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Ilya wakes up the first morning at the cottage feeling…soft. Clean maybe, even though he’s still sweaty from waking up in the night with Shane’s hands and mouth on him. The sun is bright in his eyes. The view from Shane’s cottage is very beautiful, but it does not compare to the view of Shane barely awake on his chest. There are shadows on Shane’s face, but his eyes are so bright.
“Good morning,” Shane says, and he sounds so soft too.
“Good morning,” Ilya tells him.
Their first night together. How long has Ilya been waiting for it? He can’t remember now. Years and years of stolen hours and he could never imagine this. He could never allow it to be a dream for him.
He isn’t dreaming anymore.
He wants to count each one of Shane’s perfect eyelashes. He wants to kiss each one of Shane’s freckles. He wants to smooth Shane’s dark eyebrows with his thumb. But he won’t move. He can’t. Not when Shane looks so peaceful, smiling up at him.
A feeling rises inside Ilya, hot like the fire the night before, painful like his bruised ribs. But sweet too, like his favorite tea. It’s hard to call it happiness. He has not felt it like this, not in a long time. Happiness is contained in a gold medal or a good fuck or a moment he can separate from other moments. This feeling is something like forever. The happiness of winning the Cup was different: he was exhausted then, his body aching. It was a happiness spread over so much time, over so many people. But this feeling, now, this new happiness, it isn’t complicated. It is clear and pure and fresh like the lake outside the window. There is just so, so much more of it than he could have imagined. Ilya thinks it will fill him up, crack him open. It’s more than his heart can bear, to feel so much. It’s more than his body can hold.
It’s love. Love felt more like misery in the Moscow snow. Now it feels like happiness.
No wonder it took them so long to arrive in this place. There wasn’t room for this feeling in Boston or Montreal. They needed time. They needed space.
Here at the cottage, they have everything they need. Even the moments that are awkward or strange or confusing feel important and special, part of something bigger. They can recover from awkward. They have done it before.
Ilya thinks he will cry. Not because he is sad this time: the opposite. Because he is so happy, so fucking happy that the happiness has to get out of his body somehow. He will sweat happiness and cum happiness and cry happiness. He is strong, but not strong enough to hold it all. Shane will help him. Together, they can find a way to hold all this happiness.
“I like you,” he says to Shane, and it isn’t all-the-way honest like Shane wanted them to be, but it’s still true. Ilya is trying, he is really trying. He told Shane about not fucking other people, saying something without saying something. He thinks Shane understood.
He can’t be all-the-way honest in English yet, but he can taste it on his tongue.
Love.
“I like you, too,” Shane says. Je t’aime, he thinks, the ambiguity of the French. I like you, less common, or I love you. He thinks of telling Ilya in Tampa that he likes him too much. It’s still true. He likes Ilya way, way too much. He reaches for Ilya’s hand, because they can fucking hold hands now, and it’s such a simple thing but it breaks Shane’s fucking heart wide open. They can lie here all morning if they want to, holding hands. Talking. Fucking cuddling, unambiguously, because they like each other, and they can do all the stuff they never had time for before. All the stuff that hookups don’t do because it’s not that serious. All the stuff Shane’s never really done with anybody he liked. Yeah, sex, of course, but just existing. A real friendship. More than that.
Shane isn’t always good with feelings. Not his own, not other people’s. He doesn’t know what other people are thinking when they’re not direct. He gets overwhelmed sometimes, in a way that maybe Ilya doesn’t. People think he’s cold or shut off, but that’s not it. Shane feels too much. He can’t hide it the way other people can.
Ilya makes him want not to hide it. It’s terrifying how much he wants to be able to kiss Ilya or hold his hand in front of everybody, the whole fucking world. In front of his parents and Hayden and Jacki and JJ and the rest of the team and Ilya’s team and the everybody else. Shane doesn’t think he’s ever wanted anything so much in his whole life. Not to win a Cup, not to go to the Olympics. Just to share his days and nights with Ilya, to be in public openly with Ilya. It scares the shit out of him.
He doesn’t want to be scared. It’s their first morning together. They’ve slept together before, some naps mostly, but never stayed the whole night. Shane woke up a few times and Ilya was always there, safe and solid and warm, pressing up against Shane. Ilya smells like sweat and sex and whatever nice cologne he’s been using the past year or so and Shane could lie here forever with his head pillowed on Ilya’s chest. He wants to wake up this way tomorrow and the next day and every day after that. It hurts when he remembers Ilya has a flight back to Boston scheduled in two weeks. Shane doesn’t want to think about saying goodbye.
It feels like too soon to say he’s in love, which is so weird when they’ve been tangled up in this thing together for years. There are probably rules about when to say it, the kind of unwritten guidelines Shane doesn’t understand easily. Shane’s never really thought about being in love before. It wasn’t something he really expected in his life. He’s always been more interested in hockey than anything else, obsessed with it to the point that there wasn’t room for other stuff. Now he’s obsessed with hockey and Ilya. He wants to know everything about Ilya, not just his favorite drinks and the way he likes his dick sucked and his brand of shampoo or whatever, but everything that Ilya thinks and feels and wants. He’s never gotten Ilya a real present. He doesn’t know what Ilya likes. With anyone else, that would feel like some kind of immense pressure, a social challenge Shane is likely to fail. With Ilya, it just excites him.
Shane sort of remembers being in the hospital after Marleau’s hit. He knows that when Ilya walked into his room, the sun came too, shining on Ilya and nobody else. He remembers how easy it was to say what he wanted to say. Maybe it was the drugs, but some residue of that stayed with him ever after the drugs were out of his system. He still sees the sun when he sees Ilya. Even now, with his eyes closed, he can sense Ilya’s light. Shane wants to spend the rest of his life basking in it. He just has to figure out how to tell Ilya that without scaring him too. Or if Ilya’s already scared like he said in the car, they can be scared together. It’s not like they haven’t had the practice.
Shane’s dizzy again, but this time it’s not his head. It’s his heart, pumping so hard he’s surprised Ilya can’t feel it.
Maybe he can.
They stay in bed a long time. Ilya feels lazy, in a good way. It’s a new feeling. He kisses the top of Shane’s head. Shane’s hair smells really nice.
Shane reaches for Ilya’s dick, because Shane is always horny. Ilya’s heart warms as his dick gets hard. That’s his Shanya: all his wanting on the inside until he meets Ilya. Ilya touches Shane too, kissing him, rolling on top of Shane so he can have one hand on Shane’s face and one on Shane’s dick. It’s just a hand job but it feels so fucking good, because it’s Shane and it’s him and nobody has to clean up and leave after. They can stay here as long as they want. Shane’s body pushes against Ilya’s and it’s so fucking perfect. Pleasure is tight inside him, but something else, something harder to find than a muscle, feels loose and relaxed. The more he touches Shane, the more he feels that calm.
“Shanya,” he whispers against Shane’s neck, and Shane shivers.
“What did you call me?” Shane asks. “While we were…you know.”
“Shanya?” Ilya’s lips curl up in a smile. “It’s like…a small name, how do you say it. A love name. For Shane.”
“A pet name,” Shane says. “That’s sweet.”
“Mmm.” Ilya kisses him gently.
“Do you have a pet name?” Shane turns his head and kisses Ilya’s hand where it’s still cupped against Shane’s face.
“Ilyusha,” Ilya says softly after a moment.
“Ilyusha,” Shane repeats. It feels nice in his mouth. Ilya’s smile widens, flickers, fades, and steadies. “Who calls you that?”
“No one.” Ilya licks his lips. “Since my mother.” There’s a hollow sound to his voice. Loneliness, Shane thinks. If he has his way, Ilya will never be lonely again.
“Is it okay?” Shane asks. “If I do?”
Ilya pauses, nods. “It’s okay.”
Shane loops his arms around Ilya and pulls him close. They’re both sticky and sweaty but for once, Shane doesn’t give a damn. This is the only place he wants to be: in bed with Ilya pressed so close against him Shane forgets what it’s like to be apart.
“Ilyusha,” he says, as gently as he can, and it almost sounds like “I love you”.