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It’s Shane’s first away game as an Ottawa Centaur. He’s excited but also pretty anxious. It’s been an adjustment learning this new team and their dynamics and how he fits in. It’s been good, and all the guys are great, but he’s still unsure about his place after so many years on another team.
Thank god Ilya’s there. He’s been so supportive and patient, leading not only Shane but the entire team in a way Shane had never really been able to in Montreal. Any time he starts to feel even slightly untethered, Ilya seems to sense it and comes over to place a hand on his back or whisper a kind word in his ear.
Which, as they’re waiting to get on the plane that will carry them to New York City, is something Shane could really use, but as he looks over at his husband, Ilya seems distracted. His eyes flit all around, and his leg bounces.
He seems nervous. Like he’d rather be anywhere else.
Shane tries to chalk it up to first away game nerves as they board the plane. He follows Ilya about halfway back to a row that sits over the wings. Ilya takes the seat by the window and promptly shuts the shade.
Shane sits and settles his pillow behind his head. He always travels with a pillow from home because he sleeps so much better that way, and even though Ilya pokes fun at him for it, he’s lost count of the times he’s woken up to find Ilya sharing it with him, so really it’s for both of them.
Ilya doesn’t speak much to Shane, only responding with a short yes or no when he absolutely has to, and it’s only when his hands grip the armrests as they start to take off that it clicks for Shane.
“Hey, are you okay?” Shane asks quietly. “Are you nervous about the flight?”
“Yes,” Ilya says, looking at him from the corner of his eye.
“But I thought you weren’t getting anxious on flights anymore?”
“I didn’t,” Ilya breathes out as the plane hits a bump. “But this is different.”
Shane searches his face, trying to understand. He vaguely registers some of the team asking who’s turn it is. He has no idea what they could be talking about, as he focuses solely on Ilya.
“What do you mean?” he asks, his thumb running over the back of Ilya’s hand.
“I–” Ilya tries to start, but they hit another bump, and he takes in a deep breath. “I was fine. But you are on the flight now, and I don’t want anything to happen to–”
“Hey, Hollander, it’s your turn to tell the story,” Wyatt Hayes interrupts from the row behind them.
“The what?” Shane questions, looking to Ilya, who only manages to give him a sort of sympathetic look. “Is this some kind of hazing thing you didn’t tell me about?”
Troy Barrett’s head pops up from the row in front of him. “It’s something we do every flight. Harris told the story about his sister and a skunk on that first flight after the incident in Tampa, and it kinda became a thing. Helps to calm everyone’s nerves.”
“Oh,” Shane says, feeling nervous and kind of annoyed already. “Just like…any story?”
“Usually it’s something funny. Pretty simple stuff,” Nick Chouinard tells him. “But you’ve got to stand in the aisle and project so we can all hear you.”
“Oh, but I don’t have that loud of a voice,” he tries to say, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is listening, an excited rumble moving through the team.
He looks to Ilya, trying to see if his husband is going to protest on his behalf, but Ilya only nods to toward the aisle, and Shane soon finds himself at the front of the plane holding a microphone that will carry his voice over the plane’s PA system.
Fucking great.
“Uh, okay, well,” he pauses and racks his brain for a story he can tell that any of them would find even remotely entertaining. “Um–”
“Preferably before we land, Hollander,” Zane Boodram says, and Shane feels his cheeks flush as every set of eyes on the plane looks at him expectantly.
Something finally pops into his head, and he decides to go with it before he can to overthink what he’s about to share. “Okay, fine, uh, so, I’m gay.”
“WHAT?!” Evan Dykstra yells, causing all of the men to laugh.
“You think you know your teammates,” Zane says with a grin and a shake of his head.
“So that’s why you married, Roz,” Wyatt chimes in. “Makes so much more sense now.”
Shane glances at Ilya to see that he’s clutching Shane’s pillow to his chest, but there’s a tiny smile that’s pulling at his lips. It gives Shane the encouragement he needs to keep going.
“Like I said, I’m gay, and the first time Ilya met my parents was so bad.”
“How bad was it?” Hayes deadpans, and everyone laughs again.
Shane swallows. “I’m so glad you asked,” he says. “So, I invited Ilya to my cottage for a couple of weeks back in 2017, and I told my parents that I was doing this like, silent retreat thing, and that I shouldn’t be bothered so that I could guarantee we had two full weeks of uninterrupted time.”
“That does weirdly seem like something you’d do, though,” Troy says. “The silent retreat thing.”
Shane shrugs. “Ilya said the same thing when I picked him up from the airport.”
“I am never wrong,” Ilya says, and Shane’s glad to hear his voice sounds steady. It calms his own nerves.
“That’s highly debatable,” Wyatt says from behind Ilya, and Ilya holds up his middle finger in response.
“Anyway, so, my parents didn’t know about Ilya at the time, and they also didn’t know I was gay, either.”
“Oh, no,” Luca Haas says from a couple of rows in front of Shane, as he runs a hand down his face. “I do not think I like where this is going.”
“And one day,” Shane goes on, “We were really busy, and I hadn’t checked my phone at all–”
“I bet you were busy,” Zane contributes, causing quite a few whistles and catcalls.
“–and while we were kissing on the dock, something moved and caught Ilya’s eye.”
“What was it?” Coach Weibe asked, leaned forward in his seat, and clearly invested in the story.
“Who was it,” Shane corrects, before he pauses briefly, kind of enjoying how everyone seems to be waiting for what comes next. “It was my dad.”
“Fuck,” Evan says, shaking his head. “That sucks.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s putting it mildly,” Shane laughs. He’s glad he can finally laugh about it now. “My dad, who didn’t even know I was gay, caught me kissing my rival while I was supposed to be on a silent retreat.”
“What happened next?” Luca asks, his eyes wide.
“Well, I tried to catch him before he drove off, but he had left so quickly I couldn’t,” Shane replies. “And then I had a bit of a panic attack, and Ilya offered to go with me to talk with them.”
“Aww, Roz,” Wyatt says. “You’re such a good partner.”
“I thought you said this was a funny story, Hollander,” Tanner Dillon pipes up for the first time.
“Oh, it gets better,” Shane says. “Or worse, depending on how you look at it. But we left to head to my parents’ cottage, and Ilya was wearing a Bears t-shirt.”
“I take back what I said about you being a good partner,” Wyatt tells Ilya, and Shane’s pleased to see Ilya smiling fully now.
“I called him out on it, and he said, ‘Oh, they do not know I play for Boston?’” Shane says in his best imitation of Ilya’s accent, and it must have been pretty decent because Coach almost chokes on his water, and he can hear one of the flight attendants snickering behind him.
“The asshole of our time,” Troy says with affection, and Ilya finally laughs. It’s the perfect sound in Shane’s ears.
“And then we got to my parents’ place, and when we walked in, I had to explain that not only was I gay, but that I was in love with the asshole in the Boston Bears t-shirt.”
“How’d they take it?” Nick asked.
“Well, considering Ilya referred to us as lovers, not great at first,” Shane says, as several of the men visibly cringe.
Wyatt makes a gagging sound. “Ew, Roz.”
"Thank you," Shane says with the microphone a little too close to his mouth.
“I still do not see what’s wrong with this word!” Ilya defends, and Shane has to bite his lip to keep his face from breaking out into a grin. “We were in love, we fuck. Lovers. It is not a bad word.”
“Yeah, but you don’t say that to your lover’s parents,” Nick counters.
“Then my mom asked me if there weren’t any nice men in Montreal I could have dated.”
“Ouch.” This came from Troy. He turns to Ilya. “She asked that with you in the room?”
Ilya nods, and Shane can see his shoulders shaking with laughter. He doesn’t seem the least bit upset about the memory, and Shane knows he isn’t. It was one of the best days of his life, he’s told Shane on more than one occasion.
“And when they started asking us about the timeline of our relationship, I had to admit that we’d been together since our rookie season. They were obviously shocked, and then Ilya kindly corrected, saying it was the summer before.”
“Super helpful, Roz,” Zane says, and Ilya loudly scoffs, even as Shane can see his shoulders have relaxed considerably since he stood up.
“I cannot lie to my lover’s mom!”
“I think you could have made an exception this one time,” Troy supplies, and Shane silently agrees.
“My mom then asked me if I had ever let Ilya win.”
“Oh, shit,” Wyatt says. “So, you’d been accused of cheating before?! Seems like a pattern, Hollander.”
“Too soon,” Shane says, pointing to Wyatt, who grins back at him. “So, then we told them about our plan to start the charity, and Ilya potentially moving to Ottawa, and my mom was super judgmental because Ilya didn’t seem to have any loyalty to Boston.”
“Wow,” Nick says with his eyebrows raised.
“If there is one thing our mom is more serious about than her boys, it is hockey,” Ilya says, and Shane suddenly feels incredibly emotional about so many things in the sentence Ilya has spoken.
He suddenly feels a real and irresistible urge to be back in his seat next to Ilya. He needs to wrap this up.
“And then we had dinner, and Ilya ate an ungodly amount of pasta, and I had another panic attack, and Ilya kissed me and called me his boyfriend, and everything was great. The end.”
“Roz calling you his boyfriend helped you calm down from a panic attack?” Luca asks before Shane can hand off the mic.
“Uh, yeah,” Shane says. “I guess he did.”
“Grossssss,” Zane says loudly, and laughter once again fills the plane.
“Damn,” Wyatt says. “After all that, you still chose each other.”
“After all that, I knew we’d make it through anything,” Shane says, blinking to keep a swell of feelings at bay. “Together.”
“Grosssss,” Zane drawls again, while Evan makes a show of pretending to throw up into the paper sack from the seat back in front of him.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re in love, we get it,” Wyatt calls out as Shane is finally able to give the microphone back to the smiling flight attendant and walk back to his seat.
“Thank you,” Ilya whispers as he presses his forehead to Shane’s when Shane’s settled back into his chair.
“I meant it,” Shane says. “We can get through anything. You and me.”
“I know,” Ilya replies.
“Feel better?” Shane asks after he lightly brushes his lips against his husband’s, unable to care about how many of their teammates are probably still staring at them.
Ilya smiles, simple and bright. “You were the perfect distraction.”
_____
When they board the plane home a couple of days later, Ilya seems much more relaxed than he had been on the way to New York.
He’s still tightly holding Shane’s hand, but he’s laughing and doesn’t immediately close the window shade when they sit down, and he settles Shane’s pillow against his shoulder so Shane can lean against him while they start to watch a movie on Ilya’s iPad.
It feels calm.
Until it doesn’t, because this is a team full of chaos agents, led by Ilya himself.
They’ve just leveled off at cruising altitude when Troy peeks his head over the seats in front of them and informs Ilya that it’s his turn to distract the team with a story.
For a brief moment, Shane thinks he’s going to tell him no. They’ve just gotten comfortable, and Shane has really been looking forward to a quick nap after a hard-fought win the night before.
But instead, a grin spreads across Ilya’s face, and Shane has to fight to keep himself upright when Ilya unbuckles his seat belt and stands to crawl over Shane and out into the aisle.
He taps his finger against his lips, appearing to think about what story he’s going to tell. Shane figures it’ll be some crazy thing he did while he was in Boston for all those years. He knows some of the things Ilya got up to during that time, and it’s certainly enough to make the team around them laugh.
Naively, he doesn’t think it’ll have anything to do with him. He can be such an idiot sometimes.
“Today,” his booming voice starts, and Shane’s struck by how captivating Ilya can be. He commands any space he’s in, so he doesn’t need the microphone like Shane had, his voice automatically elevating to whatever space he occupies.“Today, I will tell you about the time Shane got jealous because Tro–”
“NO, Ilya,” Shane interrupts, causing Troy to look at him curiously, while Shane feels blood rush to his face, turning it bright red so quickly he feels even more embarrassed about being embarrassed.
“Okay, well, what about the time you bought us a sex building?”
“A what now?” Zane questions as the eyes of everyone on the plane go back and forth from Shane to Ilya.
“Definitely not,” Shane snaps, suddenly wondering if it was an option to sit with the pilots for the entirety of the flight. Maybe there was a parachute in there he could use? Surely someone on the ground could give him a ride to New York.
“You are so boring, my lovely husband,” Ilya groans dramatically. “What about the time you panicked so much you got into a relationship with Rose Landry because I said your first name?”
Every head swivels towards Shane. He knows he has to give them something, and as far as the list of embarrassing stories Ilya could tell, this one really didn’t even rank that highly.
At least he hadn’t tried to bring up that time Shane had thanked him during sex and then proceeded to smash his ass in Ilya’s face when he was trying not to come from having his salad tossed.
It could always be so much worse.
“Fine,” Shane says with a roll of his eyes, and the team cheers as Ilya grins at him with so much love that Shane almost thinks he might not regret this.
Ilya claps his hands in front of him excitedly, taking a deep breath as he begins. “It all started with tuna melts–”