Archive of Our Own

Ilya is laying on his couch, scowling at TSN’s coverage of that evening’s upcoming playoff game, when a text pops up from Svetlana.

Sveta: i have found the perfect property for you

Sveta: only three hours from your place in ottawa

Sveta: looks turnkey. easy rental. very good price. the person selling it must be very stupid. 

Ilya frowns. He’s been thinking of buying an investment property, it’s true, but nothing has been the right fit yet. Idly, he taps on the link Svetlana shares, not expecting this one to be any different. They’re all too small, too dark, too far away to manage. Ilya’s entire life has been small and dark and unmanageable since Boxing Day. He doesn’t need any more of that, thank you very much. 

The real estate app loads while Ilya uses the bathroom and gets himself another beer, even though it’s not noon yet. He has nowhere to be, and no one to see, and no one who cares if he drinks a whole six pack at ten in the morning. He can do whatever he wants.

He reaches down and picks up his phone and when he sees the first photo he drops the beer and the glass shatters all over the floor.

It’s Shane Hollander’s cottage. Their cottage. 

Pristine, of course, like no one has ever lived in it. Crisp and immaculate without a single hint of personality: not a pillow on the sofa or a blanket over the back of a chair. No photographs and none of Ilya’s clothing left neatly draped over the banister of the stairs for him to take into the bedroom and no two sets of shoes lined up by the door.

He wants to throw up.

This has to be a mistake.

He rapidly swipes through all of the photos on the listing - bedroom, bedroom, their bedroom, kitchen, firepit, dock, boathouse - thirty-two photos in all, thirty-two stark reminders of everything Ilya has lost. His stomach roils and his head is swimming and he has to sit down hard on the couch because he might be about to pass out.

Sveta: it’s perfect, yes? so private!

Sveta: you could host many parties, it has plenty of bedrooms and even a guest house

Sveta: i will tell you exactly what color to paint my room

Ilya checks the listing. It was posted just this morning, and it’s listed at a frankly offensively low price.

Like Hollander can’t get rid of it fast enough. 

Sveta: you will consider it? i want the back bedroom overlooking the lake.

Ilya swipes the listing closed and taps on the contacts icon, scrolls until he finds his real estate lawyer’s phone number. He jabs at the phone and then drums his fingers on his knee, leg jiggling so fast he can feel the whole sofa shaking.

The lawyer answers on the second ring, even though it’s a Saturday morning, and sounds, as always, delighted to hear from Ilya.

“I want to buy house,” Ilya says bluntly. “I will send you listing. I want it done today.”

“Of course, Mr. Rozanov, but don’t you need -”

“Today,” Ilya repeats. “You can make this happen, da? I want it to go through the trust. Not my name.”

“Of course, Mr. Rozanov, but -”

“Should I call someone else?”

“Absolutely not,” his lawyer says firmly. “I’m on it. Enjoy your weekend. I’ll be in touch when it’s done. Cash? Any dealbreakers for you? Inspection contingency?”

“Cash,” Ilya confirms. “I want to close as quickly as possible. Must be entirely anonymous, you understand? I do not need inspection. I already know is perfect.”

He hangs up, his hands still shaking, and then he texts Svetlana a single reply.

Ilya: you can have second bedroom on ground floor. Bedroom facing lake is mine.

***

Ilya’s lawyer calls him back just after 3pm, efficient as always. Her voice is giddy with triumph.

“It’s yours for asking price,” she says breathlessly. “Closing in ten days. Seems like the seller can’t wait to get rid of it.”

Ilya grits his teeth so hard he thinks he hears something crack. 

“Great,” he says. “And where is closing? Can we do here in Ottawa?”

“Um, no,” she says, already apologetic. “No, I’m afraid the seller’s agent wasn’t able to be flexible. Seller is located in Montreal for only a couple more weeks and wants to finish the deal before they leave the area for the summer.”

He wonders, briefly, where Hollander is going. With who. Various possibilities flash through his mind: David and Yuna’s cottage to lick his wounds if the Metros lose the Cup. LA or New York to visit stupid Rose Landry. Maybe they will go to Cabo like she is always threatening. Maybe Hollander will go somewhere further flung like Corfu or Mykonos where he can fuck beautiful men indiscriminately without anyone knowing who he is.

He does not want Hollander to go to Mykonos. 

He hopes he’s with David and Yuna after a devastating, humiliating loss, because he wants them to hurt right alongside their stupid son. They reached out a couple of times after the fight, before Ilya blocked their numbers. He could not bear to lose another set of parents. He knows, without a doubt, that they would always choose Shane if he gave them the chance.

As they should. But it still hurts.

“Does not matter,” Ilya says to his lawyer. “And you will go to the closing for me?”

“Ah, we’ll need your signature, Mr. Rozanov,” she says. “But don’t worry. The sale will go through your trust. Your name will be kept out of it entirely, and the seller’s agent agrees to sign in separate rooms to protect your identity. The seller is a high-profile individual as well, so he had no issues with that request.” She pauses, like even revealing Hollander’s gender is too much of a lapse. “I can prepare an NDA for the entire title office, if you prefer.”

“Is not necessary,” Ilya replies. Ten days feels almost too long, even though it’s astronomically quick for a real estate deal, but the Metros are in the fucking Stanley Cup finals, so of course Hollander has a limited window of time. 

He hopes he loses. The Cup, and then the cottage. He hopes it fucking burns him up. 

“I will see you in Montreal on June 18,” his lawyer confirms before hanging up.

Ilya idly taps on the MHL app. June 17 will be Game Five between the Metros and the Minnesota Nomads. Currently the series is tied 1:1. Either team could clinch victory that night.

“Fuck,” he spits, and slams his phone down. He stands up and his knees creak in protest and he realizes he’s been sitting in the same position since he saw the listing. He has not moved for almost five hours, disassociating in his dim living room with all the curtains shut and with a growing urgency to urinate; his head is pounding and his mouth feels full of sand, dry and choking.

He takes a few stiff steps and pain slices through the sole of his foot. Swearing, he realizes he never cleaned up the beer and the broken glass. Hopping through to the kitchen he sits at the island and pulls the shard of glass from the cut, blood oozing sluggishly as he presses a clean kitchen towel against it. He can see the dark, stained spot on his wood floor where the spill has been soaking for hours. He will never get it out.

Just another thing ruined by Shane Hollander.

Ilya spends the next nine days doing absolutely nothing, but he does get bullied into going over to Bood’s house for a Game Five watch party. It’s loud and disorienting and Ilya gets drunk as quickly as possible, the bodies of his teammates blurring around him. He is warm and well-fed and laughs loudly but he’s so fucking miserable he wants to curl up under the guest bed and cry while he listens to his teammates gleefully slander the Metros with increasingly creative invectives. 

Ilya has refused to watch any Metros games between Boxing Day and now but he can’t escape it today. The Centaurs only faced off against the Metros twice between December and the April game when the Centaurs got knocked out. Ilya had managed to get scratched for both games. 

“He’s playing really bad,” Troy says, smugly, from next to Ilya.

Ilya attempts to look at the massive TV screen but he’s so inebriated that all the players are just various-colored blurs. Troy points at a blue-and-red blur. Ilya feels his eyes cross.

“Hollander,” Troy says with satisfaction. “He’s totally asleep out there. He’s been bad the whole series, but you think he’d lock in knowing they could finish this tonight. It’s like he’s underwater.”

“Tired of carrying that whole shitty team, more like,” Wyatt remarks from the other side of Ilya. Ilya didn’t even notice when he sat down. “He’s been floundering on the ice since the holiday bye-week.”

“I feel bad for him,” Harris chimes in, charitably, because Harris is always charitable even to assholes who don’t deserve it, assholes like Shane Hollander. Ilya can smell the faint scent of apples that always seems to cling to him, apples and aftershave and it’s mixing with Troy’s cologne so maybe Harris is behind the couch or something? The press of knees, shoulders, biceps against him is almost unbearably warm.

Fuck, he hasn’t been this drunk in a long time. 

“Don’t feel bad for him,” Troy scoffs. “Guy’s a machine. I don’t think he’s capable of any human emotion.” 

“I don’t think that’s true,” Harris hedges, but then Minnesota scores on Montreal and the Montreal barn erupts in groans and boos. The game is trailing 2:1 to Minnesota in the final period, and there’s only six minutes left on the clock. 

“Miitka’s gonna give away the whole season,” Wyatt complains, gesturing at the goalie in frustration. “Can’t blame Hollander for that.”

“Worst thing for them, that lower-body injury for Drapeau,” Troy agrees. 

The camera smash-cuts to a closeup of Hollander at the bench, squirting a stream of water into his mouth and Ilya closes his eyes again, feeling dizzy. 

“Lotta hockey left to play,” Bood reminds them. And he’s right. Something seems to ignite inside Hollander in the final minutes of the game. His face is grim and set and in a matter of seconds he turns it around: wins the faceoff cleanly and whips across the blue line and fires a backhand with such finesse the Minnesota goalie has no hope of stopping him. And then he does it again. 

And again.

“A fucking hat trick with three minutes left,” Troy’s hands are on his head, absolutely floored. The entire room is silent as the clock runs down and Hollander assists with another goal, and then, in the last twenty seconds, scores a fourth goal. A flood of blue and red descends upon Hollander who is standing, almost disbelieving, in front of the Minnesota goal. Ilya watches as Hollander disappears under a crush of his teammates.

“That was incredible,” Ilya says loudly. It’s the first time he’s spoken all night.

Fuck, he hates him. 

Fuck, no he doesn’t.

Ilya leans forward and throws up on the floor. 

***

Ilya wakes up in an unfamiliar bed. He’s sprawled across the covers; someone dumped him here and didn’t bother even draping a blanket over him. Bright early sunlight streams across the wooden floor. 

He checks his watch. It’s seven in the morning and he’s supposed to be in Montreal in four hours to close on the cottage.

“Fuck,” he swears and rolls over, directly onto the floor. The thump shakes the room but he manages to struggle to his feet, head pounding and mouth repulsive, the tang of vomit clinging to his tongue. 

He stumbles into the en-suite where, thankfully, someone very thoughtful - probably Cassie - has left out a new toothbrush still wrapped in plastic and a tiny travel-sized toothpaste. He brushes his teeth twice, gagging as he scrubs his tongue. His clothes are rank with sweat and wrinkled and his hair is sticking up all over his head like he’s been electrocuted and there are deep creases on his face from where he slept, face-down, against the quilt. He looks objectively terrible. He runs his fingers through his tangled curls, which does nothing to tame them, and then he shuts the light off and races down the stairs, brain throbbing in time with his footsteps. 

Cassie sits at the breakfast bar, nursing a mug of coffee. She lifts her eyes to him and takes in the chaos with one clear-eyed sweep. 

“I cannot believe you’re upright,” she remarks. 

“Is very unfortunate,” Ilya agrees. “I am sorry to leave so early, but I have appointment I cannot miss. Thank you for not putting me out with garbage cans.”

“You’re welcome,” she says. “Do you want to talk about it?”

The team, and the WAGs, have been asking him this for six months. 

“Someday,” he says, which is what he’s been answering for six months. “Bye, Cassie.”

“Drive safe, Ilya.”

He slides into the driver’s seat of his orange Porsche and roars out of Bood and Cassie’s quiet neighborhood. It’s early enough that he beats the morning commute out of Ottawa and he makes good time. He forces his mind to think of very safe things - transfers for his niece’s trust, upcoming vacation plan to see Svetlana in Boston - even though the thread through all of it is he’s going to be in the same building as Hollander in less than two hours. 

He makes it to the title office with ten minutes to spare. He pulls in beside his lawyer’s sleek gray Audi and then panics because right across from him is Hollander’s Jeep. He carefully reverses out of the spot and parks in a hotel garage two blocks away and arrives, panting, at the front door just as his lawyer is coming down to look for him. 

“Wow,” she says, as Ilya braces his hands against his knees to catch his breath, t-shirt damp under his armpits, fighting back a wave of nausea. “Do you need a coffee?”

“Please,” Ilya says breathlessly, following her up the stairs to the neat, quiet office. There’s a receptionist desk and two doors set next to each other, frosted glass windows on either side. His lawyer steers him into the closest room, sits him down with a water bottle and a stack of paperwork, and leaves him there to fix him a coffee. 

“Pretty standard,” she says when she returns, placing a paper cup brimming with burnt-smelling coffee in front of him. He gulps it down, scalding his throat, and follows it with the entire bottle of water. “And not too much paperwork because you’re paying in cash. Each signature location is highlighted and anywhere you see an X, you’ll need to initial.”

Ilya takes the pen off the glass-topped table. The windows of the conference room overlook Sainte-Catherine Street, tourists and locals alike bustling by below, completely unaware that Ilya is purchasing the last physical proof that Shane Hollander once loved him. 

A tear drops onto the paperwork and Ilya wipes it away before it can smudge. His lawyer, tactfully, says nothing. 

It takes no time at all to complete the paperwork. In the ink of every printed word he sees Hollander: his freckles and the way he ducks his head when he smiles, pushing his dark hair out of his eyes, the way his glasses slip low on his nose when he’s reading. He pictures the way the sun glitters off the water on his shoulders after swimming and imagines the smell of the woodsmoke from the firepit in his clothes, back when Ilya was allowed to bury his nose in the crook between his neck and shoulder and inhale whenever he wanted. He thinks of the way his hands would splay over Ilya’s stomach and hears the sound of his name on his lips, gasping, the heat of his body clenching around Ilya and how fucking soft the palms of his hands were by the end of the summer when weeks of sex and reading and swimming and gentle, slow mornings have worn away the roughness that hockey put there. 

“The sale includes all the furniture,” his lawyer is saying, and that’s fucking worse because now he’ll be able to look at each piece of furniture too and remember how Hollander looked bent over them, reach out and touch the side of the bed that will always be empty but used to be where he’d find Hollander when he woke up from bad dreams, his arms always ready to hold him. 

“Okay,” he says, because what else can he say? He considers maybe burning the fucking cottage down. He doesn’t want the memories, but he can’t bear for anyone else to have the ghosts of them, either. 

He caps the pen and slides the paperwork towards the title agent waiting discreetly in the corner. He leaves with the completed paperwork and his lawyer excuses herself to take a phone call and Ilya is left alone, the air conditioning blowing cold on his neck and raising gooseflesh along his bare arms. The door to the conference room next to his opens and closes and then he hears people talking and then he hears Shane fucking Hollander, his voice as beautiful as any music, saying “let’s get this over with.” 

Someone is in there with him. His own lawyer, probably, or the realtor, and Shane speaks to them in that low, gentle voice he used to save for late at night, when the lights were off and Ilya’s head was on his chest and there was no one else in the world: warm and tender and affectionate and all Ilya’s, Ilya’s alone.

He has not heard Hollander’s voice in six months. It slips through the drywall and fills the room around him, shapeless and impossible to hold, like dense fog rolling in off the lake. Thick enough to lose himself in, not solid enough to keep. Next door, Hollander laughs and Ilya swallows, hard, against a knot in his throat. Because this is a great day for Hollander, he’s won the Cup and he’s getting rid of this fucking albatross of a cottage where the only thing left for him are memories, the rooms where Ilya still lingers like a bad smell, impossible to clear even with every door and window thrown open.

Hollander is happy. It’s one of the worst fucking days of Ilya’s life.

“All done,” he hears someone say, and Hollander replies: “Good.”

Ilya covers his face with his hands and tries not to scream. 

His lawyer returns with an envelope, beaming, and Ilya drags his hands down his face and clears his throat as she passes him the paperwork and the deed and then a small jingling package that must be house keys. 

I don’t need these, he wants to say. I already have my own.

The cottage key is still on his ring, tucked between the Porsche fob and the little silver skate keychain that Hollander gave him years ago. Ilya has never used the key, not even once. He’s never had to, because he’s never been to the cottage without Hollander. The cottage is a world that existed only because they entered it together.

And now it belongs to Ilya alone.

The agent and his lawyer congratulate him as he listens to Hollander’s chair scrape back. Footsteps cross the floor and pause as the door opens. Ilya knows the sound of Hollander’s walk. He knows the exact weight of it, the slight drag when he is tired, the quick impatient rhythm when he wants to be somewhere else. He has listened to those footsteps approaching him in hotel hallways, crossing thresholds, rushing towards him, climbing stairs toward their bedroom.

Now he listens to them recede down the corridor.

He thinks, this is the last time I will hear Shane Hollander walk away from me.

“Thank you,” he says, his voice a little hysterical. The agent looks concerned but he stands up before anyone can ask him what’s wrong. 

He blinks and finds himself standing on the curb with his arms full of papers and the housekeys pressing into his palm hard enough to hurt. He has no memory of the elevator or the lobby or saying goodbye. His lawyer looks at him with pity as she gets into her Audi, like maybe she’s considering taking him out for a drink or taking him home and tucking him under a blanket. Instead she just tosses him a little wave as she pulls out into traffic. 

Hollander’s stupid boring Jeep is gone, too. 

Ilya manages to walk back to the parking garage without completely breaking down, although later he will not be able to remember the walk at all. He sits behind the wheel of the orange Porsche for a long time. The closing papers lie on the passenger seat, neat and official and catastrophic. His name is on the deed now and the cottage belongs to him in every way that matters to the government and none of the ways that ever mattered to Ilya. The packet of keys rests on top, a glittering taunt. He grips the steering wheel until his knuckles blanch.

He should go home, back to Ottawa, and put the paperwork in a drawer where he cannot see it, lock it away until he can bear to think about what he has done. He can send someone to take care of the place until he decides what he’s going to do with it moving forward. He never has to see it again.

Instead, he starts the car. He pulls out of the garage and points the Porsche north toward Lanaudière, toward the lake, toward the cottage Hollander has just sold to a stranger like it meant nothing at all, like it isn’t where Ilya first told him that he loved him.

It’s his now. So he may as well go say goodbye.

***

The Porsche bumps down the rutted driveway towards the lake, threatening its suspension. Ilya parks crooked across the driveway, the way Hollander always hated, and takes the front steps two at a time.

He unlocks the door with the key still attached to his keyring and the scent of memory hits him square in the chest. The cottage has been shut up since the end of last summer. The air is stale and close, thick with old wood and dust and the faint dampness that creeps into every lakeside house over winter, but all Ilya can smell is him. 

Flannel shirts and woodsmoke in his hair and lake water drying on sun-warmed skin. Sweat and come and the clean smell of lube, the tang of salt at the hollow of his throat. Sunscreen and wet towels and the sharp green scent of the balsam pillows he kept in every drawer. 

It’s impossible, of course. Hollander has packed his clothes and stripped the beds and carried every trace of himself out of this place.

Ilya smells him anyway, and trembles in the doorway before finally gathering his courage to step over the threshold. 

The rooms are too large without Hollander in them. The plush leather sofa has been left behind, along with the scarred coffee table and the armchair no one ever sat in because it was uncomfortable and Hollander refused to admit he had made a bad purchase. Pale rectangles mark the walls where photographs used to hang. The bookshelves are empty. The lamps are dark. 

Ilya walks through it without turning on any of the lights.

Upstairs is worse. The bedroom door is ajar and the bed is the same, the mattress bare. There are no pillows, no rumpled blankets, no clothes folded neatly and waiting to be put away. No Hollander sprawled diagonally across the bed, waiting for him with those limpid brown eyes.

He opens the closet, which is empty except for one overlooked item shoved far back in the corner. Red-and-black-and-tan flannel, soft with age, one cuff is missing a button. Hollander used to wear it on cold mornings at the lake, the sleeves pushed carelessly to his elbows. Ilya remembers stealing it gleefully, how Hollander would roll his eyes but never ask for it back. He remembers him reaching around him to button it over Ilya’s bare chest, laughing when the fabric pulled tight across his shoulders.

Ilya presses it to his face. It does not smell like Hollander at all.

The first sob catches him without warning. It tears out of him hard enough to hurt, and then he is sitting on the floor of the closet with the shirt pressed against his mouth, trying to swallow every sound before it can fill the empty house.

Eventually he drags himself upright again and puts the flannel on. The sleeves end too high on his wrists and the shoulders pull when he moves. It does not fit him and never has, but he buttons it carefully over his wrinkled, stale t-shirt and lies down on Hollander’s side of the bed. He can almost reconstruct Hollander around him: one warm leg thrown over his hips, breath against his neck, a heavy hand resting beneath the hem of his shirt. He remembers the slow, sleepy way Shane used to touch him in this bed, as though the summers - and their love - would last forever.

His body responds before he can stop it, shame rising hot alongside the desire. Ilya slips a hand beneath the waistband of his joggers and touches himself, chasing something that is not pleasure so much as proof: proof that he and Hollander existed here together. That Hollander had wanted him, that he loved him. That there was once a life in which Ilya could reach into the dark and find him.

Ilya’s hand tightens around his cock in a poor approximation of the way Hollander would stroke him. 

“Shane,” he whimpers into the shadows of the room. 

It’s over almost embarrassingly quickly. Afterward, Ilya lies curled on his side, breathing hard into the empty space where Shane - not Hollander, not anymore, not for a long time now - should be, grief spreading through him cold and sickly with every slowing beat of his heart. There is none of the relief that usually follows getting off, only the terrible knowledge that his body will still call for Shane, and Shane will not answer.

Outside, the wind begins to rise. By the time Ilya goes downstairs, clouds have gathered over the lake, low and bruised. The water has turned dark, the surface chopped into restless little waves. Ilya leaves his shoes beside the steps and walks barefoot through the damp grass toward the dock. His curls whip across his face. He hunches his shoulders against the wind, turning up the collar of Shane's flannel as cold fingers slip beneath it and creep over his throat.

The dock groans under his weight. He sits at the end and lowers his feet into the lake, where the water is cold enough to ache even in June.

A million years ago, or maybe only one summer, Ilya had planned to cover this dock in candles. He had imagined Shane following the path down from the cottage, complaining that Ilya was going to set the entire forest on fire. He had imagined himself waiting here in a good shirt with the ring hidden in his pocket, every light reflected twice in the dark water.

He had planned what he would say. It would not have been beautiful, because Ilya had never trusted himself to be beautiful with words, especially not in English. But it would have been clear, and brave, and honest. He would have said it all out loud. He would say Shane’s name where the lake and the trees and the whole enormous sky could hear it. He would tell Shane that he wanted every summer and every winter after it, every hour of every day. He would ask Shane to let him build a life around the certainty of coming home to him.

He had wanted to claim him openly, not a secret in the dark. 

Mine, Ilya would have said. And yours. No rules, no distance, no frightened part of either of them could take it away.

A wave breaks against the pilings and splashes cold water over his shins. Ilya grips the edge of the dock. The ring is still hidden in the back of his closet in Ottawa, inside a box he has not opened since Shane left. Black and gold, like the team he had left without a moment’s hesitation for Shane. He always imagined he’d get himself a matching one, after Shane said yes. Because of course he would say yes.

The cottage belongs to him now, this dock and their bedroom and the water numbing his skin. Every place where he once imagined their future, the first place since his childhood that has ever felt like home.

He has managed to keep it all, the ring and the house and the memories and the grief. Everything except Shane.

***

The first drop of rain lands on the back of Ilya’s hand. Within seconds, the lake is stippled with them, the smooth spaces between the waves disappearing beneath a thousand small impacts. The rain gathers quickly, cold and insistent, soaking through Hollander’s flannel and flattening his curls against his forehead. It runs into his eyes and down the back of his neck. The dock grows slick beneath his palms.

He does not give a fuck. Let him get wet. Let him freeze to death, let the rain fill his lungs and drag him to the bottom of the lake. At least then he will not have to sit here trying to understand how Shane could sell this place.

He remembers the documentary about this place, how Shane had meticulously planned every inch of this place to be his. The place had Shane in its very bones long before Ilya ever crossed the threshold. And Shane had brought him here like he was revealing something that could wound him, exposing the tender line of his Achilles tendon. He had spent the entire drive acting casual, one hand loose on the wheel, talking too much about how private it was, and how his parents would stay away, and how they wouldn’t even need to go get groceries. But when they finally reached the cottage, Shane had gone quiet. He had led Ilya through the rooms with a boyish pride, pointing out the view from the bedroom and the path to the lake and the well full of crisp, fresh water. He had explained how the screen doors worked and how to coax the fireplace into drawing properly. He had complained about the contractor who installed the backsplash tiles crooked, although Ilya could not see anything wrong with them.

He had been so proud. Not of the house, Ilya realizes now, but of sharing it with him. Shane had watched Ilya instead of the cottage, waiting for every reaction. He had opened cupboards and pointed out features as though each detail were part of some confession, raw with nervousness that Ilya had not understood until much later.

This house was where Shane could be himself, without masking, without hesitation. And he had let Ilya see all of it, all of him, and made room for him inside it, too. It was the first place they had ever belonged to each other without conditions. No separate hotel rooms or carefully timed arrivals or looking over their shoulders before touching, but loving him out loud, fully under the sun. No hiding. No shame. 

And now Shane has sold it like it never meant anything at all. He’s practically given it away, considering what it was listed for. 

Maybe, he thinks, Shane had looked at all the places where Ilya had settled into his life and felt invaded. Maybe he felt relief as he emptied each drawer, stripped each bed, each time another trace of Ilya disappeared.

Rainwater slides over Ilya’s mouth, clean and bitter. The rain rattles against the cottage roof. The gutters overflow, spilling water in silver sheets; the trees bend in the wind and Ilya hears the creak of the dock behind him. It almost sounds like footsteps, but he dismisses this. The dock has always shifted in bad weather, its joints complaining against the pilings. He thinks he hears someone call his name. For a minute he thinks he’s finally cracked, that his brain has broken open under the weight of all these memories. He knows if he looks, there will be nothing there but rain.

And then he hears footsteps again, footsteps he knows better than his own. Ilya’s heart gives one brutal, disbelieving beat and then he pulls his feet out of the water and turns around. 

Shane is standing there on the dock, soaked to the bone. His jacket hangs open and useless around him, his T-shirt plastered to his chest. Water runs from his hair - he’s cut it short sometime between Boxing Day and today - down into his eyes.

He looks devastated, the expression raw and naked. His mouth is parted, his face pale, his brown eyes wide with the stunned grief of someone who came here to look at a grave and found the body sitting upright. The rain falls hard between them, drumming against the dock and the lake and the cottage Shane threw away like it was nothing. His gaze moves over Ilya: his bare feet and the soaked joggers clinging to his legs and the old flannel pulled tight across his shoulders.

“Ilya,” he says, voice breaking on his name. 

Ilya gets to his knees, then to his feet, wobbling dangerously. Shane takes a half-step towards him, his lower lip trembling, his hands clenched in fists at his sides. For one suspended second, Ilya thinks he might reach for him. Instead Shane looks toward the cottage, then back at Ilya, confusion breaking through the grief on his face.

“What are you doing here?”

Ilya laughs, the sound ugly and hollow. “Is my house.”

“What?”

“Is my house,” Ilya repeats, louder over the pounding of the rain on the dock. “You did not want it anymore. I bought it.”

“You - you’re the buyer? But I didn’t - I would have seen your name on the papers.”

Ilya folds his arms over his chest, although he cannot feel his hands anymore. “I purchased through trust.”

“Why would you do that?” Shane’s voice cracks. 

The question is so absurd that for a moment he cannot answer it. Why did he buy the house where he learned what it felt like to be loved without fear? Why did he spend millions of dollars preserving the one place in the world that had ever felt safe? Why did he sit through the closing while Shane’s voice came through the wall, eviscerating any last shreds of hope Ilya’s stupid heart might have clung to?

He looks past Shane toward the cottage.

“I could not let someone else have it.” There. That’s as honest as he can be without breaking down entirely. 

“Why not?”

“Because I love this fucking place!” Ilya finally snaps. “You sold it like it was nothing. Like we were nothing.”

“Ilya -”

“You did not even tell me you were putting it on market.”

“We haven’t been speaking -”

“No shit,” Ilya yells, really yells, and Shane takes a step back. Ilya’s feet slip on the wet boards of the dock, the cut on the bottom of his foot stinging again, the bandaid no doubt at the bottom of the lake by now. “We have one fight and I ask you for space and then you do not speak to me for six fucking months, Shane. You don’t know anything. And you do not know what it was like to sit there today and listen while you signed it away.”

“I was giving you space!” Shane protests. “And today - you were there?”

“In next room. As requested.”

Shane looks stricken. “I thought the buyer wanted privacy.”

“I did. Papers still required my signature.”

“Jesus Christ, Ilya.”

“I heard you say you wanted to get it over with. I heard you laugh, say good when it was done. Like you were so fucking happy to be rid of it.”

Shane lifts a hand to his mouth. 

“Ilya, I wasn’t happy. I was trying not to lose it in front of my lawyer.”

“You said good.”

“No.” Shane takes a step toward him, then stops when Ilya stiffens. “No, that’s not what I meant. I just meant I could get out of there before I changed my mind. I had to sell it,” Shane continues, voice wobbling, “because I couldn’t come here again. Not without you. Not after you told me to leave.”

“You could have called me. You did not call me even one time, Shane. You did not even send me a text.” 

The rain strikes the dock so hard it bounces back from the boards in silver mist. Shane’s face crumples slightly, but Ilya is too angry to let it soften him. Six months of silence have calcified inside him. He can feel every day of it now, each one sharpened to a razor’s fine edge.

“You told me to leave. You said you didn’t want to talk to me - that you couldn’t even look at me, Ilya. And I came here and all I saw was your fucking ghost. There was no way I could keep this place. Even though I love it. Like I -”

He swallows, wet and thick. 

“You told me to leave,” he finishes.

“Because I was fucking angry,” Ilya snaps.

“How was I supposed to know you didn’t mean it?”

“Because you were supposed to know me!” Ilya shouts. “You were supposed to understand that I was hurt. You were supposed to come back when we were not yelling at each other and ask me what I meant. What I needed.”

“I thought respecting what you asked for was the right thing.”

“No. You were afraid, and you are trying to make it sound noble.”

“Fine,” Shane says, voice breaking. “I was afraid, okay? You were asking me for something I wasn’t able to give. I loved you so fucking much but I was so afraid of what would happen if your teammates saw us together. They would - they would have known immediately, Ilya. There is no way they’d miss it. They’d have taken one look at us and known exactly what you meant to me.”

Ilya does not miss the past tense. Loved. Meant. Known. Wasn’t able to give.

“I see,” Ilya says, wishing Shane had never come. This is agony, knowing that it’s been over while Ilya has been waiting for some sign that maybe there was still a spark left between them. “You were afraid, and so was I. Do you understand that? I was afraid because I already thought that I loved you more, that I was not someone you could love the same way. You asked me if I’d choose you, when I had chosen you over and over. I left Boston. I left my team, I left my home I had lived in for ten years. I left doctors, trainers, friends. I started using metric again, which is not fucking easy after ten years in America, and I memorized new route to Montreal and I even switched coffee shops because you hated the one near my new house that never felt like anything more than a place to wait for you in. I chose you every day. And then I asked you to go to a party and you just - you could not even do that.”

“Ilya, we agreed to keep it private -”

“I did not ask you to walk into press conference and tell whole world. I asked you to stand beside me in room full of people who love me and would protect me, would protect our secret. I asked for just one night, for you to not act like I was something you wanted to hide.”

“I was never ashamed of you, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“You made me feel like it. And when I asked whether you would ever choose me over hockey, instead of answering, you asked me same thing. Like I had not already done it. Like my whole life in Ottawa was not the answer.” 

“I was defensive.”

“You were cruel. And then when I told you to go, you went.”

“I thought you wanted me gone.”

“For one night!” Ilya’s voice cracks. The sound of it seems to split Shane open. His shoulders fold forward, like he’s trying to hold his guts in.

“I wanted you to come back,” Ilya continues. “I wanted you to let me calm down and then come back. I wanted you to knock on door and tell me I was wrong or you were wrong or we were both fucking idiots. I wanted you to fight for me. I left everything familiar because I believed you were home. Do you understand what it did to me when you walked out and never came back?”

Shane’s eyes fill.

“I waited,” Ilya says. “All night.”

“Ilya.”

“I did not sleep. Every car outside I hoped would be you. The next morning, I thought maybe you would call. Then I thought maybe after practice. Then next day. Then New Year’s. Weeks and weeks until I stopped hoping altogether.”

“I wanted to.”

“But you did not.”

“Because every time I picked up my phone, I heard you asking whether I would ever choose you. And I didn’t know how to answer without admitting you were right.”

Shane’s crying now, the tears mixing with the rain on his face. “You had already chosen me, so many times I stopped seeing what it cost you. I let myself believe Ottawa was just another city and the Centaurs were just another team because acknowledging how much you gave up meant admitting I owed you the same courage. I thought it could be enough, keeping it quiet. Enough to get by until retirement, anyway. I was a coward, Ilya. I decided to sell because I came here alone a month ago and realized I could never be happy again here without you. And I thought you’d never want that, would never want me after everything.”

“You never even asked.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice rough with tears. 

This is what he wanted for six months: Shane apologizing, standing in front of him with no excuses left, finally admitting that the silence was not confusion or restraint but fear. It does not feel as satisfying as he imagined.

Shane’s hands hang uselessly at his sides, open now instead of clenched, and Ilya hates that he still knows what they feel like against his skin, hates that his body has already begun leaning toward Shane even while his brain is trying to hold the line.

“I should have called,” Shane says. “I should have come back to you instead of turning it around because I was scared of what the answer would cost.”

“And what is your answer now?”

Shane’s breath catches. The storm seems to recede around them, though the rain is still hammering the lake and streaming from their hair.

“You,” Shane says. “Ilya, I made a mistake. And I will choose you every single fucking day if you let me.”

Shane takes one careful step closer.

“I don’t mean I’m suddenly not afraid,” he says. “I am. I probably always will be, a little. But I’m more afraid of living the rest of my life knowing I let you go because I couldn’t stand beside you when you needed me. And I realized I want to stand beside you in front of the whole fucking world.”

Since the fight, Ilya has imagined Shane relieved. Shane moving on. Shane waking in a clean, quiet house and feeling lighter without him. But there is no relief in the man standing before him. Only grief, and shame, and the same terrible emptiness Ilya has been carrying.

“You should have fought for me,” Ilya says.

“I should have,” Shane agrees. 

“I should not have had to ask.”

“No.”

“And when I told you to leave, I should not have expected you to read my mind. I was cruel too. I wanted to hurt you. I wanted you to feel how much you had hurt me.”

“I did.”

“Good.”

A small, broken laugh escapes Shane. Ilya’s chest aches at the sound of it.

Then Shane says, “I came here to say goodbye.”

“To the cottage?”

“To you. Whatever part of you was still here.”

“I came for same reason,” Ilya admits.

The dock shifts beneath them, waves ragged from the storm. Ilya’s injured foot throbs against the boards and he staggers. Shane’s hand shoots out before he can stop himself, closing around Ilya’s forearm and the touch travels through Ilya’s entire body like lightning. His hand is so broad and strong that his fingers meet even around the corded muscle of Ilya’s arm.

Shane looks down at his hand around Ilya, then back up at Ilya’s face. His wide brown eyes are two pools of desperate hope. 

“And what happens when we get caught?” Ilya asks, his voice still harsh. He does not know how to soften this moment, cannot bear to make it less.

“I don’t want to get caught,” Shane replies, without hesitation. “I want to come out. On our terms, not because someone takes a picture or asks the right question or decides something about us we don’t want to confirm. I want it to belong to us first. I want us to decide what we say, and when, and who gets to know what.”

The rain runs down his face and into his eyes, where he blinks it away. He is not crying anymore. Ilya’s never seen him look so certain.

“I want it on terms that work for us,” he says. “Not the league or the media or anyone who thinks they get a vote. Just you. Just me. I should have told you on Boxing Day. I should have said it every day after that.”

“Shane -”

“I love you,” he says, and his voice does not shake. The words strike Ilya harder than the driving rain. 

“Don’t,” Ilya says fiercely, and Shane’s grip tightens on his arm, as if he can tell Ilya is about to pull away. “Don’t say this unless it’s real. I have been dreaming of these words for months, words I used to hear all the time and then silence. And now you are here, and you say exactly what I wanted to hear, and I -” His voice breaks. He looks away, furious with himself. “I cannot do this if it is not real.”

“It’s real. Ilya, please, I love you so much it’s killing me.”

“I have never stopped loving you,” Ilya says. “Not for one second. Do you understand? Not when I spent weeks crying and not when I bought this fucking house because I could not stand anyone else having it. I have loved you since first moment I saw you, and I have never fucking stopped.”

Shane’s breath catches and he steps closer to Ilya until he can feel the warmth radiating through his soaking clothes.

“And now you are standing here,” Ilya continues, and his voice is shaking now, “saying you choose me, saying you love me, and I do not know if I believe you or if I have finally lost my mind.”

“You haven’t.”

“It feels like a dream. Or maybe nightmare.”

Shane takes one more step until there is barely any space left between them, his pelvis and stomach and chest flush against Ilya’s, the insistent hand on Ilya’s arm pulling him in as close as he can. 

“Then maybe it’s time to wake up.”

He tilts his chin up and kisses him, his hand sliding into Ilya’s curls, mouth warm and wet and open, and the first touch of his lips is so familiar that Ilya almost collapses from it. Shane kisses him again, deeper this time, and Ilya’s hands fist the front of his jacket. Shane’s mouth is soft and his fingers are trembling against Ilya’s scalp, tugging him deeper into the kiss. The dock shifts again beneath them, and Shane’s arm circles his waist before he can lose his footing.

Ilya kisses him back with all the longing of six months’ worth of grief lodged behind his heart. Shane makes a broken sound against his mouth and holds him tightly against him, like he knows exactly how close Ilya is to coming apart.

When they finally break off for a shared gasp of breath, Shane stays close, forehead pressed to Ilya’s, unwilling to lose the contact. 

“I love you,” he says again, breathless. His lips are red and swollen and Ilya wants to kiss them until they’re rough and chapped. “I love you. I’m here. I’m not leaving.”

Shane kisses him again, slower now, as though he has all the time in the world to convince him. Then he pulls back and looks down.

“You’re bleeding.”

Ilya follows his gaze to the thin red trickle washing across the boards beneath his foot. “Is nothing.”

“Don’t be stupid. Come inside.”

Shane threads their fingers together and tugs him toward the cottage. There is something soothingly familiar in the command, as though Shane has simply decided that Ilya has been cold and hurt long enough and that he is going to do something about it.

They stumble up the path through the rain, Shane glancing back every few steps as though he needs to make certain Ilya is still there. He hesitates at the doorway, unsure whether he’s really allowed to enter. The cottage is still and dark beyond him, rain streaming down the broad glass windows, blurring the lake and trees into shadow. Ilya watches the loss of it pass over Shane’s face: the brief, painful realization that he no longer has the right to just walk inside.

“It is still yours,” Ilya says. “It was yours before I was. Then you made room for me here, and it became ours - the first home I had known in a very long time. That is why I bought it, Shane. I could not let what belonged to us become someone else’s. I could not let strangers live in the place where I learned what it felt like to belong to someone entirely.”

A real smile breaks over Shane’s face, sudden and radiant, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He crosses the threshold, drawing Ilya in behind him. Water pools around their feet on the kitchen floor. Shane strips off his jacket and drops it without looking, so unlike his usual careful neatness that Ilya almost laughs. Then Shane turns back to him and reaches for the buttons of the flannel.

“I don’t want to do this just because you are feeling guilty.”

“I’m not.” Shane’s eyes are burning. “I mean, I am - but that’s not what this is. I do feel guilty, and angry, and sad. I’m fucking furious that I’ve wasted six months of our lives. And I want it because I’ve missed you every day for six months. Because I love you and I thought I’d never get to touch you again.” He swallows. “It’s okay if you - if you don’t want to. No pressure, or anything. I just…I need to take care of you. If you’ll let me. Whatever that looks like.”

Ilya is frozen, staring at Shane, taking in the softness of his chocolate-brown eyes, the tenderness around his mouth, every beautiful freckle standing out against his skin.

Fuck. He loves him so fucking much. 

Shane turns his hands beneath Ilya’s grip until his palms rest lightly against the wet flannel. He does not try to unbutton it again. He only smooths his hands over Ilya’s chest, tracing the shape of him through the soaked fabric.

“Please,” he adds.

Ilya closes his eyes. Desire surges through him so violently his knees threaten to give out. The desire is tangled with grief and relief and six months of wanting Shane so badly he had begun to believe it would kill him. When he opens them again, Shane’s still looking at him, his fingertips tracing tiny, patient circles over Ilya’s chest.

Ilya releases Shane’s wrists, his hands dropping limply to his sides. 

“Take me apart, Hollander,” Ilya says in a broken little voice. 

Shane’s eyes darken with desire. He slips one hand around to the back of Ilya’s neck and kisses him once, softly, as though sealing a promise. Then he crouches and slides one arm behind Ilya’s knees.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking care of you.”

“I can walk.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I am also very big. Bigger than you.”

Shane gives him a look. “You think I can’t carry you?”

Under any other circumstances, Ilya would challenge him, maybe even scoop him up before Shane got the chance. Instead, he loops his arms around Shane’s shoulders and lets himself be lifted. 

Shane carries him through the dark cottage. He is careful on the stairs, one hand spread wide beneath Ilya’s thighs, the other arm locked securely around his back. Ilya presses his face into Shane’s neck and breathes him in, rain and the faint trace of whatever body wash he uses now. Different, but still Shane underneath. Shane keeps looking down at him every few steps, as though he still cannot quite believe Ilya is here, whole, in his arms.

“Watch where you are going,” Ilya murmurs, his fingers skimming Shane’s cheekbone. 

“I am.”

“Shane, you are looking at me.”

“I know.”

The bedroom is dim, the storm turning the windows into black mirrored sheets, reflecting them back. Shane lowers Ilya onto the edge of the mattress as if he is placing something fragile there and then kneels at Ilya’s feet. Shane rests his hands on Ilya’s thighs and looks up at him, rain still caught in his lashes. The expression on his face is so reverent that it sends heat curling low in Ilya’s gut. 

Shane’s hands slide down Ilya’s legs from knee to ankle and then he rests Ilya’s injured foot in his lap, opening the nightstand and grabbing a bandage. He presses it over the cut, smoothing the edges down with his thumb. Then, without looking away from Ilya, he turns his head and kisses the inside of his ankle.

Ilya’s breath catches. Shane kisses him again, slightly higher. His lips move over Ilya’s shin with slow, deliberate reverence, pausing at an old scar Ilya barely remembers getting. Shane presses his mouth there like an apology.

“Shane.”

“Shh.”

Shane rises onto his knees between Ilya’s legs. His hands slide beneath the open edges of the flannel, palms flattening against Ilya’s waist. He pushes the wet fabric from his shoulders carefully, freeing one arm and then the other. He drops it carelessly onto the rug before tugging the hem of Ilya’s t-shirt up. Ilya obediently lifts his arms over his head and lets Shane ease the wet fabric off of him and it follows the flannel to the floor. 

Shane’s gaze moves, slow and hungry, across Ilya’s body, taking in every change six months have made: the thickness at his waist, reflecting hours spent on his couch and avoiding the gym. A bruise fading over one hip, no doubt from the disastrous party at Bood’s house. The moles Shane has kissed a hundred times, the ridges of his ribs.

There is no hunger in his face that is not also adoration.

“You’re beautiful,” Shane says.

Ilya scoffs automatically. “You have seen me before. Many times.”

“Not enough.”

Shane straightens, still on his knees, leaning up to kiss the center of Ilya’s chest, then the slope of one pectoral, then the hollow beneath his collarbone. His hands splay over his stomach, warm and alive underneath, and his lips cover a thin silver scar, left from a skate blade before they even met. Shane’s mouth moves over him as though he is reading something written beneath Ilya’s skin, something he once knew by heart and is terrified he might have forgotten. He kisses every place where injury or time or nature has left a mark. He presses his cheek to Ilya’s stomach and wraps his arms around his waist. For a moment, he simply holds him. Ilya puts a shaking hand on the back of his head.

“You are supposed to be seducing me,” Ilya points out. 

“I am.”

“You are hugging me.”

“Is it working?”

Ilya swallows. “Yes.”

Shane smiles against his skin. He opens his mouth over the hard line of Ilya’s stomach, his tongue following the ridges of Ilya’s abdominal muscles, the cut of his hips. Ilya’s fingers tighten in his hair.

Shane takes his time. He traces Ilya’s body with his lips and tongue, never settling anywhere long enough to give Ilya what he wants, always moving on just as Ilya begins to lean into him. It is the most exquisite torture, worship and punishment in equal measure.

“Shane.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

“I need to hear you say it.”

Ilya’s eyes flutter closed as Shane’s teeth drag, gently, over his navel. 

“Touch me,” Ilya says.

“I am touching you.”

“More, moy lyubimyy. Please.”

Shane’s eyes darken and he stands, pressing Ilya back onto the mattress with one hand. The bed gives beneath him with a familiar sigh. Shane follows him down, bracing himself over Ilya, and for one dizzy second they are exactly where they have always belonged.

Shane closes the distance between them, kissing him so softly Ilya thinks maybe he’s imagining things again. Shane’s mouth is soft and coaxing as he cups Ilya’s jaw, holding his face still while he tastes him with devastating patience. Every time Ilya tries to kiss back, to take control, Shane eases him down, kissing the corner of his mouth or the sharp line of his cheek until Ilya is restless beneath him. His thigh slots between Ilya’s legs and Ilya arches against him, their wet clothes sticking and clinging to every line of his body. 

“I love you,” Shane exhales into his mouth, like it’s as natural as breathing to tell him this. He says it without flinching. Without past tense. 

Ilya surrenders to the enormity of it.

He allows himself to be guided, allows Shane to lift his arms over his head and hold his wrists lightly against the mattress, lets Shane’s mouth travel down his throat, across his chest, over every inch of him that has ached for this. Shane works his way down Ilya’s body with worship in each kiss. Even the pauses feel deliberate, Shane settling over him whenever Ilya begins to shake, giving him something solid to hold on to.

He kisses Ilya until his lips look swollen and sore, mouths at Ilya’s skin until every breath comes out ragged, and presses himself close enough that Ilya can feel exactly how badly Shane wants him, but he refuses to hurry.

Shane releases his wrists and Ilya’s hands slide through his hair, wet and dark as silk, as Shane rubs his cheek against the coarse hair below Ilya’s navel before tugging at the wet polyester of Ilya’s joggers and stripping them off when Ilya helpfully lifts his hips off the bed. He kisses the jut of his hipbones and then the inside of his thigh, teeth ghosting against his skin like he wants nothing more than to bite down. Ilya wriggles, seeking friction, and Shane presses an open-mouthed kiss against the hard shaft of his cock, still covered by the thin fabric of his boxers. 

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya whimpers, his hips bucking involuntarily. 

“Shane,” Shane says against the rigid line of him. He looks up at Ilya from between his thighs. His own breathing is uneven now, his face flushed and pupils blown black and enormous, but his hands remain steady where they smooth over Ilya’s thighs in a slow, controlled rhythm. “Please.”

“Shane,” Ilya says, voice breaking a little. “My Shane.”

Shane’s chin trembles and then he tugs down Ilya’s boxers. His eyes are greedy as he takes in the sight of Ilya, flushed and hard, and then he presses a tender kiss just at the underside of the head of his cock before he sinks down, taking him to the root.

Ilya gasps at the sudden wet, tight heat that floods his senses. His hands tighten in Shane’s hair and Shane moans around him, the back of his throat vibrating around Ilya’s cock. Ilya’s head falls back against the mattress, tugging Shane’s hair again, but Shane needs no encouragement. He works his cock with single-minded focus, his hands still kneading Ilya’s thighs, throat open and drooling around him, a slick wash of saliva running down Shane’s chin and dripping onto the mattress beneath them. Shane slides his fingers through the mess and then Ilya feels him stroke, featherlight, against his hole. He whines, which would be embarrassing if this was anyone but Shane, the only person he’s ever let touch him like this. Shane hums around his cock as he gently works one slick finger inside of Ilya, easing him open so slowly there’s hardly any burn. 

Shane crooks his finger and strokes Ilya’s prostate firmly. Ilya cries out and Shane moans like he’s the one being touched, like Ilya’s the one working Shane open. He moans like nothing feels better than Ilya’s pleasure, and he eases a second finger in alongside the first, stretching him tenderly. His fingers are callused from a full season of hockey and the way they catch and rub against that bundle of nerves inside him makes Ilya want to sob. He can feel waves of pleasure sparking like heat lightning just under his skin, racing up and down his spine, crackling in his very bones. 

On any other day, in another life where misunderstandings and pride and hurt feelings had never ruptured them, this would be enough. But Ilya needs to claim him, needs to bury himself in his body, reassure himself that Shane still belongs to him and no one else. 

“Shane,” he pants, tugging Shane off his cock, “please.”

Shane pulls away reluctantly, voice already hoarse. “What do you need?”

“Sweetheart,” Ilya’s voice cracks. “I just…I need you.”

“You have me, Illy.”

“All of you.”

Shane closes his eyes briefly, emotion tightening his mouth. When he opens them, there is nothing uncertain left in his face. He undresses without moving far from Ilya, pausing to kiss him between every discarded piece of clothing. Then he settles over him again, bare skin to bare skin. Ilya’s hands move instinctively over Shane’s back, relearning the shape of him. Shane is leaner than he was at the holidays, the ridges of his spine pronounced beneath Ilya’s fingertips.

“You are not eating,” Ilya says, fingers tracing the contours of Shane’s ribs. Under the padding and loose-fitting uniform, Shane had looked no different on the television. Now Ilya can see it in the narrowness of his waist, the way the curve of his ass is more subtle. His hands tighten on him with worry.

“I’m trying,” Shane says with a wobble in his voice. “I’m sorry. I just…I’d get back to my condo and I’d fix myself a plate but then I’d start thinking about you or there’d be a game on and I’d just sit and watch you and I…everything tasted like ash.”

“You watched my games?”

“I watched every single one.”

Ilya searches his face. The question has been lodged inside him for six months, but now that he can ask it, he is almost too afraid of the answer.

“Were you with anyone?”

Shane stills. “Since Boxing Day? No. Of course not.”

“You do not have to lie because you think I -”

“Ilya.” Shane takes his face in both hands. “I already know what it feels like to have you. Why would I want to touch someone else and spend the whole time wishing they were you?” His mouth twists, tender and miserable. “You’ve ruined me for anybody else.”

“You have ruined me, too. In case you were wondering.” He pulls Shane down to kiss him. “But I am still angry. And now I am angry you have not been taking care of yourself while I could not.”

Shane kisses his forehead.

“Be angry,” he whispers. “Just let me stay.”

Ilya turns his face away, overwhelmed, but Shane follows. He kisses Ilya’s temple and his eyelids and the wet track beneath one eye. He does not ask if it is rain. They both know it is not, hasn’t been for a while.

“I’m here,” Shane says. “I’m right here. I’m okay. I will stay where you can see me.”

Then he shifts above him, taking Ilya’s hands and placing them where he wants them, low on his hips. Ilya’s hands settle naturally on familiar curves, as though Shane’s body has spent six months waiting for them to come home. Shane leans over to the nightstand drawer again and pulls out a small clear bottle.

“Jesus, Shane. You were going to leave lube for new owner to find?”

Shane shrugs. “Would give them a fun party story.”

Ilya laughs, full and loud and it startles him, startles Shane too. He’s still smiling when he slicks his fingers and works himself open this time, eyes never leaving Ilya’s face, letting him watch all the tiny movements of his brows, the way his eyes flutter closed, the way his lips purse and tighten and the way he bites his lip at the stretch. Ilya’s fingers stroke against his hips, awed as always by the sight of him, so fucking beautiful. Shane is quick and efficient, hissing a little at the sting but unwilling to wait, needing it as badly as Ilya. He coats Ilya’s dick with a generous palmful of lube and then lines Ilya’s cock up against him, exhaling a little shakily as the blunt head nudges his entrance.

“Slow,” he sighs, and then he sinks down on Ilya’s cock. The stretch of the muscle around him is indescribable. Ilya’s head falls back again, fingers digging in so tightly he knows they will bruise. Shane works himself down in tiny increments, his body clutching at Ilya greedily, the velvet heat of him threatening to drive Ilya insane. He rocks his hips back and forth to mold himself to Ilya’s girth until he’s fully seated in his lap, then he leans forward until their chests are flush together. Ilya can feel Shane’s cock leaking against his belly, precome pooling on Ilya’s stomach. The feeling of Shane’s fluttering heat around his cock, after six months of loneliness and his own hand and bad porn, is so overwhelming that Ilya has to close his eyes. He wraps both arms around Shane so tightly it must hurt, but Shane doesn’t complain. He merely threads his fingers through Ilya’s curls and tips his face back so he can see all of him.

“Look at me,” he orders softly. He stops moving until Ilya opens his eyes, glassy and shimmering. Shane tugs once on his hair to better angle his lips to kiss. “There you are,” he murmurs against Ilya’s mouth and Ilya nearly comes from that alone.

Shane moves with him, around him, giving himself and somehow still making the entire thing about Ilya. He slows down and kisses Ilya whenever the pleasure becomes too much, swallowing every sound as though it belongs to him, as though he’s been starving for them. He guides Ilya’s hands over his body but keeps his own touch fixed on the places that make Ilya lose control: his nipples and his stomach and sliding back to grasp the meat of Ilya’s inner thighs. Ilya, buried completely inside of him, can feel the soft swell of his prostate dragging over and over against the head of his cock, sweet and intoxicating. He feels almost as drunk as he was last night. 

“You don’t have to be gentle with me,” Shane tells him. 

Ilya’s grip tightens on his hips, pistoning up into the pliant heat of Shane’s body. Shane rides him with overwhelming tenderness, mouth against his ear, I love you pulled from his throat with every thrust. Ilya feels like maybe he’s fucking the love out of him and then Shane is pouring it back with each roll of his hips. They curl around each other until they form a closed circuit of want, an ouroboros of desire, each of them giving back exactly what the other takes, pleasure moving endlessly between them with no clear beginning or end. Ilya buries his face in Shane’s throat.

“No,” Shane says, and he feels Shane’s strong hands tugging his hair again. “Stay with me. Say my name. Please, Ilya.”

“Shane,” he says, thrusting up into Shane’s body again, feeling the drag of Shane’s cock against his stomach. “Shane,” he says again, sliding his hands down the curve of Shane’s ass to skate along the point of connection, feeling the grip of Shane’s hole as he drives in and out of the ring of muscle, slipping his thumb in alongside his own cock to feel Shane stretch that much further. 

Shane’s control finally begins to fray. His mouth falls open. His forehead presses to Ilya’s, their breath mingling in the narrow space between them. Every thrust is I love you until that’s too much to manage and then it becomes Ilya Ilya Ilya and then Shane’s spilling all over Ilya’s chest, his cock untouched and pulsing, coming with a shudder that moves through both of them.

Not for a moment does he look away from Ilya’s face.

When Ilya finally breaks, Shane holds him through it, one arm tight around his shoulders, the other hand cradling the back of his head. He keeps moving just enough to carry him through every aftershock before he collapses on Ilya’s chest, boneless, the tight clutch of his body milking every last drop of come from Ilya’s cock, heat flooding him in a way that feels endless. Ilya is shaking and his face is wet and Shane is kissing him, rubbing the bridge of his nose against Ilya’s, mashing their faces together, like maybe he can sink straight through Ilya’s skin. His body is heavy and warm, his face tucked against Ilya’s, and Ilya runs his hands down Shane’s back, not ready to let even an inch of space return between them.

For a long time, neither of them speaks.

The rain has softened against the windows, no longer violent. The cottage settles around them with small familiar sounds: water trickling through the gutters, branches brushing the roof, the pipes knocking inside the walls. Shane lifts his head to look at Ilya. His face is wrecked, his lips swollen, his eyelashes still wet. He studies Ilya with the same fierce attention he’s given him since he appeared in the pouring rain, as if he is searching for something he doesn’t know how to name.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Ilya tries to answer. Instead, his mouth twists and his eyes fill again. Shane’s expression crumples. 

“I do not know yet,” Ilya admits.

Shane brushes the wetness from his eyes. “What do you need?”

The question should be easy to answer: Ilya needs six months returned to him. He needs Boxing Day undone. He needs every silent morning and every empty night erased from his body. But Shane cannot give him any of that.

“Stay,” Ilya whispers. His hand tightens at the back of Shane’s neck. “Stay and put me back together.”

There’s no hesitation in Shane’s expression. 

“I’m staying tonight,” he confirms. “And when you wake up, I’ll still be here. We’ll figure out tomorrow when it comes. And I’ll stay tomorrow, if you’ll let me. Forever, if you ask.”

Ilya sniffs loudly because he wants nothing more than to ask, but tomorrow is not forever and a single new day cannot repair everything they have broken.

But it’s a start.

“Okay,” Ilya whispers. Shane settles against him again, tucking his face beneath Ilya’s chin. Ilya wraps both arms around him and holds on while their breathing slowly finds the same rhythm. 

He stays awake long after Shane drifts off, listening to every breath, each one a small act of keeping his word. Just before dawn, without realizing it, Ilya finally stops waiting for him to disappear.

***

Ilya wakes to a blaze of light streaming in through the bedroom window. For one disorienting second, he does not know where he is.

The storm has passed and the sun is bleaching the bare mattress and the clothes scattered over the floor. The cottage is silent except for water dripping from the eaves and the even, warm breath against the back of his neck.

Shane is curled around him, arm heavy across his waist, his palm anchored possessively over Ilya’s stomach. Sometime during the night, he must have pulled the fitted sheet loose and wrapped it around them. His knee is wedged between Ilya’s, his face pressed into Ilya’s shoulder as though even in sleep he is determined to keep him from going anywhere.

Ilya cannot process waking up in his arms. Last night, Ilya could already feel the fear creeping in at the edges even when Shane kissed his shoulder and promised him forever if that’s what Ilya wants.

Promises made in bed are easy. Morning is where they’re really tested.

Behind him, Shane shifts, arm tightening unconsciously around his middle. 

“I’m here,” he mumbles, still half asleep. The words catch beneath Ilya’s ribs. He wants to respond, say something snarky and disinterested and detached. Instead he turns carefully in the circle of Shane’s arms. Shane’s eyes are barely open. His hair sticks up on one side, and there are shadows beneath his eyes Ilya did not notice last night in the dark, a haze of stubble across his jaw. He looks nothing like the polished version of himself the world knows.

His Shane.

“You stayed,” Ilya blurts.

Shane wakes fully, eyes opening wide, something painful moving across his face. “I said I would.”

Ilya studies him, searching for hesitation, regret, the first signs of retreat. There are none. There’s only fear. Only hope. Shane reaches up and brushes a curl from Ilya’s forehead.

“You stayed too.”

“Is my house.”

A smile pulls at the corner of Shane’s mouth. “Right. I forgot.”

“You will adjust.”

“I’m sure you’ll remind me.”

Ilya kisses him before the conversation can become too tender, heedless of their morning breath, slow and safe and warm. Shane cups the back of his neck and holds him steady.

This is how he wants to wake up for the rest of his life. 

“Now what?” He asks, breaking the kiss. 

“Now we talk to our agents. And my parents. They’re going to be thrilled, by the way, they have been berating me for months for messing things up with their favorite son. My mom actually cried when she realized you’d blocked her number.” Ilya shifts uncomfortably. “And we’ll tell your teammates, too, whenever you want. We can do it in person. I’ll go with you.” His thumb moves softly against Ilya’s skin. “Then we can figure out the rest.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“It won’t be. But I’m not going anywhere just because it gets hard.”

Ilya wants to believe him. Hope and even a little bit of joy is already bubbling up inside him, fragile and bright, despite everything he has done to smother it.

They dress in yesterday’s damp clothes and go downstairs.

The cottage smells different this morning, like rain blowing through the door they left wide open, and like fresh-ground coffee waiting to be brewed, and like Shane: moving barefoot through the kitchen as though the last six months have been folded away somewhere, not erased but survived. 

Shane's found one of the chipped ceramic mugs he left behind and is standing at the counter with both hands wrapped around it, staring into cupboards that are nearly empty.

“We have no food,” he says.

“You are criticizing my hospitality?”

“I’m observing that you spent millions of dollars on a cottage and didn’t buy milk.”

“I did not know I would have houseguest.”

Shane looks at him and a flicker of pain passes over his face, quickly followed by determination. They have work to do, but Shane Hollander has never been afraid of hard work.

“I don’t want to be a guest,” he says.

The open door frames Shane in morning light. Beyond it, the lake is calm, the dock washed clean by the storm. Shane’s key lies on the counter beside Ilya’s, the key he kept even after he no longer had the right to use it.

For six months, Ilya waited for Shane to come back. Now Shane sets down the mug and holds out his hand.

Ilya crosses the room and takes it.

The door stays open behind them.