Brand the Fish

it was not.

He finds an old binder or something, a photo album, very very few photos in their at all, mainly pictures of the city, of his old house, family portraits, a few pictures of birds. soon, it’s clear that this was made by Irina.

he’s flipping through and there are more blank pages than filled ones, and then he finds a few old pictures of himself, yellow with age and with some small water damage in places, but it’s him, in hockey gear, at the dinner table, maybe the odd birthday. ilya knows shane would love to keep them in a shared album somewhere. and he’s just about to call for his husband when he turns the page and-

Irina

it’s undeniably her, the curls he remembers, the red lipstick. a photo of her looking into the camera and then a similar one, taken immediately after, of her laughing.

and tears spring to his eyes, he’s hit with every detail he’s forgotten in the decades since he last saw her. that small mole on her chin, her silver earrings she always wore at home, her-

Ilya realises through the age of the photo you can almost make out her freckles

how could he have forgotten her freckles? he never took too much notice of them, probably mostly covered by makeup, but now- now, he can’t imagine forgetting them.

and ilya is then like. on the FLOOR. dazed and just "??? jesus christ??? you could do that the WHOLE time???" while shane is just scrambling to get out of bed and stop his mom from coming any further into the house in case anything incriminating has been left out accidentally

Irina is having a stilted conversation with one of the airport workers, maybe her tickets are wrong because they've seated her five year old away from her, I don't fly so whatever.

Anyway Ilya is bored and doesn't really understand the conversation anyway so he's looking around and notices Shane, who saw a dog and wandered away from his parent because he wanted to pet it and forgot that he should say something about the dog and wanting to pet it, something something mostly nonverbal Shane.

So Shane realizes that he can't find his parents or the doggy and starts to cry and well, no one really cares about one crying toddler when they have flights to catch, except Ilya decides that he's going to help this kid, so he goes over and gets babyShane to stop crying and tells him he'll help in his very limited English and takes his hand to take him back to Irina but they can't find her so they go on an adventure through the airport trying to find either of their parents.

Eventually Shane remembers the bording gate he and his parents were going to and they go off to find it, they get there and Ilya is helping Shane climb onto a seat but Shane won't stand on it because you're not supposed to do that, that's a bad thing and Shane's already been bad enough in his eyes today so Ilya is standing on the chair looking for two people that look like Shane because the concept of parents not looking like their kids is foreign to him.

However, they are only little and airports, adventures and new friends are exhausting, so eventually Ilya sits down in the chair and curls up with Shane and they fall asleep together sharing the same chair.

They are found by an airport worker who reports it but doesn't want to wake the children so they wait while the parents are located and brought over and while Yuna meets Irina David is taking a dozen pictures of the two on his camera.

However they do still have flights to catch and while Ilya doesn't wake up when Irina untangled him Shane does and wails the entire way to the bording gate and through most of their flight before he passes out from exhaustion.

Unfortunatly Shane asks for Ilya almost everyday for a year because he's his bestest friend and he helped him find his parents but neither David nor Yuna thought to get anything more than Irina's name, they didn't think their son would fixate on a boy he knew for a handful of hours so deeply.

Ilya also asks for Shane but well, he's no stranger to not getting things he wants so his asking doesn't last nearly as long.

Of course, David never got the pictures from that trip developed, at least not until after the Hollanov wedding, and he finds a handful of pictures of his kid with another kid (who he does eventually recognize as Ilya but not immediatly) curled up in an airport chair and thinks that looks familiar and realized that it's the same exact way Ilya and Shane curl up together on the couch or loveseat when they are over watching a movie.

And maybe there is a picture or two of Irina collecting a sleeping Ilya and of him sleeping on her shoulder before they leave.

And David wonders if maybe, just maybe they were meant to find one another.

He does, of course, use the pictures to embarass them at one of their anniverseries when Harris is asking aboit the Hollanov Timeline, David has the gleeful pleasure of saying that Ilya and Shane are both wrong as he whips the pictures out and says they were meant for each other long before Rookie season or the summer before and thus causes a breakdown in most of the team and their partners but also unlocks that memory for Ilya and Shane.

i think holmberg starts them off with good luck babe since it's her big breakthrough hit and ilya is like "hm. so this is a song about being in a relationship with someone who's in denial about being gay? and they won't admit to the relationship because of it? interesting" while staring directly at shane who is making very determined eye contact with the floor.

and holmberg (clueless) is like "yeah she writes a lot of situationship anthems actually!" and puts on casual.

which allows shane to pull an instant uno reverse card and stare daggers into the side of ilya's head while going "wow, imagine what it would be like to spend years sleeping with someone who sends really confusing mixed signals by saying that what you have is casual but then treating you like it's not casual at all. that would suck."