Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble & Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Brad Hammersmith, Ryan Carmichael, Victor St. Simon, Connors (Heated Rivalry), Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

POV Outsider, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Ilya Rozanov, Friendship

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of With a Little Help from My Friends

Stats:

Published: 2026-06-02 Words: 7,247 Chapters: 1/?

Come Out and Play

Summary

"Shane Hollander lives in Canada."

Or how the Boston Raiders form a task force dedicated to preventing their captain from emigrating for love.

Notes

they are pure of heart but dumb of ass

Chapter 1

The thing about a clean hit was that it never felt clean afterward.

The mechanics were right. That was the part Cliff kept coming back to, in the way you came back to something that still didn't help. Left shoulder, square contact, timing that a coach would put on a reel for a defensive clinic. Not late. Not from behind. Not dirty. The kind of hit that generated nothing more than a line on the penalty sheet that said nothing, which was the highest available verdict.

It was two minutes into the game.

Boston and Montreal were doing the thing they always did in the first two minutes: establishing tone, which mostly meant hitting people hard enough that everyone remembered they were allowed to hit people. The ice was still new. The lines were rotating fast. The crowd in Bell Centre was loud in the particular way Montreal crowds were loud, like they understood the game at a cellular level and wanted you to know.

Cliff had been watching Hollander since puck drop. That was his job in general and tonight his job specifically, because Hollander was Montreal's engine and Boston had discussed this extensively and the conclusion was: track him. Not interfere. Not target. Just be present. Be physical in the neutral zone. Make him work for every transition.

Cliff was physical in the neutral zone. That was his function. He was comfortable with that.

Hollander came through the neutral zone at 0:32 on the clock.

He was fast. He was always fast, that was the thing people who'd only watched him on highlight reels never understood, the clips showed the goals and the plays but not the baseline speed, the way he moved with a slight forward lean like he was already three seconds ahead of the play in his head and his body was catching up.

Except.

At 0:32, for a single half-second, he wasn't.

He was in the neutral zone and his eyes were somewhere else. Not losing the puck. Not losing the play. But something had pulled his attention sideways, just slightly, just enough, toward something behind Cliff.

Cliff had already committed.

Years of instinct. Left shoulder. Square contact. Textbook.

He hit Hollander at full speed with every technical metric correct, and Hollander went into the boards without bracing.

That was the thing.

Hollander never missed things. Hollander had some kind of internal accelerometer that processed threat at a speed Cliff couldn't account for. Every time they'd matched up in the past seven years, Hollander had always, always braced.

He didn't brace.

The sound was wrong. Not catastrophically, not the kind of sound that emptied a crowd, but wrong enough that Cliff knew before Hollander hit the ice. He knew in the half-second of contact, in the angle of Hollander's shoulder, in the way the body absorbed the hit with no preparation.

Hollander went down.

And stayed down.

"MARLEAU YOU BASTARD—"

Pyke arrived the way he always arrived for Hollander, which was immediately and without deliberation. Six-two of Montreal's most reliable winger, who had famously been Hollander's best friend for years.

He didn't drop his gloves. He just got into Cliff's space at full speed, chest-to-chest, voice carrying over the noise.

"What the fuck, what the fuck—"

"I know," Cliff said.

"That was late, that was a late—"

"It wasn't late," Cliff said. "I know. I'm sorry."

The thing about Pyke being this angry was that it was specific. Not hockey angry, which had a performance quality to it, an edge that was also partly theater. This was personal. This was a man who had come off the bench in a literal sprint because that was Shane, and Shane was still on the ice.

Cliff put his hands up. 

"Marleau—"

"I'm sorry," Cliff said again, which was not the sentence that won fights, but it was the true sentence, and the only one available.

Pyke looked at him for a hard second. Then at the ice.

Cliff looked too.

The trainers were already there. Hollander was on his back, and the crowd had done that thing crowds did when a good player went down: a low, sustained sound, not quite silence, not quite noise, which was somehow worse than either.

He wasn't moving.

Cliff found Ilya by proximity rather than intention. He had moved away from Pyke by maybe ten feet, and Ilya was already in motion, not toward the boards, not toward the trainers, but around. Circling at the edge of the allowed zone, the way you circled when you needed to be doing something and every available action had been taken away from you.

He was yelling at an official. Then at a trainer who was too far away to hear. Then at no one.

Cliff had seen Ilya angry before. He had seen Ilya furious before, the contained kind and the real kind, and this was neither. This was different. This was Ilya Rozanov with absolutely no version of control available to him and the absence of it stark and visible in every movement, in the set of his jaw and the way he turned and turned again like if he kept moving he could find a position from which this was solvable.

He couldn't fix this.

That was the thing Cliff kept coming back to. Ilya could fix almost everything through force of will and talent and the kind of competitive intelligence that operated about three moves ahead of most people in the league. But Hollander was on the ice, and the trainers were doing their job, and Ilya was circling the perimeter of a situation that had no entry point for him.

Cliff watched him.

He watched Ilya's hands, which were twitching, looking for something to grab.

Movement on the ice.

The trainers shifting slightly. The kind of shift that happened when the patient responded.

Hollander opened his eyes.

Cliff saw it from fifteen feet away. A slow blink, the specific confusion of someone returning from somewhere else, and then before anything else, before the trainers' faces, before the crowd noise resolving. His eyes found Ilya.

Across the ice. Through the noise. Immediately.

Ilya went still.

Not the terrified still from a moment ago. A different kind. Like the circling had been running on the energy of he might not be okay and now needed a second to recalibrate around the fact that he is.

It lasted maybe three seconds.

Then the trainers were moving Hollander to the gate, and Ilya turned back to the ice, and the ref blew the whistle, and the game resumed.

Cliff skated back to position.

He felt awful.

The period ended 1-0 Boston, on a Connors goal in the seventeenth minute that nobody on the Boston bench seemed particularly energized about.

Cliff found Ilya in the locker room during the intermission, which was not difficult because Ilya had placed himself in the specific corner he placed himself in when he didn't want to be approached, which worked on everyone except Cliff, who had learned years ago that this was an opt-out Ilya offered to the room and not to him specifically.

He sat down beside him.

Ilya looked at the floor.

"Rozy—"

"You don't have to."

"I do," Cliff said. "I'm sorry. I didn't see him — he wasn't—he usually reads—"

"Marly."

Cliff stopped.

Ilya was still looking at the floor. His helmet was on his knee, turning slowly. The same thing he did with his phone, Cliff thought, and then made himself not think that.

"I know you didn't do it on purpose," Ilya said. Level. The voice he used when he was managing something from the inside. "It was a clean hit. You had the angle."

"He wasn't braced."

"I know."

A pause.

"He was looking at you," Cliff said.

Ilya's jaw moved once. "I know," he said again, quieter.

Neither of them said what that meant. They didn't need to.

"He opened his eyes," Cliff said. "Before they took him off. He's conscious."

"I know." A beat. "I saw."

Cliff nodded.

They sat there for a second.

Then Ilya looked up. His expression had resolved into something like composure, or the outer shell of it, the version he wore when he'd decided to be functional.

"Play the game," he said. It wasn't directed at Cliff. It was directed at himself, which was what happened when Ilya gave himself orders he wasn't sure he'd follow.

"Yeah," Cliff said.

"If he dies I kill you," Ilya said.

Cliff looked at him.

"He is not dying," Ilya said, with the specific certainty of someone who absolutely needed that to be true and had decided it would be.

"He's not dying," Cliff said.

"Good." Ilya put his helmet on. "Play the game."

The team asked, because the team always asked, because they'd spent years paying attention to things they were not technically supposed to notice.

It happened in the way it happened, not directly, not as a line of questioning, but as the particular careful circling that the Raiders did when they knew something was wrong and also knew that asking directly would produce nothing.

Connors handed Ilya a water bottle.

Hammersmith adjusted his position on the bench so the space next to Ilya was occupied.

Victor refastened a piece of equipment he had already fastened.

Carmichael, who had been watching Ilya with the focused uncertainty of a man who had decided he was going to get this right, said nothing. Just moved closer. Not touching. Just present.

None of them mentioned Shane.

They didn't need to.

Ilya drank the water. He looked at the ice. His jaw was still set in the way that meant he was holding something steady that didn't want to be held.

"Okay," Connor said finally, which wasn't a question.

"Okay," Ilya said, which wasn't an answer.

They went back out for the second period.

Boston won 3-1.

Nobody celebrated.

The third Boston goal went in at 17:44 on a Ilya play that was technically excellent and clearly had all the mechanical precision of someone who had decided the body would keep working regardless of what the rest of him was doing. He set up the play, he delivered the pass, he skated back to center with the expression of a man completing a task on a list.

Connor scored it. He did not do the thing he usually did after goals.

In the locker room afterward, the noise was low. The kind of low that happened after a win that hadn't felt like winning.

Connor pulled off his helmet and said, "He's going to be okay."

This was, technically, not information Connor had. Nobody called it out.

"Yeah," Hammersmith said.

"The concussion protocol is good now," Carmichael said. "Better than it used to be. They take care of guys."

Ilya was at his stall. He had his phone in his hand. He wasn't using it.

"Rozy," Connor said.

Ilya looked up.

"Are you—" Connor stopped. Recalibrated. "Are you going to go see him?"

The room went quiet enough to hear the air.

Ilya looked at his phone. Then at the ceiling. Then at some point in the middle distance.

"I don't know," he said. "It's—" He turned the phone once. "He is captain of the opposite team. Our thing is private. It could look—" He paused. "Tomorrow. Maybe. As sportsmanship."

Connor nodded. Seriously.

"Okay," he said.

"I could come," Cliff said.

Ilya looked at him.

"I hit him," Cliff said. "I should apologize. In person." He held Ilya's gaze. "I like the guy. I want to make sure he's okay."

A beat.

"Fine," Ilya said, with the tone of someone allowing something they'd already decided.

"I'll come," Connor said immediately.

"And me," Hammersmith said.

"Obviously," Victor said.

Carmichael raised his hand. "Yeah."

The look Ilya gave them suggested he was trying to decide whether throwing all of them out would require too much energy.

"We will be quiet," Victor said. "Very discreet. In and out."

"The picture of restraint," Hammersmith agreed.

"I hate all of you," Ilya said.

"We know," Connor said. "Tomorrow. Nine o'clock."

The hospital was grey and bright in the way hospitals were always grey and bright, which was not a comforting combination but was at least a consistent one. 

The door to room 4314 was partially open.

Cliff pushed it the rest of the way.

Shane Hollander was propped up in the hospital bed at a slight angle, shoulder immobilized, with the particular wide-eyed quality of someone who had recently been given drugs that they were experiencing as a notable event. His hair was doing something unplanned. There was a bruise starting along his jaw.

He looked at the door.

He looked at Rozy.

"Ilyaaaaaaa," Shane said.

The word came out with a warmth and a length that it definitely did not have under normal conditions. 

Behind Cliff, he heard Connor make a sound against his own hand.

Heard Hammersmith's sharp intake of breath.

Heard Victor turn this into a small cough.

Heard Carmichael, quietly whispered "oh my god."

Ilya walked in.

His face was doing something that was trying very hard to be neutral, and was not entirely succeeding, and the specific way it was not succeeding: the corner of his mouth, the brief thing that happened in his eyes before he managed it, was a sentence Cliff had been reading in fragments for six years and was only now seeing complete.

Shane was making grabbing hands.

Not subtly. Not with any of the careful control that was his actual baseline setting. Just: open hands, extended toward Ilya, come here, obviously, what are you doing standing over there.

Ilya crossed the room and stood beside the bed.

Shane grabbed his hand.

Looked at it. Then up at Ilya.

"Good," he said, with the profound satisfaction of someone who had solved the central problem.

Ilya looked at Cliff. His expression said many things, most of them in the direction of do not.

Cliff looked at the patient in bed.

"Hi, Hollander," Cliff said. "Holzy. I'm really sorry about—"

"It's fine," Shane said, generously, without looking away from Ilya's face. "We all get your bell rung eventually."

"You didn't brace."

"I was—" Shane's brow did something thoughtful. "Distracted." 

He did not elaborate. He looked at Ilya when he said it.

Ilya looked at their hands.

"Next season," Shane said, with a small, serene smile that was doing approximately forty percent more work than his usual smile, "I'm going to destroy Boston."

This produced a ripple through the room. Connor actually pointed at Carmichael. Carmichael nodded gravely.

"Fair," Hammersmith said.

"Extremely fair," Victor said.

"You're welcome to try," Connor said, and it came out warmly, which was not how he usually delivered chirps to opposing captains but appeared to be the tone the room had selected.

Shane looked at him. Processed. Seemed satisfied.

"What does the doctor say," Ilya said. His voice had dropped slightly, the volume you used when you were asking something in a room where you didn't want to make it about you asking.

"Collarbone," Shane said. "And concussion." He considered this. "It could be worse."

"It could be worse," Ilya echoed.

"I'm angry about it," Shane said. "Mostly at Marleau."

"I know," Cliff said. "I'm sorry."

"You ruined my evening plans," Shane said.

The room went ooooh with the precision of a single organism, like they were suddenly teenagers and not fully grown men.

Ilya turned to all of them. "Shut up."

"We said nothing," Connor said.

"You made a noise."

"Supportive noise," Hammersmith said. "Appreciative noise."

"Shut up," Ilya said again.

Shane was watching this. The drugs had removed the filter on his face, which normally operated as a kind of careful opacity, and what was underneath it was easy. Just easy. Looking at Ilya in the middle of trying to manage five Raiders and failing, and being entirely comfortable.

"I had a plan," Shane said.

This produced a silence of a slightly different quality.

Ilya looked at him. "What plan?"

"A good one." Shane moved his free hand vaguely. "At the cottage. It's private. There's a lake."

"...Okay," Ilya said.

"And kayaks," Shane said. "In case you wanted to kayak."

"I don't know how to kayak."

"That's ok" Shane said. "We have two weeks I can teach you."

Hammersmith opened his mouth. Cliff looked at him. Hammersmith closed it.

"It's beautiful in July," Shane said. "And private. I was going to invite you." He paused. He looked at Cliff with the specific serenity of someone experiencing excellent pain management. "You ruined it."

"I'm really sorry," Cliff said.

"I was going to ask him something," Shane said.

Every person in the room immediately stopped being able to look natural.

"What question?" Connor asked, at a volume he had not planned.

Shane looked at him.

"It's a secret," Shane said, making a shush expression with his finger. 

"It's—what do you mean it's—Hollander, that's not—"

"A secret," Shane said pleasantly.

Connor turned to Ilya. Ilya was looking at their hands again. The expression on his face had gone somewhere private and quiet, something that lived underneath the composure but was, just now, very close to the surface.

"I would love to go," Shane said, not looking up. "To the cottage. If you want."

Shane looked at him. The easy quality of his expression went something slightly more specific. More present.

"Yeah," Shane said. "Obviously."

"Obviously," Ilya agreed.

They both appeared to need a moment after that.

The rest of the room was experiencing the restraint of men who had agreed to be discreet and were finding itpossible and emotionally challenging.

Then Shane looked at Ilya and said, "Can I have a kiss?" with the directness that apparently became available above a certain painkiller threshold.

Ilya turned to the room.

The room understood before he had to say anything.

"We'll be outside," Cliff said.

"Getting coffee," Connor said.

"Such good coffee in hospital vending machines," Hammersmith said.

"Absolutely," Victor said.

Carmichael was already through the door.

They stood in the corridor.

For a moment, nobody said anything.

Then Connor put his head back against the wall and exhaled.

"Ilyaaaaaaa," Hammersmith said softly, in perfect recreation.

Connor started laughing.

Victor covered his face.

Carmichael, to the ceiling: "The grabby hands."

"The grabby hands," Connor confirmed, still laughing.

"He said obviously," Cliff said. "Like it was already decided."

"It is already decided," Connor said. "It has been decided."

"The cottage," Hammersmith said. "Two weeks. Private."

"Lake," Victor said.

"Kayaks," Carmichael added.

Connor turned to Cliff. "You heard him say two weeks, right."

"He implied two weeks."

Cliff leaned against the wall. He was thinking about Hollander's face when Ilya walked in. The immediate thing, the unguarded thing, before any performance had time to arrive. He was thinking about Ilya going still, across the ice, when Hollander opened his eyes. He was thinking about the way Hollander had said obviously like the question had barely needed asking, like the answer was something that had been settled in a place that didn't require discussion.

"The secret question," Connor said, quieter.

"Yeah," Cliff said.

A pause.

"You think it's—" Connors started.

"Maybe they'll finally just date," Hammersmith said. "Like, properly."

"Maybe," Victor said.

Connor was quiet for a second, "Or maybe Hollander asks Roz to marry him."

Nobody laughed.

"I mean," Carmichael said, carefully, "that would be—"

"Good," Connor said. "That would be good." He said it without qualification. Then, a beat later: "But."

He looked around the corridor.

The look moved through the group the way it moved through a locker room when someone said the thing everyone was thinking and the room needed a second to land on it.

"Wait," Hammersmith said.

"Yeah," Connor said.

"If they get serious," Hammersmith said.

"Hollander's in Montreal," Cliff said.

The corridor went very quiet.

"And Roz is in Boston," Connor said.

"And if they get serious," Victor said.

"One of them moves," Carmichael said.

Everyone looked at each other.

"He wouldn't," Connor said. Not as a certainty. As the thing you said first, before you'd thought it all the way through.

"He might," Cliff said.

"He would," Hammersmith said. "For that. He would."

The vending machine hummed at the end of the corridor.

Connor looked at the door. Then at Cliff. Then at the ceiling, in the way he looked at ceilings when he was arriving at a problem he hadn't budgeted for.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. We'll— we'll figure that out later."

"Much later," Victor said. "They haven't even—"

The door to room 4314 opened.

Ilya stepped out.

His expression was carefully arranged but the corners of it were doing something he hadn't quite controlled. The thing that happened when he'd been somewhere good and hadn't fully returned yet.

He looked at them.

"Coffee," he said.

"Yes," Connor said immediately. "We were getting coffee."

"I see no coffee."

"The machine was broken," Hammersmith said.

"There are two machines," Ilya said.

"Both broken," Hammersmith said.

Ilya looked at him. Looked at Cliff. Something moved through his expression that was aware of more than he was going to admit to.

"Coffee," he said again. "Come."

He walked down the corridor.

They followed him.

Cliff fell into step at his shoulder, easy, like always. Not saying anything. Not needing to.

Ilya glanced at him sideways.

"Stop smiling," he said.

"I'm not smiling."

"You are."

"I'm not."

Ilya looked at him for another second. Then at the corridor ahead.

"Cottage in July," he said. Quietly. Not to anyone specific.

Cliff said nothing.

"He has a very good lake," Ilya said.

"I'm sure he does," Cliff said.

Ilya walked a few more steps.

Cliff looked at him.

Ilya was looking at the floor. The expression on his face was the one from the airport. 

"I said yes," Ilya said.

Simple. Level.

Like he was telling Cliff the weather. Like he was telling Cliff the score of a game. Like it was just a fact, just the newest fact, sitting in the air between them in this fluorescent corridor at nine in the morning while his team walked behind them arguing about vending machines.

Cliff let it sit for a second.

"Good," he said.

Ilya nodded once.

They walked to the coffee machine.

Even though they beat Montreal, Boston got knocked out of the playoffs in the second round, on a Tuesday night in New Jersey, by a team that had been better than them for two months. No overtime, no heroics, no moment where the series could have gone either way if one thing had been different. Just: better team, worse outcome, done.

They watched the rest of the playoffs from couches and bar stools and, in Ilya's case, his extensively furnished apartment in Boston.

The Finals were New York and San Jose. The Admirals, led by Scott Hunter, who had twenty-two points in the postseason and the specific quality of seeming larger on ice than his listed 6'4”, against the Barracudas, who were younger and faster and had everyone's neutral-fan sympathy because they had never won and their fanbase had the particular desperate energy of people who had started to believe it was personal.

Connor had organized the watching party with the focused competence he applied to things he cared about, Ilya's living room, because Ilya's living room had the biggest television and also because Connor had decided, at some point in the last two years, that organizing things around Ilya was the most efficient way to ensure Ilya was present for them.

Ilya tolerated this. Cliff suspected he relied on it.

Svetlana arrived with vodka she had strong opinions about and a carry-on bag she deposited in the hallway with the ease of someone who knew where everything was kept.

She did know where everything was kept. She had the code.

Cliff had met her for the first time five years ago, at a team event Ilya had brought her to without explanation, and his first impression, that he knew was shared by everyone present,had been something approximately equal to Jesus Christ. She was tall and stunning and moved through a room like she had assessed it before entering and found it acceptable. His second impression, over the course of the evening, was that she was also the only person in the room funnier than Ilya, and she knew it, and Ilya found this both aggravating and deeply satisfying.

His third impression, which had arrived slowly over subsequent years, was that whatever they were to each other was its own thing entirely, not reducible to any of the obvious categories, and that they were both better with the other around.

She dropped onto the couch beside Cliff, poured two glasses and handed him one before he'd asked.

"Marley," she said.

"‘Lana," he said.

"How are you spending your summer?"

"Beach," he said. "I'm going to Galicia in Spain. Get drunk on rum and hopefully score some Spanish girls."

She nodded like this was the correct answer.

Carmichael arrived twelve minutes late, which was early for Carmichael.

Svetlana looked at him.

"You're shiny," she said.

"I just—it was hot," Carmichael said.

"Mm," she said.

Carmichael sat down and immediately found something to look at on his phone, like he was conducting very important business.

Cliff watched him for a moment.

Connor appeared from the kitchen with a bowl of something and pointed it at Carmichael. "Who are you texting?"

"Nobody," Carmichael said.

"You've been texting since you sat down."

"Just—a chat." Carmichael's phone produced a notification sound. He looked at it and did something involuntary with his face that he then attempted to undo. "With someone."

Connor stared at him.

Carmichael looked up. Looked at Cliff. Looked back at his phone.

"Miles asked how my boring hockey thing was going," he said, with the energy of someone hoping the volume of information would prevent follow-up questions.

Connor looked at Cliff.

Cliff looked at his wine.

"Miles," Connor said.

"He's asking about the game," Carmichael said.

"At ten-thirty p.m on a Saturday."

"He watches hockey sometimes."

"Does he," Svetlana said.

"He's been—we've been talking," Carmichael said. "Since Montreal. It's not—it's just talking."

"Sure," Connor said.

"It is," Carmichael said.

Connor sat down. Let it go, which with Connor meant filed it and moved on. "Where's Roz?"

"Here," Ilya said, appearing from the hallway with a beer, in a worn-in Boston t-shirt and sweatpants that cost three hundred dollars, because Ilya's relationship with casual dressing was its own specific contradiction. He dropped into his chair. Looked at the television. Looked at his phone.

"Game starts in five," Connor said.

"I know," Ilya said. He was texting. He was almost always texting now, which was different from two years ago when the phone had been a grenade. Now it was just: present. Constant. The way a person was present when they had somewhere their attention wanted to be.

Nobody asked who he was texting.

They all knew.

Svetlana refilled her glass and settled against the cushions completely at home. She and Ilya had reached, Cliff understood, a new arrangement — not distant, not altered, just recalibrated around what had shifted in the last few months. Neither of them appeared to be struggling with this.

"I'm taking your gifts to Moscow," she said to Ilya.

"Good," he said, not looking up.

"Your niece wants new skates. She could go pro."

"She's seven."

"She's been watching Tatiana Navka videos," Svetlana said. "She moves like she was born on the ice. It's genetic."

"Get her the skates," Ilya said.

"Already did. They're in my bag." She looked at him sideways. "You're not coming this summer."

"No."

"Because of the cottage."

"Yes."

"The cottage with Holzy," Connor said.

Ilya looked at him.

"I'm just confirming," Connor said.

"You're just being nosy," Ilya said.

"Both," Connor said comfortably.

Svetlana looked at Cliff with an expression that said: this is what I live with, which was rich given that she had chosen to be here, sometimes she was here before Ilya arrived from practice. Cliff matched it with an expression that said: and yet.

She almost smiled.

The game started.

The thing about watching hockey when you played hockey was that it was never quite relaxing. The body knew too much. You watched a defensive breakdown and felt it in your shoulder. You watched a clean hit and the muscles registered the physics before the brain caught up. You argued with every line change. You were always simultaneously watching and playing, which was not restful but was, Cliff had decided, better than not having it.

They watched the first period the way they watched all hockey: loud, fractious, with several competing analyses happening at once and a running commentary that would have appalled any nearby civilians. Connor had opinions about the Admirals' power play, which he expressed at length. Hammersmith had opinions about Hunter specifically, which were mostly positive and delivered with the grudging quality of a man conceding something he'd prefer not to. Svetlana had very sharp opinions about San Jose's defensive pairings, which she delivered in a mix of English and Russian without apparent concern for which was which, or who understood her.

Ilya watched.

He contributed occasionally, a comment on a breakout, a sound of agreement when Svetlana dissected a penalty kill, but he was quieter than usual. Not the dangerous quiet from months ago in Victor's apartment. Something else. The quality of someone who had a lot to think about and had chosen a comfortable place to think it.

He was also still texting, periodically, between plays.

Second period: San Jose tied it 1-1 on a goal that was frankly lucky, a deflection off a skate that went in at an angle the goalie had no business being expected to stop. The room registered this with the collective philosophical tolerance of people who understood that hockey was partly a sport and partly a probability distribution.

Carmichael's phone went off twice in quick succession. He looked at it and did the face again.

"Miles has thoughts about the penalty," he reported.

"Miles is watching?" Connor said.

"I told you."

"What does Miles— what does Rose think about the penalty?"

Carmichael rolled his eyes and looked down at the screen. "He thinks it was—" He squinted. "He says, and I'm reading this directly, 'that penalty was camp’"

Silence.

"The penalty was what?" Connor asked.

"Camp."

"Yeah, that's definitely Miles, not Rose. How?"

Carmichael checked the second text. "Unsure. Vibes. Question mark.'"

Victor laughed.

"That is not analysis."

"That is a sentence about hockey," Svetlana said.

"Barely," Connor muttered.

"He means it was dramatic," Carmichael said, with the tone of someone who had learned a new language and was still translating in real time. "The call."

"Of course," Svetlana said.

Carmichael texted back, he had gotten faster at this over the last few months.

Third period: 2-1 New York. Hunter had scored the go-ahead on a backhand that had no right to go in and went in anyway, which was Hunter's particular talent, making things work through a combination of skill and something that looked almost like stubbornness, like he had decided the puck was going in and the physics had been notified.

"He's unbelievable," Hammersmith said, with the resignation of someone paying respect to an opponent.

"Best playoff run in a decade," Connor agreed.

"Best in two decades," Svetlana said. "Don't be modest about other people's achievements."

"Okay, two decades," Connor said.

On the ice, the clock was running down. San Jose had pulled their goalie. Three minutes, one goal, full New York defensive shell. The Admirals were doing what good teams did with a lead in the final two minutes of a potential championship: nothing fancy, nothing clever, just: hold. Own the ice. Make them work for every inch and give them no inches for free.

Hunter had the puck in the corner. One of San Jose's forwards was on him, pressing. He moved it to his winger, got it back, moved it again. Control.

"Two minutes," Connor said.

The room had gotten quieter. Not because they were invested in the outcome, they'd all paid their loyalty dues to their own team, and this was pure appreciation now, the neutral-fan engagement you brought to watching excellence from a distance.

Ninety seconds.

Ilya was watching the television. He'd put his phone down.

Something had changed in the room's air, though Cliff couldn't have said why yet. A subtle recalibration. The way rooms sometimes knew before they knew.

Sixty seconds.

San Jose called their last timeout.

During the break, Hunter skated toward the boards. His team clustered around the coach. Routine. Standard.

Except.

Hunter had moved slightly apart from the cluster.

He was looking toward the stands.

Not at the crowd, at something specific. Someone. He was scanning with the particular focused quality of someone who knew where to look and was confirming what they'd find.

"What is he doing," Connor said.

He found it. Found whoever he was looking for.

"Who's he looking at," Hammersmith said.

His expression changed. Not the locked-in game face. Something underneath it, breaking through, briefly, the way things broke through at the end of long things.

Ilya's texting had stopped entirely. He was watching the screen.

Svetlana had uncurled from the cushions slightly.

The timeout ended. The teams took the ice. Twenty seconds. San Jose couldn't get organized. A missed pass in the neutral zone. New York cleared it. The horn sounded.

New York won. Scott Hunter won the Stanley Cup.

The Admirals pile was happening at center ice. Camera cuts, confetti, players finding each other in the chaos. Hunter was somewhere in the middle of it, getting crushed by teammates, both arms raised.

"God," Hammersmith said. "Good for him. Genuinely."

"Long time coming," Connor said.

The broadcast was cycling through reaction shots. Coaches. Owners. Players in the stands. A cut back to the ice as the team started their lap, Hunter at the front, the Cup not yet out but coming, the particular exhilarated disorder of a team that had just crossed the finish line.

Then Hunter stopped.

In the middle of the ice. In the middle of the chaos.

He turned toward the boards.

And called someone.

Not a teammate. Not a coach. He was looking at the stands, at a section behind the bench, waving someone down. The broadcast tracked it, the camera following Hunter's eyeline to the boards, to the gate opening, to a figure coming onto the ice.

"What is he doing," Connor said again.

Cliff watched.

The figure was tall. Dark jacket. Moving clumsily across the ice without skates. He had a beard, close-cropped. He was smiling before he was close enough for the camera to get a clear shot, and when he got close enough, Hunter grabbed him by the jacket—

"Who is—?" Hammersmith started.

—and kissed him.

Center ice.

Madisson Square Garden erupting.

Eighteen thousand people, plus however many watching on screens everywhere, including Ilya's living room in Boston, on the last night of the playoffs.

Nobody in the room said anything.

The broadcast camera held on it for a long second, as broadcast cameras do when something unprecedented is happening and someone in the truck has the presence of mind to know it. Hunter's hand was on the guy's face. The guy had both arms around Hunter, laughing, into the kiss, like this was something they'd been a long time getting to.

The crowd was completely losing its mind.

"Okhuyet," Svetlana said.

She was the first one to speak. She had stood up at some point, without appearing to decide to, and was looking at the television with the expression of someone recalibrating a fundamental assumption.

"Blyat, good for him," she said. Then, in Russian, something short and emphatic that Cliff didn't catch all of.

Connor made a sound.

"He—" Connor stopped. Started again. "That's—"

"Yeah," Cliff said.

"On the ice," Hammersmith said. "In the Finals. He just—"

"Yeah," Cliff said.

Carmichael's phone was going absolutely insane. He was staring at the television and ignoring it, which was new.

On screen, the broadcast had cut to the studio, where three analysts were doing the thing analysts did when something happened that wasn't in the script: working very hard to be normal. One of them was succeeding. One of them was visibly trying. One of them appeared to have entirely vacated his own face.

Ilya had stood up.

Not dramatically. Just: standing, where a moment ago he'd been sitting. He was looking at the television with an expression that had closed down completely, not upset, not suppressed, just processing something at a depth that didn't have surface features yet.

Then he picked up his phone.

Connor watched him.

Nobody followed him.

The television was still going. Analysts, replays, the Admirals celebration resuming, Hunter back in the middle of, a man who had done something enormous and was living in the first few seconds of knowing he'd survive it.

The room sat in the specific silence of people who were all thinking the same thing and waiting for someone else to say it first.

Svetlana sat back down.

She refilled her glass.

"So," she said.

"Yeah," Connor said.

"That changes some things," she said.

"Some things," Cliff agreed.

Carmichael was still staring at the screen. His phone had given up notifying him and he hadn't noticed.

"Roz is calling him right now," Hammersmith said.

"Obviously," Connor said.

They sat with that.

On the television, the Admirals were kissing the cup.

Svetlana left at midnight, with the carry-on and the remaining vodka. She kissed Ilya on the cheek on her way out, said something in Russian, and went.

Ilya was on the couch with his phone, typing with the focused unhurried pace that was different from anxious texting and different from casual texting and which Cliff had learned meant Shane.

The others trickled out. Hammersmith first, then Carmichael with his phone finally in hand and an expression of someone who had decided something about his evening. Connor last, who paused at the door and looked at Ilya for a moment like he didn't know how to say the thing he meant and was deciding whether to try anyway.

"Hey," he said.

Ilya looked up.

Connor opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Hunter did good tonight," he said, which was not what he'd started to say, but was also true.

Ilya held his gaze for a moment.

"Yes," he said. "He did."

Connor nodded. Went.

Cliff knew what Connor had almost said.

Hunter had kissed his boyfriend in front of the entire hockey world and the world had not ended. Tomorrow there would be headlines. There would be idiots.There would be people furious about it.

But tonight Scott Hunter was still a Stanley Cup champion.

And for the first time, Cliff found himself wondering what happened if people like Hunter kept surviving things they weren't supposed to survive.

Cliff was last. He got his jacket from the chair. Ilya was typing again, the small focused economy of someone mid-conversation.

"Good night," Cliff said.

"Night," Ilya said, not looking up. "Marly."

Cliff paused.

Ilya was still looking at his phone. The television was off now, the room dim, the city making its quiet late-summer sounds through the window.

"He kissed his boyfriend," Ilya said. "In front of everyone."

"Yeah," Cliff said.

"On the ice."

"Yeah."

A beat.

"He was not scared," Ilya said.

Cliff looked at him. There was nothing to read in his voice, it was level, observational, the tone he used when he was cataloguing something carefully. But his thumb had stopped moving on the phone.

"No," Cliff said. "He wasn't."

Ilya looked at the window.

"Good," he said.

Cliff left.

He was halfway down the block, in the warm June dark, when his phone buzzed.

A group notification.

He looked at the screen.

You have been added to Rozy Watch 2016 🐻👀

Cliff stopped walking.

Three typing indicators appeared simultaneously.

Svetlana has been added to Rozy Watch 2016 🐻👀

Thirty seconds.
Forty.
Forty-five.

Nothing.
Long enough that Cliff thought she might actually leave.

Chat stopped.
Completely.

A pause.

Cliff stopped at a corner.

He looked at his phone for a long moment.

He thought about Ilya standing when Hunter kissed his boyfriend.

About the expression that had closed down completely while something enormous moved underneath it.

He thought about Shane in the hospital.

Ilyaaaaaaa.

The grabby hands.

Good.

He thought about Ilya saying he said yes in a fluorescent corridor like it was the most important thing in the world and also just a fact.

He thought about Montreal.

He thought about the cottage.

He thought about Canada.

...

Fuck.