today i made a cappuccino with almond milk and said out loud: "man, this would kill Shane Hollander" and then i had to remind myself Shane Hollander is not real.
and even real fake him isn't allergic to almonds 🤣
shane + svetlana + cliff organize banger birthday party for ilya. shane is VERY insistent that it has to be before his actual birthday. cliff isn't sure why, but svetlana knows...
he's spending his actual birthday getting freakay, somehow managing to be more freakay than the year before and the year before that and so on. he and shane will be feeling it for a week. shane and ilya are so excited
hey so if my math is right Ilya Rozanov turned thirty right before he and Shane got married. Which means that by the time hollanov got married, he’d known Shane for longer than he’d known his own mom. And according to most headcanons, he’d surpassed Irina's age as well.
Summary: A quiet birthday dinner with Shane's family shouldn't feel like much. For Ilya, it feels like everything. Sometimes the best gifts are the people who choose to keep showing up.
Read on AO3
It wasn’t fancy. No private room. No celebrity friends hiding behind menus waiting to yell surprise. No giant cake shaped like a hockey rink. No cameras. No reporters. No carefully curated social media moment designed to make strangers on the internet jealous.
Just dinner.
A small Italian restaurant tucked into a quiet corner of the city, warm light spilling across white tablecloths. The smell of garlic and fresh bread hangs in the air. Soft music plays somewhere in the background, barely loud enough to notice.
At the table sit exactly three people.
Shane. Yuna. David. That’s it.
Shane, meanwhile, looks vaguely panicked.
Not actual panic. Shane never actually panics. Shane does something much worse. He worries himself into a state of polite, silent anxiety while pretending everything is perfectly fine.
Ilya knows the look.
The tiny crease between Shane’s eyebrows. The way he keeps glancing around the restaurant as though he’s personally responsible for the quality of every meal being served. The way he asks if everything is okay every ten minutes.
As if there is any universe where Ilya is going to complain.
Especially when Shane has already spent half the evening smiling at him like that.
At some point Yuna insists on a photograph. Shane immediately sits up straighter, polite and composed as ever. Ilya leans in close enough that their shoulders touch. The resulting picture is painfully them: Shane smiling softly at the camera while Ilya looks delighted by absolutely everything. It will end up as Shane’s phone background within a week. Shane will deny this. The evidence will be overwhelming.
Especially after this morning.
Ilya has already had an excellent birthday.
Maybe the best possible start to a birthday, in fact.
Being woken up before sunrise by his husband had resulted in several minutes where coherent thought had completely abandoned him. There had absolutely been fireworks involved, regardless of what the Canadian government officially classified as fireworks. So really, Shane could have handed him a stale muffin and a coupon for free parking after that and Ilya probably would have called it a perfect day.
Instead, Shane had spent the entire day looking increasingly concerned that he hadn't done enough. It was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.
Ilya leans back in his chair and watches Shane fret over the menu.
The man has somehow arranged a dinner with the two most important people in his life, booked a restaurant Ilya actually likes, cleared everyone's schedules, and spent the whole day treating him like he hung the moon.
And still Shane looks worried.
"You know," Ilya says finally, reaching for his wine, "most people would be very offended."
Shane immediately looks up. "About what?"
"About how little faith you have in them."
The crease between Shane’s eyebrows deepens.
"I don't know what that means."
"I mean," Ilya says patiently, "you look like you think I am about to stand up and announce this is worst birthday in history."
Yuna snorts into her drink. David outright laughs.
Shane sighs. "I just wanted it to be nice."
"It is nice."
"I know, but—"
"No." Ilya points at him with his wine glass. "Listen carefully. I am going to explain something important."
Shane immediately adopts the expression of a man being forced into a lecture.
"I woke up this morning very happy. Then I spent the day with my husband. Now I am eating pasta with people I like. This is already successful birthday."
Yuna nods. "That's actually a pretty good summary."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Shane's shoulders finally loosen a little.
And that, more than the restaurant or the food or the occasion itself, makes warmth settle comfortably in Ilya's chest. Because Shane still doesn't understand.
He still thinks effort is measured in grand gestures. He still worries that simple isn't enough.
But across the table is Yuna, smiling into her wine. Beside her is David, telling some story that keeps getting interrupted by laughter. And next to Ilya is Shane, who woke up early just to make sure his birthday started right and has spent the entire day trying to make him happy.
What Shane never seems to realize is that none of this is simple. Not for Ilya.
Not when, for most of his life, birthdays had been phone calls across oceans, teammates in hotel rooms, hurried celebrations squeezed between games and flights and obligations.
This is family.
And for a moment, watching Shane finally stop worrying long enough to smile, Ilya thinks that maybe that's the real gift.
he's a star athlete. he's an orphan. he's bisexual. he's depressed. he's a dog dad. he's a sex symbol. he's a retired hoe. he's traumatized. he's a nhl captain. he's a character of all time. happy birthday, ilya rozanov.
Fully wakes up, at least. He has a hazy recollection of Shane pressing a kiss to his temple and whispering "happy birthday, baby" as he got out of bed, but it had been too early, still dark out, and Ilya had been too sleepy, snuggling into the warm patch left behind by Shane and letting himself get pulled back under by sleep.
But when he eventually blinks his eyes open for real, he's alone in the bed. On their bedside table is a small stuffed bear and a handwritten note from Shane: "Happy birthday! I'll be back soon. Get dressed - wear something nice but comfy. Love you <3"
Ilya pulls on a favorite t-shirt and shorts before padding downstairs. There's a box of donuts and another small bear on the counter, which makes Ilya smile. Hopefully his husband makes an appearance soon, but in the meantime, he could do worse than help himself to a jelly donut or two.
Soon enough, he hears Shane's key in the door. Dropping the bag he'd been carrying, Shane beelines to Ilya, licking the sugar out of his mouth and murmuring happy birthday against his lips before pulling away with a smile. "I'm kidnapping you," he says with a grin, holding up a bandanna. Ilya barely has a chance to protest before Shane's tying it snug-but-not-too-tight over his eyes, carefully tugging it just into place before pressing a kiss to Ilya's knuckles and leading him by the hand out the door and into the car.
It probably isn't too long a car ride, but it's hard to keep track of time and distance when you're blindfolded. (In truth, he can see a tiny bit if he crosses his eyes and looks down his nose, but he wants to play along.) Shane refuses to give any clues, no matter how much Ilya wheedles, and firmly moves Ilya's hand when it wanders over to his crotch (though he lets Ilya rest it on his inner thigh, just where the hem of his shorts meets the skin, and that alone feels like birthday present enough).
Soon Shane's pulling the car onto a gravel road, car bumping along and eventually swinging into a parking spot. "Don't get out yet - I'll come around to you," Shane says, unclicking his seatbelt and opening his door, long enough for Ilya to make out--
"I hear Ke$ha," he says when Shane opens his door.
Shane laughs, "Yeah, they've got her playing. I gave them a whole list."
"Them?"
"You'll see."
The sun is warm on Ilya's skin as Shane leads him over grass, and he can smell... sugar. Cotton candy? Popcorn, too, he thinks.
"Shane, did you...?"
"Okay, here we are!" Shane brings them a stop and reaches up to untie Ilya's blindfold, kissing his cheek as he does so.
It takes a moment for Ilya's eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight, but then--
"You got me a carnival?"
"Rented you a carnival. For the day. They were already in town, I just paid them to stay an extra day."
The Cens are there and their families, the Pikes, David and Yuna and Svetlana, as many people as could make it, and they have the place to themselves. They play all the games on the fairway, and Shane wins Ilya an enormous stuffed bear to accompany the smaller ones at home. Ilya gets his face painted like a tiger and roars as he chases after the Pike kids, eventually collapsing when they tackle him to the ground. He eats more sugar and fried food than he knew was possible.
But the best part is the dunk tank, where Ilya gets to repeatedly knock Hayden into the water and laugh every time he comes up spluttering (all in exchange for an extremely generous donation from Shane to the charity of Hayden's choice).
That night Shane brings out a pair of handcuffs to go with the blindfold, uses both on Ilya while he fingers him, back arching off the bed as he comes untouched as Shane murmurs encouragements and presses kisses to his thighs.
It's a perfect day.
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