Chapter Text
“You can do this. He’ll have a good day.”
That was the thought running through Shane’s mind as he stood outside the bedroom door he shared with Ilya.
In his hands was a scrapbook he had dug out of one of the storage bins in the garage earlier that morning. The bin had been labeled Memories in black marker and stuffed with old photographs, the kids’ baby clothes, birthday cards, and years of little things they could never bring themselves to throw away.
It had taken nearly an hour of searching before he finally found the scrapbook buried beneath everything else.
But now that he had it, he was hopeful.
Maybe it would help.
Maybe it would bring something back.
Ilya had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s two years ago at fifty-eight years old.
The diagnosis came four months after their wedding anniversary.
Shane still remembered the exact feeling of sitting in that doctor’s office while Dr. Olson explained what was happening to the man Shane loved more than anything in the world. It had felt like the room was tilting beneath him, like his entire future had been shoved violently off course.
Would he forget the kids?
The house?
The dogs?
Hockey?
Me?
The questions had come so fast Shane could barely breathe through them.
“Shane…”
Ilya’s voice had pulled him back into the room.
“Yeah— sorry.” Shane blinked hard. “What was the question?”
Dr. Olson folded his hands together gently. “I asked if you’ve noticed your husband forgetting things lately.”
Shane glanced at Ilya before answering.
“No… not really. Little things sometimes, but…” He swallowed. “We aren’t exactly young anymore, so I didn’t think much of it.”
“Definitely not young anymore,” Ilya joked quietly, rubbing at his knee.
Shane tried to laugh.
He really did.
But after that, most of Dr. Olson’s words blurred together into meaningless noise.
Treatment plans.
Progression.
Medication.
Support.
Shane could barely process any of it.
Across from him, Ilya looked just as lost, though he was trying harder to hide it. Shane could see it in the tightness around his eyes, in the way his hands kept clasping and unclasping in his lap.
And all Shane could think was:
Why him?
Ilya was the gentlest man Shane had ever known. He deserved mornings at the cottage, gray hair, grandchildren running through the yard while they sat side by side on the dock together.
Instead, they got this.
The drive home was nearly silent.
Only the radio played softly in the background while Shane drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on Ilya’s thigh.
“Shane?”
“Yeah?” His voice shook.
Ilya kept staring out the passenger window.
“I won’t forget you.”
Shane tightened his grip on the wheel.
“No matter how bad this gets,” Ilya continued softly, “I won’t forget you. I can’t.”
The tremor in his voice nearly broke Shane apart.
“Ilya…”
“No.” Ilya turned toward him, eyes glassy. “I can’t forget you.”
Shane grabbed his hand immediately.
“We’ll figure this out,” he whispered. “Okay? You and me. Like always.”
Tears blurred Shane’s vision so badly he could barely see the road.
“Pull over,” Ilya said suddenly.
“What?”
“Shane, pull over— I can’t—”
The panic in his voice hit instantly.
“Okay, okay— hold on.”
Shane swerved toward the nearest exit and pulled into a small rest area off the highway.
The second the car stopped, Ilya shoved the door open and stumbled out.
He barely made it a few feet before collapsing to his knees.
Shane was beside him almost immediately.
“Hey. Hey, look at me.” He cupped Ilya’s face with shaking hands. “Breathe with me. In… out… that’s it.”
Ilya’s breathing came in sharp, broken gasps.
Shane stayed there with him in the grass, breathing slowly until, little by little, Ilya calmed enough to stop shaking.
Tears streamed down both of their faces.
Then Ilya buried his face against Shane’s chest and whispered the words Shane would never forget.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
Shane wrapped his arms around him so tightly it almost hurt.
“Don’t say that,” he whispered desperately. “Please. You’re here right now. That’s all that matters.”
Those two years felt both impossibly long and terrifyingly short.
Now Shane stood outside their bedroom door with the scrapbook pressed against his chest, listening carefully for movement inside.
He was tired all the time these days.
But he never minded taking care of Ilya.
Not once.
Some nights he held him for hours while Ilya drifted to sleep against his chest, kissing his curls while the television flickered quietly in the background.
Ilya forgot a lot now.
Names.
Places.
Days.
Sometimes entire years.
But somehow, he never forgot Shane.
That promise had remained untouched by the disease, and Shane didn’t understand how. Every morning, Ilya looked for him first. Every night, he asked for him before falling asleep.
But the kids…
That was harder.
Some days Ilya remembered them instantly.
Other days, he looked at them like strangers.
Watching their faces fall apart every time nearly killed Shane.
“Shane?”
The sleepy voice from inside the bedroom pulled him from his thoughts.
He opened the door slowly.
Ilya was lying beneath the blankets with one eye barely open, curls flattened against the pillow.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Shane said softly as he crossed the room. “How’d you sleep?”
“Good. Still tired.”
Shane sat carefully beside him.
Ilya looked around the room suspiciously before lowering his voice.
“Did you finally kick that woman out?”
Shane blinked. “What woman?”
“The one trying to steal me away from you,” Ilya whispered dramatically. “Don’t worry. I told her I’m married.”
Shane burst out laughing.
The first time Nurse Haley had tried to help bathe him, Ilya had nearly started a war over it.
He’d yelled for Shane the entire time, horrified that some strange woman was apparently flirting with him while his husband did nothing about it.
In the end, Shane had been the one forced to give him the bath while Haley tried not to laugh herself unconscious in the hallway.
“Yeah,” Shane said through a grin. “I scared her off.”
“Good.”
Shane brushed a hand gently through Ilya’s curls.
“I brought you something today.”
Immediately, Ilya brightened.
“What is it? Did Yuna and David come over?”
The smile faded from Shane’s face.
His chest tightened painfully.
“No,” he answered carefully. “Not today.”
Years ago, after Yuna and David died, Shane had made the mistake of telling Ilya the truth when he asked where they were.
The grief had shattered him.
Forty-five minutes of sobbing, shaking, screaming.
Hours afterward spent asleep from exhaustion.
And when he woke up, he had forgotten all over again.
Shane could never do that to him another time.
“Oh.” Ilya nodded easily. “Okay. So what did you bring me?”
Shane lifted the scrapbook onto his lap.
“What’s that?” Ilya asked curiously.
“A scrapbook,” Shane said. “I thought maybe we could look through it together.”
Ilya’s face lit up immediately.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you shown me this before?”
The hesitation in his voice nearly broke Shane’s heart.
“No,” Shane said gently. “First time. Sofia actually reminded me about it.”
Ilya frowned slightly.
“Sofia?”
“Our oldest daughter,” Shane explained softly. “Dark hair. Best laugh in the world.”
Recognition didn’t come.
Still, Ilya nodded politely.
“Oh. Right. Of course.”
Shane smiled anyway.
“So,” he whispered, opening the cover carefully, “want to see our life together?”
Ilya looked at him with that same smile Shane had fallen in love with forty-three years ago.
“Yes,” he said softly. “I’d really like that.”
The cover was purple and white with silver glitter lettering across the front.
Long Live.
A motto Shane and Ilya had shared through every milestone of their lives together.
He couldn’t wait to share it with him.
Shane got up and moved around to his side of the bed before slipping beneath the covers beside Ilya. He propped the scrapbook on a pillow between them. Their hips brushed together, and Ilya smiled softly at the contact.
“Ready,” Ilya said, almost childlike.
“Okay.” Shane opened the cover carefully. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“Shane… um…”
Shane immediately closed the book again and looked at him nervously.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Ilya’s expression softened.
“You know I love you, right? So much.”
Shane’s chest tightened.
“I love you too,” he said quietly, unsure where this was going.
Ilya stared down at the scrapbook for a moment before speaking again.
“If I don’t remember anything in this book… please don’t be sad.” His voice was small now, fragile. “I really want to remember. I do. And just because I can’t remember something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean I didn’t love every moment we had together.”
Emotion clogged Shane’s throat instantly.
“My love,” he whispered, cutting him off gently, “I know that.”
He reached up and brushed curls back from Ilya’s forehead.
“This isn’t your fault. And somewhere in that beautiful brain of yours, those memories are still there.” Shane smiled weakly. “They made us who we are. I just want to relive them with you again.”
Ilya looked at him with that same smile that had made Shane fall in love with him over and over again.
“Let’s start, sweetheart,” he said softly.
Shane took a slow breath and opened the book to the first page.
Photos, receipts, ticket stubs, folded notes — decades of their lives preserved beneath plastic sleeves.
“Oh my God,” Shane laughed quietly. “I don’t even remember putting this in here.”
“What? This?” Ilya pointed toward an old plane ticket tucked carefully into the page.
Moscow to Saskatchewan. 2008.
“Whose was this? Mine?”
“Yeah.” Shane smiled instantly. “That was your ticket from Juniors. The first time you ever left Russia. You were seventeen and—”
“The first time I met you.”
The words came naturally out of Ilya’s mouth, almost like instinct.
Shane stared at him in shock.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, Ilya.”
The grin on Shane’s face was so wide it almost made Ilya laugh.
“Oh, come on,” Ilya teased softly. “Do you really think I’ve lost my mind that badly?”
Shane laughed through the sudden sting in his eyes.
“I know I don’t remember much,” Ilya continued, “but I’ll always remember the first time I saw those freckles.”
His hand came up slowly, thumb brushing gently across Shane’s cheek.
“I love these freckles.”
God.
Shane loved him so much.
For a moment they just sat there together while Ilya absentmindedly traced constellations across Shane’s skin.
Then Shane looked back down at the scrapbook.
“Here’s the Team Russia photo from that year.” He snorted suddenly. “And look at me in the background pretending to be happy for you.”
“Did we beat you?”
“Oh yeah.”
Shane pointed accusingly at him.
“But I got you back the next year.”
“Of course you did,” Ilya murmured with a grin.
Shane flipped the page.
“Look at us.” He covered his mouth dramatically. “We were babies.”
The draft-day photo showed them both at eighteen years old, standing only a few inches apart in oversized suits and nervous smiles.
“I can’t believe we were only eighteen here.” Shane looked over at him carefully. “Do you remember being drafted by Boston?”
“A little,” Ilya admitted slowly. “Just… flashes.”
Shane rubbed a comforting hand over his thigh.
“It’s okay if you don’t remember. That day was chaos.”
“You were drafted too?”
“Second overall.”
Ilya’s eyebrows lifted smugly.
“So I was better than you.”
“No,” Shane laughed, “just luckier that day.”
Ilya hummed proudly like he fully disagreed.
Then Shane suddenly froze.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
Shane carefully peeled an old hotel keycard from the plastic sleeve.
“This,” he said, laughing, “was my hotel room key from draft weekend.”
He held up another one.
“And this one was yours.”
Ilya blinked between them.
“So?”
“So both of these keys got us into the hotel gym that same night.”
The memory hit Shane instantly.
The smell of rubber mats. Sweat dripping down Ilya’s neck. The way his fingers brushed Shane’s while handing him a water bottle.
That night had changed everything.
“I bet you liked the view, yes” Ilya said, raising an eyebrow.
Shane barked out a laugh.
“Oh, absolutely.”
Ilya smiled, but it faded quickly into something more distant.
“It’s strange,” he admitted quietly. “Most memories of us feel like dreams now. Like they still exist somewhere inside me… but I can’t reach them anymore.”
Shane’s heart cracked a little.
“It was a dream for me too,” he whispered. “You were my dream come true.”
Ilya smiled softly before leaning over to kiss his cheek.
They continued flipping through pages until Ilya suddenly sat up straighter.
“Wait,” he said excitedly. “I remember this one!”
Shane looked down at the photo.
The CCM photoshoot before rookie season.
They were both laughing so hard in the picture.
“Yeah?” Shane asked hopefully.
“Yes.” Ilya wiggled his eyebrows. “That was the first time you and I…”
He made a vague gesture with his hands.
Shane burst out laughing.
“Yep. Shower. Room 1410. And you accidentally running into my mother in the elevator afterward.”
“WHAT?” Ilya slapped a hand over his mouth in horror.
Shane laughed harder.
“You were coming upstairs to see me while she was heading down to the lobby.”
“Oh my God,” Ilya groaned. “That’s horrifying.”
“You survived.”
“Barely, I bet!”
Then, softer:
“How is Yuna? Is she coming over soon?”
The question hit Shane like a knife every single time.
His mother had been gone four years now.
After her death, Shane used to find Ilya sitting by the lake at sunrise talking quietly to her like she was still there beside him.
When the dementia worsened, he started asking for her again almost daily.
“She’s good,” Shane answered carefully.
He kept his voice light.
Short.
Safe.
“Good.” Ilya smiled easily again. “Okay. Let’s get back to us falling in love.”
They continued flipping through the scrapbook together.
“So, this was the All-Star Game during our rookie season,” Shane said, pointing toward a photo of all the players lined up together on the ice before the game.
“Where am I?” Ilya asked immediately.
“Right…” Shane squinted at the photo dramatically. “There.”
He tapped a player wearing Team Europe colors near the back row.
“Oh.” Ilya tilted his head. “Why aren’t you standing beside me?”
Shane smiled softly.
“Well, we didn’t really talk much back then. We’d only met that one time before. We hadn’t exchanged numbers yet.”
“Not until that night,” Ilya said knowingly.
Shane laughed quietly.
“Yeah. Not until that night.” He glanced back at the picture. “We made awkward small talk on the bench during the game, and then afterward you skated past me and casually told me your room number like it was the most normal thing in the world.”
“What sport was this again?” Ilya asked hesitantly.
The question still hurt every time.
But Shane only smiled gently.
“Hockey,” he answered softly. “Professional hockey, actually.”
“Oh.” Ilya nodded slowly. “Wow. No wonder you fell in love with me. I was probably rich.”
Both of them burst out laughing.
Shane already missed that laugh before it was even gone.
“Obviously,” Shane teased. “That was the only reason.”
“So…” Ilya made a vague gesture with his hands. “That night, did we finally—”
He finished the sentence by making an extremely obscene hand motion.
Shane nearly choked laughing.
“No! We didn’t.”
“Really?”
“Scott Hunter was staying next door, and I was paranoid he’d hear us.”
“Who’s Scott Hunter?”
“Oh.” Shane grinned. “He played in New York for years. You hated him.”
“I did?”
“You called him old and a dinosaur constantly.” Shane laughed harder. “I don’t think he appreciated it.”
“That sounds like something I’d do.”
“It absolutely is.”
Shane turned another page.
“He was actually the first NHL player to come out publicly. Kissed his husband, Kip, on national television after winning the Cup.”
Ilya blinked.
“So we weren’t the first?”
“No,” Shane said softly. “But eventually we came out too. Well… sort of.”
He stopped himself there.
That story belonged later in the scrapbook.
“You know what,” Shane said instead, smiling at him, “we’ll get to that part.”
Ilya nodded eagerly, completely focused on every word Shane said.
Shane loved him so much.
They continued flipping through pages together, talking about award shows, rooftop kisses, road trips, and old teammates. Then there was a stretch of years with fewer memories.
Shane hesitated slightly before explaining.
“We texted a lot during those years. Mostly late at night.” He smiled faintly. “A lot of flirting. A lot of pretending we weren’t completely obsessed with each other.”
Ilya smiled.
“But we didn’t really see each other outside hockey. Only when our teams played.”
“Oh.”
The disappointment in Ilya’s voice was immediate.
Shane’s chest tightened.
To Ilya now, loving Shane felt as natural as breathing. The idea of willingly staying apart from him probably sounded impossible.
And honestly?
Shane hated those lost years too.
So much time wasted being afraid.
He turned the page carefully and found an old taxi receipt tucked beneath the plastic covering.
“Oh,” Shane said quietly. “Here we go.”
“What’s that?”
“This,” Shane held up the faded receipt, “was from the night we finally slept together.”
Ilya immediately grinned.
“Shane,” he said dramatically, “we have been together for…” He paused, trying to remember. “A very long time. You can say the word sex to me. I’m not a child.”
Shane laughed as Ilya leaned over and kissed the side of his neck.
Even now, those kisses could undo him completely.
“I stole this from your jacket pocket while we were waiting for your taxi,” Shane admitted. “You were heading back to your hotel.”
“And you kept a taxi receipt?”
“Yep, and you kissed me goodbye before you left,” Shane said softly.
That made Ilya still.
Shane traced the edge of the receipt with his thumb.
“That was the moment I knew I was falling in love with you.” His voice dropped quieter. “It wasn’t even a dramatic kiss. It was just… soft. Sweet. Completely you.”
Their eyes met.
Then Shane leaned in and kissed him.
Slow.
Familiar.
Perfect.
For a moment, Shane let himself pretend nothing was wrong.
That they still had decades ahead of them.
That this disease wasn’t slowly stealing pieces of the man beside him.
When they finally pulled apart, Ilya smiled against his mouth.
“Was it like that?”
“Exactly like that,” Shane whispered.