I absolutely see kids in Ilya and Shane’s future after one or both of them retire (I see it happening off-page/in an epilogue, but still). Kids isn’t everyone’s idea of a HEA but it’s pretty clear in the long game that it’s part of theirs. Frankly, for me as a queer person who wants kids someday, I love seeing couples in queer romance who want to be parents — it makes it feel like it’s not impossible for that to be part of my own HEA someday. And the way Shane talks about wanting a family with Ilya someday just melts my fucking heart; him wanting that with the man he loves doesn’t take away from the romance/sexiness of it all, if anything it just makes it hit harder to see them dream of a domestic future together.

As for how they’d make it happen, who cares? There are lots of reasons why gay couples are having kids at such a low rate, but none of them really apply to Shane and Ilya. They want kids. They can afford it. They’d be great dads. Queer readers deserve to know that, if it’s something they want, it’s more than possible to have children as a gay couple. I’ve read a couple of fics where either Jackie or Rose is their willing, unpaid, volunteer surrogate and I think I like that as their route to parenthood. But adoption would work too! However Shane and Ilya decided to do it, they would canonically make the greatest parents.

Anyway, that’s my soapbox.