Work Text:
11:47 pm
Shane: Husband.
Shane: HUSBAND
Ilya: Yes, I am your husband. Hi.
Shane: hi my husband 😍 ur so handsome 🍆💦
Ilya: Yes. Very. How drunk are you?
Shane: whaat? hayden keeps buying beer because he misses me. And one was from J.J too. It would hav been so rude to say no
Shane: SO RUDE and im polite.
Ilya: How many rude beers have you avoided.
Shane: eiGht
Ilya: Eight.
Shane: ilya. im polite. I just said that. but can you come get me pleaaase? i miss my husband
Ilya: Ok. I am leaving now. Stay inside.
Shane: wear the grey sweatpants 🥵🥵
Ilya: No.
Shane: the grey oNESss. please. ilya im going insane in this bar thinkg bout yor dick in them
Ilya: Ten minutes.
Ilya put the phone down on the duvet and grinned up at the dark like the love-drunk idiot he was. Beside him, he saw Anya open one eye in the lamplight, and she let out a yawn that was far too loud for her little body.
"Eight beers," Ilya told her. "He will be a big menace."
Anya's tail moved once, which he chose to read as amusement.
He sat up and rolled his shoulders once. Truthfully, he wasn't even close to falling asleep yet. The house was still foreign enough to him that it made sounds he wasn't used to yet. The bed was far too big to only have one person and one very cute dog lying in it. It was also the cold kind of night that made the thought of not sleeping alone so much more appealing. Really, there was a whole list of reasons why he couldn't sleep. But the biggest reason, the only one that really mattered, was that Shane was out and Ilya wanted to go and get him.
Shane being out at all was new, but it was something that Ilya was glad happened these days. Hayden had come in from Montreal for the weekend, and Montreal was still complicated and still a heavy thing that sat in Shane's chest. A whole decade of successes and history had been changed overnight, and Hayden was one of the only pieces which had survived. They'd come up together their first season, before either of them was anyone, and the friendship had survived all of it since. The trade to Ottawa. The new room, the new sweater with the new crest, learning a whole new locker room at his age. The wedding. Not much survived all that. But Hayden had. So Ilya was glad he was out with his friend. And glad, more simply, that eight beers meant cuddly Shane, and the night was freezing, and the bed was too big.
Ilya gently got out of bed so he wouldn't disturb Anya, and in the lamplight he found the grey sweatpants Shane had requested in the laundry basket. He pulled them out, looked at them a moment, and put them on with the full knowledge that Shane was more than likely going to have his hands inside of them within the hour. Only if he was sober enough to know what was going on, and to know that they could stop at any time.
"Keep the bed warm," he told Anya, pulling his puffer on over everything. "Both sides. It is a big job, but I believe in you."
She let out a huff and stretched out across the bed.
"Good girl."
The streets were empty the way Ottawa only got after midnight in deep winter. All salt white and orange lit and fresh bruise blue. He drove with his Spotify playlist low, listening to the 'Shane approved' music they had curated together on the first night in their new house, his breath clouding the windscreen. It was coming out steady and strong, the breath of a man going to reclaim something that belonged to him. Monks sat on its corner with the windows glowing gold. It was his local now since the move, the place he and the rest of the Centaurs went to when they wanted to be left alone, and they mostly were. They knew all of the bartenders and their back booth that had been dubbed 'the stable' by the staff. He also knew that for the low price of a signed pint glass there were rooms upstairs that weren't usually available to the public for short stays. They were the only reason he wasn't currently worrying about how Hayden Pike intended to get home, because Hayden Pike definitely wasn't going to be the first guest they had stay over.
He saw two figures before he'd even pulled into the parking lot. He recognised one of them immediately. That ass and those thighs were burned into his memory. Two shapes under the streetlight in the carpark, barely holding each other upright. A mess of limbs, arms over shoulder, swaying against the cold like a tent in a storm. Even through the closed windows and the wind, he heard that they were also doing something that resembled singing. Terribly.
"Of course," he told the steering wheel. "Not only do they not stay inside, they also sound like dying cats."
Ilya rolled into a parking spot and sat a moment with the engine running. He tried squinting through the glass, as if that would help him make out the song. It did not help, and it was not possible. Whatever it had been when it left the singer, it had since been butchered beyond recognition by Hayden and Shane. Both of their heads were tipped back, silver breath caught in the winter night streaming from their mouths. Neither man was making sounds close to song lyrics; however, they were fully committed to the bit. The sounds coming out of Shane's mouth were closer to the sounds he only made with Ilya than to anything musical. Hayden was also making sounds, and Ilya desperately hoped that they weren't his sex sounds. Because, if they were, poor Jackie. He killed the engine and got out. The thunk of the closing door gave him away. Two heads turned with the almost comedically slow delay of the very drunk, and then Shane's whole face did the thing. The lighting up thing. The thing Ilya had been collecting for years and still wasn't tired of. Shane threw both arms in the air like he'd scored the winning goal in the finals.
"THERE'S MY FUCKING HUSBANNNNNNNDDDDD!"
"Christ," Ilya muttered, but the grin he couldn't fight was already stretching itself across his lips.
They came at him together and Ilya didn't even try. There was no stopping it. It was less a hug and more of a tackle with love jammed into it. Shane hit him first, and Ilya felt his arms wrap around his neck, his cold nose slot in under his jaw, and for a moment Ilya felt whole. Then Hayden arrived a half second later and simply joined, one arm around Ilya's shoulders, the other around Shane, the three of them locked in a clumsy triangle that smelled of beer and poor decision making.
"You came," Shane said into his neck, amazed, as if Ilya had swum across an ocean and not simply driven ten minutes down a few empty roads.
"Yes," Ilya replied. "You asked me to."
Shane let out a content little mutter as he snuggled further into him.
"Hayden," Ilya said, over the top of Shane's head. "You are also hugging me."
"Yep," said Hayden, still not stopping. "Deal with it, Ilya."
This was new. Hayden Pike, sober, spoke to Ilya mostly through gritted teeth and always had a scowl fixed on his face. A nod across a table, an eyebrow at Christmas, and a half smile had been some of the politest things he had ever given him. However, Hayden Pike, drunk, was apparently a hugger.
Ilya stood very still and began to file every detail away in his 'Dirt on Hayden Pike' folder for later.
"Okay. Enough," Ilya said. He patted them each once, hard enough to get their attention. "Shane. Your coat is open and you have lost your scarf. You will catch a cold. Car. Now."
Shane pulled back just far enough to look at him with his beautiful brown and currently very betrayed eyes. "But. We were singing."
"That was not singing. That was war crime."
"Booooooooooooo," Hayden called out. It was loud enough that it bounced around the nearly empty car park before the wind caught it and blew it over the city.
"I called my husband, but it looks like the fun police came instead," Shane snickered, as he turned towards Hayden.
"Man, so lame," Hayden agreed, swaying slightly as he squinted his eyes. "We were fuckin' killing that, Shane." He then peered at Ilya with sudden sincerity and gripped his shoulder. "Hey. Hey. Centaurs are at the top of the standings. Top of the whole league. First time! And this guy." He shook Ilya's shoulder. "The big fuckin' captain hey, Shane."
"The best," Shane said, raising an invisible glass in a toast to Ilya's captaincy.
"Is the whole team," Ilya said. "Not me. Everyone."
The two of them went quiet for a second, swaying, and then Hayden laughed.
"Ohhhh. He's so fuckin' humble," Hayden wheezed, far too delighted at his very lame, very Hayden joke. "Marriage has changed him, ey boys?" he continued, gesturing wildly around him at the empty car park.
"Yes," Ilya said, dryly. "I am a new man. Shane, get in the car."
Shane, ignoring him completely, noticed his own shoelace was untied. Ilya watched him bend to fix it and very nearly faceplant in the snow. He managed to catch him by the back of the coat one handed while Shane did the lace with the fierce focus that he usually saved for the ice.
"Fuck," Hayden said, steadying himself. "That was so smooth, Ilya. And look, Shane fucking killed it."
"Yeah I did," Shane said, still facing the ground, his speech somehow having become more slurred in the span of five seconds.
Ilya looked at the two of them. One, his beautiful husband and of the best players in the league, really, of their generation, and the other, one Hayden Pike. Neither of them currently had the capacity to walk in a straight line. And then he had a sudden, vivid picture of this exact scene, except the two incapable things around him were smaller, stickier, somehow more coherent, and legally his forever.
I’m definitely not ready, he thought, with great peace surging from his body. Not yet. Not for years. Is not logical. Anya is plenty… and this idiot is plenty too, especially when he is drunk, he thought fondly, gently helping Shane to his feet.
"Hayden, I need to get Shane home now," Ilya said, as he felt Shane wrap himself around his arm again, somehow tighter than before. "Are you okay to get upstairs?"
Hayden fumbled a set of keys out of his pocket and pointed straight up with his free hand. "Fuck yeah I am. They've got rooms here, man. It's fuckin' sweet."
"I did know that. Can you manage the stairs, or do I carry you?"
Hayden turned, slowly, and pointed at him. It was a long and swaying and sincere point that nearly made Ilya burst out laughing. "Ilya," he said, his tone the most serious it had been since Ilya had arrived. "I love you too. But not like that. And like, not as much as I love Shane. But you're… okay."
None of that was even remotely close to an answer to what Ilya had said.
Hayden stumbled forward and hugged Shane goodnight, which took a while and involved a lot of mumbling. Ilya caught best guy and text me when you're home. And then, with the casual devastation that he will know once he’s sober again, Hayden turned and hugged Ilya goodnight too. Properly. Both arms. A pat on the back.
Ilya stood in the cold with Hayden Pike's chin on his shoulder and grinned so hard it hurt, over the man's back, at nothing, at the streetlight, at the gift of it. Years of merely tolerating his existence, and now it was this. Sober Hayden was going to want to leave the country. Sober Hayden was going to have to sit across a table from a man with this in the bank at the very next Pikes family dinner. Sober Hayden was hopefully going to loosen up a bit more now.
"Yes, yes," Ilya said, patting his back. "I love you too, Hayden. Please tell me again at the next dinner. Loudly. In front of your wife and children."
"I already said you were okay," Hayden said, with the heavy sorrow of a man confessing something. "Don't make me repeat it, Ilya. And don't fuckin' tell anyone I said it."
"I am live on Instagram right now, Hayden."
Hayden flexed his arms and grunted loudly as he walked away from them, before spinning in a shape that barely resembled a circle, which caused him to stumble slightly. Ilya covered his mouth with his spare hand while they watched him attempt to work the door to the stairwell. It was a brief and tense and serious negotiation between Hayden, the door handle, and the concept of physics. Then the door swung inward, and he was inside.
"Heyyyyy. He did it," Shane called out proudly as he nuzzled closer into Ilya.
"Is truly a miracle of our time," Ilya said as he went to escort him to the passenger seat.
Just as Ilya's hand was going towards the door handle, Shane, with a sudden burst of drunken strength and zero warning, tugged Ilya's arm so he was facing slightly towards him. Shane's hand went flat on Ilya's chest, and he walked him backward two steps, and pinned him against the side of the car, up against the cold metal by the passenger door.
Then he kissed him.
Ilya flinched. It was from pure reflex. The ten years of hiding their secret ran as deep as any other instinct. Shane's hand at the back of his neck, the open air, Shane's tongue gently pushing its way into his mouth. Every alarm he had in his body went off at once, the way they always had.
Not here.
Someone will see.
Pull back.
Smile, friendly distance, the dance they had done for a decade. All so he could love this man in private. And then his brain caught up to his life. Now, there was just his husband, drunk and warm and sure, with a ring on his finger that matched the one on Ilya's, kissing him stupid in a parking lot because he could. Because they were married. Because this, this exact ordinary impossible thing, two men kissing against a car in the cold with nothing to hide, was the whole point. The long secret decade had been a tunnel, and this was the other end of it, and he was allowed to stand here.
So he let himself have it, just for a moment.
He stopped holding his breath and kissed Shane back, one hand coming up into his hair, the other splaying warm at his lower back, pulling him in, and Shane made a pleased sound against his mouth and pressed closer. It was cold and it was public and it was perfect, and some quiet part of Ilya thought, I could get used to this. Fuck, I am going to spend the rest of my life doing this. He knew he had to stop. In a second. Just one more moment against Shane's perfect lips…
"OH SHIT."
Ilya jerked his head back and Shane let out a huff in protest.
A group of men had come around the corner from the bar, four of them, breath fogging, jackets open, and one had stopped dead.
"Yo. Boys. BOYS. Yo it's Ilya and Shane Hollander-Rozanov. Right fuckin' there. From the Centaurs!"
Ilya went still. The voice was too loud.
Years of waiting for exactly this, the wrong person at the wrong moment, the whole thing he'd flinched against a breath ago.
"Heyyyy," Shane said, beaming back at them. There was clearly not a thought going through that beautiful head of his. "Hi, yeah. It's us."
"Shane," Ilya hissed.
"They seem nice…" Shane said as he poked Ilya in the stomach.
"Stop," Ilya warned.
He moved in front of Shane and clenched his jaw, ready for what he expected was four arseholes looking for a fight. As they moved properly into the light being cast by the streetlamp, Ilya huffed a breath of laughter. All four of them were beaming back at him and Shane.
"Heyyy. Holy shit, man, sorry, for interrupting. We're not being weird," one of them said, all in a rush with his hands up. "But yo. Man. We're such big fans. Fuckin' huge fans. Both of you."
"Congrats, on the, you know, on getting married and everything," another chimed in, "and the trade too, Shane. It's awesome. That's sick ey buds? Go Centaurs!"
"Top of the standings, playing together AND married," another one said, and Ilya heard the adoration in the man's voice. "You're fuckin living the dream, buds."
"Thank you," Ilya said, slowly. He realised that he was still braced for the thing under it as the men stepped closer to him. But there was nothing under it. There were just four large Canadian men in front of him, with scruffy beards and big smiles and thick eyebrows, dressed in different coloured flannel, who had drunk a lot of beer and were thrilled for him and Shane.
"Budssss. Look how fuckin' ripped Ilya is up close. Holyyyyy," one said as he grabbed Ilya's bicep through his jacket.
Ilya heard a soft, undeniable grumble of annoyance from behind him. He bit his lip to stifle the laugh that was threatening to burst through.
"Jacob, don't be fuckin' weird," another said, punching the man hard in his shoulder. "It's like, not cool to touch someone without asking man."
"Oh, yeah. Sorry, sorry," Jacob muttered as he quickly withdrew his hand. "My bad."
"Hey," the one who had just punched Jacob said, clapping Ilya on the shoulder, "we're doing a barbecue at my house over there tomorrow." He gestured vaguely over his shoulder, as if that settled the location. "Like a, just a thing, some of the boys. Tunes. Girlfriends. Salmon too. Guy caught it." He gently punched the man in the yellow flannel jacket on the shoulder, who sheepishly smiled at Ilya. "You two should come. Seriously. Bring your dog, Ilya. You do have a dog, don't you?"
"We have a dog," Shane said, with enormous feeling, gripping Ilya's sleeve. "Ilya, they're having a barbecue and we can bring Anya."
"I heard."
"So, are we going to the barbecue?"
"We do not know these men, Shane. We do not know where it is. We have no address."
"East, man," the man named Guy said helpfully, pointing in the opposite direction to the one the other man had.
"I love salmonnn," Shane said, his voice trailing off.
The four men cheered, clearly taking this as a yes.
"Sick. See you tomorrow then. Get home safe, eh? Fuckin' legends, both of you," Jacob said as he held out his fist for Ilya. Ilya slowly moved a closed fist towards Jacob, who enthusiastically bumped his own fist against Ilya's before he pulled it back and made an exploding sound effect. The rest of the men cheered again. One waved at Shane, and Ilya turned his head to see him wave back so hard he nearly lost his footing, and then they wandered off down the street and one of them started singing and the others joined and it faded around the corner into the cold.
Ilya stood there a second in a daze, slightly recalibrating ten years of fear in real time.
"Best night ever since you arrived," Shane sighed, before his chin found Ilya's shoulder again.
"We have been invited to a barbecue by four men whose names we do not know, at a location that is only 'east,'" Ilya said. "We cannot go to this barbecue even if we wanted to."
"Ilya, we are TOTALLY going to the barbecue. They have salmon."
"Get in the car, Shane."
He got an arm around him, steered him back to the passenger door, and posted him gently into the seat, Shane beaming up at him the whole way down like he'd been handed the moon.
Shane was quiet as they pulled out of the carpark. Then his hand crept into his coat pocket, and it came out with his phone. Ilya heard his thumbs press clumsily against the screen for a moment before the scenarios of what he could be doing started to fill his head.
"Shane. What are you doing?"
"Posting on Instagram," Shane replied. He angled the screen away, guarding it, the light from the screen catching his grin. "Telling every-fucking-one. That my husband. The captain of the Centaurs. The captain of the fun police. Is not letting me go to a barbecue tomorrow. The fans deserve to know, Ilya."
Ilya took one hand off the wheel, reached over without even looking, and plucked the phone out of his grip. Shane's reflexes, eight beers deep, arrived far too late, and Ilya heard the gentle pat of skin against skin.
"Hey… That's mine," Shane said, the faintest whine creeping into his voice.
And because the car was warm and the street was empty and ten years of being careful had earned him exactly this kind of stupidity, Ilya pulled the waistband of his sweatpants open and wedged the phone straight down the front of them. Shane made a sound of absolute betrayal as the waistband bounced back against Ilya's skin.
"ILYA."
"You can get it out," Ilya said mildly, his full attention back on the road now, "when we are home and the car is parked. And only if you are quiet."
Shane's mouth shut so fast his teeth clicked.
"Good," Ilya said.
Shane lasted two minutes. It ended, the way trouble usually did, with Shane going still in the dangerous way, the thinking way, the one with the hockey brain. Ilya clocked it at a red light as he glanced over, and something in his stomach lurched.
"No," Ilya said.
"You don't even know…"
"I know the face. The face means an idea. It is past midnight. No ideas. No…"
"I'm gonna sit in your lap," Shane announced, cutting him off.
Ilya looked at him. Looked at the road. Looked at him again.
The light turned green, but Ilya didn't put his foot down.
"No. I am driving, Shane."
"That's the best part." Shane was already fighting his seatbelt with the doomed effort of a fly in a web. "You drive. I sit. We both fit. That's a whole free seat we're not using. It's wasteful, Ilya."
"Shane. Sweetheart," Ilya said, as he reached over and pinned the seatbelt buckle flat without taking his eyes off the road. With the threat contained, he gently put his foot down on the accelerator. "We are in a moving car. On Bank Street. I am not having you in my lap. You are very big. Two-hundred pounds of muscle, remember?"
"I'll be small."
"Shane. You cannot just be small. You are a very cute five eleven, but that is not small enough."
Ilya suddenly felt Shane gently smacking his palm against his fingers.
"Shane," Ilya warned.
"I'll be still. I'll curl into a ball. Wait, I'll do pose forty-five."
"Shane, no. Wait, what is pose forty-five?"
"Ilyaaaa… Please?" Shane whined.
Ilya broke into a broad and uncontrollable smile. Half from how ridiculous this whole thing had turned into, and half from how fucking adorable Shane was being right now.
"You are not small because you can do whatever the fuck pose forty-five is. You are a starting centre. And you are sitting in your own seat, which is what the police, the government of Canada, and I, your husband, all want very much."
Another short silence passed between them before Shane stopped tapping Ilya's fingers with his palm. Ilya did not mistake it for a win.
"So… it's only okay when you do it to me, huh?" Shane said, his voice full of indignation.
And there it was.
Ilya didn't take his eyes off the road, but he already knew Shane was scowling at him. His grin stretched further across his face.
"Shane, that was…"
"No. Ilya. You did. New Year's Eve. You got drunk on Harris' cider and THEN you…" Shane let out a burp and then continued as if it hadn't happened. "You fuckin' did the thing into my lap and you said," Shane's voice lilted into a surprisingly good impression of Ilya despite how drunk he was, "Drive, Shane Hollander-Rozanov. I am your captain now and your husband. I am law." His voice dropped back into its own register. "And I let you. Because I love you. Do you love ME, Ilya?"
"Shane. Shane," Ilya started, as he took his hand off the seatbelt buckle to make the point with it. "The car was parked. We did not move one inch. The keys were not even in the ignition. I was in your lap maybe thirty seconds, and you know how I know?"
Shane clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and Ilya took that as a yes, my brilliant and sexy husband, of course I know, but tell me anyway.
"Because Barrett opened the door," Ilya continued. "He took me off you by the back of my shirt like an animal and told me to stop being an ass in front of the wives."
"But you still got to do it and now I suddenly can't," Shane muttered.
"It happened parked, Shane. The important part of the story is the car was not moving," Ilya said, his voice now trembling with incredulity. "You once watched eleven hours of tape to find one bad change. Where is that brain? Use that brain now, Shane."
"Oh. OH. Fuckin' okay."
There was a brief pause before Ilya heard Shane clap his hands together.
"Okay. So, what if…" Shane said, and Ilya saw out of the corner of his eye both of Shane's hands go up, negotiating now. He stole a quick glance and saw that Shane's eyes were very bright and very glassy. "What if you go really slow? Zamboni slow."
"No."
"Parade slow?"
"No."
"What if I face forward so it's basically just me driving, with extra…"
"That is worse. So much worse. Do you hear the words?"
"What if…"
"Shane."
"Ilyaaa… I just fucking wanna be really close to you," Shane said, and his voice cracked clean in half at the end. Ilya glanced over at him again.
Oh no.
The shine in his eyes tipped over into something genuinely near tears. Not sobbing. Worse than sobbing. Welling. Shane's bottom lip had gone soft and the man he loved appeared truly and deeply broken by the rules of common sense and car seating.
"Oh no," Ilya said, this time out loud. "Shane, do not be sad. We are nearly home."
"But," Shane started, "you're all the way over there and I'm here." The words had come out wet, and Ilya felt Shane gesturing at the vast distance of the centre console. The whole distance was perhaps thirty centimetres, at most.
"And, and," he continued, the words still wet, "I… didn't see you for hours, and you came out in the cold to get me, and you wore the sweatpants, and then you kissed me and then we got told about salmon… and I just…" Shane's breath hitched, "I love you so much and you're so far away."
And there it was. It was the beautiful thing about his husband, Shane Hollander-Rozanov.
The rest of the world got the former captain and brilliant hockey player. The careful interviews. The perfect changes. The man who had been in one fight on ice in his entire career and never once given a reporter an inch in over eleven years. The whole country thought he was made of granite and good posture. Sober, he was the most controlled man Ilya had ever met. Sober, he was somehow so strong and smart and brilliant. And Ilya got this. He got the version with eight beers in him, with tears in his eyes and a heart so full of love it sometimes hurt, because this small distance was too far from his husband. This was the version nobody else had ever seen or ever would. After all the years of secrets, the wedding, the house with both their names on the deed, it was still the sight of drunk Shane, heartbroken over a seatbelt and a gap so small that anyone outside the car would have thought them crazy, that undid him completely.
He fell in love with him all over again right there at the lights on Bank Street.
Hopelessly and simply and intoxicatingly, for maybe the ten thousandth time. And he managed, just, not to drive into anything because of it.
"I know," Ilya said, his voice gentle now as he reached over to wrap his hand around the back of Shane's neck, stroking his thumb behind his ear. "Listen. So soon, in about eight minutes, we are home. Then I will be so close to you. You will say, Ilya, please, I need one centimetre, and I will say no. This is my life now. I quit hockey to become professional pillow for you. Promise."
Shane sniffled as he leaned into the hand.
He was quiet almost a full minute before he crossed his arms, slumped against the window, and muttered, "Fun police."
"Yes."
"So lame. I'm telling the guys about it tomorrow at the barbecue."
"Yes. I am lamest. Very famous for it. But I still have your phone."
Shane made an outraged noise, clearly remembering, and then he sighed, because there was nothing to be done about it. By the time they turned onto their street he had crept as far across the console as the belt allowed, his head tipped onto Ilya's shoulder and one hand wrapped around Ilya's forearm.
The house came up on the left with the porch light on, because coming home at night to a lit house was new and exciting for both of them. Neither had said out loud yet how much they liked it, but the grins they shot each other every time they pulled in said enough, and tonight was no different. Their house. Two months in, and all the words that came with it still hadn't lost the feeling.
Their driveway. Their garden beds. Their mortgage with both of their names on it.
Hollander first, because Shane had won the coin toss and would never let it go.
Ilya pulled in and killed the engine. The cold was pressing at the glass already. Shane had gone quiet again, but it was a different quiet now, sitting up a little, watching Ilya in the dark with something soft and expectant in his face. Ilya looked back at him. The porch light caught the line of his jaw, the flush still high across his face, the smattering of freckles across his face he was still obsessed with and the scowl that had been lines of stubbornness a minute ago was something else now.
Eight minutes. Ilya had promised him. They had made it home in seven.
Ilya unbuckled his own seatbelt, then fished Shane's phone out of his sweatpants and put it on the dashboard. He reached down beside the seat, found the lever, and dropped the backrest with a long mechanical whirr until he was lying nearly flat. He turned his head and saw that Shane was staring at him, mouth slightly open. Ilya grinned and slowly patted his crotch once. Twice.
"Car is now parked, Shane."
The change in Shane was instant. His whole face lit up like a stadium during the finals, and then he was coming over the console with all the grace of a baby giraffe on a frozen pond. His knee was in the cupholder. An elbow then bashed into Ilya's ribs. Shane’s head hit the roof, then the rear-view mirror, which Ilya hoped would stay knocked askew forever, so he could always remember this night. At one point Shane's hip caught the wheel, and the horn gave a short, scandalised honk into the sleeping street, and they both froze, wide-eyed, as a light came on in the new neighbours' upstairs window and then, thank fuck, went off again.
"Smooth," Ilya whispered.
"Shut up," Shane whispered back, beaming down at Ilya, as he finished arriving. His knees were squashed on either side of Ilya's hips, while he began settling down into his lap with a slow exhale. All warm and sexy and beautiful, with the smell of winter and bar on his skin and just him. He leaned down and kissed Ilya slowly, with none of the clumsiness of a minute ago. His cold hands framed Ilya's jaw and then slid back into his hair, tilting his head where he wanted it, as he pressed kisses onto Ilya's mouth, unhurried and certain, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it. Ilya's hands found the backs of Shane thighs and gripped, and Shane made a low growling noise and rolled harder into him. The slow deliberate drag of his hips that had nothing drunk in it at all made Ilya's breath catch before it went out of him in a rush. He arched up, and his fingers dug in harder against Shane's flesh. Shane chased the movement, pressing him down into the reclined seat, mouth going to his jaw, the hinge of it, the side of his throat, teeth catching there light enough to make Ilya's whole body go tight and want.
"Shane," Ilya managed.
It came out wrecked, nothing like fun police, nothing like in control.
"Mm."
Ilya felt Shane smiling against his neck before he leaned back and looked down at him. Shane started rolling his hips again, slower, watching what it did to Ilya. His cold fingers had found the collar of Ilya's coat and were working under it, along his collarbone, and Ilya was getting genuinely, embarrassingly close to not caring at all where they were, and that was the thought that stopped him. Where they were.
Before the brain he rarely used when he had Shane on top of him finally started making sense. The lit street. The neighbours' window that had just gone dark. The wide front seat of a car in an open driveway in a quiet suburb that felt impossibly small right now. The two of them tangled up and visible to anyone who happened to glance out at the wrong moment. Their car. Their own street. Their names on the deed, right there, and still the old alarm, never quite gone.
"Okay," Ilya breathed, getting a hand flat against Shane's chest, gently easing him back an inch.
Shane pulled back, blinking, lips swollen, hair messy, looking down at him with such open dazed want that Ilya nearly said fuck it.
"We have a house," Ilya said, as a little desperate laugh left him. "Right there. With a bed Anya has kept warm. And a door. And no windows for the neighbours."
Shane looked at the house, then looked back at Ilya, sprawled and hopeless and wrecked beneath him. Then Ilya saw Shane's brain catch up as he looked at the steering wheel digging into his own back, and the gearstick that had been a genuine danger to both of them for several minutes, and the rear-view mirror now pointing uselessly at the roof.
"This isn't a good spot to make out," Shane admitted.
"Is the worst place. My leg has been asleep since Bank Street."
"The handbrake is nearly in me."
"I know."
And then Shane started to laugh. Helpless, beautiful, free. His forehead dropped to Ilya's shoulder and Ilya wrapped both arms around his back and laughed too, the two of them folded up impossibly in the front seat of a parked car, breathless, cold-nosed, half-undone, in front of the house they owned together. It was uncomfortable. It was something that was only sexy in theory. But it was, Ilya thought, with Shane warm and shaking with laughter against his chest and the porch light gold through the windshield, completely perfect. One of those moments that married life would not always be, but would sometimes, on cold nights, in parked cars, be exactly. And those ones, he was fairly sure, were worth all the ordinary rest of it.
"Come on," he said into Shane's hair, eventually, when he could breathe. "Husband. Hollander-Rozanov. Inside. Before we both freeze or the neighbours call police."
"Carry me," Shane muttered.
"No."
"Carry me, fun police."
"Fun police does not lift drunk hockey players."
They went inside, eventually. Only after much protesting from Shane and a great deal of awkward shifting. Ilya saw that Anya had not kept either side of the bed warm when they entered their room. Instead, she had retreated to her basket, clearly wanting no part of whatever state Shane was going to be in. Ilya undressed Shane slowly, pressing gentle kisses to skin and muscle as it was exposed, while Shane softly sighed, gripping Ilya's hair and gently pushing him against himself. Ilya somehow managed to work stiff legs out of tight jeans and socks off cold feet before he looked up at Shane and he saw the blissed expression spread across his face. These were the moments Ilya loved best, this softness, this small careful tending, because they came so rarely. Not because the relationship wanted for love, but because Shane so rarely needed looking after. To be allowed to do it was its own quiet gift. When Shane was down to his briefs, Ilya scooped him up, turned, and walked them backward until they tipped onto the bed together, Shane landing on his chest. Ilya shifted up until his head found the pillows, and Shane followed, burrowing into the nook of his neck that only Shane had ever found. He dragged the blanket clumsily over them both, and they settled.
"Ilya," Shane muttered into his neck.
"Mm?"
"You're my husband."
"I am. All night. Every night." Ilya pressed a kiss to his hair. "Go to sleep."
Shane was gone almost before the words landed, heavy and warm and breathing slow against Ilya's throat. A moment later there was a soft thump at the foot of the bed, and the mattress dipped, and Anya picked her way up over their feet now that the worst of the night had passed, turning twice before she flattened herself across both their ankles. Ilya sunk into the moment. The whole house quiet, the cold shut outside the door, Shane's weight on his chest and the dog on his feet and both their names on the deed. Everyone home. Everything where it was meant to be. The bed that had felt too big an hour ago held all three of them now, and it was, at last, exactly the right size. Ilya let his eyes drift closed and let himself think about tomorrow. Shane would wake up wrecked, eight beers' worth of regret and certain he was dying. Ilya would not let him out of the bed for a single second of it. The blinds would stay drawn against the hard white snow-light, the heat turned up, with Shane kept tucked warm against his chest for as long as he wanted to stay there. Somewhere in the grey afternoon there would be a long hot shower, Shane going limp under the water and his touch while Ilya washed his hair and listened to him complain about his own head. And if Ilya was very lucky, the rarest miracle of the whole year might occur, and Shane might even want something greasy. Then Ilya would pull the grey sweatpants back on and drive to the far side of the city in the cold to fetch it, and feel, the entire way there and the entire way back, like the luckiest man who had ever lived.
There was nowhere either of them had to be tomorrow. No one left to hide from, no careful distance left to keep, and a whole slow Sunday waiting on the other side of the dark. Ilya pulled his husband a fraction closer, pressed one last kiss into his hair, and let the warm quiet of their house take him slowly as well.