Rating:

Not Rated

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow, Yuna Hollander, Original Characters

Additional Tags:

Autistic Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander is Obsessed With Ilya Rozanov, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Yuna Hollander Finds Out About Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Good Parent Yuna Hollander, Yuna Hollander Takes Over The World, Good Friend Cliff Marlow

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of sailing, sailing

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-08 Words: 5,364 Chapters: 1/1

Since the Ship Has Sailed (Shanyshko)

Summary

“But…” Ilya stalls out. He conjures his sun’s face: the soft curve of skin where the corner of his eye becomes the sweep of his cheekbone, the stubble that clings to the soft end of his chin, the strong and even line of his eyebrows. “Solnyshko,” Ilya says. “It means sun, yes, but… it’s like a pet name. Sunshine. Honey. I’m calling you my sun.”

This is mortifying in English. Christ, he should never have started this conversation. He should have shaken Shane off when he had the chance. Even as Ilya thinks this, he knows he could not have done it. He cannot deny Shanyshko anything. That has always been the problem between them. What a terrifying, awesome, horrible problem to have. Ilya would like to have this problem for the rest of his life.

-x-
or, Ilya and Shane talk about their love, their lives.

Notes

this is a sequel to "Two-Four-Eight-One-Oh-Eight" and will definitely NOT make sense without reading that !! So... do yourself a solid, lol. thank you all for the outpouring of support for "two-four-eight-one." i'm trying to keep up with the comments but i'm sorry if there's a delay! i feel very firmly that Ilya is a poet and a very, very advanced english speaker who has a warped sense of his own english capacity *because* he is so advanced. i tried to reflect that in the voice of this piece and in his voice. also: cliff marlow & ilya rozanov are friends of all time 2 me.

Ilya has barely hit call a third time when Shane answers.

“Ilya, I’m so sorry.” He sounds out of breath already. He also sounds significantly more sober than he did several hours ago. “I’m so, so, so fucking sorry. I can’t believe I—I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just so—I wanted to tell you I was alright, but I was so high and it was so hard to think. But that’s not an excuse to betray your trust, and I know how much that matters—”

“Marlow figured it out.”

Shane stops speaking abruptly on the other side of their call.

“That’s why I took so long calling,” Ilya says. “After we landed? He… he came to my hotel room, told me he thinks he knows who my Montreal person is.”

Ilya lets his eyes look at nothing through the Buffalo hotel window. Marlow had looked so uncertain as he said it. Your Montreal… person. Marlow sat down in the desk chair, walked Ilya through his though process: hearing Ilya say Hollander’s name in his sleep one night years ago, thinking nothing of it until Ilya really started texting the “Montreal girl” nonstop. Apparently, Marlow didn’t quite know how it all fit together until Rose Landry. Then, it was too late for him to say anything. And then Marlow fucking hit Rozanov’s boyfriend on the ice and sent him out of the game on a spinal board.

I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you, man, Marlow said. But I’m here now. And, like… I get that Russia isn’t cool? For like… LGBT people. So, if you ever want to talk about that, I’m here. I know you're not a rook anymore, but I’m still your big, still lookin’ out for you. Alright?

Ilya finds himself shaking again. The fear of being uncovered, yes. But also, the relief.

“It felt so good,” he finds himself admitting to Shane. “Talking to someone else about you. Someone who was there from the beginning—who teased me, who saw me through it all. Someone who knows you as a player. And that made me mad. Because I want that feeling always—want to tell the world, ‘I get to lick that bit of skin behind Shane Hollander’s ball sack and he whines and squirms like prettiest thing’.”

“Oh fuck off!” Ilya can hear the reluctant smile in Shane’s voice. “You’re such an asshole.”

Then, because Ilya is a coward, he slips into Russian. “I want to tell the world how softly you hold me; how sweetly you smile without your fake canine tooth—the one you knocked out tripping on fucking concrete two months before we met, because you are grace incarnate on ice but don’t know where your feet end without your skates. I want to tell everyone how giving you are. I want to tell the world your trust shatters me and makes me a better man. That you make me want to be a better man.

“But how can I tell the world when I can’t even tell you? When I can’t be honest about how much I love your freckles, or the acne scars on your shoulders? I’ve watched those scars fade. I have watched you become the brilliant man you are today. I have traced the birthmarks that stretch like pink and brown continents across your back; the ones I don’t even know if you know you have. I have watched your toes curl in your sleep. I have been unmade by the sound of my name before yours. I love you so much and I want to tell everyone, yet I can’t tell you. Instead, I make you listen in a language you don’t speak. I take advantage and you let me. You let me be selfish and act like I’ve given you some great gift. It’s dizzying. It’s a revelation. I don’t think anyone has loved the way I love you. I think we are unprecedented.”

Ilya pants as the avalanche of feeling finally settles. “Okay,” he whispers. “I’m done.”

“Better?”

“Always.”

Shane finishes their routine with a soft humming noise, low and sweet. The noise that makes Ilya feel his bones are made of denser stuff, that makes him think he can be brave.

“So, five people know now,” Shane says. Ilya’s heart grows three sizes in his chest, like the stupid green Gritty he can never remember the name of. Shane and his brilliant, one-track mind.

“Five? Your mother spreads the words so fast?”

Ilya is half-joking. Shane is not.

“No!” He gasps. “No, I swear Ilya—she would never. I know I betrayed your trust and—and fucking outed you to my mother but—”

“Shane. Breathe.” On the other end of the line, Hollander pulls in a tight inhale and holds it. “There was no trust… betrayed. You only wanted to tell me you were okay. Your mama—she loves you. And she already text me, even though she says for emergency. So, you say five. Seems like more than two I know about. So tell me. Who are five?”

“You, me, Mom, Dad, and now Marlow. Five.”

Ilya chuckles, then finds himself belly laughing. “I did not count us,” he admits. “So, I am thinking: who are three other people Shane’s Mama told? How did she find three people to tell so quick?”

“Oh.”

They don’t have to be on facetime for Ilya to know what face Shane is making. It’s his cutest of many, many cute faces: the scrunched one he makes when he is embarrassed but pleased. Pleased to have made Ilya laugh.

“Am I on speaker again?” Ilya asks.

“No! No, you’re—nobody is even in the room. My parents are grabbing breakfast down the block.”

Ilya lets himself relax. Thank god. “They are okay? Your mama, your father? They are not…” They’re not cruel? They will not hurt you? You are safe with them?

Shane hears it all. Of course he does. “They’re not old-fashioned.” Shane places careful emphasis on the words, like Ilya could ever forget a single word of their conversation in Tampa.

Ilya hums, hopes Shane will say more. When he doesn’t, Ilya dares to press. Because they have this now. Since Tampa, they have the trust to press. “What did they say?”

“Dad just kissed my forehead. It was weird—he hasn’t done that since I was a kid. He told me he loved all of me. That was it. He didn’t mention you or anything. I’m sure Mom told him—they don’t keep secrets. But it was Mom who grilled me. Shane, does anyone else know you’re with your arch nemesis? Shane, how long have you two been taking trips to bone town? Shane, have you ever thrown a game for him? Shane, what does the sweat on his kneecaps taste like?”

Ilya lets himself fall back against the hotel bed with a face-splitting smile. Shane is so adorable when he’s grumpy. It isn’t fair. The bed creaks under his weight. Shitty fucking Buffalo. Ilya can’t wait to grind them into dust and move on to the playoffs.

“You can tell her the rest,” he teases, “but maybe we save sweat-tasting for first in-person meeting?”

Shane makes a gagging noise in Montreal. “You’re disgusting. I hope you know that.”

But Shane is laughing too.

Ilya has been trying, with limited success, to imagine or find in the annals of history and literature (Hehe. Annals.) a reasonable diminutive of Shane. English has none, other than Shaney, which is so cringeworthy it makes Ilya’s balls crawl back into his body. Russian is equally useless. There are so few names that end in  -ane, and those that do have irregular diminutives. Ilya does not want to change the root of Shane’s name. Just—

“Shanyshko.”

Shane goes quiet down the line, waiting for more Russian.

“No, sorry—ignore me.” Ilya throws one arm over his face and uses the other to crush his phone into his cheek. The pain is less grounding than he would have hoped. He can feel his blush against his forearm. You could probably fry an egg on his cheekbone. “I was… thinking on speaker.”

“Shanyshko,” Shane repeats slowly. Of course, his accent is perfect, even for a made-up word. “What does it mean?”

It means you, Ilya thinks. You, who are like the sun glinting off the icy dawn currents of the Moskva.

But Ilya cannot say that. Not without digging a ditch and dying in it. So, he shakes off the sloppy English he usually clings to with Shane, because Shane lets him be selfish even with his language.

“In Russian, we have diminutives. English has them also: Elizabeth becomes Beth. Thomas becomes Tom. They show friendship, intimacy. Not everyone calls you by your diminutive, yes?”

“Nicknames, yeah.”

“But Shane does not have a nick name.”

“Oh. No, I guess not.” Shane does not say this with any particular alarm. “I’ve always just been Hollzy. Or the beast. Someone tried to make Mad Prince work in high school, but… I dunno, nobody else got it.”

Ilya rifles through his memory in translation. Most of his literature courses focused on Russian playwrights when theatre came up, but this sounds very familiar. “The mad prince? Like… the Shakespeare?”

“Yeah, Hamlet. He’s the prince of Denmark. Hollander. Denmark. It’s a stretch, which is why it didn’t work.” Shane clears his throat. “Anyway. No, Shane doesn’t have a nickname.”

“Yes. And it’s…” Ilya reaches for a word but only finds, “Weird. I would never call Sveta, Svetlana. I would never call Mamochka, mother. Still, I am to call you Shane? No. So I look it up in English, but there is nothing to find. I start looking in Russian, but names with similar endings are irregular. Like how Richard becomes cock, somehow.”

This startles a laugh from Shanyshko, as Ilya hoped it might.

“But…” Ilya stalls out. He conjures his sun’s face: the soft curve of skin where the corner of his eye becomes the sweep of his cheekbone, the stubble that clings to the soft end of his chin, the strong and even line of his eyebrows. “Solnyshko,” Ilya says. “It means sun, yes, but… it’s like a pet name. Sunshine. Honey. I’m calling you my sun.”

This is mortifying in English. Christ, he should never have started this conversation. He should have shaken Shane off when he had the chance. Even as Ilya thinks this, he knows he could not have done it. He cannot deny Shanyshko anything. That has always been the problem between them. What a terrifying, awesome, horrible problem to have. Ilya would like to have this problem for the rest of his life.

“So from solnyshko,” Shane says, “you got… you got Shanyshko.”

“Yes.” Ilya can barely put enough breath behind the word to get it across the bottom of his phone. Shane is quiet for a while, giving Ilya time to get his racing heart under control. He let’s Ilya be so, so selfish. How could Ilya possibly repay him?

“What’s the diminutive of Ilya?”

Heat rushes to the tips of Ilya’s nose and ears. His throat is suddenly very thick. “Ilyusha,” he croaks.

“Are you—can we facetime?”

Instead of responding, Ilya hits the little red phone then toggles to the facetime app. He hits call. Shane doesn’t even make him ring three times.

“Sorry,” Shane says. “I know our code, but—”

“Fuck the code, Hollander.” He hopes Shanyshko can see the smile breaking through his grief. He buries one half of his face in a pillow. “Sorry,” Ilya whispers.

He hates crying. Hates it, hates it, hates it. He hates when people as if he’s okay – no, obviously not, why the fuck would he be crying if he was okay? – hates when people look at him, hates how it makes his body into a stranger. He cannot control his tears the way he controls everything else, and they are always so close to the surface. He wishes he could push them down farther, forever.

“Your family,” Shane broaches. Hesitant, beautiful Shanyshko. “They call you Ilyusha?"

Ilya grips his mother’s crucifix. “No. Father called me a disappointment.” The joke lands flat. Shanyshko has suffered much, but never has he been branded a disappointment by those he loves. Ilya is glad. He would not wish it on anyone. “Alexei calls me faggot, mostly. In English, there is not diminutive form to establish authority. Or… to say you have authority with someone. But imagine like your coach called you Shaney. It would be—”

“Condescending?”

“Exactly. Kissed the word off my tongue.”

“That’s not the phrase and you know it, freak.” Shanyshko is smiling. His bruises highlight his freckles. His golden skin is washed in Montreal’s watery sun. Ilya wishes he could reach through the screen to caress that lovely, lovely smile. What a gift, Shane Hollander has given.

Perhaps this is why Ilya says, “My Mama. She alone called me Ilyusha.” As always when Ilya tries to conjure her or translate any of the softness lost to his past, he slips into the formal register of English—the one Marlow tries to tell him doesn’t exist but absolutely exists.

Another of Shanyshko’s hums; the ones Ilya likes to believe are just for him. Then his face tightens. “Does… does Svetlana call you Ilyusha?”

Ilya will always regret mentioning Sveta to Shane. He was trying to save face, trying to figure Shane out. Was Shane bisexual like him? Was he seeing other women? Other men? Clearly, he is skilled at keeping relationships a secret. How many other people were making him laugh like Ilya does? How many other bodies warmed the sheets of his decoy Montreal apartment?

He was also trying, he sees in retrospect, to confess the enormity of feeling inside him to Shane: There is a woman I could love and she would be perfect for me. But she isn’t perfect for me and I don’t love her because I am stupidly, horribly, irreversibly in love with you. Instead, he chased Shane away, made him jealous and nervous.

“No,” Ilya says. And it’s true. Truth is important, Shanyshko. “No, I don’t let her. She did when we were very young. But after Mama’s… accident. I could not bear it. Hearing the word tore me open. Maybe still tears me open. I could not risk it. There was… no room in that house, in all of Moscow. And now, I think, we are too old for that sort of intimacy.”

“Too old?”

“Yes. I would be strange, I think. Sveta and me are not… how can I explain. Have you ever had—ah, fuck, what is phrase. Friends with perks?”

“Friends with benefits?”

“Yes, this!” For all they’ve talked the last seven months, Shane’s sexual history remains a frustrating enigma to Ilya. “You have had?”

“No.” Then Shanyshko scrunches his face as he always does when trying to parse a new thing. “I mean, maybe? You? Do you count?”

Ilya wants to laugh. But he finds he can’t. “No. What we have… it is not this. We are friends, yes. We fuck, yes. But… there is more, also.” Shane is quiet and pensive. Ilya is thrown back to his home in Boston, to the tuna melts and the disastrous call with his father and the mind-blowing sex that wasn’t even really sex, and then the Hell that followed. He should know better than to try to put his clumsy English words to what they have. Still, he finds himself confirming, “Yes?”

“My mom thinks we’re boyfriends,” Shane says. He’s got his thinking face on, which is also his hiding face. Ilya tries to listen between Shane’s words; tries to give as completely as Shane gives to him. “Or partners. I told her we can’t be. She said the ship sailed.”

The ship sailed. Ilya has not lived in port cities his entire life without knowing this phrase. He hears now what Shane is getting at. His Shanyshko is not one who comes… easily to emotions. Or, maybe better to say: he is not one to trust his own emotions. But now Shane is offering an outside perspective. Someone other than us has diagnosed the situation. Does Ilya agree with this diagnosis? Is Shane safe to trust what his heart already knows?

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “That ship sailed.”

Shane nods once. “So, why doesn’t Svetlana call you Ilyusha? Now, I mean. Even though you guys are... were? Friends with benefits.”

Ilya shrugs, buries himself into his pillow. “Were," Ilya affirms. "Have not been for a while. Before Tampa, even. For Ilyusha, it would be… Sveta and me are friends. She loves me like how she loves her favourite toy, you know? Familiar, reliable. Didn’t have to think too hard. Maybe she loves me less, because her favorite toy cannot fuck up a pass in the third period and cost anybody any games.”

“Her favourite toy?” Real anger has bloomed on Shane’s face. “You aren’t a toy, Ilya.”

How many times is Ilya allowed to fall in love with the same man? “Ahhhhh, Shanyshko. Never change. I mean, favourite sex toy. It’s like—a little sucky-sucky toy. For her clit. It’s pink.”

“The toy or her clit?”

Ilya finds his face opening in delight at Shane’s mulish frown and quick, surly retort. “Oh! Mr. Hollander has jokes, now!” Then, because he knows Shanyshko is somehow still on Chirping 101, “To answer your question: both.”

Her body appears in his mind’s eye, in a detail born of years of familiarity. They were—what, fourteen? Fifteen, when they first had sex? Once, the thought of her might have sparked something for him. Arousal. Now he can feel only a dimmed appreciation. She is beautiful and hot, yes. But she is not Shane. She is not Ilya’s terrible, awesome, impossible problem.

Shane blushes vibrantly on Ilya’s screen. He also frowns. “You shouldn’t talk about her body that way,” He says. Ilya thinks—jealous? But then Shanyshko continues, “I know I started it, but. We’re being disrespectful, Ilya. I’m a stranger to her. She didn’t agree to me knowing about her… you know.” He clears his throat. “Her clit.”

Ilya immediately imagines Mr. Hollander speaking sternly to baby Shane about consent, boundaries, what is and is not okay to say in a locker room. Somehow, Shane clings to that as a professional hockey player. The goody Canadian. Ilya feels himself melting into a puddle. Mortifying, what Shanyshko does to him.

“Okay,” he agrees. “I will not speak like this. She would not care, for the record. But you are right. We can stop.” Then, because he knows Shane will keep circling back until Ilya answers: “For me to invite her to call me Ilyusha, to open this door… It would mean more now than when we were babies. Now it would mean emotions. It would mean romance.”

Again, Ilya’s disastrous attempt at a date occurs to him. To be safe, he adds, “I do not want this with her. Ever. So. No, Sveta does not call me Ilyusha.” A mortified blush is crawling up Ilya’s neck. But Shane gives and gives and gives. The least Ilya can do is be mortified to put him at ease.

Shanyshko has a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth. “Can I call you Ilyusha?”

Ilya has to bury his face in the pillow. But he nods anyway, like he isn’t giving Shane the key to his fucking soul. “Yes. You may.”

“Well. Ilyusha.”

Kill him. Kill Ilya now. He will never recover from this anyway.

“I couldn’t sleep after the 2 a.m. rounds, so I got to thinking about how we could… uhm. Since the ship has sailed. How we might get to being… out. Being more public. If that’s…”

Shanyshko seems to run out of steam. Ilya pulls his face from the pillow. Shane is owed Ilya’s full attention. “Tell me,” He says. “I want to hear.”

Shane swallows. “Well, uhm. Maybe we start with the All-Stars games. Say that we played together, got to know one another better, blah blah blah. Then, in conversation, you brought up working with my mom.”

Ilya blinks. That is not the turn he thought this plan would take. “Working with your Mama?”

Shane shrugs one shoulder carefully. “Well. Everyone knows she’s my manager. And she gets me all these brand deals…”

“If she’s good enough for you, she’s good enough for me,” Ilya finishes.

“Exactly! Yes. So, I arrange for us to meet. In public. We have a business meeting over lunch, for example.” Shane’s eyes dart from wherever he was looking to his phone screen. “She will probably actually want to get you brand deals,” he adds. “Like—if we do this, you should have some target sponsors in mind. But anyway. That gives us a reason to keep meeting and build a public friendship. We’re both free agents next year. Teams are gonna be chomping at the bit to get us. The question is always going to be caps—can one team afford both of us? Probably not—”

“Boston will.” Ilya shrugs. He pulls the phone very close so he can speak quietly. “Don’t tell anyone I tell you this, but… our goalie and two second liners are retiring next year. Announcement will drop after playoffs. Boston wants me to stay. They have said this. We need better depth at center. You and I already prove: I can be your winger or we both play center on different shifts. Without Parker, Mathson, or Bubbles, there will be plenty of space for you. Could even take a rookie, if they like.”

Shane nods. It’s his thinking nod, not his agreeing nod. Ilya tries to be patient as he waits for Shanyshko to finish adding this variable to whatever calculations he’s already run to reach his plan.

“That… could be perfect, actually. The Metros don't need two centers. The only other team I think could reasonably take us is the Admirals. They’re looking for a big refresh. But I don’t want to live in New York. I would, you know, but…”

Ilya can’t help smiling. He sees his face in the tiny corner, looking just like his grandfather’s. His grandfather, a war-hardened military man, whose love for Ilya’s grandmother turned him into a dog on a leash. “No,” Ilya agrees softly. “I do not think you would like New York. I think… I hope you would love Boston.” He sniffs. “You were right. In Regina? Boston is nice.”

“Yeah?” Shane’s face is open, soft. Ilya thinks he might die if he cannot kiss that face soon. So, so, so soon.

Ilya has to return to Moscow. His responsibilities there are non-negotiable: selling his father’s estate, closing out bank accounts and cashing savings, paying debts and lapsed invoices, setting up the trust for Alexei’s daughter and his wife, because Alexei has driven himself many miles down a one-way road to an early grave. If Ilya could trust anyone else to do it, he would. But it must be him. It can only be him. And there is so little time in the season. But a week? Ten days?

Yes. He can find ten days to spare for Shanyshko.

“Yes.” Ilya shrugs himself back to the present conversation. “Boston is very nice. It would be nicer if I could suck your cock in it on regular basis.”

“You are such an asshole.”

“Honey?” Shane’s eyes dart away from Ilya toward something he cannot see. Ilya listens to the rustling of shoes, coats, plastic bags. Mrs. Yuna and Mr. Hollander speak but Ilya cannot hear them very clearly.

Then, “Is that Rozanov?” Mr. Hollander. Ilya runs a quick hand through his curls, tries to smooth them into something more appropriate. He looks awful. He can’t meet Mr. Hollander like this. But Shane is nodding.

“Well, tell him I say hello. And tell him to crush Buffalo.”

“He can hear you,” Shane adds. His face is caught somewhere between mortified and pleased.

“Hello, Mr. Hollander,” Ilya offers. “I will do so.”

“Okay,” Shane says. “I should go. I can’t eat and hold the phone at the same time.”

Ilya nods. He should get ready to head to Buffalo’s arena, starting with a shower to finally rid himself of airplane funk. “Okay. If your Mama agrees, tell her email me—we can find time and meet. Ah… set the ship sailing, you know?”

Shane nods. He is still holding the phone so close: enough that Ilya can make out his favourite constellation on Shane's right cheek.

“Goodbye, Shane Hollander,” Ilya murmurs.  

“Bye, Ilyusha.”

Ilya hangs up before he is totally unmade by the soft, open smile on Shanyshko’s face. He toggles back to messages, then to Shane’s contact. He deletes “JANE,” still in all caps, one letter at a time. Swipes his keyboard over to Cyrillic. Adds, instead: Shanyshko. Then, because he cannot help himself, because Shanyshko turns him into a puddle, because Ilya has a terrible, horrible, perfect problem, Ilya adds a small sun emoji and their usual heart.

Save.

His face is still burning as he pulls himself up and wanders to the bathroom. He texts Marlow:

Bus leaves when?

Marlow fires back:

arent u the fuckin captain

Three dots appear, disappear, then appear again:

in 40 min.

Ilya sends a yellow thumbs up.

Meet in lobby, 15? Maps says Dunkin is five min. walk away.

bet.

Ilya swipes back to Shanyshko’s thread and sends a shower emoji. Shanyshko sends back a salad.

U r really eating salad for breakfast???

No. But I couldn’t find a good emoji for an acai bowl.

wtf is acai ? how even do u say this word?

Shane sends back a voice memo. Ilya turns off the warming shower so he can hear it. “Ah-sigh-ee,” Shane says. “But mom says you can pronounce is like ten different ways, so I don’t even know anymore.”

Ilya is going to be late meeting Marlow. He sends back a string of baffled and disappointed emojis, then adds:

english is horrible horrible language.

no respect.

have all these letters, no consistent sounds.

how anyone is going to learn?

Shane sends back a shrugging emoji.

You’re doing pretty well. Amazing, even.

Then a kissy face. Their heart.

A boat emoji.

Ilya is definitely going to be late meeting Marlow. He adds a boat emoji to Shanyshko’s contact, then sends the heart and boat back.

k time 4 shower really.

gonna be late meeting M in lobby.

want dunkin.  

Shanyshko sends an eye-rolling emoji.

Go! Don’t be late!

Ilya is still laughing as he opens the shower stream again and steps inside.

(He’s only two minutes late to meeting Marlow. Cliff forgives him when Ilya shows Marlow his most recent texts with Shanyshko. Ilya and Cliff ignore the tears in each other’s eyes and blame is on the bitter Buffalo cold.)

THREE WEEKS LATER

Ilya is not surprised to find himself accosted by reporters in the tunnels leading out of the arena. He is still damp from his post-game shower. The disappointment clings to his shoulders and his brow despite the wash. They came close to a win against the Admirals, but close is not the Cup. Next year, it will be his. They won’t stall out in the playoffs.

And of course, it would be Ilya’s luck that Scott Fucking Hunter made out with his cute little pipsqueak boyfriend after Ilya rushed into the guest locker rooms.

He’s already seen the video. Mrs. Yuna sent it. He’s also already seen Shanyshko’s seventeen text response. All of them, in their own ways, warn him to be careful. Moscow’s eyes will absolutely be on him tonight. His phone is a grounding weight in his pocket as he begins the usual questions after a defeat.

How does he feel? “Disappointed,” he acknowledges. “But I hope Boston knows we played best game we could. We did not hand Admirals their win. We fought them until buzzer of game seven.”

He also feels like he wants to get out of here so he makes his direct flight to Moscow. It’s the last of the night; his ten days at his boyfriend’s cottage depend on him making this flight. Ilya does not try to be coy as he checks his watch. “Sorry, I have flight to catch soon. Other questions?”

What’s his plan for next season? “Continue playing best hockey I can. Keep leading my team to victory. Next question?”

Anything exciting in the off season? “Home.” He cannot swallow the smile as he says it. First, to Moscow, technically. Then: home to Shanyshko. “Next question?”

Any thoughts on Hunter’s big moment tonight?

Ilya was not born last night, or whatever the phrase is. He knows this reporter, and knows the bastard is trying to goad him into saying something ugly. They assume: he is Russian, he must be homophobe. Ilya swerves. “Hunter fought us as hard as we fought him. He earned every pound of Cup he lifts tonight. I congratulate him.”

What do you say to fans who wonder whether Hunter should bring his personal life to the ice?

Ilya sees a flash of Shanyshko’s face, warning but trusting him. Ilya’s permanent American residency papers came in last week. He is not out of the woods, not yet. But he can afford to play. “I think they are upset for wrong reason. Is very sad: Hunter’s boyfriend seems like nice guy. I’m sure he could get better boyfriend than dinosaur like Hunter.”

Ilya checks his watch. He’s got ten minutes to make it to his called car before things really start getting dicey. He adjusts his coat—Burberry, because Mrs. Yuna is no slouch and is frankly thrilled to have another Ken doll to shower in luxury sponsors.

“But no,” he says, “Let me be serious. For once, huh? Hockey is simple game we have made very complicated. At the end of the day, what matters is how well you and your team handle the puck. Hunter is gifted player. He is captain his team believes in. He is gay? Not my business. Not anyone's business. I will say only this: Love…” Ilya pauses to adjust his necklace. The small sailboat charm clicks against his crucifix. Both are warm against his skin. “Love makes us stronger. In every form--from spouse, parents, brothers, sisters, teammates, fan. Love pushes us, sharpens us, focuses us. Gives us someone to gloat for, huh? To make proud. I will not begrudge anyone this. Certainly not a veteran of the game like Hunter. And Hunter has changed hockey forever. History will look back and count: how many generational talents will choose to play, continue playing, play better than ever before, because they know they are not alone on ice?”

Ilya aims for casual when he checks his watch again. Six minutes. He still has to get through the maze of tunnels and find the stupid Uber bringing him to Newark Liberty.  “I’m sorry, I have flight to catch,” he says. “I must go. No further questions. Thank you. Goodnight.”

When he emerges into the cool night air, he has three unread messages and an alert from Uber. He slides into the appropriate luxury SUV, throws his four-day duffle into the back seat beside him, then checks his messages.

From Mrs. Y:

That was incredible. Be safe.

From Shanyshko, a voice memo:

“Fuck, oh my god. I love you. I know I should wait to say it when we’re together and I should make it romantic like on the docks or something but. I have to—you’re so—I love you. I love you. You’re incredible. Please be safe in Moscow, okay? Come home soon, Ilyusha.”

Then, a regular text.

Please buckle your seatbelt. Yes, even in the back seat. Call me when you can, Ilyusha.

Ilya buckles his seat belt even though he hates it. Then he hits call. Shane lets it run to voicemail. Ilya leaves a fart sound in the voicemail for fun, then calls again.

On his third ring, Shane picks up. “Ilyusha?”

“I love you too.”