Work Text:
#1.
“You are too cruel to me, любимыйlyubimyy!”
Bood nudges Shane’s side. “What’s that one mean?”
Shane looks up from the cones he’s collecting — his alloted half, if Ilya would behave and get to work on the other side of the rink instead of being a little annoying shit about it — and over to his teammate. “Sorry, what?”
“Li-you-bi-mi,” Bood enunciates, lobbing the net of pucks over the boards. “What Rozy just called you.”
“Oh,” Shane feels himself blushing and hopes the helmet hides at least a little of it. “It’s, um, Russian.”
“No shit, dude. And don’t give me that ‘I don’t know what he’s saying’-BS because I’ve seen you understand full sentences from him. He says this to you all the time.” Bood’s eyes widen. “Wait, shit, is it really dirty?”
He glances over to Ilya, who is now dutifully collecting cones. “It’s not dirty,” Shane laughs.
“So what’s the hangup, then?”
Shane doesn’t know how to say it’s kind of embarrassing. He doesn’t know why it’s embarrassing. Or maybe that’s not it. Maybe it feels secretive. A tiny bit of privacy even when their relationship is public, and plausible deniability for PDA at work. “It’s… kinda hard to translate.” He continues before Bood can call him on that, “it sounds more old-fashioned in English. Or, it’s fine in Russian, more like. It means my beloved. Or darling, kind of. Russian’s hard to translate directly sometimes.”
“Man. That’s some Bridgerton shit.”
“You watched Bridgerton?”
Bood punches him in the arm. “Cassie got me hooked on it. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”
“Try what?” Ilya slides up with the stack of cones in hand. “Shane is very adventurous. He says he will not but then he—”
“I’ll fucking end you,” Shane says.
“That’s no way to talk to your beloved!” Bood chirps. Ilya blinks and turns to Bood, clearly confused.
“I translated,” Shane explains. Ilya slides a bit closer and presses their arms together, another bit of plausibly-deniable PDA that he’s taken to since Shane transferred to the Centaurs. Ilya is always professional, at Shane’s behest, but he finds ways of reassuring Shane and being physically present regardless. And it isn’t like they have to pretend they don’t know each other. They’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.
“At first I didn’t believe you when Hazy kept insisting you’re a softie,” Bood muses, “but this is pretty damning evidence, cap.”
“Slander, you are slandering me, Hollander. Trying to ruin my reputation and steal my C. Zane, my beautiful A, do not let him fool you. He does not know Russian, not really. He is only pretending.”
“Your guy’s, like, crazy smart, Rozy. I’m not falling for that, he’s not gonna gaslight me.”
“What is gaslight?”
“Why the fuck are you talking about gaslighting?” Troy slides up to the conversation, pushing a single puck ahead of him. He bends down to pick it up and deposit it in the net over the boards. “You idiots probably even aren’t using it right.”
Shane sighs. “Ilya is trying to convince Bood I lied to him about a Russian word.”
Ilya tugs on the sleeve of Shane’s jersey like he’s a little kid begging his Mom for ice cream. “Shane, любимыйlyubimyy, what is gaslight?”
He looks to Barrett and Bood, trying to communicate to them just how bad of an idea it would be to give Ilya this word. Luckily, Bood finds something else to pounce on. “There it is again! You’re getting fuckin’ mushy!”
“No, is not true. Shane is gaslighting you.”
Ilya looks to Shane, then, grinning proudly. Did I do it right? Shane angles his skates and lets his weight pull him just a few inches away from Ilya as punishment. Ilya pouts. “Give it up, Rozanov,” Shane mutters. “Are we all cleaned up?”
“As much as Rozy’s ever clean,” Troy says over his shoulder as he skates to the gate. Ilya peels away from Shane’s side to chase Troy all the way back to the changing room, both of them laughing as they go. Shane sighs and picks up the equipment to carry it back to where it’s supposed to be.
Bood grabs whatever Shane can’t keep a hold of. “So, what, he just walks around calling you my beloved on the reg’?”
“I mean,” Shane watches his husband swerve around the corner with the gait of a toddler from the guards on his skates, “I guess? Like I said, it’s kind of weird to translate. You don’t call your wife any pet names?”
He gets a little thrill down his spine from saying pet name out loud, still not entirely used to being able to discuss these kinds of domesticities out loud even after months since the wedding. Ilya is his husband just the same as Cassie is Bood’s wife, and calling each other pet names is just something you do.
“Yeah, but I call her, like, babe. Roz is out here talking to you like it’s the eighteen-hundreds. You’re his victorian war wife, Hollywood.”
“Fuck off. Not my problem Ilya’s a better husband than you.”
“Oh!” Bood laughs, “He’s got claws today. Rozy, come get your man!”
“Oh shut up,” Shane laughs. “Don’t start it, he’ll be annoying as fuck all day if you do. More than usual,” he amends when he sees Bood gearing up to chirp him about it.
Bood bumps their shoulders together. “Nah, but seriously, though. It’s sweet.” He gestures vaguely to the locker rooms. “He’s always been a good dude, but we didn’t really get to see this side of him. Obviously not at practice, but not at barbeques or anything. It’s nice to see him happy, y’know? Smitten’s a good look on Cap.”
Shane feels a smile tug at his lips. “Yeah. Yeah, it really is.”
#2
The gym is pretty much full today, all the guys on either strength training or rehab excersises. LaPointe is on shoulder rehab by the bars, pulling a resistance band from the bar with the fervour of a rookie facing his first potentially-serious injury. He’ll be fine, the way he’s going, and his ice time isn’t so high that they need to cut it for him to recover. The chirps have been relentless all morning, crowed breathlessly from treadmills and between sets of RDLs.
Ottawa is a lot friendlier than Montreal was, Shane is realizing, but that doesn’t mean anyone is safe from stupid nicknames. The difference, he thinks, is that Dillon would’ve been torn to shreds for even knowing anything about ballet in Montreal. Here, everyone just accepted his explanation about pointe shoes and ran with Ballerina for his new nickname.
“Ah, but Hollander should be ballerina, no?” Ilya shouts from over by the stairmaster. Doesn’t even sound out of breath, the asshole. But Shane reaps the benefits of that stamina every night, so he isn’t going to complain. “Graceful! And good legs!” A chorus of groans around the gym and Ilya cackles. “How is rehab, Ballerina?”
LaPointe hisses through his teeth and then lets the resistance band go slack. “Just fine, Cap.”
Shane shakes his head to himself and returns his focus to the mat with a deep breath. He’s had plenty of practice in tuning out rowdy spaces, locker rooms and gyms and rinks alike. Shane is on cardio-strength combination today, and he’s doing a modified HIIT program. Burpees next.
Shane feels strong today. There’s a pleasant burn in his legs, but his arms are staying stable and he feels centered in his body overall. The set of burpees passes quickly and he relishes his 30 second rest.
“Looks good, Hollander!” Ilya shouts again. A little out of breath now, at least. Shane flips him the bird over his shoulder without even looking back. “So strong, зайка мойzaika moy!”
At that, he does look back. “The fuck?” he takes a second to reboot, lungs still heaving from his set. Ilya has a way of bypassing his filter for noise, and unfortunately that doesn’t mean just the important things he says. It’s also the really stupid shit. The Russian seeps through Shane’s brain slowly, until he digs up the meaning. “Little rabbit? Are you serious?”
Ilya grins. Shane relishes in the way he’s glistening with sweat (for several reasons), seeing the stairmaster finally get to him. “You are jumping so high. Strong thighs — it’s better than ballerina. You are зайкаzaika.”
It’s fucking idiotic that Shane still feels a pleasant thrill about Ilya using the word mine to talk about him when it’s in this context. A fucking bunny. Not even a big one, a small bunny. His timer beeps and tells him to get to work on his set of mountainclimbers, so he does. He becomes suddenly grateful for his choice of workout short, as well as for having the foresight of placing his mat right in front of the cardio machines. Sure, he’s directly in Ilya’s line of fire for chirps, but below a certain inseam him doing his workout in front of Ilya becomes direct retailation.
He paces himself diligently through a minute and a half of mountain climbers before settling immediately into a plank. Shane puts his feet slightly wider than he usually does. He thinks he hears Ilya suck in a breath and smiles at the mat beneath him. Then, he hears Hazy.
“At what point does it stop being worth it to have the league’s two best centers on the same team? I dunno how much more of Cap ogling Holly on the clock I can take.”
Barrett speaks up. “Now we have Hollander we could probably lose Roz. I mean, the guy’s washed up, isn’t he?”
“I heard he married rich,” Dykstra says, and Shane nearly loses his hold on the plank. He takes a deep breath. “Probably some last-ditch effort to stay relevant in his old age.”
Shane knows with absolute certainty that Ilya is having a horrifying internal conflict on the pros and cons of responding to this. He could remark that his contract is actually higher than Shanes, by a quite wide margin, too. But that would be opening him up for chirps about how he doesn’t deserve that contract, and that he really should let Shane have that money. But if he stays silent, they’ll start getting him for his poor stamina, which is a train wreck waiting to happen.
That leaves him with one option: come up with a clever chirp back, while he’s still finishing up on the stairmaster and Shane is doing jump squats in front of him. Shane isn’t supposed to be doing the squats until another 25 seconds have passed, but it’s not that important, really.
“You know all about getting old and trying to stay relevant, don’t you, Vanny?” The rhythmic stomping behind Shane stops. “If you are having trouble with your aging limbs I hear there is pill you can try if your wife is unsatisfied. I wouldn’t know, though, my Shane is very—”
“OKAY!” Shane lands from his squat and stops his set. He fixes Ilya with a look as he gets off the stairs, walking toward Shane. “Get it together, guys, c’mon.”
Wyatt snorts. “Tell your husband that.”
Ilya plasters himself to Shane’s back, their shirts sticking together and against their skin with sweat. “Gross,” Shane says. Ilya hooks his chin over Shane’s shoulder, nosing at his neck. Shane shrugs to move him before he can start to do something stupid like suck a hickey into Shane’s sweaty skin. “Get it together, Ilya.”
“But Shane, my beautiful husband who has a great ass—”
“Come on, man!” Dykstra groans.
“—I should be allowed to look. Is my ass to look at.”
“You’re not the one who was doing jump squats.”
“Correct, зайкаzaika. I was walking stairs, because I know that a marriage should be fair. I should also have great ass for you to look at whenever you want.”
“We are,” Shane says slowly, “at work.”
Ilya blows him a raspberry but walks himself over to the free weights. Shane breathes a deep sigh and tries to return to some sort of fit state to work as he goes to get the cleaning spray. Most of the team has managed to get back to their own workouts, so he feels hopeful about a mostly peaceful run on the treadmill until Ilya has finished his ab workout. There’s a bit of chatter, as always, but he likes that more than he finds it bothersome. It’s a comforting din in the background as he lets his feet his the ground over and over.
Gradually, the team starts dropping off. Shane is still running by the time that half the room has cleared out. LaPointe is still running his strength training, set back by his rehab, and Haas is doing what’s usually the last round of his stretches: pigeon, lunge, groin. Shane presses the cooldown button. Ilya grunts his way through his final set.
“Hey, Holly?” Haas says.
“Yeah?” Shane wipes his forehead with his shirt. He can at least try to be presentable in front of the younger players. “What’s up?”
“Did Cap really call you bunny?”
Shane heaves a deep breath and tries not to throw his water bottle at Ilya. So much for professionalism in the workplace. No use denying, though. “Yeah, in Russian.”
“Huh.” Haas looks surprised at the admission. “That’s… kind of sweet.”
Shane blinks. He doesn’t hate Ilya’s pet names for him — far from it, he actually quite likes them. He likes being Ilya’s, no matter the way he’s being claimed. But no matter how welcome the Cens make him, and their relationship, feel, he hesitates to break that barrier of professionalism at all. He knows nobody would object to them acting more like the husbands they are — Harris and Troy regularly share good luck kisses ahead of games and the guys FaceTime their wives in front of the team regularly on roadies.
He smiles at his husband, now putting his weights away. People don’t often call Ilya sweet. It’s definitely not in line with what the media wants to make of him, even now that he’s settled down and married and only finishing fights instead of starting them.
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Shane says. “He’ll never let you live it down.”
“I mean,” Haas says, “if he’s calling you bunny in front of the team, he can’t really complain, can he?”
“That would be the reasonable response, yeah.” Shane grins. “But he’s got a way of… skirting that.”
#3
The Hollander-Rozanov house pretty naturally becomes a gathering spot for the team. Ilya has always been good at throwing a party, but since Shane moved in there’s been a gradual shift to them hosting more non-party events like dinners and lunches, too. Something about having Shane close has let Ilya settle more into his home, and to treat it more as his home. Shane isn’t afraid to admit (unless it’s to Ilya) that he isn’t a very good cook. He got lucky that is husband is, or at least willing to learn to become one.
Today, he’s offered to host an early birthday party for Hayes, who’s birthday falls during the training camp. He’d insisted, even when Hayes said that he and Lisa don’t mind hosting. No, no. Is your birthday, let your wife have a rest and save her energy for celebrating later. What is her favorite wine? What do you want to eat? he’d pressed. And so he and Shane had taken a trip to the grocery store, and then the liquour store, to equip themselves with enough food and drink for fifteen hockey players and all their partners and children.
Shane has been put on chicken tenders duty. Ilya at least got him kitchen gloves for the breading and battering, which Shane kissed him thoroughly for after being scared shitless at the prospect of caking his hands in egg and panko breadcrumbs. Shane hasn’t been convinced of the benefits of a convection oven until today when Ilya stacked four trays of potato wedges in at once because they would all bake evenly. Shane isn’t a culinary mastermind, but he appreciates efficiency.
People are dropping in as the afternoon progresses, helping themselves to drinks out of the cooler and snacks off the counter, leaving presents for Hazy on the alloted table. Shane starts to suspect that he’s on chicken tender duty because it prevents him from panicking about the hosting being perfect by giving him a task to focus on. Ilya knows him too well, but his husband is also a fantastic host. Between cutting cucumbers and radishes for the potato salad, he’s flitting out to the living room to say hello to new arrivals and to make sure Anya is staying where she’s supposed to in the yard.
Hayes himself and Barrett have settled at the kitchen counter, austensibly to keep Shane company but more likely to get away from the increasingly rowdy game of Uno taking place around the living room table. Every once in a while the shouting will get so loud that Shane overhears oh, fuck off combined with some multiple of the number four exclaimed in total rage.
“No, I’m telling you. The best birthday present you could give me would be to sit down and watch all the X-Squad movies and the lead-ins. I really think you would like them!”
“I don’t know, I don’t really watch movies,” Barrett hedges.
“Shane doesn’t either,” Ilya says, sauntering into the room. Shane smiles at him over the island, “he watched the movies to try to become straight. Cultural exchange.”
“Fuck off,” Shane says, still knuckles-deep in the egg mixture. Ilya comes over to, very unhelpfully, lay his chin on Shane’s shoulder. He doesn’t push him off. “For what it’s worth, I also think you’d like them.”
Hazy makes an emphatic gesture toward Shane. “Thank you!”
Shane shrugs, dislodging Ilya who readjusts with a grumble. His arms wind loosely around Shane’s waist. “You can watch with Harris,” Ilya says, “have a bonding moment about Moonshade being hot.”
“We’re engaged, asshole, we don’t need a bonding moment.” Troy takes a sip of his beer. “Also, you just think Moonshade is hot because he looks like Shane.”
“I will neither confirm nor deny,” Ilya says. He presses his lips to an exposed bit of Shane’s shoulder. “Looks good, sweetheart,” he says, presumably about the tenders, “you will get award in most even breading. Oscar nominee for Best Panko.”
“Shut up,” Shane says. He doesn’t do anything to push him off, though, just lets him drape his weight across his back and relishes the warmth of him, the firm press of his chest. “You asked me to do this.”
“Mmh, and I am so grateful. Kids will be very happy.”
Shane feels the same warm fizz in his chest that he always does whenever Ilya mentions kids. It feels almost dangerously possible these days, to have a kid of their own running in the house, when their teammates children are out in the garden. It’s still a couple of years out but the idea of it being possible at all, not just some pipe dream about his casual hookup, makes him want to hold Ilya to his chest and not let go.
“You guys are gross,” Troy says, apropos of nothing. Or, well, maybe apropos Ilya still holding Shane while Shane is cooking.
Ilya blows a raspberry. “Homophobia,” he states.
“I’m gay, fuckwad.” Shane gets the distinct feeling he’d be throwing cucumber sticks at Ilya if he weren’t hiding behind Shane. “Seriously. If this is how you guys have always been with each other it’s a miracle nobody ever figured you out. How long were you even together before the whole leak thing?”
Shane clears his throat and dips another piece of meat into the egg mixture. Ilya noses at his neck, a silent question. Can I say? Shane lifts his foot to hook it quickly around Ilya’s ankle. Yes.
“All the time,” Ilya says simply.
“Wait, huh?” Hayes says. “What do you mean all the time? Like, as in, you met up every time you were in the same city?”
“That too,” Ilya amends.
“You’re fucking kidding me.” Troy is gaping now, eyes flickering between Shane and Ilya. “The whole time? Since, what, your first game?”
“Yeah,” Shane adds, feeling somehow like he needs to participate in the conversation. The breading on the tender is too thick in some spots.
“Hell of a way to start your first preseason,” Hayes nods.
Ilya snorts into Shane’s shoulder, and Shane gives him a kick to the shin. “Did you see pictures in hallway?” Ilya says, and Shane resigns himself to his fate. Ilya’s fingers are splayed against his skin under his shirt.
“Yeah?” Hayes says slowly. “It’s a bunch of photos. Some photoshoots— wait, what the fuck? Are you serious?”
Before either of them have a chance to say anything, Hayes is walking out of the kitchen and presumably into the hallway to google the timing of the adverts they’ve got displayed, if the way he’s digging into his pocket for his phone is any indication. Shane sighs.
“Why do I put up with you?” He looks to Barrett next. “Don’t be weird about this. I swear to god, he’s annoying enough as it is.” Shane cocks his head toward Ilya.
“You love me,” Ilya croons.
“God fucking knows why.”
#4
Shane has been learning Russian for months at this point. It’s the first language he’s learned that wasn’t taught to him as a child, and he’s been struggling more than he thought he would. He’s always spoken English at home, and he did French immersion for primary school. He knows passable Japanese, enough to understand vague context when his extended family speaks it around him, but he’s never sat down to properly learn it. Russian, he thinks, is a different beast regardless. He’s familiar with non-latin alphabets, but something about the modifiers and conjugations makes his brain glitch as soon as he sees Cyrillic.
Ilya does his best to help whenever he isn’t actively trying to make life harder for Shane. Mostly he’s forthcoming in answering Shane’s questions about grammar, but every once in a while he’ll decide it’s fun to pretend one word is another for aboout a week until Shane gets far enough in his word-of-the-day calendar to bitch about it.
“Shane, моя посудомо́йкаmoya posudomóyka”
“Wait, what? Hold on,” Shane tries to pair the syllables with letters and feels a spike of pain behind his eyes. “Dishwasher?” he says as soon as he’s matched it to the gravelly voice of his online tutor and his color-coded notes.
“Mm,” Ilya hums an affirmative. Dishwasher is right, then. “Where is goalie pads?”
“Where are,” Shane corrects, petulantly, still reeling at being confronted with weekly vocab so early in the morning. Ilya scoffs.
“Over here,” Hayden says. “Are you having Russian lessons at 8 A.M?”
“You should hear them at regular practice,” Bood adds, swinging a bag of footballs over his shoulder. “I think the team is going to start learning a new language by proxy.”
“No,” Ilya brushes a hand over Shane’s lower back as he walks over to grab the goalie pads from Hayden, “you are not smart enough for that. Моя микроволно́вкаMoya mikrovolnóvka is unusually clever for hockey player. The rest of you have had too many concussions. Lessons would make you bankrupt before you learn Russian.”
“Is he being all Bridgerton again?” Bood asks.
“Bridgerton?” Hayden looks confused from his corner of equipment storage. Shane waves a hand at him like nevermind. Hayden doesn’t mind. “What the fuck do you mean Bridgerton?”
Bood laughs heartily, and Shane resigns himself to be the center of some truly embarrassing bickering once more. He hopes Hayden can behave with this. “You know how Roz is always calling Holly all these things in Russian? He’s got, like, a full roster. I asked Holly to translate once and apparently he’s walking around all ‘my beloved’ on the daily.”
“Slander,” Ilya shouts, “he is gaslighting you, Pike, do not fall for it.”
Shane closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. It’s Hayden’s turn to laugh. “Dude, I don’t believe that for a second. You’re fucking whipped.”
It’s a nice change to have him chirp Ilya about being too in love with Shane instead of accusing him of being a manwhore, for once. Somehow, though, Shane can’t help but feel he’s getting caught in the crossfire. In reality there isn’t really any way for anyone to know how much he likes it when Ilya calls him Russian pet names, but he feels himself blushing anyway.
“Usually the deal when you’re married,” Shane says plainly. “Should I be worried? Do I need to make a call to Jackie?”
Depositing the goalie pads in a huge net sack, Ilya is grinning wildly. Shane tries not to let the hot flush of pride get to him at Ilya finding him funny, and only has to mildly adjust his stance. He thinks Ilya notices anyway, but then they’re both too distracted by Hayden coughing out indignant noises for it to become a thing.
“That’s not— I don’t— that doesn’t—!”
“No man, I get it.” Bood nods sagely. “It’s like: call each other ‘babe’ and be done with it, you know?”
Hayden throws his hands out. “Yes! Exactly! Thank god some people here have some sense.”
“The people you are currently accusing of not having sense are the gay couple,” Ilya points out. “Homophobia is not a good look on you, Pike.”
“Aren’t you bisexual?” Hayden says, and Shane feels a headache blooming just at his left temple. “No, wait, shit. You’re just trying to distract me! Shane, is he seriously walking around calling you my beloved?”
Shane pulls his lips to the side. “Not exactly.”
“Okay, what the fuck does that mean, then?”
“It’s hard to translate, apparently,” Bood says. “Lots of different meanings, et cetera.”
“My own assistant captain,” Ilya laments. “I am demoting you, Boodram. Say goodbye to your A, I am giving it to my lovely husband. Мой холоди́льникMoy kholodíl'nik, call Dale so he can fix your jersey.”
“Absolutely not,” Shane says decisively, “Bood, keep your A. Ilya, seriously? Fridge? Come on, lets just get this gear out. We’ve spent enough time just dicking around, come on, out!”
So everyone files diligently out of equipment storage, and Ilya smacks his ass on the way out with the hand that isn’t occupied carrying stuff, and everything is back to normal. They line the pads-for-borrow up by the changing rooms and deposit break and play stuff in the staff loungue. Some of the other coaches have started coming in for the day, and Wyatt Hayes and Ryan Price are catching up by the coffee maker as a pitcher slowly fills up. “Morning, gentlemen!” Hayes chirps.
“Fuck, please tell me you made extra,” Hayden groans, “I need a cup of coffee. How the fuck do you guys deal with the two of them all the time? How the fuck did you deal with just Rozanov for two years?”
“Eh, he’s not so bad when you get used to him.” Hayes shrugs.
Hayden rubs at his eyes as he drops down into one of the lounge’s couches with a sigh. Shane walks to stand next to Ilya, and lets his head drop onto his husband’s shoulder. He didn’t sleep much last night with the nerves of the first day of camp coming up, and he’ll take whatever small doses of energy he can get. “Camp founders get first dibs on coffee,” Shane mumbles, eyes slipping closed as Ilya presses a kiss into his hair.
“You’re a tyrant, Hollander,” Bood laughs.
“There’s enough to go around,” Price adds helpfully, if a little hesitantly.
Ilya’s hand squeezes gently up and down his shoulder and deltoid. Shane melts into his touch and lets the conversation wash over him for a bit, allowing himself not to participate and instead just cuddle his husband a bit. Work hours haven’t officially started, he can take a moment for himself.
“No, I think Shane is right,” Ilya says, “camp founders get dibs. Моя плита́Moya plitá deserves everything he wants.”
“Fuck off,” Shane mutters. “Stove?”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “Do you want milk in coffee?”
What Shane wants is for Ilya not to move, but he doesn’t say that. Partially because he gets interrupted before he even can.
“See, that! Again! It’s all the time, dude,” Hayden yells, far too loudly. “Also, Shane, you’ve been naming random kitchen appliances all morning, do I need to be worried? Is Rozanov poisoning you or something?”
Ilya’s shoulder shakes under Shane’s head, and he smacks him to get him to stop. “Pike,” Ilya says, again before Shane can get to it, “Shane is learning Russian, yes? Best husband ever, very good, very romantic.”
“The fuck does that have anything to do with it? So what, Shane’s too good for you, no news there.”
“You have to learn words in new language,” Ilya continues patiently, like he’s talking to a child.
Shane sighs, entirely over it and sensing that the coffee is done. He opens his eyes again and straightens up from where he’s been resting. “He’s using random kitchen things as pet names, Hayd.”
Hayden looks entirely bewildered for a moment. “Wait, seriously?”
“Did you seriously think I was just walking around saying random words?” Shane laughs at Hayden’s guilty look. “It’s vocab. Spaced repetition.”
“Sure,” Bood says, drifting toward the coffee maker, “you tell yourself that.”
#5
“Shane, my love.”
“Shut up.”
“Light of my life. ДорогойDorogoy. Sweetheart. МилыйMilyy.”
“Stop it.”
“Shane.”
“What!”
Shane turns sharply toward Ilya, who is holding his hands by his shoulders with a smile. “Is Mario Party. Not playoffs. You are scaring the babies.”
“Fine. You take over then.” Shane whacks the controller into Ilya’s chest and then leans back on the couch with his arms crossed. He’s absolutely sure that Ilya’s going to lose the lead he’s managed to gain, but apparently taking things seriously isn’t allowed any more. Shane watches Ilya fuck up every single minigame and carefully keeps his mouth shut.
By the time they finish the game, Ilya offers him the controller by leaning in and pressing a kiss to his mouth. He leans back only slightly and says against Shane’s lips, “if you can be a good boy.”
Shane stands up and walks over to the kitchen. He hears Ilya yelling after him, a long drawn out no and something котенокkotenok, which is usually the case when Shane is irritated. It doesn’t usually help.
Bood is hosting, and Cassie looks right at home walking around her kitchen and cleaning up after dinner. “Do you need any help cleaning up?” Shane asks.
“You know,” Cassie says as she turns around, “if it were anyone else, I’d probably say no. But if you respect my system, you can load the dishwasher.”
Shane grins and starts collecting the glasses gathered on the very edge of the counter. Cassie’s system, as far as he can tell, seems to just be stacking the same kinds of cutlery and china next to each other so unloading is as smooth as possible. Sensible enough, so they don’t really have much conflict.
“Not that I’m complaining, but why are you in here stacking dishes with me and not out with the rest of the boys?”
Shane shrugs. “They banished me from Mario Party.”
Not strictly, but as good as. Shane also doesn’t really have any interest in alienating himself from the team, or getting a game banned from gatherings when everybody else seems to enjoy it. Hayden is still pissed about UNO being nixed from Montreal road trips, even though Shane has left and they can technically pick it back up whenever. Cassie laughs. “Ah, so you’re in exile?”
“Something like that.” Shane smiles as he starts on the forks. He can overhear shouting from the other room, the game clearly not entirely peaceful even though him and his intensity have been removed. Something comes to mind. “Hey, Cassie?”
She’s up to her elbows in suds washing a tray that held ribs earlier. “Yeah?”
“Shit, nevermind, it’s stupid.”
A smile pulls at Cassie’s lips. She wipes her hands on a towel to cross her arms over her chest. “No, now I’m curious! I can be nice, promise. I’m Zane’s better half.”
“Okay, um. Ilya has a lot of… pet names for me, right?”
“Right,” Cassie agrees, clearly amused.
“Do you ever think it’s weird? I mean, that he has so many, or that he calls me them all the time. They’re kind of intense sometimes.”
“Both of you are kind of intense a lot of times. I don’t think it’s weird if it works for you guys. It’s cute. I mean, he calls you my love, how romantic is that?” Shane feels himself blushing a little. Cassie just goes back to her dishes with a shrug. “You guys spent a lot of time being together in secret, right? It’s nice that you can be affectionate in public, isn’t it?”
Shane concedes with a nod. It’s really nice, in fact. “Yeah.”
“So why worry?”
He looks toward the living room. “I don’t know. I think… sometimes I’m still scared. I’ll hear the guys chirping, and sometimes it takes me a minute to remember that it’s different now. That they’re messing with us ‘cause they think we’re being sappy and not—” he cuts himself off.
“God, I can’t even imagine,” Cassie says. “You of all people earned being a little sappy, I think.”
“Yeah?” He glances over at her and finds her nodding.
Ilya comes storming into the kitchen. “ДорогойDorogoy!” he runs up to Shane and places a hand on either side of his face. He presses until Shane’s lips come together in a pout and won’t let go even when Shane tries to shake him off. “I need you back in living room now. They are saying teams for Monopoly because there are too many of us, and the rest cannot count. I need David’s accounting-genes.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how it works,” Shane says as soon as he can move his jaw again. He grabs Ilya’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and leans forward to kiss him. “You sure you wanna play with me? I’m not too serious?”
“Shane,” Ilya says gravely, “is Monopoly. We must destroy them.”
“Well then,” Shane grins, “lead the way.”
+1
“Thank you, baby,” Shane says, tilting his head up for a kiss. He closes his eyes, and then opens them again when a kiss doesn’t come. He frowns. “Ilya? What’s wrong?”
Ilya is still holding their luggage, both hands occupied while he stands in the aisle staring at Shane in his seat. He’s wide-eyed, brows drawn just a little while his gaze flicks back and forth over Shane’s face. Shane reaches a hand out to brush against his forearm.
“Hey, you okay?”
And then, just as suddenly as he froze, Ilya lifts both bags over his head and stuffs them onto the overhead shelving. Shane is just about to ask him what the hell is happening when Ilya dives down onto the seats and presses Shane up against the windows with a kiss to his jaw. What the hell is going on?
“Ilya. Ilya,” he tries, scrabbling to push his husband off of him before he can manage to start sucking a truly regrettable hickey into Shane’s neck. The team is already groaning around them, and Shane tries to signal that he really, truly, has nothing to do with this. “Baby, stop, come on.”
Ilya bites him in the shoulder. “Ow! What the fuck?”
Shane finds the strength to push Ilya off enough to see his face. Ilya’s expression is, as expected, wild, but there’s an unsteadiness to his gaze and his eyes look misty. Shane brings a hand up to cup Ilya’s cheek. “You love me,” Ilya breathes.
“Well, yeah. Wasn’t marrying you enough, asshole?”
“Ah, no,” Ilya says, “go back. Before was better.”
Before? Shane tries to remember what the hell was going on before Ilya started mauling him in front of their teammates. The bags, but that wasn’t— oh. “What, baby? I’ve called you that before.”
Ilya shakes his head furiously. “Not in front of team. At home, yes. Never—”
Oh. “Love you lots,” Shane says. “Did you like that? Baby?”
“Please don’t make this our problem,” Holmberg says as he walks past with his own bag. This bus isn’t big enough for us to give you guys, like, a five row berth.”
“What the fuck is it now!?” LaPointe yells from the front.
“Enough!” Ilya barks. Shane’s ears become unfortunate victims because he hasn’t gotten fully off of him before he starts shouting. His left arm is going numb from being pressed against the seat backs and he’ll probably at least get a semi if Ilya shifts his leg any more. “My lovely husband loves me. You are all jealous, shut up.”
“Jesus christ,” Dykstra mumbles. “At least move your fucking feet so we can walk properly.”
A fair amount of shuffling commences, as well as a very awkward sweatpant-adjustment from Shane that he hopes nobody but Ilya notices. Just like how he hopes nobody but himself notices how Ilya’s arranged his legs just so as he sits down in his chair, pointedly waiting with the seat belt.
“If you fuck on the bus, I’m having you demoted,” Bood says, leaning over the aisle.
“My Shane deserves better,” Ilya says easily, but Shane doesn’t think that’s all of it. They’re both just slightly to the left of soft, but they’re always embarrassingly gone for each other. Ilya’s gaze had held something different before, something deeper and more vulnerable than desire. Want. The team continues filing onto the bus, loadings bags onto the overhead shelves. Shane stays in his seat, catches up on some texts from Rose and makes sure he hasn’t missed any important e-mails. Ilya sits next to him, bouncing his knee as he swipes his way through a level of Candy Crush.
Coach Weibe starts them off for the ride by simply saying, “Three and a half hours! Everybody behave.”
Once the bus has started moving Shane lets his hand drop onto Ilya’s knee and scratches his fingers gently over the inside of his thigh. Ilya looks over with a grin. “What, you want to be bad already? Coach just sat down — did not know you would be so needy.”
Okay, so Shane is going to have to play dirty. He runs his hand up and down Ilya’s leg a bit. There’s still a bit tension in his frame, and a bit of a shine to his eyes. “All good, baby?”
Ilya blinks. He seems to be assessing, first, getting a hold of the situation before he offers too much of himself. Shane waits. “You said…” Ilya starts, looking away from Shane out of the front window of the bus. “In front of team.”
“Yeah,” Shane agrees softly. Ilya’s chewing on his lip now, moving his jaw around like it’ll physically dislodge the words from his mouth.
“Didn’t think you wanted that,” he lands on. “Names, and things. In front of everyone.”
For so long, Ilya and Shane hid behind Rozanov and Hollander. They hid behind last names and insults and a rivalry that didn’t ever outweigh their affection for each other. It isn’t lost on Shane that a lot of the hiding was his doing, or at least on his behalf. He’s a private person, and he always has been, but he doesn’t like how much that has spilled over and looked like shame about Ilya.
“I want everything with you,” he says now, “all the time.” Ilya looks back to him, eyes glittering with tears. But he’s smiling. “I love you, yeah? C’mere.”
He shuffles in his seat (as much as he can with the seat belt) so he’s closer to Ilya and then tugs on his neck until he can press Ilya’s face into his shoulder. He presses his lips to Ilya’s temple when he feels a sniffle against his skin. “I love you. Я тебя люблю,” Ilya mumbles.
“Love you, too. My baby.”