Work Text:
Montreal is hosting Calgary tonight. Halfway through morning skate Ilya texts him: We have earlier puck drop, I can be at your apartment by 9.
Shane doesn’t see the message until the team meeting’s done, headed back home to heat up lunch. Are you crazy?, he texts back, and starts the car. After a game? That’s gonna take hours!
The screen in the car lights up: Ilya, calling him. Shane hits accept and speeds up. “Do not drive here after your game,” he says immediately. “Ilya. The traffic’s gonna be a nightmare.”
“‘Hello, Ilya, good to hear your voice, you are such good boyfriend.’” Ilya’s voice out of the car speakers is a drawling, sarcastic coccoon. “It’s two hours, maybe two and a half? That’s easy commute. Not so long.”
“Not with rush hour traffic,” Shane says. He hits a red light, stops with a jerk. “And the traffic from the game, and it’s gonna be worse if it rains like the forecast says it might–”
“Okay, so three?” Ilya sounds unconcerned. “It’s easy, Hollander, my baby can handle this.” Shane happens to know his baby is an Aston Martin Vanquish. “I get through boring rush hour, I make up time–”
Green light. Shane stomps on the accelerator. “Oh my fucking god,” he says to his steering wheel. “You can’t, you said you weren’t gonna get another speeding ticket.”
“No, I didn’t,” Ilya says.
“You literally said–”
“Ah, that,” Ilya says. “I lied.”
Shane grits his teeth. Gets through a traffic circle and a stop sign. “We said we’d call later, right?” he says. “That’s always nice. You can tell me all your thoughts on Calgary.” Ilya has it out for a forward there, for some reason, is extra gleeful whenever Shane gets a goal against them. “Why would you want to–”
“–come see my boyfriend?”
“–get arrested, probably,” Shane says over him, “for going 145 on the 417–”
“180,” Ilya says, unrepentant.
“Oh, so you’re not gonna get arrested, you’re gonna die.” Left turn, toward parking. Shane should be eating his protein and complex carbs right now, not talking Ilya out of suicide. “Can you even apply for citizenship with an arrest record? What if they kick you out of the country?”
“Shane,” Ilya says.
Shane puts his forehead on the steering wheel. Breathes. “Okay, they probably won’t,” he admits. “Still. Bad idea, Ilya.”
Ilya says, quiet, “Okay.”
Shane turns the ignition off, jams the phone between ear and shoulder as he goes up to the apartment. “Anyway, what brought this on?” he says. “You hate driving on the 417.”
“Yes, it's a terrible highway,” Ilya says, a familiar kind of aggrieved. “The drivers are so slow—”
”That’s the speed limit—”
”—and the signs are in stupid language—”
“Only when you get into Quebec, and it’s not hard, you already know ouest means west.” Shane heats up the meal in the microwave, vented for steam, and then peels it open on the counter. Ilya's unexplained hatred for French probably shouldn’t make him smile. “You know, now that you live here, I could teach you some stuff. If you want. Since you’re teaching me Russian.”
“They do not put the word for cock on the road signs, Shane.”
Ilya had taught him that one, extensively. Shane, alone in his kitchen, goes hot all over. “Um.”
“Ah, now you’re thinking about it, too.”
“Stop trying to get me hard during my pre-game meal.” Come to think of it: “Shouldn’t you be napping right now?”
“I did,” Ilya says. “Had nice plan: sleep, win game, go fuck boyfriend. And then he texts me, tells me I cannot drive or read French or get Canadian citizenship–”
Shane’s laughing. “I did not, you asshole–”
“So now I am awake, very sad. Will still win game, but then there is only phone call, and I will not see my boyfriend for eight whole days.”
Oh. “Because of the road trip.” Shane had put together the calendar when the season schedule dropped: the days they played each other, the days only one of them had a game; and then, bleakly impossible, the away games, when they were in different cities, halfway across the continent, not even in the same timezone.
“Yes, because of the fucking road trip. And Colorado, and Vegas, stupid cities, with their stupid teams–”
“Hey, we had some nice times in Vegas,” Shane says without thinking.
“Mm, we did. Which times?”
“Uh, 2015, I guess?”
“Oh, when you won MVP? Not any of the times I won?”
Shane thinks back to 2014, Ilya smoking and the taste of vodka in his mouth. “Some of them,” he says. And then: “Jeez, we used to go for months without seeing each other.”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “It used to kill me.”
Shane puts down his fork, because he can’t swallow around the sudden lump in his throat. “Ilya–”
“It will be okay,” Ilya says. “Like you said. It used to be months. Eight days is nothing.”
“Yeah,” Shane says. “Yeah. Go get ready, okay? It’s gonna be a tough game for you.”
“Against Boston?” Someone who didn’t know Ilya well might mistake his tone for cockiness. “I hope they’ve learned some new tricks since I’ve been gone.”
Shane hangs up and finishes his pasta with chicken. Puts the fork in the dishwasher, the packaging in the trash. The temptation is almost physical in his mouth: Ilya here, tonight. But three hours is a lot, after a game: the exhaustion in his muscles, the road unfurling beyond the windshield in the descending dark. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t ask Ilya to do it.
Shane should be resting. He has a pre-game routine. He could do yoga, calm the flickering of his nerves. Get in the nap, the way he always does.
He opens up his laptop. There’s a real estate site he has bookmarked. He zooms in on the map between Ottawa and Montreal, between him and Ilya. Picks a spot.
Filters for properties in Hawkesbury and hits search.