Archive of Our Own

The country sped past them at a clip. Blue skies, green trees, the route on the back of his eyelids. Despite this, Shane was feeling mutinous. It wasn’t right to go directly from Ottawa to his parents’ cottage anymore. There was a way to shuck off the season and plunge into lake time, and it involved going from their house to their cottage, franchise to freedom, Ilya pressing him up against the door and dragging the world out of him. That was the threshold of summer. 

“We should have at least dropped our bags,” Shane said again, knowing he was being adolescent and unable to stop himself. Ilya was driving because just this once he was indisputably faster and they were late. Why were they late? Because the phone never stopped ringing when you won a Stanley Cup with a team that hadn’t touched metal since the advent of the Internet. 

Shane wasn’t a stranger to this kind of press - he had, after all, given the Metros their first Cup in sixteen years - but he had yet to encounter the lines of questioning that had accompanied his first win. Instead of “Is this the start of a dynasty?” and “What do you think gave Ottawa that final push?” he got: 

“Did the pressure to win a Cup together put a strain on your marriage?”

and

“The Centaurs are the most openly queer team in the League. Do you think the culture of acceptance has a unique bearing on your capacity for excellence?”

Where Ilya leaned in and got stupid with it Shane usually rerouted the conversation, but he had just emerged victorious from a 105 game season and he was tired of forcing pivots. Besides which, he hated how stiff he was sounding even by his standards - and people were noticing it, and commenting on it, and trying even harder to find the Hollander reaction button. A diagrammable shitstorm.

It was just that. After winning his first Cup with the Metros, Shane didn’t have fucking Out magazine breaking down the door for a shirtless cover. The contrast made it difficult for him not to hear what all these media platforms were really saying — 

Slayyyyy, bestie! Such cute work stumbling into first place, that must have been so fun! But are you sure you and your ragtag bunch of gaylords wouldn’t be more comfy somewhere like WeHo than back on the cold, hard ice next season? What are we saying, you probably love it hard! Actually, now that we have you like this, can you settle something for us? Between you and Rozanov, who gets to wield the stick, if you catch our drift? Gagging to know!

This rainbow deluge was worse than the kind they had faced when they were outed, he thought. As nightmarish as that had been, at least it was topical. Now they had returned to the peak of their field under near impossible circumstances. That was what people should be focusing on. But this was the 2.0 narrative of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, and it coloured every achievement. Gay gay gay gay gay.

It made him extremely grateful his parents would be in France the bulk of his and Ilya’s time in Lanaudière - although Shane doubted that this would stop his mother from calling from, like, a lavender farm in Provence to let them know that Ellen wanted to sit down with them for a very special oops all winners interview.

“Stop worrying. Ellen doesn’t even have a TV show anymore,” Ilya had told him when Shane gave voice to this concern. “She’s cancelled. Danced too much, not enough, something.”

“Maybe we should get cancelled,” Shane had muttered. This made Ilya laugh so hard he almost choked. “What?” asked Shane.

“You know I’ve been cancelled once a year since first term Obama. People still love me.” He ran a hand over the back of Shane’s head. “You wouldn’t like it very much.”

Anyway. His mood was foul, and it was all the more reason to do things properly and recalibrate the tone. But his parents were leaving for their vacation the following evening, and his mom wanted a family meal before they went. Dinner was a prompt seven o’clock no matter where they were. And so.

Ilya patted Shane’s thigh. They were about fifteen minutes out now. “We’ll get there,” he said. Shane sank down in his seat.

***

When they got out of the car in his parents’ driveway Ilya put a hand to Shane’s chest, a big Stop. 

“Yes?” said Shane, irritably. 

Ilya smirked, brushed invisible dust off Shane’s shoulders. Plucked at something by his chin.

“Shane Hollander,” he said, and Shane couldn’t help standing straighter with his name in Ilya’s mouth, “you are a four time Stanley Cup winner. Son of Yuna and David Hollander, who you love.” This last with a warning threaded through, and Shane knew what he meant. Behave. Your parents are here and they are, for the most part, good to you. There was an unspoken comparison hovering next to these unspoken statements.

“With the world’s most annoying husband,” Shane said. He could feel his lip curling up.

“Annoyingly hot, maybe,” said Ilya. He was fishing, but Shane could give him what he wanted after being a dick in the car for two hours. He kissed Ilya, and the bump set them both to rights. Crazy how one small touch could do that. Ilya slipped his hand into Shane’s, swinging it.

It was still light out, and he could smell the grill going from here - they went around to the back, where his dad was turning steaks.

“Ah! The champs have arrived,” said David Hollander, putting down his tongs. He wiped his glasses on his apron, which was mercifully not the one that Ilya had gotten him for Father’s Day a few years ago that said “GRILL HOG” in big fake neon pink letters, and came to hug them both. “Drive up okay?”

“Yeah, all good, thanks,” said Shane, noting the stack of napkins on the table and moving to set them at each place. Meanwhile Ilya began to light the candles with a Zippo he always seemed to magically procure for just these situations despite no longer being a regular smoker.

“Shane loved it. He was singing all the way here,” said Ilya, nudging Shane with his shoulder. “Winning has put him in a really good mood.”

“Oh?” said Dad.

Shane pushed back against the part of Ilya’s shoulder that had just hit him. “Fuck off,” he said.

Ilya grabbed his hand and gave it a kiss, an exaggerated piece of anti-violence theater. God, he was such a brown-noser. “Sorry, David. I know you didn't raise him like this.”

“Didn’t raise him like what?” said Yuna, choosing that moment to step out onto the deck with four wine glasses.

“To be a foul-mouthed goon,” Shane said, kissing his mother on the cheek. Let no one say he didn’t know his lines. Ilya kissed her too, handed over the bottle of pinot gris they had brought. 

“I see,” she said. “Foul-mouthed, maybe accidentally. Goon certainly not.” She took the bottle with a murmured “thank you, sweetie,” and moved to open it with a device plucked from the table - Shane supposed they should try to finish the bottle tonight ahead of his parents’ flight.

His mother poured them each a glass and toasted them. “Beautiful work this season, you two,” she said, rubbing Shane’s back.

Ilya clinked his glass to hers. “We did it for you, Mrs. Ottawa.” 

Yuna and David had been at CTC as the final horn sounded on game six. Vegas flattened, his parents joined them on the ice. Shane kissed the Cup, then his captain. It was a moment still deeply embedded in his nervous system.

Here in the summer evening Shane swore his mother’s eyes were overfull again. “You both made me so proud,” she said, her fingers against Ilya’s cheek now. Shane could hardly look at it. The sight was like staring directly into the sun. 

Yuna sniffed loudly, then said, “That reminds me. Have you boys congratulated Scott Hunter yet?”

“Congratulate Scott Hunter?” they said in unison. Shane shivered. 

“For what, being too washed up to even make playoffs?” Ilya said, already laughing to himself.

Shane’s parents exchanged a glance.

“The news must have broken while you were driving up. He and Kip announced they’re having a baby,” said Yuna. “Due in January.”

Ilya looked at Shane. “Huh,” Shane said. If he had been driving, no doubt they would have known. Ilya’s phone addiction was getting worse by the minute; he had promised he was going to use the break to try to curb it. “There goes his season.” Even Hayden and Jackie had good enough sense to time their births. “Via, um…”

“Surrogate,” his mother supplied.

“Kip won’t want to ruin his figure,” said Ilya. He shot another glance at Shane that Shane wasn’t sure he had the mental space to interpret right this second. He was still on you made me so proud! that reminds me gays can have babies now when are you giving me grandchildren. 

“We’ll send them some stuff,” said Shane, watching smoke rise from the grill. His mother seemed satisfied with this and went back inside. Shane took a deep sip from his glass. Ilya’s hand found the small of his back. 

“Still up for a hike tomorrow?” asked Dad. “Bright and early, eh? We have to leave for the airport around three, but I think we can fit a quickie in.”

Shane braced for Ilya’s that’s something you can count on us for, David.

“Yes, we’ll be up,” he heard instead. “We will meet you at the trailhead.”

It felt like Ilya was maybe drawing some kind of symbol with his fingertip, but if it had meaning Shane couldn’t tell. All he registered was the sensation of Ilya pressing into him.

***

Unlocking the cottage Shane expected a switch to flip, but it was dark when they finally entered and there was something else inside him still out of place. Which was weird, because the cottage looked exactly as it should. The cleaners had been through earlier and so had the housekeeper. Everything they needed was here - their clothes in the closet, fridge stocked, patio swept. But.

Ilya dropped his duffel in the entrance, pried Shane’s bag from his grasp so that it too fell to the floor. Then he walked Shane backwards into the house.

“You have been waiting for this all day,” said Ilya, his hands coming to Shane’s shoulders, Shane’s shoulders coming to the glass doors.

“All year,” Shane said.

“All year,” Ilya agreed.

“I’m practically a saint,” said Shane.

Ilya snorted. “I don’t know any saints like you.”

“What? Who are good at hockey?”

“Please, we have that kind. No. Good at this.”

Feather-light, he stroked the top of Shane’s head, the faintest suggestion of a caress. Shane’s knees buckled and he dropped till he was eye level with Ilya’s groin. No, there probably weren’t saints like this. The worship normally went in the other direction. His hands travelled up and down Ilya’s legs, the denim of his jeans starched and hard.

“Who do you think is the father?” Ilya said now, his fingers brushing back at Shane’s hair in a way that kept him from keeling too far forward. Okay. Here it was. 

“I mean, they’ll both be,” said Shane, frowning.

“No, like - whose genetic shit?” Ilya asked. 

Shane shrugged. Who cared? 

Ilya tapped Shane, and Shane rose. All these cues programmed into him like stations in a radio. This was why they were the best, but he wasn’t going to tell ESPN that. Ilya turned him till he was in front of the dining table bench. 

“Maybe they both jerked off into a cup, mixed it up,” Ilya said, still mulling it over. He stepped forward. Shane stepped back. At Ilya’s slight nod, Shane laid flat on his back on the bench. Ilya came forward again, his legs bracketing Shane’s. “Let the chips fall where they may.”

“Let the Kips fall where they may,” said Shane absently. The wood felt good.

Ilya laughed, leaning down over him till he was all Shane saw. That felt even better, a diminishing window of possibilities. They hadn’t turned any of the lights on yet, but the blinds were all the way up and the lake was in the room with them. Ilya’s palm was warm against Shane’s abs. His cross swung free between them, shred of moonlight caught in it, another little blessing. What an embarrassing thing to think. Ilya kissed him then, filthy and declarative: cottage time starts now. The days ahead expanded in direct correlation to the way Ilya’s tongue filled his mouth. Shane pressed up into him, desperate for the soft blur.

Ilya ran his hand underneath Shane’s shirt so slowly, fingers stroking upwards where Shane wanted him to go down. His own hand moved to Ilya’s fly, but Ilya caught him and placed his hand up by his head on the bench, voicing disapproval in how he pushed down, drove back. He was the only person who could shape a kiss into punishment. A moan of frustration escaped Shane - this was good, this was fine, this was heaven. But also —

Ilya’s hand inched down, now cupped against Shane’s stomach almost as he would Shane’s throat. He pulled out of the kiss, though a trail of spit connected them briefly; Ilya licked his lips and it was gone, a loss Shane could bear because he was looking at Shane the way Shane loved to be looked at, with consideration, with design. He was formulating something for them. Ilya’s palm flexed against his stomach again, his thumb and forefinger pulling against Shane’s belly button, stretching it out with a familiar gesture. 

“Are you ready, mалыш,” Ilya said, not really a question. It was too dark to see the colour of Ilya’s eyes, but there was that shine, a web Shane wanted to get caught in.

“Ready for what?” said Shane.

Ilya bent down and licked the space where his hand had just been, tongue spackling directly over Shane’s belly button. When he spoke it was a low purr to Shane’s stomach. “For me to get you pregnant, of course.”

“Jesus fuck,” said Shane. His erection, which had been progressing at the normal rate, was immediately no longer tenable.

Ilya grinned with all his teeth. “Not an answer.”

Shane shook his head. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, fuck,” each word harder to reach for, but rising to the surface from the aquifer whose location only Ilya could divine. “Put a fucking baby in me, please,” this last a gasp as Ilya had rucked his shirt all the way up, grabbed at his pecs.

It didn’t make sense how desperately he suddenly wanted it - there was no point ever questioning any of it. What was biological impossibility to Ilya Rozanov, a man who had taken one of the worst teams in the league and given them a Stanley Cup in under a decade? What was a fucked up game between husbands? Between people who had been fucking through fucked up games their entire adulthood? 

“Good,” Ilya gritted out, pulling Shane upright into his lap, his mouth on Shane’s again. “We will show them how it’s done.” The them in this case being Scott and Kip. Yes, Shane thought wildly, we can figure out what they can’t.

Shane groaned then, doing his best to find Ilya’s dick, but before he could get there Ilya hoisted him into a bridal carry. Fuck. Shane had checked the scale just this morning to send the number to his trainer: he weighed 196 pounds. On the lean side for him, and they would fix that now, but still - Ilya’s strength - maddening.

Ilya nipped into his ear as he walked them up the stairs and into the bedroom like Shane was made of lace and wedding cake. “Let’s get to work,” he said, laying Shane on the bed. 

Shane sat back on his elbows, watched as Ilya unbuttoned his shirt. Since their initial impromptu meeting, he always tried to wear something with a collar around Shane’s parents, but they were never like Shane’s linen standbys - louche was the only word that Shane could think of to describe Ilya’s style. Shirt discarded, Ilya’s broad, chiselled chest gleamed before him. Shane’s mouth filled. He went to tear his own shirt off, and Ilya grabbed him by the calves.

“No,” he said, “not for you to do, моя прекрасная новобрачная.” He was slouching out of his jeans even as he made his way up the bed. Ilya approached the waistband of Shane’s chinos, snapped it against his side. “What’s under here, I wonder?”

“It’s for you,” breathed Shane.

“Oh, I know it’s for me,” said Ilya, unbuttoning Shane’s shirt, raking his hands down Shane’s arms as he removed it in one fluid go. He returned to Shane’s still clothed crotch, stroked the back of his hand across the seams. Shane jerked - if Ilya didn’t get his pants off soon —

“A beautiful pussy,” Ilya said, contemplative. “So ready to be a home for me. For our baby.”

“Ilya,” said Shane, a half-broken plea. His eyes closed. “My—my pussy is so, so empty.”

He felt the air over his legs now as his pants came off, then his boxers. His dick sprang to his stomach, an aching weight leaking at the tip.

“Wet,” said Ilya, and the hunger in his voice was enough to make Shane’s eyes snap open. He glanced down. Ilya’s cock was a rigid bulge in his briefs. Ilya ignored it, slotting himself between Shane’s legs. His gaze never leaving Shane’s, he ran an agonisingly slow hand up Shane’s dick. When he reached the head he circled it with his thumb, smearing precome onto his fingers. Shane watched, mesmerised, as Ilya put his forefinger into his mouth, sucked it off with a pop. A soft whine dragged out of Shane’s gut.

“So wet,” Ilya amended. Then he spread Shane’s cheeks wide and slid that same spit-slicked knuckle inside, making Shane hiss. He was tighter than he should have been. But Ilya just smiled. “My perfect bride. A virgin.” He leaned over Shane, the length of his dick pressing against Shane’s ass. Shane needed it now, actually.

“I bet you knock me up right away,” said Shane, breathless with how much he wanted it, bucking into Ilya. He felt Ilya’s dick react. Inconceivable that he hadn’t even seen it yet.

Ilya licked his lips. “Maybe I shouldn’t spoil you,” he said. “Maybe you are too fragile.”

Shane ground his ass forward again, drew Ilya down so his ear was by Shane’s mouth. “Or maybe,” he said huskily, “you should give us what we both want and shoot a huge load into my tight little pussy before I fucking die of deprivation.” 

Shane was close enough to see what his demand did to Ilya in the split second before he got a hold of himself. “My bossy new wife,” Ilya growled. In an instant his briefs were off and there was his beautiful cock, an absolute travesty that Shane had yet to get his mouth around it, and Ilya was slicking up his fingers with the bedside lube. “Doesn’t–” and here he inserted a finger into Shane’s hole, Shane crying out – “even–” and another – “like–” and his thumb against Shane’s taint - “foreplay,” now working them in with delicious force. Shane’s head hit the headboard as he gasped, a string of yeses falling out of him, Ilya opening him up hard and fast.

“Baby, baby,” he heard himself saying, “if you give it to me now, fuck, I promise I can take it—”

When Ilya pushed into him moments later he wasn’t totally ready but that just gave the situation a strange ring of truth to it. “Fuck, you’re so big,” Shane choked, that searing, sweet feeling of fullness. 

Ilya looked down, swore. He moved his hips carefully - too carefully. Shane forgot his role and wrapped his legs around Ilya’s waist and pulled him in, more, his arms around Ilya’s neck, more, more.

“Okay, mалыш, okay,” said Ilya, and that was that: he built up speed till he was a series of waves crashing into Shane - the tide - he grabbed Shane’s face and kissed him, and they were a complete circuit, a hot unit of movement, one into the other into the other. When he took Ilya inside him, Shane knew there was no room for any other feeling, any other kind of existence.

One hand braced against the headboard, the other grasping Shane’s jaw, Ilya breathed meaning into them both, a jumble of English, Russian, wrung-out sounds: for you for you my princess my baby an army of children our offspring the fastest most beautiful just like their mother so wet baby so good Shane so good – Shane could only lay back and take it, what he was made for, what they were making —

Ilya shifted his angle and suddenly each thrust was a burst of molten gold. Shane cried out, and kept crying, a low moan. “Please, please, god, fuck, baby – baby —” biting and biting Ilya’s lip, his neck.

“Going,” panted Ilya, “Just - you—”

Shane nodded - tried to - and Ilya got a hand around him, barely, and then Shane was yelling, “Fuck! Oh, fuck, fuck,” just as Ilya buried his head in Shane’s shoulder, a jolt of heat inside him, Shane’s come striping his stomach and Ilya licking the sweat off his jaw.

Fast. Maybe a bit stupid. But hot. Always hot. 

“I think we did it,” Shane managed to say even as the fantasy slipped away.

“Probably,” Ilya said, his head heavy beneath Shane’s chin. He kissed each of Shane’s nipples as if for luck, then ran his fingers across Shane’s belly again, spreading a sticky mess as he went. “Watch this space.”

***

Shane woke when their alarm went off at six thirty, tired and confused. His sleep had been patchy. Fraught dreams he couldn’t totally remember clung to the border of consciousness. Beside him Ilya made a noise of complaint.

“You’re the one who said yes to Dad,” Shane croaked.

“Mmmnnn,” said Ilya, throwing his leg over Shane’s and pulling him in. “Because I’m tradhusband.”

“We have got to get you off the Internet,” said Shane, kissing him quiet.

***

Once they were outside Shane felt better. The morning air, the scent of the pines, his thermos full of coffee - everything was going a long way towards piercing whatever shield he was having trouble putting down. Ilya and his dad were striding ahead talking about golf, and France, and the Austrian Grand Prix, which Shane had not known his father knew a single thing about. Shane was happy just looking at the same stands of blue flag irises he’d been walking by every June of his life. He could feel his head clearing by the minute.

It wasn’t a strenuous trail, more of a lake loop, and they had just come to a section that cut a gentle path up the ridge when David stopped them.

“Look,” said Dad. He pointed to an oak down the hill. Shane couldn’t see anything special about it, and from the way he was squinting in concentration neither could Ilya.

“At what, exactly?” Shane asked.

“Oh, I guess they’re pretty well camouflaged. Try these,” David said, removing the binoculars he never left the cottage without from around his neck and handing them to Shane.

As Shane raised them to his eyeline Ilya leaned over his shoulder, like putting his head next to Shane’s would allow him to see through Shane’s eyes.

“What am I looking at here,” said Shane.

“You see the branch near the top of that maple? Kind of poking out? Follow that along to the right.”

“Okay,” said Shane, tracking. “Yeah, sure. What about it?”

“Well, do you see a big pile of sticks in the oak? Bit above the maple?”

“Uh huh. What is that, a nest? I don’t – ah!” The sticks moved, and a pair of mottled brown birds revealed themselves, their truncated faces belying fierce raptor stares. 

“Show me,” said Ilya, reaching for the binoculars. Shane handed them over and made sure he was pointing in the right direction.

“Oh,” said Ilya, finding them faster and with less help. Annoying. “Two little guys.”

“Red-tailed hawk juveniles,” said Dad, smiling. “Hawks built this nest years ago, but then great horned owls took over for a few seasons. The hawks must have won it back.”

Ilya was scanning along the branches. “Where is their mother?”

David shrugged. “Probably with dad getting breakfast,” he said. “Although these babies are well on their way. Hatched around the beginning of May, I think.”

“How long do they stay in the nest?” asked Shane. 

“Landlord wants to know if he can charge rent,” said Ilya. 

Shane backhanded him. “This is public land, asshole.”

“You’d find a way,” said Ilya.

“I’m not totally sure,” said David, politely ignoring this exchange in favour of answering Shane’s question. “A month, maybe? Maybe more? Don’t quote me on that. You should look it up. But hawks fledge quickly, if I remember correctly.” 

“You need to see, Shane, they’re doing bird yoga. Just like you.” Ilya gave him back the binoculars.

“You’re so full of shit,” said Shane, looking anyway. To his great surprise the birds were flexing and rolling their wings in unmistakable exercise. Getting ready to fly, maybe. “What the fuck?”

“I don’t know why you ever doubt me,” Ilya said, wresting the binoculars off Shane and returning them to David, who took a glimpse.

Shane’s father laughed to himself as he looked at the nest. “The miracle of life!” he said, delighted. “Can you believe what nature gives us?”

Shane addressed the droplet of nausea that slid down his back with a scalding gulp of coffee.

***

His parents insisted they didn’t need to be taken to the airport, that he and Ilya should rest, finally, so that was what they did. They ate breakfast; they weight trained; they ate some more. In the afternoon they swam lazy laps around the lake and played a game they had invented the summer before that was a kind of bastardised one-on-one water polo. They ate again, and then Ilya decided if he was going to get serious about limiting his screen time they needed to fuck or lie out on the dock, and since both their legs were aching they chose the latter to start.

Ilya was face down on a towel in record time. Shane brought his book out - some alpinist’s autobiography his mother had given him at dinner - and laid on his back, making it through about two paragraphs before the calm overwhelmed him and he closed his eyes. The book made a useful additional shade.

He must have drifted off for a while - a few minutes, half an hour, hard to tell. But he came to with a feeling like falling, like he’d lost his balance on the ice. Shane sat up. From the shallow movement of breath through his body he could tell Ilya was in light sleep. 

They’ll be engraving my name next to yours soon, Shane thought, and smiled. He couldn’t resist running a hand down Ilya’s back then, just to remind himself he was real. Ilya made a soft sound at the touch.

Ilya’s back was still covered in round welts from the cupping session he’d had two days ago. Dispersed between his moles they looked like small angry planets amongst stars. Ilya had only recently gotten into cupping after years of Shane telling him he would benefit from it, and now that the acupuncturist was coming to their place once a week to treat them both Shane was feeling pretty vindicated. 

The contortions their bodies went through over the course of a year were routine at this point - Shane knew all about them and he could catalogue the same for Ilya. The information he was currently missing, though, was of a different genre. It was going to take special extraction.

When Shane opened his mouth it was dry and sort of hoarse. A few unpremeditated words came out anyway as he traced one of the circles by Ilya’s shoulder blade: “I know we…” 

A lingering crackle of resistance under his fingers stopped him. He got up and crouched over Ilya’s back, knees on either side of his hips, which was precarious, but whatever. Using both his thumbs he started in on the knot that should not have been there anymore. Or at least not this big still.

“Mmm,” said Ilya, his voice muffled, and then, prompting, “You know we…?”

Ilya was warm to the touch. Late afternoon sun wasn’t too terrible but Shane knew Ilya hadn’t reapplied SPF since their swim. First things first.

“Yeah. I know last night — um.” What was he trying to say. How could he best say it. Probably by just saying it. He started over. 

“I mean. Okay. Do we actually want kids?” Shane said, and felt the muscle he was attending to jump.

Ilya turned his head, doing his best to look at Shane from an almost impossible angle. “Ah,” he said, and then went quiet. 

Shane worked at the knot. Center out. He would not try to fill this silence. The question deserved space. But after a few minutes of careful kneading he found he couldn’t help himself. “Do we not want kids,” he said, slowly, in Russian. Maybe that would work.

“I,” said Ilya, the fastest thinker in the NHL, the keyholder of Shane’s desires. “I don’t know.” A light breeze ruffled his curls. Shane gave his traps a break. “I feel like… I don’t know.” Я не знаю. In Russian even a phrase of hesitancy came with buzzsaw edges. Shane thought there was a strong possibility the not-knowing belonged to the question of where to begin the answer, not the answer itself, but that didn’t alleviate the discomfort.

“Do you want kids?” Ilya asked Shane with a parry so unexpected it made Shane dizzy. This wasn’t how it went. Ilya's refusal to chart the plays heightened Shane’s inertia, added a layer to it. Why didn’t Ilya know? Shane couldn’t say anything. The signal was jammed.

The lake’s small waves lapped rhythmically against the dock pilings. It was the only thing Shane found he could pay attention to, and once he did he discovered that the sound kind of reminded him of. Well. His dick twitched in his shorts.

Underneath him Ilya chuckled. “Oh my God, Hollander,” he said, back in English. 

Shane felt his cheeks go red.

“What,” he said.

“They need to study your brain,” said Ilya, who was pressing his hands into the dock and flipping over almost before Shane could lift himself up.

Now they were face to face, which was better. Shane had missed Ilya’s face. This was the point of the summer: he got to drink and drink and drink without interruption, drink and never find his thirst fully slaked. Shane took it all in. The first swath of sunburn across Ilya’s forehead from the section of the morning’s hike where he had pretended to have forgotten his hat. The imprint of his arm from where he’d been resting on it. The swell of his model cheeks, the haughty bow of his lips. Shane knew this face better than his pucks knew the back of a net and it was a clean miracle every time he saw it.

Ilya took Shane’s sunglasses off and ran his thumb over Shane’s mouth. 

They were also now pelvis to pelvis, and Ilya was catching up to Shane here too.

“I wasn’t thinking about kids, just so you know,” said Shane quickly, making it worse.

Ilya laughed again. “Oh, I know,” he said, wrapping his hand around the back of Shane’s neck and drawing him down. “I know what you were thinking about.”

***

Shane tried to remember anything they’d ever said to each other on the subject and when they might have said it. Maybe an our kids won’t after a favour to the Pikes. A comment never actually articulated on seeing a rare baby photo of Ilya. In his head they had had this discussion at least once, and the conclusion was yeah, probably, later. But now that he was focusing on it he couldn’t seem to find any evidence, which was bad, because it meant they needed to talk about it again, and how could he talk about it if he didn’t know what he thought and Ilya wouldn’t tell him? He had been so sure they already knew.

One of these days Shane was really going to have to kill Scott fucking Hunter.

***

But neither of them wanted to talk about it again, and in a few days the question was as sidelined as their phones. No need for distraction out here. Without external spin to piss Shane off the concept of being winners, again, filtered down in its purest form, a rush that made them both giddy and cocksure.

They fucked like they were twenty-one, everywhere, all the time, nasty deranged shit in between bouts of the staunchest domesticity. Shane bruised his lip from a suite of overambitious blowjobs. They capsized a canoe going too hard and after barely a moment’s collection Ilya got Shane up against a rock and finished them off in the lake. They were wolves, incubuses, cowboys, stepbrothers, captain and rookie, themselves age fifteen, themselves present day meeting for the first time off Grindr, and once, the only session they’d really had to abort, each other. 

They clawed and spat and bit and tore until Shane couldn’t possibly belong to anything, anybody else. It was the happiest he had been in years, maybe since their first visit, and when he looked at Ilya he knew he felt the same. It was summer in Lanaudière, and they were fucking champions.

***

They went for a run one morning following the lake around the same trail they had hiked with Shane's dad. When they got to the hawks’ oak tree they both stopped, peering at it. 

“I don’t think they’re in the nest,” said Shane.

Ilya had taken out his phone and was zooming in all around the tree. “They’re not,” he said, pointing the camera at a branch off to the side. “Look.”

He showed Shane his phone: two pixellated figures perched on a bough close to the nest. Shane looked up, and now he could make out the young hawks in person, though only just. “That was fast,” he said.

“They’re our birds, they should be fast,” Ilya said with a half-smile.

“I mean, Dad said they were almost done,” said Shane. One of the hawks shuffled further up the branch.

“Strange we haven’t seen mom at all,” Ilya said, casting around again. “How will they know how to fly?”

“We’ve only been here twice,” said Shane. “Anyway, I don’t think they need to be taught that. They just do it when they’re ready. They’re birds, they don’t need, like, spiritual guidance.”

“No, but someone has to bring them food,” said Ilya. It was weird how caught up he was on this. He could get very sentimental about animals, though. But this was the second time he’d brought up the mother. Was that it, Shane wondered, the door creaking back open. Was it about Irina? Or did Ilya think they shouldn’t have kids if there wasn’t a woman involved? What if he wanted Svetlana to carry the baby. Shane couldn’t imagine her pregnant, but she would probably do it if Ilya asked. Would he want to do it by – would he want Shane to—

Ilya looked at him, handed him the water bottle. Shane took a pull and handed it back.

“They’ll be fine,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”

***

After dinner they were lying on the couch, Shane with his head on Ilya’s chest, Ilya with his hands casually down Shane’s shorts, a largely ignored Mission Impossible on the TV, when Shane realised they’d forgotten to say anything to Scott. 

Ilya rolled his eyes. “So? Half the world is saying good job to them. They won’t notice that we haven’t yet.”

“I don’t know. Kip can be kind of petty about shit like that,” said Shane.

“More reason not to,” muttered Ilya.

Was this the usual resistance or something else? Jealousy? Worry? Here was that fucking stack of questions again. Shane pushed it away.

“If we text them,” he said, “you can have thirty minutes of phone time.”

Ilya squeezed down hard on the inside of Shane’s thigh, searching for a yelp Shane had no choice but to provide. “Don’t tell me what I can have,” Ilya said. But he untangled them and went to find their phones, which had been abandoned on the charging pad in the kitchen all day. He returned to the couch with them and had Shane fold back into him as before, bringing up their thread with Scott and Kip. “What should we say?” he said.

“Whatever,” said Shane. “The standard congratulations, I guess.”

Shane watched as Ilya started typing “u fags never heard of plan b” and punched him in the arm even as he bit his lip to keep from cracking up, which didn’t totally work. Ilya deleted the message.

Ilya: just saw your news!!! congrats to u both, change table is on the way 

Ilya: and let us know what u need for the baby Scott

Shane laughed properly then. He couldn’t help it. Ilya’s snicker stuttered through his chest, making Shane’s head nod.

Kip: Haha omg thank you! We’re so excited 👶🏻👶🏻👶🏻👶🏻👶🏻👶🏻

“Jesus, how many are they having,” said Shane.

Scott: Thanks, we’ll send over the registry shortly - feel free to get us whatever’s most expensive on there, know you boys can afford it.

Ilya: sorry can u repeat that my ears are still ringing from cup win screams

Shane shook his head and picked up his phone.

Shane: Seriously, huge congratulations you guys. Very happy for you!

Shane: Do you know the sex yet?

“You can’t ask that!” said Ilya in mock outrage. 

“Shut up,” said Shane. “Wait. Or is it gender?”

Ilya shrugged, already swiping over to peruse the skateboarding dogs and indecipherable Russian memes of his feed.

Kip sent a picture of a sonogram, which looked to Shane the same as all the other sonograms he’d been shown over the years. Not that he’d been shown that many.

Kip: Our beautiful girl!!!

Shane: Nice!

Was it? He looked at Ilya, who was dismissing every new text coming in without reading them and mainlining the algorithm. Did they have a preference? He could probably see them easier with a boy. But Kip and Scott might do well with a girl.

Kip: I’m already insane about her, sorry

Scott: Well that’s because she’s already perfect

The beginning of an extremely rude thought popped into Shane’s mind - before it could fully materialise he squashed it as Ilya would a spider.

Scott: Congrats on the Cup. We’ll have to get together for a drink and celebrate everything soon.

Shane elbowed Ilya, who huffed and closed TikTok. He hearted the sonogram, thumbs up’d the invitation, locked his phone, took Shane’s out of his hand, and put both devices on the side table.

“Something to be insane about,” he said, tipping Shane’s head up to kiss him. This was the truth. Thank god he’d said it out loud. Shane turned over so Ilya could deepen the kiss the way he needed him to; it felt like coming up for air. Ilya kissed him as though they’d been apart for months and maybe Shane had forgotten who he was. Like Shane ever could.

Shane broke away and inched down Ilya’s body. Ilya raised an eyebrow at him, smirked. “Already perfect boy,” he said, wry. An insult to Scott and Kip, a compliment to Shane. Shane grinned, awash with pleasure.

With no small reverence Shane took Ilya’s cock out his shorts and laid his cheek to rest against it, nuzzling into it before slipping it into his mouth. Ilya murmured something senseless and stroked a finger over Shane’s cheek.

Shane sank down deeper. Spit dribbled out the corner of his mouth as he set to work, running his tongue along Ilya’s shaft, pulsing him further and further back. Ilya wrapped his hands around Shane’s head, a welcome band of pressure. Then the length of Ilya’s swollen dick was down his throat and Shane was gone, on the other plane. His eyes fluttered closed. 

Ilya moaned and Shane gripped his thighs. Like this Ilya was the only thing in the world, a god of light in the dark. Even with Ilya’s blood practically running through him Shane wanted him more, nose-deep, palming a hand around his balls. He bucked against Ilya roughly again and again till he was starting to choke, almost hoping for it, and then Ilya was saying, “Shane. Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane,” as he came, Shane pushing into him hard to wring the last throb of feeling down.

He looked up at Ilya now, his lips wet with drool, eyelashes a little glued together. Ilya wiped at them with his thumb. “Beautiful,” Ilya said softly.

***

For the third morning in a row Shane woke just before five, which was crazy even for him. If we had a baby I’d be up like this all the time, he thought. I’d be up all night. How long did it take newborns to sleep through? During the season neither of them would be able to do it. Could you hire someone for that? He vaguely knew that was something. Jackie had a lot of opinions about it. What they were he couldn’t remember. His mother had recently told Ilya that Shane had been a terrible sleeper as a baby.

“Maybe it’s the rose-coloured glasses speaking,” she had said, smiling, “but I didn’t mind that much. I loved my nights with you.”

Shane got out of bed and put on running shoes.

***

He knew he wanted to see them. He didn’t know why it mattered. The sun rose as he ran. 

***

Shane reached the ridge and the maple and the oak. He took out the compact binoculars he had stuffed into his pocket before leaving. He looked, and looked, and looked. He couldn’t see them in the nest, on the branches, in the nearby trees. They weren’t on the ground or in the sky. He looked and looked. The fact seemed inescapable. The hawks were gone.

Good, he thought.

It sounded like an incorrect note played on a poorly tuned piano.

Good? he thought.

Good? Good? Good? Why would that be his reaction? Why was it so strong? Could that be right? Wasn’t that callous? Wasn’t that wrong? What the fuck was wrong with him? What the fuck was always fucking so wrong with him?

***

When Ilya found him he had no idea how long he’d been standing frozen in place. Ilya was saying something to Shane as he jogged up the trail but the words didn’t make it to Shane’s ears. Ilya closed the distance between them and said something else; Shane flinched. There was an expression on Ilya’s face. It could have meant anything. Another stretch of time went by. Then, without touching him, Ilya swept a palm over the top of Shane’s head.

Shane dropped to his knees. The woods filled with noise. It was raining, even. Shane had not known he was wet.

“Up, Shane,” said Ilya.

***

The silence that followed was a different texture. Rest silence. Ilya was thinking, and Shane wasn’t. The relief of that carried him home. 

***

Back at the cottage Ilya stripped them both and guided Shane into the shower with him. It was still so early. The hot water pounded over them, and he let it happen for a while. Then he stepped forward into Ilya’s arms and buried his head against his throat. Ilya rocked the two of them back and forth, almost microscopically. But it was Shane’s job to notice Ilya’s movement. To his completely predictable embarrassment, Shane started to cry. Ilya kissed his head, his forehead, his neck, his shoulder. Shane kept crying.

***

Ilya dried them, dressed them, made eggs, toast, tea. They ate at the table as the rain drummed against the roof and the lake. Ilya rinsed their plates and put them in the dishwasher. Then he took them back to bed, where he laid down on top of Shane until their breathing synced and Shane fell asleep.

***

Shane woke up. He was tucked against Ilya like a third arm. 

“Hello,” said Ilya, skimming his hand down Shane’s back.

“Hi,” said Shane. The sense of constriction had eased but it would take further effort to keep getting looser. He had a feeling it was going to end now one way or another.

“Situation is this,” said Ilya, and all the cells in Shane’s body stood to attention. “First, we are not Scott Hunter and Kip What’s-his-name,” he said.

“Grady,” said Shane, automatically. “I know.”

“Okay, good. Second: I want you every second of every day,” said Ilya. Shane smiled. Ilya brushed at it and continued. “I don’t feel like that about having kids. I don’t think you’re supposed to. But it’s hard not to compare.”

“Yeah,” Shane mumbled.

“When I do think about it, I’m usually saying to myself: I would do it right. And then I know I’m talking to my father. I thought about it more when I was younger.” He looked up at the ceiling. “But also, the thought didn’t go very far because I didn’t know if I would be alive long enough to find out.”

Shane tried to say something to this but the forward momentum of his forehead falling into Ilya’s chest was too great. Ilya’s arms came up around him, and he kissed Shane’s head, erased Shane’s whisper of “No, no, no.”

“It’s not like that now,” said Ilya. “You know. I’m just saying that’s not a good enough reason for kids. Just to fix my family, fix me. It would be nice, of course. With you anything would be nice. But I also - what if I fuck them up? And - are there enough hours in a day for you and me and hockey and anybody else? Maybe. But I am selfish.”

There were a lot of pieces in here but Shane felt strongest about the last. “No one has ever been less selfish than you,” said Shane. “You’ve spent your whole life caring for other people. All you do is look after me.”

Ilya shook his head. “I don’t look after you. You are an adult. I know your weaknesses, you know mine. You’re my team.”

The rain punctuated the quiet. A steady rhythm.

“I used to picture myself with kids,” said Shane. “They were always there next to a woman.”

“Mm,” said Ilya. Then: “Did she have a face?”

Shane tried to revive this tattered image to interrogate it. “I don’t think so. I mean, she was never anyone specific. Just.” He gave an apologetic stupid smile, “My wife.”

“Riiiight,” said Ilya, turning on his side till his dick pressed against Shane’s. “Your wife.” 

Shane huffed out a laugh. They were nose to nose now. 

“The kids were in the picture because I thought they made me look normal, like the wife made me look normal,” he said, finally. “But nothing I do will ever make me normal.”

“Shanya,” said Ilya. Not contradicting, because he had long since metabolised this fact about himself. More of a net for Shane to land in.

“Can you imagine the questions kids of ours would get? Their whole lives? If they played hockey, or if they didn’t play hockey.” Shane closed his eyes. “I don’t think I want them,” he confessed. He felt Ilya nod. “I don’t – I’ve never actually wanted them. Does that mean I’m – what does it mean.”

Ilya inhaled deep and slow. Shane inhaled deep and slow.

“It doesn’t mean anything other than you don’t want kids,” said Ilya. A sheet of rain whipped loudly against the window.

“Yeah, but. Am I your wife. Your cold bitch wife,” said Shane. Ilya’s grip on him tightened.

“I am going to start finding out people’s addresses on Twitter,” Ilya said. “Musk will give them to me or I’ll leave and then everyone else will leave too.” Shane opened his eyes and looked into Ilya’s, which were full of feeling. That underscored Shane’s point, he thought. 

“I know what’s inside you,” Ilya said. “Intimately.”

“Intimately,” echoed Shane.

“Yes,” said Ilya. “Why are you listening to them? Listen to me: I know you. You have every emotion, same as me. Not in the same way, but you have them all. If you didn’t you wouldn’t feel so much about this. Shane,” he said, cradling Shane’s face in his hand, “we don’t need to do anything we don’t want to do. We don’t want kids? Okay. We won’t have kids.”

We don’t want to. We won’t.

A stairway to the roof. The glow of the emergency exit in a dark movie theater. Path down to the sea. Permission. 

Follow me and I will lead you out, Ilya had always told him. We will go together. He lit up Shane’s entire existence like a lighthouse. There would never be anyone else. 

Shane blinked. “Okay,” he said, kissing Ilya, desperate to be kissing Ilya right now and always. “Okay, okay.”

They rolled over till Shane was straddling him, magnet and iron, and he had both their cocks out and in his hand, Ilya grinning up at him lazily. Shane spat into his palm and worked it over both of them, eliciting a groan from Ilya, who was rutting against Shane’s dick even as Shane brought them together.

“Tell me what I told you,” said Ilya, the shore beneath him, his arm around Shane’s neck.

Shane slowed despite himself. “We don’t need to do – anything we don’t want,” he said. He opened his hand so the two of them could watch as he pulled along their lengths, covered with spit and precome, vivid and hard. 

“And?” said Ilya, wrenching his gaze back to Shane’s face.

“And,” Shane panted. “And. If we’re never going to be normal,” he ramped up his movement, “if everyone else gets to take. What they want. If we don’t get to do it, us–” he ground down into Ilya – “what’s the fucking point?”

Ilya snapped out a laugh. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, yes, yes, солнышко, fuck— no, you don’t come yet—” 

Shane choked back a whine as Ilya jerked Shane’s hand out the way and spilled into his own upturned palm, shuddering, his other hand grasping Shane’s waist. “Over,” Ilya bit out, pushing through. “Turn over.” 

Shane turned over, and suddenly he felt Ilya everywhere: come-lubed fingers breeching him, prying him apart; another hand on his dick, a hot silky grip; Ilya’s face pressed to his ass, kissing him, biting him. The thought of Ilya’s come sinking back into him, where it belonged - Shane moaned, all body, on fire. 

“I want you,” he rasped out, “I just want you, like this—”

Ilya’s tongue was on his hole now, his greed as wide as Shane’s, a firm crush. He circled Shane, slipping into him, then withdrawing to suck at his rim even as he dragged a slick fist over Shane’s cock, relentless. The fit was luscious, maximal. Shane backed into Ilya, searching for more, more - Ilya removed the hand around his shaft, dug into his hip - not yet. Shane clawed at the bed, grinned savagely at the sacrifice. “Gonna fucking – kill me, Ilyusha,” he hissed, longing for exactly that.

A gluttonous sound which could have come from either of them travelled up from the base of him. Ilya’s mouth was obscene, and he had both hands pressing into Shane’s sides, fingers making waves over Shane’s nipples, until he was cresting, abstract, sure he was part of Ilya just as Ilya was part of him – his brain glitched, went black, red. Ilya’s fist returned to sheath his dick - okay, now - and then with a long heaving sigh he was coming into Ilya’s hand, his hand, Ilya’s hand. Ripples of certainty.

Ilya withdrew, satisfied, and Shane turned again to watch as Ilya, heavy-lidded, licked a slow, lecherous glide up the palm of the hand striated with Shane’s come. Shane moved without knowing how he knew how to move, he never did, he didn’t want to know, crawled forward and opened his mouth. Ilya spat into it, Shane’s come and Ilya’s spit combined on Shane’s tongue. 

“Wait,” said Ilya. 

Shane waited, his eyes never leaving Ilya’s. 

The moment Ilya wanted arrived. He nodded, and Shane swallowed.

Ilya’s smile was as big as it got. He kissed Shane, and kissed him, and kissed him.

***

That evening they sat outside on the patio drinking beer. The rain had stopped in the afternoon and the stone was dry enough to lounge on. It was a fresh world.

“What are we going to tell my parents,” Shane asked. Ilya’s hand was linked into Shane’s on Shane’s knee; they were shoulder to shoulder on the steps.

Ilya tapped Shane’s thigh. “Nothing. None of their business.”

“That’s not very realistic,” said Shane.

Ilya shrugged, laid down perpendicular along the top step so he could put his head in Shane’s lap. Shane wrapped an arm around his chest. “We have been very realistic for a while and now we deserve a break. Also, we run a fucking camp for kids every year. They can pick one of those, pretend they’re ours.”

Shane chewed on that, smoothed down Ilya’s tank top where it had rolled up at the hem. 

“Sometimes I get nervous that all this is a dream,” he said, “and I’m gonna wake up alone in Montreal and still be nineteen.”

“It’s not a dream,” said Ilya, yawning.

“How do you know?”

“My dreams are much cooler. Like sometimes there are two of me and one of you, and both of the mes fuck you at the same time,” he said, wistfully.

Shane considered this and grew hot at the thought. “Why aren’t there two of me to one of you?”

Ilya rolled his eyes. “Hollander, you are impossible to satisfy. Even in dreams. That ratio would kill me.”

“I thought—”

A sharp scream startled them both: Ilya sat up. Shane got to his feet, alarmed, searching around them, finding nothing wrong.

“Wait,” said Shane, spotting something over the lake. “Is that them?”

There were two birds wheeling around each other in the sky. They didn’t seem to have an agenda - they weren’t trying to fish, and they weren’t fighting each other, not for real, he didn’t think. They were just putting on some kind of aerial show.

Ilya shaded his eyes against the sinking sun. “It looks like them,” he said. “But I don’t know birds so well. What are they doing?”

Another scream. One of the hawks dove underneath the other before pulling up hard and returning to the same altitude. Then the other hawk executed the same maneuver. They whistled to each other, diving and soaring and diving again. 

“I think…” said Shane, staring, “I think maybe they’re… playing?”

Shane moved back into Ilya’s immediate orbit. Ilya squeezed his shoulder, kissed his cheek. They stayed like that, watching quietly, until dusk came down and the hawks disappeared, and then two of them headed back inside, turning on the lamps as they went.