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Shane sits on the closed lid of the toilet. His heel is tapping rapidly and his fingers ache as they squeeze each other, desperate to find an outlet for the nervous energy coursing through him.
On the counter, his phone chimes. He silences it immediately, picks up the plastic stick, and looks.
Two pink lines stare back.
Fuck.
The last message in the text thread is from over a month ago. He has to scroll past threads with his parents, half the team, and even Shane’s on-call maintenance guy before he finds Lily.
The last message is a gray “See you soon.” Shane remembers the Uber dropping him off and wondering if he had the address right. The house didn’t really scream ‘Rozanov,’ with the modern facade and the clean lines of the decor.
It was only a month ago but the memories already seem like something worn, broken-in like a good pair of skates. Or maybe the frayed edges of a trading card that’s been handled too many times, and is rapidly losing its value.
He can’t be upset about it—it was his choice to leave.
And now he has Rose. Rose, who is funny and who he likes talking to and who likes talking to him. That’s not nothing.
When he backs out of the Lily text chain, Rose’s is at the top of the list on his phone, the most recent texts from the early hours of last night when her shoot went long. Their exchanges are easy, friendly. She talked about her diva costars, Shane talked about his similarly dramatic teammates. She complained about her skeevy director, Shane complained about the demands of being captain.
Boston plays in Montreal in three days. Shane doesn’t expect any texts from Lily. There weren’t any after he panicked and ran away and ruined everything. And especially now that he and Rose have been everywhere in the tabloids, he expects Rozanov will have seen him moving on.
Shane should be the first to reach out, but he doesn’t want to be the one to do it. It’s not simple, it never is with Rozanov.
Fuck, and he’s about to make it a million times more complicated.
Not for the first time in the past couple of months, he chickens out.
He clicks on ‘Rose Landry’ and texts “Come over?” before he can second guess himself.
He gets lucky, Rose has a free evening. He lets her in the back stairwell, not because of secrecy, but to avoid the incessant paparazzi that have been staked out near his lobby since they became a thing.
It’s only once they’re inside the apartment proper that she gives him an assessing stare as she shrugs off her coat. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” he says, automatically, before he catches himself. “No.”
She nods, but doesn’t ask anything else as he leads her over to the living area. Now she looks nervous, sitting up straight in the armchair as he similarly perches on the edge of the couch.
“I have to tell you something,” he says. Stops. Searches for the words.
She reaches over and squeezes his hand. “Whatever it is, I hope you know you can tell me. And I would never share anything you confided in me.”
He nods. He does know that. Rose, more than most people, understands the pressure of fame, the need to keep parts of yourself hidden. But knowing that brings him no closer to finding the right words to explain what he needs to tell her right now.
“I’m pregnant,” he says.
Her mouth drops open. It’s understandable—male carriers are rare, and males who actually end up pregnant even rarer. Shane can see the wheels turning in her head as she pieces together what that means and it feels like being flayed open. It feels like just by looking at him she can see all his secrets written across his body.
“It was—I didn’t cheat,” he feels the need to point out. “It was before I met you.”
His skin feels too tight. Shane is a private person. Even with his relationship with Rose, a relationship that he can share with the whole world, he doesn’t do any of the locker room bragging that other guys do. The team made fun of him for it, probably thought it was to be respectful to Rose, or to avoid anything ending up in the tabloids. But that’s not the only reason.
That’s one of the most horrific things about all this; there’s no mistaking how it happened. If this got out, everyone would know.
“I had some… suspicions,” Rose says.
“Suspicions?”
Rose gives him a gentle smile, just a little pained. Shane feels his cheeks burn hot with embarrassment.
“I know the… sex stuff…” he stutters out.
“You don’t owe me any explanation,” Rose quickly interjects.
“I do.”
“You really don’t,” she says. “Are there any gay hockey players?” At Shane’s look, she laughs a little. “You know what I mean. Out gay players.”
Shane shakes his head.
“Was it different? For you, I mean. With…” she trails off.
Shane nods, and it’s so hard not to sink into the memories.
“Was it better?”
Shane nods again.
“Are you…” Rose bites at her lip. “What are you going to do now?”
“I can’t,” Shane starts, his throat tight around the words. “I have to do something, I can’t. I don’t know, I’m bad, but this… this wasn’t supposed to happen, and I—”
“Woah,” Rose says, and she’s suddenly there, sitting next to him on the couch, arm around his back. “Hey, I might be American, and I know our politics are, like, pretty insane right now, but I’m not going to tell you you need to keep it or something. This is your choice.”
She rubs his back as he fights back the static and tries to put the words right. “I can’t do it. I don’t know if I ever could, but definitely not now. Not without losing hockey.” Losing everything, he doesn’t say, but he thinks Rose understands, even after only knowing him for such a short time. Everything Shane has ever done, everything he is, is hockey. Other players joke about retirement, but Shane can’t, not without feeling like the walls are closing in.
“Have you seen a doctor?”
Shane shakes his head. It’s not something he could take to the team doc. There aren’t any regulations against carriers playing in the league, in the same way that there aren’t any regulations against gay players. It’s just not something that is done. And there’s no way for Shane to come out as pregnant without also coming out about everything else.
Rose pulls out her phone. “I have… the studio sent us all some information, for everyone shooting in Quebec. But one of them is a doctor. Discreet, does phone consultations for a lot of things. They can mail you the meds.”
That information washes over him. “Really? They told you all that?”
Rose rolls her eyes. “I mean, maybe not in so many words, but obviously it’s a cast full of young actors. If someone gets an STD or knocked up, they want it taken care of. Discreetly. And Canada’s more chill than some of the states I’ve shot in. Remind me to tell you about when I was down in Georgia. Do you want the number?”
Shane nods. A moment later his phone buzzes in his pocket. The relief is immense, he’d tried Googling, but the idea of visiting a doctor or, god forbid, having to fill a prescription had him panicking.
“Thank you,” he says, throat still tight but this time around the tears he refuses to spill.
“Oh, honey,” she says, and pulls his head onto her shoulder. It’s a little awkward, she’s so much shorter and smaller. But he soaks up the comfort anyway.
“This is the weirdest break-up I’ve ever had with any of my gay boyfriends.”
“You’ve had other gay boyfriends?”
“I was in theater school, at least 70% of my exes have left me for other men. Maybe 80%.”
Shane laughs, though it’s thin.
“What about the… father?” she asks. Her voice twists awkwardly around the last word. “The other father, I mean.”
“We’re not together.”
“But you were?”
Shane thinks back. How to put what they were into words? “Kind of. Not… official. We couldn’t be. Even if… it’s just not possible.”
“Is he another player?”
Shane nods against her shoulder, the point of it digging into his cheek. It makes sense; Shane doesn’t have that many friends outside hockey. It’s something Rose made fun of him for, but she was always eager to introduce him to her own friends and her own circle.
It’s easier like this, without having to try and keep eye contact or figure out what his face is doing. Shane stares at the coffee table as he asks, “Do you think I should tell him?”
Rose blows out a breath. “I want to say ‘fuck him,’ you know? I don’t think you need to. It’s your body, Shane. But… I get the feeling that maybe you want to?”
“What if he thinks I should keep it?”
“Then absolutely fuck him,” she crows.
Shane pushes everything down as they gear up for the game against Boston. His break-up with Rose, his feelings for Rozanov, his… state. He stuffs it neatly into a box and focuses on the game.
Hayden gives him some weird looks, but nobody else seems to notice anything is off. Because he’s fine. He’s playing fine, and that’s what they need from him.
The game is a grueling slog. Hayden tries to cheer Shane up, insisting they’ll shake the rust off, but Shane knows that he’s not firing on all cylinders. Still, they eke out a 1-0 victory for Montreal that feels like treading water. Shane makes it through answering a few media questions, and then through showering off and changing, on autopilot. A few of the guys offer Shane a token invitation for their celebration at a local bar, but Shane turns them down. He’s probably not imagining that they seem more than okay with that. He’s never been the life of the party.
As he’s finishing up he unlocks his phone, swipes away notifications from his mom, and scrolls down to “Lily.”
Come over.
His phone doesn’t buzz until he’s buckling himself into his car.
I’m busy.
That should put an end to it. He’s finally sucked up the courage to reach out and he got shot down. A tidy ending to that chapter of his life. Closure, kinda.
In another situation, maybe he would’ve accepted that. Shane worries at his lip as he tries to decide what he can put into text.
Please.
He waits a few minutes, but no response comes through. An unsteady breath later, and he puts the phone to the side to focus on driving home. He’s so tired. Overall he hasn’t had any crazy symptoms, but in the past couple of weeks he’s started to feel exhausted all the time.
When he gets home he changes into his most comfortable sweatpants and hoodie. They’re well-worn and the hoodie has a few holes near the collar. He’d washed them specifically for tonight. He ignores the nicer set of clothes that he’d also washed. Maybe he’ll wear some of them at the All-Star game in a few weeks.
He sets up everything in the bathroom. True to Rose’s word, everything had been delivered immediately and discreetly. The package came with instructions, information on what to expect, and guidance for when to call a doctor. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
Step one of the instructions is to take some ibuprofen and then wait 30 minutes. Shane opens his half-empty bottle of painkillers, shakes out two pills, and washes them down with water. He sets a timer on his phone for 30 minutes and sits down on the closed toilet seat to wait.
Some time passes; Shane doesn’t take much notice of it. His mind spins with a million thoughts and not a single one that registers. It’s just static.
His phone, counting down the time on the counter, buzzes. When he turns it towards him to check the name on the notification makes his breath catch. Lily.
Here.
Here? For a moment he has no idea what it could mean. Where’s ‘here’? But his body starts moving even before his brain catches up. He’s already on the way to the back stairwell and hurrying down before he can think twice about it. And then he’s at the bottom and opening the back door and—
—and he’s there.
Rozanov pushes past him and into the stairwell.
“It’s too cold for you to be so slow.”
“I didn’t think you were coming.”
Rozanov’s posture is all long lines and relaxed shoulders. He’s dressed to go out, his coat open around a fitted white shirt with some sort of animal print across the front. Leopard, maybe? His voice is perfectly casual as he replies. “You say come over, so I am here.”
“That easy, huh?” Shane says, no idea what his own voice is doing. He can feel his own shoulders creeping up toward his ears.
Rozanov’s answering smile isn’t nice at all, but Shane figures he deserves that. He trudges back up the stairs, only too aware that he’s still in his rattiest sweatsuit. He should’ve changed into the nicer clothes before coming down. But then maybe Ilya—Rozanov would’ve left.
“Do you want anything to drink?” he asks as they get in the door. “I, uh, don’t actually have that much, but I could get you a glass of water.”
Rozanov crowds into his space. “I do not need any water.”
He’s so close and he smells so good and Shane wants to just curl into him. Let all of the rest of it fade away, let Rozanov do whatever he wants to him. Why not? It’s not like he could get more pregnant.
The thought sends a jolt of clarity through him and he pulls away, even as his body strains against it. Like magnets being pulled apart.
“We have to talk,” he forces out.
Rozanov turns away, walks into the open concept living area. He looks out over the city, standing in the architectural no-man’s-land between the kitchen and dinette and living room, before turning to face Shane. “So talk.”
All of Shane’s carefully rehearsed words have deserted him. This isn’t how this is supposed to go. “Can we sit down?”
Rozanov doesn’t move. “You wanted to talk, Hollander. I don’t have all night.”
His phone chimes from where he left it in the bathroom. He’s supposed to take the medicine now. “I just have to, hold on.” He suddenly wishes that he’d set everything up in the en suite, but he always kept his medicine in the more central bathroom. It would’ve been nice to hole up in his bedroom, at least for a moment, just to put his head back together.
Rozanov dogs his heels. Shane turns off his phone alarm before he realizes, oh hey, maybe he shouldn’t let Rozanov see all this. But of course it’s too late.
“What is this?”
Rozanov is already holding the instructions, which come helpfully labeled with “Managing your medication abortion” in bold letters across the top.
Shane snatches them out of his hand. “It’s what it looks like.”
“You’re pregnant?”
So much of Shane wants to shrink from the question, but he pulls himself tall instead, meeting Rozanov’s gaze head-on. “Yeah.”
“This is what you wanted to talk about.”
Shane nods.
After a long pause, Rozanov shakes his head. “I need a drink.”
“I don’t have any—”
“I know, I know,” he says, finally leaving the bathroom.
Shane struggles for a moment, torn between taking his first dose of pills on schedule and following Rozanov out.
Rozanov is sitting on his couch. He has his head in his hands, his elbows propped on his knees. Shane doesn’t know what he needs, but he can’t just let Ilya stay like that. So he sits next to him, and places a tentative hand on his back.
“It’s mine?” Rozanov asks.
“There’s no one else,” Shane says, a little offended, but not much.
Rozanov scoffs, “Yes, Rose Landry couldn’t do this.”
Shane finds himself bristling. “Yeah, well, she helped me get those pills, so maybe you should thank her.”
“You think that’s what I care about?” Rozanov snaps.
“I don’t know!” Shane snaps back. “Are you gonna pretend you want me to keep it?”
Rozanov finally meets his eyes, but Shane isn’t backing down now.
“I’m sorry,” Shane says. “I’m sorry for the way things ended the last time we were together.”
“Oh, yes, when you ran away like little baby?”
It’s a weak insult, and it doesn’t land. “Yes,” Shane says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to deal with how I was feeling.”
“How did you feel?”
“Too much,” Shane says. “I felt like I liked you too much. It felt different. I think it felt different to you, too.”
Ilya finally looks away. “Don’t, Hollander.”
Shane isn’t good with physical comfort, but he reaches out to grab one of Ilya’s hands. “I’m sorry that I didn’t reach out until… this. I didn’t want to spring this on you like this. But I’m glad you’re here.”
“You wouldn’t prefer your girlfriend?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Shane says. “Not anymore. She’s nice and we’re friends, but we weren’t… compatible.”
“Compatible.” Ilya echoes.
“I’m gay,” Shane says. The words are stilted, but these are the ones he’d practiced in front of the mirror, and it’s a relief to finally be back on script.
Ilya snorts. “Oh, yeah? What makes you think that?”
Shane should’ve expected something like that, but it catches him off guard. “Shut up, you’re not gay.”
“No.”
“Well, I am. And the last time we were together, it was a little too good, you know?”
Ilya won’t look at him. “No, no.”
It’s a denial, but Shane doesn’t take it to heart. “I don’t know if I can keep pretending not to like you.”
“You don’t like me.”
“I do. A little too much.”
“No, this is the pregnancy, the chemicals in your brain.”
Shanes laughs. “Hormones?”
“Yes, those. They’re making you think crazy things.”
He wishes that were true. Everything would be so much easier if he could take the pills still sitting out in the bathroom and make all of these feelings go away. But even as he thinks that, he knows he could never do it. If offered the choice, he wouldn’t give that up. Even if this is the end of them, if this is all too much for Ilya and he goes running and never texts again… it will have been worth it.
Ilya continues “Once you are done, you will think differently.”
“I won’t,” Shane says, but he doesn’t expect Ilya to believe it. Not now, not yet. He won’t push that anymore, at least not today. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about being a carrier.”
“Yes, this was very surprising. And so irresponsible, for boring Shane Hollander.”
“I’m on birth control!” Shane’s offended. Ilya looks at him, deeply skeptical. Shane rolls his eyes. “It’s not as effective for males, the market is so small. And other medicine can interfere. I looked it up, and for awhile I was on this antifungal, for—”
“Tch,” Ilya hisses, shaking his head. “I do not need to know medical history. Accidents happen.”
Not to Shane, they don’t, not if he can help it. Shane’s never been good with chance. He takes his pill every day; he has an alarm on his phone to remind himself. The doctor had recommended an IUD, but he didn’t want it showing up in x-rays if he got hurt on the ice. It probably says something—something not complimentary—that the humiliation of the perceived irresponsibility is nearly as bad as everything else this reveals.
Ilya doesn’t need to know all that, though. “I’m sorry this is how you found out.”
“Did you think about keeping it?”
It’s a fair question. Ilya’s face is unreadable, Shane isn’t sure if there’s an answer he’s looking for. Lots of people have opinions about things like this, and Shane’s heard them all at one point or another. “No.”
Ilya pulls his hand away from Shane’s, something in his expression getting harder, more distant, and Shane feels the panic creeping up his throat. Was that the wrong answer? Should he have been less decisive? Said he thought about throwing it all away to become a father?
He looks down at his hand, now alone on his knee. He can explain. “They’d force me to retire. Or try to trade me. Even… after… nobody would want me anymore. Too risky. Too much media attention, too much hassle.”
“So you do this for hockey?”
“Yes. No, not… Everyone would know,” he says, and while he hasn’t lied, this is edging closer to the truth. “There would be no way to hide. And everyone would know everything. That I’m gay, that I’m… what kind of sex I have. And they’d know that it was a mistake. That I was too stupid or reckless or, or, whatever to keep this from happening.”
A hand lands on the back of his neck and squeezes hard, and suddenly Shane can breathe again. Ilya pulls him into a hug, and Shane sags against his shoulder. He smells so good. “It’s stupid, right?” he asks, voice muffled against Ilya’s jacket. “That I care what people think.”
“Is not stupid,” Ilya says.
Shane snorts. “You’re just saying that because it gets you out of child support.”
Ilya laughs. “This, too. I would have to sell my cars. You would take everything.” His voice is rougher than normal.
“I don’t need your money.”
“No, no, no,” Ilya says, and then he’s pulling Shane’s face up to kiss him hard. “You don’t need the money, but you would take it anyway.”
Shane groans as Ilya works his way down, over the hard line of his jaw, to mouth at his neck. Ilya pushes him backwards, until his body covers Shane’s. “I’d have to buy a lot of things,” Shane admits. “Cribs, stroller. High chair. A van.”
“A van?”
“Yeah, it’s more practical,” Shane says. The importance of automatic sliding doors became immediately apparent the first time he went anywhere with Hayden’s kids.
He can feel Ilya’s smile against his throat. “Practical.”
“And I wouldn’t be able to work,” Shane says, testing the water. “So you’d have to support my lifestyle.”
“Yes, very expensive lifestyle, with all your partying and shopping,” Ilya teases, but he’s sliding a hand into Shane’s pants.
“Fuck you,” Shane shudders out as Ilya’s hand closes around his cock. “You don’t know what housing prices are like here in Canada. Montreal is expensive.” He reaches for Ilya’s pants, but the jeans are harder to get a hand into than Shane’s sweatpants.
“Mr. Real Estate,” Ilya says, looking down at Shane, before dipping his head to kiss.
“You’d have to pay all my bills,” Shane says as he finally gets the zipper down and pulls Ilya’s cock out. He thumbs at the head. “You’d have to take care of me.”
Ilya shudders and gets his hand around both of them, cocks pressed together. It’s electric, shocks running through his body like his dick is plugged straight into the pleasure center of his brain. Shane pants into Ilya’s open mouth, their faces inches apart.
“For eighteen years,” Shane pants. “You’d be stuck with me.”
Ilya moans, loud, right into his ear.
“Maybe… maybe even longer,” Shane says. “If you knock me up again.”
Ilya bites at the lobe of his ear and Shane cries out, but there are no more words as Ilya’s hand speeds up. Shane sneaks a hand below, to cup Ilya’s balls, and then they’re both coming onto Shane’s ratty sweatshirt.
Ilya’s body is propped up, avoiding the mess, but his face is buried in Shane’s shoulder. Shane kisses his temple, his cheek, the side of his hair right in the curls, wherever he can reach.
After a moment Ilya gets up and helps Shane strip off his soiled shirt. The old one goes into the laundry hamper in his room, and Shane puts on one of the nicer shirts he’d picked out when he originally planned for Ilya to come over. He changes his pants, too, since this shirt doesn’t really go with the sweatpants.
Ilya is standing in the hall and doing something on his phone when Shane reenters the living room.
“Are you heading out?” He ruthlessly quashes any possible disappointment. This night already went far better than he could’ve ever expected.
“I could stay,” Ilya says.
Shane’s mouth pulls into a sardonic smile. “I don’t think I’m going to be very fun the rest of the evening.”
Ilya closes the distance between them. This kiss is sweeter, less heated, but Shane still feels it down to his toes. “I want to stay.”
“For how long?” Shane asks, before his brain catches up. “I mean, when do you head back to Boston?”
“Tomorrow, yes,” Ilya says. “But I have a later flight.”
“Okay,” Shane says. “Okay. Let me get you some clothes to sleep in.”
He sets out a shirt and sweatpants for Ilya on the bed and then drifts over to the bathroom. It’s been much longer than 30 minutes, but not so long that the ibuprofen will have worn off. He reads the instructions, even though he’s already read them several times. Ilya, freshly changed into softer clothes, joins him in the bathroom but doesn’t say anything. Shane pops two pills out of the blister pack and puts them in the space between his cheek and gums, then repeats the process with another two pills on the other side. He sets another timer for 30 minutes.
Ilya watches all of this, and when he’s done he herds Shane back over to the couch. He grabs the remote and waves it at Shane. “I think San Jose game is still on.”
Shane nods and settles on the couch next to him as he finds the station. Somewhere in the middle of the second period, Shane’s phone alarm rings. He moves to get up, but Ilya pushes him back down. Shane cranes his neck to watch him move through his kitchen. He seems at home in the space.
When Ilya returns he hands Shane the water and the instructions from the bathroom. Shane swishes the water around his mouth, swallows any pill remnants. He double checks the instructions and sets another timer for three hours. Doing this overnight probably wasn’t the best idea, but he didn’t want to wait any longer. He was already creeping up on the edge of the medication’s effectiveness.
The buzzer sounds, signalling the end of the second period. The game cuts to the commentators in the booth, and Shane tunes them out.
“Are you looking forward to the All-Star Game?”
“I am looking forward to Tampa, yes. Florida is nice.” Ilya says. “Should be fun. You will finally get to play with best player in the league.”
Shane rolls his eyes. He’s also looking forward to it, though. He’s always wondered what it would be like to play on Ilya’s team, if they’d click on the ice just as much as they did off of it. He doesn’t know if they’ll get a chance, they’d have to be on the same line. But it’s not like the All-Star Game really matters.
Eventually the west coast game ends and they move to the bedroom. It’s strange, to go to bed with Ilya without the physical release of sex first. It’s domestic, even more so than the last time when Shane was at Ilya’s house. He tries not to think too much about it, but there’s only about an hour left on his phone timer and so he can’t sleep.
Ilya must have the same issue, because eventually he breaks the silence. “Do you want to have children? In the future?”
“Do you?” Shane asks, stalling.
“I think… maybe. I have niece, have not seen her in years, but she is very cute. Kids are fun.”
Shane should just say ‘yeah, me too.’ If Ilya wants kids, that’s something Shane could give him. Ilya knows that now. In the past, he worried Ilya might end this thing between them so he could have a normal life, a normal family. Ilya, who likes women, could do that. And no matter how many times Shane told himself that this thing between them wasn’t meant to be forever, thinking of losing it still makes the bottom drop out of his stomach.
But now Ilya knows that Shane could offer that as well. Shane has the biology necessary to keep him from looking elsewhere. He could say that sure, maybe someday. Provide some incentive for Ilya to keep doing this insane thing with him.
But here in the dark of Shane’s room, as he waits for his phone alarm to go off so he can take another round of pills, Shane can’t lie.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I want to keep playing hockey for as long as I can. And maybe that won’t be that long, maybe I get hurt or something. But I’m not sure I can do both.”
It probably sounds stupid. Selfish, even. He knows he isn’t alone in caring deeply about hockey; you don’t get to this level without some dedication to the sport, but he also knows that for a lot of the guys this is mostly a job.
Hockey is what Shane is.
He knows, theoretically, that there will be an after. Unless he gets hit by a bus tomorrow, he’ll have to retire at some point. He knows some guys who have retired, and for most of them hockey is still part of their lives. Maybe he could coach, or volunteer. And there’s always beer leagues, playing for fun.
Shane can never think about that except in furtive glances without his chest getting tight. Sometimes he hates the jokes Ilya makes about how old Scott Hunter is, how he should be put out to pasture, because Shane knows someday that will be him. He knows, like he knows how to read a play, like he knows the feeling of clean ice, that he will keep clinging onto this for as long as he can.
Everything he does is in service of that. His diet, his exercise routine, the way he spends his spare time. Everything… except what he has with Ilya. Somehow, fucking his rival is the only thing he’s ever done that wasn’t about hockey. What a fucking joke.
Strong arms wrap around him, a body lines up flush behind him. “Shhhh,” Ilya murmurs into his ear. “No more thinking so loud.”
The night passes smoothly, in a rhythm set by Shane’s carefully timed phone alarms. Shortly after the second dose, his stomach starts to cramp. When they get too bad he slips out of Ilya’s arms and into the en-suite. He can’t tell if Ilya is asleep, but his arms welcome Shane back each time anyway.
By the time the late winter sun is rising the worst is over. He’s already taken more ibuprofen, and the cramps aren’t entirely gone, but there’s nothing more to do than ride those out. He wakes as Ilya slips from the bed, and tries to get up to see him off, but a night of only sporadic sleep and physical discomfort has taken its toll and he falls immediately back to sleep.
When he finally does wake up, it’s to the smell of food.
Ilya is in his kitchen, unpacking an assortment of styrofoam and cardboard take-out boxes from a couple large paper bags.
Thanks to the open floor plan, Ilya sees him from a ways off. He nods at the spread. “There is oatmeal, also breakfast sandwich with wheat bread. And avocado toast.”
Shane takes a seat at the large kitchen island and pulls the box with the avocado toast towards himself. It’s a little soggy from the trip to his apartment, but still appetizing.
“Where did you get all this?” He asks.
“Cafe.”
“You don’t have a key,” Shane points out.
“Delivery, Hollander.”
“Did anyone see you?” he asks.
Ilya frowns, but shakes his head. “I wrote note to leave at the door.”
Shane nods, hating the relief that floods him. Hating that that was his first thought. “Thanks,” he says in lieu of the apology he’d like to provide. “For the food,” he clarifies. Not for the secrecy, though unfortunately he appreciates that as well. “I can pay you back?”
Ilya scoffs, and shoves a mouthful of some sort of scrambled egg monstrosity in his mouth. “I am rich.”
This reminds Shane of their conversation about child support yesterday and his cheeks heat up.
Eventually they finish up. Ilya packs the leftovers into the fridge, even though Shane is pretty sure very little of it fits into his diet. Shane busies himself throwing things away, and they both drift to the door.
Ilya slips on his jacket, his shoes. Shane does the same and tries to think up the right words for the moment. He doesn’t find any, and the staircase down echoes with their steps.
“You have day off?” Ilya asks as they reach the bottom.
“Optional practice,” Shane says, “But I told Hayden I didn’t feel great, so he knows.”
“He knows?”
Shane winces and shakes his head. “Knows I won’t be at practice. He doesn’t know about any of… this.”
“And you feel better now?” Ilya’s gaze is heavy, assessing.
Fortunately, Shane does. The cramping is minimal now, and he has more energy. “Yeah,” Shane says. “I’ll take it easy, hopefully be back to normal by tomorrow. We only have a few more games before the break.”
Ilya nods, and heads for the door. Then he spins back around, and crowds Shane up against the wall. His hand grabs Shane’s chin, his lips cover Shane’s own. Shane can feel his body responding, his hands are in Ilya’s hair.
Just when Shane thinks they might end up doing something regrettable in this filthy stairwell, Ilya steps back and out of reach. “I will see you in Tampa.”
“Asshole,” Shane mutters, winded where he’s still leaning against the wall. He tries to tamp down a smile, but it won’t be stopped. “Can’t wait.”