Archive of Our Own

Sunday, 10:00 PM

When all the dinner plates were scraped clean and loaded into the dishwasher, wine glasses rinsed and dried, leftovers packed away into the fridge next to five-dozen eggs (Yuna simply aghast), and Hollanders were escorted out to their car with a solemn promise to never, ever, stop by unannounced again, Shane and Ilya were finally alone together, again.

The sacred and protective bubble over their trip popped as soon as Ilya saw David's dumfounded look through the window of the cottage with two handfuls of his son. Now, with the crescent moon dangling over a clear, starry sky and the cottage returning to its quiet statis, ever so faintly, the thin, iridescent membrane of protection was beginning to take its shape again.

The adrenaline and subsequent crash from the day's drama washed over Ilya in unrelenting waves. Meeting the parents was not an activity he was particularly experienced or adept in, especially not his arch rival's parents, whose son he had been fucking for the better part of a decade; parents who had already spent the better part of that decade despising him for stealing what media attention and hockey accolades they believed their son rightfully deserved; parents who were privy to his reputation as a playboy, a provocateur, a menace on the ice. Needless to say, it was an uphill battle to win them over, to parry their accusatory questions about his feelings for their son which were nothing short of complete and utter adoration.

On top of it all, the way the Hollanders talked to each other, quick and quippy, sentences overlapping and interweaving, pushed Ilya's English proficiency to its limits. After living in the States for so long, he had grown quite confident in his ability to speak fluently, now only occasionally caught up on uncommon phrases or idioms ("But teeth don't have skin?"), but something about all of them in concert, voices converging, jumping in and jumping out of conversation, finishing the end of each other's sentences, their Canadian intonation, required much more focus from Ilya than usual, translating in his head, thinking about what to say, translating back to English, only to realize the topic had changed twice already and he had lost his chance to chime in. Unable to really find his footing, he contented himself with watching Shane chat animatedly with his parents, his Shane, who was usually so reserved and tightly wound, gesticulating wildly, laughing with an open mouth, looking light, effervescent, at home once the initial shellshock of the confession started to fade. So, this is what a family is like, Ilya thought. This is what a family will be like.

The two collapsed into bed, wordlessly finding each other under the sheets, two bodies becoming one again, again— thank God, thank God. Ilya could tell from Shane's glazed-over look, pressed into the center of his chest, that he was feeling just as exhausted. Mostly, Ilya felt relieved for Shane, remembering how he had come out to him in Tampa only a few months prior ("Who else am I gonna tell?"), and how much of a relief it must be for him, knowing how close he was to his parents and being able to finally share this piece of his soul with them. A small, nagging part of Ilya, however, felt melancholy, knowing this type of warm revelation was never something he could have for himself. A stupid thought.

"You did really well," Shane mumbled into the middle of Ilya's chest. "With them. My parents."

"Of course I did, what did you expect? MILFs love me. I am catnip to them."

"Oh, my God, you are fucking unbelievable. Do not talk about my mom like that." Shane pinched Ilya firmly in the side, indignantly. Ilya yelped but made a mental note to use that line again. He liked when Shane was a little mean. It felt righteous, like he deserved it.

Shane rubbed his fingers soothingly over the spot he squeezed, an olive branch. "I mean it though. I could tell they were really warming up to you at the end."

Ilya coaxed Shane's hand up from his stomach up against his lips. "I think they were just happy to see you so happy."

"And why am I so happy?" Shane asked, like a riddle, tilting his head up, chin resting on Ilya's sternum, onto his crucifix, pressing so it would leave an impression in his skin.

"You," Ilya pressed a kiss onto his knuckles, "are happy because you have pretty Russian sex slave held captive in your remote cabin in the woods. Foreign country. No family."

Shane snatched his hand back from Ilya's lips and gave him a firmer pinch on his chest. All according to plan, thought Ilya delightedly as he winced. "Not fucking funny."

"Ah, but you are so delicious like this. It's too easy."

"You think you can read me so well, don't you?"

Ilya shrugged. "Sometimes you still surprise me."

Shane looked up at Ilya thoughtfully. The truth was, after nearly ten years together, Ilya could read him quite well. Shane was not necessarily the most expressive, but he couldn’t keep his emotions from simmering at the surface. Even in his most valiant attempts to keep his face neutral, his brown eyes always betrayed him. A furrowed brow and narrow gaze betrayed his irritation, when Ilya would touch a nerve. Sometimes they would swim with tears threatening to spill on soft cheeks—in self-pitying frustration at worst, in delicious desperation at best. Ilya loved best when they would sparkle, the whites of his eyes shining after a particularly good game, a satisfying score. He knew from the current far-away look on Shane's face that he was deep in thought, the way his eyes flicked back and forth, as though he was reading some kind of manual in his mind.

After a second, Shane leaned up to kiss Ilya on the chin and flipped onto his cheek, turning his face away from Ilya's, and pulled the duvet over his head, like he needed privacy to ruminate. Ilya, tickled, reached over to flick the lamp off. "Spokoynoy nochi."

When Shane didn’t reply, Ilya shook Shane's shoulder, popping his own head under the covers. "It means good night, and usually it is polite to say it back."

"'m not tired yet."

"You're not?" Ilya replied.

Shane traced circles on Ilya's shoulder with his index finger. "Tell me a secret."

Ilya couldn't conceal the delighted surprise on his face.

"Are we having a sleepover? Want me to braid your hair next?"

"Don't be a dick, please. I'm serious. Will you tell me something you've never told anyone else?" he asked, quietly, earnestly, like a schoolboy, so earnestly it ached.

"What, you mean like my boyfriend is the captain of the Montreal Metros?"

"C'mon. You know what I mean."

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything. I don't care. Something I don't know."

Ilya chuckled. "I think there is lot you don't know."

"Well, I want to."

Ilya always found his stubbornness endearing.  He tilted Shane's head up to meet his gaze, as much as he was able, in the dark under the blanket. Even in the low light, Shane's eyes gleamed, fixed on Ilya's chin. Ilya could sense this wasn't a request he would be able to evade.

He swallowed. Where could he even start? After years, and years, and years, could they really say they knew each other? To cry and be held by Shane in this very bed only the night before, to tell each other, "I love you, I love you, Ya tebya lyublyu," between gasping breaths and desperate kisses, and realizing that Shane did not know much about him at all, least of all the parts of him that Ilya shoved down, ignored, refused to acknowledge until it all bubbled over violently when he was alone, made Ilya's stomach tighten. What if he did bare his soul, pull out the dark, ugly parts of him and lay them out for appraisal, and Shane doesn't like what he sees? If he's too sick and too broken to be loved by him?

Shane— that beautiful boy, with a perfect, squeaky-clean reputation; two Stanley Cups and an Olympic gold medal before 30; an unparalleled career, not just in terms of hockey, but for most athletes, living or dead; a loving family. Gorgeous, limitless potential, there, in Ilya's arms. He feared he would only corrupt him, rot him, or even worse, Ilya would finally show Shane the dusty corners of his heart that only he alone has ventured in, and finally realize what a disaster he got himself involved with.

But for now, Shane was there, like an angel, fingers dancing along his arm feather-light, making Ilya's skin prickle with goosebumps. How could he deny him?

"Okay, fine." Ilya started, voice low, almost a whisper. "I have story I have never told anyone. And you can't tell anyone either."

Shane's eyes popped up to meet Ilya's for a brief moment, corners of his lips perking up. "Is it bad?"

"Yes."

Shane sat up, rapt. "Okay. I won't."

"This was maybe, two, three summers ago. Back in Moscow." Ilya shifted to sit up slightly, pulling the duvet further over their heads, cocooning them in a feather-down fortress. "Was staying at my father's, he was not so bad back then, health-wise, but was getting very difficult to be around. So, I spent lot of that summer in the house, just me and him, nothing to do except text Canadian boy with pretty mouth to pass the time."

Ilya pressed the pad of his thumb on Shane's lower lip, Shane smirked, pushing his hand away, determined not to be baited so easily as Ilya opened up to him more than he had ever before. "Okay," Shane prompted him to continue.

"So, I was fucking bored. Going crazy. Having old man yell at you thinking you are your brother is only funny first few times, then it starts to get depressing.

"Sveta lets me know she will be back in Moscow for cousin's wedding, which is perfect excuse for me to get out. I don't give a fuck about weddings, but I needed excuse to get out of the house. Plus, I am really good date. So, I beg and beg and beg Alexei to take care of father while I'm away. Of course, I can't have anything unless he gets something in return. He said he will only let me if I give him and pregnant wife money for baby things. I say, 'I will buy you a thousand fucking kolybeli if you sit with papa and keep him from keeling over for one night.' And to that he says yes. So, it's all good for me.

"I told you Sveta is very rich girl from very rich family. Father is minister, former Soviet goalkeeper. So, family wedding is on this," Ilya gesticulated, trying to find the word. "big land—estate. And it's fucking crazy wedding. I’m talking like, hundreds of people, most flowers you have ever seen, big fucking cake, fireworks, whole thing. So much food, so many drinks. Sveta and I get very, very drunk off very, very nice champagne. And it's real champagne too. And they're opening the bottles with swords, like this, pop," Ilya sliced his hand through the air for emphasis. "Like that. And Ed Sheeran was there."

"What, like as a guest?" Shane interrupted, listening with bright, intent eyes.

"No, no, he they got him to perform at reception. But is not important." Ilya flicked his wrist dismissively. "Anyways, Sveta and I got sat at distant cousin table, which is very bad table to sit at a wedding, probably worst table you could be at. These distant cousins were bunch of fucking dickheads. Fucking middle aged, boring, stupid bureaucrat guys, whole time talking about how much their watch cost, lame fucking vacation to Dubai, showing pictures of their cars, trying to be coolest guy at table.

“I would rather do anything but get into piss contest with these guys, but Sveta was so drunk and wanted to show off her date. So, Sveta goes 'Ilyushka, show them car I helped you buy,' and 'You know, Ilyushka is big hockey player from USA, plays for Boston Raiders.' Distant cousins all got very interested in me after this, and rest of the night they are all over me, asking me stupid fucking questions, they are looking up photos of me, 'Ah, they say you are good, but your team did not get the Stanley Cup this year,', 'How much do they pay you in American league? How much is that in rubles?', 'Ah, you were on Sochi team that lost to Latvia, you must have to move to US because you were not good enough for Russian league,', stupid shit like this. To be honest, at that point I am drunk enough that it is funny to me.

"Family of bride is staying in guest houses on the estate. So, after wedding, Sveta, me, distant cousins go back to guesthouse with cousins to drink more. It is always mistake to go to second location after party. Nothing good happens at second location. So, we all go back to guest house. Cousins drink a lot more and it is all getting very messy. Sveta is getting too drunk, so I am trying to take her back to the room, but cousins aren't having it, they won't let us leave. This guy, Mikhail, has been clinging to me ever since he found out who I was. He is like, 'No, don't go Ilyukha, don't go, let me show you something, let me show you, just outside, just quickly,'. So, I say fine, hurry up and show me whatever stupid shit you're going to show me, and then we can leave. And so, he takes me and Sveta back to his car parked out front of the guest house. And there's this," Ilya pantomimed a rectangle with his hands, "on the back of his car. Latched on."

"Trailer?" Shane suggested.

"Yes. Like for horses, you know. And he says 'Look, look what I have, Ilyukha.' And I look inside the trailer, and inside is a bear."

Shane's eyes widen. "A bear? Live a live bear?'

"Yes, real bear. In the trailer, sleeping in the corner. He says, 'Isn't he beautiful, I just got him this afternoon, he does tricks', and he bangs on the side of the trailer, rattles keys on his belt to wake it up. Bear is so scared, it jumps up in corner. He opens the door to the trailer, but the bear is so scared it won't come out. 'Ah, show us a trick, darling! Molit'sya! Pray!' and he bangs on the side of the trailer some more. The bear puts his paws together over his face, but it looks so sad, like it's trying to hide itself. It's trying to back up into corner." Ilya took a breath; the memory was causing his heart to race. Ilya continued, "And you know what bears name was?"

Shane shook his head, enthralled by the story.

"Uncle Vanya." Ilya watched Shane's face for recognition. Seeing none, Ilya waved his hand dismissively. "It's ironic in Russian. Anyways, Sveta and I are looking at each other like we can't believe what the fuck is happening. We can't tell if what we are seeing is real or if we drank too much. Meanwhile this guy is banging his trailer and shaking his keys, trying to get this bear to come out. So, we are saying wow, so cool, so cool, we see it, you don't need to let him out.

Then, I don't think she did this on purpose, but was so perfect that she did, at that moment Sveta throws up, gets sick all down the front of her dress. So finally, I have excuse to get away and take Sveta back to the room and away from this guy."

Ilya took another breath, looking down to see Shane's captivated face. "That night, I can't sleep. I can't stop thinking about poor bear locked in the trailer. He was probably just a baby, and he was going to spend the rest of his whole life in a cage on the back of a truck doing tricks for benefit of fucking loser, when he's supposed to be in the wild, eating salmon and berries, and whatever else a bear is supposed to do. It made me sick.

"So, I am first one awake, just before sunrise. Distant cousins have passed out downstairs sometime after Sveta and I left, looking like shit. It is not hard to take keys from Mikhail's pocket. So, I take them, go out to front, and I open the trailer.”

Ilya ended there. Shane's mouth gaped open, waiting for more to come.

"And? Did the bear get out?" Shane prompted.

"I am smart enough not to take my chances with disgruntled bear, so I didn't wait to see. After that, I went back upstairs and got Sveta up and we drove back to Moscow before anyone else noticed we were gone.

"Few weeks later she told me she heard all about this drama after we left, about how mad they were that Mikhail got so drunk he forgot to lock his trailer, how he let wild bear out in the middle of family wedding party, and they had to spend the whole next day looking for it. So, yes, bear got away, as far as I know."

Shane just looked at Ilya, awestruck, processing what he was just told.

"So. That is my story. I didn't even tell Sveta what I did. So now you know." Ilya sniffed, cleared his throat.

Shane's face morphed from enthrallment to a disbelieving smile. "That was not at all what I thought you were going to tell me."

"What did you think I was going to say?"

"I dunno. Maybe something more..." Shane searched his brain for the right word. "Reckless."

"Like I said, there's a lot you don't know about me," Ilya muttered, more sardonically than he intended. Anxiety bubbled up in Ilya's chest again at the inevitability that Shane will continue to pull at his threads and uncover truths about him that are not so palatable and heroic as rescuing an animal in distress.

But Shane was looking up at him, with a face so earnest it almost made Ilya flinch, like a revolver with a single bullet in the chamber. If Ilya was unlucky enough, the pulled trigger would see his brains splattered against the drywall, his true feelings and darkest thoughts seeping and settling in the cracks in the baseboards.

Pretty, and perfect, and does not know what he's getting himself into. Ilya suddenly got the urge to run as quickly as he could back to Boston. He got another to swallow Shane whole. Ilya averted his eyes.

"Okay. Your turn now, then."

Shane laughed, settling back onto Ilya's chest with a yawn. "Don't you think I've done enough soul-bearing for one day?"

Ilya thought about pushing, but he let him have it, feeling quite exhausted himself after his long-winded story. He couldn't remember having spoken to Shane for so long at once. A dull ache started to crawl in at his temple, maybe from how tightly he was clenching his jaw. "It is because you are perfect. You have no secrets."

"I am not perfect." Shane said, adamantly.

Ilya almost laughed at the absurdity of that statement.

Monday, 7:00 PM

In the evening, the loons sung their mournful song overhead, retreating west as the evening rolled in with brilliant oranges and purples reflected off the surface of the lake. Ilya didn't startle at their calls anymore, a sign to Shane that he was becoming accustomed to the environment, becoming part of the landscape. Canada suited him.

Shane taught Ilya how to skip stones, and Ilya proved to be a good student, consistently getting two or three good skips per stone. He stooped to pick up a stone off the edge of the water, rearing back and flicking his wrist to send it skipping across the lake's surface.

"That was five," Ilya said smugly.

"I counted four."

"No, it was five." He was already bending down and searching for another stone, assessing the candidates' smoothness, the angle of their surface, the feel in his hand. The ones that didn't make the cut fell back to the shore with a satisfying clatter. Shane, trailing behind him, flipped the discards over with the toe of his sandal.

"Are there fish in this lake?" Ilya asked suddenly, sending another rock sailing through the air. One, plunk. A dud.

“Yeah, definitely.” Shane replied.

“Have you ever?”

"Fished?"

"Yeah."

Shane stooped down and picked up a rock near Ilya's ankle. "When I was younger, yeah. My dad liked to take me when we'd come up here." Ilya shifted his weight, gently tapping his hip against Shane's shoulder. Shane leaned back into the touch, his knuckle trailing up Ilya's ankle as he stood back up. "I probably wasn't a good fishing companion. It was too hot, I wasn't patient. Eventually he just gave up trying to take me with him."

Shane reeled back and tossed. One, two, three, four, five, six (!). Ilya groaned, dropping the rocks in his hand down to the shore in a clatter. "You won't even let me win at fucking stone toss," Ilya moaned, throwing his arms over Shane's shoulders and leaning his forehead down on his shoulder in mock-defeat. Shane, trying to conceal a boastful grin, bent down and kissed the shell of his ear, cold under his lips from the breeze off the lake.

"What about you?"

"Hm?" Ilya peered up.

"Fishing?"

Ilya tightened his lower lip, shaking his head. "No. My father and I did not have this kind of relationship. I thought it was just something you see in American sitcom."

Shane hummed, not knowing quite how to respond. He turned a rock over with his shoe again.

"Do you have good memories with him?" Shane mumbled anxiously, unsure if he was pushing too far.

"My father?"

"Yeah."

Ilya stood up straight, face stoic, eyes searching, inventorying his memories.

"Sure. I mean, sometimes he was there, for the good memories." Ilya started. "But there's not that many. Not really." It wasn't sentimental, just matter of fact.

"Oh," Shane felt remorseful for bringing it up. He ached at the thought of it, of looking back at his childhood and struggling to find moments of happiness. Even when he thought back to the fraught fishing trips with his father, he thought back in fondness, at the memory of splitting a ham sandwich on the water, at his father's patience with him.

"Do you want to fish?" Shane said, changing the subject

"You built in time in your itinerary for us to fish?" Ilya replied.

"No, but I think I could move some things around, if you wanted to."

Ilya grinned, sliding his hands down to grip at Shane's ass, who yelped in surprise. "Don't move anything too important."

"You're such a freak," Shane said, swatting Ilya's hands away weakly and turning back towards the water.

"You think I will be good at it?" Ilya asked, following him.

"Maybe. You're good at everything."

They continued to shuffle along the edge of the lake quietly for a while, their skin starting to prickle from the cool breeze, now that the sun disappeared behind the trees.

Shane turned over Ilya's answer about his father in his head while they walked. He relished in Ilya's newfound openness. He had come to expect a certain level of deflection when he touched on more personal subjects, but the more time they spent together alone at the cottage, the more and more Shane was able to get his fingers in the cracks of Ilya's facade and start peeling away towards the warm, soft center of him.

"Do you ever think about what you would do if you couldn't play hockey anymore?" Shane asked finally. The question landed like the stones they tossed into the lake, a heavy plunk, rippling the pleasant stillness that had enveloped the two of them on the edge of the water.

Ilya's response didn't come instantly. Shane turned a flat stone in his palm, over and over, as if his nervous energy would erode its surface even smoother. He anxiously watched Ilya's expression that he couldn't quite read, his brow furrowed slightly, his lips pulled into a tight line.

"Stay-at-home-husband?" he offered, finally, reeling his arm back and sending his stone skipping across the surface of the water, one, two, then sinking to the bottom.

"Be serious," Shane pleaded.

"I don't think about things like that," Ilya said, straight-faced. "I don't have much of a choice. My visa depends on it. If it happens, then I will think about what I’d do next."

"Oh." Shane couldn't find a good response to that, feeling a bit guilty for not considering that aspect of it. Ilya's life was wrapped in red tape that Shane rarely stopped to consider. There was something macabre about the thought, his immigration status tied to his physical ability. Surely, there was leeway for him to recover if something happened, Shane thought, but thinking about what might happen if Ilya suffered a career-ending injury made his stomach drop. What recourse would he have then? Would they send him back to Russia if he wouldn't be able to play anymore? Did Shane know a good immigration lawyer? Stupid, he thought, surely Ilya would have his own, had undoubtedly thought about all of this already. Still, this new realization would make it even harder for Shane to watch him play next season, knowing how aggressive and reckless he could be on the ice.

"Would you still want to do this?" Ilya asked, pulling Shane from his spiral. "With me?"

The unspoken, If we're discovered, if they kick us out of the league, if it means we can never play hockey again, if it means you could never play hockey again, hung between them. In Ilya's eyes, something new sifted to the surface, something Shane had never seen in him before. Unguarded, vulnerable, a young boy asking, "Are you as scared as I am? Will you jump if I jump? Can you hold my hand as I do it?"

Shane nodded gravely. "Of course I would." He said it and he meant it, but decided to take a page out of Ilya’s playbook. If it happens, then I will think about what I’d do next.

Then, it was gone, Ilya's face settling back into a placid stillness. "Okay. Me too."

They sat silently for another minute, watching the water's edge turning a dark bruised purple as the sun continued to creep down. Ilya tried to conceal a shiver as another swift breeze blew across the water, but Shane caught it, like a loose puck.

"You wanna go in?” Shane asked.

Ilya nodded.

As Shane turned to walk back towards the cottage, Ilya grabbed his hand, lacing their fingers together as they walked. To Shane, it felt like a revelation, to hold hands as they walked together out in the open, even alone where no one could see. He felt like his chest would split open.

"I love you." Ilya said, quietly, almost apologetically. An apology for having a complicated life. An apology for asking for more than Shane should have to offer. An apology for needing, for wanting.

"I love you too." Shane squeezed his hand tightly, like a promise.

Tuesday, 12:00 PM

Shane let Ilya commandeer his Land Rover on the drive over to his parent's house to pick up the fishing gear, a decision he regretted immensely as soon as Ilya pressed the lethargic and dependable product of British engineering to its limits down a vacant municipal road, topping the speedometer higher than Shane had ever dared to or the manufacturers had expected their customers to ever try to.

After a stern reprimand, ("Imagine how fucking bad it would be to get pulled over, us together in the car like this,"), Ilya licked his wounds and drove the rest of the way five kilometers under the speed limit, taking a much longer pause at stop signs than he normally would, pressing hard on the brakes so that Shane's head bobbed and bumped against the headrest with the momentum of the car, mostly out of spite. Ilya savored the pouty scowl Shane would give him every time.

In between directions to his parent's summer house, Shane gave a vague tour of scenic roads and landmarks he remembered from his childhood ("There's a house with big statue of a chicken if you make a left up there," "We used to always stop at that ice cream stand over there before it burned down," "My mom accidentally slammed my finger in the door of that McDonald's when I was little,"), but his own, private scenic view was watching the way Ilya's eyes flicked from windshield to rearview mirror under his sunglasses, the relaxed way he draped his forearm over the steering wheel, the casual way he'd reach his left pinky down to flick the turn signal, which he would not have used nearly as much if Shane had not shot him a dirty look as he merged dangerously onto the highway without it. He relished in watching Ilya's head tilted back to the headrest, his easy smile as he nodded along, listening to Shane chatter about the local sights and personal points of interest.

Shane settled back in the passenger seat, pleasantly warm from the afternoon sun, the flickering of the light filtering through the trees making Shane's eyes grow heavy. He reclined his seat and rested his head against the passenger window as Ilya chauffeured him. He didn't realize he had dozed off until he woke with a start as the car came to a gentle stop. Through bleary eyes, Shane could make out the shape of a nearly derelict wooden structure on the side of the road. A hand-painted sign advertised its wares: FARM FRESH FRUIT.

"If you're hungry, we can stop off at a grocery store on the way back, or maybe my mom made lunch already," Shane mumbled groggily.

"Let me see what they have."

"Fine, but pull down further," Shane conceded, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "So they don't see both of us."

Ilya, just pulling the key out of the ignition, shot back a dubious look. "I don't think this guy would recognize either of us," he said, obediently putting the key back in. "Look at him. He's old enough to remember when hockey was invented. When it was called stick and ball."

Ilya's assessment was not inaccurate. The old man, withered and hunched over, shuffled slowly between his displays and gingerly rearranged a vibrant display of stone fruits, looking at each one carefully and assessing it for blemishes before unhurriedly reaching for the next.

"Hey, you don't know how beloved I am in this country," Shane replied impishly, watching the old man continue his methodical assessment as Ilya pulled to the other side of the shack. The man seemed to not even hear the car rolling past across the gravel. "In terms of recognizable faces, I'm right up there with Trudeau and the fucking Queen."

"Mm, Canada's sweetheart. One day they will put you on the dollar. Or a stamp." Ilya threw the car in park and planted his lips on Shane's sun-speckled cheek before hopping out.

He would hate being on a stamp, imagining his NLH headshot on the corner of a utility bill, a court summons. A Shane Hollander stamp probably wouldn't be the kind of stamp you would put on a Christmas card, a graduation announcement, a wedding invitation, Shane thought as he watched Ilya saunter casually up to the fruit stand through the rear view mirror. Now that was something worthy of being on currency: Ilya in his tank top and basketball shorts, already developing a deep tan, blonde arm hair glowing in the sun like a halo surrounding him, an angel dropped to earth, the patron saint of Adidas.

A buzz from the center console reminded him that another world existed, a world where Shane Hollander categorically is not ogling his boyfriend buying organic fruit to take back to their vacation home. As much as Shane did not want to break his immersion, he relented and dug his phone out from under a pile of receipts.

Largely ignoring the wildfire raging in his email inbox, he opted to catch up on the nearly hour-by-hour baby photos from Hayden, many photos of which, Shane was positive, Jackie had not vetted prior to their sending. Shane flicked through and gave a heart to the more thoughtfully composed ones, sans spit-up or an unaware, sleep-deprived mother in the background.

He skimmed texts from his mother, mostly quips about nothing important ("It took me nine minutes to do the crossword today, guess how long it took dad. Love you."), a few hours later, fishing for any more information about her son's romantic week away ("You boys doing anything fun today?"), a topic that was most certainly highly discussed across her and her husband's dinner table since they had left the cottage earlier that week. Despite the fact Shane was well-aware (and somewhat mortified) his parents could hint at their activities, he found it hard to stomach the idea of sharing any details about his and Ilya's time together, no matter how benign. Not particularly because he felt ashamed or embarrassed, but because he felt it was theirs and theirs alone. To give any of it away felt like it would be sharing a secret somebody asked you to keep. Something fragile, shared in a whisper in the dark, pinkies locked. He wanted to protect it. Just boys doing boy things. Swimming in the lake. Jumping off rocks. Holding hands. Swapping secrets. Kissing with tongue. Feeling each other's heartbeat as they fall asleep. Boy stuff.

The sound of flip-flops on gravel broke Shane from his reverie. In the rearview mirror, Ilya, entirely encumbered by two hefting bags of peaches and a pint basket of berries precariously pressed against his chest, held in place by his chin. Shane leapt across the console to pop the driver's side door.

"What the fuck?"

"What?" Ilya asked naively, gingerly set a bag down on the driver's seat to free up a hand to lower the rest of the fruit into the car. Shane took quick inventory and counted twelve peaches to a bag. Times two.

"What the fuck are supposed to do with all of these?" Shane asked, incredulously, hauling the bags delicately down onto the floorboard between his feet.

"We have few more days, yes?" Like eating four peaches a day between them for almost a week is the most obvious explanation in the world. "Besides, he couldn't break a hundred."

"So you bought everything he had?"

"No. I don't like plums so I left the plums." He took a small handful of berries from the basket on the dashboard and offered it out to Shane. "I don't know what these are, but he said I need to try."

Shane valiantly choked back his neurosis about needing to wash fruit before eating, and accepted the offering, inspecting the small green and red fruits rolling around in his palm. "They're gooseberries."

Ilya's eyebrows shot up. "No. You're fucking with me. This is not what they're called. Like the bird?"

"Yes, they are. Now eat one."

Ilya made a dubious face before tossing a handful back, chewing thoughtfully, face wrinkling.

"Sour?"

"What the fuck. Old man was trying to offload his shitty fruit onto stupid foreigner." Ilya swallowed with a grimace. "The rest are yours. Give me one of those," pointing to the bags between Shane's legs.

//

Ilya was much more satisfied with the peach, perfectly ripe and sweet, and Shane didn't even have the heart to say anything about the mess as he watched Ilya steer with one hand and took big, clumsy bites of the fruit with his other. Shane followed the juice dripping down his forearm, settling stickily in his arm hair. It made his mouth water. He fantasized about leaning over the center console and licking him from elbow to wrist, and he might have, if they didn’t have a standing appointment with his parents for that afternoon. He was sure if he did, Ilya would certainly pull over for a detour. He catalogued that little fantasy away for later.

Ilya, without taking his eyes off the road, reached the fruit out across the center console in front of Shane's lips. An invitation.

Obediently, Shane leaned forward and took a messy bite as the car hit a rough patch of gravel, Ilya's outstretched hand buoying with the movement and the peach pit bumping Shane's teeth, the juice dripping down his own chin. Ilya, peering out of the side of his sunglasses, used the back of his wrist to wipe Shane's chin clean. "Neryashlivyy." The sound of it was just as sweet as the ripe fruit in his mouth.

Tuesday, 1:30 PM

Pulling back up to Shane's parents’ house for the second time in three days felt a little bit like reliving a nightmare; logically he knew that the air had been cleared and he wasn't coming to reveal some terrible, earth-shattering, ten-year long secret about himself, but pulling up in the driveway still made Shane's chest feel tight and the bile churn in his stomach as if he was.

David was already shuffling around in the garage and turned around upon their imminent approach up the gravel driveway. Ilya pulled in a little too fast and stopped a little too close to the back of his parents' car, causing Shane's cheeks to light up in minor mortification, but David had the courtesy to pretend not to notice.

Father and son exchanged a casual greeting and a hug; David and Ilya nodded at each other-- both men not quite sure if they were on hugging terms yet. He led them into the cluttered garage. It was clear attempts had been made to contain some of the chaos—large rubber bins with painter’s tape labels, "SHANE 2003", "CAMPING", but the overgrowth of life had spread like vines across the efforts to beat it into submission. Errant pool toys, golf clubs, gardening tools, all tucked into any available real estate between the bins. For a family that was so outwardly type-A, so put-together and such a united front, the fact that even they had some unmanaged chaos behind it all was a slight comfort to Ilya.

"I was just trying to move some stuff around. I'm not sure what you boys wanted to take," David started, opening the lid to one box unhelpfully labeled "OUTDOORS 1", looking in and assessing the contents before moving to equally unhelpful "OUTDOORS 2".

"I think we can just take the rods; we'll get bait on our way back. Is that place by the gas station still open?" Shane padded into the garage to rummage through the boxes with his father, starting up a familiar dialogue. Ilya, feeling out of place, made himself scarce and shuffled to the other side of the garage so as to not lurk, the voices of the two men discussing the merits of different bobbers and hooks blurring into the background.

It became apparent the more Ilya looked around that the garage of the Hollander's summer home had become a de facto storage unit for Shane's things, probably brought over in the years following the draft, after he had left his childhood home and moved away to his own apartment in Montreal.

As he looked between derelict exercise equipment and power tools, what revealed itself, superimposed on the chaos, was a museum, a snapshot into Shane Hollander's childhood summers, the mementos of a young boy who must have wanted for nothing.

Ilya saw him, seven and freckle-faced, laughing, knee-high in the grass chasing a neon green soccer ball (now deflated, shoved between a stack of water-damaged gardening magazines and a crate full of seasonal decorations), at ten, in the late afternoon summer sun, in a helmet and kneepads flying down a hill on his bike (front wheel now inexplicably missing, the frame looking so tiny Ilya had a hard time imagining a Shane small enough to fit on it), at thirteen, on black and green rollerblades practicing his hockey shots on a small net set up in the driveway, even during his summer vacation, probably much to the delight of his parents, who saw such potential in their shy, sensitive son— a way for him to excel.

Between the lifejackets and kayak paddles and pool toys hid stacks of elementary school yearbooks. Flipping through one, he recognized a third-grade Shane with a missing front tooth, the same little Shane from a photo he had pretended not to memorize hanging on the fridge in Yuna and David's kitchen. Ilya peeked into a box labeled "SHANE - SCHOOL" to discover a trove of report cards, construction paper crafts, scribbly little poems with primitive crayon figures, so sweet it made his teeth ache.

It was then that Ilya was suddenly struck by the realization that none of these things, little mementos of his own childhood, still existed. His father certainly did not hold on to any of his school assignments. Hell, he probably never even laid eyes on any drawing Ilya did as a child. Nobody had kept his toys from childhood, his boyhood joys, things he had owned, and loved, and taken care of. None of it.

He couldn't even think where he would look to find a photo of himself as a kid. He didn't have the time (or the stomach) to go through his father's things after the funeral, and considering the way he left things with Alexei, he wasn't even sure if he would ever be able to go back and dig through it all. Ilya sincerely doubted Alexei possessed the sentimentality to keep anything at all without monetary value. And what could he do? Call, after six months of radio silence, and ask, "I know we haven't spoken since the funeral, but do you happen to know where the blanket mama brought back from her sister's in Nizhny is? Can you dig out a few photos for me? Did dad keep my hockey trophies? My first tooth?"

He was indifferent to his father for many years of his life, just as he was sure now, looking back on his childhood as an adult, his father was mostly indifferent to him: a beautiful, golden-haired prop to parade out at parties, his little olimpiyets when he was playing well, but not much more than a footnote, the youngest, when he was not. After the death of his wife, the life of a single father did not come naturally to him, then already in his fifties, nor did the emotional support a young boy with a dead mother needed, so a surrogate, Polina, was quickly brought in at a poor attempt to spackle the hole punched through by the unfortunate circumstances of her suicide. He and Alexei did not talk about it, but when his brother's voice adjoined his father's chorus of "Don't be a baby, Ilyukha, she was a sick woman, haven’t you cried enough about this?" it was obvious where his brother's loyalties lied. He almost couldn't fault Alexei for that (like he very easily could fault him for many, many other things), a child needed a way to cope.

There were times as a child Ilya hated his father so much he thought he could kill him. He remembered a long car ride, one summer when he was thirteen. To where, Ilya couldn't remember, but Ilya could remember how he begged his father to stop for the restroom for miles, nearly in tears. His father, finally fed up with the boy's relentless pleading, pulled over to the side of the road to let him out. When Ilya returned from the wooded thicket not a minute later, he found his father's car nowhere in sight. Ilya sat on the side of the highway for the better part of an hour before his father finally returned and berated him for crying, acting like the child he was. Ilya recalled fantasizing about reaching over and yanking the steering wheel, sending them both careening off the edge of the road.

The irony of it all was that, at the end, he was the only person desperately trying to keep the man alive, making sure he wanted for nothing, making sure he was cared for. His precious few months off from the hockey season he spent at his father's side, counting out medication for the week, making sure the fridge was full, negotiating furiously with his brother to take at least some of his shifts caring for their frail father. Ilya would sit on the couch in that empty house, watching his father read and re-read and re-read the same page of the newspaper, thinking, "Did you ever love me, papa? Like I was obliged to love you?"

The back of his eyes suddenly felt very hot. The soft chatter of Shane and David debating whether to bring monofilament or braided fishing line now rung like tinnitus in his ears, unpleasantly resonant and inescapable. Quietly, Ilya shut the boxes and replaced them on top of their precarious stacks as best he could, and retreated to the driveway, taking refuge behind the Land Rover to swallow his... sadness? Not quite that. Bitterness?

A few minutes later, Shane and David plodded down the driveway with their supplies in tow. Ilya, sniffing, popped the tailgate and chivalrously helped David load everything into the car. Yuna had emerged from the house to oversee their progress, trying to make last-minute suggestions, which Shane had to gently deflect ("We have plenty of sunscreen mom. No, we're not going to take the kayaks. I don't have space in the shed. No, don't get rid of them. We might want to use them next year.")

David broke the silence between him and Ilya. "I think that's probably everything you should need. Now, don't get discouraged if you don't catch anything. Some days the fish just don't want to bite. It's normal."

"I'm sure I won’t, and that Shane will catch a hundred. He is determined to outscore me everywhere."

David chuckled. "He's a special kid."

"Yes. Very."

Ilya shut the trunk and caught Shane's eye, still deep in conversation with Yuna who is trying to pawn off more of the clutter in the garage. Over her shoulder, Shane shot back a shy smile at the compliment.

"You know, I'd think in Russia fishing would be pretty big, you've never done it before? Your dad never took you?"

Smelling danger, Shane's ears perked up. He cleared his throat. "Dad, Ilya—"

"No," Ilya interrupted, shooting Shane a look. "I was city kid. Didn't get into that kind of stuff until I moved to the States. Only hiked for first time few years ago." Ilya's throat tightened. It felt like digging a finger into a fresh bruise. It was infuriating to feel the weight of his father’s passing so heavily now. Even in death, the old man couldn’t stop finding the most perfect ways to haunt him, to make him feel small.

David took the boys' body language as a hint and didn't push it. "Well, you two will have fun." He clapped Ilya on the shoulder.

"And send us photos of anything you catch." Yuna adjoined.

//

Ilya relinquished the keys to Shane for their trip back to the cottage, and David and Yuna waved them off from the driveway, Ilya watched them disappear in the rearview mirror, his forehead pressed against the window.

It was a short return trip, but Shane kept fidgeting, peering at Ilya through the corner of his eye, noticing his reticence.

"What are you thinking about?"

Ilya almost quipped back with something clever, toothy and defensive, but remembered their promise on day one to be honest with each other, say how they really feel. Much easier said than done—very easy to promise when it was the only thing keeping Ilya from taking a bite out of Shane when they arrived at the cottage that afternoon. But still, a promise was a promise. The right words seemed gummed up in his molars, hard to chew out.

"It must have been nice to come here every summer. Fun for a kid."

Shane studied Ilya's expression for clues, not quite sure what he was getting at. He shrugged, eyes flickering between his solemn face and the road ahead.

"Yeah, I mean sure." He adjusted the air vent unnecessarily. "It was nice. But it's better now, as an adult, I guess. It's nice to just be away, in the quiet. I appreciate it more as I get older, I think."

"You did not have fun here as a kid?"

Shane shrugged. "I dunno. I guess, as a kid, it was kind of lonely. Not like it was much better at school, but once I got old enough it became pretty apparent my parents would really smother me to make sure I was having fun." Shane flicked the turn signal much earlier than he needed to, the gentle tick-tick-tick filling his pregnant pause.

"At least," he added, off-handedly, "after school I had hockey. And at least I could be useful there." Shane made his turn, then added, self-consciously, "Sorry. That was so long ago. It's stupid to talk about that now." Once he was back on a straightaway, he glanced over to see Ilya's face, previously turned towards the window now trained on Shane's profile, drawn into a frown.

Ilya's previous visions of Shane changed completely. Instead of a smiling boy chasing a soccer ball in the yard, he saw a small Shane somberly shuffling in the grass and kicking the ball to no one. Doing lonely loops down the cul-de-sac on his bike. Practicing on his roller skates because it kept his parents from fussing over him. Ilya's heart quivered. He was a lonely boy, just like Ilya was.

"What? Did I say something wrong?"

Ilya smiled then, shook his head, reaching back over and drawing Shane's hand from the steering wheel.

"Now you have a friend here."

A coy smile bloomed across Shane's face. "Yeah? That's what we are? Friends?"

Ilya pulled his hand over, kissing his fingertips. "Amongst other things. Yes. I'd say so. Probably."

Wednesday, 12:00 PM

A record heatwave arrived towards the end of their trip. A brutal, searing heat that prickled at your skin with the promise of sunburn as soon as you stepped outside. Cloud cover was minimal, providing no respite from the heat other than the shadows of the trees, which chased around the backyard teasingly.

The heat did not stop Ilya from eagerly unloading the fishing supplies from the back of Shane's car, carrying everything down to the edge of the lake, grimacing from the lingering pain in his bruised ribs. Shane tried to convince Ilya to wait until the sun had gone down a little, but he was restless, single-minded and determined. Shane acquiesced, mostly tickled to see Ilya's eagerness, letting himself be dragged down to the water's edge in the sweltering midday sun.

Shane reclined in what little shade was to be found in the backyard, feeling the prickling of the grass beneath his hands, on the back of his legs. Ilya, shirt already discarded, practiced his casting techniques towards the center of the yard, sweat already starting to slick his curls onto his forehead. Shane hungrily watched the tight muscles in his forearm expand and contract as Ilya flicked his wrist.

"Don't fling it so hard. You don't need to chuck it all the way to the middle of the lake."

"But that's where the biggest fish are."

"Worry about big fish once you catch any fish at all." Shane couldn't help but be snarky, the heat was making him irritable. The linen of his shirt was starting to turn dark, shellacked to his back with sweat.

Ilya, in general, was extremely coachable. With Shane's guidance, it didn't take him long to start tossing out very passable casts. When Ilya rejoined him in the shade to learn to tie a clinch knot, Shane couldn't resist the irrational stir of jealousy at how quickly he picked it up, at how his fingers worked the fishing line so deftly, when Shane recalled getting flustered and teary-eyed when his father tried to teach him as a child so many years ago.

It was unfair and irrational to compare a grown man with fully developed fine motor skills to an overwhelmed and exhausted eight-year-old, and Shane knew that. But still, a nefarious, yet familiar nagging at the back of his mind stirred envy in his stomach at how easily everything came to Ilya.

On the ice, Ilya was truly a sight to behold. There were players that worked very hard to be good at hockey, yet still there are others that understand the sport on a fundamental level, those to whom it comes intuitively, possessing an almost inhuman ability to calculate the physics of the puck, to understand how their body moves on the ice, the precise calculus of it all. To a trained eye, it was easy to tell the difference. Shane understood that Ilya was definitely the latter, and afraid that he was the former.

Of course, this is what drew Shane to Ilya in the first place. His hockey, of course, was the impetus, the thing that got him to follow that golden-haired boy behind the sporting arena at the Prospect Cup almost ten years ago. When talent scouts started buzzing about the wunderkind from Moscow, Shane had no choice but to trail him out behind the building and see up close for himself what all the talk was about, maybe someone who liked hockey as much as he did, who wouldn’t be put off by his perceived intensity.

But the true source of his affection, Shane later discovered, was Ilya's easy self-assurance, leaning heavily into arrogance, his composure, the way he fit into his own body so well, when Shane felt like he was bursting at the seams all the time, and everyone could tell.

He felt eighteen again, when he stayed up late searching up clips of Ilya on the internet to watch how he talked with reporters, watching his cocky half-smile, his blunt, unrehearsed answers, and not knowing whether he wanted to be him or kiss him. It was juvenile.

"What is that face?" Ilya tapped him with the end of the rod, breaking Shane from his reverie. "You are scowling at me."

"Nothing. Jus' hot." Shane tried and failed to rearrange his face into something neutral, pulling his knees up to his chest.

Ilya hummed, leaning forward to press his sweaty chin on the crest of Shane's knee. "Bad liar."

"I'm not."

"Sure." Ilya replied dubiously, head tilted forward, pressing his front teeth into Shane's knee gently.

Shane yielded, letting himself be made soft, pliable. "I was just thinking about back then. Like, when we first met. How I was jealous of you." Shane paused, waiting for Ilya's inevitable teasing, but it never came.

"I guess," he continued. "I mean, it was the stupid rivalry, obviously. I wanted to be the better player. But it felt like it didn't come as easily to me as it came to you. Hockey, I mean." His fingers were worrying at the dead blades of grass beneath him, pulling them out from the earth and stacking them neatly by his thigh. "Well, and everything, I guess. You seemed to have it all together." Shane braced again for a snarky response, and finding none, braved a look up to meet Ilya's eye. "Like you don't have to try that hard. And I feel like I do, at everything."

Ilya was grinning now, and part of Shane felt incensed, as though Ilya was mocking him. He was quickly soothed by a kiss on his knee. "You were jealous of me?" Ilya asked incredulously.

"Yeah."

"When you were Mister Canada Perfect? Rookie of the year? Doing interviews in French, fancy watch advertisements, kissing-babies-in-parade type-shit? How do you think I felt about you?" Ilya's eyes were soft, chasing Shane's even when they darted between the ground, his knee, Ilya's chin. "It did not come easy for me, you know." Ilya looked down at the ground, watching Shane's fingers tear out the grass. "I was scared a lot of the time. Nervous to move to US. Barely spoke English. Lot of pressure on me."

Shane's brow furrowed as his memories shuffled and warped. The look of contempt behind the sports arena at the Prospect Cup shifted to a look of suspicion, nervous about making a good impression on talent scouts and unsure of Shane's motives. His piercing gaze down to him on draft day no longer boastful, but curious. His taunting in the hotel gym just a bid for connection. His proposition in the showers as a way of getting close to Shane in the way he best knew how to succeed. Ilya probably was as just as lonely as he was back then. It had never occurred to him that the way Shane wanted to be like Ilya, Ilya might have felt towards him, too.

"But," Ilya started, pressing his fingers into the meat of Shane's thigh, leaning forward to inch towards his face. "Getting you on your knees in that hotel room, that did come easy to me." He leaned forward and planted a kiss on the tip of Shane's nose.

Shane smiled, pushing him away, playfully knocking Ilya off balance and toppling him over onto his back the grass. "Don't start talking about things that came easy. I remember that night too, you know."

Ilya gave a rare, large, toothy smile, a smile saved for occasions where Shane surprised him, after he said something unexpectedly funny or filthy.

Shane stood and pressed his foot to Ilya's bare chest. "Hungry?"

"Mm." Ilya reached up from his reclined position and grabbed Shane's foot, bringing it to his lips and kissing the bone of his ankle. Shane ignored the feelings watching Ilya kiss his foot stirred within him for now, cataloging it for later investigation, as he wiggled free of his grip and crossed back into the house, leaving Ilya on the grass, watching him in adoration.

//

He returned minutes later to find Ilya still peacefully laid out on the grass, shuffling down to the water with two paper plates balanced delicately in one hand, two sodas in the other, two peaches held in the crook of his elbow. He set their picnic spread out on their meager patch of shade.

Despite the heat, it felt like paradise. Ilya, greedily reaching out to dive into his sandwich while still sprawled out on his back, looked like the first man (if on the fifth day God had created the squat rack), perfect and effortless and relaxed in a way Shane still wasn't accustomed to seeing him, like all of his hard edges were sanded off and shaped into something softer, more gentle.

Shane could see, from the corner of his eye, Ilya watching curiously as he removed the top layer of bread and arranged his potato chips on top of his sandwich. Sitting up, Ilya removed the half-eaten top of his own sandwich and replicated Shane's technique, biting down with a crunch and humming in appreciation.

"You are a very smart boy."

They finished their lunch and Ilya took his newfound fishing skills to the test. Of course, it was just as boring and tedious as Shane remembered it was, but Ilya stubbornly refused to admit so himself. He sat steadfastly, casting and recasting into the lake, trying to get a bite. Shane had had the foresight to grab a book while he prepared their lunch and was unabashedly occupying himself with it as Ilya casted into the lake, looking for any action. Ilya held the rod in one hand, the other bringing a peach up to his mouth for messy bites.

As the afternoon dragged on, the sun started to throw long shadows across the grass, most of the searing heat of the day now being tempered. Shane didn't even notice he had dozed off in the grass until he heard a splash, followed by a giddy laugh from Ilya.

He sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, to see Ilya holding a smallmouth bass on the end of his line, probably less than six inches long, flapping desperately as it accustomed itself to its new climate. Ilya held the fish out in front of him almost daintily, grinning with all 32 teeth.

"I am master fucking angler. Shane, take photo of me." He tossed Shane his phone from the pocket of his shorts and posed with the fish. He looked objectively ridiculous, seeing him hold up an objectively very small fish and smiling like he had just angled a record-breaking catch. It was all very sweet and Shane couldn't stifle back a laugh. "Wait, let me do serious one." Ilya dropped his face to something severe Shane had recognized from center ice. It made him laugh even more.

"Okay, toss it back. It's gonna die if it stays out of the water that long." Shane managed to choke out, reeling himself in. Ilya, remembering the mortality of the creature in his hand, frantically rushed back to the water's edge and delicately released the fish back into the lake. Turning on heel, he pounced on Shane, playfully pinning him onto the grass.

"What is so funny, hm? You are making fun of me."

"No! I'm not!" Shane yelped, laughter starting up all over again. Ilya, keeping Shane pressed down onto the grass, tickled him mercilessly, fighting off Shane's weak protests and bending down to kiss at the column of his exposed throat.

Shane watched Ilya pull back with a giddy grin. Ilya's hands trembled with anticipation as they released Shane's arms and started frantically working the buttons on his linen shirt, eagerly peeling it off Shane's sweaty back. He bent down and kissed his way down Shane's chest like he couldn't do it fast enough. This hungry, frantic passion was not unfamiliar to them, but Shane realized this felt different-- dizzy, euphoric, and innocent.

Even when it veered into less-than-innocent territory with Ilya's fingers working Shane's shorts down and the grass prickled at the back of his legs, they kissed like they had invented it, and they might as well have, because it was hard to believe that anyone had ever felt this way before. Ilya's chin was sticky and his mouth was sweet. Shane licked into it, trying to memorize the moment, the taste of peaches, the smell of grass and sweat, the way his heart twitched feeling Ilya smile against his teeth in the sun.

A veritable Garden of Eden.

Thursday, 5:00 PM

Personal property ceased to exist here, some kind of socialist utopia where the heat of each other's bodies, gripping hands, rippling muscles pushed against one another, sweat slipping on sweat, was the official currency-- to each according to his need, from each according to his ability. The lines blurred between whose bodies belonged to whom, a collective ownership, hard to find one untangled from the other: a leg thrown haphazardly across a lap on the couch, or clutched tightly and thrown over a shoulder, or pressed back, back, back, against a chest heaving with abandon.

Two suitcases melted into an amorphous pile of athletic wear in the corner of the master bedroom, and if Shane were any less drunk on the remaining time they had left together, he would have endeavored to unlatch himself from Ilya's side and sort through it all. But, as it happened, keeping wardrobes separate fell to the bottom of the week's priority list, falling far behind the most important agenda items of, 1. fucking all the time and 2. making the most of their short time together. Clothing became purely functional and only when required.

As such, Ilya, broad chest flushed red and panting, grabbed the first pair of shorts he saw as he rolled off the top of an equally spent Shane, who watched him shuffle away from the couch under sweaty, fluttering eyelashes. He returned with a bundle of tissue and a peach in one hand and adjusting himself into Shane's track shorts with the other, a size too small. It was almost more obscene than seeing him naked, Shane thought.

"Those are mine," Shane protested weakly, pretending as though he wouldn’t want to see Ilya wearing anything else for the rest of his life.

"Well, keep on me like you have been, and we can swap again in another few minutes." Ilya, smiling wolfishly, kneeled over Shane to wipe his stomach clean. "Zhadnyy. Greedy."

Shane flushed, somehow more deeply than he already was. "I have to be. I don't get this often."

Pensively, Ilya replied, "One day, we will have it whenever we want."

Shane tilted his chin up to find Ilya's lips, imagining sealing the sacrament with a kiss. I promise if you do, I promise if you do.

Ilya smiled into the kiss, then, completing his closing shift at the Shane factory, slapped his clean stomach affectionately. "There you go. Pillow princess."

"Shut up." Shane couldn't contain a broad, toothy smile as he sat up, fumbling through the crumpled couch cushions and soiled throw blankets to find Ilya's basketball shorts and pulled them on. He made a mental note to send the blankets out to get dry cleaned next week, then promptly took the concept of "next week" and shoved it back, back, down into the deepest filing cabinet of his mind.

Ilya settled back on the couch, head falling back and exhaling in mock-exhaustion. "I need a fucking Gatorade. You are depleting me. I think I will be just a shell of a man after this week."

After this week. Shane wrangled that too and sent it down to be filed away in his subconscious. He crawled over to Ilya and settled on his chest, still slick and sticky with sweat. "Never knew you to be a quitter, Roz."

"I am no quitter." Ilya leered down at him through his eyelashes, almost taking genuine offense. "I will fuck you with my dying breath." Ilya kissed his eyebrow. "Even if I turn to dust and my dick snaps off inside of you."

They settle like that, the late afternoon sun beams drenched across their spent and sweaty bodies. Their heavy breaths and heartbeats filled in the gaps. Ilya worked down another peach, making steady progress on the two full bags sitting in the kitchen. He would lower it down to Shane's lips occasionally, wiping the juice that would drip down his chin with his thumb and pressing it back past Shane's lips.

Shane couldn't imagine a more perfect afternoon if he tried.

Before he had realized it, he had nodded off. His nap was interrupted by the blue light from Ilya's phone screen and the small movement in the muscles of Ilya's forearm— typing.

Shane felt a pang of jealousy at the thought of Ilya texting someone else while he slept on his chest. Without stirring, Shane peered an eye open, trying to get a glimpse of his screen. He couldn't avoid huffing out a small laugh through his nose when he saw that Ilya was sending the photo of his fishing catch. The contact, which Shane could not make out for the jumble of Cyrillic, only replied with three laughing face emojis.

Ilya, unphased, tilts his screen down to Shane so he could get a better look. "What does she think she is laughing at?" Svetlana, Shane reasoned, through context clues. He tamped down another irrational shiver of jealousy. Ilya opened his camera roll and flicked through the other photos Shane had taken of him that afternoon. "I think you took it at a bad angle. Looked a lot bigger than this in real life."

Shane watched Ilya swipe through his camera roll with fascination. There, documentation of so much of the time they spent apart, so many gaps that Shane had stayed up at night, wondering, what is he doing now? Shane only had definitive proof of how Ilya spent his time a handful of hours out of the year when they were together. He spent more hours than he would let himself admit thinking about Ilya constantly, wondering how he spent his evenings, his weekends, who he was with when he wasn't with Shane, what they did together, what he did when he was alone. He wondered if Ilya was ever thinking of him.

"Will you show me some photos?" Shane asked, quietly, as if he hoped Ilya didn't hear, cheeks burning as if he was asking for something much more intimate than a tour through his camera roll.

Ilya cocked an eyebrow. "Hm? You want to see?" Shane nodded, peering up through his eyelashes. "Okay. But you have to show me too." Ilya propped his phone up on his chest with one hand, the other coming around to clasp over Shane's forehead, holding his head affectionately, protectively, and scrolled, looking for the highlights.

Shane fumbled blindly in the cushions for his phone, and, finding it, opened to a barrage of notifications. Emails about training camp dates, requests for comments from journalists about the upcoming season, sponsorship opportunities he would need to vet with his mother to make sure they aligned with his "brand". It all made him feel a little sick, all reminders that he was a valuable commodity, and the more time he spent away, the more valuable he became— his duties as captain, his opinions, his likeness. Basic economics, supply and demand. A product to be bought and sold and leased out.

But no, it was wrong to think like that, Shane thought. This was the natural culmination of everything he had worked for his whole life. He heard his mother’s voice in his head, he should be feeling grateful for all the opportunity that he was given, and the responsibility he has to be a good role model for kids like him. Standing and posing with a sports drink, or diving watch, or pair of sneakers once or twice a quarter was an easy concession to make in exchange for his success on the ice. When he played well and earned recognition like this, it meant he was good. It meant he was worthy, useful. It meant he was holding up his end of the bargain. A bargain with whom, exactly, Shane wasn't sure.

He cleared all his notifications, promising himself he would look at them all next week (there it was again, next week, next week).

Ilya tilted his phone back down towards Shane's face, who squinted into the blaring full brightness of his screen. His teammate Victor, a rookie, probably barely older than 20, arms flung over the shoulders of a gleeful Marleau and Ilya, evidently blacked out and unconscious, sunglasses barely hanging on to his baby face.

"We did a 'Bernie's Weekend' with him. We got him into club like that." Ilya tapped the photo for emphasis.

"'Weekend at Bernie's'," Shane corrects, reaching up to zoom into poor Victor's face, mouth agape. Marleau and Ilya looked massive next to the rookie. Ilya sucked his teeth, dismissing the correction with a flip of his wrist, and flipped through another dozen photos.

Shane had a hard time believing he was that young once; that was probably what he had looked like when he first joined the Metros. All limbs, full cheeks. He thought about what Ilya had looked like, almost ten years ago. Shane remembered thinking he looked much older than him at the time, cigarette dangling from between his lips, a haughty smirk on his face as Shane naively reached out for a handshake. They were barely still children then. Now, when he looks at Ilya, approaching the end of his twenties, he can see faint lines forming around the edge of his eyes, a thin crease starting to etch itself in between his eyebrows. His own face, Shane had noticed from staring at himself too long in the mirror, was starting to settle into something sharper, less youthful, contours of his cheeks hollowing out with age. Not nearly the kids they were when they first met.

"This is when Connors lost both of his front teeth over two weeks. His fake teeth looked like shit. Completely different colors." Ilya paused on the photo, front flash, camera almost entirely in his teammates mouth. It was hideous.

"Gross."

Shane assessed his own photos, looking for something interesting to share. In contrast to the 5-digit number of pictures Ilya had, evident by his large, full-screen swipes to plunder for his very best photos, Shane's own camera roll contained barely over a thousand. The last things had photos of were screenshots of Ilya's flight arrival time, in case he forgot, and a grocery list. Not nearly the content to show next to Ilya's escapades.

The Metros had their fair share of shenanigans, but it never occurred to Shane to document it. He figured it would go against his role as captain to encourage bad behavior, but he was not naive to what his teammates got up to, and he was happy to turn a blind eye to it when it happened. And besides, he was never in the center of it all, but always just on the outside, watching it unfold. Knowing Ilya, Shane figured he was probably the instigator, the biggest personality in the room. He could imagine Ilya in the Raiders locker room, team circled around him, facing him like plants to the sun, absorbing his light and ready to take his lead. Shane knew that's what he would do if he was lucky enough to be in their place, in such close proximity to him all the time.

Shane was blinded again by Ilya's screen. "This is me at Celtics. You know this guy?" Ilya zoomed in on the photo. A selfie, frankly an awful picture, holding his phone over his head facing center court at TD Garden, getting a blurry shot of the players as they filed off after the game. "Me and Jayson Tatum."

"Wow," Shane remarked sarcastically, "I'm surprised he didn't ask for your autograph. Two fucking titans of the Boston sports scene."

Ilya scoffed. "Me and him are not the same. I am like, LeBron of hockey. He is not Ilya Rozanov of basketball. Not even close."

"What does that make me?"

Ilya pondered, giving serious weight to the question. "You can be KD."

"Hold on," Shane sat up, suddenly fired up. "How come you get to be LeBron? Only one of us here has two cups."

Ilya slapped a hand over his heart in mock-agony, "Okay, no need for low blows. It was very nice compliment. KD played well this year."

Shane leaned up to kiss him, a sweet peck on the jaw. Ilya chased it, nipping at his lower lip.

"Oh," Ilya interjected, "I have good one." Ilya pulled his phone back up under his chin to resume his scrolling, down, down, into more recent photos.

Shane assessed his camera roll again while he waited. He hadn't taken any photos since the two of them arrived, he realized in a sudden panic. He feared he wouldn't remember it all when they were back in their own apartments next week. (Again, again.) Did he save the afterimage of Ilya in the sun, holding his fish with such pride, so that when he closes his eyes at night, he'll see it again and again in photo negative on the back of his eyelids? Or will it fade, like their wet handprints in the sun?

"Okay, last one." Shane peered back up, expecting to see another photo of a rookie in a compromising position, but instead, an amateurish photo of a sunset over the ocean from a hotel window, all oranges and reds and pinks, Ilya's eyes and forehead, furrowed in concentration, reflected in the glass.

"From All-Star game. Before I came down to find you." Ilya assessed the photo thoughtfully. "Was nice day."

Shane didn't expect Ilya to be the type to take photos of sunsets on his phone. It was touching, unexpectedly sweet.

"You know," Shane flushed, "I actually got one from that night too." Scrolling again, Shane pulled up a nearly identical sunset, except taken from a lower angle, from his spot on the beach. Ilya held their phones side-by-side, the time stamps only a few minutes apart.

"Maybe you knew somehow. Our hearts connected." Ilya's hand snaked up to hold Shane's forehead tenderly. "Like Bluetooth." Ilya tilted the phone back towards himself, smiling at the private memory; an individual memory they both shared, both held so sacred, like two ripped halves of a photograph, photos in a locket, to be held always, always, against their hearts. Shane felt his own heart quiver, not quite sure where to store all of the tenderness— their shared impulse to photograph something beautiful, something pure, then finding each other on that beach, reaching out and find each other's hands in the cold sand for the possibility of another chance, neither knowing that this is where they would end up, just hungry for each other, any moment they could steal. It was enough to make Shane's throat tighten, corners of his eyes start to sing. What a difference six months makes.

"Okay," Ilya said, patting Shane's forehead, "Can we play 8-Ball pool now?" He had already pulled the chat bubble up in his messages with Jane, ready to send the game request.

Shane swallowed back the tide of emotion bubbling up in his chest. "You're fucking toast."

Friday, 11:00 AM

End of July. When the summer is thick and sweet, hanging heavily in the air, intoxicatingly overripe. So ripe, you need to eat it quickly, over the sink, juice dripping down chin. Hot, almost too hot. The cool reprieve of evening was quickly chased away by the rising sun, everything was flushed, the humidity was palpable, and the cicadas were shrilling in the dense, blanketing stillness. The trees were making their grand finale of the season, leaves bursting with deep luscious greens and hanging heavily in the breezeless summer heat, one last show before the chill of autumn started to roll in off the lake, and temper everything with golden austerity.

Somewhere, maybe somewhere between day four and five, famine had turned to feast for Shane and Ilya. Their typical cadence was frantic, needy, taking-all-I-can-get-because-I-don't-know-when-I'll-have-you-again, stolen hours between red-eye flights, checking the calendar, waiting, waiting, and then getting, taking, and taking, and taking.

And now, two weeks together. For two blissful weeks, there was no rush. No team bus to take at ungodly hours, no alibi to protect from snooping teammates, no need to pull trackpants back on before their heart rates had started to settle. Shane and Ilya now had all the time in the world, from sunup to sundown, every day. It was pure greed and gluttony. An overabundance, gratuitous excess. A second dessert with two spoons. A three-martini lunch, and Ilya Rozanov was not holding his liquor.

I have enough money, Ilya thought, in between erratic thrusts of his hips. I could quit hockey, and I could do nothing but this for the rest of my life. He could barely see straight. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the absolute vision of Shane's back in front of him, rippling in response to his movements, bent over the side of the couch; or maybe it was the noises Shane was making, desperate little hnnh's, sounds Ilya swore he would only be lucky enough to hear if he made it to the gates of heaven.

Maybe that's what this was. Maybe he had died on that plane to Canada and gone to heaven. It was the only explanation for why he was allowed to have such otherworldly pleasures. If that was the case, Ilya thought, he didn't want God to see him like this, strung out, nearly incoherent, sodomizing in the living room in the harsh light of day, doing things that are barely allowed at all in most jurisdictions. The slick sound of sex punctuated by birdsong felt sacrilegious, but if this was heaven, God must have sent Ilya the dark-haired angel beneath him just for this. And maybe God liked to watch.

And he was an angel, that much Ilya was sure of. If he wasn't, then why did he appear in his dreams, like angels do? Like his mother does, from time to time, when he's deserved it?

Although, if Ilya took inventory, he did not believe his karmic debt would have tipped the scales in favor of heaven, but he wasn't about to point out the clerical error that would pull him out of this moment. He made a solemn prayer to God, heaven, whoever was listening, as he was buried to the hilt, that he would never sin again if this was the reward he got to reap.

Ilya felt like he was becoming untethered. Like he was floating out of his own skin, levitating, just barely, above himself, watching from a third-person perspective. He was losing it, feeling the spool of his sanity spinning, spinning, thread pooling by his feet, one planted on the ground, the other on the couch cushion for leverage. It was all too much. He forced himself to slow down, much to Shane's frustration, otherwise he would fall to pieces where he stood. He needed to come back to Earth.

Five things you can see. He pulled this phrase from some deep annal of his brain, a teammate once convinced that his lack of mindfulness was what was keeping him from accurate passes, and not the fact that maybe he just needed to use his fucking eyes and hit the puck the right way, as Ilya had countered. Five things you can see. One: the sweet, flustered red face of Shane Hollander, looking over his shoulder, trying to see what was keeping Ilya from fucking him within an inch of his life. Two: a bead of sweat, delicately dripping down Shane's neck, changing course from shoulder to down to his chest as Shane dropped his head down onto his forearms, supported by the armrest of the couch. Three: six freckles on a shoulder, kind of shaped like the little dipper if you look at it from the right angle. Four: a nice little purple bruise, blooming above Shane's left hip, perfectly shaped like Ilya's thumb. Five: His hands, grabbing Shane's thighs with a death-grip like it was the only thing holding him to Earth's surface. He felt himself fall unintentionally back into his stuttering, desperate pace, rapidly unfurling yet again.

Not working. What was the next step? Four things you can touch? Ilya reached a hand up, grabbing Shane by the shoulder for more leverage, fingers slipping with the slick of his skin there. The living room was hot, almost stifling; Shane had opened the sliding doors to the backyard to let a breeze in, but the stagnant summer air crept in and covered everything with a sticky, wet veneer. That was one, two. His free hand released his grip on his thigh and ran over Shane's lower back, tracing the two delicate dimples above his tailbone, letting his thumb trail around the divots there, where they collected sweat at the base of his back like two offering bowls begging Ilya to bend down and lap up the holy water. Three. The hand on Shane's shoulder inched over to hold the back of his neck, a firm thumb and middle finger grip, adding just enough pressure to get an appreciative sigh from Shane. As he held Shane's neck, his index finger trailed up, tracing against the hairline of his neck, just behind his ear, closely cropped, gently tapered, a clean edge. Oh.

"Did you—get a haircut for this?" Ilya grunted out hoarsely, the first words he must have spoken since they woke up and found themselves tangled in a blanket on that very couch where they had accidentally fallen asleep the night before.

Shane turned glassy eyes back towards Ilya, equally as fucked-out and incoherent. "Huh?"

"Did you get a haircut?" Ilya repeated. "For this? For the cottage?"

Shane processed his unusual question in slow motion. "I, ah— I needed one."

"Did you get haircut for me?"

Peering out from behind his shoulder, the corner of Shane's eye wrinkled, almost imperceptibly. A ghost of a smile that Ilya knew meant yes.

It was almost too much for him to bear. He could picture Shane looking at his calendar in apprehension, booking a hair appointment and penciling the time in his neat little handwriting, sitting in the barber chair and making sure he looked just right, one of many dozens of tasks he had to check off to make sure Ilya's visit was perfect, right after making his itinerary and stocking the pantry with everything he knew Ilya liked.

It made his heart coil, twisting and thrashing, about to burst from his ribs. To be thought of, considered, planned around, anticipated, and joyfully, at that.

It was for him. All for him.

He was unfurling again, quickly, too quickly, like a rope tied to an anchor tossed overboard, plunging down, down to the depths.

Ilya flipped Shane onto his back, plopping him onto the couch cushions and protecting the back of Shane's head from knocking against the armrest, eliciting a surprised huff from Shane. Mindfulness be damned, Ilya couldn't keep the animal part of his brain from taking over now, seeing Shane splayed out beneath him, eyes wide and wet and wanting, the part of his brain that wanted to tear Shane apart with his teeth, who wanted to bury himself inside, carve a hole into his chest, pull his ribs around himself and make a home there. "You wanted to look pretty for me?" he grumbled, more to himself than to Shane.

"Yeah," Shane whimpered in agreement, barely able to keep his own eyes open, face scrunched in pleasure.

Another three, four shuddering snaps of his hips and Ilya was gone, what little remained of his coherence draining out of him from between his legs. Even in this state, he was gentleman enough to make sure Shane was not far behind, spitting into his palm and reaching his hand down to drag Shane down with him. Shortly thereafter, Ilya saw the clouds part and heavens open up in the way Shane's face twisted in ecstasy, head thrown back, mouth agape and eyebrows cinched together like a fucking Bernini sculpture. Part of him wished he would have died right then so that image was the last thing firing in his synapses, but another part of him wished to live a thousand years so he could see this image again, and again, and again.

He didn't even notice his ears were ringing until Shane pulled Ilya down by the neck and pressed his lips against the side of his face, muttering watery little I love you's in between kisses to his jaw, against the furiously thumping pulse in his neck.

That's what this is all for, Ilya thought. This was his higher purpose. In this moment, he was worthy. He was good.

Saturday, 4:00 AM

In the blue of the pre-dawn, the stillness rang like a bell in Shane's ears, resonant and reverent. If he closed his eyes and focused, he could hear the firs and conifers barely quivering their needles in the warm breeze just outside, the way the percale sheets crinkled with the gentle heaves of Ilya's chest, the soft exhale of his breath against the shell of Shane's ear. He could even hear, just barely, the soft, wet noise of Ilya's eyelids as he blinked, the only indication that he, too, was awake, silently, somewhere behind Shane.

Shane reached back, hand finding Ilya’s side.

“You are awake?”

“Mm-hm.”

"What are you thinking about," Ilya murmured groggily, barely more than whisper.

Shane tilted his head back, looking at Ilya's dark silhouette, outlined navy blue. He couldn't see much but the line of his ear as it trailed down into his neck and shoulder. Shane wished he could take a pencil and trace his silhouette on the wall, tangible proof that he was here once, maybe a marker to compare against next year.

Every night since they arrived, Shane spent restless nights not able to fathom that the thing that he had longed for so many years, whether he allowed himself to admit it or not, was pressed against his back, a body glowing molten red and warm. A few hours here and there was all they allowed themselves to spend together, for the last decade. Every time, Shane would return to an empty hotel room and spend the night under cold stiff sheets wishing he was able to close his eyes pressed against the broad warmth of Ilya’s body for even ten more minutes.

Now, 10 uninterrupted nights together felt like an unfathomable indulgence. He had a hard time determining whether he was dreaming or awake; he felt like it would all vanish like a wisp of smoke behind his eyes if he let himself fall asleep.

The arm wrapped around him squeezed his chest, prompting a response.

Shane swallowed and tried to pluck the words out from the nebulous dark.

"I just feel nervous."

"You are scared of the dark? Should we get you nightlight?" Ilya's hand slid down and pinched Shane's stomach affectionately. Shane swatted his hand weakly, pulling his fingers up towards his chin, kissing his knuckles.

"It's more like, I'm scared this will not have happened after tomorrow. Like this whole time, I was just dreaming it."

Ilya's foot slid up to press against the sole of Shane's. His toes were cold against his arch. "It does feel like a dream."

Shane swallowed, his sleepy brain trying to slot the right words together. "I'm scared after I drop you off tomorrow, it will be like none of this ever happened."

Ilya huffed out a small laugh. "I think it's a little late for that."

"How d'you mean?"

"For one thing, I don't think there is going back now that we've had come-to-Jesus moment with your mom and dad." Ilya added, "But was good idea to bite bullet and get coming out and meeting the parents over with all at once. Very efficient."

Shane couldn't help but crack a wry smile. "Wow, two really good English idioms in a row."

"You’re an idiom." Ilya bit his ear.

Shane rolled over to face him. Ilya's eyes gleamed in the low lavender light, sleepy and affectionate. "After all the charity talk and ten-year plans, you think I will bail after this? Is that it? After I eat your mother's pasta and drink your father's liquor, I will disappear? Like deadbeat dad?" Ilya pressed, shaking Shane's shoulder gently for emphasis. "I know much about this subject, you know."

"No," Shane replied, "I guess not. You've disappeared on me before, but I won't hold it against you," he added, cheekily. After everything that has happened has led to this exact moment, Shane wouldn't trade it for the world—good and bad—but his competitive spirit can't help but rub a little dirt in the wound. Ilya sucked his teeth.

"Oh, so we are keeping score, huh?" Ilya sat up on his elbow to leer over Shane. "Might I remind you ran out of my house while the cum was still drying on my stomach? And then got a movie star girlfriend about it?" Shane recoiled at the memory and opened his mouth to apologize, but Ilya soothed him with a pat to the side of the face, a gesture of no hard feelings. "Besides, I was no boyfriend back then, but I'm regular housecat now. Fully domesticated, home for dinner, curl up in your lap, kill mice and throw up in your shoes."

"Oh, yeah?" Shane grinned yet again. That word again. Boyfriend. It felt so juvenile to get butterflies over it.

"Is true."

"Shane Hollander, the man who tamed Ilya Rozanov."

"Many have tried but only one has succeeded."

Shane crinkled his nose at the idea of "many". Ilya bent down to kiss the wrinkle between his brow, mea culpa.

"It will be a lot easier than before." Ilya prompted, gently. "Knowing this is what it could be like."

"D'you think?"

Ilya nodded.

"I think it will be so much harder, knowing this is what it could be like," Shane said matter-of-factly. His mouth felt dry, corners of his eyes starting to sting. He turned away to avoid Ilya's sympathetic gaze.

As much as he tried not to, he couldn’t stop thinking about the dread of driving back to Montreal after all of this. The past two weeks felt like an alternate universe, where Shane could have everything he ever wanted. It felt like realizing you are in a dream while still in it, chasing the perfect fantasy, knowing fully it will come to an end as soon as the sun pricks your eyelids. He felt a lump in his throat imagining the next few months, reciting his rehearsed locker-room lines against the jeers and calls of men who, with little exception, barely knew him after nearly a decade playing together— the real Shane Hollander. Granted, they knew a very large part of him: his relentless drive, his bone-deep competitive nature, his superhuman aptitude and encyclopedic knowledge of the sport of hockey, even his more endearing and palatable neuroticisms, but did they know him? Did they know the contents of his soul, his private desires, his longing to sit in the sun, laying in the tall grass, reaching out for the warm body beside him, a man, slick with sweat and sticky from the juice of the peaches he ate who is reaching right back for him, and, fuck—

"Shane," Ilya pulled him back down to earth with a gentle caress to the cheek, a cheek Shane did not even realize was wet until the pad of Ilya's thumb is wiping a tear away gingerly. Shane cleared his throat and sniffed, pressing the back of his wrists against his eyelids.

"Sorry. I'm being stupid."

"Stop it." Ilya's voice was firm, but gentle, tilting Shane's chin to be face-to-face. "Don't do that. Don't make it small."

Shane stared steadfastly at Ilya's mouth, afraid that the intensity of his gaze will peel him all the way back into his fleshiest, most vulnerable state.

"It was perfect," Ilya began, "I'm happy to be here with you and spend lame Canadian summer together. After all this time, it was worth it to me. Even if I have to wait another ten years to do it again." Ilya planted a chaste kiss on Shane's forehead. "But please do not make me wait that long. I think I have real promise as fisherman. Think I could go big places with that."

Shane broke, corners of his lips perking up involuntarily as he finally met Ilya's gaze.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

Ilya hauled Shane to rest on top of him, and Shane always felt a little ridiculous like this at first, a grown man laying on top of another grown man.

"I'm gonna crush your ribs."

"Don't piss me off," Ilya murmured sweetly, nosing into the hair above Shane's ear. "Go back to sleep."

Shane would never deny him, and so he did, obediently, letting his eyes flutter closed and tucking his chin in the warm, dark crook of Ilya's neck, breathing in the smell of him, the shampoo they had shared the past two weeks, further blurring the line between whose body was whose.

Saturday, 7:00 AM

Shane slept lightly, a chronic symptom of a nervous disposition, but a helpful feature when having to constantly wake up at ungodly hours for flights, team buses, morning practices. He started slipping back into consciousness as soon as Ilya started to stir under the sheets as the dawn trickled in through the windows.

He hadn't slept, not really, since they found each other awake earlier that morning. Shane couldn't help but think of the alarm clock on the bedside table and run calculations on exactly how much time they had left. Ilya's plane leaves at 3, so we need to be at the airport two hours before, which is an hour and a half drive away, so we need to leave latest by 11:30, which means we only have...

Ilya normally was slow to wake, a discovery quite unsettling to Shane, often sleeping so heavily that Shane once had to hold his hand in front of his face to check that he was still breathing. He would have been content to stay in bed every morning until the sun hung heavily overhead, pulling Shane against his chest under the duvet and keeping him captive in their rehearsed choreography of limbs and lips and sweat.

But this morning, Shane, with eyes still closed, trying to pull himself back into sleep, could hear Ilya shuffle delicately out from underneath the sheets, mindfully trying not to wake Shane, and padding bare feet out of the bedroom. Shane counted his soft steps against the hardwood as they trailed off—more than would be expected if he were going to the bathroom. Shane peeked an eye open to look at the clock on the end table, shortly before 7:00 AM.

The bed felt huge and empty without him. Shane rolled over and reached his hand out to the impression Ilya made in the mattress, the warm divot where he just was. The smell of him lingering on the pillow. Shane rolled over into his spot and let himself be enveloped in Ilya's shadow in his absence, knowing in a few minutes, his large warm hand would be guiding him back over, pulling him back into his solid warm chest and back into sleep.

Except, the hand never came. Shane caught himself from slipping back into sleep when he noticed that Ilya was gone longer than he expected. Blearily, Shane rubbed his eyes and glanced at the alarm clock again, 7:16 AM. He pulled himself out of bed, tugging on the first shirt he could find in their tangled pile to investigate.

He did not have to look for long, as just outside the window, he could see the outline of Ilya silhouetted against the light blue dawn, emerging naked from the lake.

Shane was taken aback at how innocent he looked, as innocent as a man in his late twenties could look, with a body like that: a body built for work, for violence, a tool to complete a job, hard edges and sharp angles, built to push, and press, and pry. In the light of the morning, though, the edges of him were blurred and softened. Shane watched as Ilya pushed his wet hair out of his face, pulling a towel around his broad shoulders. He looked young, like how Shane remembered him back in Saskatchewan so many years ago.

Ilya startled at the sound of the sliding door closing, almost dropping the cigarette between his lips on the grass as he pulled on a pair of sweatpants— to whom they belonged, Shane couldn't say. Shane padded out to his perch on the large stone at the water's edge.

"Did I wake you?" Ilya whispered, as though they were both still asleep under the sheets.

"Yeah." Shane said, settling next to Ilya. His body was cold and wet, making Shane bristle slightly. He tossed the edge of a blanket over Ilya's shoulders, covered in goosebumps, so that they both were enveloped underneath. "It's okay though."

"I couldn't sleep," Ilya said, taking the edge of the blanket from Shane graciously.

"Bad dream?"

Ilya shrugged, cigarette perched between his lips. "Thinking."

Shane hummed in acknowledgement but didn't press too hard. He was worried this delicate thing between them would pop, squished like a bug underfoot, if he asked for too much, pushed too much, wanted too much. As their time together drew to a close, it all felt a bit more fragile, more breakable.

 He could see Ilya retreat, somewhere a bit further behind his eyes, when he was deep in thought like this. He wanted Ilya to come to him on his own terms, to feel safe enough to be vulnerable with him. So, Shane just sat next to him, pressed against Ilya's wet arm, enveloped in the smell of tobacco.

"Why no pants?" Shane couldn’t help but asking.

Ilya made a motion over his shoulder with the hand holding the cigarette, sending ash tumbling down his forearm. "Swim trunks are still wet." Shane peered back to where Ilya motioned to see both of their swim trunks laid side-by-side over the edge of a patio chair, a reminder of their previous afternoon.

And it had been a glorious afternoon, and the last time Shane could ignore the looming sense of dread in his chest that this was all over. They had raced out to the middle of the lake and back. Shane was the faster swimmer, but Ilya kept pulling him back by the ankle, dirty tricks. Shane laid his body across Ilya’s back afterwards, snaking his arms around his shoulders as they bobbed in the water and watched the ducks take off in flight off the surface of the lake.

"I'm going to miss you," Shane said, a little shocked at how easily the words tumbled out of him. "A lot."

The corner of Ilya's eye crinkled in Shane's peripheral vision, a barely-there wistful grin. "I know." Then after a minute, following the crackle of the burning tobacco, "I will miss you too."

Shane reached his hand up for the cigarette between Ilya's lips, eliciting a raised eyebrow, but Ilya released it from between his teeth and let Shane take it. He took a shallow drag and choked back a cough, much to Ilya's bemusement. But, Shane appreciated, he didn't say anything, just taking the cigarette back from Shane's hands and returning it between his lips. A silent communion they shared.

//

It had finally arrived, the inevitable end. Ten days and still nothing could have prepared Shane for the nausea he felt as he joylessly sorted through their clothing in the corner of the bedroom as Ilya showered, carefully separating a Metros sweatshirt from a pair of Adidas trackpants. It was a little more bearable to imagine he was separating their laundry, soon to be tumble-dried and tossed onto the bed they shared, and quickly to be forgotten about when Ilya would come up behind him and wrap his arms around his shoulders.

But that's not what was happening. He was preparing to drive Ilya back to the airport, where he'll go back to Boston for the remainder of the summer, then training camps, then pre-season, essentially a lifetime until they would meet again in October.

(Shane already had the day they would see each other again marked in his calendar. One hot night, they had pressed their foreheads together under the covers, looking over the season schedule shortly after it was released, calculating the number of days they would have to go between seeing each other. Looking down the barrel of three months apart made five weeks between games seem much more tolerable.)

Shane flitted around the cottage anxiously to pick up the last little bits Ilya was certain to leave behind: a charger cord here, a forgotten sock under a coffee table, his headphones tangled on the entryway table, little reminders that it was real, that Ilya was here, leaving his smudged fingerprints on the polished glass surface of Shane's heart.

Having reached the end of his usefulness, there was nothing left for Shane to do but sit and wait for Ilya to finish getting ready to leave. He had circled the cottage thrice, took out the trash, cleaned out the fridge, folded and refolded and refolded the throw blankets on the couch, not sure where else to put his anxious energy.

On his third lap of the kitchen, his eyes fell onto the fruit bowl, overflowing with the peaches they didn't get around to eating.

Ilya finally emerged from the bathroom as Shane leaned over the sink, taking weak bites of the overripe fruit with one hand and pressing the back of his wrist into his leaking eyes with the other.

Wordlessly, Ilya grabbed a fruit from the bowl and joined Shane, eating the dripping fruit with red-rimmed eyes.

//

Later that morning, the heat broke. The atmosphere exhaled, like a breath it didn't realize it was holding. The rain started as a sprinkle and quickly evolved into a torrential downpour, beating against the roof of the cottage with a hypnotic drone, falling in steaming sheets onto the driveway.

There wasn't much to say, not really, on the ninety-minute drive to airport, that wasn't already said with their desperate lips and tongues and hands in the front seat of Shane's Land Rover before they had even pulled out of the driveway. No questions their searching eyes didn't ask on their own, It's not just me, is it? Will it be the same after this? Do you want it to be?

The rain beating against the sunroof, the rhythmic squeak of the windshield wipers, and the droning Quebecois accent of the radio announcer cut the thick silence in the car. Shane prayed it would never end, that he could drive for hours so that he would never have to drop Ilya off at the terminal. Part of him selfishly hoped he would miss his exit, make Ilya late enough to miss his flight and extend his trip another day.

But as it happened, Shane made his exit, pulled up to a vacant corner of the short-term parking garage with enough time for Ilya to get through security and make his flight with time to spare.

"Okay," Shane said at last, cursing himself for how feeble and wobbly his voice sounded.

"Okay." Ilya's eyes were soft, a little shiny around the rims.

"You have everything?"

"Yes."

"Passport?"

"Yes."

"House keys?"

"Shane."

"Charger?"

"Shane." Ilya squeezed his hand, searching for Shane's eye, which was bouncing, panicked between the cup holder, out the windshield, Ilya's lips. "It's only few months."

"I know," Shane said, weakly. Shane bit the inside of his cheek to keep his face still, hard enough to draw blood. He could taste the metallic twang coating his tongue.

Ilya reached up to brush his knuckles against Shane's chin, peering around to make sure they were alone before planting a soft, chaste kiss on his lips. Shane chased his lips pitifully as Ilya pulled away.

"I'm going now," Ilya said, regretfully. Shane nodded, he understood. The longer they sat there, the worse it would hurt.

Shane cleared his throat. "Have a good summer."

Ilya popped the passenger door and stepped out, smiling wistfully. "Have a good summer."

Shane watched as Ilya popped the trunk and pulled his bag out with a barely-there wince and shut the trunk again. He gave one more half wave, encumbered under his duffel, and turned to walk out of the parking garage.

Shane watched him walk all the way to the door for departures. And then he watched him disappear behind the sliding doors, into the throng of people waiting to check their bags and get in line for security. And then he sat for another few minutes before turning the key in the ignition and pulling out of the parking lot without letting himself think a single thing.

He made it nearly halfway back, before he let himself think about it. It sat patiently there, in the passenger seat as Shane drove, waiting to be acknowledged. Finally, a fruit shaped sign is what finally set him off. On the empty municipal road, with the rain pounding the car in a deafening roar, he let the first fat tears roll down his cheeks, and then more, and then more, until he was sobbing, open-mouthed, hiccupping, with such ferocity that he was forced to pull over on the side of the road, flick his hazard lights on, and push his fists into his eyes until he saw red and blue stars behind his eyelids.

Shane Hollander couldn't ever, ever, remember feeling so happy in his life.