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Sometimes the signs are obvious. Ilya will sleep in much later than usual for a few days, he’ll eat less (or not at all), he won’t touch his Switch, and he’ll be quiet in a way that would worry even someone who hasn’t ever met him before (the total silence from him for hours on end is unnerving).
Sometimes the signs are more subtle. He’ll sit closer on the couch while they’re watching TV, his chirps at practice lack their usual barbs, he’ll walk right past whatever puzzle he’s working on instead of stopping to put a few pieces in, and the way he’s quiet is different (he’ll still engage in conversation but his usual domestic chatter disappears - the way he talks to Anya as they move around the house, the way he negotiates with their household appliances, the way he hums under his breath when he’s cleaning).
Shane’s getting better at noticing the less obvious signs - he likes to think he knows Ilya pretty much inside and out at this point and can tell when he’s feeling flat, even if Ilya tries to hide it. This means Shane has been anticipating Ilya having a bad day since Monday. It’s Thursday now and they have nowhere to be until Sunday, which is good because Shane can tell they’re going to need a couple of days to just…be together. Alone.
Shane wakes up at his usual time, presses a soft kiss to Ilya’s bare shoulder and slips out of the bed as carefully as he can (making sure to tuck the covers in so Ilya doesn’t get cold). He heads out to the kitchen and starts prepping the ingredients for his post-run protein smoothie because he likes to have it ready to go in the fridge when they get home. Ilya usually comes in right as Shane starts throwing ingredients into the blender and steals banana slices that they both pretend Shane didn’t cut for exactly that purpose. They bicker over it, kiss, then get ready to go for a run together. It’s their routine and Shane fucking loves it.
This morning Ilya doesn’t come into the kitchen before Shane blends the smoothie, doesn’t come down as the blender whirs and Shane steps far enough away that the sound isn’t like knives in his brain, and doesn’t come down as Shane finishes cleaning. This isn’t totally unusual on its own, but it is the fourth day in a row Ilya has slept in like this so Shane makes his way back to the bedroom with Anya in tow. She sits by the end of the bed and waits - she knows her role on these days well.
“Sorry, I am coming,” Ilya mumbles as Shane crouches next to his side of the bed and gently wakes him by running his fingers through Ilya's curls. Ilya looks wrecked - dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t slept in days, gaze unfocused and downcast, curled in on himself in Shane’s absence.
“No, it’s ok,” Shane assures him quietly. “Bad day?”
“Yes, I think so. Might have to skip our run.” Ilya is getting better with the bad days too - he tells Shane if he feels one coming on, he’s more honest (after) about how he’s feeling, and he’s less resistant to Shane’s attempts to help. He mostly lets Shane guide him around the house to do the bare minimum self care tasks. Their last big argument over it had been four months ago when Shane cancelled lunch with Rose to stay at home with Ilya on a particularly hard day.
“You’re fucking miserable right now and if I go out to lunch I’ll be miserable so let me take care of you, ok?” Shane had sighed.
“I survived when you were in Montreal, I will survive one lunch. I don’t need you to fucking take care of me,” Ilya snapped and something inside Shane broke.
“I need it!” He hadn’t meant to yell, especially not when Ilya looked so small huddled under the blankets in their bed. But he had, and he couldn’t stop. “Being in Montreal knowing you were dealing with this alone was fucking agony, Ilya. I need to be able to take care of you so shut the fuck up and let me.”
“Ok,” Ilya had whispered and that was the end of it. Shane had apologised for yelling the next day, but Ilya had brushed him off and stayed glued to his side for the rest of the day. They didn’t argue about it again after that.
“Do you need me to stay?” Shane asked. He can tell already it’s not the worst day Ilya’s had, but it’s certainly not one of his best and Shane is hesitant to leave him alone.
“No, I will just go back to sleep. Go for your run,” Ilya murmurs, eyes already closed again. “You will make me join you in the shower when you get back.”
“Yes I will,” Shane snorts. He bends down and scoops Anya up, setting her down on the bed in front of Ilya. She wiggles her way into his arms immediately, pressing her (likely cold) nose into his neck and heaving out a deep sigh. Ilya’s mouth quirks into a small smile, one arm looping over Anya as he scratches behind her ears and letting out a sigh of his own.
“You really must be worried about me if you put Anya on the bed.”
“She can look after you while I’m gone,” Shane shrugs before he leans in for a kiss, ignoring his own discomfort over the stale taste of Ilya’s morning breath. He can handle Anya being on the bed when he knows it helps Ilya feel even just a little bit better. “I’ll wash the sheets later.”
“There it is,” Ilya hums. “Go. I will be ok.”
“I love you. Please call me if you need anything, I won’t be gone long.” Shane has already mentally recalculated his run route so he’ll only be out for half as long as usual.
“Love you too,” Ilya yawns. Shane presses a kiss to Ilya’s forehead and pets Anya on the head, brushing his fingers over Ilya’s hand.
“Look after your papa for me,” he tells her. She responds with a huff that Shane interprets as ‘obviously’. Ilya is already asleep again by the time Shane leaves the room.
🤵🏻🤵🏻🤵🏻
Shane runs less than half his usual route. He knows Ilya is likely still sleeping and won’t wake up for at least another hour, but the dull ache in Shane’s chest doesn’t go away so he turns around and heads for home before he even hits the park they sometimes stop at with Anya. As predicted Ilya is still fast asleep when Shane slips back into the room, not waking as Shane crawls onto the bed and wraps himself around Ilya from behind. He can, he tells himself, ignore the sweat still on his skin after his run. It’s far more important that he lies with Ilya right now - that Ilya wakes up with Shane right there with him to make up for all the bad days he woke up alone. Shane lasts maybe ten minutes - lies there holding his husband until his skin starts to itch and his hair sticks to the back of his neck. He wakes Ilya, gently, by sliding his hand down to Ilya’s hip and squeezing.
“You did not do your full run,” Ilya accuses, voice muffled against Anya’s head.
“How do you even know that? You were asleep the whole time,” Shane huffs as he rolls out of the bed, stripping his sweaty running clothes off and tossing them into the hamper. Ilya is still curled around Anya but is watching Shane, expression neutral as Shane tugs off his underwear and socks.
“I woke up when you got home,” Ilya tells him as he wriggles back on the bed, offering Anya a quick kiss to placate the huff of objection she lets out when she loses Ilya’s warmth. Shane can relate on an embarrassingly deep level. “I am very good at pretending to be asleep. You are very bad at pretending to go for a run.”
“Oh. Well, yeah. One day of a half run -”
“Was not even half,” Ilya interrupts. “You got to what, maybe the park? A block before that?”
“Two,” Shane shrugs. “One shorter run won’t hurt.” He doesn’t totally believe that and is already mentally adjusting his workout for tomorrow to make up for the lack of activity today, but right now being with Ilya is what they both need.
“I will remind you of that,” Ilya huffs. “Let me see you wet and naked. Will help me feel better.”
🤵🏻🤵🏻🤵🏻
“I will not drink your disgusting smoothie,” Ilya tells Shane bluntly as he slides onto a kitchen stool. Shane wordlessly slides the small bowl of banana slices across the island to Ilya, watching as he turns the bowl and ignores the banana.
“You need to eat something,” Shane murmurs. He pulls strawberries and cut up pineapple from the fridge, holding them out as he tilts his head. Ilya usually caves when Shane tilts his head a little.
“Not hungry,” Ilya shrugs. “I might eat later.”
“At least drink some water, you don’t want to end up with a migraine tomorrow.” Shane insists. He’s still working on finding the line between telling Ilya what to do and encouraging him to just look after himself enough to not get sick.
“Ok,” Ilya relents quietly, accepting the glass of water Shane hands him and drinking it in two gulps. The quiet in the house is unnerving and not something Shane thinks he’ll ever get used to. He spent so many years coming home to a quiet apartment, seeking out the silence to regulate himself after a day of peopling. But now there’s Ilya filling those gaps in a way that’s never made Shane feel suffocated and when Ilya gets lost in his own head Shane misses how much space he usually takes up.
“We’ve got the rest of that documentary we started the other day we could finish,” Shane suggests idly, Ilya trailing after him as he walks to the couch.
“Maybe just talk to me?” Ilya asks. His head is in Shane’s lap in seconds and he turns so that he’s facing Shane rather than the room. They’ve done this a few times - Shane talking about nothing of great importance, just so his voice fills the silence. Sometimes Shane reads whatever book is closest out loud, sometimes he talks about his childhood.
“Any requests?”
“Tell me embarrassing stories. I want to hear about Shane Hollander falling over in front of the boy he had a crush on in high school.” Ilya doesn’t talk much about his childhood but he likes hearing about Shane’s which was, in Ilya’s own words, ‘boring as fuck’.
“I didn’t have -”
“You did,” Ilya argues. “You just did not know that they were crushes at the time.”
“No, that’s…oh god. Oh god that’s why Tyler stopped hanging out with me,” Shane whispers.
“Give me his address,” Ilya threatens weakly. “So we can show him what he missed out on.”
“We are not going to Tyler’s house. He lives in Halifax now anyway.” Shane only knows this because their mothers were friends, even after Tyler stopped speaking to Shane after The Incident in 2005. Shane still feels deep pangs of embarrassment and a little confusion when he thinks about Tyler, and looking back now after the casual shattering blow Ilya just dropped it all makes sense - Shane definitely had a huge crush on Tyler and his parting words of ‘gross, I don’t like you that way’ directly following The Incident make a whole lot more sense.
“Lucky Tyler. I would not have been nice to him.”
“Can we - ok, look. When I was fourteen I asked him if he wanted to go to a party with me. I meant as friends but…fuck, maybe I didn’t. I just didn’t want to have to talk to anyone else there and Tyler hadn’t been invited and Mom was making me go because it was the off-season and she wanted me to make friends and -”
“Breathe, Shane,” Ilya reminds him, pressing a hand against his diaphragm. Shane draws in a shaky breath and slides his fingers through Ilya’s curls - it always grounds him.
“Sorry. He got kind of weird about it and I said ‘I just want to hang out with you’ and then he said ‘gross, I don’t like you that way’. I thought he was telling me he didn’t want to be friends anymore and I didn’t know how to deal with how much my chest hurt when he said that, so I turned to walk away and walked right into someone carrying a tray of iced coffees.”
“Ok this story is less embarrassing and more just sad,” Ilya snorts. “Tyler is stupid. If I ever see him I will tell him that. Next time we play in Boston I will hop on a flight to Halifax. Is closest city we play in.”
“You don’t even know what he looks like or where he lives,” Shane scoffs. He thought that him being covered in coffee for an entire day would have made Ilya laugh, just a little. “This isn’t meant to be making you upset, I picked a bad story.”
“Yes. Try again.”
“When I was seven I got chased by a flock of geese in a park,” Shane recounts.
“Yes, the scar on your ankle where one of them caught you,” Ilya adds. “You have told me this one already.”
“Yes, but I never told you that after it bit me I fell over and ripped my favourite shirt. I cried more about that than the vicious animal attack.”
“Let me guess - no tags and soft fabric? Boring neutral colour?” Ilya murmurs. “Wore it every day?”
“Yes,” Shane replies evenly. “Mom bought me another one but it wasn’t the same because I hadn’t worn it in.”
“Sounds very you,” Ilya yawns. “Poor little Shane - targeted by geese and Big Clothing.”
“Big - fuck off,” Shane snorts. “It was embarrassing.”
“Yes but now I am thinking about baby Shane -”
“I was seven -”
“Baby Shane, uncomfortable and sad.”
“Fuck, ok. Uh - shit, I wasn’t ever going to tell you this. You have to promise not to make fun of me,” Shane begs as he scratches at Ilya’s scalp. Ilya tilts his head into the touch, likely unconsciously, and shifts closer to Shane.
“I can make no such promise. I will hold onto the information until I feel up to making fun of you again.”
“Sure. Fine. 2010 - after the CCM commercial -”
“Before or after you seduced me with your cock in the showers?” Shane has argued this point with Ilya before. He knows he started it - he got hard first (anyone would with Ilya naked and wet in front of them) and Ilya followed his lead. Shane knows if it weren’t for Ilya’s confidence and certainty that Shane wanted the same thing, they wouldn’t be where they are now.
“After. In my room. I, uh. Jesus,” Shane groans, scrubbing his free hand over his face. This is the one detail of the night that Shane has hung onto to retain the last shred of mystery about himself (a fruitless task, really. There are zero secrets between him and Ilya anymore). “I put on a suit.”
“...what?”
“A suit. I put on a suit before you came up to the room,” Shane mutters, one hand still over his face. Ilya tugs it away and the fingers that were buried in Ilya’s hair are now hanging in the air - Ilya has shot up, staring at Shane from barely half a foot away.
“A suit.” Ilya’s expression, to anyone else, would be blank. But Shane recognises the beginnings of the sparkle returning to Ilya’s eyes and the smile that’s tugging at his lips.
“Pants, shirt, tie, jacket.”
“What colour was the tie?” Ilya asks. He bites his bottom lip and shifts closer, breath ghosting across Shane’s face. “Shane. Tell me what colour your tie was. I need to get clear picture in my head.”
“Blue.” Shane feels Ilya laughing before he hears it - feels his body shake with it as he tries to muffle the sound, feels the quick puffs of air against his cheeks. “I should not have told you this.”
“No, shut up. This is my new favourite thing,” Ilya snorts, not even pretending to not laugh anymore. Shane feels his cheeks heating in embarrassment but he fucking loves Ilya like this - unguarded and relaxed, letting Shane see all of him. Ilya’s eyes are crinkled and his body is loose, and Shane loves him so fucking much.
“You’re gonna make me regret telling you this. I’m glad I realised how fucking stupid it was and changed out of it. You would have laughed at me like you are now and left,” Shane tells Ilya. Since the moment he looked at himself in the mirror that night he’d been so certain that Ilya would never have taken him seriously.
“What was your plan? Were we going to negotiate like a business meeting?”
“Fuck off, I was nervous ok? I thought maybe we’d sit down and…I don’t fucking know,” Shane huffs.
“No, we could have made a deal. What is the blowjob exchange rate in Canada? You might have been cheating me out of blowjobs all this time.” Ilya’s tone is serious but he’s grinning and Shane can’t bring himself to regret sharing his closely guarded piece of information.
“It’s a one-to-one exchange rate so I’d say we’re pretty even at this point.”
“But how do I know you are telling the truth? We never had our contract meeting,” Ilya smirks. “You are deeply in debt now, ah? You at least need to make up for cheating me out of seeing you all dressed up for me in your little suit.”
“You’ve seen me in a suit multiple times since then,” Shane scoffs. “You saw me in one two weeks ago at the fundraising event for the Foundation.”
“Cheated me, Hollander. I feel cheated.”
“You would have laughed in my face and left,” Shane repeats. Suddenly Ilya is in his lap, holding his face with both hands and making pointed eye contact.
“Shane. Love of my life. You could have answered that door in a fucking clown suit and I still would have sucked your cock,” Ilya tells him, their noses touching and Ilya’s fingers sliding into his hair.
“You would not -”
“Clown suit, Shane. Full hockey gear. Anything. You could have been wearing anything and I still would have fallen in love with you.”
“Yeah, I know,” Shane answers softly, placing one hand on the back of Ilya’s neck and pulling him forwards to kiss him. Ilya slides his tongue into Shane’s mouth, warm and achingly familiar but unhurried. When they pull apart Ilya slumps against Shane, sprawled in his lap with his face tucked into Shane’s neck.
“We were so stupid for so long,” Ilya mumbles.
“We were,” Shane agrees. “But I love where we ended up.”
“Would not want to be anywhere but here with you.”
“I love you so much.” Shane feels Ilya smile against his throat, pressing a barely there kiss to Shane’s skin.
“Love you too. So much. Thank you for being here with me today.”
“Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”