Chapter Text
“Will you bring Ilya?” Yuna asks a few weeks before Christmas on a facetime call with Shane.
It’s only as she notes Shane’s eyes open wide that she realizes she’s assumed the answer would be obvious. By this point, she is aware that the relationship between Ilya and his own family back in Russia is strained and besides, by the time Christmastime arrives to Russia, the hockey players will be back to their regular business on ice. So she doesn’t expect her son’s boyfriend to have family plans for the short break they get.
Christmas has never been important to Yuna growing up, but then she met David and it was an important holiday to him. So she learned to love it, just like he learned to put more significance on New Year’s Day. Their little family has made their own traditions; she wonders how that’ll continue to change with the addition Shane’s Ilya into the fold.
“We’ve never spent holidays together,” Shane says.
“You’ve never been a couple before.” She prefers to not think about the sort of relationship her boys had before this last summer. They’ve been involved for about ten years and at the same time for only a few months; it’s a little messy, but they look entirely committed these days. Even though you’d never be able to tell as much from the coverage of their games against each other.
“I’ll have to ask him whether he’d want to.” Shane is frowning slightly, like he doubts Ilya would say yes.
Which is silly. If there’s anything Yuna has learned about Ilya Rozanov over the past few months, it’s that he would move into Shane’s pocket if it was at all possible.
Shane adds: “It’s a lot, spending holidays with the boyfriend’s parents.”
“Should I ask him myself?” Yuna suggests, even though she has no intention to do so. She and Ilya text regularly, practically anytime he has a game at the very least, but this is something that should be up to Shane. However, she knows her son a little too well and she knows that sometimes the easiest way to get him to see reason is to ragebait him, as they say. “So that he knows he’s welcome?”
“Mom, no!” Shane glares, his eyebrows knitting together. “You can’t just— You can’t. It’s bad enough that you two are… friends, or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” she laughs. “Okay, okay. I’ll leave it up to you. But hurry, because I do have his number and the need to know how many people I’m hosting.”
***
And yet, Ilya shows up with a box in his hands. He hands it to David before pulling Shane into a crushing hug right in the entryway of their house. He’s still wearing his parka, which makes him even bulkier, and despite Shane’s solid frame, Ilya seems to engulf him entirely.
It’s been three weeks since Boston and Montreal last played against each other, so Yuna lets her husband pull her into the kitchen. The boys can have their moment. She has to trust Shane to show Ilya where to put his shoes and where to hang his parka and store his scarf and gloves.
She’s sure he’ll get to that eventually.
They’ve only had Ilya visit them at the cottage, and Shane’s cottage of course, in summer. It’ll be nice to have him home.
It takes Shane and Ilya several long minutes before they join David and Yuna in the kitchen. They walk in with their hands linked, fingers loosely tangled together like they are unsure about handholding but can’t bring themselves to separate either.
Ilya is wearing a black and white Christmas sweater which would almost avoid being ugly if the reindeers on it weren’t pulling odd faces.
“Oh, did you make these?” David asks, slight awe in his voice, when he opens the box and discovers a couple dozen gorgeous glazed gingerbread cookies.
Ilya chuckles. “Maybe next year!” He adjusts his hold on Shane’s hand, pressing their palms together. “I ordered these online. I had to stop in a weird dark alley to get them from this very old lady who makes them.”
This earns him a concerned look from Shane. “Do you think—“
“Yes, moya lyubov, I’m sure she recognized me. This very moment she’s writing to her Facebook retirement group that Ilya Rozanov came to Ottawa to buy cookies for his secret lo— boyfriend’s family.” Ilya lets go of Shane’s hand to pat his face instead. “Don’t worry, no one will know is you. Everyone knows you think banning sugar from your diet will make it you skate faster than me.”
“I am faster than you,” Shane is glaring, batting Ilya’s hand away.
“Nope,” Ilya pops the ‘P’ and turns to Yuna. “Can I help put these on a plate or something?”
***
“I will make cookies next year,” Ilya says confidently later, when they’re sitting in the living room, the Christmas tree lights filling the space with golden glow. They’ve turned off all the actual lamps. “I haven’t done any Christmas baking, any baking, since I was a kid. But I’m looking at recipes and I think it would be fun.”
“We can make them together,” Yuna suggests. It’s been years since she’s done that with a son. Shane must have been still in single digits the last time he’s helped her with Christmas baking.
She doesn’t dare say out loud that if things go right, according to plan, next year Ilya’s kitchen will be in Ottawa. And he’ll have it close to join Yuna in hers on no-game days, if he’d like.
“Maybe,” Ilya smiles, and it sounds like a shy ‘yes’ rather than a polite ‘no’. He and Shane are sitting on the sofa next to each other, bodies pressed together from shoulder all the way down to their feet. “I’d like to make the kind we had.”
At home, he doesn’t say. In Russia.
“You can show me, if you’d like,” Yuna says. “I’m always happy to try something new.”
“It’s shame this one won’t touch them,” Ilya snorts, putting one arm around Shane’s shoulders and brushing his fingers through Shane’s dark hair.
“I don’t eat refined sugar during the season,” Shane says in the voice of someone tired of repeating himself.
Ilya rolls his eyes fondly. “How are you going to feed that hockey IQ?”
“With actual nutrition!”
David gets up then, unsubtly changing the topic. “Ilya, has Shane shown you where the towels are?”
***
Even as a child, Shane was stubborn and practical, and much too rational. He refused to believe in Santa. To the point that parents of his classmates complained, and David had to sit him down and gently explain to him that it was unkind to ruin the fun for other children.
Yuna wonders whether that was, in a way, the first lesson Shane got in hiding his truths to protect other people’s comfort.
With a child who had no sense for the Christmas magic, and with Yuna who also grew up not believing in it, there were never cookies and milk for Santa, or stockings on the mantel. There was always a beautifully decorated Christmas tree, a family sitting down together to good food, and a Christmas afternoon with hot beverages and the exchange of gifts.
Shane’s gifts to Yuna circle through the same types of garments: cashmire sweaters, silk scarfs and books.
This year is a sweater year.
“I showed him one in black and gold,” Ilya says, grinning over the rim of his mug. “Was very lovely. But I want to keep dating your son and Shane said that wouldn’t help.”
Yuna laughs. The sweater she actually got is salmon-colored, no hint of Boston Raiders’ branding anywhere.
Ilya hands her a cream envelope. “And this one is from me.”
“You didn’t have to get me anything,” Yuna protests, but is touched anyway. From the envelope she takes out a spa day certificate.
“You work very hard making sure Shane has the best advertisements and I can see his pretty freckles everywhere I go,” Ilya explains, somewhere between sincere and mischievious. “You need some relax.”
“Thank you, Ilya, it’s lovely.”
He beams at her.
David doesn’t escape a Boston-themed present, but Yuna can’t bring herself to glare at Ilya. Under gold wrapping paper there is a 4000-piece puzzle with a map of Boston, and it looks beautiful.
“I’ve seen you had some displayed at your cottage,” Ilya says, looking down at his shoes and sounding almost shy all of sudden, “and Shane says you like them. Puzzles. So.”
“This is great!” David isn’t bothered by the Boston of it all in the slightest as he traces the picture on the box with his fingers. “Do you do puzzles?”
Ilya shakes his head. “No since I was very little, but it looks like fun. And relaxing, maybe?”
It doesn’t escape Yuna that he thinks about relaxation a lot. These boys don’t get to do enough of that.
“You should help me get this started,” David says with genuine eagerness. “We probably can’t put it together in the next twenty four hours, but we can get a good chunk done.”
“You tell Ilya he can’t accomplish something and it’ll be done by midnight,” Shane snorts.
“Make it nine,” Ilya says, shuffling forward where he’s seated on the sofa, looking like he might as well get started on it now.
Yuna pokes her husband. “Give Ilya his gift first.”
“Oh, right!” David blinks. He looks flustered when he pulls out a package wrapped in red and green wrapping paper, with a red bow on top.
Ilya’s ears almost match the color. “You didn’t have to.”
“It’s just a little silly something,” David says. “And it’s for both of you, really.”
Ilya perks up at that. For a second he looks like he wants to tear through the paper, but than he unwraps the present carefully, cautiously, like that wrapping itself is precious.
He pulls out plaid fabric. His eyes widen when he realizes he’s unwrapping two matching sets of Christmas pajamas, the nice kind.
Shane blushes and covers his face with one hand, but Ilya’s face is split by a giant smile the next second.
“Oh! Is amazing!”
“We guessed you wear about the same size as Shane,” Yuna says. “I hope they fit alright.”
“This is perfect, this is the best.” Ilya is already getting up to his feet, gesturing for Shane to follow him. He looks like he'll never stop smiling. “Come, come, we’re putting these on right now!”
Shane’s obvious suffering is worth it for Ilya’s overwhelming delight.
***