Archive of Our Own

so can we pretend, sweetly
before the mystery ends?
i am a man with a heart that offends
with its lonely and greedy demands

* * *

Early April, 2018
Ottawa

Ottawa is a city that lives up to its hype—which is to say, none at all.

Look. Ilya knows it’s unfair to compare Ottawa to cities like, say, Boston or Montreal or Toronto or even Moscow, but he can’t help it. In his defense, before this past year, he never spent much time in the city outside of the regular season schedule. He never had a reason to, because why the fuck would he choose to go to Ottawa?

Why would anyone?

Everything Ilya overhears about Ottawa is unflattering at best and deterring at worst. Boring government city, people whisper loudly. No nightlife. No excitement. Good place to raise a family, I suppose, but nothing else to do.

Even the hockey team here isn’t worth a damn.

The first time he came to Ottawa of his own volition was only this past December, when the Hollanders invited him to spend Christmas with them. It was a short whirlwind of a trip, barely a couple days long because it was squeezed in between his and Shane’s hectic schedules, and spent entirely within the confines of Yuna and David’s house. And god, the lengths Ilya had to go through to stay incognito at the airport because imagine what people would say if they found out that the NHL’s top rivals were spending the holidays together. In fucking Ottawa.

Ilya didn’t see much of Ottawa and its surrounding areas at all during that visit besides, like, the inside of Shane’s childhood home, but he did think to himself, as he sat in the Hollanders’ living room in matching Christmas pajamas and sipped an Old Fashioned that David made for him, that yes, perhaps the people were right—this is a rather good place to raise a family.

Still, coming to the city now as a future resident and not merely a visitor is…a very different experience, quite frankly.

Oh, yeah. Ilya bought a house. In Ottawa.

He’s here to pick up the keys, actually.

(Well. He is, technically, publicly, also here for an away game. But it was pure luck that the Bears were scheduled to play the Centaurs the same weekend that he closed on the new house. Sometimes the hockey gods are on his side. Thank you, hockey gods.)

Is it a rash, possibly unwise decision to buy property in a city—in a country—he isn’t even entirely sure he’ll be moving to? Probably, yes. Hell, the regular season isn’t even over yet. He literally isn’t allowed to start any contract discussions until July; he’d only recently notified his agent of his intentions to pursue a deal with Ottawa once his contract with Boston is up, and he hasn’t talked to anyone within the Centaurs organization, let alone signed anything with them. But here he is, months before the free agency period opens, to put his roots down in a city that doesn’t even know it’s at the top of his proverbial list.

He also hadn’t even necessarily been planning to buy a house so soon. It wasn’t like he’d set up notifications to alert him of new listings as soon as he returned to Boston after spending Christmas with the Hollanders. He definitely didn’t do that. And he definitely didn’t plan to close on a house before Shane’s birthday so he could surprise him with a set of keys as a grand romantic gesture. Definitely not.

Ilya is just—he’s just saving himself the trouble of having to find a house in the summer when he’d rather be doing nothing at the cottage except for finding new ways to make Shane come, okay? That is all.

Rationality could try its hardest to dissuade him, but Ilya’s mind has long been made up. The thing is, he made a promise last summer that he intends to keep. There is no other option.

To the knowledge of the general public, Ilya will play the rest of his career in Boston and cement his status as one of the best to ever wear a Bears sweater. And yes, he loves Boston, and he loves the Bears, and he loves winning…but fuck, he loves Shane Hollander more.

So come this summer, Ilya Rozanov will be an Ottawa Centaur.

And he needs a place to live.

The house he settled on—after sending his realtor what can only be described as an absurd amount of emails—is situated in a secluded suburb only about fifteen minutes from the Centaurs arena, on the western side of Ottawa. Ilya had managed to steal a few hours away from the team before their game tomorrow, making up some bullshit excuse about meeting up with someone, wink wink, and it somehow worked because all the boys hooted and hollered at him as he left the hotel and slipped into the waiting taxi that took him through most of downtown on its way out into his new neighborhood.

Now Ilya is slouched in the backseat, forehead leaning against the window, and pensively watching the city pass him by. It’s a blur of unfamiliar streets and buildings that Ilya should probably start learning the names of, if he’s going to live here, but he’s too busy entertaining the thoughts in his head to pay them any attention.

His first thought? Of course Shane is from such a boring city like this.

His second thought? Why is the arena so far from downtown? Jesus Christ.

His third thought? Ah, fuck, I will need to find someone new to cut my hair here.

The last thought is by far the most upsetting because fuck, it took so goddamn long and more than one terrible haircut to find a barber he trusted in Boston. The old Romanian man who’s been responsible for Ilya’s signature golden locks for the last few years knows exactly how he likes his curls to be styled, doesn’t give a shit that he won a Stanley Cup, and—best of all—never attempts to make any small talk with him. Ilya is going to miss Sergiu so much.

The taxi drops him off a few blocks away from his new house. Ilya walks the rest of the way through the quiet neighborhood, keeping his cap low over his face just in case. The realtor meets him outside the gate that leads up to the massive semicircular driveway. He’s a balding, middle-age man who’s apparently worked with other Centaurs before and promised discretion, and indeed, he hands the keys to Ilya without any fanfare or mention of a contract signing that hasn’t yet materialized.

“Welcome to Ottawa, Mr. Rozanov,” is all the realtor says. Then he leaves unceremoniously, and Ilya is all by himself in his new house.

The house is, for lack of a better word, big. Two stories, more bedrooms than any one person needs, and a whole lot of space that will need to be filled with furniture and personal touches. From his kitchen window, he can see the river that cuts through the land behind his house, which had immediately caught his attention when he was sorting through listings. Surrounded on all sides by trees and lush greenery, this house feels appropriately private and insulated from the outside world, yet somehow more grounded than anywhere he’s ever lived before.

But the house isn’t just big and private. It’s also…hm. How to describe it.

Silent.

It’s what stands out to Ilya the most, walking through his new house. Not the open kitchen with marble countertops and forest-green backsplash. Not the arched doorways or stone hearth or built-in entertainment center in the living room. Not the waterfall shower head or heated tile floors in the master bathroom or the way the sunlight streams in from the paned windows and dances across the blank white walls in his new bedroom.

No, the most blatantly obvious thing that Ilya notices in this huge, gorgeous, unnervingly quiet house is the deafening echo of his own footsteps.

For some reason, Ilya thinks back to Christmas with the Hollanders and how, even though he hadn’t realized it at the time, there was always noise in their home. Always a constant hum of activity, even if no one was talking: Yuna’s house slippers shuffling against the hardwood floors, Shane’s steady breathing next to Ilya on the couch, David’s fingers flipping the pages of the book he was reading.

Life—so much life, and light, and warmth—in that humble, unsuspecting house in the suburbs of Ottawa.

On Christmas morning, after the excitement of exchanging gifts was over, David had put on one of his old records while Ilya and Shane curled up together on the couch. A man’s voice crooned about searching for a heart of gold, and when David noticed Ilya had closed his eyes to savor such an achingly mundane moment, he’d sheepishly said, “Sorry, I tend to listen to the kind of music that young people find boring nowadays.”

Ilya’s eyes had shot open, and he shook his head. “No, no, I was enjoying it. I like your music.”

“Shane always used to ask me to turn it off, when he was growing up.”

Shane had stirred from his slumber at the sound of his name. “No, I didn’t,” he’d mumbled, his voice thick with sleep.

David chuckled then. “Not how I remember it, kid. At least someone here appreciates Neil Young.” And then he’d winked conspiratorially at Ilya, and Ilya suddenly felt overwhelmed with an emotion he could not name. He had to duck his head and blink furiously to keep the hot, threatening tears from leaking from the corners of his eyes.

What a startling difference between that tender, golden memory and this vacant, lifeless house Ilya is now standing by himself in.

He looks around at the emptiness surrounding him on all sides, and the realization of what it all means—what giving up his career and routines and entire fucking life in Boston means—hits him with the force of a freight train going at full speed.

Fuck. I’m all alone here, aren’t I?

The silence echoes back at him.

Ilya stands as still as a statue in his entryway, trying to imagine his house beyond the skeletal state it’s currently in, trying to imagine who will be the regular cast of characters walking through his new front doors, but his imagination is failing him.

In Boston, he had no shortage of distractions to occupy the pockets of silence. He considered his teammates to be good friends; they’d come over to his place on occasion to watch games and shoot the shit and share drinks with him. There used to be a line of casual hookups out the door, back when he was still running from his feelings for his rival; his bed was never empty if he didn’t want it to be. And Svetlana was always around, too, of course, to fill his house with hockey commentary, playful jabs, and a familiar comfort.

But who will he have in Ottawa?

Not Shane, unless it’s only for a day or two at a time, with weeks in between each visit.

Not Svetlana or his old teammates. They’ll be left behind.

Not any casual hookups, because what need does he have for them anymore?

Sure, he’ll have a new team, a new band of brothers in the locker room. But is Ilya really willing to sacrifice what precious time he’ll have with Shane to hang out with them instead? Unlikely.

He knows Yuna and David, he supposes. He’s at least friendly with Shane’s parents; they even text on occasion. But will they want to entertain their son’s boyfriend if Shane isn’t around? Also unlikely.

So who else will he have? What else will he have?

“Shit,” Ilya says out loud.

He doesn’t even have a decent barber here, god fucking damn it.

He closes his eyes and inhales slowly, deeply. The silence is beginning to cave in on him, getting louder and louder, an inescapable vacuum that’s making his thoughts spiral wildly out of control. And then, out of nowhere—

Stupid boy. You have just made the worst mistake of your life.

Oh. Right.

His father’s voice can be so fucking loud in his head sometimes.

What are you even doing here? Throwing away your career like it means nothing. A fucking disgrace, that is what you are. You should not be allowed to call yourself a man.

Ilya thought he’d managed to outrun his father’s voice, but no—it insisted on following him across the Atlantic, all the way to Boston, and now to this Ottawa suburb.

Look around you. All alone. It is what you deserve.

When his father was alive, he spoke in a way that was solemn and harsh, the kind of voice that made your spine stiffen and try to stand straighter as soon as you heard it. He barked out commands like he expected everyone in his vicinity to obey, and maybe he did, because years of his ego being inflated at the top of the police force did that to a person. His voice carried a severity that forbade any pushback, any questioning, any argument. So Ilya fell in line.

Even after leaving his father’s house and moving to America, through the praise and ovation and roar of the Boston crowd chanting his name—Rozanov! Rozanov! Rozanov!—Ilya would hear his father’s biting words in the back of his mind and be sent crashing back down to earth.

Lazy. Useless. Soft.

Worse yet was when the vitriol started to intermingle with a bleak confusion. Ilya would hear his father speak and recognize his voice but know his father’s mind was on a steady decline. And still, the disease that was eating at his father’s memory could take away the logic from his father’s words, but not their power. Why are you not home yet with the milk I asked you to get from the grocery store? And Ilya could not explain that he was not in Russia, he was in Boston, he could not go to the store—all he could do was curl in on himself and tell his father that he would try to make things right.

Ilya thought, when he finally laid his father to rest, that he would find reprieve from his father’s looming presence. But it seems that ghosts can travel, and his father’s has dutifully followed him all the way to Ottawa.

You gave up everything for this one man, but what if it is not enough? Do you really think you are enough for him?

Without any warning, the voice multiplies, warping into an indiscernible chorus so thunderous that his ears are beginning to ring. Voices, so many voices, thrashing around in his head and gnawing at their enclosures and getting louder by the fucking second and—and—

Ilya opens his eyes and exhales.

The silence of his new house rushes back. Ilya takes several shaky breaths, willing his racing heart to return to its normal speed, and wipes his sweaty palms on his pants.

He hasn’t heard those voices in a while. He’s been a bit—well. Distracted. By trying to maintain his public image, maybe. By the responsibilities of captaining his team, probably. By a certain freckled hockey player who occupied all his thoughts, definitely. But of course the anxieties he’d tried so hard to suppress would resurface here in Ottawa, where they’ve cornered him all alone and unsuspecting with nothing and no one to hide behind. He’s been caught with his guard let all the way down; that’s his fault.

But no matter. Ilya will just…need to find a way to drown out the silence.

(How, though? How can he escape from himself?)

The emptiness is starting to taunt him now, trapping him from all sides. Ilya takes a step back, then another, then another, until he can fumble for the handle of the front door behind him.

He’ll figure it out. He’ll be okay.

He can endure this.

For Shane, Ilya will do just about anything.

With a determined nod to himself and one last scan of the empty house, he turns on his heel and walks out the front door.

* * *

Mid-May, 2018
Boston

“Tough loss.”

Shane sighs heavily on the other side of the phone. Ilya can hear his disappointment even if he can’t see his face. “Yeah, well,” Shane says dejectedly, “I should have done more to score on that last power play.”

Always blaming himself, his solnyshko. Too hard on himself. “You did everything you could,” Ilya tells him. “I mean, that goal you made in the second period tonight? So good. Gave me chills.”

“Still lost the series, though. In only five games. Didn’t even make it out of the second round, fuck.”

“I am still so proud of you,” Ilya declares, his best attempt at forcing Shane into believing it. “You were fucking incredible, Hollander. Carried the team on your back in every game. New Jersey can go fuck itself.”

Shane makes a small noise of indifference. “They were the better team.”

They were. New Jersey was faster and sharper and more aggressive than Montreal was for the entire series, but Shane was still the best player on either team by a mile. With his own season cut short in the previous round of playoffs, Ilya had watched all of Shane’s games on TV from his Boston penthouse. He’d marveled at the way Shane played with such control—the way he flew across the ice like he was floating on air and hit no-look passes to his wingers like it was fucking normal to be able to do something like that and make it appear easy—and thought to himself, That’s right, moy lyubimiyy. Show them who you fucking are.

“Well,” Ilya says, trying a different tactic, “there is always next season to look forward to.”

“I guess. Right now I’m just looking forward to getting the fuck out of New Jersey,” Shane jokes. “I can’t wait to not sleep in a hotel bed, holy shit.”

Ilya chuckles. “Are you in your hotel room now?”

“No, I’m hiding out in a stairwell again,” Shane answers. “I probably can’t talk for super long, but I just wanted to hear your voice.”

It’s so unfair, Ilya thinks, when Shane says things like that and expects him to carry on as normal. Nearly a year together, and still his world spins off its axis whenever he’s reminded that he’s the luckiest man in the world to love and be loved by Shane Hollander, even if it has to be in secret.

“Oh,” Shane’s voice brings him back to the conversation. “That reminds me. At least we can be at the cottage for your birthday now.”

Ilya is ashamed to confess that was his first thought as soon as Shane’s team was eliminated from the playoffs. He’d told Shane he didn’t care what they did for his birthday so long as they were together—he would spend his birthday in Montreal or wherever else if he had to—but maybe, if both of their seasons were over by then, they could escape to Shane’s cottage a little earlier…?

In hindsight, Ilya might have jinxed the Voyageurs’ playoff run. Oops.

“Thank you for your sacrifice,” he says as penance.

Shane snorts. “How’s the new house in Ottawa coming along?”

“Mm, good,” Ilya replies. “I hired a designer to take care of all the furniture and decorations. See, I have learned so much from you, Mr. Real Estate, aren’t you proud of me?”

He can hear Shane rolling his eyes. “Asshole. When will it be ready for you to move in?”

Ilya hums in consideration. “Probably toward the end of summer.”

At which point the free agency period will be comfortably on its way and his contract with the Centaurs will be old news lost in the flurry of other free agency signings around the league and it will be normal—nay, expected—to see Ilya Rozanov moving into a house in Ottawa.

Which means Ilya will probably need to arrange to have his things in Boston packed up while he’s at the cottage because there’s absolutely no fucking way he’s giving up a millisecond of his already precious time with Shane to deal with something as menial as moving. Because, like—wouldn’t it make sense to stay in Canada since he’s already there? He can just drive one of his cars over the border, have the rest of his possessions in Boston shipped over, and go straight to living in the new house after they leave the cottage.

That could work. He’ll have to scramble to get his shit together before he leaves Boston forever, but whatever.

It will be good to be able to get settled before next season starts and allow his system to adjust from spending every waking minute with Shane at their favorite place in the world to living alone in a glaringly empty house in an unfamiliar city where Ilya’s only companion is himself. Yeah.

Yeah.

It’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.

He’ll be so fine.

“When can I come spend the night?” Shane asks. “Have to make sure my new key works, you know.”

Ilya smiles to himself. Secretly buying a house in Ottawa before free agency even started was worth it just to see the shock on Shane’s face when Ilya had given him the house key for his birthday. He’d seen the relief on his face, too—as if Shane had doubted whether Ilya would actually leave Boston for him. As if Ilya would be so foolish as to choose anything over Shane.

“I told you, Hollander,” Ilya reminds him, “you can let yourself in anytime.”

“Okay, then how about before we go to the cottage? Before your birthday?”

Ilya’s stomach lurches. “W-what?” he stammers.

“Because otherwise, we both have to report to our training camps after we get back from the cottage, and then the season starts right after that,” Shane reasons. “If I don’t come now, it might be months before I can stay at your house, and I don’t want to wait that long.”

Ilya can’t explain why his knee-jerk reaction is to respond with, Wait, that’s too soon, I’m not ready yet, especially when he just told Shane that he has an open invitation to his home. It’s not like the house is in poor condition or unfit for guests, or that he doesn’t want Shane to come stay with him in Ottawa. Far from it, actually. Ilya bought this house, in large part, for Shane—for their shared future they’d planned together.

It’s just—it’s just—

The house is still so…fucking…silent.

And Ilya doesn’t know how to get rid of such oppressive, eerie silence, let alone those pesky voices in his head stirring up a racket in the absence of noise.

What if Shane can hear Ilya’s deepest, darkest anxieties dripping from the walls of the house, too? What then?

Would he still want to come visit Ilya?

Would he run?

I’m not ready yet.

“I do not know,” Ilya says weakly. “I will likely not be able to leave Boston until right before my birthday. Maybe not even until the day before. Have to tie up many loose ends here, you know.”

The excuse sounds flimsy even to him, but Shane doesn’t seem to notice. “That’s fine,” Shane says. “We can just do the night before your birthday at your new house, and then go to the cottage. I’ll already be at my parents' house, so I can meet you there.”

Ugh. Fuck Shane for trying so earnestly to make the logistics work out. Ilya can feel his defenses crumbling.

“It will still be very empty,” Ilya tries again. “I am pretty sure the only thing that will be in the house will be, like. A couch.”

“We can sleep on a couch for one night.”

“It’s, ah—” Ilya clears his throat. “It’s—hm. Yeah. Okay. Sure.”

Who is he kidding. He can’t ever say no to Shane.

“Perfect, can’t wait.” Fuck, that hint of excitement in Shane’s voice is going to be the death of Ilya. “Look, I didn’t want to spoil anything, but I have a housewarming gift for you.”

“A housewarming gift?”

“I mean, it’s technically your birthday present, but it counts as a housewarming gift, too.”

Ilya lets out a mock scoff. “Excuse me, I gave you three presents for your birthday, and you are only giving me one? That is not just for my birthday but also for my house?”

“Hold the fuck up,” Shane shoots back. “First of all, you also gave me a present for my house for my birthday, so I’m just taking a page out of your book. Second, you think I’m going to let you beat me in birthday gifts? No fucking chance. I have three gifts for you, too.”

Ilya smiles smugly into his phone. A competitor through and through, his Shane. Always has to be the best in everything he does. “Aw, you do?”

“Obviously. I know how much you love celebrating your birthday. I’ve been planning these gifts for so fucking long.”

“Really?” Ilya can’t keep the surprise from his voice.

“What can I say?” Shane murmurs. “As your boyfriend, I take your birthday very seriously.”

Ilya rolls his eyes to the ceiling. Shane would throw his words right back at him as an excuse to go all out for his birthday. “I cannot wait, kotyonok,” he purrs. “But can I tell you the one thing I really, truly want for my birthday? More than anything else? I will be very upset if I do not get this from you.”

“Oh?” Shane sounds caught off-guard. “W–what do you want?”

He makes it too easy sometimes.

“I want you,” Ilya drawls, “to be spread out for me, open and dripping wet, begging for my cock to fill you up over and over again like the greedy little slut you are.”

“Oh—”

“And I want you to come so fucking hard for me that you can’t even remember your own name.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Shane hisses. He drops his voice and grumbles under his breath, “I can’t believe I walked right into that.”

“Will you let me use your hole, Hollander? Is all I want for my birthday.”

“Oh my fucking god,” Shane mutters. Ilya laughs at his exasperation. “I thought you were going to say something serious and I was going to have to scramble to get you something else for your birthday.”

The laugh dies in Ilya’s throat. “No, Shane, you know I do not care about presents like that.”

“Yeah, but I just don’t want to get it wrong,” Shane says quietly. “I—uh. Know how it feels. When people get it wrong.”

Ilya’s heart breaks a bit, hearing Shane say those words, because he knows the truth behind them. Oh, he’d had an inkling about Shane’s insecurities about his own birthday, but Ilya hadn’t seen it for himself until a few weeks ago. How much it actually affected Shane when other people proved how little they knew him with a shitty birthday gift. How Shane had always felt like a burden, an obligation, felt like it was his fault for being so hard to read and difficult to please when, really, everyone else should have been trying harder to see the person behind the armor.

But Ilya has been studying Shane Hollander for years. He knows every soft smile, every crinkle of his brow, every freckle on those cheeks. Ilya didn’t need Shane to tell him what he wanted; he knows Shane better than that. And on Shane’s birthday, he fucking proved just how right he could get it.

So yeah, it’s impossible for Shane to “get it wrong.” He already knows Ilya better than anyone else in the fucking world. Also, like—the fact that Ilya gets to wake up every day and call Shane Hollander the love of his fucking life is already the best birthday present he could ask for.

“I just want you,” Ilya confesses, an echo of what Shane had said when he was trying to convince Ilya he didn’t want anything for his birthday last month. Motherfucker, what a pathetic pair they make. “I cannot wait until we are in the same place together.”

Shane hums in agreement, then says, “How are you feeling about leaving Boston?”

Ilya sighs and casts a wistful glance out the window of his penthouse.

Shit, how is he feeling about leaving Boston?

He’s been trying not to think about how he’s leaving the city he called home for the last, oh, eight years, which were arguably the most formative years of his life thus far. Boston is the first place he’d ever lived on his own outside of Russia’s borders, away from his family and everyone he knew. It’s the city that welcomed him with open arms, watched him evolve from an untested rookie to a seasoned pro, and revered him like a fucking god, and for that, Ilya will always reminisce about his time in Boston with fondness.

The culture shock of moving to America by himself kept him tossing and turning in bed those first few months here, like a fish out of water gasping for air, but in the years gone by, Ilya managed to carve out a space for himself. Without even realizing it, he’d acclimated to the bite of the New England chill and the tough love of the people who were raised in such unforgiving conditions. They started to feel like familiar comforts rather than reminders that he wasn’t from around these parts.

Ilya had slowly, surely staked his claim on this city, from the grocery store in Allston, where he’d go whenever he was in the mood for Russian food, to the liquor store on the corner next to his building, where the owner kept a stash of Camels set aside specifically for him.

And his beloved barbershop, where Sergiu always kept him looking sharp. Fuck.

He’d gotten so comfortable here. Too comfortable. Settled right in and kicked his feet up and didn’t think twice about having to put the place back in order when he vacated it. Ilya never even considered leaving the Bears, had fully expected he’d live a long and lazy and lonely life in Boston, but then!

But then he fell in love with a boy outside a rink in Saskatchewan, and for him Ilya would do more than just upend all his life plans. He would burn the whole world down just to be with Shane Hollander, if he had to.

He doesn’t have to burn the whole world down, though. Just his own.

So now Ilya is saying goodbye to the city that has become ingrained in the fabric of his being and starting all over again in a city where he doesn’t know which highways to avoid during rush hour, or which restaurants and coffee shops in his new neighborhood are actually good, or which grocery stores sell frozen pelmeni to satisfy his late-night cravings.

And yeah, he’s feeling some type of way about it.

Ilya shoves whatever that feeling is as far down as it will go.

“Fine,” he finally replies.

“Do you feel sad about it?” Shane presses.

“Mm,” Ilya muses. “Yes and no.”

Because how could Ilya possibly begin to explain the mess of emotions waging a war in his chest?

He is ready to start building toward a forever future. He isn’t ready to rebuild his entire life from scratch again.

He mourns having to walk away from the team where he cemented his legacy as a hockey captain and player. He would give up the sport forever if it meant he got to keep Shane in return.

He can’t wait to bridge the gap between the other half of his heart. He dreads being alone with his ghosts.

But does he know how to verbalize those feelings to Shane without making it sound like he’s having second thoughts about making such a drastic life change in order to be with him?

ha. ha. Ha. HA. HA. HA.

So instead, Ilya says, “I am sad to be leaving Boston, yes.” He pauses to gather his thoughts. “It is…familiar to me, you know? But at the same time, I am glad that we will finally be closer to each other.”

“You might be the first person in existence to be happy to move to Ottawa,” Shane jokes.

“Ah, but who would not want to live in the same place where the famous Shane Hollander grew up?”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Will you give me an Ottawa Celebrity Tour like they do in Hollywood? Take me to see all the places you would go as a kid?”

Shane is quiet on the other side of the phone. Ilya listens to the steady sound of his inhale, exhale, to ground himself as he waits for a response. Eventually, Shane says, “Someday, maybe.”

Ilya hears the words unspoken: When there’s less of a chance our secret might be found out.

“Someday,” he repeats quietly.

Someday.

Maybe.

Ilya swallows back the lump in his throat and forces the mirth back into his tone. “I will make up my own tour of Ottawa, then. Oh, look, over there is the sidewalk where Shane Hollander once ate shit and knocked his front tooth out when he was running to catch the school bus.”

“Hey!” Shane sputters incredulously. “I told you, that happened when I was, like, eight years old.”

“So…old enough to walk on ice but not on solid ground?”

“You’re an asshole. I wish I never told you that story.”

“Too late.” The mental image of a young Shane hobbling to school with a gap in his row of baby teeth makes Ilya’s insides melt. His little zaychik. “And to think you used to tell people you lost that tooth from playing hockey. If only people knew what really happened.”

Shane lets out a huff of annoyance. “I’m never telling you anything from my childhood again.”

“What? No!” Ilya protests. “Wait, at least tell me where you would go get your hair cut.”

“My…what?” Shane sounds puzzled. “Why would you need to know that? To make fun of the bowl cut I used to have?”

Okay, this is just unfair now. Baby Shane with a bowl cut? Next time Ilya sees Yuna, he needs to ask her for proof. “No, I need to find a new barber, and I do not know where the good ones are in Ottawa.”

“Oh,” Shane says. “Huh. I didn’t think—hm. I don’t remember where I used to go. It’s been so long since I’ve gotten a haircut in Ottawa. I can ask my parents, though.”

Ilya nods to himself. “Okay. Thank you.”

Off in the distance, Ilya hears a door slam on Shane’s end of the line, the echo reverberating in the empty stairwell. “Shit,” Shane mutters. “I should probably go back to my room.”

Ilya sighs. “Okay.”

“See you in Ottawa next month, okay?”

Ilya presses his lips together. “So we will really be in Ottawa for my birthday, then?”

“Yeah, looks like it,” Shane says. “Don’t worry, it’ll still be fun.”

“Oh, I am sure,” Ilya drawls. “Ottawa is nothing if not fun.”

* * *

June 15, 2018
Ottawa

On his twenty-seventh birthday, Ilya wakes up to complete and utter silence.

He keeps his eyes closed and sinks deeper into the softness of his bed, the lull washing over him and slowing the cadence of his breath, in and out, in and out. The silence sounds different to his ears this morning. Less abrasive, somehow, but still disorienting in the same way that waking up in an unfamiliar place always is. Ilya relaxes into it and lets the quietness cling to his skin and crawl through his bloodstream.

He doesn’t recognize this silence. In his Boston penthouse, any semblance of stillness was rudely punctuated by distant sirens and car alarms and planes flying overhead. But waking up this morning in his new house in the suburbs of Ottawa?

Leaves rustling on their branches. A bird chirping from its nest. The earth waking up with the sun.

His sleep-addled brain seems intent on playing tricks on him this morning, but in the haze of bringing himself to full consciousness, Ilya thinks he hears a voice being carried by the wind outside his window, whispering something unintelligible. What is it saying? His name, maybe? He can’t make out all of the words, if they even are words. Maybe it’s an old taunt to get under his skin. Maybe it’s just a cacophony of random sounds.

Maybe it’s his mother, come to haunt him from her grave.

Ilya can still hear her voice in his head, sometimes. Not often. Not always. His brain is usually too loud and wrought with racing thoughts and existential dread and paternal disappointment for anything else to filter through. But when he does hear his mother’s voice…

When he does hear his mother’s voice.

Well.

She had a soft, lilting voice, one that was perfect for drawing the sting out of bruised knees and soothing racing hearts back to sleep after a night terror. Praise from her was like a balm to the soul—whenever he was so lucky to feel her kiss the top of his head and hear her say, “You are capable of doing anything, Ilyusha,” or, “You are the strongest and bravest boy I know,” Ilya would believe those words with all his heart.

She spoke quietly but laughed loudly, wild and exuberant and unfettered. It was the type of laugh that would sneak up on you out of nowhere, that would pierce the air and make the birds scatter out of the trees, that would make people turn their heads and open their mouths to laugh too, so captivated they were by this arresting, wondrous sound that came out of such an unassuming, sad-looking woman that they simply had to join in. Her laugh was a rare sound, only emerging for the most joyous occasions, which were few and far between for as long as Ilya could remember, and even scarcer still when Ilya was old enough to have to search his memory for the last time he heard his mother laugh.

She could sing beautifully, when she wanted to. Russian lullabies were constants in Ilya’s childhood, the sounds to which he and his brother would fall asleep and slip into their dreams, and his mother could sing them the best. Then, when Ilya was older, he’d hear her singing or humming along to whatever was on the radio, or whatever dusty record she’d found at a charity shop, or whatever song was playing on a loop in her mind that no one else could hear. In their house, where the most recognized tune was the heavy footsteps of an angry man’s boots stomping through their hallways, her singing was like a siren’s call that beckoned Ilya closer, away from the dangers of the deep blue sea.

As the years passed, her voice got quieter and quieter, steadily muffled by the darkness that was taking over her spirit, until one day—

Until one day Ilya came home to a house devoid of any noise at all.

All the whispered praises and wild laughter and mindless singing—the sounds of his childhood—were gone in the blink of an eye. And in their place came a suffocating, stifling silence that opened the door to the worst of his doubts and dread, welcoming them inside and inviting them on stage and encouraging them to get louder and louder and LOUDER until Ilya couldn’t even hear himself anymore.

So Ilya started running from it. He ran for his fucking life. He’s still running, because he ran all the way to Ottawa, where the silence tastes different but is silence all the same, and the voice outside sounds like his mother’s but can’t be because the day she died was the day it started to fade from his memory.

Maybe it’s all in his head again, because before Ilya can grab onto the voice and shake it until an answer falls out, it floats away on a passing breeze like it was never there at all.

Ilya opens his eyes.

The world reorients itself. He remembers, now—he is not alone.

Ilya slowly rotates his head to the right. A shock of black hair enters his field of vision, unruly and unkempt and perfect for fingers to run through. A little further down, a cheek dusted with freckles is smushed against the white of the pillowcase. Even further down still, a broad bare back, deliciously muscled and rising with each intake of air, tempts Ilya to crawl on top of the sleeping body stretched out beside him. But instead, Ilya is content to observe his boyfriend in this soft, lethargic state before he returns to the land of the living.

Shane is here.

They both arrived late last night, Ilya off the long drive from Boston and Shane shortly after from his parents’ house. As soon as he’d heard Shane’s Jeep pull into the driveway, Ilya had planted himself right by the front door. He’d watched, from inside the house, as the lock gradually clicked open and the door swung open. When Shane let himself inside and stepped across the threshold, his shiny new key in hand, Ilya felt something settle in the air around him. And then Shane fell into his waiting arms and crashed his lips against Ilya’s, and it was like drinking the coldest glass of water to quench his thirst.

They were too exhausted to do anything else but collapse into Ilya’s new bed (which, miraculously, Ilya had managed to get delivered to the house a few weeks early). They fell asleep in each other’s arms, and now Ilya lies awake beside his boyfriend, listening to the sound of Shane’s measured breathing against the backdrop of this strange, unusual silence.

This silence now…what is different about it? Could it be…?

Yes, perhaps that’s it.

Ilya has figured it out.

This silence…it’s a boring, unremarkable kind of silence. The kind of silence that chases all other noises out of the room and locks the door after them and keeps the walls from closing in on him. It’s not the stifling kind of silence, not the way it was when he was wandering these halls by himself a few months ago and wondering if he was strong enough to survive living in solitude with the worst of his thoughts that emerged from the depths where he’d stashed them.

No, this is a better silence—because with Shane next to him, Ilya can be fooled into believing every day can be as tranquil as this.

As if he can hear the wheels turning in Ilya’s mind, Shane groggily opens his eyes and peers up at him.

“Oh,” he croaks sleepily. “You’re awake.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Ilya says. “You are very observant.”

“Shut up.” Shane rolls over onto his back and rubs a tired hand over his eyes, which makes him look impossibly young. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know. Early.”

Shane hums thoughtfully, then turns to face him with a soft, lazy smile on his face. “Happy birthday, baby,” he whispers.

Oh. Baby is a new one, but yeah, Ilya likes that.

He likes that a whole fucking lot.

“Thank you, moy lyubimiyy,” Ilya says, reaching out to gather Shane into his arms. Shane makes a contented noise and burrows into Ilya’s chest.

“Hey, guess what?”

Ilya looks down at him. “What?”

Shane’s smile turns into a sly smirk. “You’re officially as old as me now.”

Ilya smirks back. “You have been waiting for that, haven't you, Hollander?”

“Of course I have,” Shane says. “You’ve been so fucking irritating since my birthday with your jokes about me being a cradle-robber. Not anymore, dickhead.”

“But what if I still think it is sexy that my boyfriend is so much older than me?”

“One month! I’m only one month older than you.”

Ilya throws his head back and pretends to groan. “Fuck, yes, keep going, I’m almost there.”

Shane chokes on a laugh and leans up to kiss Ilya, morning breath be damned. Ilya shuts up immediately and lets out a small, pleased noise when their lips make contact. “Fuck you,” Shane mumbles, sucking lightly on Ilya’s bottom lip. He pulls away slightly to start trailing his mouth down Ilya’s neck, making Ilya shiver in eager anticipation. “I have a whole schedule planned for your birthday.”

“Hot.” Ilya grits his teeth as Shane’s hand creeps between them and grasps Ilya’s rapidly hardening erection. “Tell me, does the schedule include you putting your mouth on my cock?”

“Mmm, close.” In one smooth movement, Shane pushes Ilya over onto his back and crawls on top of him, and Ilya thinks, if this were to be his last birthday ever, he could die a happy man under the weight of Shane Hollander.

“Remember what you asked for?” Shane whispers against Ilya’s lips.

I want you begging for my cock.

I want you to come so fucking hard for me that you can’t even remember your own name.

Ilya groans for real this time. “Fuck, Hollander,” he exhales, chasing Shane’s lips with his own. “Is that on your schedule, hm? Letting me use your pretty little hole as my special birthday surprise?”

“That’s what you wanted, right?” Shane’s breath hitches when Ilya takes his bottom lip between his teeth and gently tugs. “I’m a very generous person.”

“So generous,” Ilya agrees. His fingers find the soft flesh of Shane’s perfectly round ass, kneading until Shane arches into him and gasps into Ilya’s open mouth. “Turn around. Get on your knees, kotyonok.”

“Fuck,” Shane groans. He does as Ilya says, burying his head in his arms and grinding impatiently into the mattress.

With practiced concentration, Ilya sucks on a finger, then trails it languidly around the puckered opening of Shane’s eagerly awaiting hole. “Look at you,” he murmurs. “You’re already wet and dripping for me, aren’t you? So fucking good for me.”

Shane squirms and lets out a drawn-out moan when Ilya’s finger slips inside, stretching and teasing and working his hole to prepare for what’s to come. “Oh my god, please, Ilya, just—”

“Just what, hm?”

Shane huffs. “Jesus Christ, please just hurry up and fuck me already.”

Ilya feels his cock twitch at Shane’s demand. “Do you have—”

“In my bag.”

Ilya reaches down and, when his fingertips brush across it, yanks Shane’s bag closer. By the time he’s fished out the small bottle of lube, Shane has turned into a writhing mess on the bed.

“Patience, Hollander,” Ilya says, lowering his head and darting his tongue out to lick a long strip along Shane’s gaping hole.

“Oh, shit!” Shane gasps and presses himself down even further into the mattresses, wanton and needy and so fucking ready for Ilya. “Shit, Ilya, please, I need to come so badly—”

Ilya lifts his head up. “Tell me what you want, Hollander.”

“I want your cock, please give me your cock,” Shane whimpers. The desperation in his voice is reaching a fever pitch now, like music to Ilya’s ears. “Fuck, I need you to be inside me.”

Ilya straightens and presses the tip of his aching cock to Shane’s throbbing entrance. “Beg for it,” he growls. “I want to hear you scream.”

He does. And Ilya thinks—maybe he can get used to the silence in this new house if it’s punctuated by the sounds of Shane crying out for more.

* * *

“Thank fuck we didn’t have to sleep on your couch last night.” Shane says in between ragged breaths, collapsing next to Ilya on the bed.

Ilya laughs, then turns to look at him, his chest still heaving. “Did you really make a schedule for today?” he asks, because that is something Shane would do. That is, in fact, the most Shane thing that he could do.

And to Ilya’s sheer delight, Shane nods, his cheeks tinged with pink, and says, “Breakfast, then presents, then cottage.”

“You want me to open my presents here?” Ilya assumed they’d go straight to the cottage first thing today and spend his entire birthday there, but if Shane has a plan, then, well. Who is he to get between Shane Hollander and a well-laid plan?

“Yeah,” Shane confirms. “I didn’t originally plan it that way but—you’ll see. It actually works out better like this. Some of your presents will make more sense if we do them here in Ottawa.”

Okay. Whatever that meant.

Like, presents are presents anywhere, but sure.

Ottawa.

“I want your birthday to be perfect,” Shane sighs.

Ilya smiles. “It already is.”

“We literally just woke up, Rozanov.”

“So? I already got to come inside you,” Ilya says, pinching at Shane’s flushed cheek. “Like I said, perfect.”

Shane groans and covers his face with his elbow. “Fuck you, I’m being serious,” he grumbles. “I know you love your birthday because your mom always made them really special for you, so I just—I don’t know. I guess I wanted to try to do the same. Give you a proper celebration, you know? I know it’s not, like, anything insane, but I want to make today special. Because you deserve it. And you made my birthday really special, so. Yeah.”

He stops rambling and takes a deep breath.

Ilya reaches out to pry his arm away from his beautiful face. Those freckles…god help him. Ilya could be a cosmonaut, for all the time he’s spent lost among the stars on Shane’s cheeks.

“Thank you,” he says sincerely, “for wanting to make my birthday good for me. I promise, whatever you have on that schedule of yours is already more than I could have asked for.”

You are more than I could have asked for, he wants to say, but they just woke up, for fuck’s sake, and it’s far too early in the day to be getting this maudlin, so he just kisses Shane instead and hopes he understands.

Shane sighs into the kiss, moving his mouth against Ilya’s like a practiced dance. Then, far too soon for Ilya’s liking, he pulls away resolutely. “Come on,” he says, patting Ilya’s cheek. “Breakfast first. We’ve got a lot to do today.”

* * *

Shane had packed breakfast, apparently.

“I did a grocery run yesterday,” he says, pointing at the large cooler in the kitchen that Ilya was too tired to notice last night. “Didn’t want to have to stop at the store on our way to the cottage later. Also, you don’t have a fridge yet.”

Ilya lets out an appreciative whistle between his teeth. “So prepared.”

“One of us has to be.”

He insists on serving Ilya breakfast, so he orders Ilya to take a seat on the lone couch in the living room. It’s the only seating option since Ilya doesn’t have tables or chairs yet, which makes the house feel much more like a bachelor pad than a sophisticated, grown-up place of residence of someone equally sophisticated and grown-up, but Ilya makes himself comfortable and settles into the cushions while Shane is doing…something in the kitchen.

Ilya can hear him pattering around on the tile floors, but without the usual clank of dishes and silverware that he also doesn’t have in the house yet (Jesus, what does he have here? At least the bed made it in time), it’s hard to gauge his exact movements. But finally, Shane pokes his head out from around the corner.

“Close your eyes,” he calls out.

“Why?” Ilya calls back. “Is just breakfast. And I’m hungry.”

“Just close them, please.”

Ilya sighs but does as he’s told. When Shane’s footsteps finally seem to be getting closer, he says, “Can I open now?”

“God, you’re so impatient. Yes, you can open your eyes.”

So Ilya opens his eyes.

“What,” he says blankly.

Shane is standing in front of him. Holding a cake. With a singular candle stuck in the middle.

“Happy birthday!” Shane beams at him.

“What,” Ilya says again.

Because it’s barely eight o’clock in the fucking morning, and Shane Hollander is holding a cake on a platter with a candle stuck in the middle and wearing a mixture of pride and embarrassment on his face and Ilya’s brain is trying to catch up to what he’s looking at but—

What.

Shane gazes down at the cake, then back at Ilya with a concerned expression on his face. “Do you not know what this is?”

That’s the problem, actually. Because yes, now that his brain has caught up a bit, he does know what it is.

And it’s very much not the balanced, nutritious breakfast Ilya was expecting from Shane.

It’s very obviously homemade, that much is clear. The small round cake is leaning haphazardly to the left, and the coating of crumbs around the outside is already starting to fall off the frosting. It looks like a suggestion of a cake more than anything, but Ilya can’t see its shortcomings past the sudden burn in his eyes.

“Is that,” he swallows thickly, “is that what I think it is?”

“If you think this is honey cake, then yeah. I made it,” Shane says. “Scoot over.”

Shane…made…honey cake?

As in, the same honey cake he told Shane his mother used to make for him on his birthday every year growing up because it was his favorite…that honey cake?

As in, the same Shane whose culinary skills extended as far as the tasteless meals he subjected himself to and who never baked a goddamn thing in his life…that Shane got in the kitchen and made a fucking honey cake for Ilya’s birthday?

It goes without saying, but—what.

Ilya shifts on the couch to make room for Shane, who carefully sits next to him and holds the cake out in between them. Ilya has so many questions, so many thoughts racing through his mind, but the first thing he blurts out is: “We are eating cake for breakfast?”

“We kinda have to,” Shane says, “or else the frosting is gonna melt and make a mess in the cooler before we even make it to the cottage.”

“No, sorry, let me say again—” Ilya stares pointedly at Shane. “You are eating cake for breakfast?”

Shane shrugs with the nonchalance of someone who doesn’t treat his body like a fucking temple. “You said it was a special treat your mom made for you every year for your birthday, right?” he points out. “I can’t be the one to break tradition.”

What the actual fuck.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Shane scoffs. “It’s the offseason. And your birthday. And I worked really hard on this, so I think I’m allowed to eat some cake.”

Ilya might pass out from shock, but he manages to keep his composure. “You made honey cake,” he mutters under his breath. “You are going to eat honey cake with me.” Maybe if he says it enough times, it will start to make more sense.

“How do you pronounce the Russian name for it again?” Shane asks.

Ilya shakes himself out of his bewilderment at the scene unfolding before him. “Medovik,” he answers numbly.

“Myeh-duh-veek,” Shane clumsily repeats, but the word sounds so sweet coming from his lips. “Anyways, I tried my best. Took me all day yesterday to make it, but hopefully it tastes better than it looks.”

“It looks really good,” Ilya assures him.

It doesn’t. It looks a mess.

But, like—Ilya’s picturing Shane in the kitchen, apron tied around his waist, rolling out the dough and beating the heavy cream in a bowl and poking his tongue out in concentration as he layers and stacks the cake. And it’s almost too much to bear, the thoughtfulness and effort behind this deformed little cake that’s also the most beautiful callback to his childhood celebrations.

The wax of the candle is rapidly melting onto the top of the cake. “Make a wish,” Shane prompts him, like it’s nothing, like it’s normal, like he didn’t just resurrect a sacred birthday ritual after Ilya had briefly mentioned it to him only once before. “I’m not gonna sing for you, sorry.”

With a shaky breath, Ilya closes his eyes and sends a wish up to heaven.

And then he blows out the candle.

Shane presents him with two plastic forks. “I don’t have a knife,” he says. “Dig in.”

Ilya cuts off a piece of cake. He brings it to his mouth, slowly wraps his mouth around the fork, closes his eyes.

That first taste of medovik is soft and light on his tongue, melting into a memory that’s been buried for…fucking years. With startling clarity, Ilya realizes he hasn’t had honey cake on his birthday since he was twelve years old. The last one his mother got to spend with him. After she was gone, who was going to make medovik for him? Who in his family was going to celebrate him like she had? He was lucky if his father or brother acknowledged his birthday at all.

As he savors the sweet cake on his tongue, Ilya can almost hear his mother’s voice now: “S dnem ​​rozhdeniya, moye solnyshko.”

“Fuck me,” Shane declares, swallowing his own bite of cake. “This is fucking delicious. Damn.”

Ilya chuckles. “You should eat cake more often,” he says, taking another bite. “I did not know you could bake.”

Shane huffs out a laugh. “Me neither, to be honest. Didn't know what the fuck I was doing the whole time, but I think it turned out alright.”

Ilya nods approvingly, his heart exploding with joy. “You did a very good job, moy solnyshko. Thank you.”

After they demolish half the cake, Shane sets his fork down and says, “Okay, so, this was present number one. Are you ready for your next gift?”

“No, no,” Ilya says around a mouthful of cake. “This is present number two. This morning was present number one. Or did you forget already?”

Shane rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t counting that, but sure, if you say so. You do realize that means I’ll beat you in sheer numbers, right? I’ll be up four gifts to your three.”

Even in the offseason, Shane is still defending his title as the most competitive person in all of Canada. “I will allow it,” Ilya chuckles. He’s feeling generous on his birthday.

“Sure you will, Rozanov,” Shane ribs, nudging him with an elbow. “I know you think you’re the best at giving gifts, but I think I’m fairly decent at it, too.”

Smiling, Ilya reaches out to run a gentle finger over Shane’s cheek. “I do not doubt it, moy lyubimiyy.” He’ll happily relinquish his crown of being the king of gift giving if it means he gets to be the object of Shane’s heartfelt efforts.

“Just wait. I’m saving the best for last,” Shane says with a sly twinkle in his eyes. “Stay here.”

That sounds…ominous. And that’s fine. If the other surprises Shane has planned for him are anything like the fucking honey cake of his childhood dreams, Ilya will be completely, totally fine. He will hold it together because he will not cry on his birthday, damn it, how embarrassing would that be.

Ilya couldn’t move if he tried, still floored by the fact that he just had medovik on his birthday for the first time in recent memory, so he stays put on the couch. He watches as Shane disappears around the corner with the rest of the cake, then reappears with a brown gift bag with white tissue paper sticking out of the top.

“Where were you keeping that?”

“Stashed it in the cooler,” Shane replies, plopping back down on the couch next to him. “I knew you weren’t gonna look in there.”

Well, fuck. He got Ilya there.

“I want to preface this,” Shane says, “by warning you that I kind of had to scramble to get something that could double as a housewarming gift. Rude of you to only give me a month’s notice before your birthday that you bought a house, you know that?”

An apology dances on the tip of Ilya’s tongue, which is—wow. He’s acclimating to Canadian culture already. “You did not have to get me anything for the house,” he says instead.

“I wanted to,” Shane admits, mindlessly playing with the bag in his hands. “I figured I’m gonna be spending a lot of time here, so I gotta stake my claim somehow.”

A delicious streak of pride and possession curls through Ilya. He wants me, his heart whispers greedily, as much as I want him.

Shane hands him the present. “Happy…housewarming? Is that a thing people say? I don’t fucking know.”

Ilya’s lips twitch up as he takes the present from him. The bag has a bit more weight to it than he expected, but if he shakes it, he can still hear something rattling around in there. He can also feel Shane watching him intently, brows furrowed in concentration over those pensive brown eyes of his as his leg bounces anxiously.

He wants to tell Shane not to be nervous, he’ll like whatever Shane gets him—and that’s not even a lie, because how lucky is he to be worthy of Shane Hollander’s affection? Anything else is a bonus.

Ilya sticks his hand in the bag and draws out a nondescript rectangle box that gives him no indication as to what could possibly be inside. He pries the lid off. Peels away even more tissue paper. Sees what’s hiding inside.

Stares. Stares some more.

Then, unable to contain it any longer, he laughs—long and resounding and unrestrained.

“Shane,” he gasps, “what the fuck is this?”

Shane grins. “Welcome to Canada, bitch.”

Ilya lifts out a small, delicate wind chime, which jingles pleasantly as he takes it out of its box. It’s actually quite an exquisitely crafted piece, bronze and sculptural with a beaded chain to hang from. A slim arch connects to the chain, and balancing at the bottom of either end of the arch, with bells underneath them, is a pair of—

“Fucking loons.” Ilya shakes his head in disbelief and throws a mock glare at Shane, whose grin is stretched from ear to ear. “Are you serious?”

Because of course Shane got him a wind chime with not one, but two loons dangling from it, the little shit. Goddammit, Ilya loves him so much.

“I know how much you love loons,” Shane teases.

“Oh, really?” Ilya is going to throttle him. “And you decided I need to have these fucking wolf birds in my house?”

“Outside your house, but yeah,” Shane clarifies. “You live in Canada now, you better get used to them.”

Ilya snorts. “Hollander, I do not need to surround myself with more loons.”

“Don’t you?” Shane throws a cheeky wink at him, and Ilya’s heart flips behind his ribcage. “Now we’ll both have loons that live with us in our homes.”

Oh, shit. Oh, fuck.

The dots are connecting now. Shit, how did he not realize?

In his mind’s eye, he’s back in Shane’s bedroom in his Montreal apartment where, until Shane’s birthday a month ago, the walls were pitifully blank and sterile. Shane always said he’d get around to decorating—or, at least, have someone decorate it for him—but then it was like. Why did it matter if he was rarely there? On the road for half of the year, living out of suitcases and in a different hotel room every other night. Who cared if he went home to plain white walls if he was only going to leave again.

Until Ilya started coming over with more frequency. With regularity. And he saw how the heart that Shane wore on his sleeve broke into tinier pieces every time Ilya closed the door behind him when he had to leave. He saw the wistfulness in Shane’s eyes when he wished for it to be summer again—wished for them to be back at his cottage, just the two of them, together and alone, because stolen moments that were few and far between weren’t enough anymore. Not when there was a place where eternity was waiting for them.

And Ilya thought—he thought if they couldn’t steal away to the cottage whenever they wanted, then maybe he could bring the cottage to Shane.

That’s what he thought, at least, when he secretly commissioned a landscape painting of the lake behind Shane’s cottage and asked the artist to include two little loons in the corner to represent the two of them in their little slice of heaven. As a joke. As a clue. As a way to say, See? I am here. And we will always be together.

Now Ilya has his own pair of loons to match the ones in the painting hanging on Shane’s bedroom wall. And with it, a reminder from Shane: I am here, too. I am not leaving.

He thinks he might have a soft spot for loons after all.

“O–oh,” Ilya breathes. He will not cry, damn it!

“I considered getting you, like, loon throw pillows or figurines or something,” Shane tells him. “But that seemed too…I don’t know. On the nose. And then I came across this online and knew I had to get it.”

Ilya gently shakes the wind chime and lets its dulcet tones fill the house. “No, I like this very much. Makes a much prettier sound than the real things.”

“Yeah, I thought that was kind of ironic, too,” Shane comments. “Also, like—have you noticed how fucking quiet it can get out here in the suburbs?”

Yeah. Yeah, Ilya has noticed that.

He’s more than aware of that, actually. And so are the voices in his head, yelling at him to get a fucking grip or else Shane might hear them clawing at the sides of his skull.

“I thought maybe—maybe you might appreciate some background noise. Since, you know. You’re not in the city anymore.”

Ilya nods wordlessly.

He does miss the underlying buzz of signs of life in Boston. Maybe the sound of the chimes will carry throughout the entire house.

“And you’ll need something to drown out the howls of actual loons.”

“Fuck off,” Ilya retorts, and Shane laughs, the sweetest sound Ilya has ever heard in his entire life. “Thank you for this. I—fuck, I do not have any tools here to hang this up right now.”

“That’s fine,” Shane says, pushing to his feet. “We gotta get to the next thing on the agenda anyway.”

“We do?”

Shane holds out a hand to him, and when Ilya takes it, he hoists him to his feet with graceful ease that’s only a little bit arousing. “We’re taking a little field trip for this one.”

What the—

“Um,” Ilya hesitates, his hand still in Shane’s as he follows his boyfriend toward the front door. “What…is going on. Where are we going?”

Shane continues pulling him outside until they reach his Jeep Cherokee that’s parked in the driveway. “Get in,” he says, opening the back car door and gesturing inside.

Ilya stares blankly at Shane. “Are you kidnapping me?” Because who even fucking knows what’s happening anymore. What the fuck. One minute he was eating honey cake, and now he’s being told to get into Shane’s unbearably boring car with zero explanation.

They’re not driving to the cottage yet. They can’t just up and—all their stuff is still inside. Shane said he had a schedule. Breakfast, then presents, then cottage. Is kidnapping one of his presents?

Shane rolls his eyes. “I’m not kidnapping you.”

Ilya’s not entirely convinced. “Then if you are not kidnapping me, are you my taxi driver? Why do I have to sit back here?”

Shane raises an eyebrow. “Ilya.”

Ilya raises his own eyebrow back. “Shane.”

“Do you trust me?” Shane asks, and if the earnestness in his voice isn’t the death of Ilya, then the pleading look in those yearning brown eyes may very well be.

Fuck. Of course he trusts Shane.

“Fine,” he sighs dramatically, moving to climb into the backseat on the passenger side. “You are being very mysterious.”

Shane leans against the car. “This will all make sense in a bit, just wait,” he says before shutting the car door.

Ilya waits for Shane to slide into the driver seat before he asks, “Is this what you were talking about? My presents will make more sense if I open them in Ottawa?”

Shane cranes his head back. “Sort of,” he says. “Technically, though, these next few presents aren’t from me. Or at least, not entirely from me.”

He rummages in the glove compartment and pulls out a thin white three-ring binder stuffed with paper. He also pulls out a…what is that? A CD case?

“So,” Shane starts, twisting his body around to lock eyes with Ilya. “I asked my parents about barbershops in Ottawa.”

Ilya has given up trying to predict where this whole bit is going, so he decides to play along. “Oh, did you? What did they say?”

Shane drums a finger on top of the binder. “My dad has been going to the same guy for, like, thirty years, but he’s way on the other side of town and close to retiring. So my mom took it upon herself to do some research.”

He gives Ilya the binder, and Ilya takes it with both hands, weighing it carefully. “Are these all the barbershops in the whole country or something?” There has to be at least eighty sheets of paper in here.

“No, uh—” Shane scratches the back of his neck. “She started researching barbershops. And then she—well. She kind of got carried away and decided to just put together an entire city guide.”

Ilya’s mouth falls open. “A city guide?”

“Of Ottawa.”

Ilya gapes at him. “She made a city guide…for me?”

“Yeah,” Shane replies. “Spent every day over the last month typing it up and printing it out, but you know my mom. She can be very determined once her mind’s set on something.”

Ilya’s heart is beating faster and faster, so taken aback is he by the words coming out of Shane’s mouth. It’s overwhelming, if he thinks about it for too long—the indomitable Yuna Hollander, who stared him down over her table last summer until she was sure of his intentions toward her only son, made a guide to the city. For him.

Shane nods toward the binder. “Open it.”

With trembling fingers, Ilya opens the binder. The first page has a stock image of Parliament Hill, and underneath, in large block letters: Ilya Rozanov’s Guide to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

And underneath that, in smaller letters: By Yuna Hollander.

He turns the page. It’s a typed letter, addressed to him.

Dear Ilya,

Welcome to Ottawa!

I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about our city’s reputation, so I won’t repeat them here, but let me be the first to tell you that there’s more to Ottawa than meets the eye. We’ve got so many great museums, restaurants, outdoor spaces, festivals, and architecture. It might not be as exciting as what you’re used to, but I’d say there’s plenty of things to do here, too; you just have to know where to look.

This guide is separated by the tab dividers into different sections, including History, Arts & Entertainment, Food & Drink, Events, and Nature. In those sections, you’ll find information on classic Ottawa tourist spots, like the museums, the Rideau Canal, ByWard Market, the Glebe, etc., but if you flip to the very last tab, you will exclusively find all the Hollander family favorites: our favorite restaurants, hiking trails, weekend getaway spots, hidden gems, and more. There are also a few fun surprises in that section, but I’ll let Shane explain those.

The Miscellaneous tab has all the various essentials you might find yourself needing, such as grocery stores, dry cleaners, and trustworthy car mechanics. Also, I did some research and asked around, and I compiled a list of the best barbershops within a 10-kilometer radius of your new home (curly-hair specialists are at the top of the list). Let me know if any of them work out for you or if you need me to research more spots.

I do want to stress that this is by no means an exhaustive guide to Ottawa, but I hope it at least helps make the transition a little easier for you so you can focus on more important things, like bringing the Centaurs back to glory. And if you’re looking for anything specific, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or David. We would love to show you around.

Again, welcome to Ottawa—and thank you for being here. You know why.

Love, Yuna

The words on the page are getting a little blurry now, and—fuck, Ilya is not going to cry. He’s not! There’s just a lump in his throat the size of Mars that won’t go away, no matter how many times he swallows.

A sense of calm suddenly washes over him as he clutches this binder that feels more like a treasure map than a guide to his new city—because for the first time in a very, very long time, Ilya doesn’t have to figure things out on his own. There are people who want to take care of him, imagine that.

He looks up and meets Shane’s knowing, pensive gaze. “Tell Yuna—” Ilya clears his throat and wills his voice not to crack. “Tell her thank you for me.”

“I will,” Shane says, smiling. “But hang on, there’s more.”

“Fuck me,” Ilya blurts out. More? This gift from Yuna—and everything else Shane has surprised him with today, for that matter—is already beyond what he expected. How the fuck is there more?

Shane holds out the CD case. “This is from my dad.”

Oh, great. Ilya is definitely not going to cry now.

He gingerly takes the CD from Shane. There’s a note tucked inside the clear case, so Ilya pops it open, slides the note out, and braces for impact.

Ilya—

Hope you meant what you said at Christmas when you told me you liked my music. These are all of my favorite tunes that I’d play around the house when Shane was growing up (yes, the same ones he’d ask me to turn off because he doesn’t understand good music). Whenever I’m missing him a little extra, these songs always put me in a better mood. I hope they do the same for you.

Happy birthday, kid. You’ve got a heart of gold.

—David

Jesus fucking Christ.

Are all of the Hollanders trying to kill him?

“My dad didn’t want to be left out of the birthday gifts,” Shane says when Ilya’s done reading. “I think he wanted an excuse to make a mixtape of all of his favorite songs.”

“Ah,” is all Ilya says, because this is too much now. Way, way too fucking much. He wants to scream. He wants to cry. He wants to crawl into the front seat and into Shane’s lap and be held the way his mother used to hold him.

“I—tell your dad thank you, too.”

It feels too inadequate of a response, but what else could he say?

Listen, Shane. I am not so selfish or delusional to believe that I am your only family the way that you are mine, but—

But here is the thing. These are more than just birthday gifts from your parents, do you understand that? They did not have to accept me as immediately as they have, and still they remember the little things I said six months ago and make me feel like I belong here. They have deemed me worthy of their son, which is something I do not even believe sometimes.

So tell them thank you for me.

“They were really excited about these presents,” Shane tells him. “They understood that I wanted to spend today alone with you, though. But maybe we can do dinner with them next week at the cottage?”

“I would like that,” Ilya says, an ache blooming in his chest.

Shane grins at him. “So while we’re here,” he says slyly, “do you want that tour of Ottawa now?”

Ilya blinks once, twice. “What?”

Shane twists the key in the ignition, and the car revs up underneath them. “We’ve got a map,” he says, gesturing at the binder still on Ilya’s lap, “and we’ve got a driving playlist. No one will see you if you’re sitting back there. So what do you say—want to go see some of the sights?”

Oh.

Oh.

Yeah, this must be why Shane wanted Ilya to open his presents in Ottawa. That conniving, scheming, devious, attentive, thoughtful, tenderhearted motherfucker. Ilya could burst with the love he has for this boy.

Just when he thought he’d managed to keep his emotions under control, too. Jesus Christ.

“I mean,” Ilya says, casting a furtive glance outside the tinted windows, “like you said, we are already here, no? And if Ottawa’s very own Shane Hollander is offering to be my tour guide—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane chirps, but the grin on his face is as wide as ever. There’s a sort of giddiness to him, Ilya realizes, that he’s never seen before. Like he’s as excited to show Ilya his hometown as Ilya is to see Ottawa through Shane’s eyes.

“I’m gonna need the CD back for now,” Shane says, holding his hand out expectantly. Ilya gives it back to him, and Shane slides the disc into the CD player on the dashboard. The familiar notes of a guitar and harmonica begin to pour out of the car speakers.

“Where are you taking me?” Ilya asks, thumbing through the many tabs of Yuna’s very organized Ottawa guide. “Downtown?”

“Nah.” Shane puts the car into drive. “Go to the last section. You’ll know it when you see it.”

Those instructions make no sense at all, but Ilya already told Shane he trusts him; he’s many things, but he’s not a liar. He finds the last section under a tab aptly labeled “Hollander” and begins mindlessly flipping past all of the family’s favorite jaunts—past the ice cream shop with the most creative flavors, past the bakery that serves the best croissants, past the bike path along the canal that boasts the prettiest view of the city—until something catches his eye.

Ilya’s fingers freeze. His eyes dart across the text.

And—huh. Shane was right. He did know it when he saw it.

The points of interest detailed on these last few pages, tucked away toward the end of the Hollander section, must be the surprises Yuna was referring to. The thing is, these places are exceedingly mundane. Like, so incredibly boring that any other person reading this guide would wonder why the fuck were they included, what possible significance could they have compared to, say, the National Gallery of Canada. But this is not a regular guide to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada—this is Ilya Rozanov’s guide to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

And these are the places he wanted to learn about the most:

The ice rink where Shane held a hockey stick for the first time.

The Tim’s parking lot where David taught Shane how to drive.

The exact fucking street where eight-year-old Shane faceplanted on the sidewalk and knocked out his front tooth.

Shane’s Ottawa.

All the pieces from Shane’s past, places that populate the vast empty spaces within Ottawa’s boundary lines and give context to the man in front of him, the only man in the fucking world worth moving to this damn city for. Because otherwise, Ottawa is just another city, isn’t it? Just another pinpoint on a map. Just a collection of buildings and highways and neighborhoods, the same as anywhere else. Ottawa was a giant blank slate, a vast wilderness of uncharted terrain, but now it’s like—it’s like Ilya has been given a pair of glasses that make the most important landmarks stand out and the map a little easier to read.

Here, this guide seems to be telling him. Here are the traces of Shane that are scattered all over the city. Go find them.

And see—there’s nothing special about Ottawa, except there’s everything special about Ottawa. This is the city that shaped the other half of Ilya’s soul.

So who knows. Ottawa might live up to the hype after all.

Ilya settles back into the seat, closes the binder, and locks eyes with Shane through the rearview mirror. In the background, Neil Young’s voice continues to serenade them.

“Okay, Hollander,” he says. “Show me your city.”

* * *

They take the long way home.

Shane drives north, toward the Ottawa River and through the sleepy little suburb where he grew up, where Ilya came to visit last Christmas. Shane points out his primary school, the restaurant his parents always take him on his birthday, and—yes—the infamous sidewalk where he ate shit and lost his tooth. Ilya peers out the back window with rapt attention, picturing Shane at different stages of his life in these exact places, and wonders how he ever thought Ottawa was boring.

They listen to most of David’s mixtape on the drive, and with every song that plays, the knot tangled in Ilya’s sternum unravels a little bit more. He thinks this is how all new places are meant to be explored: with your lover in the driver’s seat and classic rock softly playing in the background.

By the time they get back to Ilya’s house, the morning is creeping into the afternoon, and Ilya feels decidedly less like a stranger in a strange land. The trees are starting to look recognizable, the street names are being burned into his memory—hell, even turning into his new neighborhood feels suspiciously familiar.

Home, his heart whispers, looking at Shane.

As soon as they stumble through the front door, Ilya pushes Shane against the wall, attacking his mouth with such ferocity that it’s all Shane can do to clutch at his shoulders, moan, and respond with equal fervor. Ilya pours every ounce of love, and awe, and possession he has into the kiss. Mine, his lips carve into Shane’s, because a man who will give you his world is not a man you let go of.

They stand pressed against each other in the entryway, making out like teenagers, until Shane finally pulls away, panting.

“I have one more present for you,” he reminds Ilya.

Oh, right. Birthday presents. He almost forgot that was the whole point of their day so far; he’s been too caught up in the emotional wreckage that Shane has subjected him to with his thoughtfulness.

“I do not know if I can handle more,” he says honestly. If Shane surprises him with even more deeply personal sentimental shit, Ilya’s heart might give out completely.

“Last one, I promise,” Shane assures him. “Then we can head to the cottage, okay?”

Upstairs, in his half-furnished bedroom, Ilya plops down on the edge of the unmade bed, his legs dangling over the side, while Shane crouches on the floor and rummages through his overnight bag. When Shane stands back up to full height, he’s holding something behind his back.

“Okay, so,” he says, “I’ve been working on this for a while.”

“Okay,” Ilya replies.

Shane takes a step closer. “The cake, the wind chime…those were ideas that I came up with later, after my birthday. But this gift has been in the works for months.”

“Okay,” Ilya says again, not really sure why this detail matters.

Shane grimaces. “I just don’t want you to think I was slacking on your birthday presents.”

Ilya has to hold back a laugh. In what fucking world would it be considered slacking to bake a Russian honey cake from scratch, track down the only loons that don’t sound like they’re dying, curate a personal tour of his hometown, and even wrangle his parents into the whole endeavor? Only Shane would think all of that was not enough. That he was not enough.

He reaches out and puts a comforting hand on Shane’s arm, rubbing his thumb lightly against Shane’s smooth skin. “This is,” Ilya murmurs, “the best birthday I have ever had in my fucking life. You know why?”

“Why?”

Because you make me feel like the most special person on earth. Because you pay attention to the things I say and take care of me so well. Because you continue to show me a love that I have never experienced before, and I do not deserve it, but it is the greatest gift I could have ever received.

“Because I get to spend it with you,” Ilya says. “Everything else is extra.”

Shane cracks a tiny smile. “God, you’re so cheesy.”

“Your fault,” Ilya retorts. “You are very good at giving gifts, did you know that? Better than me, even.”

“I mean, it’s not a competition, but if it was…” Shane trails off, yelping as Ilya pinches his side.

“You win, moy lyubimiyy,” Ilya says, drawing him closer into the space between his legs. “I concede.”

Shane rolls his eyes, then shifts nervously on his feet. “I don’t know why I’m kind of nervous to give this last gift to you,” he admits. “It feels so—fuck, I don’t know.”

Ilya raises an eyebrow. “Should I be nervous?” Which is a hypothetical question because he’s been in fucking survival mode ever since Shane walked out of the kitchen this morning with medovik in his hands.

“No, no, it’s just—” Shane sighs and looks up at the ceiling. “It’s sort of an unusual gift, that’s all.”

“Hollander, I gave you a puck for your birthday. I think I can handle unusual.”

“Okay. Okay.” Shane takes a deep breath and holds out the hand that’s been hiding behind his back. “Here.”

He drops a small flash drive into Ilya’s open palm.

“I—”

“Before you say anything,” Shane cuts him off, moving to sit beside him on the bed, “let me explain first.”

Ilya nods, studying the very ordinary flash drive in his hand. Next to him, the heat from Shane’s body presses through the thin layer of his shirt.

“So,” Shane starts. He takes a steadying breath. “I, like. Really missed you this past year.”

Ilya’s heart drops to his stomach.

“I didn’t expect how hard it would be,” Shane says, wringing his hands together nervously. “I thought it would be easier once we became boyfriends, you know? But turns out it might actually be worse because it fucking kills me to only get pieces of you when I want more than that all the fucking time.”

Me too. Fuck, Shane. I miss you even when I’m with you.

Shane continues, “I couldn’t fucking wait for you to move to Ottawa so we could be together more often, but then I realized—I’ve been so excited for you to move to Ottawa without considering how you were probably dreading moving away from Boston. I know this was the plan all along and you said you wanted to do this, but fuck, Ilya. I felt so fucking stupid for only thinking about my own feelings instead of how much you’re giving up for me.”

Ilya opens his mouth, but when Shane shoots him a knowing glare, he closes it again. Right. He can be patient, even if everything in him wants to blurt out how little of a sacrifice it was.

But was it really?

“I know how much Boston means to you,” Shane presses on. “I know how much you love the city and the team. I’m sure playing for the Centaurs will be great, and you’ll get settled into this new house and make a new life for yourself here, but–but I know that it will take time. And shit, even then, it probably won’t be the same, right? Like, it’s fucking Ottawa. I know it’s not exactly anyone’s first choice of cities to move to.”

It’s still not his turn to talk yet, but if it were, Ilya would have said: I would have gone wherever I could be with you.

“I just—” Shane reaches over and rests his hand on Ilya’s knee. “Look, Ilya. I want you to be happy. I want you to feel at home here. Obviously we’ll get to see each other a lot more now that we’re only two hours apart, but I also wanted to give you something that could help make those days and weeks in between, when you’re here by yourself, a little easier to bear.”

He finally nods at the flash drive. Ilya turns it over carefully in his hand. “What is it?” he asks, his curiosity winning out.

Shane’s cheeks flush pale pink, making his freckles stand out even more. “I, uh—” He clears his throat. “I had this idea. It was after you stayed with me the first time we played each other last fall. You left my apartment, and I just sat there in fucking silence, thinking about how much I missed you already. I had to force myself not to immediately pick up the phone to call you.”

The words are spilling out of him now. “I wanted to keep talking to you. I always want to keep talking to you. And then it hit me—what if I just record a voice message every time I’m not able to talk to you right away?”

Ilya’s heart cracks all the way open now. The threat of tears is imminent.

“So I recorded a voice message that night. And then I recorded another one. And another one, and another one. I just kept going. All fucking year, I recorded these little messages for you. I don’t even know what I said in most of them, I just hit record whenever I felt like I had something to say.”

The stupid lump is rising in Ilya’s throat again. There’s no fucking chance he gets through this without crying.

“They’re not that long, maybe a couple minutes each,” Shane explains. “But there’s, um. A lot of voice messages. Like, hundreds of them. Sorry.”

“Shane,” Ilya whispers in disbelief.

Fuck, this is karma for talking big game about his own gift-giving skills, isn’t it? It’s all fun and games, coming up with the perfect gifts for the person he loves most in the world, until that person returns the favor and makes Ilya feel completely open and raw and turned inside out from the way he seems to know exactly what Ilya needs without him saying a fucking word.

“I just wanted you to have something to listen to whenever you’re missing me, like how I missed you when I made them,” Shane says. “So don’t listen to them right now. Not while I’m with you. Save them for when you’re alone and you need to hear my voice the most.”

Everything Ilya wanted to say has vanished from the tip of his tongue. Instead, all he can do is stare at the flash drive and feel the weight of Shane’s gift hit him square in the chest.

Shane has been recording voice messages. So many messages. For him. To listen to when the silence gets overwhelming and the voices in his head won’t leave him alone.

Did Shane know? That he is the only person who can mute the din of self-loathing thoughts running rampant in Ilya’s subconscious? Probably not. But Shane knows Ilya, and that is enough.

For so long—for so fucking long—Ilya has been out at sea by himself, bobbing up and down in the turbulent waves and kicking as hard as he could to stay afloat, and just when his lungs were running out of air and his legs were about to give out, here comes Shane Hollander with a lifeboat and an outstretched hand.

You are not alone. You will never be alone again.

And Ilya knows that to be true. Look, here’s the proof of it in his hands.

“I love you,” he tells Shane.

That’s all there is to say, really.

The silence has quieted around him, shifted into something peaceful. All Ilya can hear is the sound of a familiar refrain beating in time with his heart.

I love you, and I love you, and I love you.

“I love you, too,” Shane replies. He takes Ilya’s face in his hands, brushes the tears away from his eyes, and kisses him tenderly. “Happy birthday, baby.”

* * *

This afternoon, they’ll drive to the cottage. They’ll unlock the door and fling the windows open and allow themselves to let their guards down. Shane will climb on top of Ilya and ride him until they both completely fall apart, and Ilya will find a spot in the hollow of Shane’s throat that, if he sucks on it just so, will coax the most delicious sounds out of Shane. They’ll fall asleep to the howls of the loons outside and wake up to the soft whispers of each other’s names.

It will be perfect. It will be everything Ilya wished for when he blew out the candle on his birthday cake.

Shane’s parents will come over for dinner in a few days. Yuna will wrap Ilya up in a giant hug and ask if he’s had a chance to look into any of the barbers she found for him. David will pat him on the back and ask what Ilya thinks of his old-man music.

In the midst of it all, Shane will catch his eye from across the room and gaze at him with so much fondness that Ilya will want to cry again.

And later, when their blissful summer comes to an end, when they have to say see you later and return to the real world, Ilya will come home to Ottawa by himself.

He’ll turn the key in the lock and let himself inside. The wall of silence will greet him at the door.

The voices will return. They always do. But Ilya won’t try to quiet them.

He’ll be okay.

He’ll be okay.

Someone loves him enough to drown out all the noise.