Chalala

Soon, everytime Shane finishes another boring hockey book, and he leaves it in Ilya's place, it ends up in the shelf beside the loon. Shane doesn't even go back looking for them after he's done anyways.

Then they get a few days on the cottage when their breaks match, and Ilya goes back to his house with a few stones from the lake.

Once, after David and him had finishes the first of their puzzles togheter, he insists Ilya could take it home, maybe hang it up. Ilya doesn't think he has anywhere to hang it up where it wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb, except maybe... So he takes it home and frames it, and now beside the shelves there is a 1000 piece puzzle of the Rideau Canal.

And it does stick out like a sore thumb, but who's going to see it? Certainly no one would come down here to critique his interior decorating. Even if it did look kind of ugly, and it was the only thing in the wall, drawing all the visual attention. Maybe he needed to hang up more stuff?

The problem was, there wasn't any art in particular that he wanted here, there never was because Ilya didn't know much about art. And he wasn't going to ask a decorator for their imput, the point of a secret room is that no one knows it's there. Not even cleaners, certainly not decorators.

Maybe he could just hang up some photos, that's easy to do alone and he certainly doesn't have bad taste in that regard. He commissions a large print of a good quality photo he has of the lake from the cottage, and hesitates over sending more personal revealing choices to the service. But he's rich, he can just buy an expensive photo printer and do it himself, and there's no risk then. It's not weird, it's just a printer.

So the printer arrives in the mail, and after a few trials and error setting it up with the nice quality paper and ink it came with, it's time to set up to print photos for the wall. Ilya stars with six particular photos that have been in all his phones since the 2014 NHL Awards. They're nothing crazy, and Ilya would feel kind of dumb putting all of them up, given thay they're almost identical one from the other (almost being the key word here), but he chooses one to hang and that's the first one that goes on the wall.

Now, Ilya does have plenty of photos of Shane. Since they became boyfriends and then later they set up the foundation they decided they could keep photos of each other in their phones, just nothing too obvious, and preferably in a locked album. If Shane is looking at him particularly intensely in any photo they take, it gets deleted, and so does any of the ones where Ilya is making heart eyes at him (most of the photos where they directly look at each other end up deleted). But even then, his album is full. Shane in the cottage, smiling to himself. Shane cooking. Shane in the plastic rink, playing around. Shane, Shane, Shane. He hangs them up after choosing carefully, and thanks the universe for how far technology has come, so that his phone camera could capture a fraction of the reality of those freckles.

He is a bit sad that he doesn't have many with both of them in it, just some where they're with Yuna and David between them that didn't get deleted. He thinks about how many photos of them there are in the internet, and how no one knows what those moments meant.

He looks at the printer and at his phone and his album full of Shane, and he wants a few of both of them, and then he goes to Google.

The thing is, he was there for every moment that appears in his search, but seeing them like this... togheter? It's different. They look so clinical, these moment's of them at the face off, or standing next to each in a presser or event, but maybe in his wall, next to the photos of how Shane looks relaxed, at home, maybe they would fit better there.

Ilya prints clips of them, of the rivalry, and is grateful for the high quality pictures that sport journalists provide.

Then they host the first of the Irina Foundation's charity camps, and that's a goldmine. Yuna did not cut corners on promotional content. Photos of Shane with a gaggle of kids, helping them learn stuff, and a lot of them with Ilya too. The rivals, smiling together, each at the end of a group photo with a bunch of 12 year olds flooding with excitement. These pictures do very well on social media, and Ilya absolutely loves them, and maybe he needs to print them a bit bigger than his personal printer can.

Ilya doesn't dare using a local printing service, so he hires an online one, and makes sure there's an anonymous method of payment. Nowadays a lot of websites ask for your full name and firstborn child. Truly out of a Russian fairy tale nightmare.

The canvas with the photo of them at the camp arrives a couple days after he ordered, it's autumn and he's missing Shane a lot when he's not there, specially after having him all too himself that summer.

He hangs it up in a place of honnor, and it's big, not enormous, but big. Poster big. It's the size of the puzzle, and it looks really good at the center of his carefully curated gallery wall, if a bit alone. He decides to use the same service again and gets a bigger copy of the helmet kiss, from 2017 All Stars. Two big pictures, two dozen smaller ones, and a puzzle.

Time passes and Ilya adds some pictures and takes some out even, if only to be replaced by better ones. The wall both changes and expands.

Eventually, he remembers about thay first CCM ad campaign they did, when he searched for photos first, those appeared and they were good, but they looked too hostile. Then he thinks to contact CCM, or better, the photographer, and ask if they still have all they took. Maybe use some excuse about promotion for the Foundation. This, turns out, is another goldmine.

Even in 2010, professional cameras are professional cameras, and now Ilya has in his hands the best pictures of his collection. They're teenagers, they barely know each other, they look at each other with mirth in their eyes, having fun, and it's a memento from the day he first got to see Shane like only he does.

He uses the printing service again and soon a meter tall picture of teenage Shane and Ilya laughing in face off position becomes center stage.

He thinks that maybe he should share this picture with Shane. All the other ones are photos they both have, but this one Ilya got by being crafty.

He thinks briefly about showing the print to Shane, but, well. He looks around at his secret perfectly normal living room, in a basement only accesed by a secret trap door, and at his carefully curated gallery wall. It looks great but... It's a bit hard to explain.

Luckily, Shane never comes downstairs. When Shane is at Ilya's, Ilya doesn't need pictures, he gets to see the real thing, in the real living room, in the sunshine, in the home that doesn't have any traces of Shane.

Ilya decides to use the printer and gift Shane a framed copy of the ad shot, for Christmas.

It doesn't really go well, Christmas. Later, with Galina, Ilya admits he doesn't understand why the thought of Shane displaying the picture at the cottage and not his Montreal apartment irked him so much. It's not like Ilya is hanging the pictures where others could see either. But he sees them everyday. Everyday Shane's not there with him. Doesn't he want that?

Ilya leaves the session, calls Shane and they talk. They make up, things are a bit tense but he's hopeful, they will figure it out.

Then the plane almost crashes, and it's a lot for some time, but Ilya knows he loves Shane, that Shane loves him, that they have each other, and he sets to be better, and not ask too much without talking to him first. He can wait, for the photos to be upstairs, he can wait.

Turns out, he might not have to wait too much. Shane is waiting for him when he comes home and it's incredible, it's one of the best nights of Ilya's life. He feels like his heart will burst out of his chest and dance. He has a misfitting ring hanging from his neck and a promise of this summer. This summer, they will marry, they will come out and Shane will meet his team and the world will know they belong to each other, and the pictures will come up, but this time they will have new ones.

They will have photos of their wedding day, where Shane looks at him too intensely and Ilya brings out the heart eyes and they will have no reason to delete them. And Ilya will use the local printing service, and fill out the billing information with his full name and credit card, and maybe that name won't just be Ilya Rozanov.

That night, Ilya takes Shane into the trophy room and through the secret trap door, and he can see Shane is intrigued, it seems he forgot it was there. He puts his hands over Shane's eyes as they slowly go down the stairs and then, when they're facing the wall, he lets him go.