Chapter Text
“They’re gonna want you.”
Shane’s propped in his…probably second favorite place: pushed back on the headboard to their bed, Ilya draped over his torso in any and all configurations—across his chest, against his shoulder, lined with his sternum, curled in his lap, with a handful of his pec: all varieties. No wrong position.
It’s wild, when Shane actually takes the second to think on it as he cards fingers through Ilya’s curls splayed out under his chin, scratches a little against his scalp for the moan he knows he’ll be rewarded with: the idea that any place or position on the ice barely touches his top ten, anymore. Not because he doesn’t love hockey.
He just…never expected learning how to love something else so much; so incomprehensibly more.
“Doesn’t everyone?” Ilya circles his wrist, sighs it out in out-upon dismay, the burden of his adoring public, and Shane’s lips quirk a little higher. His husband’s such an arrogant fuck.
God, but he loves him.
“You know what I mean,” Shane flicks the top of the ear not crushed against his chest; “they’re gonna want you.”
Ilya hums, and yeah, Shane does let himself sink into the way the rumble of it shivers from one rib cage pressed tight against the other. Follows the reverberations until Ilya mouths against the bottom hinge of Shane’s jaw, tantalizing as his lips drag, as his tongue teases just so:
“I think…no.”
Shane blinks, even if his hands keep playing in Ilya’s hair—he sounds so unbothered, like Shane can barely process.
Like of course Ilya would.
“They are,” Shane doubles down, tugs a little on a couple strands of Ilya’s hair to make his point, but not hard enough to excite him too much; “why wouldn’t they?”
That’s the main improbable point, really. The part Shane cannot run through his head and force sense from because: there is no why.
Ilya tips his head up and cocks a brow pointedly in Shane’s direction.
“Because they already have Shane Hollander?” and he says it so…infuriating simply. Like the obvious answer needs broken down into small words for a particular brand of moron.
And like Shane—naked under the perfect weighted blanket of his beautiful fucking husband, who he gets to lie like this with without a time limit, an expiration date, any sort of restriction or reservation or restraint—but he says it like Shane?
Shane’s currently that particular—if still deeply beloved—brand of moron.
“Ilya,” Shane tries to push, because he’s right, he knows that he’s right—
“If they ask, I will say no,” Ilya shrugs, unconcerned; uses the motion of his arms to better roll his shoulders under Shane’s collarbones; “thank you, but no.”
Shane—who is now currently in the unenviable situation of wanting to gape pretty goddamn dramatically at his unbelievable fucking husband, but equally he has no desire or motivation to remove Ilya’s sweet warmth from where it’s currently lulling soft and intimate, adoring with every lift of his lungs: yeah.
So Shane lets his jaw drop low enough so that Ilya can feel it against the crown of his head, and keeps it stretched there as long as necessary to draw a chuckle from the body pressed against him before he lets himself ask with a whine he doesn’t bother holding back:
“Why?”
Because Shane isn’t a particular brand of moron. Shane isn’t any brand of moron, not about this.
So yeah: he fucking well gets to ask why the obvious answer is somehow apparently so obviously wrong.
Ilya shifts, only just. Shane’s hands don’t even get jostled from brushing through his hair like devotion, like a metronome that counts through feeling more than time.
“Is publicity stunt,” Ilya sighs, arching into Shane’s touch unabashed; fucking gorgeous.
“Hardly,” Shane snorts a little, maybe roughs Ilya’s hair at the roots with his knuckles just a touch, a play on scolding his take on foolish suggestions.
“Maybe the optics are a perk, but,” Shane tips his chin down so he can speak closer to Ilya’s ear, make himself understood, and unmistakably at that:
“You’re Ilya fucking Rozanov,” Shane says, and it’s not even bravado anymore, or any hint of feeding his partner’s ego—it’s honest.
He’s Ilya fucking Rozanov.
And he’s Shane’s.
“You damn well know how exceptional you are,” Shane presses into the muss of his curls at the top of his head, now, holds his lips there until Ilya hums for the sensation, rather than taking the opportunity to launch straight into a rebuttal.
Shane’s had plenty of practice wrangling his husband by now to know the plays pretty fucking well.
“Especially in this role,” he adds on, taking quick to kissing Ilya’s scalp, the nape of his neck, the soft strips behind his ears at the first hint of his taking a breath to contradict Shane’s really fucking valid and entirely factual arguments—doesn’t even notice exactly when his fingers slipped to Ilya’s chest just below his shoulder, started tracing the telltale half-circle there, driving home his point.
“You brought the Centaurs back to, fucking, viability,” Shane murmurs against him, muffled with the soft intimacy of burying his face in Ilya’s curls; “single-handedly.”
“Hmm,” Ilya manages to sneak in a dissenting sort of grunt; “was a group effort.”
And even muffled in Shane’s chest, even half-distracted just as Shane’d planned by deft hands playing just so where Ilya’s far-too-sensitive above his clothes to even count as fair: he’s so earnest. So defensive of his boys. His team. His Centaurs.
Like that makes Shane’s point any less.
“That,” Shane underlines it with a similar point to his tone and a little more pressure in the curve of the letter he’s still drawing over Ilya’s pec; “that right there, that’s why they’re gonna want you,” because that conviction, that genuine belief that it’s no man alone on a team that builds it up and lifts it to greatness, that no one outshines anyone else by default, and Ilya’s still on the fucking video game covers but in his red-and-black where those colors never would have made the cut before and his immediate response when there aren’t any cameras and no one’s watching, while he’s half-dazed on Shane’s chest, is that it was a fucking team effort—
“Do you know how rare that is?”
Because Shane and Ilya might have been at this the same amount of time, but Shane…Shane’s head assesses the playfield different from Ilya’s—and thank fuck for that, generally. But what he knows for sure? Is that even the best Captains have other opinions, say other shit when the film’s not rolling.
And then there are the fucking worst Captains—
“Not rare,” Ilya buts in, refutes it simply like a given, then reaches for Shane’s chest, where his ‘C’ would be, reading every unspoken hint Shane’s been dropping, been rubbing dogged into his skin; “part of the job description.”
Shane wishes that were true. But even if it was: Ilya is…Ilya has become the type of leader they’ll write books about, the kinds he’s consistently harassed over being so boring, Hollander, I know David very well, now, and even he is not this boring, you can no longer blame genetics alone for this!
He smiles to himself a little, gives himself a moment to imagine 20, 30 years from now when his prescription’s stronger in his glasses, maybe he has to wear them for more than just reading, when they’re both more than merely going grey and their laughter lines are firmly etched and Ilya’s still finding a way to climb over Shane and pluck his book from his hands and toss it aside, dog-earring the pages without even looking anymore in a way that’s infuriating but so much more endearing, so much more, and then they, they’ll—
Shane gives himself a minute to breathe Ilya in and cement that future in the center of his chest: they were going to have that, now. They basically already did but: in public, for everyone to see and no one to even consider trying to hide—
Soon. Soon.
“No,” Shane gathers all that hope—still learning to settle in his chest without the devastating cut of impossibility, instead emanating the warm glow of yes and of course like a certainty—but he takes it all in his hands and keeps one buried in Ilya’s hair, but flattens the other firm, palm-splayed across his sternum:
“You turned a whole team around because you’re that committed, and you’re that ungodly talented,” Ilya’s neck cranes up with a quirked brow, which Shane traces before flicking at the end of it lightly, clarifying beyond question:
“And you know I don’t blow smoke up your ass for the hell of it.”
Ilya’s grin blooms slow but wide from that glorious angle Shane gets from above, where those impossible cheekbones rise up and the apples of those biteable cheeks peek before the corners of his lips give his joy away any further and Shane feels the weight of Ilya over his ribs with particular purpose as his pulse thumps a little harder for the fullness of it, skips the slightest bit even still as Ilya turns a bit to kiss over his nipple:
“True,” he drawls, almost pensive if his mouth wasn’t pursed over the quick-hardening bud; “you do many other, much better things with my ass,” and said ass isn’t anywhere near Shane, relatively speaking, but the force he grinds into the mattress with to reinforce his claim is undeniable:
“Too distracted to add smoke-blowing,”and Shane wants to blame just how self-satisfied Ilya’s tone rings out, but his own grin would betray him: the truth for why he reaches down toward that ass and intends to pinch but instead palms as much of one of those god-like globes of firm flesh, lets a thumb drop between the crease because he fucking can?
“Case, point,” Ilya enunciates and smacks his lips around the words as he arches a little to encourage Shane’s attentions, and, well.
Yeah. Shane wouldn’t even try to wiggle his way out of proving Ilya’s very obvious and wholly undeniable statement of the obvious.
Still though: what Shane doesn’t make a habit of doing with his husband’s ass remains worth driving home, because he wasn’t just building Ilya up—like that man needed it, definitely not in this; he was being honest.
And he was being fucking correct in his very honest assessment.
“You’re a generation-defining player,” he withdraws his hand on Ilya’s ass with the pinch he’d originally intended, before settling back to draw on his chest, the same curve, back and forth: “and then you’re a fucking exceptional human being to boot.”
Ilya catches the hand on his chest and lifts it to his lips, kisses the first line of knuckles, then mouths where Shane’s ring sits on his finger when it’s not held safe on the chain he’s taken to keeping around his neck.
“Biased, I think,” Ilya breathes there, gentle and more intimate than anything, voice soft and adoring as he licks around the metal.
“You inspired them,” Shane pulls himself back from the brink of giving in to ravishing his husband—again—to do what he was meaning to in the first place, and praise him in other ways.
“You pushed them just right to make them all the best they could be,” Shane says with passion in it, conviction even as Ilya does the vaguely-stony thing he does when he both disagrees and also feels a little uncomfortable with being called out, especially for praise like this, but Shane just keeps going, keep playing with his hair and loving him in all the ways he can, which is generally his orienting goal in life, these days.
“How many of those guys, really fucking talented guys, would have just,” Shane makes a frustrated sound low in his throat; “just languished on a shitty team that’d been forgotten and written off if you hadn’t lit that fire in them, and not only that, you didn’t just spark them and let it ride,” Shane taps for attention at the center point of the letter he’s still tracing on Ilya’s chest; “you tended it, you guided them, you lead them,” Shane tells him, the feeling in each word growing as his hand stills in Ilya’s hair and just grips, like he can make the words felt through sheer force as he takes the hand not tangled in Ilya’s curls and cups the man’s jaw, tilts him up to meet Shane’s eyes.
“You made that team, Ilya.” And over time, Ilya’s stopped looking away when his emotions get the best of him, when his lip starts to tremble and his eyes start to water. But that’s means that Shane’s also learned how to pick out the early signs that it’s coming, so he knows to move his hand in Ilya’s hair down, to pull Ilya tight to him, brace him straight against the rise and fall of his chest as he asks the question he started from, that still makes no sense:
“Why would you say no?”
Ilya rolls his neck and tips his head but stares past Shane at toward the ceiling, the glint of the bedside lamp catching on the ring before the crucifix where they hang bunched up to the notch at his throat.
“Is not for me,” he ultimately says, still mostly nonchalant in the question in itself, uninvested in a way Shane still sometimes struggles to grasp for things this big.
“You chose it,” he can’t help but push his point; “chose here,” and yeah, maybe Shane’s voice cracks a little, goes a tiny bit pitchy on that last word because, because…
“Chose you.”
Yeah. Yeah: Ilya’s the one who says it out loud, maybe, but that’s the bedrock of the whole thing. That’s…at least a part of what makes it matter this much.
Shane doesn’t realize his breathing’s gone a little shaky until Ilya’s lifting up, turning around and sliding, chest-to-chest up Shane’s body, bare skin sticking every few centimeters in a way that should be uncomfortable but mostly feels like home. Just another everyday given that Shane never expected could ever be his.
But then Ilya’s hands are on his face, framing it, looking at him with all the meaning, all the layers of what those words were built on between them: chose you.
“And then, so much more than even that,” and Shane doesn’t think he’s even breathing, though he doesn’t think thats the reason he cannot wholly wrap his head around anything that’s more than the way Ilya’s looking at him, and all that it holds:
“Somehow, incredible still,” and Shane used to worry that the way the look in Ilya’s eyes like this clenched and cradled between his ribs was a thing that might fade some day but no: no, this was a forever kind of bliss, he was sure of that now, especially as Ilya leans close and breathes out in pure fucking wonder:
“Somehow, you chose me.”
The way Ilya says it, kinda baffled by the only sure thing in Shane’s chest, and overflowingly in love—the only thing Shane can do is spread his thighs to catch Ilya’s where they’re loose now against him, hook him in place and fucking devour him until the bafflement dissipates, suffocates and only certainty, only pure fucking certainty gets to live next to that much love.
As it damn well should.
“I love you,” Shane pants between increasingly sloppy kisses, gasped between their quick-swelling lips; “there aren’t, fucking, words for how I love you,” Shane sucks a little longer, a little hard at Ilya’s bottom lip because it really is so much, it really is outside any vocabulary he ever learned or thinks exists to know, is gonna bank on the closest they’ll ever get being their bodies like this, because:
“Not just how much, but how,” and he grabs the chain around Ilya’s neck, presses the two impossibly precious items it holds to the impossibly precious chest it lays against, holds there for a sequence of breathes before he gathers everything: the ring and the cross and Ilya’s palm, all of it to crush against where Shane’s heart would give him away in an instant if there anything of any of this he’d even consider wanting to hide as he murmurs low, and presses tight:
“How it feels, what it does, how it makes,” and he holds Ilya there, and holds his eyes as long as he can stand against blinking, because he wants Ilya to feel it too, wants Ilya to see his fucking soul and know, in this moment like all the others:
Love is a word that doesn’t stretch nearly big enough.
“Lyubimyy,” Ilya whispers, surging into him this time to be the one to not just ravish Shane, but devour him, and Shane’s fucking ready, he’s always ready, he wants to live inside of Ilya as the peak aspiration of his whole goddamn being—and it’s a damn good thing neither of them actually care for anything like shame anymore, not like this, when they manage to rub just right as they both try very admirably to suck one another’s soul out their throats, so well that they shoot off for grinding like goddamn teenagers in the process.
Fuck, they barely even did that as teenagers.
So maybe it’s just long past due; making up for lost opportunities. Shane’s actually all for that, even if it means lying in the mess for a little while as they catch their breaths back.
Though—because Ilya is magic and a miracle and everything Shane needs in the world and everything he never even considered to want—because Shane’s husband knows him, Ilya doesn’t even wait to catch his breath before he dives, licks their mingled come from both their chests so that it’s just spit-slick between them when he collapses back atop Shane, where Shane—who knows his husband—cups Ilya’s face and cradles him like the precious thing he is, while he licks the taste of them both from that mouth with slow, unwavering devotion, the way they somehow make intimate the dirtiest fucking things they can draw between them.
“I still think you should say yes,” Shane pants against Ilya’s lips once they’re swollen almost out of shape: goddamn delectable.
“I think it will not matter,” Ilya runs the softest part of the pads of both thumbs under Shane’s eyes, close enough to brush his lashes and pull something dangerously close to but not quite a giggle from him for the sensation, before he manages to win a full-chested chuckle when he pulls back, just to lean in, quick and playful as he taps the tip of Shane’s nose with a pop of his lips:
“After all,” he drawls, reaching to pinch lightly at Shane’s nipple; “Iam not one in this room who will get this call.”
Shane rolls his eyes, then rolls his body to curl like a parenthesis around where Ilya flips beside him, the orientation of their bodies like this a practiced sort of dance as they catch their breaths still close enough to taste each other on the inhales, still close enough to bask in one another’s heat.
“I never have been coming for your C,” he finds himself kind of spontaneously in need of saying it out loud, reaching to trace that curve against Ilya’s chest one more time, with deliberate care; “you know that right?”
Because he understands why it might have been a question other people would ask, or assume. But they…they didn’t know why Shane made the move he did. They didn’t know that the Shane Hollander who was thrust into a rivalry he never actually wanted to be part of was a person who was now as good as dead in the world at large, but also on the rink. That version of himself, who believed that hockey was the pinnacle of all things to strive for, and acted accordingly, faded away when he gave his heart to something else long before he vowed his everything to the same something in front of everyone who mattered, signed on a line that was pure formality, and yeah: this Shane still loves hockey. More than almost anything.
But the ‘almost’ there can’t fucking exist without a perpetual spotter for just how much heavy lifting it’s doing. The things he loves beyond hockey now aren’t many, but fuck, for what they are?
‘Beyond’ isn’t even a broad enough concept to touch them.
The biggest and most significant ‘beyond’ by fucking light years is, of course, the one staring down at him now, eyes dancing, expression so soft as he presses his lips to Shane again, an answer this time. An understanding and a trust that transcends words.
And Shane lets the gravity of it catch him up in its spell for a few breaths, then a few more, before he pecks Ilya’s lips back and speaks between the crease of his gentle grin:
“I was always after Bood’s A, though,” he confesses, honest but no small portion sly. “Still am.”
And Ilya huffs, then starts to shake, then starts to laugh and Shane feels the sun rise in his chest for it, because Ilya’s laughter, the unbridled and unburdened joy that almost only comes out here like this, just as them: Shane never saw it coming, but fuck if he wouldn’t take the trade in a heartbeat, if he was asked to pick between hockey and the glory of that sound, that untethered bliss.
But yeah: he means what he said, laughter aside. He never moved to Ottawa to be their captain; they were more than set—they were fucking lucky, and they all of them knew it. Shane was fucking lucky.
Just more reasons for why the other version of that same point was a no-fucking-brainer.
Because Shane Hollander, a better player than Ilya? Contextual argument to make, at best. And debatable, in all scenarios. Shane knows they both land stubbornly and immovably on opposite ends of that question, so they don’t really bother asking it.
But: Shane…above Ilya?
Fuck no; not as a habit.
And as if it needed hammered home, Ilya chooses that very moment to shift, lift himself up and plaster himself wholly over Shane, kissing him uncoordinated, unburdened, too fucking giddy for anything but the need to press their lips together and share that joy as a given, and yeah. Fuck yeah. Shane above Ilya? Never as a habit.
Definitely not as a rule.
_______________________
“Shane, Shane!”
The familiar ring of his name right out the goddamn tunnel into the fray of microphones stuck out in his general direction ssaults his senses, always has, but he’s good at hiding it, fielding the attention with good grace.
Especially when his team’s just decimated the Admirals in their own barn.
“Your communications director’s jumped on to help with Team Canada,” he picks out of the layers of voices; “any thoughts?”
That throws him for a bit of a loop: first question that gets shouted loudest not even about their impressive defense, or the now-pretty-standard hat trick out of at least one of their forwards, or—and this one Shane’s surprised no one’s picked up on yet, they’d spent so much time plotting out ways to deflect it graciously that the sheer lack of opportunity is…starting to feel like kind of a let down—but like, no one has asked past a few surface level comments about how often they’ve managed to orchestrate a power play, and specifically how Shane and Ilya have taken their time on the ice together to dominate in what would be at least an interesting (if not downright telling) fashion—but nope. Not a peep.
Shane guesses at least they’re interested in the Olympics, though—even if it’s clear they’re missing the fucking trail of breadcrumbs being sprinkled generously for them, like, embarrassingly.
But whatever. He’ll play.
“That they’re lucky to have him,” because that’s is his main thought on the actual question asked: “Harris is the best of his profession, and an absolute gift of a person to boot.”
“He posted that jersey shot earlier this week, everyone looks so great!” another reporter jumps on, and Shane recognizes his husband’s influence as he fights not to roll his eyes.
“Thank you,” he says, and at least he can answer the basic sentiment as honest as possible; “it was great having some of us together, already, on the ice like that at the same time.”
Of course it’d only been possible because it seemed like near-half the Olympic squad was made of Centaurs, probably could have just used their uniforms and donated the undoubtedly-sickening budget for the official kit, but: whatever. It’s the only reason anything went up this early on socials: Harris was already surrounded by a chunk of the team.
But that wasn’t the point, just now:
“So many people who know each other but only get the privilege to play together every, what, half a decade?” Shane gestures enthusiastically, and actually feels it when he adds:
“It’s so special, and we’re lucky to be a part of it.”
It’s just that these people don’t have a single fucking clue as to the extent of why it’s so special to Shane.
They will, the voice in his head that rumbles with that Russian lilt and simultaneously tingles his spine and placates his heart: it reminds him he just has to wait, just has to be patient—not just for that voice to be a tangible, wet-warm press of lips on his neck in mere hours, but for the whole fucking world to see what’s in his heart, what’s written on his goddamn soul.
Soon, he thinks. Nods to himself like his mother taught him, her mantra of enough softening, shaped a little gentler, a hell of a lot sweeter in Ilya’s deft hands to be hopeful, to call a pause instead of an end.
Soon.
And so he nods, and blinks, and tries to key back into the questions being fired his way.
“But he had to have known the speculation for the player half cut-off on the photo, on the far left next to yourself?”
Harris. Harris had to have known, is what they mean. Shane has no doubt about it, even if he didn’t already know the answer for a fact, but like hell if he’s going to engage whatever they’re angling at.
He is going to tilt his head and smile politely to see if they give themselves away any further for just how far from the truth they’re still digging.
“No one can seem to figure who it is, frontrunner for speculation seems to be Ross Marín, if he’s coming up from Columbus,” one voice tries to make the gossip-mongering of it all sound professional, authoritative even. It’s kind of embarrassing.
The sound of Ilya’s laughter for the spectacle in his own head makes his lips quirk.
“Or maybe one of the regular Olympic squad’s letting their hair grow out? You can see a little hint,” a simpering voice latches on, tugs at her own hair indicatively, maybe even an attempt at…seductively? With wide eyes like she can ingratiate her way into some exclusive…grooming tips?
What the fuck even is Shane’s life right now.
“You’re not actually asking me to, what,” Shane leans in a little, eyeing each of the specific reporters who’d chimed in; “spoil a lineup you literally have all the possibilities for from our regular season rosters?”
And he delivers it kindly enough, he was raised a certain way, but: yeah.
Yeah, the words themselves. That’s his husband’s influence rubbed off all over him.
(Which: Shane would never in his life object to anything of his husband’s rubbing off on any part of him, no matter how potentially inconvenient. He’s not in the practice of looking gift horses in the mouth.
Not anymore.)
“I don’t even know which photo you’re referring to, to know who was standing next to me,” lie—bald-faced lie. They’d only managed the uniform fitting, basically, what with their MLH schedules so far, and they’d been very careful about the framing of the images Harris took.
But good on Harris—not surprising—to have framed whatever he shot in such a way to have them all speculating on Marín of all people. Guy wasn’t nearly as tall as…anyone they should be guessing about.
“I will say some of the guys with us this year do like playing with hair styles about as much as they like playing the puck, so,” Shane shrugs, hopes he misdirects and confused them just enough with his choice of words, then tucks his hands under his arms as he bites down too big of a grin. “I can imagine who it could’ve been.”
There’s some overlapping din before Shane picks up a dumb enough question to be a good segue out:
“Give us a hint?”
He smirks a little. He lets himself smirk, just a little.
“And ruin their big reveal?” he asks back on a laugh they can’t fully understand, not yet, and it makes shutting them down that much sweeter as he shakes his head, tosses half over his shoulder as he walks away:
“Not a chance.”
_______________________
Shane doesn’t even look at the caller ID before answering—only like ten people can get past his Focus mode—but it does make for an interesting shift in his mood as he shovels the kinda-overnight-oats-but-kinda-not that Ilya swore were healthy, Hollander, I would not touch them with hazmat gloves so you know they are good for you, but they’re a little too good tasting for him to be wholly convinced.
(Also too good-tasting for him to stop eating them, at least not until the voice rings out through the kitchen from the speaker, with full-on laughing-fucking-judgement:)
“Were you aware that not only had we gotten back together, but we’re planning a wedding?” Shane’s so fucking lucky he swallowed his mouthful of not-quite-oats before those words echoed through the room because: fucking hell.
“You really should have texted me the heads up,” and Shane can fucking hear the height of her brow-raise at him across the line, like, so clear; “or were you going to just wait for me to get the ‘save-the-date’?”
Shane swallows the last dregs of his not-overnight-oats a few times more than probably necessary, takes a swig of the actually-halfway-decent mushroom coffee-adjacent…thing that he flat out refused to endorse until he tried it, but once that’s sorted, he takes a deep breath and leans back in his stool at the island in the middle of the kitchen before he measures his answer:
“It is not strictly my fault that the press will take perfectly straightforward statements and run in the absolute most-wrong direction,” he says, and it comes out…natural. Confident.
It feels new, still, being more…or really just less willing to smooth things over at his own expense, to roll over by default and do what’s expected of him.
Still new. But it’s good.
“Mmm,” Rose hums, pride in him for it, not condescending like Shane usually took that sort of thing, but like a best friend would—and that feels good, too.
“I do assume the statement made was a wholly non-specific reference to your lovely husband?”
She says that about Ilya like she means it, and Shane grins to himself twofold for it—they’ve warmed to each other, and that’s such a soft thing in Shane’s chest on its own, but then: his lovely husband.
His lovely husband.
Hearing those words will never not feel like the best fucking thing in the world.
“You would be incorrect,” Shane replies with a tiny bit of dramatics, and the quiet from the other side of the call is a challenge that he…does cave to. A little.
“Technically. You’re technically incorrect.”
“Details, Hollander,” Rose sighs heavily through what would probably count as a whine so long as Shane didn’t say as much to a tabloid; “I keep you around for the hot sexiness as much as the gooey romance. And the impeccable tea, so,” he hears her snapping her fingers before she demands:
“Spill.”
Shane, because he lives full-time now with his lovely husband, takes another, maybe-overly-leisurely sip of his mushroom-juice-stuff, and smacks his lips to the distinctly impatient drumming of perfectly-manicured nails.
And, because he lives full-time with his lovely husband: Shane maybe grins to himself for it.
“It was entirely unrelated, what they’re talking about,” Shane starts, in no particular hurry; “at least, like, specifically.”
“You forget I can tell when you lie,” Rose shoots back, unimpressed.
“It’s not a lie!” which: it’s not. And he is at least half as offended as the words come out to sound.
At least.
“Evading!” He can hear her accusingly pointing at him down the connection. “Lying by evasion!”
“Pretty sure it’s lying by omission,” Shane comments, because he constitutionally cannot help it. Like his boring, it’s fucking genetic.
“Neither of us have a college degree, asshole,” Rose reminds him dryly, not buying it for a second.
“The New Yorker was big in my house,” Shane defends, admirably even. He thinks.
“Talk, Hollander.”
Okay, fine: so Rose maybe doesn’t agree with his assessment on his defense. Whatever.
He launches into the shorthand of how spousal visas had been brought up with regard to new partners with the Foundation, completely unrelated to his own personal interests in the matter, and he’d very innocently and professionally sympathized with the complications of the process while expressing his hopes that his and Ilya’s positions might be able to figure ways to expedite some portion of the rigmarole.
Not his fault people thought (correctly, the fuckers) that his sympathies were a little too on the nose.
“So you’re telling me,” Rose summarizes pointedly; “the cat’s gonna be out of the bag, finally, pretty fucking soon?”
Because once she and Ilya got over both having seen Shane naked in bed—Shane’s own relationship with Svetlana had also helped tame the animosity, some hindbrain fair split of ‘best friends you have fucked and/or have tried to fuck’—but once they got past that? Rose was kind of the biggest cheerleader for both of them. Anya liked her. She was a part of their little family. She’d been at their wedding.
Ilya had fucking danced with her.
And, well: she’s not wrong that Shane’s a bad liar. Or else: his tells aren’t…nonexistent. He’s proven to be really great at hiding things, but, like…
He also kinda wants to share this.
“Umm, well,” he clears his throat, takes another sip of his now-lukewarm caffeinated mushroom water: “does February count as pretty fucking soon?”
“February?”
“The, umm,” Shane swallows again because, like, he hasn’t said it out loud, much, like this; “the tenth, specifically?”
At least for the first part. February 10th for the first part, and then…
And then—
“Oh my god,” Rose says, a little breathless, because Rose knows hockey, and she knows what happens every four years in February for hockey, and Shane can almost see how the pieces are coming together in her head without having to literally see her at all:
“Shane,” she half-squeals, an excited clap echoing down the line; “this is going to break—”
“The internet?” Shane guesses with a slow-spreading grin, because he’s heard that, from her specifically. More than once.
“Forget the internet,” she scoffs; “it’s not long for this world, not with something this immense on the horizon.” She gives her best on-screen sniffle for a choked delivery: “Farewell TikTok, we hardly knew ye.”
And Shane laughs, because…because it’s funny, but really he laughs because the joy in his chest is too big to contain, like, ever. And when he’s given an opportunity to let it bubble up and breathe the air proper, to bask in the sunlight?
He grabs it, and lets his heart shout through his laughter: I’m married to the fucking love of my life and I didn’t know that hearts could just keep growing for your whole life in order to be big enough if your loving just kept expanding every single second of every single day, and I didn’t know happiness could be something you could keep but look at us.
Fucking look at us, we goddamn glow with it.
“Shane, forget the internet,” Rose says seriously, but the kind that’s built on so much excitement: “this is going to whole-ass break brains.”
Shane laughs again for that, and decides not to dwell on whether it’s a good or bad thing that one of his best friends is so fucking ecstatic about…brain breaking.
“Also,” she adds, just as enthusiastic but this time a little more wicked with it:
“Scott Hunter is going to be so pissed.”
And Shane likes Scott just fine, but fuck.
Fuck, does he laugh for that.