Chapter 1: Gantt Charts and Sex Calendars

“Jesus Christ, Ilya, what did you pack in this?”

Ilya was irritated. Irritated enough that he didn’t sprint over and rip the suitcases out of Shane’s arms and insist on hauling them himself. Also irritated enough that he didn’t scoop up both Shane and suitcases and bicep curl the whole lot of them.

He was irritated because Shane was wearing a button-down shirt, so he couldn’t see a single bulge of tricep, bicep, pec, trap, delt, or even a fucking hint of forearm. Even worse than that, he hadn’t been able to press little kisses to the skin of Shane’s arms for two fucking hours of babushka driving through bumfuck Ontario.

Perhaps that was unfair. To babushkas.

“I bring dumbbells home with me. I’m sick of everything always in pounds, pounds, pounds. Idiotic system. Kilograms are superior.”

Shane stared at him just long enough for Ilya’s mouth to twitch.

“You are so gullible, Hollander.”

“Fuck off. Open the door already.”

He’d been jangling his keys the whole drive. Checked they were safely in his backpack in Paris, Istanbul, Vnukovo, the taxi, and also twice before he walked out the door somewhere in the realm of thirty-one hours ago. And before that? Oh, about ten million times over the six summer weeks in Russia.

Shane — safe, predictable, cautious, boring Shane Hollander — had refused to send dick pics while Ilya was within grasp of the FSB. The key to his house was the singular piece of proof Ilya had that his boyfriend hadn’t been a fever dream, clinging onto the lamest piece of erotica that had ever existed.

Lame, except for the part where it was Shane Hollander’s key. Ilya had jerked off to it. More than once.

“Where’d you learn ‘gullible?’” Shane asked as Ilya slid the key in, opened the door, and tried to act cool for the single greatest homecoming of his life.

It would never not be the single greatest homecoming of his life, there would never ever be a way to trump this. This living, breathing, wood-smoke scented, glass-panelled monument to two weeks that should never have existed and somehow, miraculously, did. If God was willing and Shane’s pink-hued love blindness was a chronic ailment, Ilya would come home to this place again and again, but it would never be this moment, this perfect moment where he got to unpack his luggage and shower off the accumulated exhalations of the three hundred strangers packed into a Boeing 777 and adjust his sleep schedule for the first time sharing this cottage as someone’s boyfriend. As Shane Hollander’s boyfriend.

“Your Wikipedia page.”

“Fuck off.”

“Don’t worry, I edited it. Before, it said: ‘Shane Hollander, second greatest hockey player, and most gullible man in Canada,” and now it says: “Shane Hollander, prettiest man in Canada, best fuck in whole world, sometimes plays hockey, although n—”

“Why are you still talking?” Shane asked, his mouth as close to Ilya’s as it could scientifically be without touching. His hands had no such decorum, already reaching under Ilya’s sweatpants.

“Oh, it is me who is wasting time now? Me who is taking too long to make you come?”

Shane had boringly, callously, unromantically, point-blank refused to fuck in an airport bathroom. If Ilya weren’t so lazy he’d still be staging a sit-in protest at baggage claim.

“Yes, you, you ass.”

“You are the ass. You are all ass now, did you do anything but hip thrusts while I was gone?”

“Deadlifts. Front squats,” Shane murmured, as Ilya felt him up. It was definitely bigger. God, he loved pre-season Shane. “Wanna see?”

“Do I want to see you lift stupid barbell? No, Hollander, I want to see you on your knees.”

Instead, Shane squatted and lifted Ilya up behind the knees, stumble-carrying him further into the cottage.

“Oh, this is good trick,” Ilya said, between sucking on Shane’s earlobe. “Later, I will bench press you.”

“Do you ever shut up?”

“You know how to make me shut up.”

But only if he said please.

Later, after they had fucked once fast and once slow, and Shane had diplomatically offered Ilya the first shower in deference to the thirty-one hours of international travel he’d suffered through, and Ilya had countered with a shared shower, and they’d stayed there until the water ran cold, Ilya retrieved his suitcases from where they’d barely made it past the threshold, and wheeled them into the bedroom.

Shane was standing at the window, where the drooping sun was turning the lake white-gold, and painting his face and his bare chest resplendent in honeyed, weary, day-old light. Ilya wrapped himself around Shane’s back and relished the way Shane’s head tipped against his.

The light was not actually day-old, Ilya reminded himself, though it had the quality of trudging home exhausted, ready for bed. The light was nine — eight? Nine? He’d forgotten, shkola was so long ago — minutes old. If the sun exploded at this very moment, he’d still have nine minutes he could enjoy, just like this.

“I love you,” he said, just in case the sun had exploded.

“I love you too.”

“Will you still love me if I say I do not want to unpack suitcase tonight?”

“Yes. Will you still love me if I say I’m making quinoa and baked cod for dinner?”

“Oh my God, Hollander, off-season is not over yet! Why are you rushing back to bird food?”

“Now who’s gullible?” Shane turned in his arms and looked entirely too pleased with himself. Certainly too pleased for a man who required step-by-step handwritten instructions for cooking frozen lasagna.

Ilya plucked off the note from the aluminum foil. “Step one: pre-heat oven to 350. Hollander, why do Canadians insist on being bilingual for everything? Celsius weather, Fahrenheit ovens. Make this make sense.”

“It doesn’t make sense, you just get used to it.”

Shane was bent in half, rearranging oven racks. He would never get used to looking at that ass.

“Step two: leave foil on, bake from frozen for fifty minutes. Fiiiiiiiiifty minutes, I will die.”

A vegan, organic, gluten-free, nut-free, joy-free protein bar slid down the counter with an inanimate moue of wry amusement. Ilya flicked it away.

“Step three: remove foil, broil for ten minutes or until cheese is browned. I would make fun of your father for thinking you are so stupid to need written instructions, but I remember a certain Hollander who could not halve recipe.”

“I could! I just didn’t!”

Ilya smoothed the note down on the counter and folded it once, twice, thrice, before sliding it into his pocket. Well, Shane’s pocket really, they were his sweatpants. For now, until Ilya had a chance to stuff them into his luggage and fly them to Boston and wear them every day until the seams wore out. Or frame them. Or turn them into a pillowcase. He hadn’t decided yet.

“Tell me about Russia,” Shane said, leaning over the counter.

“I will tell you when you are not so far away. You are cruel, Hollander, I fly ten thousand kilometres and you still stand all the way over there.” He gestured to the metre of stone counter that separated them, frowning.

What Ilya would pay for Shane to be like this in public, instead of the straight-jacketed camera mannequin he thought he was supposed to be. Rolling his eyes and huffing and a crooked grin and so smug they’d be writing editorials about Hollander’s arrogance instead of Ilya’s.

Feigning encumbrance, Shane grabbed his hand and tugged him down to the couch, pulling Ilya between spread legs so his head landed in Shane’s chest. Shane ran his fingers through Ilya’s hair. “Better?”

“Yes.” He closed his eyes and waited in case the sun had exploded. Not yet. “Russia was very boring. Even you would think it was boring.”

“Even me, huh?”

“Yes, even you, Mr Reads Biographies Eats Bird Food Watches Zillow Instead Of TV Hollander. Only photos for advertising, and meetings meetings meetings.”

“With who?”

“With whom,” Ilya grinned, anticipating the shove he received. “Most boring men alive, not even sexy boring, like you. Agents, and brand executives, and Olympics coach, and accountants, and lawyers. And not even one naked picture of my boyfriend to look at.”

“You didn’t tell your agent, did you?”

“No, unlike you, dorogoy, I can remember simple instructions.”

Ilya’s papa had signed him up with Artyom once he had turned sixteen, when it was clear he was going to make it big in hockey. And, because he was lazy, he’d never once bothered to lift his head up and look around and see if there were other agents to work with.

Artyom was not the right person to negotiate a transfer for the league’s second-biggest star from a prestigious legacy team to the worst team — not just in hockey, probably any league, any sport — for the purposes of closer proximity so Ilya could nurture a fledgling relationship with his clandestine gay superstar boyfriend. He wasn’t entirely sure such a person existed on the entire planet who could fit that bill, but it definitely wasn’t Artyom. But Shane had insisted Ilya wait to terminate the contract until he was out of Russia and back in North America.

He was such a Cold War paranoiac, his Shane. It’s probably why he was so addicted to all the ways he could make Shane shut his brain off.

“What’s ‘dorogoy?’ Numbskull? It sounds like a ‘numbskull’ kind of word to me.”

“Is opposite. Sweetheart. You have no instinct for Russian language.”

“Maybe that’s ‘cause the only Russian I ever hear is from a guy who calls me boring and slow.”

“These are the most romantic words I know in English language.”

He could feel Shane smiling into the back of his head. “I think I should be jealous of these accountants and lawyers. Did that go okay?”

“Yes, yes,” Ilya waved him off. “No problems to start trust fund. I am much poorer than I was before start of summer. Good thing my boyfriend is rich, yes? Can buy me many gifts.”

“Quinoa, and spinach, and wild rice,” Shane listed munificently, raising his voice over Ilya’s squawks, “and Metros jerseys, and Jeeps — no, not Jeeps, a tiny little Korean hatchback?”

“No sex condo?! All this, and not a single measly apartment building from you? Where are we supposed to fuck, backseat of a Hyundai?”

“You wanted to fuck in a toilet stall.”

“More space than Accent,” Ilya pouted, until Shane leaned forward and kissed him.

Out the window, the setting sun sank into the lake, framed by spruce and birches. It was so fucking beautifully bucolic he had to remind himself of the snake he’d seen by the shoreline last month and the incessant harassment of mosquitoes to stop from getting all weepy.

Ilya closed his eyes against the light, just for a minute, and Shane rubbed at his shoulder, and maybe he fell asleep for a little while or maybe he was just imitating what a silent retreat would really be like, who could say? In his defense, it was past 03:00 in Moscow. He opened his eyes again to Shane’s timer beeping and an almost-ready lasagna and dried rivulets of drool that Shane wiped off with spit and a thumb and he really shouldn’t have let Shane convince him to honour his commitments in Russia rather than spending six weeks stealing evenings like this.

“I am not understanding how Yuna and David can cook food like this —” he pointed with a fork, “— and raise a son who refuses to eat it ten months of a year. Is this your version of teenage rebellion? Macrobiotic diet instead of parties and cocaine?”

“Just wait a minute, you’ll burn your tongue.” Ilya did not wait a minute, did indeed burn his tongue, and thoroughly enjoyed the way it exasperated Shane. “I don’t think I ever did the whole rebellion thing.”

“Shocked, this is shocking information.”

“Fuck off. I know you like me boring.”

There was no upward lilt, but Ilya knew it was a question. “No, I love you. Boring or not.” He watched Shane scoop a mountain of undressed mixed greens (seriously, did he actually need instructions for making a salad?) onto his plate and the way that, when he smiled, it spread across his face unevenly, like hoisting an unbalanced load. “Will they visit before we leave? Yuna and David?”

“They can? I mean, they’d like to. But only if that’s alright with you.”

Ilya couldn’t tear his eyes away from where Shane was cutting the smallest ever bite of lasagna, a toddler-sized forkful, and blowing on it for a length of time previously limited to geological eras. It sent him almost as giddy as when he watched Shane fold his clothes that first time. “They are your family, yes? Of course they should come. Will make you happy.”

“But do you want them to come?”

“I like your parents. I like you being happy. It is simple for me.” He tilted his head to one side. “But I know it is maybe not so simple for them?”

“Why not?”

Because I am Ilya Rozanov, he thought. I break things, I hurt people, I fuck everything up. I have to make people laugh because laughing at me is better than yelling at me. I do not deserve you and your perfection, and although for some reason you are blind to that, there’s no way your parents are blind to how much you deserve someone better than me. “There is difference between accepting son’s boyfriend and liking son’s boyfriend.”

Shane blinked twice, and Ilya was so lovesick and jet-lagged he almost thought he’d said it all out loud. “But they do like you.”

“They are polite Canadians. Is endemic to your people.”

“Th— Endemic? Wow. No, Ilya, they like you. I had to beat them off with a stick to stop them driving you home from the airport.”

Two hours, perfect for a threatening interrogation, he thought. “Hmm.”

“Mom’s got a whole plan to call you once a week for a FaceTime coffee. I had to negotiate her down from flying to Boston every month.”

“When they come for visit, I will re-negotiate,” he declared. “She can fly to Boston if she promises to wear Raiders cap.”

Shane snorted. “Good luck with that.”

“Yuna helped with charity research, yes? Can I read it after dinner?”

“I think it would put you to sleep. Again.”

“No, but I must prepare for visit. And it takes me so long to read in English.”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna help you stay awake.” Shane must be at least 40% lettuce by volume, Ilya pondered, watching him chow down on yet another serving. “We can read it together, tomorrow. I thought maybe you’d want to go to bed early.”

“And what do you do while I sleep, dorogoy? You want to leave me so soon?” Shit, he thought. Shit shit shit. Too close to the bone.

But Shane just cracked that secret embarrassed smile, the one that meant he was going to do something so barely suggestive it wouldn’t merit a PG rating, but would nonetheless send Ilya up the walls. “Lately I’ve been reading in bed before I go to sleep. If the lamp wouldn’t bother you.”

“The lamp? No, no problem. Lamp must be on. How else would I see you in your glasses?”

Ilya woke at 00:47, 04:15, and once in between when he didn’t bother to check his phone. Each time, he gave serious consideration to crawling down and waking up Shane with a blowjob, but decided, on balance, that he preferred Shane as he was, for tonight at least. Stale breaths across Ilya’s neck and one large hand, perfectly limp, resting at the base of his rib cage.

When he woke again, the sky was light and birds — not ridiculous loons, but chirpy chittering little finches — were calling. If this were a poem, his lover would be in his arms. He was not. Instead he was folding himself like a pretzel on a yoga mat on the porch.

If he was honest, it was what he’d been hungering for for a long, long time. To plop himself down into the heartbeat of Shane’s quotidian days. To get twitchy and restless alongside him, to learn the rhythms of his rabbity anxiety. He wanted his presence to become Shane’s new baseline, so his absence would be felt when he was gone and, in his Montreal kitchen, Shane would instinctively yell to see if Ilya wanted a cup of tea, and, in the stultifying silence, would feel the same aching maw inside him that Ilya felt whenever Shane wasn’t holding his hand.

“I thought you only do yoga outside when cameras are filming, no?”

“I really wish you hadn’t seen that.”

“Or is this special show for me?”

Shane kept his eyes closed and mouth straight, but Ilya had spent far too long — his whole life, it felt like — watching him to be put off by such a feeble attempt. “Fuck you, Ilya. It’s just a nice morning.”

“Yes yes, very pretty.” He looked at the mildly grubby wooden planks, at his pants, remembered they were actually Shane’s, and lumbered down to copy him.

“There’s another mat i—”

“No no, I am being one with nature. Also, I do not think I can get up again. You must lift me.”

“Must I?” Shane easily shifted into pigeon pose on the other side. Bastard.

“Yes. Because I spend thirty-one hours on plane and ruin hip flexors and boyfriend still does not even give me good morning kiss.”

Shane leaned over — how the fuck were his hips still on the mat — and finally delivered what Ilya was owed. “How long do you get to use the ‘thirty-one hours flying’ excuse?”

“Until you are the one flying across the world.” He tried to copy Shane, pushing back to unfold one leg and refold the other, but instead he awkwardly spilled out sideways, and before he could recover, Shane was on top of him, digging his fingers into Ilya’s armpits. “I give up! I give up!” he screamed, kicking and flailing and cry-laughing. “You win!”

When Shane leaned down to kiss him again, Ilya could feel his erection press against his belly. He had half a mind to fuck him senseless, half a mind to flip him over and tickle him back, and another half a mind to do one and then the other; until Shane’s phone chimed and he pulled it out of his pocket.

“My parents said they could come over tonight? If that’s okay?”

“Yes yes, is good. But you must let me study first.” He pulled Shane down again, tugging off his top. “Afterwards.”

The document that Ilya was reading ran to forty-eight pages. He’d been tossing up whether to ask if Shane would print it for him to take back to Boston, just for the novelty of seeing if Shane would have it spiral-bound. There was a fucking table of contents, and he knew, once they were separated again, he’d be fantasizing about Shane Hollander in his sexy glasses, frowning over his laptop and typing up a fucking table of contents.

“What is ‘under-resourced?’”

Shane leaned over his shoulder and peered at the screen. “It means there isn’t enough money to provide what they need.”

“You should not be reading screen without glasses, dorogoy.”

“It’s one word.”

“Must protect pretty eyes.”

“Ilya.”

“Shane.”

One column of the table read ‘Current Funding Level’, another read ‘Impact’. Ilya knew impact, had picked that one up early. Impact was how hard you hit.

The number of rows that had ‘Under-resourced’ listed as ‘Current Funding Level’ was devastating.

One of the entries that had ‘High’ ‘Impact’ was ‘Psychological and/or pharmaceutical intervention for people suffering depression’. He touched the screen and thought of his mama.

“Shane, what is ‘designation?’ And what is ‘T3010’ meaning?”

“Oh, you can skip over that section, it’s from a lawyer Mom emailed. None of us understand it.”

Praise God. He scrolled through ‘Articles of Incorporation, Registration, and Fiduciary Duties’ at a brisk clip, so fast he would have missed the beginning of ‘Timelines’ if it weren’t for the full-page multi-coloured diagram breaking up the legalese.

The first section, titled ‘Mission’, listed four tasks: commission research, identify priorities, contact program providers, write mission statement. Next to each line, a yellow-colored rectangle spread across columns marked ‘Month 1, ‘Month 2’, all the way up to ‘Month 15’.

Ilya thought he understood: it was marking which tasks could be completed, in which order, and how long they should take. But he wanted to keep reading before he confirmed.

There were sections for ‘Registration’, ‘Initial fundraising’, ‘Branding’, ‘Marketing’, ‘Hockey camp’, and on and on, until the very last one which was called ‘Rivalry.’ In neat and orderly rows was a step-by-step plan that outlined — in minute detail — how it would become acceptable to befriend his boyfriend. He’d need Kafka as a ghostwriter to do justice for this chapter of his future biography.

“I have not seen diagram like this before.”

“Oh.” Shane’s cheeks were turning pink. He could just bite them. “I went a little … overboard.”

“You make this? All on your own?”

“Yeah, I just … I wanted to have an idea of how long it’d take. Like, if we started tomorrow, how quickly we could —”

“You are in big hurry to become my friend, yes?” He cackled at Shane’s discomfort, and pulled him down to his lap. “Why are you embarrassed? I like your big plans. Very sexy brain. Tell me, what is the name of this kind of diagram?”

“It’s called a Gantt chart.”

“And what is meaning of ‘gantt?’”

“I think it’s some guy’s name?”

“Should I be jealous of this Mr Gantt?”

Shane was pulling up Wikipedia, Ilya’s eyes peeking over his shoulder. “Probably not, since he’s been dead for a hundred years.”

“But he has nice mustache. Do I need to grow mustache for you?”

“Please don’t.”

“Okay.” Ilya trotted his knees up and down, making Shane bounce around. “Can we go for a swim?”

Shane seemed to have some genetic resistance to mosquitoes. It was fucking unfair. Ilya had to submerge himself up to his neck to protect his skin, while Shane was able to float on his back, offering his perfect body up to the sky. If they ended up using a surrogate, they sh—

No. He shouldn’t think about that.

Instead he thought about the birds. Different and still the same, in Ontario, in Boston, in Moscow, in Anapa, in Kaliningrad. Murmurations against blue sky. He wondered how many summers he would spend at Shane’s cottage before he became the kind of person who would bring binoculars and a field guide and keep notes about the b—

No. He shouldn’t think about that either.

Pushing chimerical fantasies aside, he tried to translate what he needed to say. It was hard enough to string the words together in Russian, let alone put them into English with the right tone, the right reassurances that wouldn’t make Shane freak out. And then he had to think about hidden meanings, allusions that he was still getting wrong after seven years of total immersion. He’d always been a poor student. Too slow, too inattentive.

Like now, for instance. Not realizing that the silence had stretched on too long while he was wrapped up in his own head. Not realizing that Shane was wrapped up in his own head too, and now he was distant and fidgety.

“Shane? What is wrong?”

“It’s too much, isn’t it? All the planning. Did I freak you out? I just got all … excited.”

Oh, thank God, that’s all it was. This was the easy part. “No, dorogoy. It’s perfect.”

“I just … I was worried about you. In Russia. And I had to do something, but that was the only thing I could do.”

“You could have sent me pictures of your cock.”

Shane shoved a wave of water over Ilya’s head. “Fuck off.”

“No, I will not. It is perfect. I am very excited. And also, very … it makes me sad, for Mama. But hopeful, too, for other peoples’ mamas. I would like to do something that is good for people. And even though I am lazy, I have boyfriend who spends evenings making charts and plans for ways for us to be helping.”

“I don’t think you’re lazy at all.”

“You will learn,” Ilya shrugged.

Shane moved closer, crouching so his shoulders mimicked Ilya’s, just under the water line. They were close enough to touch, but they didn’t.

“Is that why you’re all quiet?” Shane asked. “Thinking about Irina?”

He considered lying, he really did. But he had to get it out sooner or later. “No. I am trying to translate what I need to say into English, and it is sometimes not so easy."

“Is this one of those times when it would help to say it in Russian? At least at first?”

“No, I must say it, or I will never say it. I wish to tell you: it is normal thing, for people to stop loving other people. And I worry that one day you will not love me so much — no, no talking yet — but you will feel stuck, because of these big plans you are making. And move to Ottawa, and the charity. So you must know, that if you do not want to be boyfriends anymore — in one year, two years, five years — this is okay. You are allowed to change your mind, yes?” He grabbed Shane’s hands. He couldn’t resist any longer, not with Shane looking like he was about to kiss Ilya then drown him. “And I will not be regretful about move or charity or plans, or anything, if things change for you. I will never regret being allowed to love you.”

He had the order wrong. First Shane pushed on his shoulders, dunking him under the water, then clung to his chest like a baby sloth and kissed him. Angrily. With headbutting.

“It is not okay to be this adorable while you’re talking about me leaving you. Why would you even think that?”

“It is a thing! It happens!” There was wet hair curling into his eyeball, but Shane had wrapped all his limbs around Ilya’s arms. He tried to shake it free, but Shane headbutted him. Again.

“And why am I breaking up with you, hey? Not the other way around?”

“Pffft, Hollander, be realistic.”

“You’re such an ass,” he scoffed, but when he kissed Ilya this time there was no violence and a lot more tongue. Shane rubbed their noses together, eyelashes so close they were overlapping, and asked: “Is this really something you worry about?”

“Maybe worry is the wrong word. I have been thinking about it. I do not want worst-case scenario.”

“Worst-case scenario is me not breaking up with you?”

“No. Well, yes. It is you resenting me. I cannot live if you are angry at me.”

“Oh, Ilya.”

“Unless it is sexy kind of angry.”

“You’re allergic to being serious.”

Yes, he thought. I have heard that before. When will you concentrate, Ilya? When will you stop fucking around and take this seriously? When will you stop blubbering, you have a new Mama now. It is time to stop this self-indulgence and be a man.

“I am,” he nodded solemnly. “If I come into close contact with serious man, I have reaction. Huge hard-on.”

Shane frowned, but he was such a terrible actor it was hard not to laugh even before he’d made his little joke. “You should probably get that checked out. Sounds dangerous.”

“Very dangerous. Not for me, for serious boring boyfriend.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Then you are a FOOL,” Ilya roared, and wrestled Shane under the water, who kept his legs pinned around Ilya’s waist so he could jack-knife him down too; water in their eyes, noses, gasping for air before they got tugged under again, aqua shoes scrabbling for foundation in the silt, and hands and knees and elbows everywhere, not one inch of skin forbidden to them.

He felt freer than he ever had after he’d said his piece and Shane hadn’t bitten his lip and said I’m glad you said that, ‘cause this is all a bit much for me. He probably would, one day, when Ilya’s stupidity and carelessness palled. But not today, Ilya was safe for today. Shane bobbed in the water and Ilya trailed behind him, arms fastened around Shane’s neck like he was wearing Ilya as a cape.

“I know there are many important things that are needing money,” Ilya said, after they’d been quiet for long enough for his head to make the words, “but I like the idea of helping people get better before things get very bad. Before they make decision that life is too sad. Not just when … when they climb a bridge or … start taking too many pills.”

“I like that idea too,” Shane agreed. “We can make sure we do that.”

“Thank you, dorogoy.”

Shane interlaced their hands, still around his neck so Ilya could feel a gentle throb of pulse. “Have you ever done that? Not just the team’s sports psych, but talked to a proper therapist?”

“You think I am sad?” Ilya laughed. “I have never been so happy.”

But Shane didn’t laugh back, sending a stab of frustration, and defiance, and tenderness down Ilya’s throat, all at once. "I think sometimes your life is really hard. And you have me, and Svetlana, and your team, but … I think you deserve to have someone just for you. Someone you can be totally honest with.”

“I am totally honest with you.”

“Without worrying about hurting their feelings.”

“Never in my life have I worried about your feelings.”

Ilya could sense Shane’s eye roll through the back of his head. “Fuck off, babe, I’m tr—”

“‘Babe?’ I am ‘babe’ now?”

“Oh my Go—”

“No, I love it.” He swum forward to kiss the back of Shane’s neck and the sides of his face, which were already turning red. “I am your babe. You must always call me this now, dorogoy.”

“There was something else I wanted to do before you arrived, but I ran out of time,” Shane announced, as they shuffled back up the shore towards the cottage. “Maybe we could do it together?”

“I don’t know, Hollander, I am scared it will be very boring.”

He continued as if Ilya had actually asked: “I thought we could go through the schedules and figure out what days we’ll be in the same cities this season, or when either of us have a couple of days off in a row. Maybe make a shared calendar, so we c—”

“A sex calendar? Your parents are arriving in thirty minutes, and you are proposing making a sex calendar?” Oh, this was delicious. He’d be able to eat out on this for years, if Shane was willing to give him that long.

“It’s not a sex calendar! It’s just … when we might be able to see each other,” he finished, already sounding defeated.

“And what are you planning on doing when we are seeing each other? Not fucking?”

“Maybe not, if it teaches you a lesson.”

“Noooo, Shaaaaane,” Ilya whined, turning Shane’s name into at least three syllables. For all the times he asked Shane to beg, it came naturally to Ilya, so normal despite the years he’d spent forcing it down. To want, to cling, to make Shane realize he was adored. He reached out for Shane’s hand and pressed his lips to the knuckles. “I love this idea. Most romantic idea. We will make calendar, and I will leave lists on each day for all the ways I’m going to make you come.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a bit too boring for you?” Shane teased.

“Never too boring, this is impossible. Will you be bored opening calendar and seeing plans for me to suck your cock in the shower, then bend you down over my couch and fuck you ‘til you come again?”

Shane paused mid-way through wiping his feet down at the back door and pressed his forehead against the glass. “Jesus Christ, Rozanov.”

“Uh-uh-uh, I am ‘babe’ now.” He wrapped himself around Shane’s back, hands skimming over a half-hard erection. “See? I promise, planning is not boring. Very exciting.”

“Fuck, babe, we don’t have time.”

God, ‘babe’ was hitting him like a drug every damn time. “I know this. You are the one who brought up sex calendar!” He slapped Shane’s ass and shouldered him out of the way of the door. “Come, we will not speak of this until your family goes home. You can help me unpack gifts.”

Shane’s voice lagged behind Ilya’s wake. “Wait, gifts? What gifts?”

“What did you think was in suitcases? You cannot imagine what my mother would have said to me if I did not bring gifts from Russia for new boyfriend and his parents.”

“What would she have said?”

Ilya heaved the first suitcase down to the floor and fiddled with the combination. In all likelihood, she wouldn’t have had to say this, because she would have bought gifts — better gifts, more tasteful, more meaningful — herself. “Tebe ne stydno?! Ne pozor’ svoyu sem’yu!”

“Ilya, I have no idea what that means.”

“‘Babe,’” he corrected. “And is your fault for asking then.”

“You could just tell me in — oh. Oh, Ilya.”

He looked up from the suitcase he’d finally split open, and decided not to correct Shane this time, not when his eyes were all fluttery. “Do not be so sad! I know is not much, but there is the other suitcase too.”

“Shut up,” Shane said thickly, and crouched down to hug Ilya from behind.

He wrestled the other suitcase down and left Shane to paw through metallic filigreed keepsake cases and podstakannik and picture frames, Khokhloma painted — the authentic shit, from Nizhny Novgorod, not that mass produced junk — spoons and platters and bratina, an Orenburg shawl for winter and Pavlovsky Posad shawls for the rest of the year, a Vologda lace wall hanging and an impractically expensive table runner, Gzhel tea sets and candlesticks, hair clips inlaid with amber, and an alexandrite and brass pendant that he was hoping Shane would wear and worry at with his pretty little mouth.

It was vastly inadequate for what it was supposed to be: a reciprocal invitation to all three Hollanders. A thank-you-for-inviting-me-into-your-home-it-would-be-an-honour-to-return-the-favour-when-you-are-next-in-town. Boston was home to him in the same way Montreal was home to Shane: home for now (the ‘for now’ pronounced silently, like so many of the letters in both the languages of this country).

What he should have done was put them on a plane and taken them to Moscow and said: “look, look at the way the apartments here have bathrooms so narrow your son’s broad shoulders brush the walls, and kitchens the size of an airplane galley. This was most luxurious upgrade for families after leaving kommunalkas.” He should have said: “see how all old buildings are only five stories high? This was because they only had to build an elevator if there were six or more stories.” He should have taken them to Lake Baikal when it froze over and said: “how could a country that contains this prosecute the existence of God?” He should have shown them the streets he walked to shkola and said: “look at the canopies of these trees that we walked under, in the winter we would throw our shoulders into the trunks to make the snow come down like an avalanche. Look at the way the lamp posts are different here. How is it possible to miss a lamp post? When I was eight I saw a man stabbed under that lamp post over black market cigarettes. Is it not beautiful? Now can you understand who I am?”

But he couldn’t do that. So instead he brought a suitcase of pretty things.

“Here, dorogoy, you can fire stylist. I bring you cool clothes: GJO. E, Sunday Morning, Nameless. Do not pretend you know what I am talking about, you must trust me.”

“Ilya,” Shane said, arms full of the anoraks and sweaters and tees Ilya had unloaded into them, peering into the next layer of the second suitcase. “Babe, did you pack any of your own stuff?”

“Why? When I am here, I like wearing your clothes better. Posted mine back to Boston. Now, I must explain some of these to you and Yuna and David. Not all labels have English.”

He picked through the jars and packages carefully, thrilled to see nothing had broken open. Adzhika, and the good horseradish, and many bars of Alenka, an array of vodkas for David to try, sour cherry and green walnut and rosehip preserves, Pryaniki biscuits, and Korovka candies that Ilya loved so much he would have hidden them from the Hollanders if he hadn’t found a Boston stockist in his rookie year, and, taking up too much weight but impossible to resist, a handful of Baltika 3s and 9s, and a few bottles of —

“Kvas?” Shane asked, picking one up, the label clearly marked ‘Квас’ without transliteration. “Am I saying that correctly?”

“Hollander, what the fuck? I was joking when I said you could learn Russian in a week.”

“I didn’t learn Russian. I’m starting with the alphabet.”

It was going to be an enduring mystery to Ilya, how people lived like this. With husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends who did the most tender, heart-melting, caring things like it was nothing at all, that made you want to cry and also want to fuck them until they screamed. How did anyone in this world hold down a job? How did anyone get anything done?

He held Shane’s face in his hands and kissed him ten times, across his little freckles. “This is even hotter than sex calendar. Immersion is good for learning. Later tonight I will only speak Russian when we fuck, yes?”

“Da, pozhaluysta,” Shane grinned, proving he knew exactly what he was doing, as all the blood in Ilya’s body surged to his dick, right as their phones chimed with Yuna’s ‘On our way!’ text.

Chapter 2: Appointments and Blueprints

He had ten minutes to kill. If he were Shane Hollander, those ten minutes would be put towards being a productive, perfect, brilliant team captain. He could squeeze in watching some film from Washington’s last game. He could place an online order for (healthy, wholesome, HFCS-free) groceries to replenish his threadbare refrigerator. He could pick up the uniform he’d worn to morning practice off the bathroom floor, or jot down some observations about how the team had performed last night.

Ilya was not a productive, perfect, brilliant team captain, so instead he opened his laptop and flicked through the open windows, half aware of the clock ticking towards 14:30.

The first window was, naturally, the Sex Calendar, which Ilya would be calling it until the end of his days, and even then, he was planning on telling everyone all about it in the afterlife. Not that there was a chance it had been altered in the last five hours, but he checked it again. In sixteen days he would fly to Montreal when he had a break before the start of a road trip. The little event was still there, ‘😘Lily in Montreal🫦’. He thought about brainstorming some ideas, adding some notes for Shane to discover, but it was not a good idea to get all worked up now. He needed to stay calm for the next hour.

The second window remained, as it had been since the night before training camp, when he’d come home from Ottawa like he’d snorted a line of Hollander branded diligence, a to-do list. It didn’t look nearly as good as Shane’s Gantt chart, but he also didn’t want to ask Shane how to make him one, so it wasn’t going to get any better.

It helped, sometimes, to have a list of things that reminded him that he wasn’t actually standing still, even if it felt like it. Little movements being made. He’d signed with Shane’s agent, Farah, after terminating Artyom, and she was now figuring out which talent agency he should sign with. He was trying to be an easy client, to build up some rapport before he dropped the player agent equivalent of an H-bomb, and thus his only criteria was the agency should be based on this continent.

The third, fourth, fifth, all the way up to twelfth windows were a natural consequence of another of those items on his list: to find a place to live in Ottawa. At least, that’s how it had begun.

He was now allowed to text Shane as much as he wanted, that is: constantly, needily, every waking moment, without rhyme or reason, so often he shuddered at the memories of when he was a young teenager, and texting cost a couple of rubles per message. And because Shane was Mr Real Estate, and a Canadian born and raised in Ottawa to boot, Ilya sent him every half-decent listing he came across.

Shane would respond with disturbing and disturbingly arousing insights, like: better to buy something constructed after the new insulation regulations came into effect in 2009, or: the floor thickness is only 90mm, the soundproofing will be shit, and: dude you do NOT want to live in barrhaven lol.

Sometimes Ilya would wait until they were FaceTiming to send Shane the links, so he could watch the white-blue screen reflection in Shane’s glasses and the concentration in his forehead and his head waver from side to side while he made his assessment.

And, because he couldn’t resist teasing, he would send Shane houses with the ugliest fucking interiors he’d ever seen: monstrosities kitted out entirely in blood red marble, bathrooms carpeted with shag rug, wine-mom barn decor, a wall hand-painted (badly) to look like Louis Vuitton fabric. And he would laugh to himself, imagining Shane desperately trying to judge how serious Ilya was being before he began on a tirade about hate crimes against marble, but it has good bones - lots of natural light.

All in all, it was somewhat inevitable that Ilya developed a bit of an … obsession with real estate listings. It wasn’t a fetish, no, that was Shane’s thing, but there was a definite arousal response whenever he saw the realtor.ca logo. Go ahead and sue him if it was a crime to think about his boyfriend knocking on an interior wall and wondering aloud if it was load-bearing and then picking him up and fucking him against it to see if the plaster would cave in.

He browsed the last advertisements until his phone pinged at precisely 14:29. Hope it goes well!

As he fucking should, it was entirely his fault Ilya was suffering through this at all.

They’d developed a glorious, wonderful routine during the pre-season, whereby the second both of them were in their respective homes, they would stay on the phone until one of them had to go outside or fell asleep. It was one of the only things that helped ease the ice-cold plunge of separation after they left the cottage. Chirping Shane’s meal-prepped containers of sadness in real time, analyzing the new rooks together, practicing little phrases in Russian. It wasn’t the same as being able to wrap his arm around Shane’s chest each night, but at least it was something real.

Until that got ripped away too. Shane on a road trip for his first three matches, Ilya left in Boston alone, bouncing off the walls and drinking just enough to turn maudlin.

💖 Jane

7 Oct 2017 at 22:49

Ilya

do not go out to bars in new york, the gays there will take one look at your ass and drool into their unfiltered orange wine

they will want to eat you up with an artisanal hand-carved sustainable forest wooden spoon

💖 Jane

lol i won’t be

going to bed now anyway, i’m fucking dead on my feet

Ilya

good, this is good

you must think of me tucking you into the sheets

💖 Jane

i am

i love you baby

Ilya

i love you too

8 Oct 2017 at 00:22

Ilya

i miss you very much

tell me your hotel room number and tomorrow i will get it tattooed

i will get all our hotel room numbers from forever tattooed

8 Oct 2017 at 01:46

Ilya

fuck i miss you i don’t even know what to do

i wish i could fall asleep and not wake up until you are knocking at my door again

maybe i will try that now

wish me luck dorogoy

8 Oct 2017 at 03:05

Ilya

no luck

i am sorry for all this feelings

i maybe have too much to drink

just pretend you do not read these stupid words

and i will not be so mopey, promise

love you

Shane had called at some obscene hour, his voice echoing in an industrial stairwell. Ilya hadn’t been able to blag off Shane’s worries convincingly enough, no matter how sincerely he promised that it was just a few too many drinks; it was still just adjusting to real life after the cottage and pre-season; no, he hadn’t meant he literally wanted to sleep for three weeks — okay, maybe he had, but he wasn’t actually going to; no, Shane didn’t need to be concerned, he needed to be concentrating on taking out Hunter’s kneecaps, that would make Ilya feel better; no, Jesus Hollander, it wasn’t depression, it was one bad night.

And then Shane, his darling, beloved, doe-eyed, tender, sweet, and ruthless Shane, pulled out the trump card. Would Ilya consider talking to a therapist as a favor to Shane? To help the love of his life sleep better at night?

It was a rough hit, but it was legal.

Ilya had grumbled and groaned, but it was all a foregone conclusion. He needed someone who he could meet with online, he said. Shane agreed. And they had to speak fluent Russian. Shane agreed. And be LGBT-friendly. Shane agreed. Not that he would necessarily trust them enough to tell them about being bisexual straight away. Shane agreed. And he would prefer a man. Shane agreed. And they shouldn’t be younger than him, but also not some ancient Soviet relic either. Shane agreed. And they should have some background with immigration, have some shared understanding of what it was to leave your family and your home. Shane agreed.

Ilya ran out of stipulations. And it took all of about forty-five seconds for Shane to send him three Russian-speaking, queer-friendly, immigrant male therapists aged in their forties, all with online appointments available within the next seven days. Curse the modern world with its stupid digital therapy companies.

He would get his revenge on Hollander one day.

But not today. With a heaving dramatic sigh and not a soul around to appreciate it, Ilya navigated to the last open window. The company was called Not So Small Talk. There were many things he preferred about living in America, but sometimes it was just so fucking undignified. He hovered over the meeting link without clicking until the clock read 14:31, just because he could.

The second — the second — he left the session, his phone lit up with an incoming call from Shane. Instinctively he reached for his cross, thanking God and Mama for arranging this for him. His mind was swollen, overstuffed, like he’d just consumed a seven-course feast. But Shane was dessert, or at least a palate clearing little foil-wrapped chocolate covered mint. He always had room for Shane.

“Heyyyyyy, radost’ moya, my Shane, my little Shunya. I have so much to tell you, are you home for a while, or are you going back to rink?”

Shane was smiling, but in that slightly frozen, terrified way. Ilya’s first instinct was to tease him, but his head was so full it didn’t have room for anything but trying to organize the order in which he was going to spill everything out. “I’ve got a physio session in a couple of hours, but I can resch—”

“No no, dorogoy, you must physio. I rely on you to demolish Centaurs tomorrow, so they are even more desperate for me.”

“You seem … different. This time. Was it a good session?”

“Yes. Yes, it was very good. I want to tell you everything. Stop standing at front door, you are being weird.”

“I’m being weird,” Shane muttered, but Ilya could see him pulling his jacket off, and the view behind his face fall downwards an inch as he kicked off his shoes, so he graciously let that slide.

“Now, I must make confession. I have not been … entirely honest about last sessions.”

“How could you not be ‘entirely’ honest? You literally said three words about them.”

“Well, I mean th—”

“It. Was. Fine.” Shane’s fingers came up into view to count them off. “So they weren’t fine?”

“It really depends on meaning of fine, yes?”

“Oh my God. Ilya.”

“Wait wait wait, I have dictionary app.” Ilya swiped away from the call, but the traitorous screen just minimized into one corner. Shane’s scowling face reduced to the size of a fingernail, following him as he navigated around his phone. “‘Fine: good or good enough,’” he emphasized. “By that meaning, they were fine. But now I tell you more, okay, and you stop frowning at me like this.”

“Ilya.”

“Okay okay, just listen. I am not so good with talking about feelings, yes? You cannot be mad about this, or I will remind you about tuna melts.”

“Ilya.”

Okay, maybe he could still be mad. “So Maxim begin first meeting with simple questions: who is in your family, who are your friends, when do you come to America, what makes you happy, what makes you sad, why do you meet with me. Simple things. And I answer, but I answer in same way Montreal Captain Shane Hollander answers reporter questions. Saying truth, but not whole truth.”

He decided not to mention the twenty minutes he’d spent grilling Maxim about his credentials, his connections to the Russian authorities, how often he returned to Russia, his familiarity with the NHL and the KHL, and if he knew anyone working for either league. Maxim had accepted all that without a fuss; Shane would not. For all his Russian panic, Shane did not understand the nuance of being an immigrant from an authoritarian nation. Maxim did.

Not that Ilya had been reckless enough to trust him so soon.

It was this that he needed from Maxim perhaps even more than Russian fluency. He needed a person who did not need to be told what it was to grow up in a land in a time without hope. Or, more accurately, a land that had a brief, blinding moment of hope that immediately shattered. His people, his country, always expected the worst as a way to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions, a way to permit the hand of a judgemental God without needing to concede His existence. But the decade that Ilya was born into was worse than anyone was prepared for. Things could always be worse, he’d learned. Not explicitly taught, not assigned as homework like the alphabet or his multiplication tables. It was woven into every interaction of his entire life: do not trust this momentary happiness, or even this momentary sadness. Things can always get worse.

It didn’t matter how long Shane studied his language, this was a vocabulary that he would never grasp, with his Canadian affability and his North American optimism.

After that, unflappable Maxim had accepted, without question, Ilya’s blunt ultimatum that he’d delivered without elaboration that he would never, ever, take pills for his brain.

Ilya had also bothered him with questions about the legal frameworks for protecting his personal information, the circumstances under which Maxim was permitted to override his privacy, and whether any data was stored in Russia or Belarus or China. Not that he really knew how that stuff worked, but he knew which answers would be very very bad.

And it didn’t hurt to try and intimidate Maxim. Just a little.

“The point of therapy is the whole truth.” Shane looked like he wanted to reach through the phone and strangle Ilya. It was kind of hot. They hadn’t had angry, irritated sex for a long time now. Ilya made a mental note to try and bait Shane into it in the future.

“Yes, dorogoy, I know this, but it is hard, no? Terrifying. How can I trust this man after meeting him for thirty minutes?”

Shane was silent. Ilya considered that a point in his own column.

“So when Maxim asks me why I meet with him, I say it is because someone important to me asks this as favor because they worry too much. And he asks who this person is, and why they worry about me. And I tell him I do not want to say.”

“Oh my God.” Shane was on his couch now, head flopped backwards in exasperation. “How can you possibly call this ‘fine?’”

“Because Maxim understands! He understands more than you do right now, maybe I should ask him to be my boyfriend.”

It was petulant, fractious, not entirely true, and entirely separated from reality (Maxim wore a wedding ring), but Ilya didn’t care. He wanted Shane jealous. He wanted him draped over Ilya’s chest, limbs wrapped around him, hissing mine, mine, mine, no matter how irritated he was. Ilya needed that from him, he didn’t need another person reminding him how he fucked everything up.

Shane exhaled so hard his microphone distorted the sound. Ilya watched his lips mouth one two three four and felt his chest turn over. Mine, mine, mine.

“Okay. I understand that you didn’t trust him yet. So what, exactly, have you been talking to him about for the last three weeks?”

‘Talking’ was a significant exaggeration. Ilya had been hoping that the terse treatment, the silent treatment, the shrugging treatment would have been enough to make Maxim give up on him. And, at the same time, hoping he would lose his cool and yell at his reticent client. And, even more confusingly, Ilya also hoped Maxim would never, ever give up trying.

“He is a very nice man, he said: ‘it is no problem, trust must be earned. I will tell you about different kinds of therapy, and maybe one will be interesting to you.’ Not angry or frustrated, even after he spends three weeks waiting. What do they put in the water in Canada? Or do they hide Xanax in poutine?”

“I wouldn’t know, I don’t eat poutine.”

“You are the most uptight Canadian I have ever met, my love, I would never accuse you of eating Xanax-laced poutine. Or cannabis maple syrup. That actually sounds quite good, yes?”

Shane still looked like a dog had pissed on his shoes, but he snorted and rolled his eyes, and Ilya knew he was past the worst of it. He ached to be in the same room, to get on his knees and press kisses up Shane’s thigh and force Shane to realize he wasn’t angry anymore, not really, and finish this conversation on top of sweaty bed sheets with his lips on Shane’s naked back. He wanted lots of things he couldn’t have, but he’d already gotten the thing he wanted most, so you would never hear him complain about it or dare to ask the universe for another helping of inordinate good fortune.

“So he spent three weeks doing all the talking while, what, you sat there and rolled your eyes?”

Yes. “No, there was no eye-rolling, I never do this. Just many many acronyms, so many. CBT, and DBT, and EMDR, and ACT, and IPT. Is ridiculous, no? They all sound like party drugs. But today, Maxim explains type of therapy to me in a way that makes perfect sense in my brain. Like shiver down the spine.”

“Okay, wait, hang on.” His view of Shane went blurry, then cut entirely to a view of the ceiling. “I wanna get comfy.”

“Yes, get comfortable. Take pants off, it will help.”

“Fuck off.” When he came back, Shane was lying on the couch, propped up on one elbow, and looking excited in a way that was normally reserved for hockey. “Tell me everything.”

“Okay, I will be Maxim and you will be Ilya, yes? This is wh—”

“What do I think about Scott Hunter kissing a man?” Shane said, dropping his voice and slipping into a truly insulting imitation of Ilya’s post-match interview after he’d played the Admirals last week, pirouetting around the itch to shout that Ilya himself loved a gay man, and leaping across the crevasse Russia wanted him to dive into, denouncing the evils of homosexuality. “I have better question you should be asking: there are hundred thousand gay men in New York, how did Hunter convince such nice young man to kiss oldest, slowest gay man in the city?”

“Hollander, focus. Also, I do not sound like that.”

“You kinda do.”

“No, I am much funnier. Now. I am Maxim, okay? This is what he said to me today: I want you to close your eyes. I want y— Hollander, your eyes are not closed. Better. I want you to imagine a child you have seen before. Not Pike’s children. Maybe a little boy or little girl you have seen at a game, or take a photo with.”

It was very different to watch Shane thinking with his eyes shut. Normally Ilya could see the sparks and gears turning. Now he felt as blind as Shane was.

“Tell me: how old is this child? What are they wearing?”

“She’s a little girl, maybe six or seven? I met her outside the Garden a couple of years ago, on my way into practice. She was wearing a Rozanov jersey, and we posed for a photo like she and I were doing a face-off.”

The memory was clearly a fond one: Shane was smiling to himself. But Ilya felt his stomach twist, and thought maybe he should have let Shane think of one of the Pikelets instead.

“Very g— no, eyes closed. That is very sweet. Okay, I am going to tell you a story about this girl. I want you to picture her while I tell you this. When she was even younger, three or four, her father left her family. Just poof, left town, is never coming back. Her mother is not a nice lady, perhaps this is why the father leaves. She is always telling her daughter that she is an ugly girl, even though she is just a normal, average looking kid. She tells her daughter that men can never be trusted, that men will only hurt her. The children at school make fun of her for not having a father, and for her horrible mother.”

“I don’t like this game,” Shane said quietly.

“No, it is a terrible game. Now I tell you how this little girl is so strong, how she has been managing on her own. She is very scared that maybe her mother will leave, like her father did, so she is always checking, checking, checking, making sure her mama is around. She is always wanting to be near her, because it makes her worry less.

“Because she has been told she is ugly so many times, she learns that if she thinks of herself as ugly, it does not hurt anymore. It cannot be painful to hear something that is true, so she tells herself: yes, of course I am ugly, Mama is correct.

“She decides not to ever talk to men, because then her mother won’t begin yelling about how awful men are. When she does meet men, her friend’s fathers maybe, she assumes every word they say is a lie. Because it is safer for her to think that her mother is trying to protect her, than to think her mother is terrible person.

“And because the other children are very mean when they learn about her family, this little girl does not talk about herself with her friends. She avoids telling them about her life, she does not tell them what she thinks. She is a very good listener, but she does not do much talking.”

Ilya paused, like Maxim had. He hoped he was doing this justice, Maxim’s stories had been much longer, much more elaborate. He’d painted beautiful pictures with his words, in poetic Russian that Ilya didn’t have the English for.

“Now, I ask you a question. Why does she do these things?”

“She’s protecting herself,” Shane answered instantly, his clever clever boy.

“Just so, she is doing this to protect herself. And if she grows up into an adult, and still has trouble trusting men, and still is worried her loved ones will leave her, and still is afraid to tell her friends what she is thinking, and still thinks she is ugly. Does she have broken brain now? Is she crazy?”

“Of course not,” Shane snapped, sounding like he was ready to throw hands for this entirely fictional adult with entirely fictional problems.

“So she is not crazy, but do you think maybe there are ways she could live without so many bad thoughts? Do you think she deserves that?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

Ilya’s voice had cracked on ‘deserves’ and now his eyes were wet, which had been mortifying in front of Maxim, but wasn’t so bad with Shane. Shane with his eyes still closed, so serious.

“And then Maxim says to me: ‘Ilya, you were a child once. With different problems, probably, maybe bigger problems, maybe smaller, I do not know yet. And little Ilyusha learned ways to cope with them. Do you think you deserve to find different ways to cope?’ Ah, fuck, sorry.”

He stood and opened the sliding door, out into the blustery air. It dried the tears his sleeve hadn’t mopped up. His lighter fought the wind, and when he finally pulled back, cigarette in one hand, phone in the other, Shane was waiting for him, watching him.

“It is a cruel trick, to make you think of a child, no?”

“Yeah,” Shane said, slowly. “Is that what made you upset? Thinking of a kid?”

“Now we have switched places. This is what Maxim asked me, why am I crying. What makes me upset is that my answer to his question was: no. Little girl with problems who grows up deserves help. Little Ilyusha deserves help. Ilya Rozanov does not deserve help.”

“Ilya.”

“I know, it does not make sense to me either.” He tried laughing, but it all came out wrong, like he was gasping for air. “In my head, I am a terrible person, Shane. So terrible I am not deserving of nice Russo-Canadian therapists who say they want to help me to feel better.”

And, fuck, maybe this Western business of saying things out loud, letting people hear your secrets, maybe they were onto something. For the second time in an hour, he’d said the words out loud: I am a terrible person, and each time he’d felt like a deflated balloon. Empty and hollow, yes, but also like the surface tension in his chest was gone.

“And I know this is not true, but I also know that it is true. Or maybe I feel that it is true. And my head cannot tell my heart what to feel. But Maxim says: this is fine, this is normal. Lots of people are having this problem, and together we can teach my head and my heart to have better feelings.”

Shane’s voice was muted against the wind: “That sounds good.”

“Da, I think it sounds good too. He tells me it takes time, lots of practicing, to teach a heart new thoughts. But this is okay, because I must be good at practicing, he says, otherwise, how else would I win NHL trophies?” He snorted. “Maxim must be reading Wikipedia pages, because he knows nothing — nothing — about hockey. Three weeks ago he did not realize Boston had a team.”

Ilya smoked down to the filter and stubbed it out. “And he promises it is okay that I do not trust him yet, that it is okay not to tell him everything to begin with. That it would be helpful, yes, but only when I am ready. And he says there is much on internet, many books — some even in Russian — if I am curious. I can read about … I cannot remember the English word. Ways to cope that are not helpful. And think about if any of them sound like me.”

“What’s it called? This type of therapy?”

It wasn’t until now, with his ears back indoors, that he realized Shane’s voice was not just fighting against the wind, it was quiet and thin. Ilya brought the phone closer and saw fat brackish teardrops tracing lines over Shane’s face. Consternation dripped into his gut.

“Shane, what is wrong? Why are you crying? I thought this would make you pleased, that I am doing what you wanted?”

“I am, I really am. I’m so pleased.” Shane rubbed at his face, but any tears he cleaned away were immediately replaced. “But … babe. You’re not a terrible person. You’re not. And I hate that you think you are.”

“I am sorry, doro—”

“No, stop it. Don’t be sorry. Ilya, you have nothing to be sorry about.”

He hummed in his throat and looked away from the screen, only stealing flickering half-glances at Shane. “Should I not have told you this?”

“Fuck off with that, Rozanov. I want to hear everything, okay? Everything.”

“Okay.”

He says he wants to hear everything, his chagrined heart said to him. But when he knows you, really knows you, he will be disgusted. You should be ashamed, making him sad like this. Hasn’t he suffered enough for you? Haven’t you already been making him hurt for years and years? You are a poison.

“Babe, can you hang on for a minute? I’ll be right back.”

“Yes, yes,” Ilya waved him away, and the video cut out, though he could still hear Shane’s feet shuffling on the rug and walking across his living room.

This is what he should be doing. Walking away. Not letting you distract him with your pathetic problems. Look around you, look at your laziness. The soda cans on the table. The clothes on the floor. The cigarettes by the door, even though you always say you will quit. Do you think Shane would live like this? Do you think he’d still love you if he knew who you really are?

The thing was: this was normal. This was how it was supposed to be. This was how he had lived, for years and years, for always, this knowledge seeded inside him that he wasn’t good enough. It didn’t used to hurt. But now, resettling itself on the branches of his limbs after it had flown away for an hour or two? Now it hurt like hell.

Maybe it wasn’t worth getting rid of. Maybe it was so ossified it was better to let it stay, so he didn’t have to get all scratched up whenever it returned.

“Okay, I’m back,” Shane announced.

“You are wearing glasses to read my face? Is that the expression? Or are you trying to cheer me up?”

Shane laughed. At least Ilya could still do that, that had to be worth something. “Is it working?”

“Yes, it is magic trick. Always works on me.”

“Good. Tell me, what’s this kind of therapy called?”

“In English it is ‘schema therapy.’” He could hear Shane’s fingers tip-tapping on his phone. “I have never heard this word used in America, ‘schema.’ We have the same word, ‘skhema.’”

“Yeah, it’s not a very common word. Unless you’re like, I dunno, an academic or something. Okay, here we go, there’s a bookstore in Ahuntsic with a few books on schema therapy. Probably not in Russian, sorry, but I’ll buy English copies for both of us.”

“No, that is okay, I will make order on Amazon.”

“Trust me, this’ll be faster. Ilya, I cancelled my physio session —”

“Ugh, Shane!”

“— and I booked a flight. I’m gonna get in around nine, and fly out at seven, okay? We’ll both still be good for the matches tomorrow.”

There was a moment in Nu, Pogodi! where Wolf tries to catch Hare by climbing up a pyramid of barrels, until one is kicked over and they all collapse underneath him. Ilya felt like that, the moment he laughed at when he was still Ilyusha, when Wolf stayed up in the air, feet scrabbling, for a second even with nothing underneath him. But in real life, just like in the cartoon, gravity switched back on eventually.

His first reaction was: yes. His second reaction was: no no no, Shane needs his plans, he needs his order, do not fuck this up for him. His third reaction was: please, God, please.

“Really? Are you telling truth? Or making a joke?”

“I’ll be there in … five hours, probably, depending on traffic from Logan. Swear to God.” Shane’s eyes were dancing. Ilya had unleashed a monster when he’d told Shane he was brave, a swashbuckling closet romantic.

“Hollander, you do not need to do this. I want you do to this, yes. But only because I am always wanting to touch your pretty face, not because you need to be worrying. You do not need to ruin plans for me.”

“Who said anything about worrying? I just know I’m not gonna sleep tonight unless you’re asleep next to me. And then I’ll be all tired, and then I’ll lose to fucking Ottawa, and that’s just not acceptable to me.”

Ilya grinned, his enervation banished as easily as snapping the puck clean and true. “And then reporters will call me for chirpy quote in stupid stories about ‘Is Hollander losing his touch?’ and I will tell them: 'I have always said this, Hollander is second-best.’”

“Fuck you! I try to do a big romantic thingy, and you’re kicking me in the ribs.”

“It is very romantic thingy. Someone wearing glasses that sexy should have better vocabulary.”

“You should be nicer to me, or you won’t get your reward.”

“What reward? Dorogoy, are you trying to Pavlov me into therapy?”

Shane laughed and laughed, and goddammit, he was going to Pavlov Ilya into therapy and because Shane was Shane and Ilya was Ilya, it was going to fucking work.

Chapter 3: Moving Checklists and Scheduled Spontaneity

“Why is my mother calling you?”

Ilya left his bathroom, looking significantly more like the location of a shrapnel bomb explosion than when he’d walked in, and echo located Shane’s voice to the kitchen, where his phone was attempting to vibrate itself off the counter. “It is Wednesday morning.”

“What?”

His poor Shane, so off-kilter that the precise orthogonal lines he’d been cutting into bubble wrap had suddenly swerved into a ragged arc. Bubble wrap, for Christ’s sake. Before he’d begun he’d asked Ilya if there was a tape measure or a ruler he could use. Ilya was floored Shane had such esteem for Ilya’s maturity.

“Hello Yuna! Your son does not remember that Wednesday morning is our coffee time.”

“What the fuck? You still do that?”

“Shane,” Yuna warned, so Ilya flipped the phone around so she could see him, “do you have to swear at everything?”

“Yes, Shane, your mother makes a very good point.” He smiled his broadest, most innocent, angelic smile.

“I don’t think I like this.”

“Do not listen to him Yuna,” Ilya said, turning the camera back to himself and moving to the coffee pot. “He is only mad because the ringing startled him and ruined his bubble wrap surgery.”

“Shane, honey? If you’re doing the photo frames, they should really get wrapped twice.”

“Oh my God. Yes, Mom, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”

“Can you check your emails? No, not you honey,” she directed at Shane’s turned head. “Ilya. I sent you a packing checklist for international moves.”

“I will read this. But this is what very expensive fancy movers do, no?”

He knew this. She knew this, having been the one who’d sent him a list of extremely high-end white glove removalist companies that offered not only to put your things in a truck and drive them somewhere, but also to do the actual packing into boxes and unpacking of your entire life (incredibly expensive boxes they were too, presumably made from a rare type of tree only grown in the microclimate of an endangered Pacific Island nation, watered by the tears of mermaids, and lined with silk woven by blind virginal maidens. It was the only way he could mentally justify the amount on the invoices).

Sometimes it still floored him. That he was a rich man. Ilyusha, not of the pigeon-catching-for-supper desperate poverty that the older boys had survived, but still: Ilyusha standing in line with coupons, alone, to give his Mama some relief from waiting all morning. Ilyusha, whose Papa — in his Militsiya uniform — got mugged not once, not twice, but six times in 1998. Ilyusha, who could count the number of apples he’d ever eaten before he turned six on one hand; one on each New Year’s Day. Ilyusha, who was now so rich and lazy, he paid poorer men to fold his singlets and place them in cushioned boxes and drive them to Ottawa so that he can nap in the sunshine with his boyfriend.

What kind of despicable person has these riches and does not share them with his family? You, you with so much money it is not even something you have to think about any more, while your only relative barely earns enough money to pay for a one-room apartment. You have bar tabs that cost more than his monthly rent. Do you think your mother would be proud of this? Of her son allowing his brother and niece to struggle to live with dignity?

Write him a letter, Maxim had said. I’m not saying you can’t send Alexei money, but next time you feel like you should, I want you to sit down and write him a letter telling him everything you think about him. Then put it in the trash and decide if you still want to send the money. And one day, we’re going to talk more about Subjugation.

“Yes, but it doesn’t hurt to double check, does it?”

“Of course not, this is why I invite your son.”

Shane scoffed. “Oh, I’m here for double checking, am I? Name one thing you’ve packed today. Just one.”

“Ah, my tuxedo,” Ilya said, forcing righteous outrage into his voice. “My swimming shorts. My sunglasses —”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“— My laptop. My cigarettes — Yuna, pretend you did not hear that —”

“I didn’t mean your summer stuff.”

“— My speech for in case I win award tomorrow. My …” he tilted the camera away and mouthed lube towards Shane.

“STOP.”

Ilya turned back to Yuna’s grimacing face. “We are doing a divide-and-conquer strategy. I do summer packing, he does precious things packing. Because I know he is very … what is adjective for attention?”

“Attentive.”

“Spasibo, dorogoy. Shane is very attentive, and he will double check all the precious things, and I am very unattentive —”

“Inattentive.”

“— Bud’ zdorov, dorogoy — so I will do the summer packing because it does not matter if I forget to pack socks.”

“I think we’re getting off-track,” Yuna offered.

It had taken Ilya a long time to start feeling comfortable on these calls, partly because of moments like this, where Yuna’s back straightened and her eyes went hard and her mouth was not a fully relaxed downward slope nor a genuine smile, but the thin-lipped closed-mouth slightest-upward-tilt-because-I-cannot-afford-to-be-called-a-bitch Professional Woman Doing Her Job smile. The smiles of Kelly the EA, and Van in … whatever it was they actually did in the Data Strategies team, and Fatima from Legal, who was somehow more intimidating than most of the Eastern Conference.

And, just the same, were the smiles of the women who did it for a living. The models. The women posing as television sports journalists in the hope they’d get picked for a weather spot (but not the serious sports journalists, those women had to be so fierce they’d earned the right not to smile). The women who approached him in clubs hoping for a sex tape or a pap-walked fling on his arm for a few months so they could catapult themselves into the next strata of the social hierarchy. Those smiles were huge and beaming and so exhausting that their faces collapsed the second they didn’t need to perform anymore.

Ilya did it too, of course. And Shane was the master of it. Polite and aggressively not-angry, hyper sexual and available, confident and indestructible, composed and bland, all their masks were for a single purpose: to pursue an agenda.

He spent months terrified of Yuna because he couldn't figure out her agenda.

“Ilya: read the checklist. There’s a good reminder in there to take a video of every room, every closet before you leave, so you have a record of exactly how you left it. Shane: make sure he actually does it.”

“I swear this, Yuna, I will follow advice.” He tucked two fingers to his palm and crossed himself.

“Shane?”

“I’ll make sure he does it.”

He pouted. “Oh, I see how it is. Hollanders do not trust me.”

“Absolutely not,” Shane said instantly.

“I am wounded. My heart, it bleeds.”

“You said that when they cancelled Portlandia.”

“Ilya,” Yuna interrupted, before he could begin another screed on Shane’s lack of artistic appreciation. “We trust you, but you have a lot going on at the moment.”

“This is true.”

“And we have absolutely nothing to do for the next two months except help you.”

Ilya, Maxim had said to him, when you refuse to let someone help you, it makes them feel like you’re rejecting them. It's not a nice feeling to be rejected, hmm? Why would you hurt the people you care about? If they know you, they know you are capable with or without their help. So what are you protecting by refusing them? Do you think they only love you because you are strong? Would they be good people if they only loved you when you are strong?

“And if you don’t let us, you’re going to drive me and Shane insane,” Yuna continued.

“This is also true,” he grinned. “Last night, I caught him cleaning the stove-top after dinner. And I say to him: ‘Shane, my beloved, my darling —’”

“He did not say that.”

“‘— in two days I leave this house forever, and professional cleaners will come after movers finish. Why do you do this?’ I think he is maybe already insane.”

“Oh, he’s always been like that.”

“Mom!”

“Dorogoy, shhh, this is not surprising to me.” He glanced back to Yuna and shared a mutual look of who-did-he-think-he-was-fooling. Her chin lifted again.

It wasn’t until the Christmas break that he had unearthed Yuna’s agenda. After he’d flown into Ottawa in the early afternoon of Christmas Eve and taken a taxi to a hotel on the outskirts of Stittsville, where Shane had picked him up on a street corner a block away and driven the next two hours with his free hand in its rightful place on the back of Ilya’s neck. After Yuna had congratulated him on his two goals against Detroit and David had offered him a beer. After he was treated to the spectacle of Shane and Yuna Hollander decorating the Christmas tree, a battle royale of perfectionism and only child syndrome that he could have predicted if he’d ever paused to imagine it. After Shane’s sniping about not having his favorite ornaments, the little drums and trumpets, and the ensuing conversation about forgetting to pack them revealing to Ilya that the Hollanders normally celebrated Christmas at their Ottawa house, not all the way here in the boondocks. After he’d brooded over being the reason for disrupting the Hollander family traditions. After dinner, and after he and Shane had washed the pots and pans, and after Shane had begun talking earnestly with David about his work, and after the third mention of ‘white paper,’ which Ilya knew wasn’t referring to the color of paper, but had no idea what it actually meant, and many hours after Ilya had noticed that Yuna only put on her business face when she was directly talking to him; he excused himself for a cigarette.

She joined him when he was almost finished with it, shutting the back door with her foot and walking out with two glasses of wine. “Don’t stop on my behalf,” she had said, handing him a glass and sitting on the step. He did anyway, extinguishing it under his foot and joining her. “Is this all okay? I know you didn’t celebrate Christmas, but maybe I should have included some other traditions, a—”

“No no, it is perfect. It has been a long time since I spent holidays with someone I love.”

She had turned to him, in the dim light, and for the first time her face was full of Shane’s earnestness that was painful to behold. “I really want to be your friend, Ilya. I know you may not like me very much, but e—”

“What is this? Is Shane telling you this? That I do not like you? It is a lie, not true at all.”

“No, not Shane. I just … I know I can be hard to get along with.”

“People say this of me, too. Does not scare me off. I would also like to be your friend.”

And then finally, finally, she had relaxed her stiffened smile and her tightly wound spine, and Ilya realized that that had been her agenda all along. And then she had made him swear to secrecy, on pain of death, before she had bummed a cigarette from him while they drank their wine and talked about who would get tapped for coaching at the All-Stars game.

Now it only came out when she was angling to keep him focussed. Shane had taught him the word ‘momager,’ and Ilya was chuffed he understood the wordplay without explanation.

It is a stupid idea, he thought, that she could be a mother-figure for you. She is like Shane, of such high standards and expectations, of wanting perfection. It will last until the first disappointment, when she will realize her efforts are wasted on you.

“What have you heard from Farah?” Yuna asked.

Ilya shrugged. “Much is happening, and nothing is happening. I told her I do not need to hear about interest from other teams, so I do not know.”

“And Boston?”

“What did you call it, Hollander?”

He was actually, legitimately, unpacking each picture frame and making sure it was double-wrapped, so intent he didn’t notice Ilya melting at the sight of it. “Shambolic.”

“No, there was another word. It made me laugh.”

“Oh, yeah. A comedy of errors.”

“‘Comedy of errors.’ English has some good phrases, Yuna.”

“Generous of you,” she said drily.

“They still think I am bluffing. I swear, I do not know what to do anymore.” He puffed his cheeks out and rolled his eyes. “I could attend awards night in ‘I Heart Canada’ t-shirt and take lie detector test on stage, and they would still say: ‘very funny, Rozanov, just tell us what the number is.’”

“I wonder how high they’d go,” Yuna asked, gleaming greed in her eyes. Not for money, Ilya knew her well enough for that. For glory.

“Oh, not you too—”

“That’s what I said,” Shane interrupted. “Just imagine if he wins the Hart, and then Farah makes a couple of calls during interview period. It could actually be record breaking, if they think he’d really walk.”

“Yes, but we do n—”

“Have you seen the latest betting odds? Sorry honey, but he’s a shoe-in.” Ilya made an involuntary loon-esque noise. Yuna just rolled her eyes. “You’re well past jinxing it now, they’ve already voted.”

“This is not how jinxes work.”

“There’s absolutely no logic to how jinxes work.”

“You, Yuna Hollander, tell me this? Have you ever seen your son in a locker room? Left sock right sock, right skate left skate, otherwise world is ending.”

“It’s not —”

“Tape like this, just so, or else he unravels and begins again, and two sips Gatorade — no more! — in intermissions. And if someone gets to locker room earlier than him, I think he sends them out so he can be ‘first one’ in. Not sure of that, it is a rumor.”

“I only did that once.”

“Even during All-Stars, he does this. Game absolutely nobody cares about winning except first-timers, but he still does three rosaries, throws salt over shoulder, avoids mirrors.”

“Mirrors? Really?”

Ilya flipped the camera around so she could see Shane's laser-eyed glare. “They’re bad luck,” he insisted.

“Huh, I did not even know this about you, moyo okno. Total guess.”

“Window,” Shane muttered.

“No wonder Boston thinks you’re bluffing,” Yuna said thoughtfully. “You must rake it in at poker.”

By early afternoon they had finished: one small suitcase, one garment bag, one large suitcase, four boxes filled with sentimental and irreplaceable bit and pieces. And Shane’s travel bag, which Ilya preferred to pretend wasn’t packed and ready to go.

“Let’s run through everything one last time,” Shane said, shuffling through the lists he’d printed. Printed. Ilya’s heart sang. He was going to buy his boyfriend a clipboard one day.

“Yes. Let’s.” Ilya rested his chin on Shane’s shoulder and paid attention. Mostly.

“Videoed house: done. Videoed belongings: done. Car keys and house keys at Svetlana’s: done. Moving insurance: done. Let me finish this first.”

Ilya removed his mouth from the bump of spine between Shane’s hairline and collar. “I am not stopping you. But you know what boring does to me, moyo yabloko.”

“Apple. Clean out fridge: done. Clean out freezer: done. Mail redirection: done.”

“Who the fuck still sends mail?”

“Cancel utilities: did you do that?”

“I will do after house is sold.”

“Yeah, I think the rest of these have to wait until you sell.”

“Excellent, list is done moyo pechen’ye.” He ground his hips into Shane’s ass.

“Cookies.” Shane flipped the page with unnecessary flourish. “Vegas: tux, shoes, underwear, socks, phone charger, headphones, speech, wash bag, passport."

“Yes. Plus many condoms.”

“It’s one night.”

“What is the point of celebrating if it does not involve you and condoms, moi klyuchi?”

With his hands under Shane’s shirt, touching the pendant resting on his pecs, he could feel the way Shane was teetering on the precipice of moaning, even though he stuck his elbow in Ilya’s ribs instead of sinking to his knees.

“Um, keys? Cottage: suit, swimming shorts, laptop, laptop charger, iPad, iPad charger, sunglasses, drivers license, important documents, therapy books. Babe, this is a very short list for the whole summer.”

“Yes, everything else is not important enough for list. And if I forget, I buy more in Ottawa or steal yours.”

“I keep forgetting it’s actually going to be okay for you to be seen in Ottawa.”

“Is exciting, no?” Ilya let his hands drop to Shane’s crotch. “Ah, you agree. Very exciting.”

“Mmm.” Shane’s eyes half-closed as Ilya sucked along his jaw. He continued with some visible effort: “Boxes: photos, letters, birthday cards, old phones, special sticks —”

“None more special than this one.”

There was nothing — nothing — hotter than watching Shane’s noble struggle to finish the list while Ilya spat in his hand and started tugging at Shane’s cock. “— game pucks, awards, trophies, jerseys.”

“Dorogoy?” Ilya prompted, after Shane stopped speaking, and almost stopped breathing. “You did boxes. All packed?”

“Oh. Yes. Packed.”

“Good. Now you must listen to me, like good boy, and then there is one last list before we fuck. You are listening, yes?” He pulled his hand out of Shane’s shorts and spun him around, their bodies pinned tight. He had to do this now, in the precoital headiness, so he could focus all his sappiness into fucking Shane until he forgot his own name; rather than after they came, when the only place for emotions to go would be pouring out of his tear ducts.

You have a different type of problem with Dependence, Maxim had said. You have the opposite problem: Counterdependence. You have ignored the part of you that wants to let someone help you. Who was the last person you went to and said: ‘I have a problem, will you help me?’

My mama. If I went to Papa or Alexei for help, they would have told me to figure it out on my own.

Ilyusha was a smart boy then, to know this, and avoid that pain. But now you have a boyfriend, who you tell me is very caring. It is time to let him help you, and to let him know you are not begrudging his help. That you are grateful for it.

“I am pleased you did not play for the Cup,” Ilya said, holding tightly to Shane’s jaw. “Although I would have liked to see you lift it up on the TV screen and think about how you are all mine, even when everyone else is screaming for Hollander. I am pleased because I am very thankful to have you here, helping me with moving. It is nice, to have help.”

It is weak, to need help. When the day comes that he tires of you, it will only hurt even more, to lose both him and his helping.

“You couldn’t keep me away anyway. I’ve seen how you pack your travel bag.”

“There is nothing wrong with how I pack.”

Shane ground their hips together. “Says the guy who forgot to bring deodorant to Montreal.”

“No no, this was on purpose,” Ilya reared back, affronted. “So I borrow yours and smell like you. Confuses your defenders.”

“We won that game, if I recall.”

“‘If you recall,’ like there is a single hockey stat you cannot remember? It is too late to play dumb with me, Hollander, I have seen what a little nerd you are.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yes, you should. Here is last list, moya klubnika: shower, bedroom, kitchen, couch, table, or window.” He gripped Shane’s hair and exposed his throat, licking everywhere he could touch. “You pick. Last time we will fuck in this house.”

It ended up being more of a last hurrah tour than a single location: chasing Shane from room to room, shoving him against any surface that would immobilize him, pinning him down and marking outlines in sweat against the walls, the counters, the glass. He even managed to sweet talk Shane into letting him commemorate the significance of the occasion by taking pictures, cut off above the neck, of course (his paranoiac, his beloved: Ilya knew him well) of Shane’s blissed out nakedness, athletic and sweaty, soft and relaxed, reclined across the bed. As much as he loved preseason Shane, that roundness and fullness pulling at his skin, he loved postseason Shane too: all sinew and economy, every calorie striving to preserve those beautiful muscles.

He didn’t need to kid himself anymore, they’d gone long past those denial days. He loved all the seasons of Shane.

Shane may have been too soft-eyed to deny him the pictures, but he never truly changed. He’d made Ilya upload them to their shared email account — lilylovesjane.1991@gmail.com — and watched them be deleted from the phone from his throne in between Ilya’s arms. There had been much eye-rolling and teasing when Shane had insisted on a burner account for their sex calendar last summer, ranting for a solid fifteen minutes about the iCloud hack, but Ilya considered it his win when he broke Shane down and got him to agree to lilylovesjane instead of janeloveslily.

And then there was no more time. Shane had been in and out of the shower before Ilya could blink, calling a car, heartlessly ignoring the pouting attempts Ilya had made to get him to come back to bed, kissing him on the forehead with promises to call him tonight and see him tomorrow, and then the front door had shut and Ilya was still naked and recovering on the twisted sheets, entirely alone in Boston for the last time.

In his extensive experience, it took between one and twenty minutes after Shane closed the front door for the unease to arrive. The gnawing, nagging fear that Shane was annoyed with him, that he’d done something unintentionally rude and irredeemably heartless. That something had finally tipped him off, and he’d realized how unlovable and unworthy Ilya was. There were no nice men in Montreal? would ring in Ilya’s head, and perhaps this time it was already ringing in Shane’s too, and the scales would rebalance and Shane would think: oh. Maybe there are nice men in Montreal.

Maxim had told him to make a list, to refer to in times like this. A list of all the ways, big and tiny, that demonstrated Shane loved him. A list of all the ways Ilya could be proud of himself. A list of all of his positive attributes. It was so fucking mortifying it’d taken five consecutive sessions of nagging for him to give in.

He didn’t need the list today, not even after twenty minutes. Was it progress? Or was it because his boyfriend was a nice enough person that Ilya didn’t think Shane would dump him right before the transfer? Or was it the sheer fucking imminence of it all, one night haunting these rooms, then one night in Vegas, then seventy-three days before training camp. Seventy-three. A beautiful number, a vertiginous number, untold fucking riches, a vast open sea of Shaneness ahead. He’d hardly let himself believe it all year, but it was right here, on his doorstep, giddying quantities of charity planning and Post-It notes and practice skates and off-season bulking and cardio conditioning and trips to ad shoots and still so much time for endless kisses, for lazy fucking, for swims and naps and PlayStation and hiking and kayaking and little snippets of Russian and watching movies tangled up together on the couch and the boxes and boxes of books he was going to have delivered so Shane would never take off his glasses.

It was more than he’d dreamed he could have, it was all he ever wanted, and, except for a single piece of evidence: a tear-stained piece of paper torn from a notebook and covered in scribbles and crumpled into a ball, then smoothed and flattened and packed into a box; there was nothing more he wanted from life than those seventy-three days.

The Hart Trophy would be nice, though.

Once his need to shower outweighed his inertia, after he’d rinsed the sweat and cum from his skin, he walked through the house. Naked and alone. It sounded so sad, but it wasn't. It was an ending, but he’d had endings before, ones much more terrifying than this.

He had liked the way the trees protected him, the way their branches and leaves fenced the long corridor of glass so he didn’t need to choose between sunlight and privacy. That was it, that was why he’d bought the house. The rest of the realtor’s spiel — the reasons others might sink a few million dollars into a home: bedrooms, bathrooms, theatre room, gym, sauna, solar panels — was fine, but those kinds of houses were much of a muchness once you arrived at this price range. It was the trees he bought for, something that couldn’t be express shipped overnight, the unbelievable luxury of an unbroken vista of green green green until it hit blue sky, the kind of fairy-tale view that a lifelong city boy, who grew up playing in abandoned construction sites stripped of anything valuable long ago, doesn’t quite think is possible.

Shane took that idea and injected it with steroids and built — built, God, how did you make this man? — his cottage. Of course he did. Anything Rozanov could do, Hollander could one-up. That was okay. He’d chase Shane for the rest of his life, so long as Shane was looking over his shoulder, grinning back at Ilya.

He had to scramble when the intercom rang, still staring at the glass: both out at the trees, and also at the smudges where Shane had pressed his back and scrabbled his hands against the pane when Ilya went down on his knees and tried to suck so hard that Shane’s knees would fall out beneath him. The closest sweatpants would do, all the clothes in this house fit him, regardless of who they notionally “belonged” to. The courier drove to the door and picked up four boxes of precious things, wrapped and packed in precision-cut bubble wrap by his sweetheart, and Ilya signed for them to be delivered to Yuna “Miura” — her maiden name, at her suggestion, for discreetness’s sake — in Ottawa.

The next night he sat in a room with several hundred players, coaches, executives, media representatives, league suits, and beautiful and ravenous women, all of whom thought they’d figured out his plan.

No fewer than sixteen people had sent him a link to the ESPN article this morning.

This is what he got for trying to do the right thing for the franchise that had raised him. Farah had made it abundantly clear that her client was leaving for Ottawa, come hell or high water, so Boston should take the consolation prize: the Centaurs’ second-round draft pick. Instead, they had laughed. For fuck’s sake.

And the sly winks and nudges about playing like his next ten years of salary depended on it? No, that was the unburdened confidence of a man who already knew where he’d be landing come July 1. The lightened shoulders of a man who was no longer plagued by intrusive thoughts containing the shapes of the words Papa, Hollander, love, how, impossible, never. The solidity of purpose that came part and parcel with a sex calendar on a shared email account, a boyfriend who over-stressed his Cyrillic ‘о’s, and the knowledge that an apartment in Montreal had a wardrobe half-full of his own clothes. God, he had never expected that life as Shane Hollander’s boyfriend could make things so simple.

It finally struck him, after so many years of trite speeches heard through a champagne haze, that the sentiment behind the cliched words ‘I couldn’t have done this without the support of my amazing wife’ was real, it wasn’t just lip service. He couldn't have played like this without Shane, both as his competitor and as his sweetheart.

Several thousand people thought they knew what Ilya Rozanov’s plan was. Six people actually knew what Ilya Rozanov’s plan was. Four people knew who held Ilya Rozanov’s heart in dependable, calloused hands. And only one person knew what he was going to do if he won tonight. He hadn’t told Shane, had known he’d get all blinky and anxious and do something barbarically cruel, like weaponize his eyes to take advantage of Ilya’s obsequious tendencies.

When his name was announced as the season MVP, the thoughts came in such a rush, he was unable to identify any semblance of ordinality. Mama, Shane, contracts, cottage, Papa, Boston, a rental car booked at YOW, David, ESPN, Sveta, Marleau, the summer suitcase he’d left locked in a storage locker at Logan, Yuna, happy, sad, hurry up.

By his right elbow, Marleau was grinning and roaring and shaking Ilya’s shoulder, and Ilya clasped that big head in his hands and kissed the left cheek, the right cheek, and back to the left again, avoiding Marleau’s howling laughs, and yelled over the clamor: “Good game, I love you!”

He did it again, to Carmichael on his left, the rest of the Raiders around them in hysterics and rolling their eyes at their ridiculous captain with his untrammelled foreign ways. Edging out into the aisle, he grabbed Connors at the end of the row in front and kissed him, left right left, and walked forward, toward the stage. He saw Nilsson from Seattle ahead, who he did not give a fuck about but was conveniently placed, and beelined towards him, kissing Nilsson’s cheeks and grinning so hard his face hurt when he said “Good game, I love you.” Phoenix were across the aisle, so he raced over to Sullivan and kissed him too.

The whole room was cackling, wiping tears from their eyes at Sullivan’s bewilderment and Ilya’s joy, and someone, somewhere, in an ESPN control room was surely already cutting this into a highlights package to beam across the globe, but he wasn’t done yet.

“Hollander!” he roared, bearing down on him like a match-winning goal, not even needing to hide his delight at the flush spreading across Shane’s cheeks, obscuring those freckles. His Shane, such a terrible actor, but not acting when he squirmed with discomfort under ballroom lights as Ilya kissed his cheeks three times in front of television cameras and ruffled his hair and yelled “Good game, I love you!” over the sound of hundreds of more-than-halfway-to-drunk people wetting themselves with laughter. He’d have to endure dour counterfactuals later, as if Shane’s bitching didn’t turn him on.

And Shane shouted: “You’re such an asshole!” but no one knew, as Ilya climbed the steps onto the stage, that those words were nestled in his heart, the calcium in his bones, just like no one knew that Shane Hollander’s overnight bag was not in room 1509, but was left at the end of their shared bed in the Executive Suite booked under Ilya’s name, just like no one knew that when he flew back to Boston, he was retrieving his suitcase from an airport locker and boarding the next flight to Ottawa.

Chapter 4: Meeting Agendas and Application Guide 0174

The bedroom windows in his new house faced east. He suspected that Shane had clocked this before Ilya had made an offer, and decided not to warn him about it in the hope he would be converted into the kind of yoga-at-sunrise morning person who put organic local salad greens into a blender for breakfast and enjoyed proselytizing about inflammatory foods. All it was really doing was encouraging an additional forty-five minutes of screen time each morning before Ilya got out of bed.

He rolled to one side and pulled his phone off the charger.

Well. He was certainly going to be a morning person today.

He blinked, and in that blink his baseline lowered. Do not trust this momentary panic, things can always get worse.

Ilya’s privacy was a lost cause. He felt himself go limp against the onslaught of that injustice. There was no use for self-indulgence. He needed to learn how bad things were going to be for Shane.

Not a single one of the Top 10 Picks for Ilya Rozanov’s Secret Boyfriend was even a hockey player, thank God. The list was more than mildly insulting, but that was a complaint he could gripe about after he’d confirmed he hadn’t inadvertently ruined Shane’s life. He Googled ‘shane hollander’ — the search history unhelpfully reminding him of his previous queries: ‘shane hollander tux,’ ‘shane hollander stanley cup,’ 'shane hollander calvin klein,’ 'shane hollander wet shirt,’ ‘shane hollander cottage’ — and selected ‘News’ instead of his customary ‘Images.’ There was nothing. Nothing newer than the thirst coverage of his training camp physique and the results of Montreal’s preseason games. This was good, this was very good. But things could always get worse.

He would read it all in depth soon enough, but after he located the leaked data file on 4chan, he limited himself to using the search function. His fingertips left sweaty impressions on the screen. Nothing for ‘shane’ or ‘hollander.’ Nothing for ‘montreal’ — this was a relief, he’d been so stringent about avoiding Shane’s name and profession, but the city could have conceivably slipped out. Too many results to scan for ‘partner’ and ‘hockey.’ Nothing for ‘rival.’ Okay. Okay. It was still too early to tell, but perhaps he hadn’t fucked up Shane’s life. At least not today.

The phone was screaming hot in his hand, and whirring loud enough to lift off into space. Swiping down, he saw the missed calls and messages sprinting upwards, incrementing by dozens with each blink. He could do this, he had to remind himself. He had to be able to do this.

The immediate necessity was preventing his phone from combusting. He was searching for the settings to block calls and messages from unsaved numbers when Do Not Disturb automatically deactivated, and his phone became unusable with the constant barrage of incoming calls monopolizing his screen. Fuck. 7am. Now Shane’s morning screen abstention was over. His hands were shaking.

He switched Do Not Disturb back on, finished inputting the settings, and typed as quickly as he could manage with a panicked heart and illegible thumbs and the best that autocorrect could offer.

Fam

26 Sep 2018 at 07:02

Ilya

as far as I can tell, Shane hasn’t been exposed, just me

calling Farah right now, then I will call you 💖 Jane

please please do not read full larked file, stick with news reports

*keeled

fuck

*leaked

no scary secrets, but it feels very private to me and I do not want to share like this

I will call you after Shane Jane’s Mama

Read 7:02

Jane's Mama

The little ticks next to the messages were appearing before his eyes and the ellipsis of incoming words was sorely tempting, but the sooner he called Farah, the sooner he could soothe Shane.

“Ilya, I’m so sorry this is happening,” she said, before the dial tone had even had a fighting chance. “Before we begin: are you in a safe place? Are you with safe people?”

Farah looked like a safe person. Make-up, combed hair, a cotton cardigan. Ilya looked like you’d cross the street to avoid that poor man on a meth comedown.

“I am fine. At home. Alone.”

“Do you want me to call anyone for you? A friend?”

“No,” he snapped, harsher than he’d meant to. “I want to do whatever we have to do so I can call my boyfriend.” It wasn’t supposed to be like this, not at all, but fuck if it didn’t feel good to say ‘boyfriend’ out loud.

“Right.” Farah’s face transformed from empathetic acquaintance to professional woman constructed from iron and reinforced concrete and it made Ilya feel a thousand times better. “First, let me say: I do not need to know what is and isn’t true. Okay? This is not some seedy scandal that needs a spin, this is a disgusting violation of your privacy. You don’t have to discuss your boyfriend, girlfriend — hypothetical whatever-friend — with me unless you want to.”

These people are disgusting, his father had said. It is a crime against nature. They should never have declassified it as a psychotic illness. This what asylums are for, not prisons where they can infect other inmates. And then what? They are released and spread their propaganda even further, ruining the next generation of children. That was summer 2013, watching Rossiya-1 as Kirill Kalugin was attacked and arrested in Dvortsovaya Ploshchad while they sipped their tea. Six weeks after the new laws were enacted. Nine weeks after Alexei himself had been assigned to police the clash of protesters and counter-protesters outside the Duma. And eighteen weeks before he had fucked Shane for the first time, felt his body writhing, while Ilya pretended he didn’t want to stay the night. Stay the week. Stay the rest of his life.

He didn’t like the word ‘disgusting,’ in either language.

Farah continued: “On my list, I have: your immigration status and legal protection, protecting any family of yours in Russia, Centaurs management, taking personal leave, NHL management, how you want to play this in the media, the criminal investigation into the hacker, whether you want to sue the therapy company, filing cease and desists, your brand sponsorships. Is there anything else I’m missing?”

“My boyfriend. You have read leaked file, yes? Is there any clues in there that could identify him?”

Farah pursed her lips. Outside, a cardinal was cheering. The birds, the birds, always a constant, every city, every continent, every kind of fucked up morning. A thousand missed calls, the love of his life fleeing from the sound of his own name, a mound of raw soil on a freshly filled grave. And still: the birds.

“Nothing that I recognized. But I’ll go over it again. With a fine-toothed comb.”

He loved Farah, he adored her. He would buy her a fruit basket, an island vacation, a fucking customized Enzo engraved ‘Farah’s Farah-ri.’ If she hadn’t seen the hints of her own principal client in those pages, he was increasingly certain there weren’t any to be found.

“Slava Bogu. This is … I am very pleased to hear this. Thank you.”

She was watching him carefully, no doubt noticing the way his exhalation collapsed his whole chest inwards. He could see her scribbling something on a notepad. “This is my top priority, okay? I can see how important it is to you.”

“Yes. Thank you. I would — this is worrying me. What else is top priority? What must be done today?”

“I’ll be talking to Centaurs management as soon as they get in. I need you to tell me what you want to do about the rest of preseason. Do you want time off? How long?”

What did he want? He didn’t think like that, it didn’t come naturally. What did he have to do, what was required of him, what was expected, what he could get away with. What would please Shane. These were the rubrics of his life.

Maxim and his fucking Kol'skaya skvazhina deep reserves of infuriating patience. You are not answering my question, Ilya. What is it that you want? I will sit here all day if I have to. Write it down if you cannot say it aloud. Do not tell me you do not own paper and pencil. I do not forget you live in a house with its own sauna. Go find the paper and write it down. What do you want?

He thought of cameras in airports. He thought of reporters yelling his brother’s name. He thought of his new team, but didn’t know them well enough yet to extrapolate a reaction. He thought of Border Control agents. He thought of a cancelled passport. He thought of deportation.

“I would like to not fly to Chicago. But I will play home game on Saturday.”

“Is that enough time?” Farah wasn’t looking at him, hair falling into her face as she made notes.

“Yes. I do not wish to hide like little mouse.”

“I’ll inform them you’ll miss the game tomorrow.” Inform. The verb selection did not go unnoticed. He would carry Farah’s banners into battle. “I’m going to call your immigration lawyers this morning and get their opinions on all your options, assuming I have your permission. Is there anyone in Russia whose safety we need to worry about? Friends? Family?”

“No. Alexei will …” he trailed off with a hand wave that held so many years of hurt. Farah had read the file. She would be able to finish that sentence: denounce me. Be pleased. Call this deserved. Enjoy my comeuppance. “And there is no one else.”

“Alright,” she nodded, firm and unemotional. Exactly what he needed. “Your boyfriend’s privacy, Centaurs management, and your immigration status, those are my top three priorities this morning. Everything else can wait. If you hear from the Centaurs, the NHL, the media, lawyers, Russian authorities … anything professional: you forward it to me, or you call me, Ilya. This is my job. Your job is taking care of yourself. And playing hockey.”

“One of these things is much simpler than the other.”

“Yeah, you and me both on that one,” she sighed. “One last thing. I only bring this up now ‘cause you might want to talk to your boyfriend about it. At some point I’m going to ask you if you want to confirm that the leaked files are accurate, or issue a denial. Or neither. Not right now. But that’s what’s coming next.”

“Is that even possible? A denial? One thousand people have called the phone number and heard my voicemail.”

Farah shrugged. “We could say the contact details are real, but the appointment notes are falsified. Or some of them are true, and others are made up.”

He frowned. “This is already sounding like a lie. I will talk to my boyfriend, but … no. I think maybe I will confirm. Only reason to deny is to be able to go back to Russia, and that is too unsafe now.”

It fell on him like a body blow, like he’d tripped and the ice came up to meet him. He would never return to Russia again. That had been a fact he had already accepted, but only ever in an academic sense. The hypothetical, not the execution. It was the difference between watching Montreal on film and saying: “we just have to close down Hollander’s passing angle,” and then playing him and being confronted with the magnitude of his brilliance, the way he always found the angle, leaving Ilya’s teammates stunned and demoralized.

“You don’t need to commit right now. I’ll be in touch with some updates in a few hours, okay? Call me sooner if anything comes up.”

“Yes, yes. Thank you Farah. I am sorry if I was rude, at the start.”

She laughed. “Professional hazard. Go call your boyfriend.”

Again, the dial tone didn’t even sound before the call connected. The privilege of being Ilya Rozanov today: he could probably get Lionel Messi to pick up before the first ring. “Ilya. Babe.”

“Hello dorogoy. I am very sorry for all this.”

“Shut the fuck up, don’t you dare apologize,” Shane said, but how could Ilya not be sorry when Shane’s eyes were filled with unwept tears? “Are you okay?”

Good question. Great fucking question. Yes, absolutely, and also: no, not in the slightest.

“Could have been worse,” he non-answered. “Farah has read the file. She said she could not tell who my boyfriend is. If she cannot … I think you will be safe, moy karandash.”

“Pencil. That’s not what I asked, babe.”

But it was, wasn’t it? Underscoring the panic, the fear on Ilya’s behalf, the terror of every new tweet: have I been outed too? Ilya could tell it had been there from the way Shane’s throat swallowed when he heard the word ‘safe.’ And there was no way Ilya could be okay if Shane was afraid.

“I am fine. And also terrified. But mostly fine. I think. It is hard to tell.”

“You are so fucking strong, you know that?”

He smirked. “Yes, I know this, moy zontik. You are always telling me so when I throw you on the bed.”

“Not what I meant,” Shane rolled his eyes, but he was laughing, wetly, so Ilya had done his job. “What happens with your passport now? Is that … will you …”

“Farah is calling lawyers. I do not know yet. I will not cross borders until there is an answer.”

“Dyuwangedmarrid?” Shane burst out, all at once.

“Slower, please, moy zontik?”

“Do you want to get married? If that would … if it would help?”

He did, oh God, he did. But not like this; in the hasty pursuit of a new nationality, living two hundred kilometres apart, rushing into some bureaucratic venue where the furnishings were decided based on factors like durability and ease of maintenance, where they’d sneak in with caps pulled low on their faces, and would have to weigh whether it was worth the risk of inviting Shane’s parents.

“One day, I will be the most annoying and the most happy husband in the world, and I will show your picture to everyone I meet and say: ‘look at this beautiful man, he is mine forever.’ But not like this. I do not want the memory of marrying you to be tied to this, this … ugly thing.”

“Okay. Okay,” Shane whispered. Then, stronger: “Okay." He ripped his hoodie — actually, originally, Ilya’s hoodie — off, which was pretty much the last thing Ilya was expecting to happen.

“Did that turn you on, dorogoy?”

The phone slid off the pillow it was propped against, and he could only see a smidge of Shane getting off the bed. “Fuck off.”

“I am not hearing you saying no.”

“No. Well … yes, honestly. But I’m getting dressed. Then I’m texting Coach. Then I’m driving to see you.”

“Shane —”

“Ilya.”

“Shane.”

Do not fuck this up for him, he thought. It is a gift from God that he has not been exposed. Do not let his pity for you override his panic. His heart is beating faster than his brain can think. Do not let him regret today.

“I am fine. You are fine. We have a plan. Small hiccup, yes, but plan is still good. You have a game tonight. Play game, score many goals, then drive to Ottawa.”

Shane returned to the screen, wearing a different hoodie. They stared at each other: a virtual face off, waiting for a puck that wasn’t coming.

He decided to gift Shane the drop, so Ilya could win the point. “I like sticking to the plans. I like your boring. It makes me feel safe.” And then: “Don’t cry, moy zontik.”

“I can’t remember what fucking zontik means,” Shane huffed, smearing at his cheeks. “And I only feel safe when I’m with you.”

If only he wasn’t Shane Hollander. They were rich enough. They could quit their teams tomorrow and sell Ilya’s cars and his Ottawa house and Shane’s Montreal apartment and the sex murder building, and come out to the people who mattered and only the people who mattered, and move into the cottage with its stupidly delightful well water and install solar panels and let their fortunes cover the groceries and gasoline for the rest of their lives, while they locked the door and barred the gate and were always together and were always safe. If it had been anyone but Shane Hollander, who was both born to skate and lived to skate. Canada probably had a law on the books criminalizing the act of encouraging Shane Hollander to retire from ice hockey before the age of forty. If not, Ilya would submit a legislative petition once he became a citizen.

“What else would help you today? Tell me what to do while you are preparing for your game, and I will do it, to help you. And then I will watch Nilsson weep in high definition surround-sound while you score six goals, and then you will drive to Ottawa and we will have Guinness World Record for longest hug. Just tell me what you want me to do to make it easier until then, yes?”

“Even if it’s boring?”

“Especially if it is boring. Bonus points for boring.”

Shane hummed and looked away. “I want you to go to my parents’ place. I want you to let them take care of you. I want you to eat your shitty McDonalds and smoke cigarettes and take naps and stay right there until I arrive.”

“Wow,” he drawled, making a meal out of it. “Wait, let me record this. Yuna will never believe that you say these words.”

“I’ll call her, okay? You brush your teeth, get dressed, I’ll call Mom, then call you back while you drive over.”

“Shane?”

“Ilya?”

“I love you very much.”

“I love you more.”

Ilya scoffed. “You do this, even today? Let me win this time, you asshole.”

“Never. Not possible.”

“First, I have question.” He was pretty sure he knew the answer, but wanted it confirmed. Wanted proof that it was physiologically impossible for any human being to be more adored than Shane. “Why did you take off one hoodie, just to put on different hoodie?”

Shane looked baffled. “I was wearing yours.”

“So?”

“I’m not sponsored by Adidas.”

His heart pretty much imploded. The little uplilt at the end of ‘Adidas,’ implying: duh, obviously. The way Shane went pink as soon as the words came out, realizing just a moment too late what Ilya was doing. The number of people who would consider their brand obligations while they drove three kilometres per hour under the speed limit along the Trans-Canada Highway without stopping to be seen by a soul: one. His one.

“See? I love you more, moy zontik.”

“Fuck you,” but Shane was smiling hard enough his nose went all crinkled. “Brush your teeth, I’ll call you back.”

Ilya had made it about three steps away from the bed when Shane called back. Shane could word-vomit along with the best of them, but even for him, that wasn’t enough time.

“Dorogoy?” he asked. Just a tiny bit scared of whatever else had gone wrong in the last four seconds. Things, after all, could always get worse.

“Umbrella!” he crowed, pumping his fist, and then the screen went black again. So it was, actually, physiologically possible to adore Shane even more.

“Where are you? Do I need to be worried?”

Oh. Right. He hadn’t considered that this might look drastic.

“I am in my car, in my boyfriend’s parent’s garage. For privacy, to take your call.”

He’d selected his least conspicuous car for the drive, but still: that just meant it was black, not that it cost less than $300,000. Yuna had opened the garage door for him and he’d parked it where David’s car normally sat, so the neighbors wouldn’t notice a decidedly un-Hollander Cayman loitering outside their house.

“Oh, good.” Farah’s eyebrows dropped down from her hairline. “Did you get a chance to read that email?”

“Yes. I was very … it was a good email. Better than I had hoped.”

It had arrived while he was navigating the interchange to merge onto Vanier Parkway, eyes flicking back to the center console to look at Shane when the preview pinged. His whole body shook until he was able to veer off at Overbrook, pull over, and read it out loud.

“They seem like pretty good people,” Farah agreed. “I told them you wanted to play on Saturday, and they asked me a dozen times if that was long enough. I finally said I think that facing off against Shane Hollander is always one of your season highlights, and you weren’t going to give that up.”

He cough-splutter-laughed and prayed he was a better actor than Shane. Which was a low bar, but: still. “This is true. What else did they say in the meeting? What about social media posts?”

She shook her head. “We need to talk about immigration first.”

His lungs froze up. “Okay. What do the lawyers say?”

“They said the absolute fastest we can get you a Canadian passport is three years. Even if you married your partner — theoretically, that is — that would just grant you residency, not citizenship.”

“What about Russian passport?”

“They wanted me to make it clear: they’re not Russian law experts or policy analysts. There’s an advisory group they’re contacting, but this is very much a first reading, subject to change, s—”

“Farah, just say it. Please.”

“They don't think Russia has the legal grounds to cancel your passport.”

“This ‘think’ is not encouraging.”

“Yeah. Understatement.” Her expression suggested multiple suppressed expletives, and perhaps a similar diatribe on the legal grounds of the annexation of Crimea to the one Ilya was restraining himself from beginning. “But … I hadn’t thought of this, maybe you already had. They brought up the fact that you have to cross the American border every couple of weeks. Even if Russia doesn’t cancel your passport, you’re going to run out of passport pages before three years are up.”

“Pizdets! Fuck. I also did not think of this. New passport means visit to Russian embassy.”

“And there’s no guarantee they’d renew it. The lawyers have a suggestion. I can’t tell if you’re going to hate it.”

“I wish I had vodka in this car,” he groaned. Farah’s straight mouth twitched. “Come on, give it to me.”

“Asylum. You submit a claim for asylum, which they anticipate would be processed within six months, maybe a year, based on your high profile. You can travel on your Russian passport while you wait. Once you have protected status, you can be issued a Refugee Travel Document, which acts like a passport. You’d still need to wait a number of years to apply for citizenship, but it would permit you to travel back and forth to the US.”

“Okay. Okay. This is not sounding bad?”

Farah sighed. “Two things. One: you can’t ever travel to Russia again. And two: they’d want you to affirm, on the record, that you’re bisexual and in a relationship with a man. To bolster the validity of the risks you’d face. But they said he can remain anonymous.”

Ilya could feel his mouth pulling upwards, canines exposing themselves. “This is all? Farah, this is nothing. This is … it is magic. I will tell whole world: ‘Ilya Rozanov loves man,’ no problems.”

“Oh thank goodness,” she exhaled, blowing out her cheeks. “Excellent. Okay. Good. I’ll tell them to go ahead with the application.”

“And you can tell Centaurs they can go full inclusive pride rah-rah-rah on Twitter if they wish. I am going to beat Scott Hunter at hockey and also at being bisexual.”

“Isn’t Hunter gay?”

“Yes, exactly,” Ilya insisted. “He is only half as good at sexuality as me.”

Farah took a very long, very deep, very Shane, breath. He really was going to buy her that car.

The update on the refugee angle was the perfect Yuna distraction, sending her sprinting for her glasses and opening approximately two thousand browser tabs. During the prior three hours she had: made a pot of coffee, opened and closed Twitter every four minutes, put together a dossier on suing Not So Small Talk for damages resulting from their lax data security, made another pot of coffee, changed the perfectly clean bed sheets in Shane’s old bedroom, created an account on VK and tried to perform miracles with Google Translate, researched each of his new teammates, made another pot of coffee, drafted hypothetical thank-you or fuck-you responses to each of his brand partners, created dozens of pseudonymous accounts on all the news websites and delved into the comments sections to berate homophobes, and strong armed Ilya into an impromptu rudimentary French lesson. He would be unsurprised to find her washing the ceilings or instigating a putsch by the time the sun went down.

He would have liked to calm her, but the methods he used to calm Shane down were entirely non-transferable to this situation.

The text messages kept pinging, and Yuna kept asking him how he was doing, and did he want to talk, and telling him it’s okay to be upset or angry or feel any flavor of feelings. But all he could muster was watching her in her righteous frenzy, and thinking: I am not worth all this fuss.

Maxim had made him write a script for this thought. Right now, I feel like a fraud. Like I am a fuck-up, just waiting for other people to realize that their love is wasted on me. But this is not true, this is just a lesson taught to me by someone who did not know how to love me properly. The truth is that I am caring and dedicated and passionate. I am worthy of love. It is hard to let people love me, but it is better for me to accept it.

He was supposed to say it out loud, but, honestly, a man had limits on his dignity.

The other technique he used, which Maxim wasn’t so keen on, but Ilya enjoyed very much, was to name this line of thinking ‘Filipp’, so he could retort to himself: fuck off, Filipp.

So he didn’t answer Yuna honestly when she asked what he was feeling, because all his space for feelings was taken up by the way she was scrambling to find anything useful she could do to help him, and by the way he had to wrestle his brain into submission.

Once Yuna was sufficiently occupied, like giving a baby a pacifier, except it was a grown woman and the canada.ca website, he felt like he had enough calm to address his texts.

Fam

Ilya

no scary secrets, but it feels very private to me and I do not want to share like this

I will call you after Shane Jane’s Mama

Jane's Mama

Of course, we won’t read it. Swear to god.

Jane's Papa

Jane’s Mama you’re an atheist? Swear on the Metros.

Jane's Mama

I swear on 💖 Jane’s Stanley Cups.

💖 Jane

Jesus you two, is now the time??

Of course we won’t read it babe

I’m waiting whenever you’re free

26 Sep 2018 at 07:37

💖 Jane

Heads up Jane’s Mama, calling you in a sec

Ilya’s leaving now

26 Sep 2018 at 11:25

Jane's Papa

I hear we’re having McDonalds for lunch? I’m working a half day. Text me your order Ilya and I’ll pick it up on the way home.

💖 Jane

I don’t think I even want to know …

Any updates from Farah?

26 Sep 2018 at 12:11

Ilya

Jane’s Papa 2 Big Macs, 20 chicken nuggets, poutine, large fries, large Coke, and an apple pie please

I will pay you back

💖 Jane

🤢

Ilya

Farah and the lawyers think I should apply for asylum in Canada

I told them to go ahead 🤞

will tell you all the details when you get here

💖 Jane

💕

17/18 Boston Boys 💪

26 Sep 2018 at 06:20

Cliff Marleau

Roz, tell us when they figure out who this guy is and we’ll be there to help beat him up

Victor St-Simon

Wait, I thought we were pissed at Roz?

Cliff Marleau

tbh, he did try to tell us the truth

our bad we didn’t believe him

Victor St-Simon

And now the jigsaw falls into place

His Canadian man

Ryan Carmichael

i’ve got $80 down on it being a politician

like, ottawa

what else is going on there

Cliff Marleau

some pretty shit hockey

Ryan Carmichael

facts

Connor Connors

my sister-in-law uses that website

she’s freaking the fuck out

so, yeah, first in line to knock this guy’s teeth out

Victor St-Simon

WE RIDE AT DAWN

Connor Connors

fuck, I just read one of those articles that talks about russian prisons

tell me someone’s adopting you Roz

Victor St-Simon

Adopting? Can’t he just get married?

Ryan Carmichael

depends if his politician is already married

Connor Connors

this feels a bit too jovial for the actual situation

Cliff Marleau

jovial, la-di-dah

who swallowed a dictionary lately

Connor Connors

dude fuck you, you didn’t read the russian prisons story

Victor St-Simon

What I’m hearing is … you’re willing to marry Roz?

Connor Connors

i hate you all

26 Sep 2018 at 12:19

Ilya

hellooooooo boys

Victor St-Simon

ROZ

Ilya

no one is getting married no one is going to prison

Cliff Marleau

MY MAN

Ilya

lawyers think they have found way for me to get new passport

Victor St-Simon

🫡🇨🇦

Ryan Carmichael

O CANADA

Connor Connors

awww man, what do they have that we don’t?

Ilya

sexy prime minister

Cliff Marleau

damn, that’s cold

Ryan Carmichael

fuck it, i’m taking that as confirmation

Ilya

i probably cannot commit felony while waiting for passport

but I will tell you if I find out who this dickhole is

thank you for swearing revenge

i love you all

(no homo)

Ryan Carmichael

more like yes homo amirite

too soon?

Mongrels

26 Sep 2018 at 07:28

Nick Chouinard

anyone heard from cap yet?

or management?

Evan Dykstra

nothing yet

i imagine we’re towards the bottom of a very long list

Nick Chouinard

fair tbh

cap, if you’re reading messages, we could not give a fuck who you fuck

right boys?

Evan Dykstra

word

Caleb Larouche

word

Declan Patterson

preach

Stephan Auclair

word

Kahlil Lloyd

AMEN

also, our logo is a fucking centaur

this team has bigger issues than anyone being bi

Evan Dykstra

dude, are you saying being bi is an issue?

Kahlil Lloyd

FUCK

NO

issues: our logo sucks

non-issues: being bi

or hay

*gay

Declan Patterson

hay for the centaurs 🏳️‍🌈

Nick Chouinard

someone get this guy some hay before he puts his hoof any further in his mouth

Stephan Auclair

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

Evan Dykstra

hang on I googled this

should be

wait hold up there’s no bisexual flag emoji

what the fuck

Zane Boodram

yo, stop horsing around for a sec

Caleb Larouche

🥁

Zane Boodram

no, i’m serious

(oh wait, just got it. accidental pun)

new rule 1: no one is allowed to read that leaked doc

new rule 2: don’t ask cap if he’s gay/straight/bi/whatever. not our business unless he wants to tell

heard?

Stephan Auclair

heard

Caleb Larouche

heard

Nick Chouinard

heard

Declan Patterson

heard

Kahlil Lloyd

heard

Evan Dykstra

herd

Nick Chouinard

DAMMIT IT WAS RIGHT THERE

Evan Dykstra

new rule 3: if anyone is such a homophobic dickhead that Roz leaves this team right when we have a chance to actually win a game sometimes

i will personally make your life a living hell

Stephan Auclair

herd

Kahlil Lloyd

herd

Zane Boodram

herd

Nick Chouinard

herd

Declan Patterson

herd

Caleb Larouche

herd

Declan Patterson

we’re still doing morning skate right?

Zane Boodram

yep

26 Sep 2018 at 08:25

Kahlil Lloyd

fuck me, there are so many tv cameras at the practice rink

Nick Chouinard

worse than cap’s first practice?

Kahlil Lloyd

WAY worse

26 Sep 2018 at 12:38

Ilya

hello horsemen

hope you all looked good for your paparazzi run this morning

Caleb Larouche

HE SPEAKS

Zane Boodram

good to hear from you Roz

hope you’re doing alright

Ilya

better now lawyers are starting plan for getting rid of russian passport

Nick Chouinard

oh FUCK YEAH

CANADA LOCK THAT SHIT DOWN

Evan Dykstra

DON’T FUCK THIS UP TRUDEAU

Declan Patterson

Ilya

i will not join chicago game, but i will play on saturday

Kahlil Lloyd

i think Auclair just got down on his knees and thanked god

Stephan Auclair

not denying it

facing Hollander is like those dreams where you take an exam you never studied for

Ilya

do not worry Auclair, I have studied 🤓

Zane Boodram

do you want anyone to come hang out Roz? keep you company?

Ilya

no thank you

this is a very nice team

but i am hanging out with my boyfriend’s mama today

Evan Dykstra

WE HAVE CONFIRMATION PEOPLE

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

Zane Boodram

🥺🥺

Nick Chouinard

ROZ THE SOFTIE

NEVER LIVING THIS DOWN

Stephan Auclair

cap, do you know why Carmichael from Boston just texted asking if your boyfriend’s a politician?

Ilya

because Carmichael is an idiot

remind me to tell him this

Zane Boodram

herd

Kahlil Lloyd

herd

Stephan Auclair

herd

Sveta Vetrova

26 Sep 2018 at 11:04

Sveta Vetrova

Позвони мне, когда получишь ответ от юристов

или я продам твои детские фотки TMZ

26 Sep 2018 at 12:44

Ilya

убежище

Sveta Vetrova

хорошо

К чёрту Россию, она тебя не заслуживает

David came home with three Big Macs, twenty chicken nuggets, poutine, a large fries, a medium fries, a large Coke, a medium Sprite, an apple pie, and a Happy Meal for Yuna, which was all kinds of cute. It took Yuna longer to finish her Happy Meal than it did for Ilya and David to demolish everything else, because she had to squeeze in eating around sharing her newly acquired knowledge on establishing refugee status. He loved her, he loved this, he couldn’t believe how ready they were to keep him weathered throughout this shitstorm, he felt safe and surrounded, but there was a pounding in his head and a grief in his marrow. Memories of Happy Meals as special treats at the end of his junior league seasons. Lining up the plastic toys on his windowsill, the sun bleaching the outward halves.

He had thought before that David reminded him of Maxim. In some ways. He didn’t speak Russian. He wasn’t born in a Soviet state. He didn’t have a degree in psychology. He didn’t needle when Ilya avoided answering a question. But he did have The Look; like he saw through the facade and was deliberating which soft and squishy area you could handle him prodding at today.

Ilya judged that unfair. Everyone deserved the Human Right To Put On Their Best Face In Front Of Their Boyfriend’s Father. He was pretty sure that was in the Charter.

But he liked David, and he was already getting ready to fight one piece of International Law, so he didn’t flee when David called Yuna into the kitchen and murmured something quietly and Yuna whizzed out the door to run some errands.

“What’re you thinking about?” David asked when he sat down again, next to Ilya, facing the window.

“I am thinking many many things.”

“What are you thinking about right now?”

And, again, like Maxim, it was no good lying to him. They had built-in bullshit detectors. “I am thinking about the pirate DVDs I used to buy. American films. Many good, but some the worst quality you have ever seen, like they were recorded during an earthquake. Backs of people’s heads in the cinema. And terrible terrible Russian dubbing. You could hear the voice actors smoking into the microphone.”

David chuckled. “I’d like to see that.”

“Yes, I wish I still had some. We used to buy them at kiosks, very cheap. Hundred rubles for good one, sixty for bad. We saw Harry Potter movies before they even came out in American cinemas.”

“Kiosks like, on the street?”

“Mostly, yes. Sometimes tiny little stores. Or stalls, in marketplaces. There was a man, Georgiy, on our street. He had a plastic table he would bring out in the afternoon, covered with DVDs. And if you wanted a movie he did not have, no problem, you ask Georgiy and he gets it for you, couple of days.”

“What did you ask for?”

“You will think this is ridiculous. Prepare yourself: Chicken Run.”

He could see David try to hold it in, until he gave up entirely and the laughter burst out of him, Ilya not not blushing, but laughing too.

“I will explain: there was a McDonalds toy. In Happy Meals, for Chicken Run movie. But I had never seen this, could not see this when movie first come out. So, when I am fourteen, and DVDs are cheap now, I think: okay, finally, I can see what the big deal is.”

“I’m trying to imagine it with a Russian dub.”

“Oh, no, it is even more ridiculous. I would like to watch again, one day, in English. I remember laughing at it.”

“We can do that.”

This ‘we’ that the Hollanders threw around like it was nothing had never yet failed to floor him. Plans for tonight, plans for tomorrow, plans for next week or next year or, in Shane’s brain that never stopped, for fifteen years. And Ilya was there, was supposed to be there, for all of them.

He did not cling to hope; he had been burnt before. But maybe he would be there, in five years or ten. He certainly wouldn’t be in Russia.

“It’s okay, to miss it,” David said. “To miss home.”

“It is not home. It is not even … these memories, they are from years ago, this place does not exist anymore. Russia is different now.”

“But the place where they happened, that’s still there. And you’re allowed to miss it.”

“I did not think I would, until today. I was so … I had already been thinking, for whole year, I have said goodbye to Mama’s grave, there is nothing for me there now. And I was thinking this would not … but today, it is different. It is like, like … quitting drinking. You think: okay, one day, one week, one month, whatever. Day-by-day: fine. But today, it is like knowing you can never have drink again for your whole life.”

This analogy, he was sure, would have flown over Shane’s head. But David, with the good vodka and the cold Pinot Grigio before dinner; David was nodding.

“No one expects you not to miss it. I’m really sorry. I wish we’d had a chance to visit it with you.”

He’d almost stopped crying by the time Yuna returned with a SIM card linked to a new, unleaked phone number and a fresh packet of Winston Reds and a package of Korovka that she’d gotten from God-knows-where, and then he started all over again, and then he smoked a cigarette and left his phone in Yuna’s custody and accepted her hug and fell asleep in the room Shane had grown up in.

In the untethered murk of waking at twilight, he smelled roasting chicken and heard the gentle chime of a bottle being pulled from the fridge. A third glass of wine was poured when he stumbled out, feeling and looking like an unkempt overgrown toddler. There was an appointment with the lawyers pencilled in for him tomorrow, and a statement from his publicist awaiting his approval, and messages of support on the Centaurs accounts, and emails from groups with names like RUSA LGBTQ+, and Maxim had tried to call again but Ilya wasn’t ready yet, and he finally looked at Twitter while he smoked three cigarettes in rapid succession and it was hard to know which of the two made his chest hurt, and there was not a single word from the NHL and Yuna was ready to raise a protest march and descend on HQ. That is: everything was as close to perfect as it could be.

Shane only scored four goals against Toronto, not six, which was proof you couldn’t get everything you asked for, which Ilya, as an adult — despite claims to the contrary — knew, but occasionally needed reminding of, especially on nights like this. The three of them sat in the living room with wine and tea and Korovka and were exactly as biased and smug as they were supposed to be when the man you loved most was playing, even if it was just the preseason.

It hadn’t been on his list of wants, the one that Maxim made him write, but it should have been. I want to watch alongside my boyfriend’s parents when he plays hockey and yell Shayba! and Molodets! and slap his mother’s knee and laugh at the face his father makes whenever Dallas Kent wins the drop and she curses like a shoemaker. We, we, we. Us, us, us. Things could always get worse, yes. And things could sometimes be better.

Someone must’ve put the screws on Kent, because in the post-game media when they asked about Ilya, he shrugged and said: “No comment.” But Kent, being Kent, still somehow managed to make it the most homophobic no comment in the history of no comments.

Unlike Shane, his Shane, in his post-game suit that Ilya knew the smell of, buttoned down and buttoned up and doing the mannequin equivalent of running his mouth.

“Any comment on the news today about Rozanov?” a reporter asked, no doubt frothing with excitement.

“Yes. My heart goes out to him —” Ilya’s own heart working double time, Yuna’s hand on his forearm, “— for this awful situation. I can't imagine how frightening it must feel to have your privacy invaded like that. I've told the team that any locker room talk about the minutiae of the leak is strictly banned, and I wish the media had done the same.”

“Boo yah!” Yuna shouted.

“What about the revelation that he’s now the second gay player in the NHL?”

“He’s — allegedly — bisexual, not gay,” Shane frowned, unable to not be a pedant. Ilya fantasized about having his vocabulary corrected forever and ever. “And my only comment is that I’m very glad to live in one of the most accepting and inclusive countries in the world, and that Rozanov is now too. I want to defeat him on the ice, not see him thrown in prison.”

“Wh—” the reporter started, but another voice came in louder: “Have you reached out to Rozanov today?”

Shane shifted in his seat a little. “Yes, we spoke briefly on the phone. I offered him any support he needs in navigating the coming weeks —” the understating of dyuwangedmarrid making Ilya laugh out loud, “— so I can beat him with a clean conscience, and we talked about the importance to both of us of taking care of our mental health. It’s a critical topic I think we should all be talking about more often. Any questions about the game?”

He still couldn’t act for shit, but. Damn. Maybe media training was occasionally useful.

“Well,” David said, putting an arm around Yuna’s shoulders, “sounds like we’re launching a charity.”

Chapter 5: Run Sheets and Cue Cards

There were many, many advantages to being Shane Hollander’s friend, but holding hands was not one of them.

Holding hands: no. Handshakes: yes. Touching his back: no. Driving in separate cars to meet at a café: yes. Footsie under the table: no. Running a 10k loop along the canal down to Hog’s Back Park, then back up the river and through Old Ottawa South together: yes. Staring at Shane’s nipples during said run: no. Making Shane laugh in public: yes. Making Shane laugh in public by tickling fingers behind his knee: no. Bro hugs: yes. Polite cheek kisses: no, not even after Ilya’s impassioned rationale that it was a cultural tradition, that it was basically xenophobic to reject them, and would polite perfect Montreal Captain Shane Hollander really want to have that tag attached to him?

Sucking on his neck in an alleyway, calling him dorogoy inside a forty-meter radius of another set of ears, making references to the cottage, looping an arm around his chest, running fingers through his hair, staring at his mouth while he ate: no, no, no, no, no, no.

But, still. Ilya took what he was permitted. And was grateful for what he received.

There were pictures now. Not of headless naked bodies or hard dicks or their lazy, tanned, sun-drunk selves at the cottage from summer, not the pictures that were only accessed through an obscured email account. Pictures in public. Around people. Doing normal people things.

Like the two of them walking through Patterson Creek Park, Shane giving Ilya a look implying he was an idiot, Ilya clearly baiting him, an enthusiastically heterosexual metre of clear air between them. Snapped by a local with aspirations of five minutes of fame, who sold it to TMZ, which said a lot about the level of internet catnip Ilya had ascended to. It was, probably, the most sexless $6,000 photo ever taken. That was the first.

After they’d parroted their lines in post-game media about “hanging out,” and “he’s been having a difficult time,” and “yes, I am trying to throw Hollander off his game by being nice,” delivered with all the aplomb of what-a-fucking-stupid-question-this-is-not-newsworthy they could muster, the photos didn’t sell anymore. They just got posted.

Ilya collected them like the treasures they were, like the Turbo gum inserts of cars that he had once carefully unfolded and pressed between the pages of his children’s atlas. The two of them eating pho, snapped through the restaurant window (not pictured: Shane losing his nutrition fetish privileges for a day after Ilya bet him that Ottawa could beat New Jersey). On either side of a family of hockey superfans (not pictured: the little girl asking if the Centaurs would win the Cup this year, and Shane’s scoff when Ilya said “hmm, next season, I think,” and the way he later edged Shane until he withdrew his scepticism). The photo they attached to their dual Instagram posts announcing the Irina Foundation, arms stiffly over each others’ shoulders (not pictured: Yuna having to take ninety shots before she finally got one where they looked plausibly uncomfortable with physical contact).

The Gantt chart’s Rivalry section had been reviewed and amended. Ilya looked at it daily, just for the thrill.

Make hay while the sun shines, take the plunge, lemons into lemonade: all those idioms coaches had sprinkled into their speeches without remembering not everyone had grown up speaking English. As a rookie Ilya had nodded along, mimicking comprehension, then typed them into his phone and looked them up when he got home. He had grown fluent in the language of motivational sports clichés. He knew Shane was capable of seizing opportunities. He just hadn’t realized Shane would risk pivoting during media debrief on a wing and a prayer. At least not without two minor panic attacks and seventeen phone calls.

So: gone was the schedule to mime a polite little on-ice chat with one or two hearty laughs when they played each other in October. Scratched out, like the plan to “bond” with a highly visible deep and meaningful in the hotel bar the Friday night during All-Stars. They were speed-running this friendship thing now.

He was insanely fucking grateful. He was fortunate beyond anything he’d dared to dream of. So why, why, why, did it hurt so much that he couldn’t hold his boyfriend’s hand?

You are spoilt, he thought. You have lived too long in America: always looking up, always thinking life will get better and better. This is not how life goes. Sometimes up, much more often down. Keep your eyes on the fall, not the next peak.

When that didn’t work, he would try compassion. You are human. Everyone struggles. This pain is momentary. You cannot have this right now, but that does not mean you will never have it. You are allowed to be upset.

But it never quite sunk in. His head got stuck on “everyone struggles,” ranking the pain he felt against the pain of all the gays and lesbians in Russia, quiet and hiding, or loud and spat on. Against the men and women in prison who were forced to sew garments for policemen, making uniforms for the vatniks who put them there in the first place. Against the ones who contracted tuberculosis or AIDS or any manner of preventable illnesses in a labor camp that would not treat them. Against the Haitians and Nigerians who crossed the US land border only to be sent back when they claimed asylum in Canada, terrified of existing in Trump’s America. Against the backlog of souls waiting two years for their refugee case hearing.

He consumed these stories and news articles and Netflix documentaries the same way he consumed cigarettes: knowing they were bad for him, but needing them in a way that felt chemical. An itch he couldn’t not scratch.

That was one side of the equation. The other was a rich, successful, white boy, who got his Canadian permanent residency after just two months (the cynical, widespread, and, as far as Ilya knew, accurate opinion was that the government had fast-tracked him to get a good news story in the press, after the USMCA deal was met by a very Canadian c’est bof, instead of riotous applause), who was whinging because sometimes he couldn’t hold his boyfriend’s hand.

Compassion didn’t stack up in his favor. No matter how often Maxim told him: suffering is not a competition. I know you see all in your life as competitive, but in this case it is not helping you. You do not help yourself, and you do not help other people’s struggles. All it is doing is adding shame onto your pile of feelings. Accept this fact: you are sad and many other people are sad. It is not an individual medal, it is a team sport. We cry together and we lift each other up.

And he wouldn’t forget those words, but then something else would happen. Like the article posted on CBC eleven days ago about a pogrom in Chechnya. Forty homosexual men and women detained, two dead. From torture. And he would look at his little blue Refugee Travel Document and loathe himself for his gluttony.

On the one hand: what a fucking whiny greedy little shit. On the other hand: Shane Hollander in a tux. Not literally on the other hand, of course. That was the whole problem.

There were Ground Rules for the fundraiser launch. Hammered out after it took ninety attempts to snap a photo where it didn’t look like they’d been stalking the touch of the others’ skin for a decade, when Shane spent a night tossing and turning, stressing over how obvious they’d be together in a room full of eyes and cameras. ‘Hammered out,’ in this sense — the patented Hollander freak-out sense — meant Ilya’s hand on Shane’s spine, making occasional harrumphs of dismay, then immediately caving when he felt Shane’s breathing hitch.

Ground rule: they would arrive separately. Ground rule: they would greet each other with a handshake. Ground rule: they would circulate separately. Ground rule: when they sat down to eat, no touching. Over or under the table. In fact, don’t look at each others’ faces too long. Ground rule: one frat boy back-pounding hug was permitted after the speeches. Ground rule: no arms around shoulders or on backs when they stood together for photos. Ground rule: Ilya was permitted no more than fifteen minutes of polite, friendly, but not too friendly, conversation with Yuna and David. Ground rule: they would leave separately. Shane would have legitimately hired a referee to police Ilya’s behaviour all night, if it hadn’t meant sharing their secret with another person.

Ilya took what was permitted and was grateful for it. But: Shane in a tux. It hurt.

“ROZ!” St-Simon shouted, barrelling into the very serious conversation Ilya was having with the MP for York Centre, who, Ilya had learned, represented the district with the highest percentage of Russian origin in the nation, and whom Ilya was totally, one hundred percent, listening to despite Shane’s broad shoulders encased in a tuxedo jacket, in view three tables over.

“Graeme, you must forgive my friend,” Ilya said, around St-Simon’s bear hug — decidedly too prolonged to count as bro-ey. “He has spent many years in Boston, and forgotten his good manners.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Graeme said. “But later we’ll …”

Ilya was trying to give him his full attention, but it wasn’t fucking easy with St-Simon gripping his biceps and standing dead-centre in front of him. “Yes, of course, we will take photo. After dinner, I think? There is a schedule, but I just jump when Mrs Hollander tells me so.”

Graeme seamlessly merged into a cluster of millionaire doctors — if St-Simon had been facing the other way, he could have learned a trick or two about inserting himself into a conversation with a little decorum — leaving Ilya free to tap St-Simon’s cheeks. “I am sure your mother house-trained you better than this.”

“My mother is just as proud as I that we have a new compatriot!”

And, fuck, St-Simon did actually look overjoyed. “Ah, no. Not quite yet. Three, four years on residency permit before citizenship.”

“Pah. Canada has claimed you now.”

That was certainly true. People stopped him on the street, even in Toronto and Montreal, to shake his hand or tell him they had hoped his refugee application would be approved or welcome him to Canada. Unlike the fine people of Ottawa, they normally tempered the sentiment with a modifier that they still hoped the Centaurs would lose, which he was grateful for. He didn’t know how to deal with it, this idea that he was ‘inspiring,’ a word used by more than one advocacy group.

He was more comfortable with the onslaught of ‘never thought he’d turn out a cocksucker,’ and ‘leave the woke shit out of hockey,’ and the efficient, if not erudite, staple ‘lol fag’ that were littered all over his notifications. Hate was easy, a snark and a gnash and a fire in his guts. Hate was fuck you, I’m not ashamed. Hate was fixed by avowing in the locker room — and on camera, whenever he could — fifty-one times in fifty-one games that he would bring the Cup to Ottawa in the next five years, then playing like he fucking meant it.

There hadn’t been a Kremlin response when Ilya had posted his statement online, affirming the validity of the leak. But after he’d tweeted ‘С Днём народного единства! (to everyone who includes ЛГБТ in their definition of unity 🏳️‍🌈)’ on November 4th, bellicose and self-satisfied, his ratio of hate mentions to support mentions shifted seismically. Suspiciously seismically. Bot-scale seismically. The point of no return was after he’d posted the Ukrainian flag, following the Kerch Strait confrontation, when he woke up the next morning and read the official statement that Ilya Rozanov was considered psychotically unstable, that it was suspected he was being paid by the Canadian government, that if these allegations proved true, he would be declared a foreign agent, disloyal to the Russian State.

Good. The fucking rage in his veins swelled them to cords, he could taste iron in his mouth. He worked the Centaurs into a frenzy and they took Philly to overtime and he was pissed once he’d scored the winning goal because he was in no way ready to stop now. He wanted someone to fucking come at him. He wanted blood dripping down his nostril, falling over a split lip and staining the whiteness of his bared teeth. That would've been easier than figuring out how to feel when Canadians were just so fucking nice to him that he could feel ants underneath his skin.

“Yes, yes, of course Canada has claimed me. I play for Ottawa, you know this. These are only games politicians can attend during work year. They are happy to see goals scored on home ice.”

“Is that why there are so many old white men here? Because, I should warn you, Carmichael is trying to figure out which one is your boyfriend.”

Ilya closed his eyes and let the length of his sigh indicate what a stoic saint he was. “Carmichael could not find a goose if it was chasing him.”

“Harsh, but not untrue. Trudeau is not coming, hein? Because Carmichael only just stopped reading that conspiracy group on Reddit …”

“Pfffft. I do not understand this theory —”

“That’s what I said!”

“— where would Justin and I find the time? He is always photo photo photo, off to Quebec, off to Washington, over to Europe. I do not think we could spend more than one night in same city.”

St-Simon’s laughter boomed and he looped an arm around Ilya’s neck in a quasi-headlock. “I’ve missed you Roz. But don’t make this joke to Carmichael, I beg you. Have mercy on an old friend.”

“Yes, I will have mercy. Same mercy you showed Centaurs, enculé.”

"Ça alors! Apprends-tu ma langue?”

“Oui. Un peu. Only good words. Câlisse de cave. Mange d’la marde. Tu fais dur. Il y a un chat sur la glace. That one is useful, I have used it more than once.”

Across the room, he could see Yuna holding Shane’s elbow, guiding him to a couple who Ilya was fairly sure were the founders of Sporting Life. A Sporting Life partnership for the camps would be fantastic. Holding Shane’s elbow would be fantastic. People continued dribbling through the entrance, shucking their heavy January coats, and clutching their initial coupes of champagne like a life preserver or scanning the crowd hunting for prey.

“Vicky, I should …”

“Ah, mais oui. Big man, needs to circulate. Écoute, Roz, all the other Raiders are too chickenshit to say it. You are doing good, yes? All this work you’ve done to take care of your mind: you cannot be ashamed because some fucker posts it on the internet. We are proud of our Cap. Even if he abandons us to lock down some Canadian dick.”

Ilya, you have been through a very difficult time, Maxim had told him, the misplaced responsibility showing on what was normally a perfectly neutral face. And I am proud of how well you have done. But this anger, this rage: it feels good in the moment, but it does not serve to heal your hurts. When you hurt, you feel like Ilyusha, scared and lonely. And you are choosing to defend Ilyusha by acting as a barrier, bullying all who approach him. But this is also starving Ilyusha of love. Do you remember how much you craved love, when you were small?

When people tell you that they are proud of you, that they are glad to have you in Canada, I want you to tell yourself: Ilyusha needs this. Ilya must be the responsible adult, not the aggressive hockey player standing in the way. Ilya must stand aside to let Ilyusha hear these words.

“It is very good Canadian dick,” Ilya said first off, because it really was vital that St-Simon understood that. “Top shelf. And, thank you, Vicky, for saying this. It has been … it has been difficult.” He held out his fists for a bump. “Good game, I love you.”

St-Simon looked down at Ilya’s hands, aghast. “What, you give fucking Sullivan kisses, and offer me fists? Fuck you, man.” And then he kissed Ilya’s cheeks, the proper way, left right left, and flounced off with a middle finger over his shoulder.

The room was buzzing now, onto its second or third round of drinks, canapés on roaming trays, groups forming and disbanding. Yuna had done a good job, because she was Yuna and she was biologically incapable of half-assing things, and a tasteful job, because she intended to wear a Jason Wu dress and had worked backwards from there. It was a very pretty venue, pale blue paint and white decorative plaster, but Ilya still noticed himself thinking that nothing in this country had a real sense of scale or history. This chateau was designated a national historic site, and it was barely a hundred years old. There hadn’t even been a war on home soil since federation.

Yes: that is a good thing, he reminded himself.

The last guests were arriving, just scant minutes before Yuna’s rigid run sheet dictated the procession of the first course. Probably hoping to slip in unnoticed. They were the only special invitees he wasn’t entirely sure would attend. Ilya moved through the crowd on a mission, clapping people on the shoulder and smiling when they tried to steal his attention, but not pausing his stride. He’d proven himself the fastest goddamn skater in the league only three days ago, just try to stop him.

“Maxim!” he cried — at about half the volume he normally yelled things, not to draw the room’s attention. “And Daniella! It is pleasure to meet you.” He kissed her cheek and shook Maxim’s hand and grinned, possibly manically, desperate for them to feel welcome.

“Ench—”

“I am so very pleased you have come,” Ilya interrupted, having observed the way Daniella had been making encouraging faces at Maxim during Ilya’s tramping across the room. This wouldn’t have been easy. “So pleased. Daniella, are you hockey fan? I will introduce you to all your favorite players. Maxim, I know you do not care for hockey, do not try to bullshit me.”

They were very cute together: an identical height, Daniella’s hand on his shoulder. She looked bewildered — Ilya wondered what she thought of him, if she’d been anticipating the chipped-tooth split-knuckle asshole of the sports pages, or the ashamed and isolated fuck-up of her husband’s notes — but Maxim laughed and no longer looked like he might do a runner out the bathroom window.

“I’ve watched more hockey in the last year than I have in a lifetime. It’s growing on me. But Ilya, I must warn you: Daniella is a Vancouver girl."

“Podi ti. Ugh. This is okay, Daniella, I have friend you will like more than Canajuns. Come, come.”

It was important to Ilya, this publicized show of faith. Some people, the kinds of people who spoke much too loudly and much too often about things they did not understand, were under the impression that an individual psychologist was single-handedly responsible for securing the databases of a $350 million dollar company. Ilya did not invite these people to this event, but he (re: Yuna) did invite photographers. And journalists.

“Hello Vaughn, this is Maxim and Daniella, say hello. No, no questions, they are VIPs, too important for you. Jalo, this is not rink, this is very fancy dinner, I know you do not have these in Finland, so I explain: move out of the way, my guests are trying to find their table. Daniella, I will make them take pictures with you later, there is no hurry to meet them, they will wait on you hand and foot. Hunter? No, I think he had to change his dentur— ah, no, there he is, whoops. Yes, now, this is us.”

In further enforcement of Ground Rule 4, Subsections 1–2, Yuna had ordered their table by alternating gender, precluding all possibility of feeling up Shane between bites of sake miso sablefish with yuzu butter sauce. This had multiple side-effects: he was thrilled and petrified in equal measure of what Sveta and David would find to talk about. He was glad Maxim would be seated alongside Leonie Vigneault, their speaker from SPRC. And he was feeling every which way all at once about sitting directly opposite Shane, putting Ground Rule 4, Subsection 3 in serious risk of contravention. God help him if the food was too hot, or if a smidge of wild mushroom bisque had to be licked off Shane’s lips. There were limits to what he could endure.

“Daniella, Maxim, this is Svetlana Vetrova, my oldest friend. Do not believe anything she says. And this is David Hollander, you can believe him. And … where is …” He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. “HOLLANDER! Come meet my friends!”

People were laughing and staring at him or at Shane, and Shane was a terrible actor, but Ilya knew that Shane’s you’re-an-asshole-and-I-loathe-you-right-now and his you’re-an-asshole-and-I-love-you-but-you’re-embarassing-me-right-now faces were indistinguishable to anyone without an advanced degree in Hollanderology. Shane shook the hand of the Minister for Science and Sport and wended his way over to the front.

“Hello,” he said, extending his hand. “You must be Maxim and Daniella. I’m so pleased you could come.”

Which was perfect, but Ilya should have been holding Shane’s other hand.

This wasn’t some post-game presser outside the locker room. They weren’t animals — or, at least, wild animals; dancing bears, perhaps — speeches had been drafted, edited, practiced, and transferred into cue cards.

Ilya was good at the rough-and-tumble moments, setting traps and snapping at bait and toying with the stadium media. It was all an extended part of the game, another skill to hone. In fact, they should have included it in the All-Stars competitions, so he could snatch another victory over Shane.

Speaking carefully? Using sincere words from the heart? This was something else entirely. Sometimes his brain froze up, and a word he’d known since he was seventeen, like ‘grateful,’ would be wiped clear from his vocabulary, leaving him with the equally bad choices to gape like a fish or substitute the Russian and pray it was a cognate. It never fucking was. Blagodaren. Not a chance of being understood.

For the speech he’d prepared for the Hart Trophy, all the words were written out in full on cue cards that he’d read verbatim. Not a single fuck up. Perfect.

Shane hadn’t given him anything but praise after that speech, but seven months later when he caught Ilya practicing in front of the bathroom mirror after he’d cleaned his teeth, Shane had wrapped his arms around Ilya’s waist and said: “It sounds like I made you get it professionally translated and told you not to fuck it up.”

“Dorogoy, do you want me to fuck it up?”

“No, but I want it to sound like you. Not you with a stick up your ass. I love the way you talk.”

“I miss articles. Conjugate wrong. Sometimes I forget words.”

“Yeah, and I love it. No one else in the world talks just like you.” And then Shane did that thing that made Ilya melt: held him there and pressed lingering kisses to each of the moles on Ilya’s back, moving from one to the next without hesitation. Shane had mapped him, and Ilya was glad to be known.

In the morning, Ilya had taken his cue cards and replaced them so they only held the essential English words, and practiced in front of Shane again, and when he finished, pauses and unmatched tenses and all, Shane had smiled his mawkish, transcendent smile and said: “It’s perfect,” and climbed on Ilya’s lap to prove it.

So Ilya was ready, cool and unflustered, right up until Shane stabbed him in the back. Shane was speaking about the plans, the numbers, the ways they wanted to make a difference. Ilya was doing the story, the hook. After all, he was the reason why news outlets who didn’t even cover hockey were attending. Perfect division of strengths. Until Shane starting reading sentences that Ilya definitely had not vetted.

“I can’t even begin to estimate how many thousands of words have been written about Rozanov over the last ten years. Phenom, asshole, party boy, aggressive, menace, brilliant, unpredictable: there would have been a lot of those. And over last few months: inspiration, traumatic, tragic, persecuted, heartbreaking. When I sat down to write my own speech, I wasn’t sure if it was possible to say something about Rozanov that hasn’t already been said.

“People have called him brave for how he’s faced the challenges of being outed and applying for asylum. And I want to highlight another act of bravery: showing up week after week to take care of himself. It's not something we’re good at, most of us. Saying things aren’t okay. Saying we’re struggling, or that we have bad thoughts about ourselves. But Rozanov did it: he went to a therapist and said it out loud. That’s brave. So, before I hand it over to him, to tell us why it’s so important to ask for help, I want to say: I’m proud of you, dude. Even though you definitely cheated in the Puck Control Relay.”

Like: fuck. Shane Hollander was such a fucking asshole that he was going to ruin Ilya’s zen without even giving him a heads up, and do it by being so nice that Ilya couldn’t even retaliate. Just his luck to fall head over heels for a fucking menace with a straight face and a shiny reputation.

Ilya was having his own miniature, albeit stoic, Slavic, freak-out about how it was going to land, but the crowd didn’t seem to be murmuring any louder. Shane had judged it perfectly, finding the angle and sliding the puck through like he always did. It helped that the internet, en masse, had decided Ilya’s secret boyfriend was a closeted and potentially married politician. And that ‘dude’ was doing more than its fair share of heavy lifting, even as it scratched shreds into Ilya’s throat on the way down. He was not dude. He was babe.

He’d like to be babe in front of the whole world. Everything else was already out there: his despair, his loneliness, his father and mother and brother, his niece, his sexuality, his self-worth, his anger. Every person he met he assumed had already read: Ilya has a deeply internalized sense of shame. When confronted, he justifies it as being accurate and deserved. The criticisms from his father (lazy, stupid, weak) are considered core truths that must be hidden from the external world, even to the extent that he believes his partner will one day uncover the “real” Ilya and leave him.

They knew all that about him. All the worst things. And no one knew the best. He was Shane Hollander’s babe, wanted that on his tombstone.

It wouldn’t all be sunshine and roses, but Ilya had been living with hate, knew what to do with it. Hate had fuelled one Stanley Cup, and it could fuel a second. But not for Shane. Shane, who wasn’t comfortable with hate. Nor with adoration, to be fair. But Shane’s identity was built on respect, on living above reproach. If Ilya was Shane Hollander’s babe, the bastards of the world would claw at Shane’s knees until they brought him down, and Ilya would rather spend his life hiding in Shane’s snack-less low-sodium pantry than ask him to suffer that. He’d rather be dude. He would.

So he swallowed his freak-out and rolled his eyes and stood to give Shane a little shove on his way to the lectern and opened by saying: “I am glad you have a chance to see what I have known for many years: the Perfect Shane Hollander is actually very sore loser.” And they laughed and Ilya knew he’d done the right thing and Shane was safe and what more could he ask for?

He was nailing it. A fully unbiased opinion. There were laughs, there was honesty, there were susurrations of approval. He’d fleshed out the story of the hack, bulked it out with buckwheat and barley by telling them how ripped open and raw it had made him. He acquitted Maxim, and told them all he’d returned to therapy and was not ashamed of it. He conducted them to a crescendo, joking that he’d only befriended Hollander to get access to Yuna’s organizational and lobbying skills, earning him the loudest roars of the night.

And then he said: “I wish my mama could be here too,” and everyone shut the fuck up in a hurry. “Irina Rozanova was … she was so funny. She was everyone’s favorite person, the person you hope you are seated next to at some big fancy dinner like this. All the light bulbs burned brighter when she was around. But she had sad times too. We all have sad times, yes, but not all like hers.”

He looked around the room, careful to spread out his attention. Politicians; hockey players; the NHL executives that Yuna refused to speak to, having abrogated her respect for them after they’d diplomatically declined to involve themselves in Ilya’s immigration woes, citing fears of geopolitical escalation; business people hoping to tie their logo to two men perpetually in the headlines; men and women with so much money they didn’t know what to do with it all. He’d told himself in rehearsals that it didn’t matter if they believed him, it mattered if they gave them money to do some good. But that was a lie. Now he needed them to believe him.

“Mama had depression. And that does not make her weak. It made her stronger than every single person in this room. Every hard day you have had, you multiply it by ten. Sometimes a hundred. And most of the time, she still got out of the bed and put on her sing-song voice and made us all laugh.”

The cue card beneath him had ‘multiply’ written on it. His handwriting for the Latin alphabet had no personality. Why would it? He typed everything, had written barely a hundred words of English since he left formal lessons behind in Moscow. He flipped cards. Winter. Impression. Clumsy.

“One winter, we were skating at the pond in the park. Mama was trying to teach me figure skating tricks: a two-foot spin. I am young, not big Stanley Cup winner yet, so I am falling, falling, falling, every time. And she is doing impressions of me, my clumsy feet and scared face, and we are laughing so hard my stomach is hurting. And the next day was the first time I remember her having thousand-times harder day, when she does not leave bedroom.

“Depression is not choosing to be weak. It can happen to any person, even a strong person, laughing person, like Mama. And she is having more and more thousand-times harder days, many in a row sometimes, for weeks. But Mama did not have help. I wish that she also had a Maxim.”

He turned to acknowledge Maxim, which was when it all went to shit. Because he’d practiced this speech enough times that he could talk about Mama without crying. Except now Shane had turned his seat one-eighty, his plate of fish cold and untouched behind him, and by looking over towards Maxim, Ilya saw the look on Shane’s face while the rest of the room could only see his back. Adoration. Pride. The lips moving silently: ya tebya lyublyu.

There was supposed to be a joke here, an up to amplify the crash, but whatever it had been, those words no longer came to him in either language. When Ilya spoke again, there was no hiding the catch in his chest. “And one time, the thousand-times harder day became a ten-thousand times harder day, and I lose my beautiful, funny Mama forever.”

He stopped to take a breath, but the unnatural silence in a room of four hundred people stole it back. “This is why we are here tonight. To help people having thousand-times harder days, and ten-thousand times harder days.” There was wetness on his cheeks and snot pooling in his sinuses and it was all Shane’s fault, his too-lovely Shane. “So we do not lose more people, people who keep trying and trying and are so brilliant and so wonderful, but are also so tired and so sad. Mama, ya tebya lyublyu.”

There was clapping, which there was supposed to be, and people looking at him, which they were supposed to do, but he wished they wouldn’t. Wished they would all politely file out of the room and the last one out would switch the chandelier lights off and let him sit on the floor in his dry-cleaned pants and put his head in Shane’s lap. Maybe Sveta recognized this. Maybe that’s why she got there first, darting in front of Shane before Ilya collapsed in his arms.

"Molodets, Ilyusha,” she whispered, squeezing him so hard his ribs hurt, before passing him along to Shane, who pulled him in for half a millisecond before slapping his back and stepping away. He was grateful for what he received, he was.

That was it, he had done it, and now he could sink back into his chair and pick at the last of his wilted chard for a minute until his head had cleared enough to make people laugh again. Except for Yuna, standing there wearing Jason Wu and Baltic amber hair combs that Ilya had bought in a boutique on Kholodilny Lane and packed in a suitcase and brought to Canada, and she was putting her arms around him, which was not part of the plan at all.

No no no, he thought, Shane will worry, he will panic. This is too much, too obvious, you are not supposed to care like this. A clear violation of Ground Rules. Ref, blow the whistle. There is a run sheet in twenty-four hour time that you wrote that says you should be preparing the photo lines now.

She held him so carefully. Not gently, not like he was fragile. Like he was shiny and expensive, or rare. Like he had value. And she didn’t let go, long past the dictates of politeness and etiquette. Long enough for dangerous hope to bloom in his chest, behind the rib Sveta had possibly broken: maybe I can keep her and David and Shane forever.

It was late late when they climbed into bed. Not Hollander-late, when the clubs were just opening. Rozanov-late, well after the bars were calling last rounds. There had been so many photographs and hands to shake and compliments to bear. The players from America and Montreal were staying in the hotel upstairs, so it was basic hosting decency for Ilya and Shane to stay for another few rounds. Then they’d punched each other on the shoulders and taken separate cars to the apartment building in Little Italy, where they had a blandly furnished apartment leased by Miura Holdings Pty. Ltd., which, if researched, would show one David Hollander as the sole proprietor, registered on September 27 once they’d learned of the swirling hoard of paparazzi outside Ilya’s gates. And by the time they’d removed all their fussy clothing and jerked each other off in the shower in the most luxurious, unhurried, delectable way, it was closer to sunrise than to midnight.

“I hope Yuna did not make you anxious. I tried to remind her of Ground Rules, but she would not leave me alone, after speech.”

“Yeah, I asked her to stay with you,” Shane said, reaching up to brush Ilya’s cheek. “Since I couldn’t.”

“I think you want me to think it is because you care for me, but I know the truth. Did you get rid of her so you could quiz Carmichael?”

“Maybe?”

Ilya jostled him. “Come on, Hollander. Spill.”

“He swears he didn’t start it. But apparently he was a moderator on the Reddit for a while.”

“Gospodi Isuse. I still do not know whether to thank him or kill him.”

“I think, on the whole, we should be grateful he has this to pour his energy into. Like, he’s a nice guy, but I can see him making flat earth videos.”

“What the fuck is ‘flat earth?’”

“Nothing!” Shane answered, too quickly. “But I did get a full rundown of the Jilya evidence. Hot, serious, very boring, Canadian, public figure, older — which, honestly, fucking rude —”

Shane lifted his head, and even in the dark Ilya could tell he was scowling. “It is true!”

“— hockey fan, very sweet, anxious, can’t come out until he’s retired.”

“Hot. Very hot.”

“I said that.”

“You should be saying it more than once. I know I did. I tell Maxim every week: you do not understand how pretty this man is. Helen of Troy. Face that launched a thousand dick pics.”

“Jesus Christ. He doesn’t get paid enough for treating you.”

Ilya shrugged. “I try to tip, but Canadians are prideful of their Medicare. It is almost Communist, honestly.”

“You’re so American. It’s socialist.”

“I am Canadian,” Ilya huffed. “Almost. Is very offensive to my people to call me American.”

“I think your boyfriend would be offended if you called him a Communist. Justin’s got an election this year, you know.” Shane nestled back into Ilya’s collarbone, exactly the position he’d been pining for all night. “It was good to meet him.”

There were too many men for Ilya to keep track of these pronouns. Also, he’d been awake for twenty-two hours. “You met Justin? Or Carmichael?”

“Maxim. I felt kinda starstruck, meeting someone you’ve talked about so much. Same with Svetlana, she was really nice.”

“This is how she operates. First two years, nicest person ever, so kind, so friendly. Then bam, next two decades she is calling you an idiot.”

Shane hummed thoughtfully. “Have you considered that maybe it’s just that you’re an idiot?”

“Oh. Wow. Who is rude now? Did you two make secret plan? Bully poor Ilya?”

“It's hardly a secret.” Ilya tugged on Shane’s earlobe. “We’re gonna have dinner in New York when I’m there next month. And I thought … maybe she could visit us? This summer?”

The dreams he’d had: Shane and Sveta mocking him, Ilya pouting until Shane kissed his cheek, the two of them comparing the most boring hockey books ever written in front of the fire while Ilya slowly withered from lack of affection. They were right there, no big deal at all. How had he ended up like this, a reformed sybarite reduced to these wholesome Boy Scout infatuations? “I would like that. Very much.”

“I’ll ask her. Since I’ve got another two years before she turns on me. Your team was really nice too.”

“Yes, they are nice people. Cannot find puck very often, but nice. Your team was really drunk.”

Shane was supposed to laugh at that, in his open easy way. All Ilya got was a frown pressed into his chest. “They were. I wish they hadn't been.”

“Hey, dorogoy, it was an open bar, yes? This is what people do.”

“Yeah, I just … I dunno. It annoyed me.”

“Annoyed you like missed shot, or annoyed you like losing game?”

“Somewhere in between? I dunno, it’s stupid.”

“Not stupid.”

Ilya, these things you want, they are not stupid. They are important to you. And you are not giving your boyfriend a chance to say yes or no. Why is this? Do you not trust him? Do you not think he wants to know what you dream of? Do you not think you are as important as he is? You are not helping yourself, or him. You must talk to him about what you want.

“Not stupid,” Ilya repeated, kissing the top of Shane’s head.

“This is my favorite part of today,” Shane said, nuzzling down. It wasn’t saying much, because Shane hated parties and drinking and meeting lots of people and public speaking and staying up too late and clothes with weird textures and the threat of anyone realizing there was an anomalous gravitational pull between Ilya’s eyes and Shane’s mouth. That didn’t mean Ilya wasn’t going to enclose this moment in bubble wrap and store it with his precious things. Within a minute, there was a tiny patch of drool on his pec. No one was talking any more tonight.

Chapter 6: Chirping Tallies and Wish Lists

Without the ongoing spectre of his nationality, after six months of dissecting his life, and lacking any further rumors on the identity of his boyfriend, the only remaining angle left to capitalize on the name of Ilya Rozanov was to make grand assumptions about his expectations for his new team.

Centaurs’ Lacklustre Close of Season Ends Rozanov’s Comeback Dreams, one headline remarked. Rozanov Unable to Cap Horrific Year With Playoffs. Is Rozanov Regretting His Ottawa Move? Rozanov’s Dismay: Centaurs Unable to Deliver for Their Beleaguered Captain.

It was plain rude. Did they think he was an idiot? Did they think he had been expecting to carry a kludge of a franchise on his own two shoulders for eighty-two games and come out in the top three of the division? The same division that Hollander played in? The same division that Boston, the team he’d spent seven years drilling into the best players they could be, played in? That division?

Is Love Enough? How Will Centaurs Keep Rozanov Without Playoffs Promise?

Yes. Yes, they thought he was an idiot.

They did not write about the way he had made weight-room sessions mandatory after morning practice on non-game days, and instituted a rota of who controlled the aux cord, and made them spot each other, and used his clout and the eternal trump card “team bonding” to make the trainers wait outside, and joked and jostled the team until they did, jokes aside, bond.

They did not write about the clips he made, cutting the film on his MacBook Air in his big empty house with all the lights turned on while he waited for Shane to call. They did not write about the post-post-game film meetings, after they had reviewed with Coach Stopczynski, and emerged with their brains locked up on their failings, when Ilya withdrew his laptop in the locker room and played the clips of his boys doing the things he wanted to see more of. Lloyd’s hairpin turn, and Auclair’s snappy pass, and Dykstra’s anticipation of where the play would head. He made them clap and cheer each other until these memories overwhelmed their blunders.

They did write about the Hayes trade: in a hundred words that said nothing at all, the web page containing more ads than news. Sveta had called him, in December, after she watched Toronto play Boston at the Garden, and said Hayes had something, and he’d pulled his captaincy card and made Coach Stopczynski watch Hayes’ ice time, the little of it he received, until they were aligned on wanting him. They did not write about the fact he’d amped up the team for weeks, praised Hayes to the lofty ceilings, or the way the team was jumping out of their skin with excitement when their new goaltender joined them for the first time.

They did not write about the AHL games he watched, observing who had fire and guts, watching which of the babymen improved and which stayed stagnant. They didn’t see the debate he had about who to bring up next year, in the meeting he wasn’t invited to but crashed anyway, that he won the fight for Holmberg and Young, lost the fight for Haas, and couldn’t convince them to trade Larouche for someone with more spark.

He wasn’t a fucking idiot. It was never going to be this year, and not next year either. By the 2020 season, if luck and trades and injuries went their way, they might be able to claw their way to the playoffs. And then, once they knew it was possible, he would push and scream and burn the ice down until they were holding the Cup. But they had to break the barrier first, had to make it to the playoffs to understand they were capable of it, and to lose their first playoff to make them admit they coveted it.

Bood shoved him on the shoulder as they sat side-by-side to pull on their skates. “How the fuck did you all keep playing into June? I’m wrecked.”

"We played wrecked. Stanley Cup is filled with empty bottles of smelling salts, cortisone, and Toradol. You would think it is worth it, if we had wild card slot.”

"Fuckin’ a. 2020?”

"2020. And next season, we practice stamina, so you do not think about quitting before game with fucking Buffalo.”

"You’re a monster,” Bood groaned, but his eyes were hungry.

Bood was essential to The Plan. He’d watched, arms folded, on the sides for weeks after Ilya swept over the Bell Sensplex and the Canadian Tire Centre like a tsunami of enthusiasm. After their first week of the season, Ilya having returned from bisexual-leave (as the team had dubbed his three days off, once they realized he wasn’t going to shatter), Bood had taken him aside. They were waiting to board their flight at Logan, after they’d lost 1-4, after Ilya had declined to answer ten thousand questions about his family, his boyfriend, his therapist, his Motherland, and finally got the opportunity to wax poetic in front of a camera about Dykstra and Chouinard’s defensive plays in the second period.

"I see it now,” Bood had said, the two of them hunched on too-narrow seats at an empty gate. “I get it. You think you can actually build this team into something, hey?”

"Yes. Do you?”

"I always wanted to, I just never knew how, yeah?”

Good. This was good, he had thought. Bood was not standoffish or officious. He’d been measuring. To rebuild (or just build, factually speaking) a team, he needed the first brick.

"We do it together then?”

And they’d sat at the back of the plane together, emanating repellent energy to anyone else who approached, while Ilya laid out his five-year plan, and opened Bood’s eyes to the eviscerating weaknesses in the team that a friend couldn’t call out, but a captain could, and categorized which were fixable and which were fatal. His first conspirator, his first apostle. A perfect first brick.

"Yes, but I am your monster. Better the devil wearing your jersey than another team’s, yes?”

"I dream of you sometimes. Not like that,” Bood snorted, at Ilya’s suggestive leer. “Like a bogeyman. Or a slenderman. Hissing at me to ‘skate faster, you fucking coward.’”

"Well, if you were not such a coward afraid of blood and bruises, I would stop haunting you, no?” Ilya stood on the bench, helmet and mouth guard in hand and yelled at his mostly-equipped team: “Alright, fuckers, listen up!”

A limp “Herd!” from Patterson was the only response.

"I said LISTEN UP! ÉCOUTEZ-MOI, horsemen! VNIMATEL’NO SLUSHAYTE!” he roared, spittle flying, this room used to his patois of whichever language he felt like choosing.

"HERD!” they yelled back, but their hearts weren’t in it.

"You think you are tired now? Ten days left, you are already thinking about lying on beach with pink cocktails? WE ARE NOT DONE YET!”

"HERD!”

"There are seven weeks of playoffs coming. I am going to make every one of you train harder than you have ever trained for each one of those weeks! You must EARN your spring vacation! SEVEN GAMES we have left. Each one we win, is one week less of bag skates. Do you HEAR ME?”

"HERD!”

"Can we beat these Buffalo FUCKS?”

"YES!”

"I SWEAR to you, we are going to bring the Cup to Ottawa in next five years. Will you be here when we do?”

"YES!”

"I will skate tonight like I fucking MEAN IT. Will you?”

"YES!”

"Fucking PROVE IT!” he screamed, and they screamed back, a sound beyond words. They were tired. He was tired. The frisson wasn’t there. But it’d have to do.

Ilya stood on the edge of the ice and bumped his helmet against each player as they trooped on, exhausted and excited, smelling of fresh sweat and cold sweat and physio tape. God, he was tired. But he meant what he fucking said, he was going to follow through, even if it would prevent him from locking himself in Shane’s apartment for two months like some sort of sex-crazed hermit.

By the time he was crouched on the ice, Bood and Larouche by his sides, Ilya was already disobeying his own orders, and thinking about making Shane come home from a playoff game without showering, so he could lick that victory sweat from each of his rib bones.

"I’ll go easy on you, Rozanov,” Waldblum, Buffalo’s centre, sneered. “Wouldn’t want my name in those therapy notes when you go home crying like a pussy.”

They hadn’t faced Buffalo yet this season, their only two games in the dying breaths before playoffs. He’d catalogued a full range of chirps since September, and not one of them had shaken him. Especially not this repetitive shit. Some days he wondered if there was a group chat of ninety-two centres, everyone but his team and Shane, pooling their pathetic attempts to come up with some way to throw him off.

"Ah, but that would require me to remember your name. You are too dull to stick in my brain. Is it Waller? Wilson?”

He won the face-off, snapped it over to Bood, and raced forward, through the chicane of defenders, in position for the next pass, except — fucking again — Larouche misread the play and wasn’t there when Dykstra wanted to pass. Ilya slammed into the Buffalo LW — none of these shits deserved the energy of remembering their names — and cradled the puck away, back to Chouinard, over to Larouche, back to Ilya, swerving around the goal, and — oooof. Right into the boards. Where the fuck was the rest of his team?

They pushed and pressed the rest of their shift, but couldn’t get it together. From the bench, he watched Hayes make a screaming save and said a little thank-you to God. Or Svetlana. Same difference. Auclair got a few shots on goal, but he was still aiming too low, motherfucker. How many times had Ilya drilled them? Not enough, clearly. The goal is bigger than you think.

“Cocksucker,” Waldblum-Waller-Wilson muttered when they met again. Perhaps Ilya should actively encourage the rest of the league to begin conspiring over chirps, if this was the best this douche could come up with. Did he think Ilya hadn’t heard this literally one hundred and eighty-nine times this season? The team kept a score of notches in the locker room; and that was just the home ice tally.

In fact, perhaps he could suggest this idea to Shane, get him to start the syndicate. He’d be so into it: corralling data into spreadsheets, devising a ranking system for which insults managed to rattle Ilya, pulling statistics to corroborate his hunches. God, that’d be hot. Ilya had a mental flash of Excel blue light reflected in Shane’s glasses, and was not ashamed to admit it was enough to bring him half-hard.

"Bood? One-ninety.”

Ilya was already racing away by the time his brain processed the sound of Bood’s cackle and the blank befuddlement on his opponent’s face. They made it three passes before they lost possession, crowding around the other goal. The preemptive tingle went down Ilya’s spine after forty seconds of jostling: here we go.

And just like that, Chouinard found an angle, God bless him, and it ricocheted up to Ilya, hovering at the blue line, and he skated like a week off with Shane depended on it. That is: like his life depended on it.

He was tired, but so was everyone else, so he made it to the offensive zone with clear air in his wake, deked, and slotted it home in the gap, top shelf. The crowd roared, his team roared, and in Ilya’s living room, probably lying on Ilya’s couch with Ottawa on the television and Montreal on his laptop (if it was vice versa, they would be having words), he hoped Shane was roaring. With that in mind, Ilya winked at the cameras before hopping the boards again.

When they went back in for intermission, Ilya theatrically picked up the Sharpie from his cubby and added another two notches to the tally on the wall. It had been sketched to look like a membership card, complete with a doodle of a smiling penis as the logo and the title Cocksucker Loyalty Program. “Closing in on two hundred, boys!”

He checked his notifications, as had become a habit since September. Well, more of a habit. A constant, subconscious tic.

Fam

26 Mar 2019 at 19:43

Ilya

https://espn.com/nhl/story/id/
6112333/hollander-pulling-a-leaf-from-rozanovs-book

💸💸💸

always copying me, 💖 Jane

Jane's Mama

Broken clock is right twice a day I guess 🤷‍♀️

💖 Jane

26 Mar 2019 at 19:25

💖 Jane

Auclair is aiming too low

😉 back at you

Their first line RW is drifting left, maybe an injury on the right side? Push your plays down that wing

Ilya

i love it when you talk dirty to me

Two cubbies down, Chouinard whistled. “Hollander really carries Montreal, huh?”

"Hey, brains on this game!”

"You’re literally on your phone!” Chouinard yelled back.

"This is different. I am sexting!” he pouted, to a chorus of boos.

They managed to hold on, just, for a 2-1 victory, but it was a close thing, with the entire third period spent in the defensive zone. Good enough. Ilya left the nitpicking for Coach Stopczynski to dole out, and cheered his boys as they showered and dressed. He knew anger didn’t work. He knew disappointment didn’t work. They needed faith and love, even when they were preparing to finish the season with a point score that was guaranteed to be sub-65. Especially when they were preparing to finish the season with a point score that was guaranteed be sub-65.

Not tonight, you’re tired, he reminded himself on the drive home. He hadn’t been allowed to bring it up yesterday, because that was when Shane had arrived and they needed to fuck and kiss and hold each other, to remind each other of the reality of each others’ existence before Ilya jammed a wedge between them. He hadn’t been allowed to bring it up today, because it was game day, and his spare time was doled out in thirty minute intervals, not long enough for Hard Conversations. He wasn’t allowed to bring it up tonight, because they’d be sleepy and sluggish, minds too close to addled. Tomorrow was the day.

He’d thought for all these months that he was being disciplined. Pushing back against the idea of lazy, of careless. Proving to himself that he was not the silhouette his papa had outlined him in, the pencil markings that had persisted beyond the grave. His mind was focused, sharp. He could ignore the churlish grousings that popped into his head, whack them down with reminders of the security blanket that was the ten-year plan, and thoughts of Shane: what Shane wanted, what Shane needed.

Until he found himself composing texts that he never sent, his discipline ablating, theses of sorry and I just and it’s silly of me. The way he had described it to Maxim was: “the anxiety of not saying it is worse than the anxiety of saying it,” and Maxim had nodded, with empathy, and without a shred of I’ve-been-telling-you-so-for-the-last-year.

Ilya took the exit for Moodie Drive, the headlights illuminating grass fields on either side. Too early for new growth, but warm enough for last year’s stalks to thaw out each day. A wide, wide road, all to himself. Many nights he wished he’d bought further out of the city, far enough out to rev his engine and feel the acceleration pin him back and let the sleeping Ontario farmlands and lakes zip by and pretend he was the only man awake in the province.

Not tonight. Tonight Shane, his Shane, was waiting for him in the big empty house they didn’t spend enough time together in; calling out: “Hey babe!” when Ilya opened the door, lying on the couch in Adidas sweatpants and the flannel shirt Ilya had nicked from the cottage last summer and the kind of socks grandparents would be thrilled to receive, slippers left neatly in parallel on the rug; rising on his elbows to kiss Ilya’s lips and rub their noses together and let their eyelashes intertwine.

“I watched the news tonight. Polls aren’t looking great for your boyfriend.”

“Please, I beg you, no Jilya talk tonight. People are beginning to forget, do not jinx it.”

"How about this then: I should get an assist point for telling you to focus on the left wing,” Shane said, his left eye full of mirth. Probably his right too, but Ilya was pulled too close to check.

"Hmmm, yes. Okay. One assist for Hollander tonight, goal and assist for Rozanov. I win.”

"I win. I scored an assist while I was benched. In a different city to my team. Lying down.”

"No no. It is an impressive assist, yes. But no goal, so … too bad.”

"At least I’m going to the playoffs.”

Ilya Rozanov was not known for being a patient man. One day, he’d release a memoir (one that Shane would be forbidden from proofreading, since it had the potential to be the least-boring hockey book of all time), and he would accept apologies from all and sundry for this slight upon his character. Look at him: waiting for Shane to realize he was gay, a ten-year plan, a long-distance relationship, a medium-distance relationship, rebuilding two franchises, and now: this. He was storing all Shane’s ribbing about heading to the playoffs and quietly, stealthily, letting them accumulate, until he could unleash the mother of all victory laps on the day Ottawa knocked Montreal out of the playoffs and rub Shane’s nose in it forever.

"Well, I am going to watch you score playoffs goals in your apartment knowing that when you get home that night I get to fuck you against the wall. I think this is better, no?”

"I wouldn’t know, I’ve never had a boyfriend who got further into postseason than me.” Shane was so adorably self-satisfied with his little goading. Like it would distract Ilya, instead of focus him.

"Tell me truth now, moy myasnik.” Ilya settled across Shane’s thighs and held his wrists down. “When you watched me score breakaway goal: did you clap? Did you get hard? Did you touch yourself?” And then, watching Shane’s face: “Oh, you did!”

"Fuck off,” Shane blushed, but it was far too late to hide how eyes had widened.

"Hmm, no. I will not. Instead I will carry you upstairs and you will show me what you did, yes? Slow-motion replay? And I will be commentator.”

Ilya woke after just a few hours. His legs, under the duvet, were warm and restless. Shane’s face was smooshed against his right tricep, radiating heat like a tiny fireplace. The rest of his skin was pleasantly cold, the cracked window letting in stiff starched night air and the sound of the Ottawa River rushing with the spring thaw.

He’d thought it was going to be impossible to love like he loved. To keep going, every day, with practices and gutter cleanings and a fussy electrical circuit that tripped if they used the blender and the dishwasher at the same time, while Shane routinely made him want to weep and squeal and hug and fuck by doing nothing more than being his sincere little uptight self. He’d thought the hard part would be attempting normality nestled in between so much bliss.

No, the hard part was knowing you were going to hurt your boyfriend’s feelings today, and resolving to do it anyway.

At least they had this, this week together. Otherwise he never would have done it. Forty-eight hour snatches were too short for feelings beyond horny, sleepy, preemptively sad, horny again, gooey-sweet, hungry, playful, tired, middle-of-the-night passionate, lazily adoring, aching loneliness. But God, or Mama, had sent him an omen. An omen shaped in the form of a week’s rest off the ice for Montreal’s star centre before the playoffs began; a week Shane had asked to spend in silent retreat, that old chestnut, instead of travelling with the team; a request granted because Shane was being coy about renewing his contract; a coyness that stoked the fears of Montreal management after Ilya had ‘hoodwinked’ Boston last year. Thanks God, thanks Mama.

A little patch of Ilya’s skin was rhythmically warmed and goose prickled by the humidity of Shane’s exhalations. You are so fucking strong, he remembered Shane saying. He wouldn’t be going back to sleep.

Ilya rose onto his right elbow, still cushioning Shane’s face, and rapidly swapped arm for pillow so Shane wouldn’t wake. The manoeuvre made him think of Indiana Jones, swapping the idol with a bag of sand. He’d watched that in Yefim’s apartment, Alexei’s friend, on a clunky Elektronika VM-12 that had been old, even then, on a day when Mama hadn’t been able to get out of bed, and Alexei had been ordered to get his bratik out of the house. Back in the days when he still had a mama, still had a brother, one who didn’t jump at the chance to call Ilya a pedik or give an interview on RT expressing his shame and disgust.

Down the stairs, soft-heeled in a sweatshirt and underwear and socks, cavernous darkness except for the clustered pendant lights in the kitchen. A rice cooker that Ilya had not purchased sat on the bench, and protein powder that he thought tasted like socks was in his cupboard (he tried not to draw a correlative line between Shane’s penchant for sock-flavored smoothies and Shane’s enthusiasm for tasting Ilya’s dick), and more than fifty percent of the freezer was taken up by rinsed and dried and flattened bundles of kale; all the appurtenances of being Shane Hollander’s boyfriend that comforted him daily. He steeped a pot of strong black tea and thought: how would Shane do this?

It was the fucking printer that betrayed him. E4 error: paper jam. Ilya Rozanov, world class menace, threatened it, and he swore it was smirking at him. There was sass in the blinking of the LED indicators. He ranted under his breath, making entirely serious threats to replace it unless it got its act together, while he ripped the crumpled paper free and reset the machine. It came back to life with an obscenely loud chirrup, the traitorous beast, one that summoned Shane to the study doorway a minute later, tousle-haired and puffy eyed and beautiful.

“Babe?” Shane asked, all sticky-mouthed and slurring. “What’s going on?”

“I could not sleep, dorogoy. Is okay, yes? Come, I will tuck you in.”

But Shane didn’t budge, even as Ilya rubbed his arms and kissed his ear. “Something’s going on with you. You’ve been all … frowny.”

“Frowny? I am not frowny, you are the frowny man.”

“Well, yeah, that's how I know something's wrong,” Shane said, frowning, true to form. “Please don’t lie to me, moy lyubimyy.”

His attentive Shane, with Yuna’s ability to analyze the play, and David’s ability to prod the weaknesses. Moy lyubimyy. It was unfair, that’s what it was. “Okay, there is a thingy on my mind. We will talk tomorrow, yes? A very boring man sends me many studies saying REM sleep is most important for recovery.”

Shane swallowed. Ilya felt fear in his throat. He knew that face. It was the brave face. “There’s a thing on my mind too.”

Fuck. He’d noticed it, of course he had. Ilya paid more attention to Shane’s moods than which city he was currently sleeping in, what time the bus was leaving, whether that pain was a bruise or a break. But he’d thought Shane’s fidgeting was a reflection of Ilya’s failure to hide his own worries. Not this. Not something else entirely.

It was good while it lasted, he thought. And, separately: fuck off, Filipp.

“What is wrong, sweetheart?”

“No, you go first.”

“No no, Shane, tell me.”

“Ilya, you brought it up first.”

“But you are one with panic attacks, yes? It is not good for you, to be holding this inside.”

“You’re the one who can’t sleep, you ass.”

They glared at each other, but Ilya held firm. Waited for the tears to start welling, threatening to spill down Shane’s cheeks so he could take him in his arms and coerce his secrets out.

Instead, Shane said: “Arm wrestle.” It was not a question.

“Loser goes first.”

“Prepare to talk, neudachnik.”

“I should not have taught you chirps,” Ilya muttered, even as his heart swelled, reliably as ever, at the sound of Russian from Shane’s mouth.

They braced on either side of the kitchen island and gripped each other’s hand. “3 … 2 … 1 ….”

Ilya realized within milliseconds that he should have picked the competition. He’d run his recovery routine, of course: chocolate milk, flush ride, cold tub, foam rolling, stretches, PowerDots, the whole shebang. But he’d been off the ice for five hours. Shane had been off the ice for fifty-three hours. His scheming, evil, lovely Shane.

“Start talking, Rozanov,” his cruel boyfriend said, crushing Ilya’s hand onto the granite and staring him down.

“You cheat. This is dirty trick,” Ilya grumbled. But even so, he went to retrieve the papers from his study. “You will need glasses.”

He waited by the stools as Shane scurried off to the living room, unable to tune out the ache in his soul that made him tremble. His Shane returned wearing glasses and the flannel shirt Ilya had stripped off him and left discarded on the couch and his pendant, nestled between his pecs and Ilya wanted to stop time entirely and just enjoy this sight.

You do not deserve him. How dare you ask him to change for you. How can you risk losing him?

It is time to be a grown-up, and now it was his own voice in his head, not Maxim’s. Ilyusha knew he should not ask for things. Now we teach him that it is important.

“Sit. I want you to read this. Please.”

Shane glanced down, only long enough to read the first line or two, and snaked his arm around Ilya’s waist. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. You read this, then there is … list. You will understand. In February entry. And then, we will talk.”

“Okay.” Shane’s face was turned up towards him, chin on his side. “I love you.”

“I love you too, dorogoy. I will be in study, yes? I must translate something.”

“Hey, wait.” Shane tugged at his hand before Ilya could leave. “Gimme a kiss.”

He tried to imbue it with all the tenderness and trust and love he could muster. The years behind them and however much time they had left ahead: an hour, a month, a lifetime. But there was only so much a kiss could do.

There was no way to estimate how many people had read this document: thousands? Tens of thousands? Shane was more welcome to Ilya’s secrets than any one of them. But this wasn’t some nosy fuck scrolling on their phone for the voyeuristic thrill of cracking open a stranger’s brain. This was his boyfriend, unearthing the parts that Ilya had wanted to excise from himself.

That wasn’t all of it, not by a long shot. But it was the section that terrified him most, the idea of Shane’s eyes absorbing these words. His own desires, not in perfect alignment with Shane’s. Maxim’s assertion, received by Ilya like a career-ending injury, that they would need to compromise. Shane did not compromise. Shane was the least compromising person known to mankind. He was also perfect, absolutely fucking perfect. Ilya was the one who needed to compromise. Shane didn’t deserve to be subjected to Ilya’s whining.

It was probably fortuitous that Shane had come downstairs before Ilya had time to fully prepare. Translating his list took up just enough brain power to prevent him from banging his head against the walls. Although it was a near thing.

His Latin script had personality tonight. The overly-focused, hesitant personality of a five-year-old learning their letters, both too precise and shaky.

“Ilya?” Shane called out. His voice, as well; too precise and shaky.

“Coming.” Ilya set the notebook page, worn and torn like an ancient artefact, dotted in dried tear stains, down in front of Shane. His lovely mouth was sucking on the pendant that Ilya had bought with him in mind and those fingers, the hands stupidly familiar, smoothed over the paper and followed along with the words.

I want to build a swimming platform on the lake at Shane’s cottage.

I want Shane’s cottage to be our cottage.

I want to share a bed every night.

I want to adopt four dogs and four cats.

I want to renovate a house so it is perfect for both of us.

I want to hold Shane’s hand and kiss him in public.

I want to meet Rose Landry and kiss Shane in front of her and I want to annoy Hayden Pike by being the sweetest, most affectionate boyfriend ever in front of him.

I want everyone I ever meet to know that Shane loves me and I love Shane.

I don’t want to wait until we retire to marry Shane.

I want to change the plan.

I want to join Yuna and David in the family seats and yell Shane’s name.

I want to hug on the ice with all the other families next time one of us wins the Stanley Cup.

I want to have children with Shane before he retires, so we are not 50-year-olds with toddlers and four bad knees.

Shane pushed the stool back so roughly it shrieked against the floor, and before Ilya could even wince, Shane had lifted him onto the kitchen island and was squeezing him so hard it deserved a penalty for roughing. “Babe, babe, babe,” he whispered into Ilya’s hair, and rocked them both side to side with Ilya’s legs wrapped around his waist.

Oh, it was good to be Shane Hollander’s babe. There was nothing better than having his nose crushed against Shane’s throat and feeling the vibrations of Shane’s murmuring resonate into his skull. Maybe it would all be okay.

Things can always get worse.

Fuck off, Filipp.

“I should’ve gone first,” Shane said. “Now you’re going to beat me at this too.”

“Tell me, Hollander.”

“I want to change the plan too.”

Yes yes yes, he thought.

No no no, he thought.

Ilya pulled his head back, but couldn’t find a single trace of impending panic on Shane’s face. No, instead there was his dopey little crooked smile. “You have never said this.”

Shane pulled one of Ilya’s favorite laughs out of his catalogue, the one that was so outraged at the audacity of whatever Ilya just said that his reaction rolled beyond anger and into hilarity. “Because you’re always such a stickler for the plan! ‘Hollander, I like your plan. Hollander, plan is perfect. Small hiccup, but plan is still good.’”

“It is a good plan. Is my fault for …. Shane, you never change plans. Very strict, very boring. I did not want you to be upset.”

Shane stroked his face. The size of their hands, the size of their heads; they had always matched. Cinderella’s slipper. “I can’t read minds, Ilya, I thought you wanted the plan, that’s why I didn’t say it sooner.”

“Are you sure you cannot read minds? Because you always know when to do that thing … with your tongue.”

“Shut up, you idiot.” He pulled Ilya’s head into his neck again. Idiot didn’t sound like stupid, fuck-up, useless, when Shane said it. It sounded like I love you so much you drive me crazy. “I can’t spend another decade like this. I hated pretending, that day, when it leaked. I wanted to go on TV and say: ‘That’s my guy. Back the fuck off.’”

He thought of no no no, and told himself to accept the yes yes yes that Shane sounded so sure of.

He thought of Shane, draped over over his chest, hissing at the cameras that followed Ilya for months: “mine, mine, mine.”

“That day was not so bad, really. I did not think so many people would be so nice. Foundation launch. That was the hardest.”

“I’m sorry, malysh. I’m so sorry.” Shane’s hands were in his hair and now it’d be all floofy and ridiculous, but he had never, not once, given a shit about that like he used to when he had sex first and asked for names afterwards. “I wish you’d told me earlier.”

“Is okay. My fault.”

“No, not your fault. Remember what you said? This is how little Ilya learned to protect himself. I should’ve been brave sooner, I just … I used to think coming out would be the scariest thing ever.”

“‘Used to?’” Ilya asked, wishing for the cauterizing flatness of Shane’s media persona, not this sceptical hope in an accent that had taught him optimism was folly.

“Yeah. And now I think waiting ten years to hold your hand is scarier than not holding your hand. I’m sorry it took me so long, I should’ve been braver, I should’ve said this … months ago.”

The anxiety of not saying it is worse than the anxiety of saying it, he’d told Maxim. He wondered if there were such things as soulmates. He wondered if God really had made Shane, just for him, and Ilya, just for Shane. It seemed more and more likely, with the way Ilya’s nose fit just so between the tendons of Shane’s neck.

“Shh, my love. You are brave. I have told you this, I do not lie. Yes? Yes. Okay, so, what is your new plan?”

“Our new plan.” Shane stretched one arm across the granite to grab the abandoned papers, and cleared his throat theatrically. “I remind you: ‘All healthy relationships contain compromise.’”

“You screech like cat if I put wooden spoons in dishwasher.”

“Th—”

“TV volume must always be multiple of three.”

“N—”

“Do you remember what happened when I fell asleep on your side of bed? I have nightmares, still.”

Shane covered Ilya’s mouth with a hand, and didn’t even let go when he licked it.

“Those things don’t matter. Well, maybe … they kind of make my brain go itchy. But this,” he flapped Ilya’s list, “this matters.”

He regained the ability to speak when Shane wiped his palm on his sleeve. “So what would you say if I wanted TV volume in multiple of five?”

“I would say we can set to it multiples of fifteen, duh. That one’s easy.”

“Oh, so you can do math?”

Instead of rising to the bait, Shane cupped Ilya’s face in his hands, thumbs hard along the cheekbones. His Shane, so beautiful and earnest, it was blinding to look at even in warm diffused light and deep shadows. “I think we spent so much time pretending we didn’t love each other, that now we’re scared to hurt each other.”

“Fuck. Shane.”

“We’ll practice, yeah? At compromising.” Shane’s glasses slid down his nose when he looked at the list on the counter. “We can build a swimming platform, but you’re responsible for cleaning the bird shit off it.”

“Okay.” Ilya nudged the glasses back up.

“One pet.”

“Four pets.”

“One pet to start.”

“So long as it is a dog.”

“Deal.”

“What about big things? Hiding? Not hiding? Holding hands? How do we make new plan?”

“Oh, shit,” Shane laughed, so free and easy. Like they weren’t all shaky and tender in barely any clothes, sitting in the almost-dark of the kitchen, splitting Ilya’s chest in two and stitching it back up at fuck-off-o-clock in the morning. “I didn’t tell you the other half yet. We can compromise about this, okay? But …” and now, now he was shy, and Ilya knew it was going to be his turn to be strong, even if he was fucking terrified of whatever Shane would say next. “I don’t want to stay with Montreal.”

Chapter 7: Eight Choreographed Hours and No Plans At All

“Did you know buckwheat is a superfood?”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“All nine essential amino acids. High levels of rutin.”

Ilya sighed, and decided to engage. “Rutin is an antioxidant. I know this, because I think you are more in love with antioxidants than with me. Tell me, what the fuck does antioxidant actually do?”

“Th—”

“In less than five words.”

Shane shut his mouth and frowned in the direction of the lake. “Reduce cellular damage … bitch.”

“Wow. That was the sexiest you have ever been talking about nutrition. I think free agency has made you hotter.”

The timer beeped, and Shane practically skipped over to his other baby, the Rolls Royce of rice cookers. Ilya had complained precisely once, the first time, about making grechka in a rice cooker, before he was immediately won over to the advantages of hands-free, pre-programmed cooking. “I could say more sexy things,” Shane said, fluffing the grains. “Buckwheat’s high in fibre, magnesium, manganese, a—”

“‘Manganese’ is not a real word.”

“Is so.”

“Is not.”

“Is so. Look it up in your dictionary app.”

Ilya checked his phone while Shane scooped portions into bowls. “Is not listed.”

“You’re such a fucking liar.”

“SLANDER! You slander me!” He hoisted Shane up under his armpits, squealing, and left him dangling, feet flailing wildly while he pretended to protest, until he gave in and wrapped his thighs around Ilya’s waist. “This is unfair, Hollander. Sexy talk when calendar says I cannot fuck you for another seven hours.”

“Not my fault antioxidants turn you on.”

“Ah, no, I think it is, hmm?”

Shane tugged Ilya’s head backwards by a fistful of hair, and kissed him hard enough for his lips to numb. “Down, please.”

“You are meanest boyfriend ever,” Ilya grumbled; Ilya who had had so many happiest days of his life that he was no longer able to rank them, but who knew that today would be way way up there.

“Okay,” Shane agreed primly, already pulling out soy milk and blueberries from the fridge.

“You are,” he insisted, pointing at the punnet of berries. “Look at this: more antioxidants. You try to kill me.”

Shane side-eyed the honey Ilya was drizzling over his bowl. “You’re doing that all on your own.”

“This? This is perfect breakfast.” He finished it by pouring in hot black coffee until it was porridge-y. “Much mananagese.”

It was a flawless cottage morning, clear and bright, so Ilya took his bowl outside and sat at the table and let the glare of the water burn his eyes. The swimming platform was satisfyingly shiny, a chore he relished, tending to it daily with a stiff brush before he lay on his back with his feet in the water and listened to the birds and the rippling of wind on the water. Look at it: Ilya’s place in Shane’s world.

“What would you think about growing blueberries?” he asked, as Shane came out to join him.

“What, like, a farm?”

Oh, Mama. Please be looking down right now. This ridiculous, perfect man. “In your next life, you will be an entrepreneur, moy vertolet. Mr Capitalist, Mr Investor.”

“So … not like a farm?”

“No. Like a few bushes. For your cellular health.”

Shane chewed with all the intensity of someone who’d read studies linking mastication to digestive health. “Of course. If you want. It’s your home too, remember? We could buy some bushes on the way home?”

“Hmm. Maybe. Maybe you don’t want to be in public this afternoon, yes? You can decide later.” Ilya watched him, scanning for signs of incoming panic, and found only the minor ones. “Is no big deal. We buy today, or I will ask David to bring some on the weekend.” Satisfied with Shane’s smile, Ilya chewed his sweet and bitter grechka with all the intensity of someone who’d been forced to listen against his will to studies linking mastication to digestive health, that is: with aggressive carelessness.

Ilya sat in the driver’s seat and stared at Shane.

Shane stared back.

Ilya stared back.

“Ilya.”

“Shane.”

Shane blinked. “What are you doing?”

“We are driving two hours. Too long to come back if we forgot something.”

“Yes,” Shane said, with barely restrained impatience.

“I am giving you a chance to check list for seven thousandth time.”

“I hate you.”

“Okay,” Ilya said cheerily. “Off we go.”

Shane’s hand was on his thigh before they’d made it off the property. Ilya asked: “Are you nervous?”

“I’m fine.”

“Hmm.”

“And excited.”

“Hmm.”

“And scared.”

“Mmm.” Ilya let his hand fall down, to cover Shane’s. “What can I do to help?”

“You can drive at the speed limit.”

He rolled his eyes indulgently, since Shane was watching. “So boring. What is the point of paying all this money for airbags if we never use them?”

“Oh my God. Do not say that, Jesus Christ.”

“It helps, yes? Now you are thinking about car crash, and not everything else.”

“Yeah, that’s worse, you asshole.”

Sap that he was, Ilya drove at a sedate, boring, Canadian speed and listened to the sound of Shane’s phone pinging incessantly and Shane’s right hand typing, trying to figure out how to phrase his point.

You shouldn’t … Is this good for you … I will make you a deal … Tell them from me to get fucked … Are you changing your mind … Please stop thinking about them … I hate that they …

See, Ilya? Your boyfriend agrees, he cannot read your mind. You must keep telling him what you want, and talk about it together. Do not keep hiding your needs under all this shame, or just hinting and hoping he will guess it. He will not always agree, but he loves you, yes? Now you have proof he will treat your hopes with respect.

Which was true, obviously. Seeing as he’d done the scariest thing and Ilya had gotten the gift he’d hardly even dared to dream of. But Shane had given him the exact same spiel, the day after their all-night planning, so when Maxim repeated it Ilya was feeling more than a little outnumbered and bullied. His grimace had been entirely justified.

“Mon minou, I am worrying about you with all these messages from your old team,” he said, as they neared Route 41. “I think they are making you feel worse, not better. And I get to thinking that maybe you want to change your mind.”

“Oh fuck, no, Ilya, not at all. But you’re totally right.” Shane locked the screen. Ilya felt like he was a God among men.

The phone kept vibrating.

“I hate knowing there are messages there and not reading them,” Shane confessed, after the twentieth buzz in three minutes.

“We could change plan? Take SIM out now?”

“What if Farah calls? Or Pearson?”

Ilya sucked his teeth. “You could put on … I cannot remember the term. Sending calls to another phone?”

“Call forwarding? Hang on …”

Whenever he turned to glance at Shane, Ilya could see his teeth pressing into his lip, and his eyes scrunching in concentration, shoulders hunched over the phone in a posture that he was confident Yuna would fuss about. His Shane, who attacked problems of all importance with the same determination as a bomb disposal expert.

Shane held the phone up to the windscreen, in Ilya’s field of vision, and powered it off. Once he’d stowed it in the glove compartment, Shane lifted their hands to kiss Ilya’s fingers. “You’re a genius.”

“Yes, I know this. Is all the buckwheat I was fed as a child. Did you know it is a superfood?”

By the time they reached the bridge into Griffith, the place where Ilya’s city-boy fantasies of the beautiful outdoors came to life without the imposition of snakes and mosquitoes, where the trees grew all the way up to the river edge in a way that always made his heart skip, and the land was so flat that the sky seemed over-large, Shane’s little hints of worrying had fallen away. No inhales being cut short, no rubbing at his skin. Ilya considered, not for the first time, ways to exact his revenge on the Metros without risking his future citizenship.

Shane had told him, at four in the morning with Ilya’s ass on the cold stone kitchen island and his calves wrapped around the hard warm muscles of Shane’s lower back, that not all was well in the Metros locker room. That the stern warning they had meekly consented to, back in September, banning discussion of Ilya’s formerly private life, had eroded to the extent that Shane was unable to reel them back in. That now, when he tried to lay down the law, he was met with muttering and eye-rolls. That he’d heard more than one snipe about Ilya’s proclivity for sucking dick, especially when the Centaurs lost. Which was a lot more often than they won. That Shane was unable to make them stop, only talk more quietly.

Ilya wasn’t angry about that. Disappointed, yes, for his Shane to have to listen to it, but it didn’t take him by surprise. The Centaurs took him by surprise. The Raiders took him by surprise. Acceptance was an exception in the NHL, as far as he could tell. He was angry about this:

Boiziau and Pike had taken Shane aside and told him that there had been comments when he was out of the locker room. Comments insinuating that Shane was only so persnickety about the leak because he was “weird, like, in the head.” That “maybe he’s seeing a shrink too, about not being a fucking OCD robot.” That they’d been looking forward to reading Shane’s records in the leak, and wasn’t it a pity the ransom was paid. That he’d never been “totally normal.”

That made Ilya research legally defendable methods of aggravated assault. His perfect, brilliant, unique Shane. Reduced to a fucking punchline. So resigned to these repugnant words that he didn’t even rise to Ilya's begging for those bastard’s names, phone numbers, addresses, positions, hair color, fucking anything to identify who he was supposed to kneecap. He’d just smoothed his thumbs over Ilya’s forehead and told him that it didn’t matter anymore, not after Shane had watched these same people take advantage of Ilya’s generosity by trying to drink an open bar dry when Ilya had just poured his heart out about the importance of asking for help, and Shane had emailed Farah the next day to tell her to stall the re-signing negotiations for as long as possible.

His Shane, his anxious, analytic Shane, who had ruminated in silence for those two months, writing out lists of pros and cons that Ilya had misweighted by advocating so consistently for the original plan. Who was so brave, and who, once he had chosen, made decisions with his whole chest. He longed to exact revenge with knuckles and knees. After he’d exacted this revenge first, revenge he could only participate in by driving all day and holding Shane’s hand.

Yuna called from their rendezvous point at Madawaska Golf Club twenty-five minutes early, which was practically late as far as the Hollanders were concerned. Ilya and Shane were still twenty minutes out, which was really late, by Ilya’s estimation of Shane’s standards, but Shane asked if she could swing into Arnprior and pick up some blueberry plants in the meantime and it really was unfair how easily he could make Ilya melt.

“You can change your mind about the C, you know,” Ilya said, as they skirted around Renfrew. “Today, or tomorrow, or any time.”

“I know.”

“It really would not be a big problem. I am sure we could rotate.”

“Ilya.”

“I am just saying!”

“I think you’re more nervous than I am.”

“Pfft. I do not get nervous.” He rubbed his nose.

“Mmhmm.”

“Maybe a tiny bit nervous.”

“We talked about this.”

“All I am saying is: we can talk more.”

“Okay, babe.”

“You are too calm,” Ilya grumbled. “All this yoga and swimming is like tranquilizer.”

“Sure. The yoga and swimming.”

“And the fucking, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Ilya ground his teeth and braced himself to just say it. “I do not want you to have regrets.”

“Ilya. I’ll tell you if I do, okay?”

“Swear this to me.”

“I swear.”

“Swear it on Stedlund’s grave.”

“No comment.”

“Hollander, if you do not give me a hint, I will have to punish whole Metros team.”

“Okay, Cap.”

Perhaps this was what erotic asphyxiation felt like, Ilya considered, as his vision went dark around the edges and his lungs stopped working and his foot half fell-off the accelerator and his cock went from zero to oh fuck.

“Hollander, you cannot say that while I am driving. At home: yes. All the time, yes. But not in the car. Not unless you have changed your mind about making use of the air bags.”

“Say what?” Shane blinked, but he was such a terrible actor. Also, their hands were joined on Ilya’s thigh, where the denim was being stretched to capacity in a manner that couldn’t be ignored. “‘Cap?’”

“You are evil. Why would you do this to me now, dorogoy, when I cannot fuck you for … five hours, bozhe.”

“Sorry, Cap.”

“Do you want me to pull over and fuck your mouth before we meet your parents? Is that what you are trying to do?”

“Eww, Ilya, no.”

“Then behave.”

Ilya hadn’t considered this as a potential side-effect when they’d discussed it, back in April. After they’d let Farah in on the secret (she had spent a full four minutes laughing before she could speak coherently, and even then, she kept losing control and lapsing into giggles for the entire length of the, hysterical fits notwithstanding, quite serious conversation), and she had instructed them to have an answer for her on their preferences for how they wanted to handle captaincy before negotiations began in earnest.

They had looked at each other in the same way they had been for twelve years, on either side of the dot, and begun devising competitions of escalating stupidity to decide who’d get which letter. Naming the most countries, highest standing jump, best pinball score, holding their breath underwater, thumb wars, backgammon, a Tekken tournament.

But that night Shane — who optimized every aspect of his life, and who Ilya felt was therefore deliberately and maliciously saving his bolts of inspiration for the exact moment when Ilya was at the deepest point of sleep — had shaken Ilya awake with the desperation of a man who smelled smoke.

“Ilya. Babe. Wake up.”

“Chto? Pozhar?”

“Listen. I don’t think I even like being a captain.”

“Shane. W—”

“I don’t think I ever liked it.”

“This is because your team sucks,” Ilya mumbled, because they did, even in this very odd dream.

“I thought I had to, you know, to prove I was the best. But I hate doing the media stuff, and the locker room speeches, and trying to bend the rules with the refs.”

“Yes, you are very bad at that. Because you are shit liar.”

He was just trying to get a rise, but Shane nodded. “Exactly.”

“No, d—”

“The only part I like is strategy. But I don’t need to be captain for that, right? I’m not a kid anymore, the guys would listen to me.”

“Anyone who does not listen to you would be getting traded,” Ilya grumbled.

“Plus I’m sleeping with the captain.”

“This is not sleeping. Or sleeping with. Okh, blyad’, is this when you always strategize for your games? Two in the fucking morning?”

Shane headbutted him and laid his chin on Ilya's sternum. “I’m being serious. I don’t wanna be the ‘Gay Asian Captain.’ I just wanna be the best at playing hockey. You and Boodram should stay captains.”

“Okay, moy bessonnik. Okay.” Ilya stroked his hair. “You will sleep on it, yes? And see if you feel different in the morning.”

He hadn’t. Not after they talked it over from every angle, not after they told Farah, not after she told Ottawa’s management. But Ilya hadn’t considered what it would do to him, to hear his Shane call him Cap. They would need to lay down some locker room guidelines.

Yuna and David were parked at the most remote spot of the Golf Club parking lot; suspiciously so, with only two other cars there, it looked like they were drug dealers with a calendar mix-up, who’d arrived at eleven in the morning instead of eleven at night. Yuna burst out before Ilya had even come to a complete stop, bearing a cardboard box holding six little plants.

“Hello sweethearts,” she called through the open trunk. “They said at the hardware store you should shade them in the summer afternoons, so we picked up a shade cloth too. We were going to buy mulch, but there’s a bag at our place, so just drive over and help yourself. Or we can bring it over. I think it’s down the back, by the compost?”

Ilya cupped Shane’s jaw. “No turning back now.”

“You mean the Centaurs or the blueberries?”

Both he could laugh, Yuna opened the driver door and kissed his cheek. “Excited?”

“Very. Thank you for the plants.”

“If they do well, you can thank us by letting me make a pie next summer. Ready, honey?”

“One sec.” Shane opened the glove compartment and pulled out his phone and the SIM ejector pin that had been meticulously packed and ferried from Montreal to Ottawa to the cottage and back to Ilya’s car for this specific moment. Ilya had watched Shane retrieve it from a buttoned plastic sleeve slotted inside a binder of appliance manuals shut in a fastidiously labelled filing cabinet in his Montreal study, and smiled so hard he thought he’d re-broken his nose.

“I love you.”

Ilya took custody of the SIM card in a Ziploc bag. “I love you too.”

“See you soon!” David yelled, as Ilya waved at the Hollander family and blew kisses to his Shane, relegated to the back seat because he would always be their little boy, no matter how tall or muscular or famous he was.

He was supposed to wait five minutes before following, so, really, it was Shane’s fault that he stepped out of the car to have a cigarette.

Shane had allocated him thirty minutes to drive to the arena, but Shane took into account factors like ‘possible traffic jams’ and ‘speed limits,’ so Ilya arrived with time to spare.

Mongrels

15 Jun 2019 at 9:10

Zane Boodram

happy birthday Roz!

Wyatt Hayes

bonne fête!

Evan Dykstra

happy birthday cap!

Nick Chouinard

happy birthday!

please don’t forget which of us remembered your birthday when you devise whatever training camp punishments you’re plotting for september

Kahlil Lloyd

fuck

happy birthday cap! i swear, i remembered before this, i just slept in

Ilya

notes are being taken

15 Jun 2019 at 10:52

Declan Patterson

aw fuck

Stephan Auclair

FUCK

are we too late?

Ilya

📝

1 Jul 2019 at 11:48

Ilya

hello horsemen

i am adding newest member of the herd to the chat

if you pay attention to your phones this afternoon, you will learn who he is 😉

Zane Boodram

welcome stranger!

this is Bood

Up, up, up through the backrooms, the corridors, the doors and past the windows, every step he imagined what it would be like to arrive at work with Shane. Shane in red and black. Shane sipping his foul algae drink, nattering about creatine phosphokinase and hemoglobin on the way to the locker room. Shane’s shiny hair reflecting fluorescent hallway lights. Shane yelling ‘HERD!’ along with the rest of this silly team.

“HOLLANDER!” he boomed, bounding towards the press room, putting on a show — for the last time — for the benefit of the suits milling around with stars and dollar signs in their eyes.

Shane grinned, but that was permitted today, today of all days. “Good to see you Rozy.”

“David, Yuna,” he shook their hands, as if they hadn’t all participated in a clandestine exchange of hockey players and fruit seedlings thirty minutes ago. A part of him would miss the private hilarity of these charades. “I expect to see you at every game now, no excuses.”

David clapped him on the shoulder. “Oh, we’ll be there.”

Ilya greeted the rest of the back-office staff quickly, lingering only with Pearson, who gave him a meaningful look. “Excited, Rozanov?”

“Yes, sir.”

The GM was the only other Centaur who was truly in the loop. There was probably a handful of staff in legal who were incredibly confused when they processed a contract amendment for one Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov this morning, cutting his salary by a third, but beyond determining that he was motivated to make cap space, they wouldn’t have time to piece the rest of it together.

Farah and Ilya had reassured Shane that if they had Pearson and the locker room, the whole organization would get in line. In turn, Pearson had promised Shane that the Centaurs would run interference with any trouble from NHL management; although it had taken some back-of-the-envelope calculations of the staggering revenue projections that the franchise could anticipate by having Rozanov, Hollander, and Rozanov-and-Hollander-the-boyfriends before Shane believed Pearson would truly be motivated to protect them.

“Shall we?” Pearson prompted, ushering the Hollanders into the press room.

There had been intensifying moments of realness ever since Shane asked how Ilya would feel about playing together. Sitting across the table from David and Yuna and watching their faces morph from heartbreak to anger to elation; listening to Farah’s uncontrollable laughing; the deluge of media coverage, echoing that surely Hollander wouldn’t be pulling a Rozanov and allow his contract to lapse into free agency; watching Shane skate off the ice in New York after they were knocked out of the playoffs, one of so few people who knew it’d be the last time he wore blue and red; waiting on pins and needles for Shane to return after he broke the news in person to Pike and Boiziau. But now? Signing the contract, cameras clicking, holding up a jersey with his name and that absurd team logo, shaking hands: now it was no backsies. It was so real it was no longer real at all, even when he and Shane posed together: the captain and his newest teammate.

He attached himself to David and Yuna as the whole lot of them tramped down the halls, everyone trying to get a word with The Shane Hollander before they peeled off and returned to desk jobs and refreshed Twitter until the news broke and they could finally call their friends and brag. No one questioned his presence while they sat outside the medical suite on bland chairs covered in offensively garish fabric and he asked one, one, question about the camps next month, and by the time Shane came back out, Yuna was six spreadsheets deep and he’d somehow involuntarily volunteered to call around next week to confirm the catering.

Ilya had selflessly offered to step up and give the Hollanders the guided tour, in lieu of their facilities manager, vacationing in Jamaica. It was ostensibly his reason for coming in, in addition to being Entirely Platonic Very Good Friends with Shane. Also, Harris had almost fainted with excitement when Ilya had called offering to pose for a photo with Shane for the announcement post.

They made it to the gyms before Ilya’s phone started vibrating, and once it did, it didn’t stop. When Dale asked if he needed to order in any customized equipment before training camp, Ilya took advantage of Shane’s monologuing about laser cut foam helmet inserts to switch the damn thing off.

He didn’t pull it out again until Shane sat down with the HR rep and the travel coordinator to go over all the intake details, knowing that poor Alannis had no idea what was coming for her when she reached the dietary requirements questionnaire.

Mongrels

Ilya

if you pay attention to your phones this afternoon, you will learn who he is 😉

Zane Boodram

welcome stranger!

this is Bood

Evan Dykstra

how mysterious

welcome!! this is Dykstra

Nick Chouinard

Nick Chouinard here

hi there! looking forward to meeting whoever you are 🐴

Wyatt Hayes

welcome! great to have a new foal join the herd

this is Hayes

Declan Patterson

yo! this is Patterson

1 Jul 2019 at 12:51

Wyatt Hayes

um

UM

WHAT

Zane Boodram

i have no words

i think i might be having a brain aneurysm

Declan Patterson

wait hold the the fucking phone

Stephan Auclair

asssmlmkhnnmkkoasxajnmka
xscsknqqqnjdd

Declan Patterson

yeah, what he said

Caleb Larouche

do we have confirmation???

Hollander, is that really you?

Zane Boodram

Roz get the fuck back here and prove you’re not fucking with us

ROZ

Evan Dykstra

i think i might need an ambulance

i can’t stop laughing

like i think it might be a medical condition

Stephan Auclair

ccsffbdfbfgfggffgbbkkadcfdk
dkdkd

Caleb Larouche

yeah, herd my dude

Nick Chouinard

ok sorry i’m late to the party but i come with intel

i called Harris

he confirmed it

apparently he only learned about it two days ago

it’s been under HEAVY wraps

Zane Boodram

what the actual fuck

why am i crying

Wyatt Hayes

crying’s an improvement on dying

Caleb Larouche

has anyone tried calling cap?

Zane Boodram

yeah, only twenty times

Declan Patterson

i don’t actually know what to do with myself

i think i could climb Denali right now

Evan Dykstra

wait, no ones been traded, right?

how the fuck are we under the salary cap???

Stephan Auclair

oh fuck. am i getting cut?

Zane Boodram

no, the cap changes immediately

they have to cut before they sign

so i guess they’re keeping us all?

Caleb Larouche

errr … anyone heard from Lloyd?

Stephan Auclair

oh shiiiiiit

Evan Dykstra

LLOYD

Declan Patterson

KAHLIL LLOYD GET INTO THE STABLE

Zane Boodram

ROZ ANSWER YOUR GODDAMN PHONE

Nick Chouinard

is Hollander taking the C? Or your A Bood?

Zane Boodram

i’m operating off literally the same information you are

less, actually, since you called Harris

Evan Dykstra

fuckin MVP for that btw, Chouinard

Zane Boodram

yeah, smartest guy in the room right here

Declan Patterson

… i mean

Wyatt Hayes

yeah, ouch, Bood

Stephan Auclair

Lloyd isn’t picking up either

Caleb Larouche

fuuuuuuck

Wyatt Hayes

i mean this in absolutely the nicest way possible

but Lloyd's salary isn’t anywhere close enough to make a difference to a guy like Hollander

Declan Patterson

🚒🧯🚒🧯🚒🧯🚒

Evan Dykstra

someone page the burn unit

Nick Chouinard

i was smartest guy in the room for a whole 15 seconds before you stole it right back

Caleb Larouche

poor defense Chouinard

out of practice already?

Evan Dykstra

i think we really need Roz here because none of us are smart enough to figure out what the actual fuck is happening

Declan Patterson

wait hang on

has anyone asked their wives?

Stephan Auclair

???

Declan Patterson

1. they’re smarter than us

2. They have access to the WAG darkweb

Evan Dykstra

already tried that, she’s baffled

Zane Boodram

same

Nick Chouinard

yeah, same

Wyatt Hayes

no dice

i have never wanted to know who roz’s bf is more than i do right now

that guy would have all the best gossip

Caleb Larouche

truuuuuuuuuue

Declan Patterson

FACTS

Nick Chouinard

HERD

Zane Boodram

ROZ PICK UP YOUR FUCKING PHONE

Evan Dykstra

by the way, Hollander, whenever you read this

i promise we’re not always this level of deranged

this is obviously a big day

Wyatt Hayes

…

I mean …

Stephan Auclair

yeah, normally we’re this level of deranged over much more boring shit

Wyatt Hayes

thank you Auclair

Ilya

hello children, did you like your Christmas present?

Nick Chouinard

oh my god oh my god

Evan Dykstra

it’s July?

Stephan Auclair

THATS WHAT YOU WANT TO FOCUS ON???

Wyatt Hayes

Roz, i don’t care you have a boyfriend

next time i see you i’m kissing you on the fucking mouth

Zane Boodram

you are such a fucking troll Roz

and i am so glad you’re our troll and not another team’s

Ilya

hmmm i would be careful Hayes, my boyfriend is a good fighter

not violent, but can be provoked when he’s jealous

also, Dykstra, if you ask for another Christmas present after i deliver you Hollander six months early

you will regret it

Kahlil Lloyd

oh my god what is happening

i just got out of the sauna

Ilya

anyway, Hollander wanted me to tell you he is doing some very boring 🥱 digital detox for the rest of the week

no phone

Stephan Auclair

i feel like this tracks

Kahlil Lloyd

wait, Hollander??

Declan Patterson

Lloyd shut the fuck up we don’t have time to catch you up

Zane Boodram

i didn’t believe it until right this second

might be crying again

Wyatt Hayes

dude, same

Ilya

there will be another announcement later this afternoon

should answer all your other questions

Nick Chouinard

???

Stephan Auclair

please just tell us now

Evan Dykstra

i can’t take any more excitement

Ilya

i am very inspired by Hollander, going to do digital detox too

Zane Boodram

WAIT

Ilya

byyyyyyye 🐎🐎🐎

Zane Boodram

MOTHERFUCKER

Rosie Rozy & Holly

1 Jul 2019 at 12:03

Rose Landry

i am so so so so so so so so so uncool about this right now

i think i’m more excited about this than i was being nominated for a golden globe

1 Jul 2019 at 12:51

Rose Landry

oh my god it’s up

LOOK AT YOU TWO

UGH

i’m not crying YOU’RE CRYING

what am i supposed to do for the next two hours???

i’m deadset on being the first retweet

1 Jul 2019 at 13:12

Ilya

don’t you have a job?

Rose Landry

says the guy who gets an entire spring and summer off

remind me when the last game you played was?

first week of april?

Ilya

this is not the attitude that will get you free tickets

Rose Landry

be nice or i’ll tell yuna

Ilya

fine i will be nice

tell me when your charity for dating gay men in denial launches and i will make big donation

Rose Landry

you’d better, after the freebie you got from me with Shane

Ilya

post is scheduled for 15:31

if you are not first retweet i will publicly shame you

Rose Landry

i’m so ready

tell Shane i’ll call him when he’s ready to possess a working phone again

and give him one extra very unsexy hug from me

Finest Hockey Minds + Ilya

1 Jul 2019 at 12:52

Sveta Vetrova

Black is a very unflattering color on both of you

Also red

And that centaur is an unflattering logo on everyone

But at least you look cute ☺️

1 Jul 2019 at 13:14

Ilya

very helpful, but thanks Sveta

Sveta Vetrova

I was referring to Shane

Ilya

could you not hit on my boyfriend

just once

Sveta Vetrova

What are you going to do, beat me up?

Don’t forget the photos i have of you when you were little

They’re going to sell for a LOT more money after today

Ilya

you are no longer invited to visit

Sveta Vetrova

Drama queen 🙄

You said you’d introduce me to Rose Landry

I’m waiting

17/18 Boston Boys 💪

1 Jul 2019 at 12:53

Connor Connors

so first of all

what the fuck

and then, in no particular order

i hate you

is there something in the fucking water in Ottawa or what???

Victor St-Simon

WHAT THE FUCK

Connor Connors

do you have to look so SMUG in the photo ffs

like, we get it, okay?

none of us have a fucking chance anymore now that hockey Satan and hockey Jesus have joined forces

then, i hate you again

Ryan Carmichael

SECONDED

Connor Connors

and finally, what the fuck???

Cliff Marleau

i’m pretty sure this is one of the plagues god sends before the end of times

Ryan Carmichael

what are we missing about Ottawa??

Victor St-Simon

Speaking as a Canadian

Stop ragging on Ottawa

Speaking as Québécois

There’s nothing to miss in Ottawa

Cliff Marleau

this is so unfair

surely there have to be laws against this

Connor Connors

yeah like the salary cap??? how does that work?

Cliff Marleau

i’m pretty sure Roz would agree to be paid in a daily big mac and a coke if it meant he got a chance to fucking smirk like that

you bastard

Victor St-Simon

Oh my god oh my god

I only just realized something right now

Ryan Carmichael

???

Victor St-Simon

Once Roz gets citizenship both he and Hollander can play for Canada at the olympics

Connor Connors

aw FUCK

Victor St-Simon

🫡🇨🇦🥲

Ilya

it’s a beautiful day boys

Cliff Marleau

i HATE you

Ilya

sun is shining

loons are howling

Ryan Carmichael

the fuck is a loon?

Victor St-Simon

Howling??

Ilya

and, maybe you have heard? Ottawa just signed new centre

some guy called Hollander

Connor Connors

aren’t you supposed to be promoting suicide prevention?

cause this ain’t helping

Ilya

anyway, just letting you know me and my boyfriend are doing a silent no-phones retreat for the next week

while you come to terms with your grief

😘😘

Cliff Marleau

i HATE you

also, i have never seen you go more than 10 seconds without talking or texting??

Victor St-Simon

This is just code for fucking, right?

He beat the Hollanders back to Arnprior, obviously. There had been a few TV cameras waiting at the parking lot of the arena, of the professional, news channel branded variety. No one in motorcycle leathers and a full tank of gas, not like the people who trailed him last year in the hopes of getting a shot of Ilya Rozanov kissing a famous man. They were going to make it. They were going to make it on their terms. He stared out at the fairway. Did Shane like golf? After today, they could go golfing together. He could put his arm around his boyfriend’s shoulders while Shane drove them around in a buggy. He could tickle Shane while he was lining up a putt, and kiss the frown off him when Ilya won. He didn’t even fucking like golf, but the pleasure was in the accessibility of the fantasy.

The temptation to open Twitter was killing him.

He thought about Shane in a tucked-in polo shirt and a visor.

Had the Metros posted yet?

He thought about Shane with a tiny pencil, stubbornly keeping score.

What were the NHL analysis wonks saying?

He thought about Shane’s ass in shorts, bending over the tee.

One little peek at his mentions wouldn’t hurt.

He removed his SIM card before that thought could progress any further.

The Hollanders arrived faster than he would have thought — which made sense once he realized Yuna was driving — and, caution bedamned at this, the very last time, all four of them devolved into a maelstrom of hugs and kisses, forming their own localized weather patterns as they swirled up dust from the parking lot into the dry summer air. Their Ziploc bag of SIM cards was transferred into Yuna’s handbag, the cottage’s Wi-Fi router replaced Shane on the backseat, David unearthed a cooler with sandwiches and Babybel and granola bars and Ilya inhaled his share so he would have one free hand the whole drive home to keep pressed to Shane’s pulse, and they all hugged again.

“I love you,” Yuna told Shane seriously, pronouncing a verdict, hands on his shoulders. “I love you too,” she told Ilya, in exactly the same way.

“Take care of each other,” David told them together. “We’ll be up on Friday night.”

“And remember we won’t be able to text you when we’re almost there!” Yuna yelled, as Ilya pulled away. He had thought he’d gained a sense of being part of a family two summers ago, when he’d sat down at David and Yuna’s table for the first time. Oh, how much better things could be.

“We have made a grave error,” he told Shane, merging onto the highway. “No internet means no music.”

“You’ll live.”

“You must entertain me instead.”

“Have I ever told you how much I enjoy listening to radio static?”

“This would be a joke coming from anyone but you,” Ilya said. “Mr White Noise On The Treadmill. Oh, fuck, I just realize: no music for workouts either. I hate this plan.”

“It was your plan!”

That was … unfortunately true. Ilya had pitched it to Shane knowing he’d be up all day and night letting every negative comment get under his skin if he was permitted internet access. He’d live and die within each minute, even if the support outweighed the rest a thousand to one. Better to let it settle, Ilya persuaded him. Better to come back after a week and read a high-level overview collated by his publicist than to watch his life mutate in real time with each refresh.

The clincher, according to Shane, was that it would also prevent Ilya from inserting himself into every thread of conversation. But he nixed Ilya’s simple, elegant proposal of leaving their phones with Yuna and David in favor of just ejecting their SIM cards. “What if we need to call 911?” he’d argued. “What if there’s an emergency?”

His sensible Shane. How did that brain think so much? How did he even formulate these worries?

“Tell me what you are thinking, mon cœur,” Ilya asked, as they passed the scrap yard on the edge of Renfrew, and what he thought of as the ‘good part’ of the drive began. With his hand on Shane’s wrist, he’d been tracking the silent crescendo of Shane’s heart rate. It was pulsing a rhythm fast enough to power a techno song. Which might not sound so bad, but this was Shane Hollander. His resting heart rate was supposed to be forty beats per minute.

“I’m thinking … I’m glad it’s out of our hands now. But I just want it to be done, you know.”

It is you who is causing him worry. You, who has pushed him outside somewhere he is comfortable. You are the reason his nail-bitten fingers are rat-tat-tatting on the window pane. You are the reason his eyes are tight. What did you expect? You hurt the people around you.

Okay, that is just your first thought, he told himself. That does not make it true. Put it down on the ground and walk away. What does it look like from ten steps away? Shane loves you. Shane chose this too. Shane is not used to big changes. Of course he is worried. That is not the same as regret.

“I do know. It will be done before we get home, yes? What can I do for you before then?”

Shane did one of his stupendously large exhales, and Ilya didn’t even use it as an opportunity to fake offence that Shane was bragging about his superior lung capacity. He was a good boyfriend. He was.

“Talk to me about something that has nothing to do with hockey. Or Montreal. Or contracts. Or sponsorships.”

“Hollander, this does not leave me many topics that interest you.”

“Tell me about something from home. Something happy.”

Shane shifted onto one hip, eyes pulled to Ilya like he was more beautiful than the green green grasses or the infinite sky or the senescent tall trees, ostentatious in their summer coats.

“When I was six years old,” Ilya began, “there was a huge party in the city. Nobody knows exactly when Moscow became Moscow, but they know it existed in 1147. So, they decided that was close enough to have a celebration for its eight-hundred and fiftieth birthday.”

“Eight-hundred and fifty?” Ilya glanced over and was thrilled beyond words to see Shane’s eyes had lost a little of their tension. “That’s insane.”

“I have told you this before, pay attention. Not every city in the world was founded by some pale British man. Russia is old. Old.”

“Keep going.”

So Ilya did. He told Shane about the crush of people on the streets, how it seemed like not a single person in the city was doing anything normal like working or shopping or playing street chess. All anyone seemed to be doing was trying to get closer to the parades, or walking to a new vantage point to watch the parades, or going home from the parades. How the closest Metro stations had to be closed off, from the threat of crowd crush, so the four of them walked south from Pushkinskaya, Papa’s shoulders and uniform making room in the crowds, his hand stretched backwards to hold Alexei’s, who was holding Ilya’s, who was holding Mama’s.

“What was happening in the parades?” Shane asked.

He remembered the colors and noises more than he remembered the details. Blues and yellows and reds, bells jangling, people singing, polished shoes on concrete. Mama had him on her shoulders, next to Alexei being piggybacked by Papa, so they were a grown-up height, along with all the other children who were temporarily taller than their papas.

“Was it, like … militaristic?”

Shane was not freaking out, but he was not not freaking out. There was tapping on the handbrake, and pulling at his eyelashes, and his quads were being flexed and unflexed like they were trying to communicate in Morse code. All Ilya could do was trust what Shane had said, that he needed it to be done already, and keep talking:

No no, not militaristic at all. It was like a carnival. Children everywhere, costumes everywhere. Women dressed up in blue and red sarafans and flower crowns. Teenage girls doing what teenage girls do everywhere, taking any opportunity to push limits, writing Москва 850 on their foreheads in lipstick and daring each other to kiss the street musicians and introduce themselves to Americans. People speaking a dozen languages, tourists from the West and tourists from the East and tourists from the former Soviet republics who didn’t think of themselves as tourists at all, who felt they still had a claim over this city.

“Was this at the Krasnaya ploshchad’?”

Oh, Mama, look at his love.

It was at the Red Square, but the Rozanovs were not. There was more than one parade winding its way through the many emptied roads, millions of people on the streets. And they spread across the city like a spilled cup, street parties and beer and music. He learned, later, that there was controversy about the celebration, about the wasted money sunk into it and the shiny gloss of capitalism that didn’t patch the hidden cracks. But for Ilya, all of six, it was just fun. Look at Papa, eating ice cream. Look at Alexei, dancing with Mama. Look at Ilyusha, look at his smile.

They were nearing Griffith again, approaching the bridge with the view that Ilya always liked so much, when he started giving Shane sentences that were entirely new thoughts, feelings he wasn’t conscious of until they were already coalescing out of the words.

“It is home, Shane, and I miss it so much. Even with all the bad things, too. And I’ve wanted, so much, to take you there, and show you the clubs we used to sneak into, and the rinks where I played, and where all the stray cats used to sleep in the sun in the afternoons. But it doesn’t hurt like it used to, not anymore. Because now I am feeling that I have two homes. And one: yes, I cannot ever see again.

“But now Canada is home too. Boston was a nice place, very nice place, to live, much more interesting than Ottawa, but it was not home, yes? Because when you come to the house, or I visit your parents, or we drive to the cottage, I think: ‘ah, yes, there is … space for me here.’ And even if we move teams, if we end up playing in fucking … Utah, or some bullshit, when it is over, when we are old, I would want to come back here.

“And I would miss here more, yes? When you have two homes, two countries, you always have to miss somewhere, you are always homesick. But even if I could go back, this is where I am supposed to be. It is stupid, but when we get here, on the drive, I think that this road, it belongs to me. Everyone else may drive, yes, because I am generous person, but it is mine. Like, it could never mean as much to someone else as it does to me. Because it is so beautiful here, but also because it is the most at home I have ever felt, since the second time you picked me up and drove me along it, and I knew we were close to the cottage, which meant … it was the first time I arrived somewhere where there was space for me, yes? The real me, the one who does not need to hide. It is like: no one could love this stupid piece of highway like I do … pah, I know it does not make sense.”

“No, it does make sense. I promise, it makes sense. Babe, can you pull over please?”

“What is wrong?” Ilya asked, trying to decipher Shane’s face even as he flicked the indicator. It looked fine. It looked happy.

Things can always get worse.

That doesn’t mean they will, he reminded himself.

Shane didn’t respond until the car was pulled hard onto the shoulder, two wheels tangled in the scrub, two wheels on loose gravel. Then he pounced: clambering a leg over the gearstick, one knee pressing a bony bruise into Ilya’s thigh, both hands squeezing Ilya’s face, kissing like it was something he could medal in.

“Look at the time,” he said, when Ilya tried to find the answer in his eyes.

3:34.

Three minutes ago, their scheduled posts had gone live, announcing to anyone who cared that Ilya Rozanov was Shane Hollander’s babe. The words were more polished, of course, but that was the message. On the internet, where everything lived forever, Shane and Ilya had tagged each other and said: “that’s my guy.”

His laugh felt like champagne. Or ginger ale, he thought, that was better. Bubbling up against gravity. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve never felt so free.”

Ilya held Shane’s face and kissed his freckles, again and again and again. Mine, mine, mine. “I am so happy, moy kotenok.”

“I love you so fucking much.” No tears, no tears at all, just Shane’s pretty half-moon smile and shallow half-formed breaths.

“I love you.” Inspired, Ilya rolled the window down and shouted it into the sky: “I LOVE YOU!”

Shane held Ilya’s neck when they merged back onto the road. “When we win our first Cup, I’m going to bribe whoever it takes to rename Route 41 to the Ilya Rozanov Highway. We’ll make it your road. Officially.”

There was not a single scheduled event for the rest of the week, not until Yuna and David drove down on Friday night. There were no longer blueprints for them to follow. Searching ‘what activities to do when your professional rival and secret boyfriend joins your hockey team and you and he break the internet by posting online that you’re in love and you go off grid for a week to let the dust settle’ was useless. 12,000 results, still, but there were always a bajillion search engine results, so the countability mainly reinforced how uncharted this was. Ilya had clicked as far as page three of Google for the first time in a decade.

He was going to watch Shane, that was his primary plan. Put all those years of obsession to work and the second he noticed Shane getting all locked in his head about what was going on outside their home, Ilya was going to fuck him until he forgot anything else existed. He’d even — and he would not be putting this in his memoir — packed Viagra in case Shane needed five days of non-stop sex to make it through this week without chewing a hole through his cheek. The only tears Ilya wanted to see were the gag-reflex ones. And maybe some from pretty begging.

Ilya had fireman-carried his love from the car, wriggling and whinging and smacking Ilya’s ass, and thrown him on the bed and done his best to destroy the both of them, but not in the therapeutic distraction sex way. Because the whole world knew they were head over heels for each other and Shane had decided that was a fact to celebrate, even if, rudely, he had denied Ilya road head. No one was crying, no one was grinding their teeth. They were home and they were them, Shane-and-Ilya, in a way they’d never been before, in a way he’d told himself, again and again, he could wait ten years for. And maybe he could’ve waited that long, but he didn’t need to.

Even if he couldn’t keep this forever, no one would ever be able to deny that he’d had it, at least for a while. Especially tonight. Shane had given him the hickeys to prove it.

Flung across the couch that night, his hair pornographic and his glasses on and the arch of one foot fitting against Ilya’s thigh like a jigsaw, his pretty Shane was reading. Weeks ago Ilya had teased him that he was incapable of reading anything other than hockey books, and Shane had snapped back, of course, so Ilya had bought him an unabridged copy of Les Misérables and Shane had beaten him with a pillow when he saw how many pages it was, but was still, stubbornly, adorably, proving his point, and insisting that holding it upright counted as bicep curls.

Ilya, instead of grumbling that it had been twenty minutes since he was last kissed, pulled out his almost entirely useless phone.

Shane was the keeper of their organized life: the grocery lists, the planned camp drills, the winding up of his life in Montreal, gift ideas, the contact details for electricians and plumbers and realtors. But Ilya Rozanov was Shane Hollander’s babe and he was prouder of that fact than any accolade, and he would never, ever be ashamed to admit that he was all-in on sharing an organized life with Shane.

“Dorogoy, when did you last get eyes tested?”

Shane stared at him over the pages, like a sexy librarian. “Last year. Why?”

“No reason.”

“Is this, like, a sex thing? Optometrist roleplay?”

Ilya’s mind went blissfully clear. “Oh. That too, yes. We will be needing a new list.”