Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Troy Barrett/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Troy Barrett, Wyatt Hayes, Zane Boodram, Evan Dykstra, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Eric Bennett

Additional Tags:

Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Future Ilya Rozanov/Shane Hollander/Troy Barrett, Forced Outing, Canon-Typical Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, no infidelity, Slow Burn, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Troy Gets Traded Early, Troy Barrett-centric, Troy Barrett Needs a Hug, Troy Barrett probably needs a Xanax, Ilya Rozanov is a fuckboy with feelings, Accurate Portrayal of the City of Ottawa, References to Real Events in the NHL, Complicated Relationships

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-12 Words: 10,882 Chapters: 1/4

dream of walls that hold us in prison

Summary

Two weeks after the photos get leaked, Troy is traded to the Ottawa Centaurs.

Notes

Got obsessed with Troy Barrett. Decided to write about it. Also, polyamory. Here's a kind of long list of things to keep in mind while reading this story:

1) Don't pay too close attention to the timeline, it won't make that much sense and doesn't match the books. Wyatt Hayes was traded a year earlier and Luca Haas is a rookie in 2019. It doesn’t matter. World’s your oyster.

2) In Role Model, Troy is at times mentioned to be a pretty physical player. This was fine for me until I discovered that he’s 5’9??? Sorry but that boy is not body-checking your average pro hockey player with any kind of success on a regular basis, I’ll tell you that much. If you want to picture how I imagine Troy playing hockey, watch some clips of a younger Patrick Kane. Although he probably wouldn’t be as good as Kaner, that total beauty. I just imagine Troy very spinny. Like a ballerina.

3) This is not a story that deals with sexual assault. I am not at a place in my life right now where I believe I can properly tackle a story about that, and I think the way RR wrote about it was weird and bad. Maybe one day I will write a story that deals with that, but I can’t imagine it’ll ever be one about a brave white saviour who is so awesome and cool because he Believes Women.

4) Ottawa is not actually that boring of a place, and I’m convinced everyone who believes differently has just never lived anywhere outside of Southern Ontario. Y’all ever been to Saskatoon?

5) Harris...is not in this. Sorry. I know he's technically working with the Centaurs at this point (2019), but he doesn't appear in this. Probably.

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

As it happens, it’s through his Twitter mentions that Troy ultimately ends up learning about the trade. Some leak or another from the GM’s office; an intern with a big mouth and too close a connection to someone at Deadspin.

He tells himself it could be worse—he’s heard his fair share of horror stories about players being completely blindsided by this kind of thing. One time, a few years ago, a defenseman from Edmonton had apparently been pulled right from the ice by the GM, traded without warning between the first and second period of a game against Buffalo. He didn’t even get to keep his jersey. At least Troy isn’t that guy.

Although—that guy had been traded to Florida, rather than Ottawa. So. In the end, he supposes, everything is relative.

Troy turns his phone off pretty much as soon as he finishes reading the first post, anyway. Barely considers calling someone official to confirm. Barstool Sports has already run an article. Barstool Sports has been running quite a few articles about Troy, recently, and there’s little reason to consider this one isn’t true.

He gets up from his sprawl on his couch, pads over to his fridge, and pulls out another Bud Light to add to the growing collection of cans scattered across his apartment’s floor. He takes an idle drag from his dab pen and considers that his name is now trending for the second time in as many weeks. What is it they say? Any publicity is good publicity? And, well—it isn’t like Troy has willingly dedicated his entire life to playing in a league colloquially known by most everyone in the hockey world as The Show because of some desire to stay under the radar.

He downs most of the beer in a couple gulps, bathed in the dim blue light of his fridge, and pulls out another before making his way back to the couch, flopping heavily onto his side and draining the rest of the can. He tosses it to the floor; cracks open the next one. Takes another pull of weed.

Tells himself, again—could be worse. In a lot of ways, a trade is the best-case scenario. He’s still playing MLH, hasn’t been sent down. He’s still living in Canada. He’s still got his mom, and his money, and the game. Everything is relative. Everything could be worse.

Maybe, if he says it enough times, he might just start to believe it.

The next week passes in a blur. Troy talks to his agent, and Toronto’s GM, and a guy from Ottawa who he’s at least 90% sure is their GM. Phones his mom. Cries to his mom. Tries his best to stay off the internet, to ignore the blaring lack of communication from any of his teammates, the respective and completely expected radio silence from both Dallas and Adrian, as well as the voicemail from his father still sitting expectant and terrifying in his inbox.

He packs up his stuff in a depressingly short amount of time and makes his way to Ottawa via rental car, courtesy of the Centaurs. In an ON Route outside of Kingston, he gets a text from Ilya Rozanov while inhaling a couple wraps from A&W and stops eating for long enough to panickedly swipe the notification off his home screen, ultimately electing to ignore it the same way he’s been ignoring the Instagram DM lingering in his inbox from one Scott Hunter as of two weeks ago—that is, as long as is theoretically possible.

His first practice with the Centaurs is on a Thursday. Troy arrives in Ottawa mid-afternoon on the Monday, checks into his hotel, and spends pretty much all his time in the days leading up to it cross-faded out of his mind.

Thursday morning, he pulls into a Timmies, buys a large black coffee from a pimply teenager who asks stuttering for his autograph through the drive-thru window, and throws up in the parking lot. Then he puts his sunglasses back on, wipes his mouth, and drives the rest of the way to the rink.

The locker room is still more than half-empty by the time Troy gets there. Stomach settled somewhat from the coffee, and having spent the whole drive over carefully regulating his breathing, he is a little less certain the day will end with him projectile vomiting his breakfast onto his new teammates. He becomes a little less certain of this when the first thing he hears upon entering the room is a whispered, “holy fuck” of surprise from a little blonde-haired guy wearing glasses to his right.

Troy scowls at him—a mostly involuntary reflex that has the kid squeaking and hastily averting his eyes in order to pretend at being busy tying his skates, face bright, tomato-red. Troy recognizes him, faintly, though it takes a second to recall the name. Luca Haas, that year’s second overall draft pick. From some European country. Sweden, maybe? Switzerland?

Troy squares his shoulders, clenches his jaw, and locates his stall, carefully avoiding eye contact with the rest of the room as he begins to pull his gear out of his duffle, cursing his failure to get there early enough to be changed and on the ice before anyone else had arrived. He’d underestimated Ottawa traffic—it wouldn’t happen again.

A throat clears nearby. Troy glances up, then quickly back down. Says, roughly, “Yeah?”

Wyatt Hayes says, “Barrett.” Then waits, infuriatingly, for Troy to reluctantly meet his eyes. There’s a look on his face Troy’s got no idea how to interpret—something strange and conflicted, skin tight around his eyes and mouth pursed in a thin, flat line. “You good?”

Troy feels an overwhelming urge to burst into laughter, and quickly covers it up with a cough. “Yeah,” he says again. He surreptitiously glances around, and is unsurprised to find pretty much the entire dressing room staring at him. He clenches his jaw harder, glaring. “What do you want?”

It comes out harsher than he’d necessarily meant it, but he doesn’t apologize. He and Hayes hadn’t been friends in Toronto, before Hayes’ own trade the year prior, and he isn’t about to pretend that being dealt similar shit luck is going to make them all of a sudden buddy-buddy.

Hayes’ eyebrows go up, then back down. He shakes his head, lips curving up into a rueful smile. Unsurprised, clearly, by Troy’s obvious hostility. “Just welcoming you to the team, man.”

“Great.” Troy pulls his socks up—Centaur’s branded red and black, ugly as all hell to match the fuckass jerseys—and yanks a strip of sock tape around his shin. “Consider me fucking welcomed.”

Then he stands, steady on his skate blades as he’s ever been on his feet, and walks out of the locker room without another word, knocking Hayes’ shoulder with his own as he goes.

Nobody tries to stop him.

There is little Troy finds as satisfying as the steady rasp of skate blades carving into freshly resurfaced ice; the smooth glide of cold steel against the shining white surface. There’s something so exciting about it, even after all these years, a childish giddiness that bubbles in his chest with every solitary lap around the rink.

Troy’s already worked up a sweat by the time the first player joins him on the ice. He intends to ignore them until practice actually starts, the same way he’s been ignoring Coach Wiebe watching from the bench, but that only last until the guy swoops over to poke check his stick, stealing the puck and firing it into the top-left corner of the net with an almost casual slap-shot.

“You are freaking out the team, Barrett.”

Troy jerks his head around, a snarl on his lips—stops himself just in time.

Ilya Rozanov looks back at him, eyebrows raised. Expectant.

Troy looks down again, breaking eye contact. “I’m just shooting,” he mutters.

Rozanov hums. “Sure.”

He sounds amused. Troy scowls down at his skates, the back of his neck heating. He feels like a child, petulant and stupid. So much for a good first impression, huh Barrett?

Rozanov continues. “Usually, ice is used for team practice. This is hard to do when someone is trying his best to shatter glass with puck every second.”

Troy’s blush intensifies. He missed one fucking shot. He chokes down the instinctive angry retort rising in his throat and forces his head in a jerky nod, still staring down at his laces. “Right. Sorry.”

“Barrett.” When Troy finally musters the courage to look him in the eye again, he’s arrested briefly by the expression on Rozanov’s face, the complete lack of any of his prior amusement. Admittedly, he has not met the man very many times, and even then it’d always been across the ice—but still. It’s a look Troy has never seen him wear before. Not during interviews, or a game, or on the cover of Chel; not Rozy’s trademark smirk or the strong, furrowed brow of the best goal-scorer in the league. It’s something else.

For a moment, Rozanov just looks at him. Eyes intent on Troy’s face; expression unreadable. Then he transfers his stick to his left hand, shakes off his right glove, and offers his hand to shake.

Troy hesitates for a beat, until the clear impatience in Rozanov’s raised eyebrow prompts him to grasp it. The man’s hand is warm and dry. Bigger than Troy’s; his fingers longer, his skin paler. Troy, in his resolve not to linger, ends up retracting his hand from the grip much quicker than is strictly polite, but Rozanov doesn’t call him out for it other than a brief, half-amused quirk of the mouth.

Rozanov grins with all his teeth. In his rumbling, distinctly accented voice, and in a tone not completely unlike someone doling out a threat, he says, “Welcome to Ottawa, Troy Barrett. I hope you like winning.”

The team doesn’t seem to know quite what to make of him, which is unsurprising. They think he’s an asshole—that hasn’t changed. Troy isn’t naive enough to pretend that everything that happens on the ice necessarily stays there, not with the way he and Dallas went about it. And he has said—a lot of shit. Done a lot of shit.

Troy is not a good person. That’s not in dispute. But he’s a damn good hockey player, and the Centaurs aren’t stupid, are pretty much all well aware that it’s in their favour to have him on their team. Doesn’t mean they have to like it, though. Rozanov makes this clear on the flight to their first game with Troy on the lineup, the first in a week-long road trip starting in Pittsburgh.

Troy’s stalled momentarily by the confusion of where he’s supposed to sit immediately upon boarding, whether he should join the older players in the back or stay in the front with Haas and the rest, but Rozanov spots him quickly and waves him over to the seat beside his, near the back. With a not insignificant amount of trepidation, Troy makes his way over. He’s intending to stick his headphones on and stare blankly at the headrest in front of him for the duration of the journey, Frank Ocean on shuffle in his ears, but Rozanov clearly has other plans.

“Give me your phone,” Rozanov says, once Troy’s arranged himself in the seat.

Troy turns to him, frowning in confusion. “What?”

Rozanov just holds his hand out, expectant. He’s in a suit like the rest of them, something sleekly tailored and surely ludicrously expensive that would no doubt get Troy called a faggot if he wore it but for Rozanov likely just means another year being named the only fashionable man in all of hockey by GQ.

After a second, Troy says, “Uh. No.”

Rozanov rolls his eyes. “Barrett,” he says, drawing it out in his trademark Russian drawl, needling, lengthening the vowels of Troy’s last name into an irritating sing-song. “Don’t be difficult.”

Troy’s grip tightens on his phone like Rozanov might rip it from his grasp. He’s not difficult. Rozanov’s just weird. “What the hell do you want with my phone?”

“I would like to get your mother’s number.”

“Fuck off.”

Rozanov smirks, unaffected by Troy’s very sincere glower. “Come on, Barrett. Have a little trust in your captain, ya?”

Troy scoffs with all the derisiveness that comment deserves, but begrudgingly hands his phone over regardless. What’s the guy going to do? Check Troy’s got Grindr? Who the fuck cares, anymore?

“See?” Rozanov says breezily. “Not so hard.” He taps open Troy’s messaging app. Troy jolts, hand jerking back towards his phone mostly involuntarily, but Rozanov seems uninterested in the most recent of Troy’s sparse few text chains, scrolling down until he finds what he’s looking for. He taps quickly away at the screen, thumbs blurring, and then hands it back.

To the text Rozanov had sent a week ago, Hello Barrett. This is Ilya Rozanov. Welcome to Ottawa most boring city in the world blah blah blah 🤑🤑🤑 say if you need anything maybe I will respond maybe not, a reply from Troy’s phone now reads, hiiii XD excited to be on board!! you are such an inspiration ))) <3 <3 so happy to be on your line )).

Troy scowls at him, irritation spiking sharp and angry in his gut. “I don’t fucking text like that. I’m not a thirteen year old girl.”

“Really?” Rozanov raises his eyebrows, innocently surprised. “You have me fooled, then.”

“Funny,” Troy says flatly. “That’s a gay joke, right? Love those. Keep ‘em coming. Fucking dick,” he mutters under his breath.

“No,” Rozanov says, “I think you’re the one fucking dick.” He looks very pleased with himself at that, but when Troy abruptly makes to get out of his seat, done with this, he drops the humour and raises his hands in surrender, shaking his head. “No, okay, I am not making jokes.”

Troy narrows his eyes at him, suspicious, but begrudgingly stays seated—partly out of intrigue about the man’s sudden solemnity, partly because the plane’s already taxiing on the runway and he doesn’t really want to get told off by a flight attendant.

Rozanov squints at him for a moment, then says, “You think the team has a problem with you because you are gay.”

It’s not a question. Troy swallows, throat gone dry. It feels insane to realize that this is very possibly the first time this has been said out loud to his face—not as a joke, but as a very simple matter of fact. Indisputable. Did you hear Troy Barrett is gay? I swear to god, man. There are photos and everything.

“Nobody cares that you are gay,” Rozanov continues without acknowledgement, entirely matter of fact. “They care that you are a difficult asshole.”

Troy stares at him. Rozanov gazes impassively back. Around them, the walls of the plane rumble as it picks up speed, engines roaring. Troy swallows again. Clears his throat. Rasps out, with a little difficulty, “And you? Is that what you think?”

“Well.” Rozanov’s lips quirk, eyes alight with some secret, infuriating amusement. “I certainly do not dislike you because you are gay.”

Then he leans back in his seat, facing forward again, and goes back to staring out the plane window. The conversation, if that’s what it could be called, apparently over. Fucking fantastic.

Troy shakes his head, irritated, and puts his headphones on. The plane takes off. Frank Ocean sings about White Ferraris as the snow-covered sprawl of suburban Ottawa shrinks beneath the wall of white clouds.

Expectedly, Ottawa loses almost every single game on the road trip. Troy spends a lot of time staring blankly at reporters in post-game media and flatly repeating, “I’m only going to answer questions about the game,” until they give up and stop requesting him. In Philly, someone makes the mistake of asking Rozanov, “How has the team adjusted so far to having Troy Barrett in the locker room?”

Troy watches the video on his laptop that evening, holed up in his hotel room with a mickey of rum and a liter of diet coke. On the screen, a sweaty Rozanov crosses his arms over his chest and says, flippantly, “Barrett is a short man. He does not take up much space and stinks as much as the rest of us. I do not know why that is relevant to the game but okay.”

Troy snorts. “Yeah, fuck you too,” he mumbles, taking a sip of his drink, mixed lukewarm in one of the flimsy little hotel-provided plastic cups. He went a little heavy on the rum, and it burns going down.

Trust Rozanov to find a way to insult him even when he’s willfully pretending to misunderstand homophobia. Troy can’t even be mad about it—it’s true, after all. He’s fucking short. Ever since his very first appearance in the MLH, he has yet to stumble upon a single mention of himself in the media that doesn’t use the word diminutive as a descriptor. Or, he supposes now, gay.

A different reporter, this time. “How have you dealt with the culture clash since Barrett’s coming out?”

There’s a moment of silence from Rozanov. The camera is close-up on his face, looking down and to the side, appearing to absorb the question with a furrowed brow. Troy finds himself holding his breath, the plastic cup crinkling slightly in his grip. This is, admittedly, something he’s been waiting for. Half the Russians in the league still refuse to wear Pride Tape even for warmups, citing religious reasons or wariness over legal backlash back in Russia. Rozanov has never been one of them, and has pretty openly shown his support for Scott Hunter, if not in actual words—but still. He doesn’t even know if he would really fault him for it, if he did choose to come out and condemn the whole thing. Troy’s from fucking Vancouver. He’s got literally no point of comparison here.

Eventually, though, Rozanov just says, in a flat, mechanical tone of voice, “I think I do not understand the question.”

A beat, then, slower this time, with careful enunciation, like the reporter thinks maybe Rozanov truly hadn’t understood him, “Since Barrett came out—”

Rozanova cuts the guy off. “Yes,” he says sharply. “This is what I do not understand. You say Barrett came out? This is news to me. He did not come out. I think if you want to talk to gay hockey player coming out I can give you Scott Hunter’s number. I don’t know if you remember that, it was very big thing. Lots of talk, big parade, hard to miss but maybe you were out of town.”

“Last month—”

Again, Rozanov interrupts. “Last month,” he says, leaning in to speak directly in the man’s microphone, staring very intensely at something off camera, presumably making very discomfiting eye contact with the guy asking the question, “somebody apparently decided that Barrett did not deserve the basic human decency of a private life. It was disgusting, and every question asked about it continues to be so. Troy Barrett did not come out. Every time someone implies differently, they are erasing this violation of his privacy. Now, if nobody has a question about the fucking game, I think we are done here.”

Apparently, Rozanov got a fine for swearing on live tv. Violation of public decency.

The video ends there, Youtube autoplay queuing up The Russian Machine: Ilya Rozanov’s Top 5 Most Badass Moments. Troy closes his laptop, drinks three more rum and cokes, and then leaves his room.

“Did you fucking rehearse that?” he demands, the moment the door to Rozanov’s hotel room swings open.

Infuriatingly, the other man does not seem even a little bit surprised to see him there. “Yes,” he says. “Lots of big words. Hello Barrett, how is your evening, would you like to come in?”

Troy ignores him, already pushing his way inside. “Fucking peachy,” he snaps.

Rozanov closes the door behind him and follows him into the room, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed across his chest, legs crossed at the ankles, looking casual as anything as he watches Troy glance around. “And drunk,” Rozanov observes idly.

Troy looks at him, then down at the mostly empty mickey in his hand. Back to Rozanov. Raises his eyebrows, like, fucking duh.

“I could report you,” Rozanov says, still in that same mild, impassive tone.

Troy snorts. “Sure,” he says. “Go for it.” What’s the fine, anyway—a couple hundred bucks? Rozanov would know, probably. (Rumour is, the guy once racked up 25k in fines during a single season due only to his propensity for ignoring no smoking signs literally everywhere he went. Troy heard from an old buddy in Boston that he’d set off the plane’s bathroom smoke detector on more than one occasion flying home from a tough game.)

Rozanov sighs. “What do you want, Barrett?”

“Can you stop it with the Barrett shit?” Troy demands, exasperated and more than a little irritated at the guy’s refusal to match his anger. “It’s so weird, Jesus, just call me Troy.”

Rozanov pushes off the wall, takes a step forward. “Okie,” he says evenly. “What do you want. Troy.”

Troy’s unprepared for the way his first name sounds in Rozanov’s rumbling voice. He stalls, momentarily, mortified at the way his stomach flips and stands there, swaying slightly from drunkenness in the middle of Rozanov’s hotel room, plastic bottle of Captain Morgan held loosely at his side. Wondering, suddenly—what the fuck is he doing?

Rozanov waits with immeasurable patience. Finally, Troy says, “Why did you do that?” His voice, to his embarrassment, comes out strangely young-sounding, reedy and lost.

Rozanov sighs. He nods at the rum, holding a hand out. Without much thought, Troy tosses it over, and Rozanov lifts the bottle in a slight toast before unscrewing the cap and taking a sip. His face screws up immediately, tongue sticking out as he shakes his head in disgust. “Disgusting,” he says, recapping it and tossing it with much disdain onto the bed. “You could not have chosen a better liquor?”

Troy just shrugs. It’s what his dad drinks. He was feeling dramatic. Fucking sue him.

Rozanov jerks his chin at the bed. “Sit.”

Troy sits. Then stands immediately, incensed, both at Rozanov’s gall and his own easy, instinctual acceptance. Fists balled at his sides, he spits out, “Fuck you. Don’t fucking tell me what to do.”

Rozanov casts his eyes skyward, rubbing at the skin between his eyebrows and mumbling something under his breath in rapid, exasperated Russian. Then he exhales noisily through pursed lips and says, “Okie. Fine. We do this now. Why do you think you are here, Troy?” At Troy’s uncomprehending stare, he widens his eyes pointedly, shaking his head slightly in mocking expectation. “Not here in this hotel room, here in Ottawa.”

Troy continues to stare at him. Is he joking? Is he—somehow—under the impression that Troy doesn’t know? Does he think Troy’s a fucking idiot?

Archly, Rozanov raises one impatient eyebrow. Enunciating his words with the careful slowness of the well and truly sloshed as well as the very annoying, Troy answers, “Because I’m a homosexual.”

“No,” Rozanov says. He raises a hand sharply, forestalling Troy’s instinctive incredulous protests. “You were traded because you are a homosexual, okay, yes. This is true. But you are in Ottawa, you were traded to Ottawa, because I asked. Because I wanted you.”

Troy blinks rapidly. What? What? “No,” he says blankly. “That’s not—You’re not the manager. You can’t just—request players.”

Rozanov lifts one shoulder in a lazy, languid shrug. “I am Ilya Rozanov,” he says simply. “I am best player in the league. I asked for you, so I got you.”

“Second best,” Troy says automatically. Then he shakes his head, irritated, not the point, and says, “No, what? Why?”

Rozanov massages at the hinge of his jaw for a second, for all the world appearing to be deep in thought about it. Finally he says, with excruciating slowness, like he’s figuring it out as he goes, “What happened to you…it was…not okay. You did not—deserve that. You do not deserve it.”

“I thought I was an asshole,” Troy says stupidly, feeling incredibly lost. Unbalanced; completely unsure He doesn’t—he doesn’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t understand what this means. Rozanov asked for him? This was—he was—wanted?

“Yes,” Rozanov says, unapologetic. “You are in good company, then.”

“No.” Troy shakes his head. “You don’t—you’re an asshole, yeah, but you’re a fun asshole. That’s what everyone says. That’s what—I’ve heard people say that. You’re not—people like you. You’re not me.”

“I like you,” Rozanov says simply. Like it’s nothing. Like it means nothing.

Troy stares at him. “You can’t,” he says, voice cracking with something like desperation. He’d be embarassed by it, if only he didn’t feel so fucking insane. If only any of this felt real at all.

Rozanov raises an eyebrow. “Well. I do anyway.”

Troy sits down heavily on the carpet with a thump. Rozanov says, “Okie. You are having panic attack now.” He sounds like he’s remarking on the weather, or the behaviour of a particularly uninteresting bug stuck on his windshield.

“I’m not,” Troy lies, voice muffled through the palms now pressed to his face. He becomes distantly aware that he is shaking, trembling slightly with whole body shivers. God. He really fucking hopes he’s not about to start crying. Jesus. What is he doing? Why did he come here?

He hears a shuffling noise across from him and peels his fingers away from his eyes for long enough to watch Rozanov settle across from him on the carpeted floor, back against the wall, arms braced loosely against his bent knees and head tipped back. He sighs, long and loud, and says, “I want to win a hockey game, Barrett.”

It’s out of the blue enough to jolt Troy out of his free-fall into despair. He scrubs at his burning eyes and says, roughly, “What?”

“I am tired of losing. Of being a joke. I am so fucking tired of never winning.”

Okay. Worst pep talk ever. Also—huh? If the guy really wanted to win so bad, why the fuck would he go to Ottawa?

But Troy doesn’t say that. He just looks back at Rozanov, meeting his half-lidded, pale-eyed gaze. He does look tired, he realizes suddenly. Troy hadn’t noticed, before. “Uh,” he says lamely, when Rozanov fails to follow his sudden declaration up with literally anything else. “So am I?”

“Are you?”

Troy frowns at him, but Rozanov appears to be entirely serious. Offended, he says, “Of course I am. What the fuck kinda question is that?”

“Okie,” Rozanov says evenly. “Then you need to get your shit together and start acting like it.”

Anger flashes red-hot in Troy’s gut. Ah, he thinks. There it is. “Fuck you,” he spits.

Rozanov stays infuriatingly impassive in the returning face of Troy’s abrupt vitriol. “Try again.”

Calm down, he means. Troy stands up. “Fuck you,” he says again, lips curling into a snarl. His hands clench at his sides. He wants to hit something. He wants to hurt. “You don’t know fucking—you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Rozanov just raises one perfectly groomed blonde eyebrow. Completely unaffected by the 170 pounds of furious hockey player now towering over him, he says, “I know enough, I think.”

“Oh yeah?” Troy demands. “So you know what it’s like to suck a dick?”

“Yes.”

Troy—stops. For the umpteenth time that night, thrust completely off-kilter, his anger pulled right out from under him. Fumbling, he blurts out, “Wh–huh? But you’re—”

“Bisexual.” Rozanov nods. There’s a certain twinkle in his eye, some rueful amusement Troy’s pretty sure by now isn’t actually at his expense right this moment. “Not that it is anyone’s business…but yes.”

Troy stares at him, gawking. After a moment, he says, “Oh.” Ridiculously, his first thought is like Frank Ocean? and he shakes himself, irritated. Seriously not the point, Barrett.

“Oh,” Rozanov parrots, slightly mocking. “Looks as though neither of us knows the other, ya?”

Troy glances away. Mutters, “Yeah.”

Rozanov stretches his long, muscled body over in order to open the mini fridge and grab a blue bottle of Gatorade from inside, tossing it onto Troy’s lap. “We have a game tomorrow,” he says, a clear, obvious dismissal. “I expect a goal from you.”

Troy hesitates. Fiddles with the edges of the label. Thinks about saying something. I won’t tell anyone, maybe. Thank you for telling me. Please tell me more.

Maybe, if he were anyone else, he would. If he were different, friendlier, less afraid. But here and now, he is only Troy Barrett. So he just says, “Alright,” and climbs to his feet.

Troy wakes up the next morning with a splitting headache and a mouth drier than the Sahara. The world is still spinning. The sky is still blue. Ilya Rozanov is bisexual.

Everything is different. Nothing at all has changed.

The Centaurs play hockey, losing more games than they win, and Troy tries his level best to quit haunting the locker room like the world’s most depressing poltergeist. He reserves snarky comments for other teams, tries to cut down on his penalty minutes, and stops calling people slurs unless he’s fighting with them anonymously on the internet. He restricts himself to shattering no more than one stick every five games. When he’s targeted on the ice, tripped and slashed and checked from behind while the refs turn a blind eye, he grits his teeth and keeps his head down. Keeps playing.

He gets to the rink earlier than everybody else and never stays long enough in the locker room to risk any of the other guys having to change in front of him. He doesn’t stop drinking, because that would probably suck, but he does try to cut back a bit, in favour of smoking a shit ton more weed and getting better sleep. He goes to Bood’s barbecues, and only minimally flips out when one of the guys’ WAGs invites him to a spa day with her and the girlies. (Though admittedly much of his retained composure is due mostly to the fact that Ilya, overhearing, seems to be well and truly indignant at not being offered an invite of his own.)

One day, Troy even goes so far as to give Luca Haas a blueberry muffin. He’d gotten it for free from some blue-haired chick at Starbucks, sure—but still. He remembers Luca likes muffins. The guy almost cries.

Not that things are strictly going well, necessarily. Troy’s life still sucks. Also, somewhere along the line he realizes that he has become addicted to the way Ilya grabs him by the sides of the helmet and hollers incomprehensibly in his face every time he scores a goal, cellying each and every time like Troy has just singlehandedly won them all the Cup, and is forced to accept that he is maybe, possibly, well and truly fucked.

Three weeks into Troy’s new career as an Ottawa Centaur, they play their first game against the New York Admirals. Troy spends most of the plane ride trying not to vibrate out of his skin, chewing on the inside of his lip and battling with the urge to hit his weed pen in the plane bathroom in the hopes of chilling out a little. He doesn’t notice he’s jiggling his knee against the seatback in front of him until Evan Dykstra turns around and says, unimpressed, “Dude.”

Troy forcefully stills his leg. “Sorry,” he mutters. He’s sitting alone for the ride, presumably because he’d boarded the plane sporting a bad enough bitch-face that not even Ilya felt it was a good idea to bother him.

Evan grunts, eyeballing him over the top of his seat. Tentatively, he says, “You good?”

Trapping his fidgeting hands under his armpits, Troy shrugs. Him and Evan aren’t friends, necessarily, but Troy’s pretty sure they’re friendly. Troy was pretty wary of him, at first, considering the intensely Manitoba redneck energy the guy gives off at all times, but Evan’s been bewilderingly chill about the whole gay thing. Maybe a little too chill, sometimes. He keeps trying to set him up with his cousin—despite Troy’s repeated assertions that he’s really not into Soundcloud rappers like that. It’s—nice, maybe. If super annoying.

“I’m fine,” Troy says. “‘S just weird.”

Evan cocks his head, squinting slightly in confusion. “What’s weird?”

Inwardly sighing, Troy gives in and tugs his headphones off, resigning himself to having an actual conversation with his teammate. “Just.” He gestures uselessly. “Y’know.” At Evan’s continued lack of understanding, he blows out a breath and says, pointedly, “Scott Hunter?”

“Ohh,” Evan says, drawing out the word in realization. “Wait, shit.” He drops his voice low, glancing furtively around. “Did you guys, like, have a thing?”

“What?” Troy scowls at him, nonplussed. “No, what the fuck.”

Evan raises his hands in startled apology, eyebrows raised. “Woah, okay, sorry. Just, you know. You’re both—”

“Cocksuckers?” Troy suggests in a dry tone, ignoring the way his stomach flips at saying it out loud. He’s been trying to own up to it, recently—figures he just has to get used to it, keep saying it out loud and hoping at some point it’ll stop filling his mouth with bile, seeing as there’s not exactly any point in pretending any differently, anymore.

Evan grins at him, shaking a finger in mock sternness. “That’s a no-no word,” he says cheerfully, referring to the three hour-long sensitivity training management had made them all sit through when Troy first joined the team, which had since endured in the guys’ collective memory as an endless source of content for ridicule. “Also, I was gonna say good at hockey. And—” he gestures at Troy, “—you know. You're both good-looking guys. You could do worse than Scott Hunter, buddy.”

Scott Hunter could do worse than his fiance. That guy was hot as hell.

“You can’t censor me,” Troy says. “It’s my god-given right as a member of the cock-sucking community.”

“They give you a card, for that?”

“I don’t know,” Troy says blithely. “Maybe ask your dad that one.”

Evan guffaws. “Gross, dude. And don’t change the subject. Why’re you scared of Scott Hunter?”

“I’m not scared of him,” Troy denies, which is…mostly true. “I’m just, like—I dunno. Forget it.”

Evan does not forget it. He’s definitely going to get a crick in his neck, all turned around in his seat like that. “Do you think they’re going to make you guys do a media thing together?”

Shit. Troy hadn’t even considered that. “I sure fucking hope not.”

“I don’t know,” Evan says thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t that be kind of nice?”

The horrified look Troy sends him he thinks conveys pretty well exactly how nice he figures it would be.

“No, look,” Evan says, animated now, warming to the idea, “I’m serious. I mean, I know you hate media—“ total understatement, but sure, “—but think about that would mean for, like, little gay kids. ‘You can play,’ and all that. Scott Hunter’s a total role model.”

Troy can’t help it—he scoffs, a bitter, dismissive huff of sound. “Yeah. Sure.” He pulls his headphones back on, silently conveying that the conversation is now over, and leans his head back in his seat, closing his eyes. “Scott Hunter can be a role model all he wants. I’m just here to play hockey.”

Scott Hunter’s message, when Troy had finally given into curiosity and opened it two weeks earlier, read, Hi Troy. I’m sure you’re probably staying off social media right now (or at least I hope you are—I know I wasn’t in 2016, even when I should’ve been) but I wanted to reach out. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you or your situation, so I can’t be sure this’ll mean anything to you, but I want you to know that I am here for you anyways. If you ever need anything, please call me at this number: 212-XXX-XXXX. If you want to talk about anything at all, I am here.

I’m sorry for contacting you here—I hope it’s not crossing any boundaries. Nobody from Toronto was willing to pass along your phone number.

I hope you’re doing okay. Even if it’s hard to believe right now, I promise you it gets better.

Troy hadn’t responded. Obviously. What would he even say? Oh thank you Scott Hunter, Patron Saint of Gay Hockey, for your words of encouragement. Let’s go to drag brunch together and talk about boys—or maybe, better yet, so what it’s like for your entire world to implode overnight? What it’s like to hear the shit flung at you from across the ice and have it cut twice deep, first because you know it’s true and then again because they do; have it be shit I know you got called because it was shit I was calling you and you know as well as I do that it’s never as simple as cruelty, is it, that we’re all just boys still trying so desperate to fit in, that I was only ever just a boy trying to fit in, that the only difference between them and me is I was always too fucking pussy to say it to your face—

Hunter is right. He doesn’t know Troy. Nobody does. Just because the world now has opinions on what he theoretically takes up the ass, they think anything about their situations is remotely the same at all? It isn’t. Scott Hunter made a choice. He got a choice. Troy doesn’t. He never has. All he ever gets left with are mistakes.

He’s planning on spending the night in his hotel room, drinking a bottle of wine and finishing the last few episodes of Euphoria, maybe calling his mom, but it turns out Rozanov has other plans. He shows up at Troy’s door dressed like a rockstar, all in black with an obscene amount of shirt buttons left open over his chest.

Troy blinks at him—then, panicking, goes to shut the door in his face. Ilya wedges a toe into the doorway before he can, blocking the attempt, and bullies his way inside.

“Get out,” Troy tells him.

Ilya says, “No,” and grabs him by the chin, peering into his eyes. Troy freezes. After a second, Ilya releases him with a nod of approval. “Good. You are not high.”

Troy crosses his arms over his chest, scowling darkly at him and willing the heat rising to his face to settle down. “I don’t do coke, man, fuck off.”

Ilya ignores him in favour of plucking at the collar of Troy’s bleach-speckled BC Lions shirt with a wrinkled nose. “What are you wearing? You can’t wear this out, get changed.”

Troy slaps his hands away. “Good thing I’m not going out, then.”

Ilya tsk-es at him. “We are in New York! We are going to the Kingfisher.”

“The what?” Realization strikes and Troy’s frown intensifies. “Scott Hunter’s bar? What the fuck, man, no.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. He strolls over to Troy’s bed and swipes the bottle of wine off the side table. “Ah, you already got started, good.” He inspects the label for a moment, then, shrugging, settles on the bed and takes a swig straight from the neck. Waving an imperious hand in Troy’s direction, he says, “Go, get changed. Wear something nice.”

Troy glares at him, not moving an inch.

Ilya raises an eyebrow. “Are you shy? Want me to close my eyes? Is okay, Barrett, you do not have to be ashamed of your body. It’s near end of season, is ok to get a little scrawny.”

“Fuck off,” Troy says, exasperated. he’s not scrawny, Ilya’s just built like a brick shithouse that eats at Chuck’s Roadhouse three times a week. He hesitates, then thinking, fuck it, why the hell not, pulls off his shirt. Ilya wolf-whistles delightedly and Troy flips him off, ears burning as he rifles around in his suitcase for something nicer to wear.

Because he’s going drinking tonight, apparently. At a fucking gay bar. Scott Hunter’s fucking gay bar, with Ilya fucking Rozanov, because Troy is a little bitch who still hasn’t discovered a way to say no to the guy when he makes up his mind about something. More and more lately, he gets the feeling like he’s become Ilya’s fucked up little side project, something between a weird fruity charity case and a mildly intriguing experiment to pass the time, Ilya always testing the limits of their relationship, seeing how far he can push Troy until he snaps and tries to kill him.

Which, Troy considers, as he drops his sweatpants and shimmies into his one nice pair of jeans, is probably going to be sooner rather than later. “You’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met,” he tells Ilya frankly, briefly glancing in the mirror by the bed to finger comb his hair into something approaching its normal state.

Ilya, leaning back against the headboard with his legs crossed at the ankles, takes another sip of wine and grins widely, twirling a finger in the air. “Do a spin, sweetheart.”

Troy points at him. Says, flatly, “Fag. I’m takin’ a piss, don’t listen at the door.”

“No-no word,” Ilya mumbles into the lip of the bottle, still grinning.

Troy flips him off before shutting the door to the bathroom on Ilya’s faint evil snicker.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Troy says, stopping in the doorway. A guy nearby, overhearing, gives him a wide-eyed look. Troy grimaces.

It doesn’t even necessarily look like a gay bar, is the thing. Not that Troy exactly knows what a gay bar looks like—but he’s always imagined a lot more…glitter, maybe. Leather. Hot men gyrating shirtless to Ariana Grande. This place just looks like a sports bar, albeit with a few more rainbows on the wall and presumably a lot more homosexuality.

Ilya claps him on the shoulder, unsympathetic, and steers him towards the bar, where a hot blonde in a tight t-shirt was rummaging for something behind the counter.

“Four shots of your best vodka,” Ilya says, pushing Troy in front of him with a gentle kick to the ankle.

The guy looks up, smiling—then stops, eyes widening. “Holy shit,” he says. “You’re Troy Barrett.”

Troy, who has yet to drop the uncomfortable grimace from his expression, tries not to flinch. Ilya pops his head over Troy’s shoulder and waves. “Also Ilya Rozanov.”

“Yeah, hi Ilya,” the guy says distractedly, still staring at Troy. After a moment he blinks, shaking his head. “Sorry, sorry. You’re just—wow. Troy Barrett in my bar.” He shakes his head again in disbelief, letting out a little laugh.

“Also Ilya Rozanov,” Ilya says again, a little less enthusiastically this time. “Shots, Kyle?”

“Yes,” the guy says, finally managing to peel his eyes away from Troy. “Right, yes. I’ll go get those.”

As he turns away, Troy becomes aware of the feeling of Ilya’s boring into the side of his head. “Shut up,” he says, ears burning.

Ilya hums noncommittally. “That’s Kyle,” he says. “Bartender.”

“Got that, yeah.” When Troy glances over, Ilya’s watching him with a strange, unreadable look. “What?”

Ilya blinks, then smirks, cocking his head. “What? I say nothing. So paranoid, Troy!” He claps Troy on the shoulder again and lingers this time, squeezing a little roughly against his rear delt. Troy eyes the offending hand like one might a live snake, confused by Ilya’s behaviour.

“Two shots of vodka,” Kyle says, depositing the little glasses on the bartop with a clink. “Scott and Eric should be here soon, by the way.” Smiling at Troy, he says, “Anything else I can get you boys?”

“Um.” Troy swallows, clears his throat and quickly scans the chalkboard menu by Kyle’s head displaying the list of beer on tap. “Can I get a…German lager?”

“Sure thing.” Kyle turns to fill a glass. Over his shoulder, he says, “Anything for you, Russian Machine?”

“Same for me.”

Once their beers are ready, Kyle offers them with a wink. “On the house, tonight. Troy Barrett.”

“Just Troy is fine,” Troy says awkwardly. “And, um. Are you sure?”

“Scott will pay,” Ilya says dismissively, gathering up two of the shots and nudging the remainder towards Troy before grabbing his beer. “Thanks, Kyle!”

“Thanks, Kyle,” Troy echoes, before following Ilya as he walks with unswaying confidence towards a booth in the corner of the bar, by the back wall and sign for the washrooms. They sit, Troy not able to stop himself from glancing around with unfounded nervousness, half-expecting another person to pop up to proclaim their shock and awe at Troy Barrett, gay bar patron. He has a moment of plunging dread at the idea that Kyle might tell someone—then stops himself, irritated at his own fear. So what if someone sees him? It’s not exactly ground-breaking news, is it? Troy Barrett sucks cock. Whoopdie-fucking-doo. Although—that he’s here with Ilya, maybe, would be.

“Aren’t you scared?” Troy asks in an undertone, settling across from Ilya in the booth. When he receives only a raised eyebrow in response, he leans forward, glancing around once more, and elaborates. “You know. That people might…talk.”

Ilya waves a dismissive hand, scoffing derisively. “Of course not. People always talk. They talk after Scott Hunter Night, they talk when I wear nice suit, they talk when I make flashy goal. People will say what they will say. I am European and supportive ally.” Ilya raises his first shot, motioning for Troy to do the same.

Ilya clinks his glass against Troy’s and downs it. Troy, after a moment of hesitation, taps his against the table and does the same. While he’s still licking the inside of his mouth and struggling not to make a face, Ilya nudges the second shot into his hand and Troy has no choice but to take it.

They drink.

Bolstered by the warmth of the spirit sliding down his throat, Troy takes a sip of his beer to chase the lingering burn from his mouth and blurts out, “What if someone thinks we’re on a date?”

Ilya stares at him a second, then laughs, long and loud, like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

Troy frowns. “What? I’m being serious.”

“I know,” Ilya says, giving one last chuckle and wiping under his eye. He levels Troy with a look someone might interpret from a certain angle as fond, perhaps in the same way someone is fond towards a small furry mammal. “You are always serious.”

“I’m not,” Troy denies, somewhat grumpily, a little stung at Ilya’s reaction to the idea of them being together, as well as irritated at his own responding offense. It is, obviously, a ridiculous idea. Troy knows that. And he’s not, like, hung up on Ilya, or anything. He’s still not even sure he likes the guy, even as a person. It’s only that he’s spent so long separating hockey players and objects of desire, not ever allowing himself even a passing thought concerning the bodies of the men he’s surrounded by every day, that the unexpected nature of Ilya’s confession two weeks ago had seemingly jostled something loose in his head, blurring the line of that constant, safe conceptual boundary into uncertainty.

Ilya is so hot that it almost hurts, and now Troy, against his will, has been forced to contend with the knowledge that the other man has at some point in time had a dick in his mouth. Knowing Ilya’s reputation as the sluttiest guy in the MLH, probably quite a few dicks. Troy’s imagination is a seriously dangerous place to be.

Not that anything would ever happen. Just because Ilya’s gay—or, half-gay, whatever—it doesn’t mean he’d like Troy’s dick in his mouth. It’s a bad idea, not least of all because Ilya’s Troy’s captain, who Troy is, like, fifty percent sure is fucking Shane Hollander. He’s also, as mentioned, an infamous slut. If he wanted Troy, he would know about it by now.

So it’s never going to happen. But still. Troy is so unaccustomed to the acknowledgement of wanting.

Ilya raps his knuckles on the table, jolting Troy out of his traitorous thoughts. “Our friends are here,” he says, making eye contact with something over Troy’s head.

“What?” Troy turns—and then freezes, mind going blank with panic, as Scott Hunter spots them and lights up before starting to head over, accompanied by a man Troy recognizes as his fiance. Kip Grady, of The Cup Kiss fame. Troy had watched the video enough times, downloaded to a locked folder on his phone, that he has the features of the two men's faces probably memorized better than his own father’s.

Eric Bennett is also with them, but that’s less exciting.

“Hey Rozanov,” Hunter says, smiling at the other hockey player, before turning to Troy. "And you must be Troy Barrett.” He sticks out his hand with a cheerful, white-toothed grin. All American boy, clean and handsome and big. “Nice to finally meet you.”

Troy, after a moment of hesitation, shakes his hand. “Same here.” With bated breath, he waits to see what he’ll say next—but Hunter only releases his hand and slides casually into the booth next to Ilya, as Bennett takes the seat next to Troy with a nod of hello.

“I’m Kip.” Kip Grady smiles at Troy, friendly and warm. “I’m not staying, though—just wanted to say hi.”

“Hi,” Troy says lamely.

“You guys have fun, yeah?” Kip runs a hand over the back of Hunter’s head and brings their faces together for a kiss goodbye. Troy tries his hardest not to stare, but judging by Ilya’s smirk when he darts his gaze away, does not do a very thorough job.

As Kip leaves the table, Ilya kisses his teeth and says, “Hate to see him go, but sure do love to watch him leave.”

Hunter smacks him upside the head, not very gently, and Ilya laughs, grinning open-mouthed with a wink across the table at Troy.

Troy ducks his head, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. The shots are doing their job—he’s starting to feel a little more settled, a little less like he’s going to throw up all over the guy he’d had a poster of up over his bed from the ages of 11 to 17.

“Save it for the wedding,” Bennett says, before turning to Troy. “Good to see you again, man.” They’d been at All-Stars together the year prior, when Hunter was out with a well-timed lower-body injury everyone knew was probably code for didn’t want to deal with the first-gay-guy-in-the-whole-entire-world media circus. “How’s Ottawa treating you?”

“It’s fine, I guess,” Troy says, with a quick glance at Ilya. “How’s retirement?”

Bennett laughs. “Shit, better than you could believe. I sleep in ‘til noon pretty much everyday.”

“You hear that?” Ilya says to Hunter, eyebrows raised. “Maybe it is time to follow his example, before you have heart attack on ice from old age and traumatize whole stadium of fans.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep dreaming,” Hunter says mildly. “Benny, you want a drink?”

“I’ll get ‘em,” Bennett says, slapping his palms against the table and standing up. “Usual, yeah?”

Hunter raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, okay. Say hi to Kyle for me.”

Bennett flips him off without a word and strolls towards the bar. Hunter turns back to the table, chuckling a little to himself. To Troy, he says, “So, Ottawa’s good? You guys have been having a pretty good season so far.”

Almost against his will, Troy makes a face. In what world does the Centaur’s GF–GA constitute a good season?

Ilya groans. “No. No talk of game tonight.”

“Okay,” Hunter says levelly, leaning back in his seat. “So what did you want to talk about, then?” Troy might be imagining things, but he thinks the man darts a quick look in his direction.

“How about your wedding?” Ilya suggests. “It’s big news, you know. Not every day famous hockey player gets married to much younger man. Very scandal—what is the word? Scandal-worthy?”

“Scandalous,” Hunter supplies. “Also, shut the fuck up.” But he’s clearly lit up at the mention of his upcoming wedding, and soon launches into an animated description of the planned venue, a place on Lake Ontario near where Hunter grew up. It’s a far cry from Hunter’s usual stoic reputation as Captain America—not that Troy can blame him. He recognizes the giddy sort of awe in Hunter’s tone, the still lingering disbelief that he can have this, that he can marry the man he loves and talk about it, without shame or apology.

“You should come,” Hunter tells Troy at one point, almost off-handedly. “I’ll get Kip to send you a proper invitation—he won’t let me touch them, the weirdo, says my hand-writing’s atrocious.”

“Uh,” Troy says, freaked out.

Hunter says, “There’s an open bar.”

Well, then. “I’ll be there.”

Hunter grins. “Great,” he says, and goes back to expounding on the virtues of the tree-covered, lakeside view until Ilya starts pretending to snore, like he hadn’t been the one to ask about it in the first place.

Over at the bar, Bennett appears to have gotten distracted talking to Kyle, leaning against the counter and nodding along to something the blonde-haired man is saying. Troy takes another drink of his beer and mustering his courage, cuts Ilya off in the middle of trying to convince Hunter that it’s a Russian tradition to show up nude to a wedding in order to say, “Sorry I never replied to your message. I was—yeah.”

Hunter looks at him for a moment with a serious, measured gaze. Then he says, “It’s fine.” He shakes his head. “I wasn’t expecting anything. You had a lot going on, and then with the trade to Ottawa…”

Ilya glances between them from across the table, silent and watchful with an unreadable expression.

“Yeah.” Troy swallows, throat suddenly tight.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Hunter assures him, when Troy fails to follow that up with anything of substance.

Troy shakes his head. “No, it’s fine.” He inhales a little shakily, and forces himself to say, “It was, um. Yeah. A lot. Probably would’ve been a lot worse if you hadn’t done what you did, though. So—yeah. Thank you. I guess.”

Hunter nods, silent and thoughtful, seemingly not put-off by the awkwardness of Troy’s stiff, stilted thanks. “People say that a lot,” he says after a moment. “Almost makes me feel bad, like I should've been thinking more about what it would mean for so many other people. Rather than the reality of it—which, you know, is that I just got tired of hiding. Cliché, I know, but—“ Hunter shrugs, kisses his teeth, and smiles a soft, almost apologetic smile. “What works works, I guess.”

Troy clears his throat, feeling weirdly, annoyingly emotional. “Yeah.”

“Sorry for reaching out on your private Instagram, though,” Scott says. “I hope that didn’t freak you out.”

It totally had. “Yeah, uh. I meant to ask about that?”

“You mean how I found it?” Scott clarifies. At Troy’s nod, he says, “You know Carter Vaughan’s girlfriend? Gloria Grey? She’s friends with, uh. Adrian.”

“Oh.” Troy blinks rapidly, floored. Adrian had given his instagram to Scott Hunter? He didn’t know whether to feel touched by that, or frustrated. Maybe a little bit of both. Granted, Troy had kind of flipped out on him after the photos got released, but they hadn’t been in contact at all, since then.
“You have a finsta?” Ilya demands suddenly, affronted, shattering the strange, solemn sincerity of the atmosphere. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“Who the hell taught you finsta?” Troy says, eagerly grasping onto the move into safer waters.

“Don’t change the subject, you are keeping secrets from your captain, show me now.”

By the time Bennett comes back to the table, Ilya has delightedly bullied Troy into following him on his private account, despite Troy’s repeated assertions that he literally never uses it for anything but keeping up to date on his mom’s photos of their cats and her recent adventures into the world of quilting.

“Kyle saw your drinks were getting low.” Bennett deposits a tray of four beers on the table and sits back down next to Troy. “Apparently Scooter’s spotting the bill tonight.”

“What else is new,” Hunter says, with a long-suffering sigh. But he grins at Troy, good-naturedly, and Troy finds himself smiling hesitantly back.

After that, the night goes by easy. They talk about nothing important, about Bennett’s retirement and Scott’s wedding and Troy’s mostly half-hearted attempts to find an actual place in Ottawa rather than shilling out a couple grand a week on his hotel suite. At one point Bennett gets distracted by the basketball game playing over Scott’s head and Ilya takes the opportunity to loudly denigrate the Toronto Raptors’ starting line-up until Bennett gets annoyed and begins throwing balled up pieces of napkins at his head. After his second beer Troy starts to feel a little closer to drunk than he’d meant to get and excuses himself to the bar.

Kyle greets him with a smile. “Hey again. Another beer on the good Captain?”

Troy shakes his head. “Just a water, thanks.”

As Kyle fetches a glass to fill, Troy leans against the counter for support and glances around, making brief eye contact with a sharply-dressed older guy sat at a nearby barstool.

“He’s been checking you out a while now,” Kyle says, sliding the water across the bar.

Troy startles a little. “What?”

Kyle nods down at the guy Troy had noticed, grinning. “You gonna go for it? He’s cute. Good tipper.”

“Oh.” Gathering his courage, Troy glances another look back at the guy, who is—definitely looking at his ass. Huh. Troy looks away, cheeks heating. Then back again. Apparently not very subtly, because on the third look the guy slides off his stool and approaches.

“Hi,” he says. His voice is deep—nice, Troy notices idly, with a pleasant gravel.

“Hi,” Troy echoes. He looks for Kyle, but the bartender’s disappeared, busy with a customer down at the other side of the bar.

“I’d offer to buy you a drink,” the older man says, prompting Troy to look back at him, “but…” He nods at Troy’s glass of water.

“Oh.” Troy blinks. “Yeah, no, I’m good. Um. I’m Troy.”

“Hi Troy.” The man smiles at him, eyes crinkling at the edges. “I’m Larry. What brings you here tonight?”

“A friend dragged me out of the hotel,” Troy says honestly, tongue loosened by the booze and the warm, heady way the guy is looking at him, the raw and unfiltered attraction in his pale grey. “I guess he got sick of me moping in my room.”

The guy hums. He’s stood closer now, Troy with his back to the bar, the guy leaning with one arm against the counter, almost touching him. Warmth has begun to pool warm in Troy’s belly just at the proximity to another solid body, the possibility of something more to come. “You’re not from the city, then?”

Troy shakes his head. “I’m on a—work trip.”

The man’s forearm brushes the side of Troy’s bicep. “Is your hotel far?”

Troy shakes his head again, a little dizzy with the knowledge that he might possibly get laid tonight. He’s opening his mouth to say something probably ridiculous and blatant, like, wanna see it? when a strongly accented voice says, “Troy. There you are,” and a body slides in next to him at the bar.

Without looking Troy’s way, Ilya slings an arm around his shoulders and grins at Larry with all his teeth. “Who’s your friend?”

Larry looks between the two hockey players, blinking rapidly. Ilya squeezes the nape of Troy’s neck in a weirdly possessive gesture that has him shivering mostly against his will, body still lit up with the promise of future arousal. He sees the moment when Larry visibly decides it’s a lost cause and steps back, smiling ruefully. “Just saying hi. Nice to meet you, Troy,” he says, before turning to leave.

“Bye!” Ilya calls jovially towards his retreating back.

Troy shakes Ilya roughly off of him. “What the fuck?” he hisses furiously, whirling on him.

Ilya gazes back at him, dropping the faux-cheerful grin in favour of a sudden impassiveness quick enough to give Troy whiplash. “We have a game tomorrow,” he says. “Bedtime, now.” He pushes away from the bar and turns on his heel, heading towards the door at a clip and forcing Troy to half-jog to catch up to him as he heads towards the exit.

“Shouldn’t we say goodbye to Scott and them?” Troy demands.

Strangely, Ilya scoffs. “Scott will get over it.” He pushes open the doors into the cool night air of New York City, the rush of lights and honking traffic. “We have a curfew.”

“Since when have you cared about curfew? No, seriously Ilya, what the fuck.” Troy darts forward and grabs Ilya’s wrist, abruptly halting his speedwalk down the sidewalk.

Ilya turns to him, raising an eyebrow. “What?”

“’What?’” Troy repeats, incredulous. “What the hell was that? You totally fucking cock-blocked me in there!”

“Okay.” Ilya rolls his eyes. “I did you favour, you know. You should be thanking me.”

“Why the fuck would I—Are you kidding, right now?”

“He was much too old for you.”

Troy grits his teeth, nails biting into his palms, so mad he could hit something. “He wasn’t.”

“Okie.” Ilya starts walking again, dismissing him outright.

Before he can get far, Troy catches him in a shove from behind—not hard, just enough that Ilya stumbles a little, has to stop and catch himself to keep from tripping over his feet. “No,” he spits. “No, fuck you, Ilya. Tell me why the fuck you did that.”

Ilya turns back again, eyebrows raised, lip curled, his strange, beautiful face twisted in irritation. “I told you,” he says in a clipped tone. “I was doing you a favour. He wanted to fuck you.”

“Yeah,” Troy says, anger rising, “I kinda fucking gathered that, thanks.”

“No,” Ilya says, with slow derision, like he’s talking to a particularly dull toddler. “He wanted. To fuck you.”

It takes a moment. Then, realization striking, Troy says, blankly, “Oh.”

“Probably in the men’s room,” Ilya supplies helpfully. “Very clean bathrooms, in there. Good for lots.”

Troy shakes himself, refusing to be caught off-kilter for more than a moment, to let his anger slip out of his grasp in that way Ilya is so good at causing. “Maybe that’s what I wanted,” he says stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest and jerking his chin up mulishly. “You don’t fucking know.”

“Is it?” Ilya steps suddenly closer, forcing Troy into moving back, until his back is against the exterior of a nearby, boarded-up pizza place and Ilya’s eyes are dark and intense on his face, jungle-cat predatory as he pins Troy in place with his gaze. “Is that what you want? Older man to fuck you up the ass in a bathroom stall in Scott Hunter’s bar?”

Troy swallows. Struggles to take a deep enough breath with Ilya crowding him to croak out, “I—maybe.”

“I think this is not true,” Ilya says, voice a light, airy sing-song at odds with the strange, sharp intensity of his expression. “I think if you wanted this, you would not have left with me.”

For a long moment they’re stuck like that, glaring at each other, frustration snapping heavy in the air between them—Troy wanting to deny it, but now unsure of himself. His face hot with anger and the strange, indefinable embarrassment coiling in his gut. Finally Ilya kisses his teeth and says, “I am tired. I want to go to bed. Do what you want.”

He turns and strolls away, hands in his pockets. Troy leans his head back again the rough brick of the wall behind him and closes his eyes briefly, warring with the tangled mess of emotions tightening his throat. Then he blows out an irritated breath, pushes off the wall, and follows, catching up to Ilya and falling into step beside him.

“I’m not a virgin,” Troy says.

Ilya slants a glance his way. “Okie.”

“I’m not. I’ve had sex.”

“Okie.”

Troy blows out another breath, thoroughly annoyed. Whatever. Ilya can believe what he wants to believe. They walk another three blocks like that, shoulder to shoulder, neither of them speaking, before Troy breaks the silence to say, tiredly, “You’re a real fucking dick, you know that?”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “This is what I have been telling you.”

Chapter End Notes

That thing with a guy getting traded in the middle of the game really has happened in real life, multiple times. Shit's crazy.