Chapter Text
Rome Fiumicino Airport was buzzing with excited people. Families exiting the baggage claim with an ungodly amount of luggage. Smartly dressed businesspeople hurrying through the customs. Young kids in what appeared to be team gear hovering around the adults yelling instructions on how to behave, now that they were in a foreign country.
Ilya took in the scene of people coming and going, and glanced at the man next to him. Shane Hollander was hunched over his phone, trying to balance a large pile of printed itineraries, passports and checklists in his other hand.
“Roz, I swear to god, your nonchalant attitude toward traveling is going to kill me before the end of the day”, Shane huffed exasperated.
Ilya smiled. “You would think that a professional hockey player as well-traveled as yourself wouldn't need to be stressed about renting a car, huh?”
“Sure, if you wish to be scammed by the first person renting you the said car or something!” Shane snapped back.
Like being called, they were approached by an older man asking in broken English if they needed a taxi. Shane shook his head and said irritatedly: “Non, merci!” Ilya tried to hold back his laughter, but ended up snorting loudly anyway. Man, the jetlag was really getting to them at this point.
Shane was done reading the instructions on his phone. “Ok, I think we should go outside the terminal. The rental company should have the car by the parking area on the left hand side.” Shane took his backpack from the ground and pointed at the doors leading to the sunny platform outside. Ilya followed, humming lightly, with their luggage.
Outside the arrivals terminal, the early July air was hot and humid. Ilya watched as Shane hastily tugged a few loose sweaty strands of dark hair behind his ear. He could imagine his own curls being an absolute mess at the moment, tugged under a backwards Centaurs’ baseball hat.
They had been on the road and in planes for more than 14 hours at this point. It was 10 a.m. in Rome, which meant that it was early morning hours in Ottawa. Ilya thought that no wonder Shane was tired and irritated. He rarely stayed up past the late night sports news, but his internal clock was now… 4 a.m.? But it was nothing a quick shower wouldn't solve. It could solve a few other things for his uptight husband, too, Ilya let his thoughts wander…
“Fuuck!”
Ilya was swiftly brought back to the earth by the voice of said uptight, and now also very angry, husband. Shane had found the car service representative, and was having a heated conversation in what appears to be a mixture of French, Italian and English with the poor guy.
“Shane, what's the problem?” Ilya asked. “Besides that you are yelling in québécois, no one's going to understand you here”, he couldn't resist adding.
“This isn't the car I had booked for us! It was supposed to be something normal, practical and not so… flashy, huge and idiotic.” Shane was flailing at the car.
Ah da! It was a beautiful wine red Ferrari SF90 Stradale glistening under the Roman sun. A car so fresh out of the box that it turned the heads of the fellow passengers in the airport. Ilya could already imagine the two of them riding around Lago di Garda with music blaring, holding hands, and his husband smiling adoringly at him from the passenger’s seat. Ilya would be the one driving this beast of a car, obviously.
“Ilya… What did… How did you…?” Shane had his head buried in his hands.
“You cannot possibly drive in Italy in a boring car? They would not let you do that, da?” Ilya smirked and the car service guy was nodding enthusiastically.
“Whatever.” Shane managed to say under his breath and started to load their bags to the car. Ilya handed out a few extra euro bills to the rental car representative, and took the keys.
When the car made the first thunderous sounds upon starting, Ilya could see a little smirk on Shane's lips. This was going to be one epic Euro Summer!
—
Ilya might have made a mistake. Not that he would ever say it out loud to Shane, but even though the car was a beauty, it was a nightmare to drive in the Italian road culture. There were motorcycles, vespas and tiny cars coming at them from every direction. The Ferrari was fast, but it needed space to change lanes, and it also seemed to annoy the hell out of other drivers. The honking was deafening.
Bah, idiots, they are just jealous, Ilya thought to himself. Luckily, Shane was too distracted with the map on his phone to witness all the dirty hand gestures they were getting from other drivers.
An hour later, the boys had finally managed to drive the car into the city center and into the private parking hall of the hotel. The hotel, built at the end of the 19th century, was situated just across Villa Borghese, a large public park with old gardens and villas. The hotel had a breathtaking view from the rooftop, overlooking the whole city of Rome.
The hotel room’s bed had never looked so inviting to Ilya. Ok, who was he kidding, he had many fond memories of beds in hotel rooms. But at the moment, all he could think of was Shane’s warm body against him while he would doze off to sweet dreams.
“We could crash out for a few hours and then go have something to eat?” Shane suggested and yawned. Ilya gently led his husband to the end of the bed, and carefully took off Shane’s shoes. Then he proceeded to undress him and let Shane crawl under the duvet. Ilya followed, and in just a few minutes, both of the boys were blissfully asleep.
The sun was setting and a few rays escaped behind the curtains to wake them up. Feeling like a bear after hibernation, all disheveled and hungry, Ilya fought to get up from the warm burrow they had made from the pillows and duvets.
“I’m starving!” Ilya declared and nudged Shane roughly. They got up, took a quick shower and found some clean clothes to wear. It was still +25 C outside, so a t-shirt, shorts and sneakers would be perfect. Shane had found a smaller local restaurant in Trastevere, which was a bit too far to walk from the hotel at their current state, so they decided to order a taxi from the hotel reception.
After a 20-minute car ride, they arrived at a cozy neighbourhood where cobblestone streets were lined with green trees and plantings. The restaurant had an outside patio filled with people clinking their glasses of wine and focusing on their animated conversations. The air smelled like pine trees that had soaked in the sun all day, plus a mouthwatering mixture of garlic, butter and herbs.
They were seated inside in the rustic-looking room that had bottles of wine on the shelves, and lit candles sprinkled on old wooden tables.
“Try and stop me, I need everything and anything from the menu!” Shane exclaimed to Ilya’s pleasure.
“Мой римский воин, you can eat whatever you want,” Ilya said, delighted.
“My Roman.. what?”
“Soldier”, Ilya smiled and winked.
Shane laughed and shook his head. “No no, that’s you, remember that one epic party and the gladiator costume?”
Like Ilya could forget.
“Maybe we can also find you a costume here, you think?” Ilya suggested and took a big sip from his red wine.
—
Okay, maybe Ilya should have watched a little bit closer on what Shane had been eating. Or more like what he had managed to drink during the evening. Shane was notoriously not a big drinker, nor was Ilya nowadays, but somewhere between the main course and the dessert, Shane had been drinking a whole lot of limoncello. During the hockey season, Shane had a stricter diet than Ilya. Which meant it took a while for Shane to get used to eating more than a bird during the off-season. Luckily, today Shane had at least eaten a whole plate of seafood pasta and even some white bread. So he should be fine, as long as Ilya could make him drink some water in between the shots of the lemony yellow liquid.
It was still relatively hot and humid, as they walked hand in hand the narrow streets of Trastevere. Shane was in a bubbly mood and looked so happy that it made Ilya’s heart sing. That had been his goal when booking this sort of road trip across Europe: to make Shane forget everything negative at home and just be himself in a place where nobody gave a shit about their relationship, hockey or anything that had happened in the recent years. Shane, and Ilya too, deserved a real honeymoon.
Lost in thought, Ilya hadn’t noticed that Shane had stopped. By an old fountain, there was a man with a guitar and a woman with a violin playing a melancholic tune. Maybe Ilya had heard it before, but he couldn’t remember the song. It was an old classic of some sort and Shane was now fixated with the pair playing the music.
The woman began to sing:
“When I was seventeen, it was a very good year.
It was a very good year for small town girls,
and soft summer nights.
We'd hide from the lights, on the village green
When I was seventeen.”
It took Ilya a while to understand the lyrics, but then it made him feel… nostalgic?
He placed his arm around Shane, and Shane rested his head on him.
The man playing the guitar started singing with the girl:
“When I was twenty-one, it was a very good year
It was a very good year for city girls, who lived up the stair
With all that perfumed hair
And it came undone
When I was twenty-one.”
Where had they been, at 21? Ilya was certain that they were in the middle of it all. The occasional hookups, and the anxiety and need to be with each other building inside. It had been a whirlwind of emotions to get here, to this place in their lives.
“When I was thirty-five, it was a very good year
It was a very good year for blue-blooded girls
Of independent means.”
Shane took Ilya’s hand and placed his other hand on his back. They started to dance slowly, there in the middle of an ancient town square. Where everybody could see them, though it was just some old couples, a few cats and the singers.
“We'd ride in limousines
Their chauffeurs would drive
When I was thirty-five.”
Shane leaned in to give Ilya a small, tender kiss. Here, at 35, was where Ilya wanted to stop time. Because how could this become anything more perfect than it already was?
They danced until the song ended, or until tipsy Shane almost fell on a cat. As the polite Canadian he was, he tried to say he was sorry in multiple languages, until Ilya could finally stop laughing and took him out of the angry cat’s way. Maybe it was time to call it a night, they had more perfect days like these ahead to enjoy.
