text
Shane has always been his mother’s son. From the minute he opened his eyes, he and Yuna have been two intense, loving, slightly obsessive peas in a pod. Shane has always sought to match, then outpace his mom when it comes to commitment and hard work, walking at an impressively young age just so that he could follow her around on two tiny, chubby little feet. There’s no question that hockey has been his heart and soul since the second he laid eyes on the ice, but a part of David will always wonder if that initial spark, that excitement, was a contagious thing from her.
He loves Shane’s passion as much as he loves it in Yuna, so when he stops to think about it for more than half a second, is it any surprise that Shane fell in love with the first person to actually challenge him at his favorite thing? Yuna can deny it all she likes, but David is sure he won her over purely out of irritation when he trounced her at cards the first night they met.
The rivalry between Shane Hollander and Ilya Rovanov is the stuff of legends, and while the antagonism might be all manufactured, the competitiveness most certainly isn’t. He doesn’t share Yuna’s concern that Shane has ever let Rozanov win anything. Shane wants to beat Rozanov as much as David imagines Rozanov wants to beat Shane. It’s what pushes them both so far down the path of greatness.
So yeah, Shane is his mother’s son, which is why he won’t take his eyes off her when she steps away from the table and heads outside, even though she squeezes his shoulder as she passes. David knows why she’s taking a beat. It’s the same reason he drove away without saying a word, and he imagines she will soon feel as wretched about it as he does now.
He doesn’t care, she doesn’t care, that their son is gay. He doesn’t even care that he’s picked Rozanov of all men.
What he cares about, and what he knows she cares about, is just how much pain they have caused him. Even with the best of intentions, even with no desire at all to judge or reject him, the knowledge that Shane has been living with such a secret, such a weight, for all these years... His beautiful, clever, intense boy, who already practices and plans and creates a hundred scenarios to run through in his head, and not one of the outcomes he will have played out was worth the risk of following through.
He’s doing that now. Thinking and overthinking, slow and methodical, his own process gives Yuna the time she actually needs to acknowledge her feelings and set them aside for Shane’s sake. They need to talk, even more so perhaps than he and Shane do, but it won’t be a long conversation.
They might need a minute, but once they set their sights on a path, all bets are off. A lane has been chosen, and no act of nature, god, or hockey is knocking them off course.
They’ll be fine. He knows it.
Shane carefully picks up his mom’s button-up and follows her outside.
Leaving David with Rozanov. Ilya.
Hockey’s most controversial and divisive figure, and a man who quite calmly confessed to being in love with David’s son.
He should break the ice, right? Ilya looks relaxed enough, but he’s also looked like he’s wanted to tear someone’s face off with his teeth in some interviews, so what does David know?
He cracks the knuckles on both hands and swings them in front of him in a muted clap. “You like pasta?” he asks, deliberately casual, as though there’s a universe in which a kid Rozanov’s size doesn’t need a boatload of carbs. He looks over his shoulder just in time to catch Ilya’s brow arch, and the almost-smile at the edge of his mouth.
“Of course. You want help?” Rozanov is already on his feet, a surprising amount of grace for a guy who can flatten men twice his size on the ice.
David waves him into the kitchen, a slate of staggeringly deliberate politeness already running in the back of his head. He stirs at the sauce he left simmering, knowing full well that either Shane would be coming over, or they would be going to him. The boy has a bad habit of not eating when he’s upset, something David has long found ways of navigating. When he cooks for his son, he keeps things plain. Simple. Boirng, some might say, but Shane’s always been picky about texture and flavor.
“So.” Rozanov perches by the counter, all six feet of puck-destroying energy tamed behind a posture so stiff David’s worried he might pull something. “What do you want me to do?”
David gestures with the pasta box. “You can throw this in the pot if you want. Salt’s already in.” He slides it down the counter. Rozanov snags it one-handed.
There’s a silence that wants to be called awkward, but really, it’s just the volume turned way down compared to earlier. David watches as Rozanov considers the box, then carefully unloads its contents into the pan.
A man with Ilya’s wealth and position can afford his own chef, but he clearly knows at least the basics of how to cook. That’s good. David needs to teach him Shane’s favorites.
“Shane says you like The New Yorker,” Rozanov says. Which… that doesn’t strike him as the kind of material Ilya would read. But again, what does he actually know about the boy?
David nods, and it comes out more approving than he means. “It’s good reading. Beats scrolling Twitter, anyway.” He works the sauce with a wooden spoon.
Rozanov’s eyes land on the family photos clustered on the kitchen wall. He lingers on the pee-wee hockey picture - on Shane, his smile missing three teeth, and his oversized jersey hanging down to his knees. The look on his face is pure adoration. He catches David’s gaze and startles, guilty that he’s been caught.
“How are you with a cheese grater?” David offers.
Ilya stands tall and nods as he’s handed a block of Parmesan.
He’s the one to get Ilya’s number before the kids drive home. He’s also the one to text them both, though it’s Yuna who creates the group chat. They head over, eat more food, drink together, and marvel at how much more like a home Shane’s cottage feels, just by having one extra person in it. Ilya fetches and carries with the easy smile of a man who knows what hills to die on, then calmly manages to veer Shane off a fruit salad-related spiral purely by tugging on the back of his shirt and pulling him back down into his seat.
“Stop fussing, or I will steal your strawberries,” Ilya tells him, right as he steals one of said strawberries. By the time Shane is done defending his dessert, he’s clearly forgotten whatever it was that was working him up.
Yuna is beaming the whole drive home, her thoughts running on full volume a mile a minute as she starts planning worst-case scenarios, how they can host both the boys for Christmas, and how she'll set Ilya up with the best real estate agents in Ottawa.
David tells her that there is no way Shane hasn’t already lined everything up, then opens a private message to Ilya and sends him the recipe for Shane’s favorite protein pancakes.
Four bottles of premium Russian vodka and a bouquet of Montreal blue flowers the size of a small person end up on their doorstep first thing the next morning.
Summer seems to fly by, and before they know it, Ilya Rozenov is both the star center for the Ottawa Centars and the subject of almost unparalleled levels of betrayed hatred from his former team.
At their first home game, David desperately wants to make the drive, show up, and support the kid, but he understands exactly why he can’t. He and Yuna both end up cringing their way through the game.
“Well there’s no doubt it’s true love,” Yuna says, holding up her glass as David refills it. “Poor Ilya.”
Their shared chat quickly fills with reassurances from Yuna, then from Shane. David adds his own two cents, then messages Ilya directly. He’s not sent anything since the recipe.
It’ll get better, I promise.
Ilya reads it immediately.
Three days later, he replies.
Thanks.
Ottawa continues to suck, though if there’s ever an indication that Ilya makes a difference, it’s never clearer than it is come November, when he’s out with the flu. The Centaurs take a battering the likes of which they haven’t seen since last season.
Both David and Yuna send Ilya their best. David offers to drive up to check in, maybe get Ilya some groceries, but the message remains unread, and he doesn’t want to disturb the kid when he’s most likely sleeping. Besides, when it comes to performance, Ottawa might not be great, but Ilya is both their star and their new hope: someone will be taking care of him.
A day later, he takes his weekly trip over to Shane’s cottage to check in on everything. Shane keeps telling him he can get a professional service in, but David won’t hear of it. If he continues to look after the place while Shane is out, then he and Ilya can start actually personalizing it. They already have one picture on the mantlepiece, taken the afternoon of their final family BBQ of the summer. David intends to ensure they have at least three more to add to the collection by the new year.
Most of the drive up is spent listening to a panel of puckheads argue, and David has them on at the lowest possible volume, window cracked to let in the late-autumn chill. He gets to the edge of the lake, headlights throwing weird geometric shadows off the new wind chimes Shane hung over the summer. He’d meant to come up earlier, but a blown-down hemlock and two detoured rural routes delayed him past dark, so by the time he unlocks the broad glass door, the cottage is pitch black, with just the mirrored surface of the water outside to reflect starlight in shards.
It takes him a good few seconds to notice that he can’t hear the usual chirp of the alarm waiting to be disarmed.
Through the glass wall, he scans the kitchen, the stairwell curve, the shadowed living room. The silence is thick, but now that he’s looking, not just listening, he sees the shallow, quick flick and snuff of a blue-white glow. A phone screen, deep inside the darkness, then a second flare as someone shoves it away. He thinks about the baseball bat Shane keeps in the umbrella stand, and then he thinks about the fact that it would never stop a professional thief, or a desperate addict, if that’s actually what this is. All the logic in his head says to back out, call it in, but he’s already halfway across the dark tiles, that one picture Yuna was so proud to frame a nightmare waiting to unfold should the intruder know whose house they are in.
He circles, a panicked, empty ache in his stomach, and finally rounds the end of the kitchen block to see the thing that’s set every hair on his arms to attention.
Ilya is sprawled facedown on the couch. His breathing is so slow and raspy that it barely disturbs the fleece throw half-draped over his back. His phone, the source of the earlier light, lies under one bare hand, battery indicator a thin sliver of red.
He’s never been a shouter. He hovers at the edge of the rug, heart pounding, relief giving way to confusion. Ilya’s face is turned sideways, exposed under a curtain of limp, wet curls, his nose inches from the cushion. Sweat beads along his hairline and hollows darker patches down his jaw and neck. He’s shivering, but the house is fully heated.
David clears his throat once and then again louder. Ilya jerks, spluttering awake, and nearly launches himself off the couch before his obvious exhaustion nixes the move. He slumps onto an elbow instead, gasping, halfway between fight and flight, the garble of Russian following his shock more of one blurred line than any obvious words. David has started learning Russian, but he’s yet to make it past the alphabet.
Panic over. One crisis averted. Now onto the next. Ilya looks terrible.
Jesus, kid.” He doesn't mean for it to come out that way, just a father’s instinct tripping on itself, but Ilya flinches like he’s been shot. The instinct in him is to reach out, but he holds back, lets his hands stay visible and empty.
“I’m fine,” Ilya manages. He’s doubled over, coughing raw, but he powers through it, and tries for a grin that just shows more teeth. “Sorry, sorry. Is not-” He wipes his nose with the hem of the blanket, then seems to remember himself and snatches his hand back. “I wash. I clean. Sorry, sorry, sorry.” The words fall out of his mouth like loose screws. “Will not be long. You want I go.”
He tries to sit up, only to list sideways, the room spinning under him. “Not want to mess. Not burden. Please, Mr. Hollander-”
“David,” he says automatically. “It’s just David here, kid.” For a second, his throat fills up at the angle of Ilya’s head: the blank, open terror that hardens into pleading.
“I just need water,” Ilya whispers, “is okay. Will be better. Please. Not to tell… don’t tell. Not…” He forces his eyes shut, and there’s a tremor in him now, poorly masked by the way he hugs the blanket tighter. “Is just flu.”
David has a lot of questions, not least of which is why Ilya is here and how on earth he made the trip in such a state. Instead, he shelves them. Ilya is nothing like Shane, but David knows how to take care of sick kids. Not that Ilya is a child, of course not, but he’s Shane’s boyfriend, which makes him David’s kid by default.
He heads to the kitchen, turns on the cabinet lights so he can see a little better without blinding Ilya in the process. Water, first, then he needs to get a baseline on what he’s dealing with.
“One thing at a time,” he says, as soft as possible. “If you fall off that couch, I’m calling an ambulance whether you like it or not.”
He sets about filling a glass in the kitchen and brings the water over. Ilya drinks it in two shuddering gulps, then immediately tries to hack up a lung. He tries to stand again, but David plants a deliberate palm on his shoulder. “Sit,” he says. “Now.”
Ilya goes immediately still. His hands twist where David can see them, the skin of his knuckles near blue-white. “Sorry,” he says again, smaller this time. “Is very stupid.”
“How long have you been sick?”
Ilya frowns. “Day is it?”
“Friday.”
“Hmm. Wednesday?”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“Yes, Is just flu. Will be better tomorrow.”
“I don’t think you’re going to be better by tomorrow,” David says carefully. Telling a man like Ilya something is or isn’t going to happen is just going to trigger a wall of stubbornness.
He reaches for the back of Ilya’s neck to check his temperature, but Ilya winces and jerks away from the touch. David freezes, hand suspended. “Hey,” he says. “Just checking for a fever. That’s all.”
“I don’t…” Ilya’s voice is so small and so at odds with his size and personality. “It’s fine. Not so bad.” He’s got a white-knuckle grip on the blanket, and his shoulders have hunched so far in that his head’s nearly level with his chest.
David makes himself move slowly. No sudden moves. “Okay. Let’s see how you go, yeah?” He heads back to the kitchen. “Have you eaten anything today?”
Ilya shakes his head so carefully it’s almost imperceptible.
“Right.” David finds half a tin of emergency soup in Shane’s pantry and sets about heating it up, doing his best to keep everything noisy and obvious, so there’s no chance for Ilya to freak out again. “You want TV?” he asks.
Ilya shakes his head again, straight into the cushion.
He keeps himself angled so he can see the kid out of the corner of his eye while he stirs the soup. Ilya’s breathing is bad, but he doesn’t cough unless he thinks David isn’t paying attention. The effort to look presentable is almost funny, in a heartbreaking way. David tries to lighten the mood. “You’re making yourself at home, at least,” he says. “You want some Gatorade too?”
“I pay for…” Ilya starts, but then the words trip up, and he ducks his head lower. “Sorry. I clean up. After. I’m not to… to cause work for you.”
David brings a bowl over, the soup piping hot. He wishes he had some bread to mop it up. He has no idea how long Ilya intends to stay, but makes a plan to get fresh groceries in for tomorrow at the very least. “Shane would kill me if I let you starve. I’m pretty sure he’d murder both of us, honestly.” That gets a twitch of a smile, not quite reaching Ilya’s eyes, but it’s there. “Eat what you can.”
Ilya’s hands tremble when he takes the bowl. He cradles it in the blanket, then ducks his head. He’s so very careful not to spill a drop.
He watches Ilya tip the last bit of soup into his mouth, eyes squeezed shut across the effort. “You want to sleep?” It comes out softer, gentler than David intends, and he tries to close the gap by bustling over, taking the empty bowl before Ilya has the chance to get up and try to clean.
It’s been a good few years since he’s had to put someone to bed, and Ilya’s significantly bigger than Shane was back then. Still, he holds out his hand and waits patiently until Ilya takes it. The heat radiating off the kid is insane.
“I’m fine,” Ilya says, then almost faceplants on the floor. He’s heavy as hell. David has always winced in sympathy whenever Rozanov has taken someone down on the ice, has raged internally when that someone was Shane, for all that he understands the game. The reality of trying to manhandle the kid up to the bedroom, despite Ilya’s attempts to be helpful, leaves them both out of breath.
Ilya sits on Shane’s bed, takes a deep breath, and pretty much goes boneless, leaving David with the practicalities of tucking someone his size under the covers. He knows nothing about the boy’s parents, other than that they are both dead, but he can read between the lines of the charity they are founding, and besides… Ilya is in his care now. David will look after him as he would hope another father would look after Shane.
He leaves the bedroom door ajar and heads back to the kitchen to clean up. Once he’s done sorting through things in his head, he calls Yuna.
“Everything okay?” Ever practical, she skips right past the greeting. He’s been gone a lot longer than expected.
“I’m still at Shane’s. Ilya is here with a bad case of the flu.”
As expected, she is immediately in crisis management mode. “Does he need a doctor? What’s his temperature? Does Shane know? I’ll be there in half an hour…”
David leans against the countertop and rubs at the back of his neck, phone pinned between his shoulder and cheek. “He’s out like a light. Besides, I think he’d try to run for the hills if he knew anyone else had seen him so rough. I’ll crash here tonight and keep an eye on him.” He scans the kitchen, keeping half an ear cocked for any movement from the back of the house. There’s nothing but the distant growl of the heater and the faint tick of the fridge.
“You’re sure?” Yuna isn’t buying it, but she’s also running on motherly instinct, and her “Are you sure?” comes sequined with every possible implication. Hospital? Air ambulance? Court-ordered IV fluid?
“I’m sure. Maybe bring him over some groceries in the morning?” he suggests. She already has a go-to list for Shane. He bids her goodnight and leaves her to it.
David spends the rest of the night with a routine. He sits on the couch and reads one of Shane’s paperback biographies of great hockey players, and checks on Ilya. Rinse, repeat.
There’s not so much as a whisper from him until close to midnight, when a guttural, choked shout splits the silence. David’s halfway off the couch before the echoes fade. He finds Ilya half-sitting, tangled in the duvet, blue t-shirt soaked from neck to waist. The boy’s whole body trembles, and sweat glistens at his scalp, dark along his temples.
He waits, a habit from years of parenting: the instinct not to startle a waking kid, to let them register your presence before crowding them with concern. But Ilya’s eyes are wild, and the words spilling from his mouth are a breathless, rapid-fire cascade of Russian.
“Hey,” David says, keeping his voice at just above a whisper. “Hey. Easy. You’re okay.”
For a second, it’s like talking to a sleepwalker: Ilya’s gaze slides right past him, lands on the window, then the ceiling, his breath hitching in shallow staccato bursts. David grabs the glass of water from the side table and sets it where Ilya can find it, then, after a pause, sits gingerly on the edge of the bed.
“You’re at Shane’s,” he says, extra careful, the same way he would if Shane were the one lost midway between night and memory. “You’re sick. The flu, maybe worse than that, but you’re safe.”
The Russian stops, replaced by a thick, desperate silence. Ilya blinks. “Sorry,” he manages, voice raw from coughing. “Sorry. Sorry.”
David waves it off, but stays seated. “Happens to the best of us. You want more water?” He pushes the glass closer. Ilya drinks without comment, not looking up.
“Where did you think you were?” It’s a dumb thing to ask, more the work of empty space than curiosity, but once the silence returns, David can’t not fill it.
Ilya’s lips pinch together. The glass trembles in his hands. “Home,” he says.
Somehow, David doesn’t think he means Ottawa. Or Boston.
It doesn’t take long to get the kid down again. David’s not sure he’ll even remember waking.
He naps on the couch, on and off, the bedroom door wide open just in case, but Ilya doesn’t stir again, and when David checks on him at seven the next morning, his breathing is slow and even.
He’s halfway through a mug of coffee when headlights sweep the kitchen in a strobe of white. There’s a hissing, then the front door opens. He meets her at the entry, gesturing for quiet, and she nods solemnly. In the yellow half-light of the kitchen, she looks even smaller than normal, cheeks scuffed pink by the cold, hair banded in quick, practical loops. She practically drops the groceries. “Where is he? Is he okay?” she breathes.
He points upstairs. “Out cold. He looks better this morning.”
Yuna frets, clearly wanting to see for herself that he’s okay. “I got it,” he says, running soothing hands up and down her arms. “He’s no more trouble than Shane was.” Far less, actually, and Shane has never once looked at him the way Ilya did last night. “How about I see how he is later, and you come over for dinner?” He’s not about to overwhelm the kid when he’s clearly wanting to hide from the world, but if there was ever anyone in need of some good maternal fussing, it’s Ilya.
Reluctantly, she leaves, no doubt counting down the hours until she can come back.
It’s a while before there’s any sound from upstairs, and later still before the plumbing in the walls starts up with the hollow thud of a running shower. David has refilled his mug with coffee three, already knowing he will regret it later. He’s thinking about making pancakes when the bathroom’s white noise cuts out, and footsteps start their slow, heavy way down the stairs.
He expects the same shuffling, hunched-over kid as last night. Instead, Ilya looks… not better, exactly, but upright, the big frame bundled in a navy hoodie, hair flattened against his head. His eyes are sunken and bloodshot, but he’s moving under his own steam.
He’s halfway to the kitchen before he sees David and freezes like he’s hit an electric fence. For a second, no one says a thing.
He tries to pull himself up, stand straight, but his legs betray him and he sways, grabbing the counter. “Shit. Sorry. I thought... Sorry, I’ll be leaving soon. I didn’t think you were…”
David can’t help but let out a long, slow breath. He sets his mug down casually as he can. “You’re not going anywhere. Not today, at least,” he says. He tries to keep his tone light. “You’re going to take a couple Tylenol, eat something, and you’re going back to bed. Or, you can crash on the couch and binge six hours of garbage television with me. Doctor’s orders.”
Ilya stares at him for long enough that David starts to worry. Then he carefully positions himself on the edge of the couch.
Good. That’s good. He can stay there while David cooks.
Mostly, Ilya sleeps. Through the afternoon and into the evening. He makes an effort when Yuna shows up, but if he folded for David, he’s absolutely putty for her. She puts him right back to bed, tucks him in, and kisses his forehead.
David takes the guest room that night, but worry has him stirring a little after three am.
He has six missed calls from Shane and one message in the group chat, which makes it clear he’s worried by the radio silence.
Yuna and Ilya are together on the couch when David checks in, the TV volume turned down to a murmur. Yuna’s fingers are slowly combing through Ilya’s hair, lifting curls and letting them fall, the way she used to do with Shane when he was small. Ilya’s head is in her lap, dead to the world and completely unguarded.
Another message from Shane pops up in the chat.
David takes a photo of Yuna and of Ilya sleeping so peacefully in her arms and sends it to him privately.
Don’t worry, son. We’ve got him.