Reading Time:
52 Minutes

November 2016

Shane felt the way that his brain just froze. He had said Ilya. He had said Ilya and Rozanov had said Shane. He wanted to just shove back from Rozanov and run for the hills, but his body wasn’t doing what he wanted. He slowly got off his lap. He could feel the panic attack coming. He could feel it, and he knew that it was going to hit him, and he needed to get it under control. He didn’t need Rozanov seeing him have a panic attack. Rozanov wasn’t the kind to use shit like that against people in the game. Shane just didn’t like anyone but his parents knowing about the panic attacks. It didn’t need to be known. It didn’t need to have anything to do with the game.

“I…shouldn’t stay; I can’t. Team meeting in the morning that I’d forgotten. So…” Shane tried not to look at Rozanov, but he could see him and realized that it was the exact wrong thing to say.

“Okay. You forgot team meeting?” Rozanov looked like he didn’t believe it at all.

Which was fair. Shane knew that it was wrong, but it was all his brain could come up with. He didn’t know what the fuck to say next.

“Thank you for the tuna melt. Um… ah… I’m sorry. This… I can’t.” Shane was still messing with the shirt, and he didn’t know if he wanted to put it on or not.

“Hollander,” Rozanov said, as if it were proof that it was a mistake to say his first name.

It hurt, and Shane couldn’t understand why it hurt. He didn’t know why Rozanov saying “Hollander” like that hurt. He didn’t want to be hurt. He wanted to be Shane again, but he was freaking out, and he didn’t know how to ask for that because he didn’t know what this all meant. It was supposed to be sex. Then he had been asked to stay, and Rozanov made it seem like it was going to be just sex.

Then there had been sleeping in the same bed, Shane in Rozanov’s arms. It had been fucking good. It had been too much. He wanted it. He wanted to be in those arms again.

One of their phones started to ring. It was a soft sound that was like little bells. Shane’s phone only vibrated because he hated ringtones. He had heard Ilya’s just vibrate earlier, but that had been his father, and it hadn’t seemed like a good thing that he had called, so maybe others had a ringtone, like some of the women who he had hooked up with.

“Your phone is ringing,” Shane said when the sound didn’t go away. Maybe if Rozanov answered it, Shane could slip away without feeling like he was running away.

“It’s not my phone,” Rozanov said as he pulled his phone from his pocket, showing the dark screen, and he even pressed the button to wake it up, and there was no call on there.

The ringing was getting louder. Shane felt like it was too much, the feelings inside of him, the constant ringing. He jerked his phone from his pocket to see that it was also dark. He showed Rozanov briefly before he focused on where the sound was coming from. “Then what the hell is it?” Shane asked.

“I do not know,” Rozanov said.

Shane turned to where he had been planning to go, through the kitchen to the rest of the house, and get the hell out of there. Rozanov got up off the couch and looked at the direction that Shane was looking at when he glanced at him. Then Rozanov was moving closer, only it didn’t seem like he was moving toward the entryway; no, he looked like he was moving toward Shane. Shane made a choice to head into the kitchen area before Rozanov got there. Then he stopped again, and this time Rozanov stopped behind him as well. They could both see the basket on the counter.

It was like every single atom of panic was ripped from his body because this could not be what he thought it was. There was no way. He swallowed as he looked, hoping it would go away. He blinked a few times and even reached out and pinched himself. The basket was still there, and the bells from it were getting louder. He knew that they would keep on getting louder until one of them touched the basket to wake up the baby inside of it.

Shane had never once thought about wish babies in the way that he thought he would ever want one. His career was first, and since he barely had time to date and most women he had tried to date just didn’t do it for him, he figured that he would never have kids. Being around Hayden’s kids had been enough to tell him that he didn’t want to try and have a kid before he was ready. He didn’t think he was ready now. Yet, there was a baby basket on the table that said that the magical entity that governed the wish babies thought that one of them, or the more scary thought, both of them, was ready for a kid. Shane had no idea what the hell was going on.

“Are you going to go and take your baby?” Rozanov said.

“My baby? How do you know it’s not your baby? It’s your fucking house.” Shane turned to look at Rozanov, who was looking at the baby like it was a bomb.

The sounds that declared the arrival were getting louder.

“You think that I am ready for a baby? I fuck around too much.”

Shane knew that the whole thing of Rozanov fucking around was something he enjoyed, but Shane knew that part of it was just keeping people at arm’s length. He had heard the way he talked about his friend, Svetlana. There was no yearning there, but it seemed like he liked the companionship of her. Which was probably also why he kept things up with Shane as long as he had.

“You are not just a fuck boy,” Shane said. He walked over to the basket, hoping to see a name. There was none. He knew that for the baby to wake up, the parents had to both touch the basket. If the baby were his alone, the magic would drop that kept the baby asleep. He reached out and touched, trying to prove to Rozanov that it was not his baby. The sound was still going, and Shane looked at Rozanov, triumphant.

Rozanov huffed and came over to the basket, and he was more hesitant as he reached out, but the sound didn’t stop, even when Rozanov laid his full hand on the basket.

It was only then that Shane realized their utter fucking mistake. The baby had arrived as Shane was trying to leave. He had been trying to get words out and make Rozanov understand that he was freaked out.

Even before reaching out and touching the basket, Shane knew this baby was theirs.

Rozanov still had his hand on the basket when Shane touched it. The sound stopped, and the baby started to move, waking up from the magical nap it had been in the middle of. Wish babies were newborns, because the magical entity that governed wanted the new parents to have it all.

“Fuck,” Shane said, and Rozanov said the same word, just in Russian.

This was not good.

—

With his father on his mind, all Ilya could think about was that he didn’t want this baby to ever be in the hands of his father or his brother. If his family knew about her, they would try and take her to have more leverage over Ilya, to take more money. His father would treat the baby like shit. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but this was something that had to stay a secret. He didn’t trust many people, and those he did could be counted on two fingers. Marly and Sveta, beyond Shane.

“What are we going to do? We have an afternoon game tomorrow. I already was going to skip the optional skate that we had for this evening; our practice was this morning,” Ilya said. He could see that the panic that had been taking over Hollander was gone. There was some kind of cold calm that Ilya was used to seeing on the ice. The hockey robot, as he had been called, but Ilya knew that wasn’t what it was. No, he was just good at sticking things into boxes and putting them in places where they were not going to be a bother to him when they weren’t needed.

“Why the fuck would they give us a baby?” Hollander reached into the basket as the baby looked at both of them, eyes not really focusing but hearing their voices and turning toward them. The birth certificate was magical, and there was no chance of faking one either. It had a seal on the bottom corner that glowed and sparkled. Even years from now, it would look the same. There would be no difference in it. The names could never be changed.

Ilya had never done much looking into wish babies. He hadn’t ever wished for a baby that he knew of, but then again, he knew that sometimes the baby came when it was one part of a pair wishing for a baby and the other part of the pair just being there.

The issue was that there was no actual reason why he or Hollander would be asking for a baby right now. That was the part that was throwing Ilya for a loop right now. He had no idea what the fuck they were going to do with a baby. He knew that the MLH had a few things about babies, wish or otherwise, but he never really paid attention to them. Players did their own shit, and it was up to them, the GM, and other staff to work out when they were doing what they were doing.

“Do you have a laptop?” Hollander asked.

“Why?”

“Because the phone is going to take too long for anything,” Hollander said. “It will allow whoever is not holding her to look at stuff better.”

“Hold her?” Ilya asked. He had thought they would leave her in the basket as long as possible. It was easier to not get attached. To not want to keep this. He knew that one of them had to take her. He knew that; he just didn’t know if that was something that he should do at all. It was going to be impossible to keep the baby out of the public eye in Montreal and maybe just as hard as Boston. Ilya got his picture taken a lot, even when he was trying to hide. One of them would have to claim the baby, and it would be safe if Shane did that. They could lie about the origin of the baby because single parents wish babies were rare. It was one thing he had looked up because his father had been upset to never have a child with Polina, and he hoped that if the man divorced, no one would marry him again, and he couldn’t end up with another child to fuck up like he had Ilya and his brother.

“We can’t just leave her the basket. That would be mean.” Hollander turned the basket to where it faced him. “You are being good right now, but I have a feeling that you are going to figure things out and make us want to pull our hair out. You are made from both of us; that can’t be good.”

Ilya knew that the baby was theirs. DNA would put them both as parents, despite the whole genetics of it all. One of them would be listed as the mother on paper, the one who gave over the genetics that would come from a female. He knew that. It wasn’t just the fact that Hollander was the one who got fucked that made up those genetics. There was a lot more to it, but that was the basis of it. Russia didn’t teach much about the fact that two men could get a wish baby or two females. There was so much shit that Ilya needed to learn. He could make Hollander hold the baby so he was more attached, and then he could work on the laptop and do what he was told to get them out of this mess. There was going to be so much press on this. It was going to be easier to make sure that no one knew that Ilya was the other half of the parents.

Hollander gently slipped her out of the basket and held her close, looking like he was unsure but close enough to be good at it. Ilya knew that he was close with Pike, and Pike had like five kids so far. Hollander probably held them a lot.

“If you want to take the bag. I think that she’s going to need to eat soon. The bottle should be on the side, and it should be in a bottle that is ready to go.”

Ilya picked up the bag, and he found the bottle. There were actually three of them. There was only one that had something inside of it, though, and when he touched it, it was warm, not too hot, just warm, against his skin. He shook it, and it was already mixed up well. The baby started to make noise, and Hollander made a shushing noise. He headed for the living room, so Ilya grabbed the things, sliding the bottle back where it had been and following Hollander with the rest of the baby’s things. He set the basket and bag on the couch before he started to clear off the coffee table enough to put the basket there, and then he set the bag beside it. He had no idea what was in the bag. He started to go through it after handing Hollander the bottle.

He tried his hardest not to look at the picture that Hollander and the baby made. He was still freaking out inside. He could just see what was going to happen if his family found out about her. His brother would gladly threaten to release information about her to make him pay him more, if not just try to go through the Russian courts to get custody of her. The custody of wish babies was something that was dependent on the country that the parents were born in and their nationality; he would have to look that up first. He had no idea what Russia’s views were on that. With him being a Russian citizen, she would hold citizenship there no matter what. With Hollander being Canadian, she was going to be that as well, but she was technically born in the US. He had no idea how that messed with things.

“You are greedy,” Hollander said in a tone that Ilya had never heard from him before. He didn’t even get through the pocket with the diapers in them before he just gave up and watched Hollander with the baby.

It was a sight. Ilya watched the way that Hollander held their daughter. Like she was precious and something that would be broken if he mistreated her. The feelings from before came back. Ilya was aching for Hollander. To have the man in his life more than he had before. Russia and his father loomed ahead. If he took this, he could never go home. If he couldn’t go home, he couldn’t see his father buried beside his mother. That was the part that tore him up because Ilya hated his father and he loved him at the same time. Saying goodbye to him would be the same as saying goodbye to Russia. He could see his mother’s grave one more time when he went to say goodbye. Yet, there was this being who would make it hard to go back.

Ilya wasn’t sure what he wanted right now. He just watched Hollander feeding their baby.

“Is there a burp cloth in there?” Hollander asked when the bottle was mostly empty.

Ilya went back to digging in the bag. He found the pocket that held things like that, and he grabbed it and handed it over. He knew what it was used for.

“You want to do it?” Hollander asked.

“No,” Ilya said softly. He had no idea what he was doing. He wanted to see Hollander do it. “You do this for the Poke kids?”

“I read up on taking care of the baby when Jacki was pregnant with the twins. I wanted to be able to help with them as much as possible. It was going to be easier to look it up than to have them teach me. I still needed help with things that the twins didn’t like done the normal way, but it was easy enough to learn. You can watch me do it and then do it when you feed her next. We need to figure out her name.”

Ilya grabbed the packet of papers that was at the head of the basket, clipped there and ready to be opened up. It was everything they needed to prove that she was theirs. The name would be filled in by magic when they decided on a name. He didn’t know what the hell to even do about that because the name wasn’t something he had even started to think about. He pulled the paper and looked at it.

Hollander-Rozanov was what the paper said for the last name of the baby. He swallowed as their names were beside each other like they were all the time in the news.

“Hey, what’s that look for?” Hollander asked as he moved the baby to his shoulder, and he gently patted her back before there was a small burp. “You didn’t get much air in, did you? That’s good. That means I did good and you weren’t so hungry that you just gulped it down. We are already so good at this.”

Then there was a horrible smell. Ilya looked at the baby’s butt, and he thought about how he thought it was all a big exaggeration about the smell of a baby’s poop. Yet, what he was smelling was just horrible. He had no idea what the fuck to do about that.

“They might have a changing cloth in there,” Hollander said.

“What is supposed to be in there?”

“It depends, to be honest. I’ve seen ones that just had diapers and bottles because the family has had more than one kid, and that means that they have the rest of the stuff on hand. Then there are ones who are like us, and it’s everything that we need to keep her alive until we can order in stuff to get her going.”

“Like a car seat?” Ilya asked. He dug through the part of the bag that didn’t have diapers, and he found what he thought was the changing pad. He found that the back was made of a plastic that would hopefully stop it from leaking onto whatever she was on if she decided to keep on pooping or peeing while she was naked. Hollander was about to change her, and he had no idea what the fuck to do for it as well. He had never seen his niece long enough to change her when he was home. His brother kept him away from her for the most part until she was older. He had seen her for brief moments, but at this age, he had never gotten to see her.

Hollander changed her like a pro, and there was a moment where it seemed that she was going to pee all over, but Hollander just used the diaper to cover her up and let her keep on going before he got her all cleaned up. He narrated what he did, with making sure to wipe from top to bottom each time or just wipe at the bottom. Never bottom up. Checking the cracks and other places where poop could get because it was soft due to the fact that she would be eating a liquid diet for a while. The poop was going to be nasty as hell all the time as well.

Having babies was disgusting. The making of babies was fun and could be messy but not like this. Ilya had no idea why someone would want more than one of these at a time. He knew that twins and triplets weren’t something that could be determined, but he knew too many people who seemed to want to have a baby a year, and that meant that one was barely out of this stage before a new one was there.

“You can’t just not hold her,” Hollander said.

“I…” Ilya stood up and moved away from them. He went to the other side of the room, taking his eyes off Hollander for the first time in a while while Hollander got their daughter dressed again. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

“You don’t hurt her. You can’t tell me that you would do it on purpose.”

“I’m not a good person,” Ilya said.

The sound of soft footfalls made Ilya want to run away. He didn’t want to want this; Hollander and their daughter were together all the time. He didn’t want that at all. And yet, here it was.

Hollander didn’t get too close, but he got in Ilya’s line of sight. “You are a good person. You tried to hide it, but I know you, Ilya.”

The use of Ilya again made Ilya’s heart break. He looked at the two of them, and he felt it, the shattering of everything he was trying to hold up. He opened his arm up, and Hollander stepped up into the space made there. It felt like Ilya’s heart was being put back together with two pieces in there that were stronger than his heart had ever been before. He felt his mother’s love holding it all together.

“You can have this,” Hollander said.

“And you?”

And this was when Hollander looked as afraid as Ilya felt. The fear had made him try and run away until the magical entity dropped a baby in their lap. Ilya reached out, and he cupped the back of the baby’s body. Then he stepped closer, and Hollander didn’t move. He didn’t move as Ilya got close enough to hug them both and wrap them in his arms. “Shane.”

“Ilya,” Shane said. He made a noise, and Ilya didn’t know what it was until he saw the tears. It was a half-sob or something like that. “Can I have you?”

“You can have all of me,” Ilya said.

—

The baby was asleep on the couch with a barricade that was pretty much going to stop her from going anywhere even if she woke up. They were working on the laptop and both phones at the same time. Shane wished that he hadn’t left his tablet at the hotel. He had messaged Hayden that he was going to stay with Lily for the night and to not wait up for him. Then he had muted the thread because he didn’t need to see what his friend thought about this.

“We need help,” Ilya said.

It felt so wrong to think of him as Ilya because it was a line he had tried to keep up that never got crossed. He didn’t know what the fuck they were going to do with this. As soon as the baby crossed the border, it was going to be hard to keep it quiet. He wasn’t sure about the legal stuff with a border crossing, but shit was leaked all the time, and if the guard knew their names, it was going to be hard to hide it.

“I don’t know who,” Shane said. He was being honest because he had no idea what the fuck to do. Hayden was out because there was no chance that Hayden would take any of this well enough. He knew what his team said about Boston and about Ilya the most. It was the kind of shit that was going to get him tossed off the team right now. Or at least benched, and then he would have time with the baby.

“She needs a name,” Ilya said.

“I know. I can’t even think about that right now. You name her.”

“I am not naming her without you,” Ilya said.

Shane looked at him. Ilya hadn’t held her yet, still too afraid, but Shane wasn’t too worried about that. The man would do it when he wanted, and there was no pausing that. There didn’t need to be a push at all.

“Then let’s focus on that,” Shane said. He pushed the computer back to put his elbow on the counter and looked at Ilya. “What do you want to name her?”

“My mother’s name was Irina, but I don’t want to name her that,” Ilya said.

“Okay.” Shane heard he was in there. So Ilya’s mother was dead. That was something that they could talk about later. The good news was that when it came to genetic things that killed someone early, those were never passed down in the genes. Mental illnesses and disabilities and the like could still be there. There were more than a few autistic wish babies. He had never heard of a wish baby that died unless there were outside forces. The magic protected the baby for the first few months, and then that protection was gone.

“But there could be a name close to it?”

“Well, there is Elena.”

“You have a name you want to use?” Ilya asked.

“I haven’t thought about it. I was focused on the stuff we need right now, like someone to watch her while we play tomorrow, because it’s going to be hard to get either one of us out of the game. I will have to fly with the team fight after; we need help.”

“Your parents?”

Shane thought about his mom, and he knew that she would be able to do it, but there was too much that he didn’t want her pushing on right now. He needed someone who wasn’t going to push at all.

“My father. My mom is wonderful, but she’s…a steamroller.”

“A steamroller?” Ilya asked. He tried to picture what that was.

“She’s going to come in and take over and push us on things and make it harder for us to do it on our own time. Dad will keep this from her. He’s told me before about things that he’s never told her that center around me.” Shane had thought at the time the talk was going to be his father trying to get him to come out to him, to say that he was safe, but Shane hadn’t been ready to name what he felt for Ilya before they had even kissed. He hadn’t been happy to have someone who thought that he wasn’t straight, and then there was the bisexual of it all.

Yesterday, seeing the way that Ilya was afraid to reach out and touch his family made Shane realize that he didn’t want a woman. He never wanted a woman, and he had tried to make himself want a woman.

“I’m gay,” Shane said.

Ilya looked at him like he spoke French at him.

“Shane?”

“I’m fucking gay, and I don’t ever want to see a woman naked again.” Shane started to breathe hard, and he knew that he was on his way to a panic attack.

Ilya got off the stool and helped Shane down to the floor, his back to the island, and then he was there, sitting in front of him, not touching but just hovering. Shane reached out and clasped his hand. The hand that Ilya took was held to his chest, and Shane tried to match his breathing. He looked around and started to name five things he could see, saying them under his breath. Ilya said nothing and just let him talk as he worked through it all. He worked down the list, and when he was done, he was able to breathe.

“What was that?”

“Which part?” Shane asked, his lungs still aching from the heavy breathing he had done.

“The muttering. You were listing things.”

“It’s a way to help my panic attacks. You pick a sense; I usually start with sight. I name five things I can see, and then there are the rest of the senses. I usually save the taste for last. The others are just in a random order most of the time. If I can’t smell anything, I go back to see again and name a few other things.”

“You will have to send me more about that and the panic attacks.”

“It’s rare for me to have them; when I’m overwhelmed is when they happen, and I try not to get that way. It was…it is a lot here, right now, Ilya.”

“Then get your father on his way here. I’ll get the order of things that we need put in and get them sent here. I am sure that it’ll be easy to say that I am buying them for a friend and giving them as part of their baby shower or something.”

Shane nodded, and he looked around for a few seconds before Ilya reached up and grabbed his phone before handing it over. He didn’t seem willing to let Shane up, and that was okay. Shane dialed his father’s number, wanting to type it out to get his mind in order.

“Shane, are you okay?” David asked as the phone was answered.

“Dad, I need a big favor. You said before that you’ll do anything that I want.”

“Yes. I will.”

“I need to talk to you. You alone, and I’m going to send you the address of where I am in Boston right now. It’s not a hotel. You can fly here, right?”

“Shane, are you physically okay?”

“I’m as safe as I could ever be, and I’m not hurt. Something happened, and I need you.”

“Okay. I’ll handle your mother, and it’ll be fine. Just make sure that if things change and you are not safe, you will leave.”

“I will, but I’m never going to be safer than I am right now unless I go to the cottage.”

“That’s good. Does this have to do with Lily?”

Shane looked at Ilya, who was looking anywhere but at Shane. “Yes, it has to do with Lily.”

That drew Ilya’s gaze back to him, and Ilya raised an eyebrow. Shane shrugged. He had thought that he did better at hiding from his parents, but it seemed he wasn’t nearly as good at that as he thought if both Hayden and his father knew about her.

“I’ll book the flight. How much clothing should I bring?”

“Um, just bring the bag you keep in the car,” Shane said. He inhaled and exhaled, feeling like he was going to have another panic attack. “I’m sure that Lily and I can let you borrow things, and if not, we can order in clothes or something. Text me the travel stuff, and I’ll have a car get you.”

“Okay, son, I’ll give you the update. You don’t need to send a car.”

“Yeah, let’s just say that I do. There are enough cars here to make it easy for you to borrow one to do whatever you need to until we figure shit out. Also, Dad, I’m gay.” Shane hung up before his father could say anything.

“Shane,” Ilya said.

“I panicked, okay. I just…Fuck.” Shane dropped his phone to his lap, and he rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Then he felt Ilya’s hands on his wrists to pull his hands away. Shane felt the tears, and he hated them. He hated that he was fucking emotional right now. He had been so good until this point. He didn’t know what he was going to end up doing. This was too much, but it felt like it was right as well.

“It’s okay to panic, but don’t have another attack. Just breathe and match my breathing.” Ilya brought a hand to his chest again; the rise and fall were easy to match. Shane wasn’t sure what the hell was going to happen right now, but he felt like he was going to be okay. They needed to make a list of things that they needed to order, and then they could figure things out. It wasn’t going to be long before his father got there.

The text made Shane jump when he heard the vibration. He picked it up and looked at it. His father was taking an Uber to the airport and leaving his car at work for now. To make it easier to get it later if his mother needed to get it.

“He is getting on a plane pretty much when he gets there, and he’s only taking on his personal item. The bag he keeps will fit under the seat. He took first class. I’ll play him back for that. I just…”

“Hey, hey, he loves you.”

“I know. He tried a few years ago to get me to open up to him about being gay. He tried.”

“How?”

“He talked about a lot of things that would never change how he feels about me. That no choice would ever make him not love me.”

“Even murder?”

“He holds that some people just need killing,” Shane said. He laughed a little, and it helped to remove the vice it felt like was wrapping around him again. He wanted to lean on Ilya, but they hadn’t done anything like that yet. They had barely talked about themselves, just dealing with the baby and then with looking into what kinds of protections there were. There was a lot that they were looking up when it came to what the fuck to do. There was no way of keeping this under wraps unless Ilya was the one to claim the baby. The birth certificate was going to be filed at some point, and while there was no reason for someone to look for it, they would once it got out there that there was a baby in Shane’s hands. Or Ilya’s hands. There was no reason to think that this was going to go well. The only thing that they could do was get a head of it. It was so fucking early in the season that there was a big chance that this was going to wreck either one of their seasons.

Ilya took the choice away from him and scooted closer and used his hold on Shane’s hands to pull him into his lap, and then they were turning to where Ilya’s back was to the island. He cupped Shane’s face and looked at him. “We will talk about us now, yes?”

Shane nodded.

“My father is not good. He is dying. He has months left at best from what I’ve been told by his doctors, or at least from my brother through the doctors. That is what that call was. He thinks that I am a child that he can yell at. He forgets that I am an adult. He forgets a lot of things.”

“Dementia?” Shane asked.

“Da,” Ilya said.

“Okay.”

“Before today, before that tiny baby woke up when we both touched her basket, I would have said that there was nothing that would keep me from going home to lay him to rest, but with this, it’s a new idea that I need to take care of her, no one else in my life. She is my priority. My brother cannot do this. My father never did this. My mother…she loved me but she had her issues.”

“Loved?” Shane asked.

“She died. It was an accident. My father made sure that it was listed as an accident, and I never thought anything else about it until coming here. I have looked into a few things after a few things were said around me. I think that she took her life because there was no other option that she saw to get away from my father and way from the pain inside of her. She was sad a lot.”

“Depression?” Shane asked.

Ilya nodded. He pressed a little harder to Shane’s cheeks, making him look at him. “We are nowhere ready for this. I am not sure what the magical…” Ilya waved his hand a little before he pressed it to Shane’s cheek again. “Thought that we needed a child like this, but we have it. She is ours. She is ours to protect and not to fuck up.”

Shane swallowed, and he nodded. Pressing down into Ilya’s hands, he smiled when Ilya smiled at him. “I’ll do anything for her.”

“Good. Then we will pick her name, and then we will lay out what we are going to do with her.”

“Okay,” Shane said.

“Then when your father is here and able to watch her for longer than we have been able to slip away from her, we will talk about us and what this means for us.”

Shane liked having a plan. He pushed into Ilya’s hands, and then he moved in to press his nose to Ilya’s neck. He liked the plan so far, and he would settle down a little bit. A name. A name that they chose for her without anyone else coming and pushing them.

“I like Veronika,” Shane said.

“Is a very good name. Is pretty too.”

“She’s pretty.”

“She’s a baby; she is not pretty, but I want her to have these,” Ilya said, brushing a thumb over Shane’s cheek. “I want to see her when I look at you.”

Shane didn’t pull his face out of the shelter of Ilya’s neck. He didn’t want to. Ilya wrapped his arms around him.

“Our little Nika,” Ilya said.

“Nika is the diminutive?” Shane asked.

“You didn’t look that up?”

“No, I was looking at popular names in Russia on my phone. I hadn’t gone into that part of things yet, and I figured that you would know the name.”

“I do. There was a girl in my class before I was pulled to spend more time on hockey after my mother died. She was sweet. She moved away before I could convince her to sleep with me.”

Shane pushed at Ilya’s shoulder and then moved up to look at him. He thought about Svetlana. He knew that Ilya had been trying for something with that whole thing with talking about girls. Shane just wasn’t sure what it was. It was something they would have to talk about. They had a life that connected them that would not be able to be just simple. He didn’t know what was going to happen, to be honest, because he needed to have that. He needed to have that control.

“You can’t…fuck,” Shane said. He ducked down to rest his head on Ilya’s shoulder.

“I think you’ll find I can fuck, and I can fuck well.”

“Asshole. Oh fuck, we have to watch our language. I give Hayden so much shit for his language and the sweat jar, but now it’s me. I love the word ‘fuck.’ I love calling you asshole.”

“I like your asshole as well.”

“Ilya,” Shane said.

“Shane, we are fine. I will not fuck around with anyone else. I know what you mean. It’s not like we can mess with her age. They will know it when it’s found out. They will know if I am fucking around on you. I don’t have to worry about you fucking around on me.”

“It’s private.”

“I do private things as well, and most of the girls were just taken home lately. If they are too drunk, I don’t fuck. I am not that kind of guy. I don’t do that. I make sure that my lovers can remember what we have done together because outside of Golden Boy Canadians with freckles, I don’t go back for seconds. Well, and Sveta. I like Sveta.”

“You can have fun with Sveta,” Shane said. He hated the words as soon as he said them. He hated the way they sounded, but this was…they were just lovers. Shane hated that word, but it was what they were. Lovers. He didn’t want to have that conversation right now. It wasn’t going to be long before his father was there. The flight wasn’t long, and the car had been ordered, and the driver knew who to look like, and they were someone that Ilya trusted, a guy that he used a lot when he and Sveta were out on the town. Shane wasn’t worried. He really wasn’t worried, but he was worried.

“I do not need fun with Sveta, Hollander. I just need you.”

Shane swallowed past the lump in his throat, and he followed the feel of the fingers that pressed on the underside of his chin to make Shane look at him. Ilya had never made Shane look at him, which was good, and it made Shane be more willing to look at him. He stopped his gaze on the necklace that Ilya always wore. No one had asked about it in the MLH in years. He had been very much quiet on it when he first joined and started to do shirtless interviews.

“I mean it, Shane Hollander.”

“I know you don’t say things you don’t mean,” Shane said when he finally looked at Ilya’s face, his gaze locking onto Ilya’s eyes. He didn’t feel that spark of wariness that he usually did when he looked people in the face instead of just to the side. He didn’t have much luck with people understanding him. when it came to that. “I’m just…overwhelmed.”

“I know you are. It’s fine. We both are. I’m not doing better than you, but I do well at hiding it.”

“Your father?”

“Da,” Ilya said.

“You are not him. You could never be him. You never, ever could.” Shane leaned in for a kiss, and he let himself get lost in that kiss. The taste of Ilya, the feel of his hands touching him, not to arouse, just to touch. He wasn’t hard, and he didn’t think that he was going to get hard. There was a muffled sound, and then Nika started to cry.

Shane didn’t want to break the kiss, but they had a daughter to take care of, and they needed to work on that.

“I will follow you with a snack and a drink; we can leave the laptop for now.”

Shane leaned in for a few more seconds, and he kissed Ilya like he was something precious. The worry, like he had felt before, never came back, the thing that had made him want to run from Ilya. There was only so much he could take when it came to that. The arrival of Veronika was something that had stopped him from running from the best thing in his life. There was nothing more important than Ilya and Nika right now, and Shane needed to work on making sure that they were exactly where they needed to be for that.

Ilya helped him stand up, and Shane was glad that he didn’t mind showing weakness like that in front of Ilya. He never accepted help like that unless he was hurt by anyone on his team beyond Hayden and JJ. There were a lot of times that he probably should have, but he didn’t.

Nika was waking up, and she didn’t need changing; she didn’t seem to be hungry, so Shane just pressed her to his chest. She made a few sounds and then was wiggling a lot. Shane looked at Ilya with a look of utter terror. They had her for a few hours; there was no way that they were failing this already. Ilya came over and took her from him, and he plucked at Shane’s shirt. Shane made a face. Maybe she didn’t like the fabric of the shirt on him. He tugged it off, looking for a blanket to use, and Ilya just laughed before settling Nika on the couch and stripping her of the onesie that had come with her. There were a few more in the bag. They needed to work on the items.

Shane watched as Ilya stripped her, and then he pushed Shane toward the couch. Shane removed the pillows they had used to keep her from rolling off the couch, and he sat down. Then Ilya was laying her on his chest; she calmed down nearly instantly. She curled her little hand into a fist and went limp on him.

“I found an article on skin-to-skin time. I didn’t look at it that close and had it in the collection of things to send to you. I’ll send it to you now, and then I’ll bring the laptop in here to order things that we need right now. I’ll get a blanket so that you can share your warmth with her as well. I have a very soft one in the bedroom. Don’t move.”

Ilya stepped back, and he took a picture with his phone. Shane didn’t feel weird like he did when pictures were taken of him when he was shirtless. He usually didn’t get nearly as naked as the team did when they were celebrating wins in the locker room. His compression shirt stayed on his body until he had to get into the shower.

It took a few minutes, but his phone dinged with an alert. It was from Ilya, and then he noticed that his father had texted that he had been picked up. That had been just long enough that Shane knew that his father was almost there unless traffic was even worse out of the airport than it normally was on a day like today.

“Um, Dad’s almost here. “Fuck…” Shane said when Ilya came back into the room with the blanket that he draped over Shane’s body and Nika’s little one.

“I will get him, Shane. He will not punch me, right?”

“No, that would be more likely to be my mom.”

Ilya laughed, and he nodded. He disappeared back toward the kitchen and came back with ginger ale for Shane and the diaper bag that they had taken in there to make sure that they had everything on the paper list that Shane started to make it easier to order what they needed when they finally got to it. Now, since his father was nearly there, Shane might just have Ilya wait because there was no reason to place a second if they didn’t think of something.

“Your father will like me?” Ilya asked, the only show of worry that he had done when it came to something that wasn’t Nika being used by his family or Russia against him.

“I think so. He likes anything that makes me happy.”

“Good. Good.” Ilya was gone again seconds later.

Shane shook his head, and he settled down to just let Nika sleep on him. She was already asleep again. He opened the link to the article that Ilya had found. Shane wasn’t even sure where he had found it to begin with, but cuddling with their daughter wasn’t something he was going to deny.

Their daughter.

Fuck, they had a daughter. Shane felt his heart start to race, and Nika started to get upset, making a few noises that made Shane worry about her, but he calmed himself down, forgetting where his mind had been going, and Nika settled down.

Not to self, Shane thought. Don’t get upset with Nika when doing skin-to-skin time.

Shane could do that. It would take some will on his part, but he could do it.

—

Ilya checked the fridge for food items. He hadn’t gone hopping much before Shane had gotten there because he had planned to make the tuna melts. He hadn’t needed much else because of the upcoming trip out of town for games. He needed to make a list because he was going to take off after the game tomorrow. Ilya knew that they both wanted to take the time needed to get themselves settled, and he wasn’t going to miss the Montreal game unless he was dead.

The small chirp from the alarm system told him that something was caught on the camera he had that just took footage of the cars that came down the drive to his place. It wasn’t much, but he figured that if someone really wanted to get into his place, they would no matter what. He had the alarm system that would go off if the house were breached. He wasn’t stupid enough to not have it, but the cameras were only for the drive and the two doors.

Ilya checked what he was wearing, and he headed for the door. He looked at the camera, waiting to see when David Hollander got close to the door. He had just a single bag slung over his shoulder and a coffee in his hand. He was glad that David had stopped to get a coffee; he felt it was going to be needed. Ilya didn’t stand where David could see him as he opened the door.

“Shane, son, this place is great. I didn’t know that you knew anyone in Boston who would have a place like this. You’ll have to see if they build in Canada or know someone who does builds like this.”

Ilya shut the door, thinking about how the son was like the father. David turned, and it was only Ilya’s quick reflexes that stopped the coffee from hitting the floor. The dull thud from the bag as it hit the ground made Ilya hope that it didn’t have anything breakable in it.

“Rozanov,” David said.

“Welcome to my home, Mister Hollander. Shane is in the living room,” Ilya said.

“Shane is in your living room?” David repeated the words like he didn’t understand them as they came out of Ilya’s mouth. Ilya understood. It was strange for Shane Hollander to be in his place. There was a lot of shit going on in the man’s head, and Ilya could see it across his face.

“Yes, he is. He is physically fine.”

“You specified physical, meaning that something else is not fine.”

“Best to hear from both of us, yes?” Ilya handed over the coffee, and he swept the bag up and carried it toward the living room.

Nika was still mostly covered up, just a part of it pushed down to allow her to breathe, but unless you were looking, you would never notice that there was a baby under that blanket.

“Shane, what is going on?” David asked as he breached the entry to the living room. He stopped seeing Shane on the couch under the blanket. “Rozanov said that you were physically fine; then why do you have a blanket over your body? What are you hiding?”

“Not hiding, just…We got a wish baby.”

“A wish baby?” David asked. He set down his coffee. Then he moved around to where he could see Nika’s face.

“This is not a joke? You didn’t borrow someone’s newborn to try and… I don’t know. Shane, please,” David said.

“Rozanov, Ilya and I have been seeing each other for a while now. When I went to leave today in a freak-out from things becoming…more, we both thought the other’s phone was ringing, and then in the kitchen, there she was. The birth certificate is over there.” Shane pointed to where it had made it in the clicking room when Ilya had been bringing things in there while waiting on David to get there.

Ilya stayed back, close enough to be able to defend his family if needed, but Shane was still calm. Nika was dead to the world. She was so asleep that Ilya didn’t think that anything could wake her up right now. It was good. It meant that she felt safe with them, as safe as a little baby could. They were going to be her whole world, and that meant that they needed to make a lot of plans to make sure that she was going to be safe.

David picked up the birth certificate. “There is no middle name.”

“No, we took a while on the first name. I’m shocked we didn’t notice that it was on there.”

“We have had other worries,” Ilya said.

“I’m sure that you have. Well, this explains a lot of things right now that I thought about on the way here. Why is your mother not with me?” David asked.

“I worried about her first reaction. She hates Ilya, and I never tried to stop her because it’s never worked before when it comes to guys on other teams.”

“Your mother loves her team a lot.” David sat down on the couch, on the other side of Shane, to where he could look at Nika’s face. “She’s got the start of freckles, it looks like.”

“Good,” Ilya said.

Shane looked at him and glared, and it just made Ilya want to heckle him a little bit more. “You know that I want them on her. I want to see her on you when I look at you.”

David looked at him and then down at Nika, then to Shane’s face. “Do you love him? What the hell am I asking? They don’t give out wish babies to people who don’t love each other.”

Shane didn’t look up from where he was looking at Nika, but Ilya knew that it was something they hadn’t talked about since she had shown up. They had worked around figuring shit out about who was going to be the one to claim her and what the fuck they were going to do about taking care of her with their jobs.

“We haven’t really talked about that yet. We didn’t want to be away from her, and it’s something that we should maybe talk about behind closed doors. We started a list. Ilya, list.”

Ilya grabbed it and handed it over to David. Then he sat down on the couch on Shane’s other side, pressing their hips together and then letting his entire leg just rest on Shane’s.

“It’s what’s in the bag and what we think we need. If you want to look it over, then Ilya and you can place it really quick while I finish skin-to-skin time with Nika.”

“Nika?” David asked.

“It’s the normal diminutive of Veronika in Russian.”

“Ah,” David said.

“You can stay tonight?” Ilya asked.

David nodded his head. “I took off the next few days of work at the start of the week. I have the time. “I have not told your mother anything yet, but that will have to happen soon,” David said.

“I know. I know. I just…I’m not ready for her to invade this.”

“I can make sure that she’s going to respect what you want. The legal side of things would be easier with her as well.”

“I’m going to take off the next two games after tomorrow. It’s in the contact for most of the MLH about wish babies and normal babies, outside of complications and such. I want to do tomorrows game band and then just stay here.”

“I can watch her tomorrow during the game. It’s an afternoon one, right?”

Shane nodded. He moved his hand to swap the one that was holding Nika on his chest. She wiggled just a little bit at the change but didn’t wake up at all.

“Okay, let’s see what we can figure out when it comes to this stuff.”

Ilya grabbed the laptop and found the site for the local baby shop that he knew a few guys on the team used because their stuff was good. It was in the price range for even the guys who didn’t earn as much as Ilya did. So it would be good for them. The car seat was in there, three of them, because Ilya was crazy like that. They would last them for a while, and if they didn’t use all three, the next size of seat could have them get just two instead. He didn’t know what kind of shit they would really need for her.

“The diapers she was sent with were cloth, right?”

“Yeah, the ones we have for her are cloth, and I want to keep on using them. There is a service through the place where Ilya started to make an order that would allow that to be done with her if we stay in this area.”

“Staying. You are going to swap teams?” David asked.

“I want to be in her life. We’ve looked at things, and it’s easier and safer for her and Ilya to stay here. Canada is more friendly with Russia, and it could mean a few issues with Ilya’s family and their access to them. The US has more protection when it comes to asylum and getting Ilya a way to not have to go back to Russia.”

“Because they are still not friendly at all toward pairings that are not a man and a woman, especially when a gay couple gets a wish baby. I can see that.”

“My father is sick, and he’s never been a good father. I love him, but it’s hard to want to be around him. I take care of him out of that love that I had for the man he was when I was younger, before he let the world really make him horrible. To the man who held me the first time that I broke my arm and tried to make me not notice the pain. Not the man who told me that I wasn’t allowed to cry at my mother’s funeral.”

David looked pissed off. Ilya was happy about that even as the anger there worried him. He hadn’t done much looking into Shane’s family because it hadn’t mattered before this. No, he had never cared to look at all, and now he was wondering if he should have. Was David really a good father? Shane loved him, but Ilya loved his father as well.

Shane picked him as the one to come here to help them, so there was trust there. Ilya just wasn’t sure what kind of relationship that the three of them had, and he wondered if Shane would stand up to make sure that his parents didn’t try and take Shane and Nika from him. Ilya would fight dirty about that. He would make sure that he had his family around him, the family he had only had for a few hours, but he would still destroy the world to keep them.

Ilya had no qualms about doing what he could do to keep his family.

—

Shane took off the shirt, and he dug around in Ilya’s closet for a hoodie that he could wear after the shower. They hadn’t really done much beyond a quick cleanup each from the hand jobs that Shane had done for them on the couch. He felt like he needed a shower, and he wanted to have Ilya with him, but he wasn’t sure it was what Ilya wanted. He found more clothes in Ilya’s drawers because he hadn’t brought a single fucking thing with him to Ilya’s, and he had already asked to use some of his clothes. He knew that Ilya had a little bit of a fetish for seeing him in his things even if that was only a few hours old on knowing it.

By the time that he had a pile of clothes ready for him to change into when he was done with the shower, Ilya was in the room with him. The bedroom door was locked, and Ilya leaned on the door looking at him.

Shane held out his hand, and Ilya was across the room so fast, pushing him into the wall beside the bathroom door. Shane didn’t fight what Ilya wanted, even as the man got his legs up and made him jump up to be held up and pressed into the wall.

“I want to fuck you,” Ilya said.

Shane gasped into Ilya’s mouth, and he nodded. He needed something to help him settle the nerves he had. His father had taken things well enough, and Shane was a mess. He needed something to right himself.

Ilya stepped back and deftly dropped them both to the bed when he got close enough. It was a scramble to get clothes off, and Shane knew that he needed to be quiet in some fashion. Nika was being fed right now by his father. Shane had tried to get Ilya to do it, but Ilya had said that Nika needed bonding time with her grandfather. They were going to have many other feedings as well, but Shane knew that time was going to feel precious for this.

There was little prep, but then again, they had fucked several times already that day, even if two of them had been just cock on cock. The fingers that slicked up his hole had Shane biting his lip to not yell out at the feeling of the way that Ilya was rough because he was rushing to get inside of him. Shane expected to be put on his front. When Ilya was like this, it was what he liked; they couldn’t really kiss unless Shane made sure to stretch first, but the feeling of Ilya thrusting into him was so fucking good.

Ilya grabbed the condom, and he rolled it down his cock before applying more lube to him and then smeared more over Shane’s hole, and then he was pushing inside of him. He wiped his hands on a shirt that had been left hanging off the side of the bed before Shane could even think about how he wanted to do it. Ilya grabbed his hands and pressed them into the bed on either side of his head, and then he was being kissed.

Shane could feel the slow movement of Ilya’s cock inside of him, and he tried to get Ilya to go faster. He wanted him to go fucking faster, but Ilya just kept like he was. Shane wrapped his legs around Ilya better and tried to use that, but Ilya had all of the power.

“Fuck,” Shane said as he relaxed into the bed and stayed like that.

“Yeah, that’s it; take what I give you.”

“Asshole,” Shane said, but he pursed his lips for a kiss, and Ilya gave it to him. Shane was the first to slip his tongue out, and he found that Ilya met him. They kissed and they fucked.

Unlike every other time, Shane felt like this was them making love. He groaned as he realized that Ilya was doing this on purpose. Shane pushed up against the hands holding him down, and Ilya relented, probably sure that Shane was with the program now, so Shane showed that he was by wrapping a hand around the back of Ilya’s head and drawing his mouth down to kiss again, and then the other was around his back, trying to get a good grip on the sweaty skin there. They kept on moving bodies, rocking together to make up something so fucking good that he didn’t know that sex could fucking be like this. Even between them it had never felt like this.

Was this what sex was like when there were feelings that were returned, when Shane was with someone he actually wanted, instead of making himself want them?

Shane didn’t even care when he came first, his body bucking and his ass being filled all the way with Ilya in a fast and hard move, like Ilya could feel the way that Shane’s body loved this and wanted to make it more. Ilya followed a few thrusts later, and they stayed like that, foreheads pressed together, just breathing in each other’s air. There was too much and not enough going on in Shane’s head at the moment. He wanted to keep it like this; the world wasn’t pressing in, but it would soon. They really needed to shower now. Shane knew that it was going to be a matter of time before he felt too much of everything on his body and he would need to get into the shower.

“We need to get tested,” Ilya said, breaking the silence of them just breathing in the room.

“Yeah, I’ve not had risky contact, but I would never want to risk you. Never.”

“Same,” Ilya said.

“We can work on that when we are working on getting things for Nika settled.” Shane tried to get Ilya to move on to resting on him more, and after a few pokes in his side, Ilya did it, pressing him down into the bed. This was the best part when Shane could get him to do it. He loved it. He wanted to have Ilya sleeping on him in the living room too, on the couch. He knew that he could talk Ilya into it at some point.

“I feel like everything that we finish creates five more issues.”

Shane snorted because Ilya wasn’t wrong, but they were handling things.

“After you get out of the shower, call your mom.” Ilya asked, his face buried in Shane’s neck.

Shane ran his hand up and down Ilya’s spine, thinking about it. He knew that he needed to do it and he needed to give his mother time to deal with more than just the Ilya and Nika of it all. She would have to reframe her entire worldview of not only Ilya but Shane as well.

“And tell them that I’m gay,” Shane said.

Ilya pushed up to look down at him.

“You said you like women,” Ilya said.

“I… I think I’ve been lying to myself for a very long time. I think that I’ve made it up in my head that I do like women, but I don’t. I just don’t. Sex with them is something of a chore. I can’t ever get off fast. That first time with you was fast as fuck compared to every time a woman had gotten on her knees for me or I’d been inside of her. It’s not even just the condom because we’ve done that for oral before when we didn’t want to clean up at all and we had such little time.”

“You lied to yourself?”

“I… I wanted hockey, Ilya. I wanted it more than I wanted anything else in the world, and hockey doesn’t like men who like other men. So I think that I pushed it down. You had a little freedom in Russia because there were underground things that you could find. I never accepted that I wasn’t into women until like an hour ago.”

“An hour ago?” Ilya braced himself on a single arm, and he brushed his fingers down Shan’s cheek. “You have been dealing with more than I thought you were over the last little while. I don’t care that you are gay; you know that, right?”

“Just like I’m not going to care that you are bisexual. I don’t hold the belief that all bisexual people are going to cheat on their partners with someone of the sex their partner is not. I don’t think that at all, Ilya. I know that you will be faithful to me. You would never hurt me like that. You would never hurt yourself like that.”

“Fuck,” Ilya said. He dropped his head back down, and he started to cry.

Shane wrapped his arm around him, and he held on. He felt tears in his eyes as well, from the feeling of letting out all of the emotions that were choking them up. The things that had been brewing in the background since they both touched the basket.

They both had their demons to handle, and Shane wanted to make sure that they had what was needed to make sure that they didn’t fuck up Veronika’s life. They would have to work on themselves, and maybe they both needed some outside help when it came to that.

“Are you sure that you want this?” Ilya asked when he was done crying.

“More than anything else beyond hockey that I have ever wanted in my life. I know that I don’t need to give up hockey to keep her, but we will have to walk a fine line on this. Dad’s right that we need Mom for this part, but I wanted… I wanted the calm that my father gives for this first part because once Mom gets here, it’s going to be going and not stopping. Do you want to call Svetlana?”

Ilya jerked his head up to look at him. He just stared at Shane as he processed the words. Shane knew that Ilya would speak when he was ready, but he would wait him out, not pushing him.

“Why?” Ilya asked.

“You don’t have anyone here. I have my parents. You should have someone who is on your side in this. I don’t want you to do something that you don’t want to make me happy. You need someone.”

“Maybe her and Cliff?” Ilya asked.

Shane nodded. He trusted that Ilya trusted them both. They would need all the help they could get, to be honest.

“After we call your mom and talk to her, I’ll get them both over here. Cliff and her get along. They will be fine.”

Shane was looking forward to a little quiet time in the shower, maybe hands on each other again, maybe him getting on his knees for Ilya and letting the world narrow to just the cock in his mouth.