RoseySwords

Ilya, naturally, appoints himself detective. He is team captain and the most perceptive person here after all. He takes it super seriously, sitting people down on the couch for interrogations, theorizing about motives, trying to connect the victims past "they play hockey and are here".

The gravity with which he is conducting himself does not mean that he's not cracking jokes the whole time, mostly about Shane being his sexy assistant who should have brought his glasses.

Finally, when almost half the team is dead and Ilya is running out of suspects, he makes a joke about handcuffs. Shane laughs.

With dawning horror, Ilya turns slowly towards his husband. "You would never laugh at the idea of me handcuffing someone else."

Shane just flashes an angelic smile and offers up his wrists. "You caught me, detective."

“Okay, and our teen viewers are quite taken with you. They have to know,” the simpering interviewer asks, her eyes wide and her smile as fake as can be, “Soulmates. Love at first sight. Romance: are you a believer?”

18-year-old Ilya Rozanov takes quite a long time to answer the question. Shane can see now, years later, that it’s because he’s translating in his head, not yet comfortable enough in English to converse without having to revert back to his mother tongue in his mind. But to the average person, it might look like he’s simply pausing to consider. Then, young Ilya wrinkles his nose and snorts, rolling his eyes. “No. I do not believe in such things. Is for stupid people who do not know how to get what they want. You do not wait around for perfect person to appear, you get off ass and go find them.”

Except now, the clip of the interview is playing on the TV in the sitting room Ilya and Shane share, the space crowded by the team they’re both on, everyone gazing smugly at 31-year-old Ilya, who is grinning from ear to ear, his arm wrapped around Shane.

“So, hey, Ilya,” Wyatt says, smirking as he pretends to hold a microphone to Ilya’s face. “Anything you’d like to say to the crowd?”

Ilya clears his throat before leaning in seriously, his eyes dancing with mirth. “I…am idiot.”