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1: afterparty
Around 1 AM, Ilya knew it was time to give up on the nightclub and go home.
He’d wanted a bit of early-season fun, before the stress of the season and the toll on his body wore him out too much. Instead, he’d gotten caught up in Hollander’s documentary for ESPN about his cottage. Gotten caught when Svetlana walked in, dress on and heels in hand, ready to go to the club he was supposed to enjoy, and he’d been staring at his rival doing yoga.
Ilya wondered if she knew. She didn’t seem to believe Ilya when he’d said it was so boring he almost fell into a coma. Called Hollander hot, which Ilya had tried to ignore. Asked if he was seeing anyone in the car, brought up Jane, told him Sasha said hello. It all felt so pointed.
Or maybe he was just being paranoid.
The club had been energetic in a way Ilya would normally like. Boston came alive in the fall when students returned from their summer breaks. Undergrads were starting to seem too young to Ilya (not a chance he was going to dwell on that) but the graduate students were just right. He’d been talking with one, Rachel, a dental student at Tufts. She was gorgeous, a good dancer, quick-witted, and liked good vodka. She should have been perfect company for the rest of the night.
Ilya couldn’t put together why it wasn’t working for him until he caught himself wishing that Rachel had freckles.
He would go home and get this out of his system. It wasn’t fair to Rachel to take her home when he couldn’t give her his full attention. He’d get her number in case she wanted to meet up another time.
Rachel took the “not tonight, sorry” in stride and gladly traded numbers. Svetlana eyed him suspiciously when he told her he was leaving before she returned her attention to some MBA student who seemed dreadfully boring to Ilya.
At home, Ilya grabbed his iPad and a towel, stripped off his clothes, made sure his lube was in its usual spot on his nightstand, and got into bed. Surely this was just because he’d gotten worked up seeing Hollander in the documentary and needed some release. He’d watch it again to jerk off to it, get that release, and forget about it by morning.
Ilya checked ESPN’s live programming first to see if they were showing a rerun of the documentary, but it was just SportsCenter. They were going on and on about baseball and American football, there was nothing there for Ilya. He went to ESPN’s website and navigated to the Watch page where they kept the documentaries. Ilya’s own doc showing off his sports car collection was in there somewhere, but that wasn’t what he needed.
He scrolled through the list of documentaries until he found what he was looking for, turned it on, reached for the lube, and lay down to watch. He was already half hard and began to stroke himself at the base of his cock, slowly at first, working his hand up toward the tip, as the introduction played. Hollander’s hometown of Ottawa, playing for Montreal. Interview footage of Hollander stitched together with shots of the cities he’d lived in.
Ilya quickened his pace as the announcer described the cottage in Eastern Quebec as Hollander’s fortress of solitude. These words he remembered. It meant that Hollander doing yoga was just around the corner…and there he was, posing on a yoga mat in the backyard in front of a lake. The arch of his back, his ass in the air. He looked too good for words.
Ilya kept one hand free as he stroked himself with the other, rewinding the documentary so he could rewatch Hollander doing yoga. Then once again, and he came, sighing with relief as the come spread over his stomach. He grabbed the towel he’d brought over and wiped himself clean quickly, then tossed it toward his laundry hamper. It landed just outside the basket. He’d get it in the morning.
Suddenly Ilya’s eyelids felt impossibly heavy, spent from the late night, the vodka, and the orgasm. He switched off his light and sank deeper into the pillows, closing his eyes.
The documentary was still playing in the background. Hollander had moved on to talking about how he’d had the cottage custom built and the features he’d included so he could train over the summer. Ilya didn’t want to open his eyes, but he could picture Hollander talking.
It was curiously soothing. The narrator had a nice voice, Ilya told himself. Never mind that it was mostly Hollander talking in this section. Ilya was just too tired to move. There was no harm in letting it keep playing.
Sleep took Ilya a moment later as the documentary played on.
The next day, Connors commented at practice that the captain was in an unusually good mood, and Ilya told him, “Good night’s sleep. You should try it sometime.”
2: anxiety
Usually, the MLH schedule during the regular season was punishing. Back-to-back games, late-night flights after games, barely seeing anything in a city other than the practice facility, arena, and hotel. The term “schedule loss” was common among MLH players and fans: a game at the end of a stretch so brutal there was no chance of winning, no matter how good your team was. The energy just wouldn’t be there.
One of the only handy things about fucking your biggest rival, who also happened to be the star of your team’s historical rival team, was that the MLH treated those matchups as marquee ones and scheduled accordingly. Those would be the games selected for things like Hockey Night in Canada or national network television in the United States. It would be bad for the brand to have their players exhausted and not playing at their best. The league tried to avoid putting those games on days when either team was playing back-to-back games or on a longer road trip. It helped make sure that Ilya could at least meet with Hollander when they played.
Yet even with that schedule assistance, there was never much time. Ilya and Hollander would meet at night after games, still hopped up on adrenaline, and fuck each other’s brains out. Then one of them would have to make their exit. There was curfew to think of on the road, early flights to somewhere else, morning practice and game tape review.
In his softer, fucked-out moments just after, Ilya let himself think about what it would be like to ask Hollander to stay. To cuddle with each other. To trade slow, lazy kisses that didn’t need to go any further. To fall asleep together. But usually, they couldn’t.
Their November 2016 game presented an unusual opportunity. Boston was on a home stand, playing against Minnesota on Friday night, then Montreal on Sunday afternoon, then Brooklyn on Tuesday night. The West Coast road trip was coming up, and it would be exhausting, but that was a problem for December 2016 Ilya. Montreal, for their part, were playing a Friday night game in Philadelphia. Boston would have morning practice on Saturday while Montreal had a morning flight to Boston and the day off. Hollander could come over once Ilya got back to his house around noon.
They’d fuck first, of course. Ilya always wanted Hollander so badly after being apart from him for so long. It was their first game of the season against each other, so they hadn’t seen each other since the spring. After, while they were cleaning up and coming back to themselves, Ilya would ask Hollander to stay. They could fuck more, of course, but they could also just…be. He would make Hollander something to eat, cuddle with him, talk to him.
Ilya had bought ginger ale. It was well-known that Hollander didn’t like to drink alcohol during the season. He drank tea in the morning for caffeine, water and Gatorade to hydrate, but his favorite drink was Canada Dry ginger ale. Ilya also remembered from the documentary, dimly from the times he’d fallen asleep watching, that Hollander rarely ate beef or chicken and liked to get his protein from seafood and beans. Ilya could make him a tuna melt; it was one of his own favorite comfort foods. He’d bought the ingredients for tuna melts and pre-portioned them in the fridge so he could make it quickly when they got hungry.
Friday night, Ilya was bone-tired after a hard-fought win against Minnesota. He hadn’t scored himself, but he had two assists and he was pleased with that. Marly was in a contract year and needed the goals more. Since there was morning practice the next day, only a few of the younger players wanted to go out for drinks after, nothing that required Ilya’s presence as captain. While walking to his car, he checked the other scores and saw that Hollander had scored a goal in Montreal’s road win over Philly. Good. Hollander would be in a good mood.
On the drive home, anxious thoughts made their way through the fatigue. What if Hollander didn’t want to stay? What if he was freaked out by Ilya wanting more? They didn’t do this kind of thing; they never had before. What if he didn’t eat tuna melts? What if he hated Ilya’s house? Ilya’s roommates on road trips had told him that he slept with his mouth open, drooling and snoring. (You try getting your nose broken multiple times without getting a deviated septum.) What if he fell asleep and grossed Hollander out or kept him awake?
As he got ready for bed, Ilya tried to shake off the anxious thoughts. He had to try. He had no idea when their schedules might align like this again. If Hollander said no, he didn’t want to stay, Ilya could set it aside and go back to their normal routine of fucking and leaving when they were in the same city. It didn’t have to change anything.
He needed to sleep well so he could thoroughly enjoy the next day. Ilya thought of the cottage documentary. At first, he’d just watched it to jerk off to Hollander doing yoga, but he’d noticed how easily he fell asleep after. Watching it in bed would help him sleep tonight.
Ilya’s iPad was charging by the bed, and as he tucked himself into bed and turned off the light, he reached for it. Turning the brightness and volume down first, he went to ESPN’s website again. He knew the name of the documentary now, could search for it instead of scrolling through the newer releases.
Hollander’s low, even voice began to lull Ilya to sleep. He tried to keep his eyes open until Hollander started doing yoga, but that was proving difficult. Ilya’s last conscious thought was that maybe tomorrow night, instead of just Hollander’s voice in his bed as he fell asleep, he’d have the real thing.
3: agony
The West Coast roadie indeed became Ilya’s problem in December 2016.
Eight games in fourteen days. Edmonton, Calgary, Denver, Las Vegas, a back-to-back in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, and then finally home. He’d taken a hard hit in Las Vegas and was still feeling the effects a week later. Ilya didn’t celebrate American Christmas, but the MLH’s Christmas break was in a week, and he couldn’t wait for three days just to lie in bed and sleep as much as he wanted while his teammates were with their families.
The games hadn’t even been the worst part. It was the flights. Many of the other Bears liked to watch movies on flights, and often several players would pick the same one so they could chat about it to kill time after. Since Hollander had started dating Rose Landry, many of the players wanted to see her movies. The flights usually had at least one X Squad movie or another film Rose was in.
And it wasn’t like Ilya could say “If I have to see that woman, I will punch out every screen on this airplane” without revealing way too much. (If only he could have.) So he seethed through his seatmates having Hollander’s new girlfriend on their little screens on nearly every flight.
Ilya would try to sleep on these flights, but he’d never been much good at sleeping on airplanes. Normally, this was just an inconvenience for someone who traveled as much as he did. He could catch up on sleep at home or in hotel rooms.
In-flight WiFi was far too tempting on those flights when Ilya couldn’t sleep. These days, he often couldn’t stop himself from scrolling through tabloid images of Hollander and Rose Landry together. He even read the comments, despite knowing from years as a public figure that you should never, ever read the comments. The Internet loved those two together.
After the Vancouver game, the team had taken a red-eye flight home, and with the help of some Benadryl, Ilya had slept a little on the flight. At least he’d sat next to Marly, who watched nothing at all and snored through the journey. Ilya had napped in the morning after getting home and the Bears had afternoon practice, but now the jet lag and morning nap was messing with Ilya. He’d made himself dinner, done some laundry from the road trip, ordered Christmas gifts to send to his family and Svetlana for Russian Christmas on January 6, and watched a movie that did not include Rose Landry. It was midnight. The Bears had morning skate and a game tomorrow. Ilya knew he should sleep, but he couldn’t. His body hadn’t adjusted to Eastern time.
Ilya was in bed, trying to sleep, and his mind kept flashing back to that day Hollander had come over. Trying to figure out exactly what he’d done wrong and coming up with far too many possibilities to land on which one was right. He’d sprung domesticity on Hollander when their routine was quick, casual fucking. He’d made a meal loaded with dairy for someone very particular about his diet. He’d pried about whether Hollander dated girls. He’d brought up his own relationship with Svetlana. He’d taken a call from his father while they were on the couch. He’d called him Shane.
Ilya thought about when Hollander had napped in his bed. They’d had those lazy kisses Ilya had wanted after Hollander agreed to stay, a makeout session that didn’t lead to sex. Hollander had been almost melting into Ilya, getting sleepy, so Ilya suggested they nap together and spooned him, holding him tightly. Hollander had drifted off so easily. Hollander slept still and quiet, mouth closed, no snoring, just quiet mumbles in his first few minutes of sleep. Ilya had tried to nap too, and he’d dozed a bit, but he’d been so nervous about having Hollander in his home that deep sleep never came. Instead, he watched Hollander until the other man woke.
If Ilya had known that was the last time Hollander would be in his bed, what would he have done? Would he have let himself fall asleep for real next to Hollander? Would he stay awake the whole time and watch Hollander, soaking in the sight? Would he have held on even tighter and never let go? Would he have told Hollander not to stay, preferring the hookups and longing for more to having it all ripped away?
It didn’t matter. Now Hollander had Rose Landry. He could fall asleep and wake up next to her whenever he wanted. He didn’t have to hide her from everyone or save her under a fake name in his phone. They were the perfect fucking couple. With her, Hollander could forget all about the manwhore he’d had secret sex with until Ilya had made it weird and Hollander had fled.
Ilya had to forget about this. Forget about Hollander. He’d hooked up with a couple of women on the road trip. In LA, he’d dragged himself out to a club despite being exhausted from the back-to-back games and found someone, and this time he made sure she was blonde and looked nothing like Hollander. He’d needed to distract himself from being in Rose Landry’s city, and it had worked for a little while, but he’d fought tears in the cab back to the hotel from her place. There had been a woman in Seattle too, and she was beautiful. Asian American, Chinese descent instead of Japanese, but she had doe eyes like Hollander’s. Ilya couldn’t look too closely at them.
Being home would help. Another hookup would help. He’d have to invite Svetlana over for more visits. Ilya remembered that night in October, getting Rachel’s number but not taking her home. The Bears would want to go out at least once before the Christmas break, their schedule was easier in the lead-up to break and they wouldn’t be on the road. Ilya would have to go to make up for how grouchy he’d been with them. He knew he’d been standoffish and quick to snap at them for minor mistakes. He could invite Rachel along, drink good vodka with her, take her home, and let her fuck him senseless.
Then Ilya remembered why he hadn’t taken Rachel home that first night. The fucking cottage documentary.
Ilya hadn’t watched it again since the night before he’d invited Hollander to stay. It had hurt too much to think about Hollander.
Ilya’s alarm clock read 12:38 AM. Morning skate was at 9 AM.
Ilya reached again for his iPad. He still remembered the name of the documentary. It was there on the website, just as before. Ilya closed his eyes and let the familiar sound wash over him, letting himself imagine for a moment that everything else was just like before too.
That brief flight of fantasy was enough for sleep to finally come.
4: ache
Ilya woke up in darkness and startled at the unfamiliar feel of the bed before remembering where he was. This wasn’t his bed in Boston or a hotel room, this was his Moscow apartment. Legally, it was Alexei’s apartment now, but Ilya had one more night in it. The clock read 3:59 AM.
Ilya had spent much of the day meeting with a lawyer and financial advisor in Moscow. He’d arranged to transfer his Moscow property to his brother and set up a trust fund for his niece. He’d sent some emails to a few people he trusted, delicately inquiring about whether they had recommendations for agents in North America, but he wasn’t sure yet when or if he would sign on with someone. He wanted to cut ties with Russia as thoroughly as he could, and his agent was still based in Russia. It was great for getting lucrative Russian sponsorship deals, but he knew that if his secret ever got out, the agent would drop him in a heartbeat.
After the meetings and emails, Ilya had invited Svetlana over for dinner and some drinks before she had to leave. She’d decided to take an overnight flight back to the United States, and even if she’d stayed, Ilya knew they were done sleeping together. Had been for a while, truth be told. But Svetlana was still his friend, and she was still excellent company for takeout and vodka. He hadn’t told her about Jane, didn’t feel safe saying it all out loud while they were still in Moscow, but he wanted to tell her the truth. She’d left around 9 PM to catch her flight, thanking Ilya for the vodka that would help her sleep on the flight home. Ilya had a little more vodka after she left. Not enough to get drunk, just enough to make the Moscow night feel a little less cold, the apartment feel a little less empty. It had helped him fall asleep earlier, but now it had worn off.
Ilya’s flight back to Boston was in the early afternoon. He knew he needed more sleep. The flight home would be miserable if he went into it too tired. His best bet for getting over the jet lag would be to sleep a full night in Moscow, stay awake or just take a short nap if he could on the daytime flight home, and go to sleep as close to a normal hour as possible once he was home.
Yet Ilya’s chest felt heavy. The finality of everything weighed on him. Ilya felt foolish, sometimes, for loving his father and wanting his approval so desperately despite receiving nothing but cruelty. Now he knew he could never get it. His father, who had scared him so badly when he was young, spent his last years frail, confused, and frightened. And Alexei had been the one to watch him while Ilya had been off in America. Alexei, who drank and snorted damn near every penny Ilya had ever given him while leaving their father alone far too often. Ilya would never have the kind of father or brother other people had. He would never see his niece grow up.
Maybe he could talk to Shane. That had brought him so much comfort on the rest of the trip. That first night in Moscow when he’d discovered Shane’s reading glasses. Texting and talking as best they could with the 8-hour time difference. The phone call last night, after the funeral, pouring his heart out to Shane in Russian. It would help now too.
Wait, fuck, no, he couldn’t. Shane had a game tonight. The Voyageurs were playing at home against New Jersey, it would be about 8 PM there. It would probably be first intermission, but Shane didn’t check his phone at all during games. He wouldn’t see any texts from Ilya for at least another hour and a half, maybe even later if the game went into overtime, and Ilya needed to be asleep again well before that.
Fortunately, Ilya had a substitute that would help him sleep: the documentary.
He’d started playing it on occasion after the All-Star Game, when hearing Shane’s voice had become comforting again instead of agonizing. Ilya had been sleeping better these days even without the documentary, but a few times travel had messed up his schedule or he had a low day and needed a little something extra to sleep, and the documentary was there for him.
Ilya pulled out his laptop and hopped on a VPN, unsure if the documentary was available for streaming in Russia. Once his Internet connection believed he was in the United States, he pulled up the familiar documentary page.
A memory sprung to mind as the video started playing: watching it while Shane was with Rose, asking himself what he would have done when Shane came over and napped with him if he’d known it was the last time Shane would be in his bed. Now Ilya knew he would have Shane in his bed again, at least for sex. They’d been in that same bed before the March game, right before Ilya learned that his father had died. There hadn’t been time for a nap together, but they’d stayed there for a little while after, talking and joking, Ilya announcing to the world (or to an otherwise empty room) that Shane Hollander was an asshole. Ilya didn’t know when another chance would come around for a longer visit, but he knew that twice a year, Montreal would come to Boston during the regular season and Shane would come to his home. That horrible day hadn’t been the last time. Maybe there wouldn’t be a last time at all.
But there was a last time Ilya would fall asleep in Moscow, and that last time was tonight. The weight on his chest lifted just a bit at that.
A smile came to Ilya’s face as the narrator called the cottage Shane’s “fortress of solitude.” Ilya kept his eyes open just long enough to watch Shane’s yoga poses before closing them again and drifting off.
5: anticipate
The MLH awards were in a week, and a week after that, Ilya would be in Shane’s cottage.
That was the thought that kept him going during the breathing and chest-stretching exercises that were supposed to help with his bruised ribs. The bruise itself had mostly faded, and the sharp pains had subsided to an unpleasant soreness, but it was still there.
Worse than the pain was the belief that if he hadn’t been playing hurt, he could have had a second Cup. Ilya was a better player than Scott Hunter when they were both healthy. Boston had a deeper team, better defenders. Goaltending would have been the main roadblock. Eric Bennett was past his peak (was everyone on that team old?) but still a rock-solid goalie, while Boston’s Cup-winning goalie from 2014 had retired and his replacement was young and not yet up to the same standard. Still, Ilya had carried that 2014 team on his back, and if he’d been healthy, he could have done it again. A leaky goalie is fine if you can score back. And the West was weak that year. Los Angeles was a good team, the best in the conference, but not as good as Boston or New York. If the Bears had made it past the Admirals, they’d have won the Cup.
A Cup he didn’t have to get past Shane for would have put a slight damper on the achievement, but two Stanley Cups are two Stanley Cups no matter who you beat to get there.
But if Ilya had won the Cup, Scott Hunter would never have kissed his very hot smoothie shop boyfriend on the ice and turned the hockey world upside down.
Ilya would never have called Shane and said, “I’m coming to the cottage.”
That did not make losing the Cup okay. Ilya just wanted that on the record. But there were perks to his bruised ribs.
Once Ilya had finished his exercises for the night, he settled in on the couch and turned on an action film. Something mindless he’d seen before. While he no longer felt the need to religiously avoid Rose Landry films, it was nice that she wasn’t in this one. He could relax tonight.
About halfway through, Ilya decided that he absolutely needed some buttery, salty popcorn to snack on while watching this movie. As the popcorn bag warmed up in the microwave, Ilya’s eye wandered over to his suitcase, waiting in the closet. He’d left the closet door open earlier while looking for the heating pad.
Ilya closed the closet door, keeping an ear out for the popping noise slowing down. As he grabbed his popcorn, went back to the couch, and turned the movie back on, his mind wandered to what he should pack for the cottage. He’d have to pack light. Checking a bag would be too risky. If he did, he’d have to wait at baggage claim and that would dramatically increase the odds that he’d be spotted at the Ottawa airport in the middle of summer. Everything he brought would have to fit in a carry-on suitcase and his backpack.
The weather would be warm and there wouldn’t be much to dress up for, so that would help save space. He’d mostly bring T-shirts, sweatpants, shorts. Obviously, he’d need a couple pairs of swim trunks for the lake. Enough clean socks and underwear for two weeks, but if he couldn’t fit enough clothes for two weeks in his luggage, that was fine, Shane must have a washer and dryer at the cottage. (It hadn’t been a feature of the documentary, at least not the parts he’d been awake for, but surely that was too boring for even Shane Hollander to film.) Or he’d just wear Shane’s clothes.
He’d have to pack at least one Boston Bears T-shirt. That would be fun to tease Shane about.
What would they do at the cottage? Ilya knew about the lake, the practice rink, and the home gym. They’d be able to keep up with training while they were at the cottage, but Ilya didn’t want to spend too much time training during his chance to rest during the offseason. Plus, Shane was still recovering from his broken collarbone and concussion and would probably have to go easy. Obviously, they were going to have a ton of sex. Multiple times a day.
Ilya thought of the day Shane had stayed at his house, before he’d panicked and left. After sex, before the panic attack. They’d made out, taken a nap together (though only one of them had really slept), Ilya had made tuna melts, they’d sat on the couch, watched hockey, cuddled. All of those would be nice things to do, though this time Ilya fully intended to nap properly. Shane would just have to deal with the snoring and drooling.
Shane had apologized for freaking out and leaving but had never really put into words why he’d left. With the extra talking they’d done since February, though, Ilya was starting to understand better. He was learning that Shane was very much a creature of habit. Perhaps this should have been obvious when he’d neatly folded his clothes before sucking Ilya’s dick for the first time, but not everyone learned at the same pace. Shane liked routines and predictability. Ilya might tease him for being “boring,” but it was oddly comforting, knowing what to expect from Shane. When Ilya had tried to have a more intimate visit with Shane back in November, it had been too much change too soon for Shane, and Ilya hadn’t known how to explain it, hadn’t even really understood it was a thing Shane would need explained. Shane needed a lot more directness than Ilya was used to, and he was trying to adjust.
Ilya believed it would be better this time. He knew Shane better now and they had both accepted, after the All-Star Game, that whatever they had was more than just hooking up. But it was still going to be scary, two weeks alone with Shane when they’d never even had a full day. They would have to trust each other and figure out together what all of this was supposed to be for them.
On the bright side, at least the distance from civilization would make it much harder for Shane to flee the premises if he panicked again.
The movie came to an end and Ilya thought it might be nice to watch the cottage documentary while trying to stay awake this time. It would be nice to see more of the cottage, think about what he and Shane could do while they were there. Imagine himself inside the cottage with Shane. He turned his smart TV to the ESPN app and found the documentary.
The familiar intro played and Ilya stifled a yawn. It was getting late, yes, but it was the offseason. He didn’t have to set an alarm or be anywhere tomorrow. He could sleep late if he wanted. Plus, Shane doing yoga in the backyard was always a nice view. Ilya wondered if Shane would let him watch while he did yoga in real life. Though Shane probably wouldn’t appreciate it if Ilya grabbed him and tried to fuck him in the middle of the pose where he stuck his ass in the air.
The documentary made its familiar shift to how Shane had customized the home to allow for hockey training. Ilya’s focus started to fade, fuzzing at the edges, narrowing from the film to Shane’s voice. So low and even, always consistent in tone. Ilya thought about Shane in his reading glasses and wondered if Shane would want to read at the cottage. Wondered if it would be more fun to let Shane read out loud to him in that voice or fuck him while he wore nothing but his glasses. Of course, they’d have two weeks. They could do both if they wanted.
Next thing he knew, Ilya woke up two hours later to a dark TV screen, a crick in his neck, and a spot of drool on his couch cushion.
+1: assure
Shane pulled into the driveway of his cottage, rested his head against the steering wheel, and closed his eyes. He looked exhausted.
Ilya and Shane had just come back from Shane’s parents’ home. Ilya understood that he had experienced the day very differently than Shane had. He’d been terrified alongside his boyfriend (his boyfriend!) when Shane’s father had spotted them at the cottage. When Ilya first walked into the parents’ cottage, he’d had no idea what to expect. He didn’t think the Hollanders were anything like his own father, he knew Shane had a great relationship with them, but it was hard to know for sure until he saw them with his own eyes. And if he needed to, he would have said or done whatever was necessary to protect Shane in that moment.
But they had been great. Surprised and confused at first, that was to be expected. The “were there no nice men in Montreal?” line had stung just a little, though Ilya hid it; he could tell David didn’t say it with any anger. Shane hadn’t needed someone to go to war for him right then. He needed someone to help David with the pasta lunch while he went out to talk to Yuna and someone to talk him down from a panic attack while they ate. Ilya could be that person, too. And it turned out being that person came with two parents who loved Shane very much and were doing their absolute best, plus some delicious pasta.
Ilya didn’t really get panic attacks the way Shane did; his brain had a different bag of cruel tricks it liked to play on him. However, he knew exactly what an adrenaline crash felt like, and he could tell Shane was having one now.
“You were so brave,” Ilya told Shane, rubbing his back gently. “Let’s go inside now.”
Shane only nodded and slowly got up, unbuckling his seatbelt. Ilya followed along, watching Shane closely. Ilya could tell that Shane’s panic was well and truly gone, but he still needed someone to take care of him.
Once they went inside and shed their shoes, Ilya pulled Shane into a hug, rubbing his back again. Shane leaned into the hug, holding Ilya tight and resting his head against Ilya’s shoulder. “Do you want to take a nap?” Ilya asked, keeping his voice low. “We can rest now, have fun later.”
“Yeah,” Shane said quietly, yawning.
“Bed or couch?”
“Bed, please.”
As the couple walked to the master bedroom, Ilya remembered something Shane had said to him the other day. After Shane had woken him up at some ungodly hour with a master plan and they’d told each other, “I love you,” Ilya had fallen back asleep lying on top of Shane. Ilya apologized for it when Shane came out to find him on the rock looking at the lake in the morning, but Shane told him he’d actually liked it. The weight and pressure of Ilya’s body was comforting and helped him sleep.
As Ilya and Shane shed their clothes, stripping down to their briefs, Ilya asked “Do you want me to lie on top of you again?”
“Yes. That would be really nice. As long as you’re comfortable.”
Shane lay down on the bed on his back and Ilya followed suit, lying on his stomach directly on top of Shane. Ilya pulled a blanket over both of them, remembering that Shane would probably feel cold during this crash. Ilya buried his head in the crook of Shane’s neck and lifted a hand to give Shane a gentle head scratch. “You’re safe here,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”
“I love you,” Shane said, closing his eyes. He wrapped an arm around Ilya’s waist.
“I love you too.”
Ilya kept up his head scratches as he felt Shane’s breathing slow and even out. Once he realized Shane was asleep, he began to feel sleepy too. The blanket and Shane’s arm were warm, his stomach was full of pasta, he could smell Shane’s shampoo. His boyfriend was cared for and he could rest now.
Ilya closed his eyes, his thoughts fading other than one certainty: he was safe, he was loved, and he was home.