Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Sex Tapes, Outing, Canon-Typical Homophobia, Visa Marriage, Marriage of Convenience, Montreal, A hand-wavey understanding of immigration and contract law, Angst with a Happy Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pining While Fucking, Explicit Sexual Content

Language:

English

Collections:

HR

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-03 Completed: 2026-05-25 Words: 66,960 Chapters: 8/8

I'll build a house inside of you

Summary

In late 2014, celebrity photos start dropping. Ilya deletes his texts, his photos, a video he should never have taken. It isn't soon enough.

Notes

Title from Wolf Parade's You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son. Listen to this approximately 500 times to get my full writing experience.

Inspired by Ccainao3, who said "visa marriage fic" and I said "how high". Beta read by greattemptation, who also put up with an awful lot of my bitching along the way.

Chapter 1

The locker room is a cesspool at the best of times. This is far from the best. They’re up against the Admirals in the preseason, and Ilya is still annoyed at being dragged into this shitshow of a game when he could have been at home doing anything else.

“What is the point of preseason,” he asks the room at large, “if we drag whole last season roster to fucking New York. Let the rookies play. There is new Survivor episode.”

“Why the fuck do you watch that shit?”

“Shut the fuck up, Kohn, or I will send you to Exile Island.”

“Check this out.” Marleau waves his phone in front of Ilya’s face. Ilya looks gamely at what turns out to be a set of grainy, amateur nudes. The lighting is bad and the photos show the backdrop of an expensive bathroom. He thinks he recognizes the subject, an actress in a movie he watched on one of their interminable plane rides last season.

He shrugs and tugs his left skate on. “I have seen better.”

Marleau looks between him and his phone with open disbelief. “That’s Vanessa Lee, you blind fuck. Where are you seeing better.”

Ilya waves emphatically. “Have you heard of internet? Full of porn. Good porn, not shitty movie still.”

“Oh no,” Marley leers down at his phone. “Someone got into her phone. These are genuine leaked photos, oh captain.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Does not improve, uh, production value. And why are you showing me this? We have a game. Focus on not falling down like a baby deer like last season.”

It’s a sore spot, and it has the intended effect. Marleau goes red, his nostrils flaring. “That was tripping! You fucking know it.”

Ilya shrugs. “Ref is blind. Do not trip.”

“Look she’s got a tattoo,” Marleau insists.

“Lemme see.” Kohn takes the phone from Marleau and holds it at an angle. “Yeah, she’s hot. Good thing they didn’t leak your phone. I bet Roz’s phone is just a bunch of dick pics.”

“You should be so lucky.” Ilya finishes lacing his skates. They’re new, and he doesn’t like the way the heat molding sits around his little toe. He wiggles it under the carbon fiber. Something to fix before the season starts properly. “Give you something to look at instead of your tiny little dick.”

It devolves from there until the bunch of idiots that Ilya calls teammates are yelling at each other about who has the worst pictures on their phone and why it’s definitely Johansson.

Ilya ignores them. His phone pings. Jane. He reaches for it automatically. The Metros don’t have a game tonight, but he holds out hope that maybe Hollander has found himself mysteriously in New York for a brand meeting. Maybe he wants to sext, which, sure. Bad timing, but Ilya doesn’t give a shit about this game. Maybe he has thoughts about Kelly on Survivor.

None of the above, as it turns out. Hollander saw the same photos, probably. Ilya spares a thought to imagine Hollander in a locker room like this one, one of his teammates shoving their phone under his nose. Hollander’s face would draw up in dismay, until he remembered to play along.

Hollander does not text him back. Ilya plays hockey and revels in the sour look on Scott Hunter’s face when Ilya snaps the puck past him, God, and the Admirals’ equally geriatric goaltender to clinch the game.

“Do not cry,” Ilya tells him. “Save it for elimination.”

“The season hasn’t started yet, dickhead.”

Ilya shrugs. “I skip ahead. I hope final game is on West coast. Will be better for you.”

Hunters’ face is a mask of resignation. He knows better than to ask, and Ilya delights that he does anyway. “Why?”

“No television after eight at the retirement home.”

“Go fuck yourself, Rozanov.”

Ilya winks at him as he skates backwards and towards his waiting teammates.

The season settles in around him, easier every time. Ilya knows hockey like he knows the breath in his lungs. They have a pair of new rookies, useless children who do not know which end of a stick to hold. They have eighty-two games and, God willing, playoffs and a cup to win.

He likes the beginning of the season. His body is fresh and new, corded with muscle and padded with a gentle layer of fat. He sprints on the treadmill next to his teammates, exhilarated by the potential.

Their first game against Montreal is only five games into the regular season. He likes this, too: Hollander, crouched low across from him, his mouthguard caught under his canines. He likes it better, later, when he has Hollander over his couch, gasping little breaths rocking out of his mouth as Ilya plunges deeper into him, as deep as their bodies allow. Hollander hitches his leg forward, easing the way for that extra centimeter of space, and Ilya, overwhelmed, puts his teeth to the knobs of Hollander’s spine.

“Did you delete everything?” Hollander asks, after. His voice is muffled against Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya drags his arm further around Hollander, pulling him tighter, if just for a moment. He can’t have too much of this, but he can linger for a moment with his mouth against the sweat-damp crown of Hollander’s head.

“Is gone,” Ilya confirms.

There have been more leaks. The targets are arbitrary. News anchors at small local stations, an actress, naked in front of a wall of golden awards, a few people whose only crime was knowing someone famous. His teammates have been rolling around in the photos like dogs in muck.

Ilya deleted everything from his phone after the second set of photographs dropped, and then got a new phone, just in case. Four years of texts with Jane gone like that. There were a few things he could not bear to lose, for reasons that do not bear examining. The awards show selfies he moved to a flash drive tucked in the back of his safe next to his passport and birth certificate, along with a few photographs that should have been deleted before he even took them.

“And the—”

“I deleted everything, Hollander.” Ilya untucks him from under his arm and shoves Hollander lightly to his feet. “When is your bus?”

Hollander looks at his phone and curses softly. “I need to go.”

“Colorado next?”

Hollander nods, shrugging jerkily into his clothes. The sex-drunk lassitude never lasts long. Ilya watches as Hollander puts himself back together, unfolding his shirt and his jeans and slipping back into his discomfort. The faintest flush is still there for those with eyes to see it, dusting his cheeks under the spattering of freckles.

“See you in November?”

November thirteenth. They play each other four times this season, three times before Christmas. It’s almost too much. Ilya doesn’t know how to handle this new glut of Hollander in his life, the knowledge that there is only a month before he will see him again. Eleven games across seven different cities and then Hollander back on Ilya's own ice.

“Maybe next time your team will not be so surprised by forecheck.”

“You’re such an asshole.” Hollander’s mouth quirks up as he says it, and Ilya wants to lick the smile off his face.

“Bus,” Ilya reminds him, and Hollander goes.

Afterwards, Ilya lays back on his couch and breathes. The room smells like sex and sweat and Hollander’s deodorant. It’s impossible that the tightly wound Montreal center is the same person who sprawled back on a hotel bed in Vegas. The same person who moaned around Ilya’s cock against the glass windows of his penthouse, backlit by Boston's busy incandescent glow.

The second time they play that season, a bare month later, Ilya drags him away from those windows and into a bed properly and rims him until he cries, his eyes and his neglected cock leaving damp spots on Ilya’s sheets. “Please,” Hollander moans, nearly insensible, and who is Ilya to deny him. 

Ilya kisses him after, his elbows up on either side of Hollander’s shoulders, and Hollander unfurls under the attention, soft and lax. He’s still like that when he stumbles back out through Ilya’s front door, and Ilya realizes only afterwards that the black hoodie he grabbed was one of Ilya’s, and that Ilya now has a navy blue Metros one. He folds it carefully and puts it in the back of his dresser to return next time.

Boston is on track for another good season, but Montreal skates like someone has lit a fire under them. Ilya watches tape of their games, preparing for their third matchup, in Montreal this time. They traded wins in their first two games, and Ilya intends to win the third. Losing makes Hollander sullen and reluctant, and Ilya counts it as a bonus win when he gets to drag him out of his sulk with the flat of his tongue.

All the while, more photos drop.

“Didn’t know he was that flexible,” Marleau comments, passing his phone around again. Ilya has to turn the phone sideways to make sense of what he’s seeing, and then passes it again with a snort of disgust. It’s one of the players from Tampa, a third string defenseman who barely gets to look at the ice. Hollander probably knows his TOI to the second.

Ilya never wondered what Parker’s dick looks like, but he knows now. Average, and not worth the number of photos he takes of it. He also knows what Parker looks like sprawled across a gaudy hotel bed with naked models who are not his wife. She files for divorce. It makes the news.

Ilya grabs the season in both hands and swallows it in gulping handfuls. There is hockey and sex and the sheer joy of having all of this. He feels greedy in the excess and revels in it further. As a reward for last season’s win he buys himself a Spyder in a shade of orange that screams venomous. Danger. Look at me. It clings to the road as he flings it around curves, careening too close to the guardrails and the dropoff underneath.

Svetlana declares it hideous, but they fuck in it anyway, his bare back on the soft leather, her knees around his hips, teasing. It is phenomenally uncomfortable. The car is built for a different type of performance, and Ilya pulls her laughing mouth down to meet his. Hollander would never, he thinks, as Sveta grinds down against him.

His good mood lasts through an embarrassing loss to Columbus, Marleau’s birthday party at a rank smelling strip club in the Theater District, and their new rookie’s meltdown in the showers after he misses an open net and is booed by seventeen thousand people. “It goes,” Ilya says, and slaps him on the back. “You are famous now. Do not look at Reddit. Give it, eh, two days. Someone will do worse. New Jersey will score own goal, they will forget you.”

They’ll be back on the road in December, Pittsburgh and then up through Canada, zig zagging back from east to west, and then home for a luxurious unbroken stretch, capped off by Christmas. Two games before Montreal. They get into Pittsburgh too late to go out, and Ilya stretches out naked on his hotel bed instead, his phone propped up against the pillow. No roommates is his favorite part of the new season, he decides, as he swipes through porn, looking for something good.

He pauses on a video of two men, one of them in a full split up on a counter as the other pounds into him from behind. He takes a screenshot.

Ilya grins, his hand already wrapping around his cock. He looks forward to showing Hollander that his body can hold more than just hockey. Ilya can fuck anywhere, but Hollander is easy, a regular hookup, a treat. It’s decadent to sink into Hollander and pit his skin with fine bruises in the shape of Ilya's fingers. He didn't know if they'd keep doing this after Sochi, after Vegas, but Hollander keeps answering his texts and Ilya is not going to turn down a sure thing. 

They get into Montreal late, shuttled down on a bus after grinding Ottawa into their own ice. There’s practice in the morning, and tape review so their coaches can tell Ilya all the things he already knows about Hollander’s tells. He gets lunch with Marleau, already distracted, and winks when Marleau asks if he’s going to make curfew tonight.

The timing is deliberate.

Boston is up, though it’s a close thing. A few inches to the left and Hollander’s shot would have jerked them into a tie instead of zinging off the post. As it stands, Ilya is ready to get back on Montreal’s ice for the third period and drag their 2-1 lead up by a goal. Maybe two. He’s pretty sure they can do it. Montreal’s defense is a mess, wide open stretches of ice like an invitation. Hollander’s line is good, clean passes, but too slow to commit. They’re tightening up as the season goes. Ilya intends to win another cup, but maybe he’ll let Hollander wear his rings while he fucks him. A consolation prize.

Intermission is almost over, and Marleau is already trying to corral the team into going out after the game. It’s not likely; they’re ninety six hours into the roadie, and the shine wore off ninety five hours ago. No one wants to spend their night in a shitty bar with the same people they’ll see eighteen hours a day for the rest of the trip.

Ilya pulls his skate back on. He wiggles his toe. He’ll lose the nail, he thinks. No matter. A fair trade for the goal. For the look on Hollander’s face as Ilya skidded past him.

“You all suck,” Marleau announces to the room at large, and thunks back down in his stall. He thumbs his phone open, probably to find some more interesting group of people to spend the evening with, and then gasps in audible delight.

“What?” Sebbin asks.

“New photo dump,” Marleau says, his face splitting into a wide grin. “Bunch of actors. They got another one of the Admirals, too. Fucking hilarious. And there’s—” he stops, and his eyebrows draw together. He taps at his phone.

“There’s what, man? Hunter’s dick all over the internet now? I don’t need to see that.”

Marleau looks up at Ilya with wide eyes, and Ilya’s stomach drops. Panic settles in the hollow between his ribs, clawing.

“More than that,” he says, looking at Ilya, and he knows. Ilya knows. His phone. His photos. His texts, maybe. Fuck. His pulse throbs in his ears. They use code names. He deleted the video. He got a new phone. He needs, desperately, to know exactly what was released, but there’s no time.

“What’s up with it, then?”

Marleau shakes his head lightly, a warning. He is a good friend, better than Ilya deserves. The feeling in his chest builds on itself, growing with each heartbeat.

“We have another period to play,” Ilya says loudly, drawing attention. He swallows his fluttering pulse down. “Focus. Montreal cries, and then you can look at Scott Hunter’s withered dick.”

Marleau watches him as they straggle out of the locker room and down to the rink. He hangs close to Ilya, his mouth pursed so tight he has to shove the words out through his teeth. “You going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Hockey,” says Ilya. “It is a game. On skates.”

Marleau shakes his head. “Good luck.”

The energy in the area is sour. Ilya feels it settling on him like fog. Hollander won’t look at him. He’s pale and slick with sweat. Ilya wins the face off, but it doesn’t feel like a victory.

Ilya tries not to look at the stands. Half the people there are staring at him, looking down at their phones and back up again. His stomach twists and he forces his gorge down.

“Roz, you good?” LeClaire doesn’t know yet. Ilya nods. He’s good. He’s fine. Breathe in, hold, breathe out.

LeClaire pulls him two shifts later, one more than Ilya should have gotten, and he slumps on the bench, his head down so the cameras can’t see his face.

No one scores in the third period. Hollander passes wide, skids on his skates. Someone says something and his face curls miserably, but he doesn’t rise to the bait. The game devolves. Someone on the Metros says something to Sebbin on the ice, and Sebbin turns then to look at Ilya, just for a second, and his blood chills one degree closer to ice.

“Fucking shit show tonight,” Johansson says when they’re back in the locker room. “What the fuck was that?”

“We won,” says Feller, and shrugs. 

“Yeah no shit we won.” Johansson whoops. “Marley, we still going out?”

Ilya strips as quickly as he can, trying to outrun what’s coming. He skips the shower and tugs his nice suit over his sweaty skin. He’s only half-dressed when the summons comes, still standing there in his suit pants with his shirt unbuttoned. He tries to do it up, but his fingers slip past the mother of pearl. His calluses catch on the fabric.

Ilya is well-versed in trouble. He is familiar with authority and anger. 

He perches on the very edge of the wooden chair. All of his muscles are too tense. His body wants to jump up and run. He forces a breath in. Out. LeClaire sits across from him with his arms crossed, too big in this borrowed office.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

“How do I know?” Ilya asks, answering anger with more of the same. “Marleau said phones got—hacked, is the word? My phone, maybe? I have seen nothing. Is my dick on the internet? It is very good. More people should see it. I will show you right now.”

LeClaire crosses his arms over his chest. “Yes, your fucking phone got leaked. Do you have any idea what kind of shit was on there?”

Ilya doesn’t like not knowing things. The off-kilter feeling surges around him. “Are you going to tell me?”

LeClaire pushes his phone across the desk. Ilya doesn’t press play. The paused screen is plenty. Hollander’s face looks back up at him, calm, smiling. The still is pixelated, but Ilya can make out the soft flush and the way his damp lashes clump together. Ilya wants to throw up.

“Okay,” Ilya says. His chest is tight. “Okay.”

“That’s the headline,” LeClaire says. “God only knows what other shit they’ve dug up on you by now.”

LeClaire talks for a while. Ilya hears some of it. His mind focuses more on the anger that suffuses every word, snagging on the tone. Somewhere in this building Hollander is in another office, hidden away from the press. 

“I need to talk to management,” LeClaire says finally. “You’re going back to Boston tomorrow.”

Ilya’s fingers curl around each other. He picks at a cuticle. “What happens then?” His mind supplies a series of worst-case scenarios. Benched turns into terminated. He’s black listed across the league. He never skates again. They send him home. He never skates again, for different, much worse reasons.

“I don’t know yet. The commissioner will have something to say. We need to talk to legal.” LeClaire passes his hand over his face. “This is a fucking disaster, Rozanov. Not just that video. There’s so much more. They got your emails. Your records.”

“I deleted my data,” Ilya says through numb lips. “I bought a new phone.”

“Not soon enough. You made a stupid mistake.”

Hockey players make stupid mistakes all the time. They get addicted to drugs and get venereal diseases and get into stupid fights on the ice and have their stupid teeth knocked out. There are pathways for all of those. Rehab and medical and PR. Ilya can only nod in agreement, throat too tight to force any words out. There is no pathway for this.

“Wait here until the media clears out,” LeClaire says. “Then you’re going back to the hotel and you’re keeping your ass there. Get some sleep. You look like I kicked your dog, so I’m going to remind you that you’re the one who took that fucking video. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Don’t do anything stupid on camera. Stay the fuck away from Hollander.”

Ilya stays there, on the too-small chair, until the building empties out. His phone buzzes over and over. He doesn’t look at his messages until he’s safely back at the hotel in his empty room.

He sits on the bed and scrolls. There are missed calls from everyone he knows, just about. His brother has called three times. There are no messages from Hollander. This is fine, Ilya tells himself. It is worse for Hollander, probably. The video will not land well.

Ilya thumbs through the headlines. They’re not flattering. His personal correspondence glares back at him from his phone screen. Texts with Svetlana. Messages from the Olympic team doctor. A photo of a tiny cup with a pile of brightly colored tablets in the bottom. Hollander, looking up at the camera with tears brimming in the corners of his eyes, his cheeks flushed a deep, candy apple red.

“Fuck,” he says, and then says it again and again and again, an endless litany.

Ilya doesn’t sleep. He sits up against the headboard, turning his phone in his hands. When Hollander finally calls, it’s nearly one in the morning. Exhaustion sits on Ilya like a blanket, but his mind is racing. He picks up on the second ring with a sharp-edged “What?” 

“What do you mean what?” Hollander answers irritation in kind. 

“My life is falling apart. I do not have time for a booty call.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, fuck you. That is the problem, after all.”

“The problem is that you kept that video on your fucking phone.” Hollander is shouting. “You said you deleted it. Rozanov you said.” His voice breaks. “You said you deleted it. You lied to me.”

The silence lasts too long.  There is so much inside Ilya clawing to get out: grief and anger and betrayal, and he doesn’t know how to piece those emotions together in a way that makes sense.  “Yes. It is my fault. Does that make it better?”

“No. It makes it worse. I’m so fucking angry, Rozanov. I’m so—you said.” Hollander sniffs wetly. “Can you come here?”

“You want me to go there?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know right now. I can’t think.”

Ilya scrapes for words in any language. “I cannot. I am under—what is the word? They are watching. I have fucked up. I cannot fuck up more. Not now.”

“Scrutiny.”

“Stupid word.”

“I think I’m benched,” Hollander says. He says it like the words hurt him. The season is burned into Hollander’s brain, baked down into his very marrow. The Metros are playing Boston then New York then Tampa. They would be up against Bitmore, who has never beaten Hollander in a face off. Hollander belongs out there.

“Yes. I am, too. Fuck. Fuck, Hollander.”

“Yeah. Fuck.”

“Did you delete it?” There is a pleading quality to Hollander’s voice. “You said you were going to delete it that night. Did they get it from, I don’t know. An old phone? People can recover that stuff, right?”

It would be very easy to lie, but Ilya just says, “No. Not then. I did later. Too late.”

“Fuck you. I hate you. I hate you so much. I wish I’d never—” Hollander’s voice breaks over and over, into smaller pieces.

“Yes,” Rozanov agrees. “There is mini bar in this room. It is full of very bad drinks. Tiny American vodka.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No. I want to be. They are—” Ilya curses in Russian. The weight of English is too much to bear on top of it all. “They are angry. Not safe, maybe. Would be worse if we lose. If we lose to Shane Hollander, who is on my phone, with video of—”

“I know what the video is.”

“You should watch it.” Ilya shrugs, pretending at a nonchalance he does not feel. It sits unevenly on his skin. “It is hot. Is why I kept it.”

“I hate you.”

“Yes. Me, too.”

Hollander has nothing to say to that. Ilya sits there for a long moment, listening to the sound of Hollander’s ragged breathing. Wishing, unreasonably, that he were there. He can’t pin down why. The thought of touching anyone right now makes him want to throw up.

“I think they might trade me,” Hollander says. “Theriault is so fucking angry. Maybe they’ll send me to Florida. They have cap space. Trade me for draft picks. See if they can start fresh with someone new.”

“Florida is terrible. I do not wish this for you.”

“Yeah, well. What about you?”

“I will go home tomorrow. Rent a car and drive, I think.” Ilya laughs, though there’s no humor in it. “Maybe I will start packing, too.”

“Do you think you’ll get traded?”

The quiet lingers a moment too long. Ilya’s voice comes out cracked. “Suspension. Fine. Trade. I hope it is only that.”

Ilya spends most of the next week drunk and miserable, curled up on his couch and watching the Raiders lose a series of easy games. He sits through the after-game interviews and listens to the talking heads discuss why, exactly, Ilya Rozanov is not there on the ice with his team. He watches his teammates’ faces twist in disgust when the press asks about him. Someone has given them orders not to discuss it openly, but there’s no hiding the way Feller’s eyes narrow, or the curl of Johansson’s lip.

“Fuck you,” he screams at his television, too drunk to care. There’s no one to hear, anyway. He shouts at them until his voice goes hoarse, all of it in his broken, stupid English. He doesn’t even want to think about Russia right now.

When they finally drag him into the team offices, he’s rumpled and unshaven with bags under his eyes. Ilya catches a glimpse of himself in the glass door and looks away. He doesn’t need to know what the worst day of his life looks like.

The general manager’s office is large, with floor to ceiling windows that look out over the snow-capped city, with a narrow slice of river just barely visible. Ilya’s only been here a few times. He isn’t involved in the administrative side of his own game. He shows up when he’s told, wears his body ragged, and in return the paychecks are deposited in good American dollars. Money is easy. He can’t spend it fast enough. Alexei wants his cut, always, and Ilya’s penthouse and fast cars don’t come cheap. That’s fine, though, because there’s always more coming. 

He knows Finlan by sight. The general manager is a tall, broad-chested man with a trim salt and pepper beard that frames his downturned mouth. He doesn’t know the others. The introductions are brief. There’s a pair from legal, a man and a woman in cheap suits, and a representative from the league. They take up one side of the long boardroom table. Ilya, with his dour-faced agent next to him, pulls out a chair opposite.

“Let’s get to business,” says Finlan. “Mr. Rozanov.”

Ilya tries to muster all of the irreverent disdain left in his body, but it’s like holding sand between his fingers. He is tired. “Yes.”

“The circumstances surrounding this are truly unfortunate. I sympathize with the loss of privacy. It can’t be easy to have your personal life spilled out for the media.”

“No,” Ilya agrees shortly. Finlan waits for him to add something more, but Ilya has nothing else to say.

“Our legal team has prepared a dossier of the facts.”

“Dossier?”

“List of fuck ups,” his agent says in Russian. Across the table, one of the lawyers coughs. Another Russian speaker, then. Unfortunate. Ilya has few advantages at this table, and now one fewer.

“Your data breach was unfortunate,” Finlan says. Ilya wonders how many times he’ll use that word. “There are a number of things that we would have preferred not to know. Your personal life is, of course, personal, but the league cannot overlook information that has been brought to such a critical public point. The media is already breathing down our necks, and I do wish to extend my appreciation that you have not given any comments at this time.”

Ilya hadn’t considered it. He turned his phone off days ago, only turning it back on to skim his emails. He doesn’t want to read ESPN. He doesn’t want to know the depths of depravities that have been dug out of his electronics.

Finlan slides a thick beige folder across the table to Ilya, and a matching one to his agent. There is another unused stack, and Ilya wonders if he was meant to bring someone else. A lawyer, probably.

“The business with Shane Hollander is unfortunate,” Finlan says. Ilya flips his folder open, and on top of the stack is a blurred image that he recognizes with an animal instinct. He’s looked at it plenty of times. So has everyone else by now.

“Unfortunate,” Ilya parrots. “What will happen to him?”

“That is beyond our purview here.”

“Do not ask about Hollander,” his agent mutters to him, again in Russian. “You have other problems.”

“Is he in trouble?”

“The league takes a stance that the personal lives of its players are their business to manage as they see fit, which includes their intimate relations. There is no restriction in the code of conduct against conducting a relationship with another player.”

It’s as much of an answer as Ilya is going to get, and he tries to settle himself in the knowledge that Hollander at least will skate through this. Ilya hasn’t fucked up that badly. Hollander might spend the rest of his career warming the bench for some mid-tier league in the middle of nowhere, but they can’t kick him out. He has years left on his contract, enough time to ride the scandal out.

“So it is not the dick that is the problem.”

“Mr. Rozanov.”

“So sorry. Is a dirty word? Homosexual.” He draws the syllables out, emphasizing his accent. “That is better? I am not, but,” he shrugs. “Maybe sometimes.”

Finlan is drawing on an endless well of patience. Ilya can’t imagine how many players he’s had in this office, how many scandals he’s led this team through. Well, Ilya’s always tried to be the best. This is a new way of being number one.

“I am not concerned with your sexuality, Mr. Rozanov.” Finlan turns another page, and rotates the page so Ilya can see. He recognizes a few of the photographs. A small white cup with bright blue tablets at the bottom. A snap from the Olympics locker room. A printed series of damning text messages, all in Russian. That explains the other lawyer, at least.

The fight floods out of Ilya all at once, and he has to force himself to stay seated and upright.

“Your conduct off the ice is unfortunately beyond what the league can tolerate. We were able to overlook allegations of doping, but there is concrete evidence. This along with,” Finlan turns another page, “evidence of official bribery. A series of low-value bets on your own games. You did not come into this season with a clean record, Mr. Rozanov.”

“Is not bribery,” Ilya says through his dry mouth. “Is money sent to my brother. For my family. I did not bet on games.”

“That’s not what your texts say.”

“So what, then? I text bullshit to my brother. Do you not have a brother?”

“Not one keeping me from conscription.”

Ilya’s hands clench into fists under the table. “I cannot go back to Russia.”

“Your immigration status is your own affair, I am afraid. The league has suspended you indefinitely. This means that—”

“I know what this means,” Ilya snaps. It’s a cozy way of removing him. No games, no team activities. No protection. He’s seen it happen a few times, when the league decides a player is more trouble than the money he brings in.

“In light of your suspension, the franchise intends to terminate your contract, pending the conclusion of the league investigation.”

Ilya’s fingers curl into fists. “I will appeal. I have contract.”

“You are of course welcome to appeal, though frankly I wouldn’t bother.” Finlan flips another page. More evidence stares back at them. “My colleagues will take you through the official termination paperwork, including the relevant visa concerns. The league has prepared a statement.”

“Do something,” Ilya snaps at his agent. “What do I pay you for?”

“I will send you my final bill,” says his agent bluntly.

Ilya leaves his phone on this time. He watches the stream of notifications. Twitter, the sports networks, Instagram. Rozanov contract terminated. The vultures are making a meal of his bones, and all Ilya can do is watch.

He needs to do something. His body is itching for movement and purpose. Since he was a child, he has always had hockey to drive him forward. When things were terrible, he could push himself in the gym or on the ice, forcing his body to be stronger or faster. A guiding purpose to his entire being.

There is nothing to do now, so he finds something. He slings a suitcase onto the bed and throws clothes messily into it. Designer sweatpants, a wool sweater, the silk shirt that makes him look expensive. It’s going to wrinkle at the bottom of the pile. He tosses more on top.

His phone rings, and he snaps his gaze toward it, ready to throw it at the wall and watch the screen shatter, but it’s Hollander’s name popping up. A video call.

Ilya doesn’t recognize the room around Hollander. It isn’t his Montreal apartment with its tasteful cream walls and modern furniture. The walls are blue, pinned over with old hockey posters. Behind Hollander’s left shoulder, Ilya can make out an old fashioned alarm clock, the kind with the two bells.

Hollander looks at him through the camera screen with wide eyes, his lip bitten red.

“Are you ok?”

“No. Next question.” Ilya spins, looking for somewhere to prop his phone up, and ends up sitting on the floor, his phone balanced against the edge of a book he always meant to read but never did. He never smoked inside the penthouse, but he lights one now, waiting for Hollander to tell him he shouldn’t. None of it matters. It won’t be his for much longer.

“What’s going on?”

“Did you call to ask me questions you can find out on the news? What about you? No one will tell me anything.”

“Oh, I, uh.” Hollander blinks at him. “I’m in Ottawa. With my parents. Just for the week. They didn’t want me at games right now. I’m a distraction.” His voice is bitter.

“They cannot terminate you.”

“No,” Hollander agrees, and his breath of relief is palpable. “They’re not happy. I don’t even think they’re going to trade me. They told me I’m,” he laughs, and it comes out sugar-spun fragile. “They put a lot of work into me. Like I’m just this thing they own.”

“That is hockey.”

“Yeah,” Hollander agrees, quietly. “Not for me.”

“How is your team?”

Hollander runs a hand over his face. “Bad.”

“Bad how?” Ilya is pushing, but he needs the reassurance that he’s not alone in feeling like his carefully constructed world is crumbling.

Hollander shrugs. It’s barely a movement. His muscles are wound too tight to make the gesture properly. “All the shit they’d say about someone else, I guess. Team chat’s been quiet. I think they made another one. Without me.”

“I do not have a team,” Ilya says, ripping the band aid off. If this is the Olympics of suffering, he intends to take gold. “I have a, what is word? Expiration date. No more hockey. No more nice US team and Stanley Cups.”

“Can you play in the KHL?”

Ilya’s throat is tight. He hasn’t said this part out loud yet. Another layer of unhappiness, bared for no one other than Shane Hollander. “My brother called me. He spent years calling me a,” Ilya pauses, looking for the words. He doesn’t know them in English, so he says it in Russian instead. With the way Hollander’s face twists, he  can hear the slur even without knowing the language. “Yes, and now he has proof. My father has made the suggestion that I will be—military service. Mandatory. I will not come back from this, I do not think.”

The golden glow of Hollander’s face has paled, even through a phone screen and across a thousand miles. “What does that mean?”

Ilya fights to keep his face steady. “Ilya Rozanov disappears. Not too soon, probably. Must make an example first.”

“Why?”

Hollander is full of questions. Usually Ilya likes this about him. He likes to know things that Shane Hollander does not, to force him to ask over and over, seeking out information self-consciously. Today, Ilya is tired and heartsick. “Russia has new laws since I left. It was not good before, but now it is worse. They will not like that Russian athlete has—” he waves a hand. “Worse, that it was with you. High profile. Big news.”

“When do you have to go?”

The league always handled Ilya’s immigration concerns. His role had extended as far as appearing in person at an embassy to provide a stack of paperwork and sign even more, all of it far above his pay grade. He spent the day trying to find his own immigration attorney, someone to answer to him and not to an organization that had hung him out to dry, but the responses he received indicated that by the time you were calling in an emergency, it was too late.

“Soon,” he says, and slumps back. He draws his lip between his teeth. “I go or there will be extradition. Big word, yes? Attorneys make lots of money to explain this word to me. I asked Svetlana if she will marry me,” he adds, throwing it out between them to watch Hollander’s face shift again in a way that Ilya cannot define but which cheers him anyway, in a time when nothing else can. “For American visa. She said no, of course. Too dangerous for her. For her family still in Russia.” He doesn’t know the English word for the blush-pink color that built up around her eyes as she pretended not to cry, so he doesn’t try.

Neither of them has anything to say to that. Ilya’s restless energy settles into a weary fatalism. It is good, maybe, to know what is coming. Naming the monster does not take away its teeth, but it does let him look at it in the clear light of day. He catalogues the shape of his life, and what it is likely to become. How much of it he may have left.

Hollander starts talking again after a while, filling the silence. He tells Ilya about Ottawa, where he is staying with his parents, and shows him his childhood bedroom. They lived different lives. Ilya knew this already, but it is put into starker view by the photos and awards, all left on the walls as though Hollander may walk back into his parents’ house at any time and turn back into the pink-cheeked toddler with his plastic skates and his too-big stick.

Ilya doesn’t know why Hollander is talking to him. They don’t do this. They text before games, and they fuck, and Hollander chokes himself on Ilya’s cock and protests sweetly when Ilya pulls out his phone but lets him anyway, too cock drunk to say no, and then Hollander trusts him and does not watch Ilya delete the video, trusts him when he should not, and does not bring it up again.

Hollander should hate him. Maybe he does, somewhere behind those sad doe eyes as Hollander pulls a book from his narrow bookshelf and holds it up to the camera to show Ilya the signature inside. This is something that Ilya did to him with his own stupidity and stubbornness, a grain silo worth of each, and Hollander is acting as though he does not know that he should despise Ilya to his very marrow.

Ilya sits and listens as Hollander talks. He asks simple questions. What will you do for Christmas, and is there much snow in Ottawa. They don’t talk about hockey or grainy phone videos or Russia. It’s not enough to pull Ilya out of his whirring despair, but he catches perhaps a fingertip on stable ground, and takes the deepest breath he has all day.

“I need to go,” Hollander says eventually. It’s late, and Ilya is sandy-eyed with exhaustion. He doesn’t think he’ll sleep.

“Go,” Ilya agrees. Go back to your life. Go back to your parents and your team and your career, all of which you have and I do not. Go back to being Shane Hollander, marred but unbroken.

“I’ll talk to you soon.”

Ilya shrugs. “If you want.”

Because Ilya is an idiot, he pulls up the video. He settles on his bed to watch it, on his stomach between his suitcase and his crumpled clothes. It isn’t hard to find. He searches his own name on Twitter, and there it is, luridly captioned. Millions of people have seen it. He presses play.

Shane Hollander, on his knees, smiles loosely up at the camera. His mouth is soft and pink, and the blush on his cheeks spills down over his neck. Ilya knows how far that color goes, but the view from his phone camera is limited. It cuts away and back as Ilya’s hand moves, and then he settles the edge of his phone against his stomach to hold it stable.

Ilya’s dick is hard and already wet. They have been going for a while, which is why Hollander agrees at all. He loses that strung-tight rigidity when Ilya fucks him and melts into a softer version of himself. Shane, where he would be Hollander.

On the screen, Shane flicks his tongue against Ilya’s dick, and then mouths his way down to nuzzle at the crux of thigh and stomach where the hair lies thick. Ilya’s fingers in his hair tug him away again and guide him down, and Shane’s mouth opens automatically. In other circumstances, Shane should be proud of this video. He sucks dick like a professional, just the way Ilya likes. The way Ilya taught him. Ilya’s dick disappears between those wet, pink lips, and Shane blinks up at him through tear-damp lashes.

Ilya turns the video off. He doesn’t want to watch the rest.

Chapter 2

Ilya books a flight, thumbing his way through first class seating with unsteady fingers. If he has to go back, he will do so in style. He won’t be dragged out by the collar like a stray dog. He’ll go in January, he decides, at the tail end of his visa’s grace period. He’ll spend the holidays alone with the best bottle of vodka this putrid country can provide and slouch his way into the new year with a headache and rebuilt resolve.

He remembers acutely how homesick he had been his first Christmas in Boston. The holiday was wrong. Everything was loud and tacky, coated in gleaming tinsel and smelling of peppermint. He hadn’t known what to do with himself that first year. The holiday break was too early, before the New Year had crawled into its bed, and every underpaid, dead-eyed checker wished him a Merry Christmas with equal disinterest.

Even now, four years and a new understanding of the seductive appeal of excess later, he still finds Christmas too much. The older skaters take turns hosting Christmases and Thanksgivings, sweeping the rookies and the foreigners into their orbit. Ilya went once and found it startlingly offputting, his teammates, crowded together, drunk on rum-spiked eggnog and intent on drowning their day in alcohol and cheap trinkets. He celebrates his version in January, tucked away for a spare moment in a quiet corner or exchanging nods with the only Russian player on the opposing team. 

Marleau is the only one to have reached out at all.

The radio silence is not a surprise, but that doesn’t lessen the sting. Hockey is a series of smaller groups, nesting inside each other like dolls. His line, his team, the affiliate teams, the league. He went to weddings and christenings, held babies and, not that long ago, a cup, hoisted above their heads in the artificial air of the arena. Now, nothing.

The city is busy in the waning days of December. Ilya shoulders his way through the crowds and steps into the quiet of the package store. It is familiar in the way all stores of its kind are, never quite clean, filled to the brim with cheap whiskey and imported rum. There is a promotional standee by the door with a santa hat balanced jauntily on top. His foot slips on the tracked-in slush and salt, and he corrects quickly before taking out a whole shelf.

Their selection is bad, but he finds a respectable French vodka and snags a bottle of tequila for good measure on his way to the register. He waits impatiently behind a stoop-shouldered old man intent on counting out his change. Maybe he will not miss America, if this is what it has for him. Cheap liquor and grime and his own ragged impatience.

His phone rings as he’s digging his driver’s license out of his pocket. He waves it in the clerk’s face, daring him to comment, and shoves a handful of bills across the counter without waiting for the change.

He answers as he steps outside, breath steaming. “What?”

“Hi. It’s, um. It’s me.”

“Hollander, yes. I know. I have caller ID.”

There is a tense note in Hollander’s voice. This is not unusual, because Hollander is held together by latent panic, but something about it feels new. Maybe it is because Ilya has joined him in this subcutaneous anxiety. Maybe Hollander feels like this all of the time, like his skin will crawl away without him if he does not hold himself still.

“Well?” Ilya prompts, when Hollander does not continue. He ducks into an alley, ankle deep in warming slush, and leans against the brick. “It is very cold, Hollander. Not a good time to chat.” Don’t hang up, Ilya thinks. Stay.

“I did some research,” Hollander says, and Ilya thunks his head against the brick.

“You have too much free time. When do they let you back in practice?”

“Yesterday. I’m playing in two days. Last game before Christmas.”

Ilya didn’t expect an answer to that, but he likes having it anyway. He thinks about Hollander skating with his shitty team and wonders if he is back in the team chat. “Ok, good for you.”

“Yeah. No, fuck. Rozanov, can you just listen for a second? It’s important.”

“Okay,” Ilya sighs, and looks longingly at the paper-wrapped bottle in his hand. Well, fuck it. Hung for a sheep. He pins the phone between his shoulder and ear, pops the cap off, and takes a swig. “Talk.”

“Where are you?”

“Hollander. If you want to talk, talk.”

“Yeah, ok. Sure. Yeah.” Hollander’s words chase each other out of his mouth. “Look, I did a bunch of research, right, and I, uh, I talked to a lawyer. Not this week. Kind of… before? Just in case.”

“Good for you.” Ilya swishes liquor between his teeth to feel it sting. He should have bought a cheaper bottle. “Lawyer gets you back on team?”

“No, not that kind of lawyer.”

Ilya waits. The alley does not smell like piss, but only because it is below freezing. The rats must go somewhere in the winter. In the summer the city teems with them, chunky brown bodies scrabbling in the corners. He kicks the edge of the dumpster next to him, but none scurry out.

“What was that?”

“No rats,” Ilya informs him.

“Where the fuck are you?”

“Outside.”

“You don’t make any sense,” Hollander says, like he’s not the one that called Ilya to ramble about his legal problems. “Can you talk? Is this okay? Look, Rozanov.” Hollander pauses, long enough for Ilya to check that the call hasn’t disconnected. “Don’t go to Russia.”

Ilya laughs, startled. The bottle is cold between his fingers. Everything is cold. “Hollander do you know the meaning of work visa?”

Hollander talks over Ilya, shoving the words through the phone line. “Look, I know you don’t like me or whatever, but you can’t go back. I looked that up, too, Russia, and I talked to someone and I think it’ll work and you… you can’t. I can’t,” he says, like he wants Ilya to resolve him of some invisible sin.

Ilya pulls his phone away from his face to stare at it. It’s three in the afternoon. Hollander is almost certainly not drunk, though Ilya could be soon if he tries. “Hollander. What are you talking about?”

“Marry me.”

Ilya blinks. “What?”

“It’s a good idea,” Hollander says. Ilya can almost hear his shoulders creeping up towards his ears.

“No, I am sorry. I did not hear you right. Say it again.”

“You should marry me. Or, I guess, will you marry me? I don’t know if I need to like…propose? I know we couldn’t there, but it’s legal in Canada, and you could stay in Montreal. I don’t even think you’d need to learn French, actually.”

It’s such a stunningly Hollander concern that Ilya can’t help but laugh again. “You want me to marry you?”

“No, fuck you, I don’t want to, but it’s…” Hollander trails off. “You don’t want to go to Russia, right?”

To call it an understatement would itself be an understatement. Ilya is sick with fear at the thought of what will happen to him in Russia. He lies awake at night imagining the ways they will break him. “No,” he says, which is inadequate, but all he can muster.

“So move to Canada.” Ilya wishes he could see Hollander’s face. He wants to know how deep the worry-line between his brows has etched itself. “Move to Canada with me. I know it’s probably not a good plan, and you wouldn’t want to marry me otherwise, but I think it’ll work if we do it now. Before you go.”

Before he goes. If Ilya goes, he is not coming back.

It is not a good idea to move to Canada to play house with Shane Hollander. It is a worse idea to board his flight. Ilya takes another drink from the cold glass bottle and closes his eyes. His hair catches on the rough brick. Everywhere the world is snow.

If Ilya were a better man, he would ask what Hollander’s parents think of his plan. Whether he has thought about the life he would sign away to save Ilya’s, when Ilya is the one who put them both in this place. Ilya is not a better man. Ilya is weak and desperate and scared. 

“Okay. When?”

“How soon can you be in Montreal?”

Ilya stuffs a duffel bag with six crumpled shirts, a pair of jeans, his cup ring, the MVP award they can’t take back, and the rest of the bottle of vodka. Waste not want not. The snow starts halfway through the drive, coming down in choking flurries that bring traffic down to a crawl. He barely avoids rear ending the car in front of him when its brake lights flash red, and his wheels skid on the icy asphalt until he is nearly sideways on the road, his heart racing behind his ribs. 

The five hour drive takes eight. He parks his loud, orange car by a snowbank and hustles into the courthouse, minutes before their scheduled appointment, the last one available that year. 

The tuxedo is the same one he wore in Vegas, when he stood next to Hollander and took a series of careful selfies in front of a crowd of their peers. It does not look as nice this time. The pants are crumpled from the drive, and the silk is probably ruined from the snow that melted into the fabric when he stopped to piss on the side of the road, just past the Canadian border.

Hollander is waiting in the lobby, shoulder to shoulder with Hayden Pike. Ilya stops, his breath frozen in his chest.

Hollander is wearing a tidy blue suit. His face is drawn tight and sleepless bruises pool under his eyes. Even from here, Ilya can see that his nails are picked to stubs. He has shaved, though, and brushed his hair, and put on his nicest clothes for this farce of a wedding.

“Hi,” Hollander says, when Ilya walks over to them. He tries to smile, but it comes out lopsided. 

Pike does not fake a smile. He looks at Ilya with undisguised contempt. “Nice of you to show up.”

“Traffic,” Ilya says. He holds his hands out to his sides. “I am here now.”

“Yeah, you. Fuck.” Hollander looks around. “We have a couple of minutes. The appointment is for three. Is she—?”

“Bathroom,” Pike says.

Ilya wants to say something, but the only things he knows are mean, ragged little chirps, and this is not a day for that. Instead, he watches Hollander watching him, both of them caught in a spell which shatters when an extremely pregnant woman waddles up to them. Pike reaches for her immediately, puts himself between her and Ilya.

“Rozanov,” she says, with better-hidden dislike. Her look to Hollander is pleading, and he looks carefully away. “Shane. You don’t have to do this.”

“I want to.”

“So many sad eyes,” Ilya says, and forces a grin. “On my wedding day?”

“Mine too, asshole,” Hollander mutters, but he slides an amused glance at Ilya anyway. “This is Jackie. We need two witnesses.”

“I don’t like this,” Pike declares. “Shane, you know I don’t care that you’re… gay, or bi, or whatever. You didn’t even tell them.”

It is all too soon. Ilya should have been there hours before. He wanted to look Hollander in the eye and ask maybe are you sure, or why are you doing this. Ilya wants, desperately, to know the answer. He would not have done the same in Hollander’s place. He is a hypocrite, perhaps, the reprobate his father always assumed he would turn out to be. 

“It’s three,” Hollander says, and Ilya follows him to a small, sterile office where a middle-aged woman walks them through a thin pile of paperwork. Ilya hands over his birth certificate and his passport and keeps his palms firmly settled on his knees. For an excruciating minute, he is afraid that Hayden Pike will refuse to sign his piece, but then he does, and then they are—

“Married,” the woman finishes, just like that, and gathers the paperwork. “Congratulations.” She winks at them, a break in her businesslike demeanor. “Now is traditionally when you kiss.”

There is a game that Carmichael’s children play, Candyland. It is simple. The cards are shuffled and laid in a pile. The players take turns flipping over the top card and move their pieces to the color on the card. There is no strategy and no choices; the winner is determined as soon as the cards are shuffled. Ilya found it amusing. He made the right noises of disbelief when he was sent back to the molasses swamp and let the children crow over their predetermined victories.

Twenty three years ago his deck was shuffled. He plays for Russia. He is drafted. He takes a video. He drives to Montreal.

He kisses Shane Hollander.

It is the first time they have done this in front of anyone else, and he is conscious of the watching eyes of three people. It is a dry peck, lips barely brushing, but Ilya feels a shiver build in his spine and settle in his fingertips.

The terror that has been dwelling in him ebbs. In its place relief rushes in. He is not safe, but maybe he is closer. Maybe, he thinks, he will make it through this.

Hollander has three designated parking spaces under his apartment building. He is waiting by his car in one when Ilya pulls in. The orange stands out among the sensible greys and blacks.

“This is new,” Ilya comments, as he pulls himself upright. “Maybe soon you will let me come in the front door.”

“Yeah, funny.”

“Not a joke.”

Hollander leads him through the underground warren of damp concrete and up to a resident elevator. Three floors up to the main elevator bank, and then over to the dedicated elevator for the penthouse suites. Ilya has seen this elevator before, when Hollander snuck him through the emergency staircase. His foot had tapped impatiently on the faux-marble tile as he glanced around, desperate not to be seen.

He is wound just as tight today, nervy and talkative. He lists the building’s amenities: a mailroom on the first floor, twenty four hour doorman service, a fitness center. “I have one in the apartment,” he adds, glancing back at Ilya. “Not a full gym, but there are weights and a treadmill. It’s on the second floor so the noise doesn’t bother anyone.”

“Okay.”

“I got you a key,” Hollander adds, as he unlocks his front door. He scrabbles in his pocket and comes up with a small silver house key on a Montreal Metros keychain. “It was the only one I had,” he says, new panic building.

“Thank you,” Ilya says, and picks it from Hollander’s hand. He slings the duffel over his shoulder and pushes past him into the apartment. It is as he remembered. It’s only late afternoon, but it is already well past dark and the city glimmers below them.

“I made up a guest room. I don’t know if you…” Hollander trails off. Ilya sets his bag down. 

“Why did you call? Before. First night, and then later.” It is what Ilya wanted to ask at the courthouse. Beyond everything, he wants to know this.

Hollander’s mouth twists. “I needed someone to talk to.”

“Why me?”

Hollander looks anywhere but Ilya. His gaze flicks between the lamps and the counter and the edge of a rug. “I didn’t want to talk to my parents about it. My mom kept asking questions. About you. And, uh. About me.”

“So call friends.”

The line between his eyebrows deepens. He stares past Ilya, through the dark window. “I don’t know if I have any. I thought I did. Hayden, yeah. He’s trying, but he just wanted to talk about how it wasn’t my fault. Everyone else I know plays hockey.” He gestures at Ilya’s duffel and changes the subject. “Is that all you brought?”

“I will have more sent up. I need to find, uh, contractor. To handle my penthouse. Sell the cars.”

“Yeah, shit. Your whole life is there.”

“I do not know if I—can I leave Canada?”

The weight of the last twenty-four hours finds its way onto Ilya’s shoulders, dragging him down. There is too much he does not know. Ilya has never been allowed to chart his own course, not really, not in a world of draft picks and player trades and curfews. There is no system to rely on here, only Shane Hollander and the strength of his convictions, and Ilya  does not know how to trust this deeply.

The feeling is not helped by the awkward half shrug that Hollander gives him in return. They are both flying blind. “Are you hungry?”

Ilya is starving. He hasn’t eaten since the morning, too focused on making it to Montreal to risk stopping even for drive-through food. He nods, and Hollander pulls pre-portioned meals from the fridge. Ilya recognizes the type: the nutritionist-approved meal plan meals, delivered three times a week during the season. Hollander frowns at the neatly labeled containers.

“Is salmon ok?” he asks. “I don’t know what you eat. I ordered extra,” he says, and Ilya is startled by the thought. He had expected—what? To fend for himself, maybe. To be left eating leftovers or begging for crumbs. He should have known that Shane Hollander would think of this. Ilya would not have.

They eat in silence. Hollander’s meal plan allows salmon and brown rice, huge portions of each. Hollander is in the middle of the season, and no amount of calories will be enough to stop the weight from slipping off him as the season progresses. Ilya shovels rice into his mouth, and tries not to think of the meal he would have been eating in Boston.

It is the first time they have eaten together. Hollander eats the way Ilya does, with his fork in his left hand, knife in his right, not the American style he had grown used to seeing in Boston. Ilya holds the tiny spark of familiarity close.

Ilya does not know anything about this man. He does not know what he eats or what he likes, how he sleeps or which flavor of toothpaste he prefers. He knows that Hollander is thoughtful, and has stocked his fridge for Ilya, which has to be enough for now.

“I got some champagne,” Hollander says when his plate is empty, and he blushes violently. “It was Jackie’s idea. To celebrate. I don’t think she was serious, but I got it anyway.”

“Celebrate?”

“Getting married.”

Ilya nods nearly involuntarily. Married. God. He never thought he would be married. He had, in some dark corner of his mind, never expected to make it past twenty, and now he is married. To a man. He stifles a hysterical giggle. “Champagne,” he agrees. Their fingers brush when he takes the bottle from Hollander.

“Married,” Hollander says. They are, both of them, reduced to single words by the weight of the day. Ilya pops the cork and finds heavy-bottomed water glasses in a cabinet. 

Hollander makes a face when he drinks. “It’s so bad.”

“Is fine. Is champagne.” Champagne is too sweet for Ilya, but he likes how the bubbles collect on his tongue in an effervescent haze.

Ilya is aware of every inch of distance between them. Hollander is clutching his glass with both hands, as though he’s afraid of what his hands will do if he doesn’t. Ilya wants to know what champagne would taste like in Hollander’s mouth.

The silence is heavy. Hollander flicks a glance up at him, and then away.

“Is wedding night,” Ilya says, because this is something they know how to do. He does not know how to do any of the rest of it, but he knows Hollander’s tells and Hollander’s body. Hollander’s pulse flickers in the hollow of his throat.

“Please,” Hollander says.

Ilya pushes him gently against the counter and takes the glass from his hands. The champagne is sweet on his lips, and Hollander’s gasp is sweeter still when Ilya ruts his thigh between Hollander’s legs.

Ilya knows who he is like this. His world has tilted sideways, but Hollander’s desire is an anchor, and Ilya grasps it with both hands. He does not know what Hollander wants from him, or for how long this illusion of safety will last, but he knows who Hollander wants him to be right now, and he is happy to oblige. He has spent his life earning his keep with his body; this way is more pleasant than most.

Hollander’s bedroom is as Ilya remembers it. Blue sheets and throw pillows in a neat line. He imagines Hollander making his bed each morning, pulling the covers into place and setting the pillows back in order, each one exactly arranged. The covers wrinkle when Ilya flops back onto the bed, up on his elbows. His jacket is on the back of one of Hollander’s chairs, but he still has on the too-formal pants and the fussy shirt. He undoes his pants and rubs the heel of his hand over his stiffening cock.

“Yes?”

Hollander is frozen, waiting for something. Permission, maybe. 

“You should take your clothes off,” Ilya says, and Hollander scrambles with the tiny buttons up his front. He shuffles his pants down to his ankles. Ilya waits until Hollander has set the folded fabric on the bedside table before he taps the bed beside him. 

Ilya kisses him carefully, his hands on either side of Hollander’s face holding him steady. Hollander pulls him closer, dragging Ilya down on top of him until their feet are tangled, Ilya’s whole weight pressed onto Hollander so that he can feel each dragging inhale. Hollander stares back at him with wide brown eyes, his lips parted.

Ilya wiggles a hand between them to tug Hollander’s cock and delights in the little noise it pulls out of him. Hollander bucks up against Ilya’s thigh, rutting against the fabric.

“Can you—” Hollander plucks at Ilya’s shirt. Ilya rolls over and lets Hollander undo the buttons carefully. He lifts his hips so he can tug the pants down, and then they are both naked. Hollander’s tongue flicks out to wet his lower lip.

“Suck it,” Ilya suggests, and Hollander’s resolve dissolves. His hair is slick between Ilya’s fingers, and he guides Hollander into place. Like Ilya likes. Like Ilya taught him. The scene is too familiar; every wet sound is the echo of the video.

Ilya pulls him back. Hollander’s mouth is wet and his face flushed. “You don’t want to?”

“I change my mind,” Ilya says.

“What, then?”

Ilya flips them again so Hollander is on his back with Ilya above him. Ilya likes this position better. He pins Hollander’s hips with his thighs and takes both of their cocks in his one hand. Hollander’s eyelashes flutter against his cheek.

There is no time frame tonight. Ilya does not have a bus to catch or a game to head to. He wants to luxuriate in the opportunity, but Hollander writhes underneath him and Ilya cannot stand being outside of him for a moment longer.

“I want to fuck you,” Ilya says, and Hollander nods in wide-eyed agreement. Ilya slicks his fingers with Hollander’s expensive lube and lets it warm on his skin before he presses with one finger and then a quick second, all while he mouths at Hollander’s stomach, thighs, cock,.

“Oh, fuck, Rozanov.” Hollander’s head is thrown back, his eyes squeezed shut. “Fuck, fuck. You have to—I’m not going to last.”

Ilya pulls off with a soft, wet sound. Hollander is still too tight, squeezing around Ilya’s fingers. He prods deeper and strokes along his prostate, earning a quiet whine. Hollander is gorgeous like this, all sweat-slick skin, hot where Ilya’s fingers brush over him. It is so familiar to have him under Ilya’s hands that he can nearly pretend that he will be on the ice against him tomorrow. That nothing has changed. That Hollander is, for now, for these precious spare moments, his.

Hollander likes it more on hands and knees, but Ilya is selfish so he arranges him on his back with his knee pressed up nearly into his chest so that Ilya can watch his face as he slides into him. He’s hot and tight and his eyes are wide open as he watches Ilya. This is all Ilya has to offer: his body and his unerring attention. He slides a hand around Hollander’s cock and strokes him in slow, teasing motions, in line with the gentle slide of his cock.

“Harder,” Hollander says. He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth. “I want to feel it.”

“You want to feel me while you skate,” Ilya says, and thrusts hard, hip bones up against the muscles of Hollander’s ass. Hollander trembles all over and mouths a quiet yes. 

Ilya tugs at Hollander’s nipples, stretches them out from his body. They have always avoided leaving marks, and maybe it’s too late for that now, but he knows the ways to drag sensations from Hollander’s body with the crest of his fingernails and two fingers squeezed over pebbled flesh. Hollander writhes under him, and Ilya won’t last, either, but maybe that’s all right. There is tomorrow.

Ilya knows where Hollander keeps the washcloths, and he takes his time wiping Hollander down. He cleans him carefully, swiping the terrycloth over his stomach and between his thighs, and follows with his tongue, licking the sweat away.

“You’re so gross,” Hollander says, but it’s halfway to a moan. “Come on. I need to shower.”

Ilya sucks him off in the shower, half-drowned under the wet stream. The adrenaline in his blood has crashed into a sweet relief that he channels into Hollander’s skin, with Hollander’s fingers pulling in his sodden hair.

“These are new?” Ilya asks, when they’re drying off. Hollander had white towels, but now he has blue. It’s a weird change to notice, but Ilya has so few points of reference to base his observations on. 

“Are they ok? I didn’t have enough for two people. The old ones are somewhere.” Hollander looks around like he needs to find which cupboard his spare towels are in, ready to offer them up to Ilya. He wears his nerves on top of his skin, and Ilya is, again, surprised by the thought that Hollander has put into this paper marriage.

“Oh no, towels are terrible. I will make my flight after all.”

“You’re an asshole,” Hollander says, but he smiles while he says it, soft and new. Ilya wants, very badly, to know what is going on in his mind. “I have a game tomorrow,” he says, and hangs his towel neatly on a little hook. Ilya hangs his next to it. Two towels, side by side. Deeply domestic.

“You told me. I should go, yes? Wear Hollander jersey. Wave for cameras.”

Ilya means it as a joke, but Hollander freezes like a wounded animal. “You can stay here. I’ve got, um. There’s DVDs if you want to watch movies or something. I have Netflix. And an xBox.”

“Okay.”

Ilya follows Hollander back to his bedroom and watches him strip the bed. He takes one corner of the clean fitted sheet and tucks it under the mattress while Hollander does the same on the other side.

“I have a guest room,” Hollander blurts out as he’s finishing making the bed he is about to sleep in. “I mean. I need to get up early. And you probably don’t want to…”

Ilya wants to crawl inside the clean new sheets and curl his body around Shane Hollander. He tries to keep this from his face, but he’ll never know if he managed, because Hollander won’t even look at him. “Okay,” Ilya agrees.

Ilya has slept in many empty hotel rooms, sometimes with his teammates snoring beside him, sometimes alone. He has stayed in Olympic housing and snatched naps on women’s couches and reclined his airplane seats as far as they will go and curled up against the hard plastic side of the humming plane. He’s never felt quite so out of place as here, in Hollander’s tidy guest room, listening to the sound of his own breathing.

Ilya watches Hollander score once, twice on home ice to the sound of cheering fans. It comes through tinny on the television speakers, but clear enough that he knows how loud it must be in person. The camera lingers on his unsmiling face.

He comes back after the game with his hair still damp and settles on the couch with a wince and a sigh.

“Good game,” Ilya offers, and Hollander nods. “You are hurt?”

“It’s fine. I have a couple of days to rest it.”

Hockey pauses for three days over the Christmas break, couched in the middle of a week-long roster freeze. It is a little island settled perfectly in the center of the season. Back home, the tree in Boston Common is lit up in bright colors. 

Hollander has not put up Christmas decorations. There are no candy canes or tinsel garlands, no tree. This is not surprising; Ilya has not known many single players who do more than a cursory wreath on the door. There is a hand-knit stocking with Shane embroidered in glittery blue yarn. It catches the firelight when Hollander flicks the fireplace on.

“I always go up to Ottawa for Christmas,” Hollander says, more to the fire than to Ilya.

“Why?”

“I grew up there. My parents live there.”

“You were there after—” Ilya waves a hand. “Everything.” 

“Yeah. I go back when I can. I have a place up there, too. It’s really nice. I had it built over the summer, so I haven’t gotten to use it yet. It’s on a private lake.”

Hollander rambles when he’s nervous. Ilya isn’t sure if Hollander knows this about himself.

“So you are going to Ottawa, to your fancy new house?”

“It’s really close, actually. Just a few miles away from my parents. I’ll probably stop in while I’m up there, just to see.”

“Hollander.” Ilya cuts him off. “You are going to Ottawa. I get it.”

“Yeah, so I was thinking,” Hollander says. He flicks the switch, and flinches when the fire goes out. “Sorry, let me just—” The fire lights again, licking up in a flickering line along the fake wood logs.

“Do you want—”

“They don’t know yet. I can get you something,” Hollander says. “I don’t know what you like. For holidays.”

Ah, Ilya thinks, and keeps his composure steady. He did not expect to go to Ottawa, to meet Hollander’s doting parents, who welcomed him home with open arms when Ilya burned his world down. Even if he were allowed, he does not think he could meet his mother’s eyes.

It is one thing to know this, another to be told bluntly that he is not invited. He is a secret, then. Hollander has saved him, but now Ilya must play his part and hide in this apartment with Hollander’s Netflix and his nutritionist-approved meals. It is a different prison than the one he expected.

“Is ok,” Ilya says. He pulls Hollander to the couch and settles him on the cushions. He runs his hands across Hollander’s chest, and takes his chin between two fingers to kiss him. He will take his privileges where he can get them.

Hollander is still too sore for Ilya to fuck him again. They’ve never done this two days in a row. Hollander is learning new things about his body at the same time as Ilya does, so Ilya gets on his knees instead and bites the creamy inside of Hollander’s thigh to feel the skin tremble between his teeth. He sucks him off leisurely, his hand moving in tandem with his mouth. He thinks about trying to kiss it back into Hollander’s mouth, but Hollander is already too on-edge so he swallows instead and wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist. Hollander curses low, and drags Ilya down to return the favor. 

Hollander leaves early the next morning when Ilya is still stumbling awake. In the range of things Ilya doesn’t know, whether or not to kiss his ersatz husband should be a small concern, but they stand there by the door for too long, Hollander’s head slightly tilted. Ilya cups his cheek with his palm, and Hollander melts into the touch, and Ilya knows he’s made the right choice here, at least.

“Three days,” Hollander says into Ilya’s mouth, and then kisses him like he’s storing it up for their time apart. “I’ll be back the morning after Christmas.”

“Will be more fun here,” Ilya says into the join of Hollander’s jaw and neck. He sucks a bruise to the surface while Hollander writhes between him and the wall. He hopes his parents see it, this proof that Ilya was there. 

Hollander wears his guilt across his face, as clear as his freckles. “You’ll be all right? I need to tell my parents. I don’t want to ruin Christmas by springing this on them.”

Ilya understands. The only thing he has ever done for families is ruin them, and he does not want to do this to Shane Hollander’s perfect Canadian family. Ilya hates Shane Hollander, just a little. 

“I’ll tell them soon,” Hollander promises. He looks miserable, which is not as cheering as Ilya would like. “The lawyer I talked to said that we can’t keep it hidden. Immigration will want to talk to them. To, uh. Verify.”

“Hollander, go. I do not care about your wrong Christmas.” Hollander will go to his parents’ house and drink maybe one sip of boozy eggnog and open presents wrapped in printed paper and sit on the floor in his pyjamas like a small child, and Ilya will be fine.

“Don’t burn the place down.”

“Whole building. I am too hot.”

“Asshole,” Hollander murmurs and slips through the door, out of Ilya’s grasp, and then Ilya is all alone in Shane Hollander’s tidy apartment.

Ilya pours himself a glass of vodka, ignoring the clock on the oven, and sips it as he wanders through Hollander’s home. His home, he supposes.

He goes through Hollander’s room first. His clothes hang neatly in the closet, arranged in drifts of monotonous tee shirts and folded pants. A quilt is tucked away in a corner of the closet, handmade, along with a teddy bear missing one eye. On the nightstand, a box holds two watches which tick a quiet tattoo when Ilya holds one up to his ear. He slips it on and admires how the light catches on the crystal face. Rolex. Ilya never developed the taste for fancy watches. Watches are an old man’s game. Ilya prefers louder fashions.

Hollander has not developed either of these tastes, evidently. The watches are unworn and his closet is a shrine to athleisure. There are branded Metros tee shirts and Under Armour workout gear and sweatpants that Ilya can only barely shimmy up around his waist. He finds a slightly oversized shirt and slips it over his head, amused by the Metros logo on his chest.

Hollander does not keep much in his bedroom outside of his bed and its piles of neatly arranged pillows. Ilya tallies up the things he is learning. Hollander makes the bed every morning. This is not in itself a surprise; he has the demeanor of a man bothered by creased sheets. Hollander has a half-full bottle of lube in his bedside drawer. Ilya digs around behind it and finds the dildo he wondered about for so long. It is not big.

He pulls out his phone to text Hollander. What is your address? For mailing.

Hollander responds nearly immediately with an address and an apology that he forgot to get a copy of the mailbox key for Ilya.

No problem, Ilya replies, and sits on Hollander’s bed while he orders a much larger bright purple dildo.

The rest of the drawer is as expected. Condoms and tissues and a little jar of earplugs. There are three books on the table, two about hockey and one book of crosswords. Ilya flips through it, decides he doesn’t want to bother with English today, and places it neatly back where it belongs.

Ilya hadn’t expected to find treasure troves of sex toys or gay porn, but it’s still disappointing to come up empty handed. Hollander keeps his trophies in a glass-fronted cabinet and his alcohol under the cabinet, all of the bottles thick with dust. There’s a single houseplant on the bedroom windowsill with white-striped leaves that curl gently. Ilya doesn’t know how to tell if plants need water.

Even Hollander’s houseplants live on schedules. Ilya shouldn’t be surprised.

It takes a surprisingly small amount of time to poke through every corner of Hollander’s apartment, and he flops down on the couch, bored, and then hops back up ten minutes later to burn off some of his restless energy in the small workout room at the end of the hall. It’s meant for maintenance exercises, lightly stocked with a few free weights, a yoga mat, and a stationary bike that Ilya spends an hour racking up miles on, increasing the resistance every time his thoughts start to wander. Hollander probably works out at the training rink every day, even holidays, there by seven with his disgusting protein smoothie. 

Ilya needs to stop thinking about Shane Hollander, but it is an impossible ask in this place, surrounded by his things. He gets meditatively drunk instead and lies on Hollander’s couch and watches the first Christmas movie that Netflix suggests and falls asleep before the leads figure out that they are in love. He wakes in the pitch dark and stubs his toe on the way to his bedroom before tumbling into a restful sleep.

Christmas dawns bright and cold, and Ilya works his way through the hangover through sheer force of will. Hollander does not keep bacon or frozen potatoes or anything that is good in the world, so Ilya eats two of his pre-portioned meals, picking out the good bits from each, leaving behind a massacre of undersalted green beans and asparagus.

He spends an hour trying to beat Hollander’s high scores on his xBox, and then gives up, bored and restless. He can’t focus. There is too much of the day still to come.

Ilya is used to being alone, the way he is used to being lonely. Both of them are easy to do in a crowd. Teams and cities are alike that way.

He is not used to having it enforced. He has always been able to call on people when the solitude became too much, to corral at least a few of his teammates in going out to clubs or bars during his dark days, or to cajole Svetlana into visiting. He does not know anyone in Montreal. The Metros’ players would as soon spit on him as answer his texts, and that was before he defiled their beloved captain.

He skims through Google Maps for options, debating the merits of being alone in company. Hollander’s apartment is in a densely-populated area, a short walk from a series of small stories and bars, some of which look interesting, if a bad idea to be spotted at, and all of which are closed for the holiday.

“This is stupid,” Ilya says, sprawled out on Hollander’s couch. He flips through his phone, resigned to doom scroll the day away. There is a text from Svetlana, checking in, and he grins as he responds. He has not told her the details, only that he will not make his flight, and that she should not worry.

His brother has texted as well. Ilya chews the drawstring of his borrowed sweatshirt as he reads. Alexei vacillates between threats and promises that Ilya knows better than to believe. His father needs money; his niece has school fees; his family is under scrutiny because of Ilya’s misbehavior. Alexei does not know yet that Ilya is not coming back. He is trying to bleed Ilya’s accounts dry before then, probably. Ilya is meant to ignore the threats that sound like promises and play his part. 

Ilya types a message, deletes it, types it again. Resentment sours his stomach.

I will send for papa, he sends, eventually, and puts his phone on silent before he can see a response ping back.

He doesn’t need to send money. His father’s stony disapproval cannot find him here, hidden away in Montreal. Ilya spent his summer in Moscow, holed up in his family’s gilt-edged home. Every morning, his father looked at him with a sneer on his lips and asked why he had not visited sooner.

He doesn’t know how much of his money goes to doctors and the medicine and how much goes up Alexei’s nose. Maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same black pit.

Ilya scrolls on his phone and watches the sun disappear behind the horizon.

There are two packs of cigarettes tucked into the outside pocket of his duffel bag and Ilya retrieves one and his old brass lighter, tucking them in his pocket. It is full dark now and snowing, twenty degrees below freezing in Montreal, and Ilya did not bring a coat. His tuxedo jacket was a stylish but objectively impractical choice, and he regrets it somewhat now that he is here and has to think of things other than looking good in the photos they didn’t take.

Hollander’s apartment is on the top floors, no upstairs neighbors, so it doesn’t take Ilya long to find the back staircase. He jogs up the stairs, two at a time, and through a door marked in bright red as emergency exit only. It doesn’t trip any alarms, so Ilya slips through the door and props it open with one of his shoes so that he will not freeze to death up here. 

There are already cigarette butts on the gravel, so Ilya is not the first one to sneak out this way, nor the first to ignore the handwritten défense de fumer sign. From the edge of the roof he can see forever, if forever is a moderately sized city lit up in artificial lights. The winter cold stings his cheeks and he tucks his hands under his armpits, shivering lightly as he looks down at the cars, just toys from this vantage point.

The bulkhead provides a tidy windbreak, and Ilya cups his cigarette behind his hand to coax the flame into life. He shivers his way through one cigarette and then lights a second and blows the smoke out through his nose.

“Those are bad for you.”

Ilya spins, startled. “Hollander.”

“I couldn’t find you in the apartment. I looked around but you weren’t in the, um. In your room. And your phone was on the table so I didn’t think you’d gone out.” Hollander is bundled up in his winter coat still, gray wool that hangs down around his thighs. His toque flattens his hair to his forehead, strands peeking out above his eyebrows. His nose is already pink from the biting chill. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Russians do not get cold.”

“That’s such bullshit.”

“Is true. Too much vodka in blood to freeze.” Ilya is in fact freezing, but he leans back against the concrete and pretends. “You are back early.”

“Yeah, I—” Hollander stops and looks at him. Maybe he sees the way Ilya has to clench his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering. “Can we talk inside?”

Hollander doesn’t say anything about the half-empty glass of vodka on his coffee table or the dirty dishes on his kitchen counter, but he picks up as he goes in automatic motions. The dishes go in the sink. The glass, after a quick sniff and an expression of surprised distaste, gets put on a coaster near to where Ilya sits at what he has started to think of as his end of the sofa.

Ilya’s fingers tingle with the contrasting warmth. Hollander would probably make him tea if he asked, or bring him a blanket. He has fallen into the overly-casual movements of a host when he should be snapping at Ilya to pick up his own things. His presence is a smear in this neat house. He has left a trail of detritus throughout, presence marked by forgotten clothes and the corner of a protein bar wrapper. They disappear under Hollander’s hands.

Ilya is used to feeling comfortable in every space. It’s a habit he learned through long practice, but he can’t make it stick here. He is wrong-footed instead, watching Hollander awkwardly. He knows logically that he lives here now. They are married, a word which sticks in his mind and drags acid up his throat, but it is Hollander’s house that Ilya is in.

Hollander doesn’t even seem upset by the mess. Ilya had planned to clean up before he got back. He has no idea what Hollander’s end game is, and he wishes Hollander would tell him, because it cannot be to tidy his own apartment of Ilya’s mess. He wishes Hollander would come out and tell him what he wants so that Ilya can run the new calculus of his desperation. Everyone wants something, and Ilya needs to know whether he is capable of meeting those demands. And what will happen if he does not.

“Do you want more of this?” Hollander holds up the increasingly slight bottle of Ilya’s expensive vodka, and puts it in the cabinet when Ilya shakes his head.

“You are back early.”

Hollander looks like a startled animal, like he hadn’t expected Ilya to mention it, even though it is Christmas night and Hollander should be singing carols with his perfect family and eating roast goose and gingerbread. “I texted. You left your phone down here, though.”

“Why are you back?” Ilya asks with what he thinks is a reasonable level of patience. “You say you are spending Christmas with your family. Now you are here.”

Hollander swallows, his throat moving around the motion. “I told them.” Hollander says it to his hands. He won’t even look at Ilya. “My mom told me to come back here.”

Oh. So this is it. Ilya thinks through the few things he brought. He left his socks in a hamper in a small laundry room. He’s wearing a pair of Hollander’s that he stole from his dresser. He’ll need to return those, probably. Or not, maybe. Fuck him. Fuck him for giving Ilya this moment of hope and then tearing it away again. He told his parents and they told him, sensibly, that it is not too late to abandon Ilya to his own well-deserved fate. They sent him home because they cannot stand the sight of him, corrupted by Ilya’s hands.

He won’t make it easy, at least. Ilya’s determination lives in the set of his shoulders. His muscles knot around his spine.

“My mom was talking about you.” Hollander fills the silence, still staring fixedly at his knuckles. “She said some things. She’s really—fuck, she’s really intense. About hockey. She said you’d got yourself in trouble, like you deserved it. She’s really uh. She’s mad that it was your phone and that I got—” Hollander trails off and drags his lip between his teeth.

“Your mother cares about you.” Ilya knows what that is like, at least. Unconditional love with an expiration date.

“Yeah. She does. And I just. Fuck.” Hollander’s voice is shaking. He opens the cabinet again and pulls out Ilya’s very good vodka and pours himself a slosh which he drinks with a grimace that says it might as well be the fluid from Ilya’s lighter. He sets it back down, staring down as though there are answers best seen through the thick glass. 

“So I told her.” Hollander shrugs.

“What did you tell her?”

“Everything. That you had to go back to Russia. She knew that part, of course. And that we were scared about what was going to happen.” Ilya’s brain fixates on that we, but Hollander is still talking. “And I told her I couldn’t let that happen. I’ve always been pretty predictable, I think. She, um. She looked at me like she didn’t recognize me.”

“And she sent you home.” Ilya’s eyes are dry from the effort of holding them open. He might still be able to catch his flight. He never canceled it.

“Yeah she’s um, worried. That you’re taking advantage of me.”

“It was your idea.”

He smiles a little. “Yeah, I told her that, too. We never really fight.”

It must be worse, Ilya thinks, to have that affection before it is taken away. “But she was okay that you are gay.”

“I'm not,” Hollander says automatically, and flicks a glance up at Ilya and his raised eyebrow. “Fuck off. It’s going to take her a little while to come around.” Hollander huffs, nearly a laugh. “She said it’s not fair that I left you alone on Christmas.”

Ilya’s brain catches like a skate on jagged ice. “Fair to me?”

“Christmas is supposed to be this, like, romantic holiday. It never mattered because I never had anyone to spend it with, and uh. She’s mad at me because I didn’t tell her what I was planning and because I didn’t invite her. I told her it was just paperwork.” He catches his lip between his teeth. “She wants to meet you. You don’t have to.”

Ilya watches himself move as if from outside his body. He stands and walks across the room into Hollander’s kitchen and pushes him up against the counter, his thumb and forefinger holding Hollander’s chin steady as Ilya presses their bodies together. “You came back for me.”

Maybe Hollander does not know what he wants from Ilya. Hollander, from every indication Ilya has seen, is meticulous and precise. His closet is organized and he has the same number of forks as knives as spoons, nothing misplaced in his life. What does that make Ilya, then, to have slew-footed him.

Hollander blinks back at him with glazed eyes. Ilya does not know what conversation they are having or what conversation they need to have, but he does know how to do this. He has been half hard since Hollander got back. He is aware that he tastes like cigarettes and stale vodka and he kisses him gently and Hollander moans into his open mouth. Ilya’s heart aches.

“Thank you for coming back,” he says softly, because he can be polite even when the longing is a clawing, physical thing.

“Didn’t want you to kill the plant.” Hollander’s breath is warm on Ilya’s neck. He buries himself in the crook of Ilya’s shoulder, breathing deeply. “Can I—?”

Ilya does not protest when Hollander slides down to his knees.

“What are you thinking?” Hollander asks afterwards, tangled together in Hollander’s bed. It’s still Christmas, but only barely. Ilya must be thinking too loudly, thoughts jangling against each other, pinging against the inside of his skull like so many pucks.

“Nothing.”

“You can tell me,” Hollander says. He’s blinking back sleep like a kitten, all of his pretenses stripped away. Ilya runs his thumb over a freckle, low on his cheek.

It’s not true. Ilya can never show him the depth of his need.

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

Of all the things I get wrong in this fic the most galling is knowing that I couldn't quite get the spring 2015 survivor airing schedule to line up properly. (Ilya would be so disappointed with Survivor 50)

It is too easy to play house with Shane Hollander.

Hollander leaves early every morning. He has dryland and practice and meetings with the sponsors he is trying to keep. He runs through Mont Royal, dodging piles of snow. He sends Ilya a photograph from a lookout: Montreal, winter-gray. He goes to Ottawa on his rare free evenings. Ilya does not go with.

In the middle of January, Hollander packs his bags and leaves for two weeks, and Ilya’s composure cracks like ice. 

His penthouse apartment is waiting for him in Boston, frozen in time. He glances at the camera app occasionally. A package sits by the front door for three days until someone moves it. Takes it, maybe. He has no idea what would be inside.

He did not think he would miss Boston. His life was built around the team, not the cramped, messy bustle of the city. Boston is proud of its history, littered with plaques commemorating who was born here, who died there. 

Marleau made him take a walking tour in his first season, the two  of them following at the rear of the crowd in their baseball caps and Raiders tee shirts.

Ilya understood maybe half of what the tour guide said. His knowledge of history was built on a different, older foundation, and Adams and Franklin meant nothing to him. He read the dates dutifully as they passed, waiting patiently for when they would get to the real history, delve past this superficial patina. America is too new. The gilt hasn’t worn off yet. Moscow is scratched.

He had tried to explain this to Marleau the next day, when they sat shoulder to shoulder in a ludicrous driving boat, but his English was also too new.

He doesn’t know when Boston became more. It isn’t as though Ilya spent much time there. His time, as Hollander’s is now, was spent in training and on the road. Sometime in the interstitial moments, though, he learned where the good restaurants hide. He learned what time he needed to leave home to avoid the traffic. He learned not to leave at all on September first, if it could be avoided. He learned the shape of the skyline, as seen from his window, lit by the morning sun.

He hires a service and explains in short sentences that he has left the country and will not be returning. He has them clear out the furniture, the exercise equipment, the stocked but barely used kitchen. They sell the cars. He isn’t sure what he’s allowed to have sent through international borders and talking to yet another lawyer has no appeal, so he sends them a short list of personal effects and has them shipped up in four medium-sized cardboard boxes that Hollander will have to sign for at the post office after he gets back. Like that, Ilya’s tenancy in Boston ends. He cancels his lease and tries not to think about the contents of his bank account, still in American dollars.

Ilya spends most of the next two days on the couch. He orders takeout and spends more time sleeping than awake.

Hollander comes home exhausted and with rings under his eyes. He does not want to talk about his road trip or his team, and turns off the highlights that Ilya is watching. 

“Was a good play,” Ilya offers, and turns the television back on. He can be supportive.

Hollander doesn’t agree. It’s obvious in the set of his jaw. “I’m tired,” he says instead of arguing. “Do you want to—”

And yes, Ilya is not dead. Of course he wants to.

“Pass was wide,” Ilya says, gesturing at the screen. “Pike was not ready.”

Hollander takes off his shirt, and Ilya gives up.

The sex is constant and incredible. Filthy. They fuck nearly every day, Hollander pliable under his hands. He is so flexible that Ilya can barely believe it, always half worried that he will snap his legs off as he bends him nearly in half, knees up by his ears. Some days it’s the only talking they do.

“Do you want to top?” Ilya asks one day, when Hollander is already naked, splashed out on the bed, one leg already turned out to reveal the inside of his thigh. Ilya kisses the inside of his knee, dragging his teeth along the skin.

Hollander’s mouth turns down. “Is that what you want?”

“No,” Ilya says honestly. The idea holds no appeal.

“Would you just—” Hollander hitches his leg up, revealing more.

It’s its own routine. Hollander comes home from practice and games and falls into bed with Ilya and then falls asleep straight away like the world has wrung him dry, leaving Ilya to tiptoe down the hall to his own empty bed.

When they should argue, they fuck instead. Ilya leaves his shirt on the back of the couch one day to test it. He rearranges the fridge and sets his glass on the table. He smokes on the roof and doesn’t brush his teeth so he knows his mouth and clothes smell of it. Hollander’s mouth tightens when he walks through the door. He moves Ilya’s glass and drops his shirt in the hamper in the laundry room. He submits to Ilya’s mouth and it’s only through Ilya’s palms spread wide on his chest he registers the faint flinch at the cigarette taste. Hollander is so agreeable that Ilya wonders which parts of himself he has cut away to allow space for Ilya in his home.

Ilya wants to keep pushing, but he doesn’t know how far Hollander’s tolerance extends. He catches Hollander looking back at him sometimes, waiting for the barbed remark, but Ilya swallows his tongue. The polite facade chafes, but he is all too aware of what happens when Hollander grows bored of him.

It might not be long. The proximity is wearing on Hollander, Ilya thinks. Some evenings he disappears into his bedroom, turns the lights out and pretends to go to bed early, but Ilya can hear his muffled movements. Ilya is forever too much. 

Ilya meets Shane’s neighbor wholly by accident. He is picking up the mail in the bottom floor mailroom, a letter tucked between his teeth and a stack of small boxes in his arms. He’s trying to walk backwards to keep the boxes from falling and he doesn’t hear the door opening, doesn’t notice the dog until there is a leash wrapped around his ankle and his boxes are scattered on the floor.

“I’m so sorry,” she says as they engage in an awkward dance to free him and retrieve his things. The dog is the ugliest thing Ilya has ever seen. Large, offset eyes sit in the center of its black and white face, out of proportion with too-small, too-bent ears, and a face that looks like it took a tumble into the boards. He loves it immediately.

“Who is this?”

“That’s Greg,” she says, and Ilya has to stifle his laugh.

“Pleased to meet you,” he tells the dog seriously and lets it sniff his hand. It sits and extends its paw.

“He’s trying,” says Greg’s owner with a sigh. “I taught him to shake and now he tries it with everyone. I’m Alice, by the way.”

“Ilya. I like your dog.”

“Yeah, he gets that a lot,” she says, laughing. She’s middle-aged with graying hair and lines around her eyes that crinkle when she smiles. 

“Sorry. I was not watching where I was going..”

“Sorry about the dog.”

“Do not apologize for the dog,” he says seriously. “He is perfect.”

“Perfectly capable of staying out of the way,” she says, more to the dog than to Ilya. “Are you new here? Sorry if that’s a weird question. It’s a big building. I don’t recognize you, but we might have lived next to each other for years.”

“I am, er. Top floor.” Outside of buying cigarettes at the corner store, this is the first time Ilya has spoken to anyone other than Hollander for weeks, and English is thick in his mouth. He’s astonished at how fast his hard-won gains have slipped away.

“Nice view up there. Did you just move to Montreal? Not to assume, just with the accent and all.”

Ilya weighs what he is allowed to say. “Yes, new to the city,” he allows. “Moved for relationship.” And then, because he is lonely in a way he does not allow himself to think about normally, he adds, “I do not know anyone here.”

“That must be hard.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “Very.”

Alice lives on the eighth floor in a much smaller apartment than Hollander’s with a view of the back of another building. Ilya picks his way past the dog toys and sets his pile of boxes on her dining table next to a black-wicked candle with a label showing glossy red apples. He wants to ask her why she feels safe inviting a much taller, much more muscular male stranger into her home without so much as texting a friend first, but he very much does not want her to second guess her objectively bad decisions.

Ilya sits at her rickety table and sips from a mug of oversteeped tea and feels lighter than he has since before it all fell apart. Greg sits by his feet and holds out his paw again, and this time Ilya has a treat to reward him with.

“He is a good dog,” he says, lacking any other topic of conversation.

“Most of the time. So you moved for a girlfriend?”

“Ah,” he pauses. “Husband.” It feels odd to say it out loud. A forbidden taste on his tongue.

He watches the gears shift in her brain, reassessing all of her initial assumptions. Ilya resents it slightly. He is the same person he was before she learned this about him, but now she will find him softer and more relatable. European rather than Russian.

“Well, congratulations,” she says after a moment. She glances at his bare left hand. Ilya would wear the ring on his right if he had one, but he does not. “What’s his name?”

“Shane.”

“And he lives in the building? Well, of course he does. Silly question, sorry. What does he do?”

“He works with Metros. Hockey,” he adds, when her eyebrows furrow. The conversation is a little surreal. For his entire life, his social circle has been built around hockey. His life has been built around hockey. He doesn’t know how to process the little shrug she gives, almost apologetic, like hockey has never occurred to her.

“And you?”

“I am waiting for visa.” He shrugs. “Cannot work.”

“Trophy husband,” she says, laughing again.

“Yes,” he says, thinking about holding the cup on the ice, lights flashing. His mother’s name in his mouth. “Like trophy.”

Alice asks a lot of questions, some of which Ilya has to fall back on fractured English to avoid answering, and tells him a lot in return. She grew up in Toronto and moved to Montreal for work in her twenties. Her son lives on the other side of the city and visits for dinner. Ilya might like to meet him, she suggests. He follows hockey. They would have things to talk about. Ilya cannot explain why this is a terrible idea, but he is charmed by the offer.

“Maybe,” he says, and drinks more of his tea.

Ilya tells Hollander about her that night. They’re watching television together, not hockey because Hollander’s mouth goes sour when Ilya tries to bring it up. There’s a new season of Survivor, and Ilya is trying to convince him to watch it, but mostly Hollander doesn’t understand why anyone would put themselves through this and doesn’t like that they’re lying to each other when they’ve only just met.

On the screen, one of the contestants is trying to eat a scorpion. The apartment is lit by the bright light of a Nicaraguan beach. Hollander looks at Ilya, and the television glow catches in the hollows of his cheeks.

Ilya waits for Hollander to ask his questions, the way he always does, but Hollander only swallows, studying Ilya. Finally, “She lives downstairs?”

“She doesn’t know about hockey.”

It’s meant to reassure him, but Hollander just looks sick. “Don’t bring her back to the apartment. Please.”

“Okay,” Ilya says, reeling.

Meeting Alice kicks something loose in Ilya’s chest. He met someone and it did not end in disaster. She did not recognize him. Anonymity is novel and freeing.

He is still careful. It is the middle of winter still, so he can hide behind scarves and draw the hood of his jacket up around his head. He steals Hollander’s reading glasses, even though they make the world fuzzy and leave him with a thrumming headache. 

The neighborhood is full of small, crowded shops, everything covered with a thin veneer of cigarette smoke. He has to dodge packs of college students, all of them a little too loud in their rapid-clip French and English.

The Eastern European grocery store is a decent distance, and Ilya enjoys the walk even when the clouds start to spit a pattering rain. He makes it just before the downpour starts in earnest.

The place is small, about the same size as the corner store where Ilya buys his cigarettes, and a single old man watches him dourly from behind the counter. His expression doesn’t soften when Ilya greets him in Russian, but he does hold his side of a grudging conversation as Ilya wanders the aisles.

“This is all?”

“Yes,” Ilya replies, digging his wallet out. Most of his bag is treats. Frozen dumplings and candies in familiar wrapping and dark rye bread. He squints at the Canadian currency. “These coins are the two?”

“How long have you lived in Montreal?”

“A few months,” Ilya replies idly. “America before. Here.” He places the small handful of plastic bills and coins in the man’s outstretched palm.

“You have a familiar face.”

“Ah, no. Large family. Probably you have met them. Lots of Russians in Montreal, they say.”

The man shrugs. “Maybe.”

Ilya is soaked by the time he makes it back, and he has to hold the paper bag from the bottom so that his things do not end up littering the street. He backs his way through Hollander’s door, navigating the handle with his elbow. Hollander has an afternoon practice, so the apartment is still empty.

It’s a silly idea, probably, but he has nothing else to fill his time. They eat together most days. Hollander is forever the polite Canadian boy; he puts his phone face down on the counter to be present at meals. It is one of the few times that Ilya can ease him incrementally out of his shell. Hollander drops little anecdotes about his day, petty observations about someone’s penalty time or commentary on the city. Ilya clutches each one with clawed hands.

He wants that tonight. More, maybe. He can share something that is his with Hollander and see if it is enough to drag him out into the open. He wants to tease that smile from him, the one that comes chased with surprise when Hollander remembers that he is capable of smiling.

Ilya knows how to make a few simple things, but the last time he really cooked was with his mother. He doesn’t remember much of it, only standing with his elbows propped on the counter to watch her stir and slice. It has been longer than he cares to think about.

Hollander’s knives are half-dull, the way knives come out of a box. He knows this because Svetlana complained about this on one of the few occasions she had cooked in his home, and she badgered him until he sent them to be sharpened professionally. All the same, the onion parts under the blade into a neat-enough dice and stings his eyes when he doesn’t remember which end to cut. Boiling the cabbage is a harder task. There is a pot that is just large enough, and then Ilya stands by the stove, staring at the head of cabbage submerged in boiling water, stumped on how to get it back out. He tips the whole thing into the sink in the end, determined not to mention to Hollander the little splash of burn on his wrist.

Ilya props his phone up on the counter and has to squint to read the tiny recipe text. There are so many more steps than he remembered. All of his life has been hockey, so he never learned about things like the different sizes of graters and how hot to make a pan when you cook onions.

The first rolls are overstuffed, the cabbage coming apart at the edges, and then the next are too thin, but he figures it out eventually. He’s still cleaning up when the door creaks open. He scrubs at another spot of tomato. He does not want Hollander to walk in and see only the messy aftermath.

There are two sets of footsteps, and faint laughter. Ilya freezes with his hand on the damp towel. There are only a few minutes left on the timer.

“Hey,” Hollander says, and smiles lopsidedly. His arm is slung over Hayden Pike’s shoulder. Pike maneuvers him to the counter, and Hollander sits primly on a stool, hiding a wince.

Ilya has not seen Hayden Pike since the courthouse. Absence has not improved him.

“This is cozy,” Pike says, gesturing to the kitchen. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Hayden,” Hollander warns.

“I have many talents. You have… missing pass?”

“Yeah well at least I’m on the ice. Asshole.”

Ilya tries not to let the sting show. “I watch your games. Have a hint for you. The puck, you may know? Small round thing. Black. It goes in the goal.”

“Oh, you watched? I can sign a jersey for you.”

“I’m fine, by the way,” Hollander says. Ilya rolls his eyes and grabs a soda from the fridge, flips the tab and drops it in front of him. He does not offer Pike anything. “Knee’s fucked. Hayden drove me home.”

“Thank you, Pike,” Ilya says. “Must take care of only player that is—-what is word? Can do things.”

“Capable,” Hollander says, resigned. “Can you not right now?”

“People are wondering where you are,” Pike says, leaning up against the counter. He doesn’t look like he plans to leave anytime soon, which is for the worst. “TSN had an article about it.”

Ilya read that article. Rozanov Missing, it said, in startling bold print. Ilya knows exactly where he is, but no one else seems to. There is a quote from unnamed “Russian authorities” stating that he has not returned to Russia, and he is encouraged to do so, as well as speculation from unnamed lawyers about the status of his American visa. His brother has been texting, asking where he is.

“Big mystery,” Ilya agrees. “No one looks for me at the Couche-Tard.” The French words are slippery on his tongue. He resents every Francophone sign in this city.

Discomfort is plastered across Hollander’s face in bright color. Ilya doesn’t want to be spotted, but Hollander is scared at the thought.

“How are you?” Pike asks. He’s watching Ilya with an intensity that Ilya dislikes immensely. “Shane hasn’t said much.”

Ilya smiles with his teeth. “Do you want details of what we did last night?” He’d put Hollander on his knees and twisted his hands in that fine, slick hair while Hollander moaned his approval.

“Jesus Christ.” Hollander looks like he wants to put his face to the cold marble of the counter. “He’s asking how you’re settling in Montreal, you asshole. You don’t need to make everything a competition.”

“Montreal is fine,” Ilya says. “Is cold. Has shit hockey team. Cannot help that.”

The timer dings. Ilya pulls the golubtsi out of the oven. There are two trays; he hadn’t accounted for how much the recipe would make. They don’t smell quite right, but it’s close enough to pull the string of nostalgia in his chest.

“I made food,” he says, trying to hide the swell of pride.

“Ilya Rozanov. Housewife.” Pike’s being mean about it, but Ilya doesn’t care. His opinion does not matter here.

“It needs to sit. To cool.” He pulls a pair of plates from a cupboard and sets them on the counter. “Is good. You will like, I think.”

Hollander is frowning at him, that little line between his eyebrows. “I’ve got dinner. From the nutritionist.”

“This is good,” Ilya says, helpless. “Cabbage.”

“It smells good,” Pike offers, and there’s a new expression on his face that Ilya never wants to see again. Pike is looking at him with open pity. Pity for being stuck here, in this place, with Hollander who will not break his diet plan to eat the golubtsi that Ilya made for him.

Ilya’s chest is too tight. “Eat if you want,” he says, forcing the casual tone. There are so many. He’s going to be eating them for days, until he’s choking down cabbage out of spite. He grabs his coat and his cigarettes and goes to find space for himself in the cold.

He doesn’t hear what Pike says, but he can hear Hollander’s answer, a startled yes that echoes in the room.

When Ilya returns, hours later, the trays are empty. One of the plates is dirty, and the cabbage rolls are put away in the fridge, in tupperware with a strip of masking tape on each one with a date.

Hollander’s bedroom door is open, and Hollander himself appears in it a moment later. He doesn’t have to say anything. Ilya doesn’t need words to know what the fractional tilt in Hollander’s chin means, or the way his spine curves. It’s not an apology, and it doesn’t have to be.

Ilya’s still hungry, running off the toast he ate that morning and three cigarettes, but nothing could stop him from marking the steps to Hollander and tipping his head back further.

This is the place where Hollander unfolds. Ilya holds him between his hands and picks his petals apart, soothing and loosening until Hollander is open underneath him, his shining heart bare to the open air. He knows so little of Hollander, even now, but this he knows. No one has ever made Hollander feel like this other than Ilya. Ilya alone has the privilege of watching Shane Hollander unfurl. 

“Get on your knees,” he says, and Hollander falls so sharply that Ilya is worried for the injury he came home with. Hollander does not seem worried. He puts his wrists behind his back without being asked, his eyes falling half-lidded and his breathing steadying.

It’s one of those nights, then. It’s not Ilya’s favorite. He likes Hollander with bite. He likes tearing that bite out of him. Tonight, Hollander has started from an easily-won place, eyes downcast, waiting.

“You want this?”

Hollander nods. The pink is still spreading on him. Cheeks and chest, a smear of crimson across the exposed back of his neck. “Please.”

“Please what?”

“Please,” he repeats, and Ilya would not know how to say no to him even if he wanted to.

Ilya fucks him in slow, careful movements. He puts Hollander on his front on his bed and clenches his wrists between his own spread fingers, though Hollander doesn’t make even the motions of resistance. Ilya kicks his knees apart with his own and takes his time, dragging sweet sounds out of Hollander.

“Please,” Hollander says again, like it’s the only word he ever learned.

“Pozhaluysta,” Ilya prompts, and Hollander repeats it, stumbling over the syllables. Ilya’s heart kicks in his chest. He should not have suggested it. This is a chink in his armor that Hollander has dragged his thumb into.

“Say it again,” Ilya demands, desperate to hear his language in Hollander’s mouth. Maybe this is the first step in his foundation; he can build a home here, inside of Hollander, pasted together with spit and mangled Russian. It’s not his home; he knows that, but for now—

Ilya flips Hollander, and puts his hands to use holding his own thighs back until he is pinned nearly double. There are tears in Hollander’s eyes, welling and wet, not yet falling. Hollander’s cock bobs between them, and Ilya licks cat-like up the side, resting his mouth around the head.

“You want me to make you come?”

It’s the wrong thing, somehow. The tension is back in Hollander, creeping in through the open doorway. “Yeah,” he grits out. “Obviously.” His legs are still held high and wide, his body an offering.

“Is ok?” Ilya has to ask, because he doesn’t know what to do here, when that golden glow inside Hollander has shuttered.

Hollander lets his legs drop. He puts his hand on his face instead. Ilya’s own hand settles on Hollander’s shin, holding on like an anchor. He traces the soft hair from knee to ankle, and kneads his thumb into the muscle. “Is ok if you do not want.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Hollander says, his voice muffled and thick with unhappiness. Ilya crawls up the bed beside him and drags Hollander over to rest his head on Ilya’s shoulder. His face is damp. “I’m sorry. I can—” he reaches down and strokes Ilya’s cock, root to tip, in a tentative motion. Ilya bats his hand away.

“No.”

“Fine.”

“Fine,” Ilya echoes, and drags Hollander closer. They do this sometimes after sex. Hollander curls into Ilya like he wants to sink through his skin and settle inside his bones. They’ve never done it before sex. Or during, Ilya supposes. Hollander is fully soft now, crying softly into Ilya’s shoulder, his whole face hiding against Ilya’s skin.

“I’m sorry,” Hollander hiccoughs. “I didn’t mean to. Just give me a minute.”

“I only like when you cry on my dick.”

“You’re such an asshole.” Ilya catches the edge of a smile. Hollander’s shoulders shake and Ilya holds him tighter still. “Sorry,” Hollander repeats. Ilya drags the covers up around them to ward off the shiver working its way through him.

After Hollander slumps, wrung out, Ilya fetches him a glass of water and a damp towel. It’s the same routine as after every time they have sex, but this time Hollander scrubs at his face, washing the salt away. He glances up at Ilya.

“If you say sorry again I am going to Russia, where they have not heard this word.”

“Because it’s English.”

“They have English in Russia,” Ilya says, gesturing to where he is in fact speaking that language. “Only learn useful words. I did not know sorry until my first game in Canada.”

“Really?”

“No. Do you need more water?” Ilya gets it anyway. Hollander is still naked, and Ilya thinks it might be rude to put his clothes on at this point, so he doesn’t. He sits cross-legged on the bed next to Hollander, with his red-stained eyes and hunched shoulders.

“Better?”

“Not really.”

Ilya waits for Hollander to explain, but his jaw sets tight, face tilting away again in the way that Ilya knows means he’s lost him. But then Hollander turns back, breathing deep and holding the air in his lungs.

“Everything just sucks,” Hollander says finally, and Ilya’s heart is speared with that everything, and the knowledge that he is part of it. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it.”

Ilya reaches out his hand and settles it lightly on Hollander’s knee. This he is allowed. This is part of the trade they have made, body for body. “So do not think.”

“Yeah, it’s that easy, huh?” Hollander’s lip twitches.

“Yes. Be like your team. No thoughts in second line. Cannot find puck with flashlight.”

This, again, is the wrong thing to say. Ilya feels as though he is stumbling blindly through the dark, tripping on hidden obstacles. Hockey has always been safe, a shared language all its own, but now it has put Hollander’s shoulders up near his ears.

“I don’t want to think about them, either.”

“Okay.”

Hollander’s fingers twine into Ilya’s. Ilya can feel every beat of his heart. He waits to be dismissed. Hollander does not need what Ilya had to offer. Ilya fucked it up, took something beautiful and made it sour.

“Hockey used to be fun.” Ilya stays quiet, lets Hollander pick through his words like stones. “They made Olsson captain. I’m unreliable.”

“You are not.”

“Yeah, well.” Hollander’s mouth twists. “I’m so scared. All the time.”

“Of Olsson?”

Hollander makes a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Of you, sometimes.”

Ilya flinches. The guilt is so deep it threatens to drown him. “I did something?”

Hollander stares at their clasped hands. He does not let go. “I did, maybe. I don’t know. When Hayden was here earlier, it was like you were yourself again. You’re so…careful.”

An unexpected lick of anger sprouts in Ilya’s heart. “You are not, if it is you? If I say wrong thing, that is it, yes? I fuck up, back to Russia.”

Hollander’s mouth parts ever so slightly. There is real hurt in his eyes. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“You say so now.”

“No.” Hollander flips their hands, brings Ilya’s to his chest. “I won’t. I promise. Even if… even if you don’t want to be here. We can find you an apartment if you want. You don’t have to stay here with me.”

“Hollander.”

“Whatever you want,” Hollander says, and presses his lips together tightly.

“And you want?”

“I want you to stop doing what you think I want.”

It takes Ilya a moment to parse the sentence. “You want me to be asshole?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Hollander says, with a little huffing laugh. “Not all the time.”

“Only special occasions.”

“Yeah, days that end in Y, probably.”

“Treat for Sundays,” Ilya says, and tugs Hollander towards him. The space between them is suddenly too large. “Russian days, not English,” he amends.

“Am I going to have to learn Russian?”

Ilya taps him on the forehead. “There is room left? Not too full of hockey?”

Hollander’s smile creeps unbidden onto his face. His eyes are still rimmed in pink, but his tight-wound tension unticks. “Would you stay tonight? Here. With me. You don’t have to.”

Hollander snores, only lightly, enough to remind Ilya with each exhale that he is here, that is alive, that they are together.

Hollander shakes him lightly awake in the morning. Ilya is still blinking sleep from his eyes, and Hollander has his disgusting protein smoothie in his hand, his hair damp from his post-run shower. Hollander bounces lightly on his heels.

“Can you drive me?”

“Where?” Ilya rolls out of bed. Out of Hollander’s bed. He steals a shirt from Hollander’s dresser without looking, and then grimaces to see the Metros logo.

“You look like a WAG. No, don’t take it off.”

Ilya stretches, muscles popping. “What time is it?”

“Six.”

“Hollander. Your practice is not until eight thirty.”

“That’s tape review. Practice is at ten.”

“Oh, excuse.” Ilya stifles another yawn. “Why?”

“I want to get there early.”

“I am not your fucking Uber,” Ilya grumbles, even as he rifles in the little bowl by the front door for his keys.

Hollander slides into the passenger seat of Ilya’s impractical car. He’s out of place in the gaudy interior. Hollander’s car is something practical, tidily kept with neat trim, nothing like the monstrosities Ilya liked to collect.

“This isn’t the way,” Hollander says, when Ilya pulls onto the freeway.

“Scenic route,” Ilya says. He wants to rev the engine and see whether it puts fear or arousal in Hollander’s eyes. The traffic is awful, though. Rows of sensible black cars bustle for space on the asphalt, and Ilya settles for zipping into too-small openings, earning a flurry of upraised fingers from the good people of Montreal.

Hollander settles back and watches out the window. “Do you ever think what it would have been like to be one of them?”

“One of who? Canadian with bad car? No.”

“Normal,” Hollander clarifies. “Work in an office. Pack a lunch.”

“You can pack lunch,” Ilya points out. “I will pack it for you. Two scoops of protein powder and half cup of rice. Two blueberries for special treat.”

“Fuck you. You know what I mean.”

“I do not. Why early today?” Ilya realizes it as soon as he says it. He’s conspicuous at the best of times. Too tall, too loud to blend into a crowd. It was good for hockey. It made him popular. People chanted his name when he scored. Now, in his bright orange car, Hollander would be a spectacle. Ilya is exactly the type of attention he doesn’t need.

“I didn’t want to call a cab,” Hollander says, before Ilya can ask. “I’ll do yoga or something before practice. Hit the weight room. We’ve got conditioning after, so just weights.”

Hollander probably follows the training plan better than anyone else in the league. Gold stars on the board by his name. Every day a personal best. Ilya misses the structure. He uses Hollander’s anemic apartment gym, but it isn’t the same as the team practices, all of them struggling through together.

“Knee is better?”

“I’m day to day.” Shane’s head is turned again, his forehead on the car window. “They might pull me for Tampa.”

“Even Montreal can beat Tampa without you.”

“I need them to need me.” Hollander’s breath fogs up the glass. With one finger he draws two dots and a line underneath, a face, its mouth turned faintly down.

Shane is pulled for the Tampa game, and Montreal still wins, a clean 3-1 which could easily have been four or five with Shane on the ice. Tampa’s goaltender is good, but their defense lets too much pass. Shane would slip through them like a knife.

The season is two thirds done already, moving faster every time Ilya looks. Ilya would have played his fifty-third game yesterday, against Arizona. Arizona’s defense is better than Tampa’s at least, but still slow. They second-guess their goalie. All Ilya has to do—had to do, he corrects himself—was look away, and they fell over themselves to cover imaginary paths. It is embarrassing for the league that Arizona is ranked as highly as they are.

They clear Hollander for the next game, though Ilya doesn’t like the way he still favors his knee when he walks. It’s the last of this set of home games, a difficult match-up against an incongruously good Western Conference team fresh off their expansion draft. Worse, it is Pride Night. Hollander comes home the day before the game with anxiety grit between his teeth.

“They told me I’m not allowed to use the rainbow tape,” Hollander says finally. They’re sitting on opposite ends of Hollander’s couch, passing a controller back and forth, their ankles tangled together. Touching without expectation is an unexpected comfort. It reminds Ilya of Svetlana, how they used to sprawl together and watch hockey, her elbow on his back. He misses her terribly.

“Big surprise.” Ilya never used pride tape. It was too much of a risk to make that much of a concession. He read the comments about him on Instagram sometimes, the ones that called him homophobic. He wonders what those people think about him now, knowing that he had been getting his dick wet with Shane Hollander since before their first games on MLH ice.

“I wasn’t going to anyway. I don’t want to be the symbol of this.”

“What is this?”

“Fuck off.” Hollander kicks him. “Any of it. It’s all been shit.”

Hollander has not made any official statements. His team’s official policy is to refuse to answer any questions regarding his sexuality, the leak, his association with missing Russian players. It doesn’t matter; it will hang over him forever. That bell cannot be unrung. No matter where Hollander goes, the first Google result will forever be Ilya’s video.

Hollander requested to be pulled for Pride Night. Ilya overheard him talking to his mother about it on the phone, looking for a way to force a healthy scratch. It’s down to optics. Montreal already canceled the theme once. It would look worse for them to cancel it again,  worse still to keep it and pull their only known queer player, no matter how involuntary that outing had been. Beyond all of that, they need to win. The season is marching on, and Montreal does not have the standings to risk a loss, which means Hollander racking up time on the ice.

“What will you do?”

“Hide, maybe. Move to the woods.”

“Do they have hockey in the woods?”

Hollander loses, huffs, passes the controller back to Ilya. “Maybe beavers can skate.”

“Oh, you are into beaver now?” Ilya makes a crude gesture, and Hollander flips him off, but at least he’s smiling. “You want me to come with? Wave little flag?” Ilya mimics the motion, twisting his wrist.

Ilya had made the offer once before, not seriously, but Hollander tilts his head, considering. “Not yet.”

“You want that one day?” Ilya asks, surprised.

“It’s ok if you don’t want to. I just need to get through the season. Once we get your permanent residency you can do whatever you want.”

Hollander flushes slightly. There is a conversation they need to have here, but Ilya isn’t sure what. For all that Hollander wears his soul unbuttoned, Ilya is never quite sure what he’s thinking.

 “After,” Ilya agrees.

“It’s been nice having you here,” Hollander says, and smiles crookedly, like he can’t see the knife it twists in Ilya’s heart.

Ilya watches the game from that same couch.

He wants to start a fight. He wants to be on the ice next to Hollander. He would drop his gloves and climb into the stands and show the jeering crowd what they have earned.

He learned young how to drown out the audience. The crowd becomes so much white noise, even as they hammer on the glass and boo, heckling people they think they know. Hollander knows how, too. He keeps his head down, focused on the ice and the puck. At home, watching the camera pan over the crowd, Ilya’s blood boils. Half the signs should not have been allowed at all.

The stream does not pick up what the second line center says to Hollander, but it catches the way Hollander flinches back, how his gaze flicks up briefly, and the way his mouth settles back, just short of a snarl.

When Hollander comes home, it is to find Ilya on the couch with a needle held up to his ear, a mirror propped up on a pillow. There is, it turns out, plenty of room for Ilya to have his own, separate crises.

“You are early,” Ilya comments, not turning. He has just gotten the dot on his ear where he wants it, and cannot risk smearing the pen ink. “Congratulations. Good game.”

“We lost.”

“Yes, good game for you, not for team. Too distracted by gay to remember which way to skate, maybe.”

“Got me out of press, at least. What are you doing?”

Ilya is pretty sure the answer to that is obvious. The tip of the needle presses a sharp divot into the flesh of his ear, and he sucks in a breath, readying.

“Jesus Christ.” Hollander sits on the edge of the couch, and Ilya’s mirror tumbles down to land askew. 

Ilya scowls up at him. “Careful.”

“Are you really—with that?”

Ilya found the sewing needle in a travel kit shoved in the back of Hollander’s luggage. He had been correct in his assessment that Hollander would be the type to travel prepared. It butted up in his leather carry-on against a lint roller, extra buttons, an extra pair of folded socks. God forbid a hockey player lose a button.

He’s fully set up now: needle, rubbing alcohol, one gold earring. It’s a relic of a past hookup, unearthed from the bottom of his bag.

“You’re going to get an infection,” Hollander says, when Ilya presses him into service and has him hold the mirror steady.

“Russians do not get infections.”

“You can’t say that about everything. Anyway, you’re trying to become Canadian. Canadians get infections.”

Ilya contemplates this for a moment. He doesn’t think his attempted citizenship will make any difference for his exceptional immune system, but Hollander is looking at him with real concern.

“You do, then,” Ilya says, and holds the needle out on his palm. He’s going to need to sterilize it again.

“How is that different?”

“Then it is your fault.”

“Asshole.”

“Ear hole.” Ilya gestures to the mark. “One move. Put, um.” He fumbles on the table and comes up with a piece of apple. “On the back.”

“This is so stupid. Do you have a second earring?”

“Only one.”

“All right.”

Ilya didn’t expect Hollander to do it, but Hollander takes the rubbing alcohol and re-wets the needle. He smears some of it on Ilya’s skin and uncaps the pen to re-mark the spot. His fingers are warm. Ilya holds the mirror to watch. 

“There?”

“Yes. Is good.”

“Ok. Deep breath.”

Ilya takes a breath and holds it. The pain is sharp but fleeting. He feels a little light headed. Hollander’s fingers are on his ear, hesitating like he doesn’t know what the next step is now that he’s put a hole through Ilya’s skin.

“Earring,” Ilya prompts. It hurts again when the needle comes out, and once more when the post of the earring goes through. He thinks it’s gold. It feels warm and expensive, with a diamond chip at the end. “Leave loose. For skin to grow.”

“Swell,” Hollander corrects gently, and undoes the earring by one notch. “There. All done.”

Ilya has to go to the bathroom to look properly. He turns his head this way and that, admiring the sparkle. He’s always wanted earrings. He likes the way they look, but there was no time to heal them during the hockey season, and no need to draw more of his father’s disdain outside of it. Neither of these are a problem anymore.

Ilya’s supplies are put away when Ilya gets back.

“Why the right ear?”

“Only one earring. Why? Are you worried I will find other men while you are away?” Ilya cozies up behind Hollander in the kitchen and slides his hand down the front of his pants. Hollander isn’t hard yet, but it won’t take long. “You can do other ear later.”

“Okay,” Hollander agrees, like he doesn’t know how to do anything else. He tips his head back, pulse fluttering.

Ilya spends the night in Hollander’s bed again, and wakes to find a small smear of dried blood on the pillowcase. He starts the laundry while Hollander packs, sewing kit back in its place.

He has spent the last three nights in Hollander’s bed. Maybe his defense is not any better than Tampa. Still, it feels like a small victory to wake up with Hollander’s head pillowed on his chest. He will move back into his room while Hollander is gone and hope Hollander does not come to his senses while he is away. Maybe Hollander will pick up a stranger in some shitty hotel bar in Ohio, egged on by his teammates. A girl, maybe. Someone easy, someone soft. Ilya does not examine this thought too closely. He touches his sore ear, teasing out the sting.

Chapter 4

He does not respond, and she does not press, which gives him plenty of time to spiral.

Ilya has always lived his life around the rhythm of hockey. It is different now that he is on the other side. He lives in the negative spaces between practices and games, a moon in orbit, always aware of Hollander’s presence and absence. Ilya knows for each hour of the day whether Hollander has practice or morning skate or an afternoon game or the one solitary day off allowed this month. He holds that knowledge inside himself and layers nacre upon it, smoothing the grit until his own life, built around Hollander’s, almost does not hurt to observe.

Hollander leaves early in the morning, his duffel bag slung over his back. Ilya kisses him before he goes, as if this will be enough to drag Hollander back to him.

There are four games over eight days, travel and play and practice all crammed up against each other. Montreal plays Boston first. Ilya makes it through the first period, throws up in the bathroom, and then spends the rest of the game on the roof, his phone in one hand and a cigarette between the fingers of the other, watching the game from the safe distance of TSN’s live recap. The city lights are a bright smear around him. Montreal wins.

The Admirals are the day after. This one, Ilya watches properly, feet kicked up on the coffee table. After the third missed pass, the puck flying wide into open ice or tangling in the Montreal defensemen’s skates, Ilya digs a notebook out of Hollander’s cabinets. Watching is easier this way, with a pen between his teeth. Hollander is quick, good on the forecheck, but he is wearing himself out with it. Ilya watches the Metros overcommit, skirting danger. It is because the Admirals are worse, not because the Metros are better, that they do not score while Hollander is caught deep. Ilya scribbles the game into neat notes.

Montreal takes it in overtime when Hollander flicks the puck cross-crease to Pike for a tidy deflection. Two more points for the season, one game closer to playoffs. The camera zooms in on him, flushed and jubilant, Pike’s arm around his shoulder.

Hollander doesn’t send anything after that. Ilya scrolls back through their message history. There isn’t much, just sparse logistics. When Hollander is coming home, and does Ilya need anything from the store. The texts from before December are artifacts from a different life. Ilya can barely remember sending them. There are more of them, at least one a week. Most of them are come-ons of some variety. Ilya doesn’t know how to text, maybe. He types and deletes and gives up.

Ilya knew in an objective sense how much of his life had been hockey before, but it is something different to fill his days with that roadmap stripped away. There are so many hours in a day. Walking, for whatever reason, feels safer than taking the Metro. It’s a silly comparison, probably. The streets are full of the same melange of strangers as the subway cars, all of them armed with cell phone cameras.

He knows the neighborhood now, in a superficial way. It’s busy, which he likes, full of people living their own lives. He likes to wander through the streets, stepping into small galleries and shops. He isn’t bold enough to go into the echoing quiet of the museums, but he thinks he might wander down to the Esplanade where it’s too busy for anyone to notice him.

Everything outside is blanketed in a slowly graying snow. He bundles himself in a thick scarf and Metros toque and Hollander’s stolen glasses and feels a little bit like an old Soviet spy, out to infiltrate an unsuspecting Montreal. 

“Ilya,” someone calls from behind him. He is a terrible spy. He picks up his pace, crunching down the salt-crusted street.

“Ilya, wait.” Footsteps speed up behind him and Ilya’s scowl drops away as he turns to see Alice. She has two dogs with her, one which Ilya knows and a second trailing slightly behind. It has the same large eyes and long fur as Greg, but it is all white with a little pink bow above its eyes. It looks like a cartoon. 

“I’m glad to see you,” Alice says, breathless, one hand on her hip. 

“Yes, it is nice to see you,” Ilya says, bemused.

“You wrote your number down for me, but I think the paper got caught in a cleaning spree.” She laughs. “I didn’t want to go knocking on doors.”

“Do you need something?”

“No, no.” Her hair falls in her face as she shakes her head. She is bundled up as thoroughly as he is, in a thick puffy jacket and big mittens. It is a historic cold spell. Half of the newspapers at the corner store have headlines about the weather. Even the dogs have boots on, though Greg is trying to chew one of his off as they stand there.

“This is Lillian," she says, and gestures vaguely. Ilya turns to look behind him. “The dog,” Alice adds quickly, “the dog is Lillian. One of my friends had an emergency and she needed to find a new home for her.”

“Is your friend OK?”

“Oh yes, she’s fine, thank you for asking. That’s very nice of you. She’s doing all right, but she can’t keep Lillian here.” Ilya has to fight to keep a straight face every time she says Lillian. It is an incongruous name for such a tiny dog. No worse than Greg, maybe. His father did not believe in pets, but his friends had dogs, all of them with normal names, Volchok and Bobik. Not Greg. 

“So Greg has friend?”

“I wish.” She huffs and looks down at her dog, now ignoring her in favor of fully removing one of his tiny green booties. “They’re terrible together. I have her for now, but I’m trying to find her a home. That’s why I wanted to find you. I’ve already pawned dogs off on all my friends. I don’t suppose you or your husband know anyone who might want a dog?”

She speaks very fast, and Ilya isn’t sure he understood all of it, but, “You are looking for home for the dog?”

“Yes.”

Ilya drops to one knee in the slush. The tiny white dog sniffs his hand, licks it with a tiny pink tongue, and then proceeds to ignore him in favor of sniffing a patch of ice. “She needs home?” He repeats, to make sure he understood it right. “Now?” Alice nods. “I take her,” he says, and holds out his hand for the leash. “She is my dog now. Is ok?”

“Oh,” Alice says, startled. “Well, yes, if you want. That would be lovely, actually. She has some health issues, though, which is why it’s been a bit of a challenge. Nothing serious, but the medication is expensive. She’s mostly deaf, too. She’s a bit of a disaster, actually.”

“I buy dog medicine,” Ilya says, and takes the leash. “Deaf is good. Will not have to learn Russian.”

“Do you need to check with your husband first?”

“No,” Ilya says decisively. Hollander has not texted him in three days, and Ilya’s feelings have been vacillating wildly between anger and despair. “He is on work trip. Will be surprise.”

Ilya spends the rest of the day ordering supplies online, and then half-walks half-carries Lillian to the nearest pet store so that she will have a dog bed and blanket and the right type of brush for her fur. He buys a bright pink leash, delighting in the absurdity of it, and a set of tiny bows that the woman at the checkout counter points out.

The dog is unsure of him until Ilya opens the first can of food, and after follows at his heels, so insistent that Ilya looks up appropriate feeding amounts twice in case he is accidentally starving her, and then texts Alice to check.

That evening, he sits on Hollander’s leather couch, gently stroking the dog on his lap, feeling somewhere between contentment and parody of a cartoon villain, and watches the third game of the road trip. It’s nearly the trade deadline, and Philadelphia picked up a new left winger from San Jose, an aggressive little shit that Ilya once laid out on home ice.

Montreal has new players, too. Hollander was afraid of being traded, but the team is angling for the playoffs run. One of their forwards is out on injury, and they’ve picked up a rental from Toronto to balance out the first line and, oddly, Ilya’s own rookie from Boston, another solid middle-six forward. They are drowning in offensive depth, and yet they still cannot manage to score a fucking goal on the power play.

The Toronto player is good. Ilya likes him. Hollander finds him in the slot, and he sinks a snap shot to tie the game. It might be enough to win this game, but they’re not a cup-winning team. They’re giving up interior chances, losing their battles. Ilya worries his pen between his teeth and considers.

“That is your other papa,” Ilya informs the dog when the camera lingers on Hollander. He should perhaps not refer to Hollander as her papa, but he does not think she will tell on him.

He watches the rest of the game like that, notepad on one side, dog on the other. He turns the volume off and provides his own commentary in a stream of continuous Russian, and swears loudly when Hollander catches a stick to the cheek. The blood on his face is a vivid red, nearly as vibrant as Ilya’s anger when the penalty goes uncalled.

Montreal loses in overtime. “One point,” Ilya informs the dog. Ilya keeps his phone unlocked, but Hollander does not text.

Hollander scrapes himself through the door several days later, fresh from their final game, a brutal loss. Ilya is on his knees when Hollander walks in, cleaning dog piss off the kitchen tile.

“You are early,” Ilya says, slightly startled. “You said nine.”

“It’s nine,” Hollander says, holding out his wrist. He isn’t wearing a watch, and notices it too late to stop himself. “What are you doing?”

Ilya doesn’t have time to explain before Lillian barks, just once. She does this for strangers, Ilya has learned. One bark, and then no more. Her barks are the same size as she is, swallowed up by the too-large world. Hollander looks down at her, brows furrowing.

“Whose dog is that?”

“My dog,” Ilya says, and washes his hands.

Hollander stills.

Ilya is familiar with his stillness by now. There are cadences to it. There is the stillness of surprise, where Hollander’s nostrils flare slightly. When he is aroused, he goes quiet, his mouth slack. Sometimes, if Ilya is lucky, his tongue will poke out to rest on his lower lip. He has a different, unhappy stillness after practice, where he cannot look at Ilya at all, but hides in plain view, ignoring or maybe not hearing Ilya when he tries to coax him out of it.

This is new. Hollander’s fingers flex like he wants to form them into fists. His whole face twists. Ilya can see the rabbity pulse flicker in his throat. Good, Ilya thinks. Be angry. Don’t swallow it down. He wants it, this thing that is real. He wants all of Hollander’s attention, however he can get it.

“You got a dog?”

Ilya gestures. Obviously. “She is a good dog. The floor is my fault. I wait too long. Now I know.”

“You got a dog and it pissed on my floor? No, wait.” Hollander holds up a hand like he needs to hold Ilya away. Ilya, for his part, crosses his arms and leans against the kitchen counter. “You brought a dog into my fucking house?”

“Your house?” Ilya knows stillness, too. His own anger is rising from some familiar place, leaping up in his chest.

“Yeah, my fucking house.” Hollander throws his bag on the couch. “What were you thinking?”

“I think that it is my fucking house, too,” Ilya says, his volume rising. “Or is that only when I behave? Stay in nice apartment and do not touch anything. Maybe you will remember me when you come back.” He swears loudly in Russian. His hands come up automatically, like he’s pleading, and he shoves them back down to his sides.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You think I will just wait here for you? Maybe you think I am dog.”

“I was doing my fucking job,” Hollander snaps. “You’re so fucking selfish. You can’t just get a dog.”

“What can I do?” Ilya shouts. “What can I do that you will let me do? I have nothing, Hollander. I have one shitty room in fucking Montreal.”

“Fucking Montreal saved your fucking life,” Shane snarls back. “I saved your fucking life.”

“And so I live here forever like this?”

“Like what?” Ilya isn’t sure he’s ever heard Hollander raise his voice like this before. It is a furious, cleansing thing to meet it in turn. To let his own frustration boil over.

“Like fucking this.” Ilya’s English isn’t good enough for this argument. There is so much he needs to say, but he has to settle for, “Like you are ashamed. Like I am secret you keep.”

“You are a secret I’m keeping!”

It doesn’t help. None of it is helping. Ilya can feel his own lip wobble and he fights it down. “Maybe I do find my own apartment then. If it is so hard for you.”

It hits Hollander like a physical blow. They are having different arguments, Ilya thinks. Language is imperfect.

“Do you want that?” Hollander’s voice drops. He asks it like Ilya has suggested something incomprehensible, even though he was the one that offered it up in the first place, not two weeks before. His eyes are welling up, glassy and wet. “Do you not want to be here? Of course you don’t. Fuck.”

Hollander shoves past Ilya and grabs a glass from the cupboard, but his hands are shaking too much and Ilya is worried he will drop it and then he will need to worry about broken glass under Hollander’s bare feet and the dog’s paws and there is always one piece you cannot find, which finds you when you think the danger has passed, months later a shining shard of glass on your kitchen floor.

Ilya takes the glass from Hollander and fills it with water from the fridge. He pushes Hollander to sit on a stool and sets the glass in front of him. They are silent while Hollander drinks, the ice water settling him back in his skin. Lillian sniffs at his foot, and Hollander visibly startles.

Ilya tries to see her through his eyes. She’s barely a dog, closer to a mop. Her eyes are pure black in the sea of freshly-brushed white fur.

“Why did you get a dog?” Hollander asks quietly.

“She needed home. I needed dog.”

Ilya doesn’t realize how true it is until he says it. He has spent the last four days dedicated to this dog. She needs to go out several times a day. She does not like the chicken flavor of her canned food, but does like the duck. She cannot hear him when he calls, but he thinks she may be able to learn hand signals.

The hours are no longer endless.

Ilya refills Hollander’s glass. “I have this,” he says, gesturing to the four walls of Hollander’s apartment. “More than I have otherwise. I do not have,” he stumbles for the words, and has to check his translation app. “I lose things. Friends. Hockey. Fuck, Hollander. I miss hockey. I watch your games and it is like ache, here.” He taps his chest. Hollander tracks the movement.

“I’m sorry.”

“Is not your fault. Is shit, though, yes?”

“Yeah. It’s shit.” Hollander is easy to read. Ilya can track his emotions as they flit across his face, a quick, stabbing guilt, the unhappiness that pervades his days. Anxiety settles in its usual space, perched on the wrinkle between his brows. “You miss skating.”

Ilya nods. He does not have the words in English or in Russian. The loss has scooped out a part of him, unstitched an old mending. He thinks about it every day.

Hollander looks at his wrist again, then over at the clock on the oven. Somewhere out on Rue Sainte-Catherine the bars are starting to fill up. Now is when Hollander usually heads to bed, settling in for his precise eight hours.

“Okay,” Hollander says. “Come on.” Ilya follows, confused, as Hollander hops up from his stool and heads back to the door.

“Where are we going?”

“There’s a game tomorrow, so everything’s already at the arena. Do you need to bring the dog? Can you leave her alone for a few hours or will she eat the couch?”

Ilya looks down at three kilos of dog and tries to imagine her doing any damage at all. “I can bring her?”

“Yeah, fuck it. What’s her name?”

“Lillian.”

They look at each other for a moment before Hollander’s lips purse around a bolt of startled laughter. “Lily? You named your dog Lily?”

“I did not name her! Is her name!”

“Jesus Christ. Yeah, sure. All right, come on, Lillian. Let’s see if she knows how to skate.”

“I talked to the lawyer yesterday,” Hollander says, and shoots the puck to Ilya. Ilya skids it back across the ice. He skates backwards, carving neat lines into the clean ice, crossing over in tighter and tighter circles for the thrill of it and ends on a spin.

“Should have gone into figures,” Hollander calls from across the rink, and Ilya holds up a single finger, still spinning.

“What lawyer?” Ilya asks, when he’s done several laps at top speed, and then ended by kicking up ice into Hollander’s face. Hollander pauses the stick handling drill he’s doing and wipes snow from his face.

“Yulia. The immigration one.”

“What does she say? Why does she not call me?” Ilya skates circles around Hollander as they talk. He cannot stop moving. He was not sure he would ever be on the ice again, and he cannot control the exuberant grin.

He wasn’t sure it would happen today until the moment he stepped out in his borrowed skates. Hollander crept in to check the offices and hallways first, ready to leave at the first sign of movement. Ilya waited in the dark, in the slowly cooling car, fingers drumming impatiently on the dash, barely daring to hope. It was a full half hour before he reappeared at the door and gestured for Ilya to follow. Even now, the lights are at their lowest, barely illuminating the rink. None of that matters, not when Ilya is here, breathing in the artificial air, heady with exhilaration.

“You’re on the emails.”

“I hate email.” He tries a jump, something figure skaters do, and stumbles, laughing. “No toe pick.” He manages a decent spin, leaning back into it and staring up at the metal ceiling. “I need costume. With diamonds. Fake diamonds.”

“Rhinestones.”

Ilya’s whole body is warm. He’s breathing heavily when he stops, though the world keeps moving around him. “Stupid word.”

Hollander shoots the puck to him. “The details are in the email. She says it’s all on track. Interviews over the summer, probably. Maybe the fall.”

Ilya has known in a theoretical sense that they will have to do this. Part of the immigration process requires convincing the government that their marriage is real, which both they and the lawyer Hollander has hired expect to come with additional hurdles given the nature of their relationship. They do not have years of friends to vouch for them or Instagram feeds of vacation photos. Years of sexting are on the internet, along with some flattering photos of Ilya’s dick in Hollander’s messages, but nothing that will prove a marriage.

It’s close enough that Ilya can taste it. Yulia laid out the framework for them early in the process. If they pass the interview, if Ilya gets permanent residency, then he’s safe. He can get a job. He can build his own life. He will need to spend the majority of the next few years in Canada before he can petition for citizenship, but it won’t need to be with Hollander. They can relax the charade. His stomach churns.

“What does she say?”

“It’ll be harder because we’re keeping it quiet.” Hollander catches the puck back from Ilya and shows off, zipping around the rink with it while Ilya chases. They catch their breath by the boards, Ilya hiked halfway over to check that his dog is still asleep in her little pink bed.

“Quiet is good,” Ilya points out. “No trouble.”

“So much trouble,” Hollander says, and leans back on his elbows. That worry line is back between his eyebrows and Ilya wants to lick it away. “We need to make the playoffs,” he says, out of nowhere.

Ilya snorts, and waves an apology at the look Hollander gives him. “Your team plays like shit.”

“We’re in the running.” Hollander looks almost wounded, which is ridiculous. He knows the game better than anyone. Ilya should not need to tell him how this goes. He does anyway. 

“Fourth place in division. Whole division sucks. Wildcard will go to, I don’t know. Carolina?”

“Fuck Carolina.”

“Yes, they are terrible. You are worse. Team, not you.”

“Fuck. I know. They don’t trust me anymore.”

“You are best player on the team. In the league.”

“Tell them that,” Hollander says glumly. “I’m afraid I’ll get traded,” he adds, when Ilya waits long enough. “We’re playing like shit. Maybe they want to start over. Get someone new.”

Ilya shrugs. “Not this season. Too late.” The trade deadline came and went while Hollander was on the road. The playoffs roster is locked in.

“Over the summer, then. Before the draft.”

“You want to skate for Montreal still?”

“No.” The admission takes something out of Hollander. He slumps and kicks one skate out to drag his blade across the ice. His mouth twists. “I hate it here. Sometimes I wish they’d trade me. I could go anywhere else. I could skate for, I don’t know. Columbus.”

“Also bad team.”

“Fresh start. They dragged me into the GM’s office back when your… when it happened. They asked me if I was still dedicated to this team or if they should look for other options. It’s insulting. I do one thing off the ice and all of a sudden they can’t trust me.”

“More than one,” Ilya points out for the incredulous look it gets him. “We do many things. How do you forget this? There is a video. Why did you not say yes, then?”

Hollander’s laugh echoes across the rink. “Yeah, they’ll love that at the interview. We got married and I immediately moved to another country.”

Ilya gestures impatiently. “Over summer, then.”

“Not a lot of options for a trade.” Hollander chews his lower lip. “Long contract, high salary. Most of the teams with cap space are American. I’m sure they’re keeping talks open. Not like I get any say in it. I just want to get us into the playoffs. Kill penalty time until the interview, you know? Maybe that’s enough to convince them to keep me here.”

“And you want that?” Ilya has to ask it again. “To stay with Montreal?” Hollander just shrugs this time. His mouth is an unhappy line. Ilya nudges him with his knee. “Maybe they trade you because you are so fucking slow. I watch your games. It takes you whole period to make it around rink.”

“Oh fuck you.” Hollander kicks off, skating backwards. Ilya follows. “Faster than you ever were.”

Ilya yawns. “Boring. If I want to watch turtles, there is exhibit at Biodome. No, it is too bad you will never keep up. Very sad for you.”

Hollander grins. “Prove it.”

Ilya loses, but not as badly as he had expected. He lets Hollander gloat for a minute, then checks him into the boards before taking off sprinting again, waiting for Hollander to chase. 

They wind up running lazy drills, passing the puck back and forth. Ilya always found hockey fun. A combination of natural talent and sheer determination dragged him through to the highest levels of the sport, out of Russia and into the MLH. He isn’t sure if Hollander does. This is fun, though, catching the puck on their blades like children, setting meaningless challenges.

Ilya checks Hollander lightly and tries to steal the puck but they end up tangled together, falling carelessly to the ice. Ilya crawls over him and braces himself on his forearms. Hollander is hot underneath him, even through his thin hoodie. Ilya leans down until their mouths are nearly touching, breath mingling. “Do you ever think about fucking on the ice?”

Hollander shoves him. “Sounds cold.”

“I can keep you warm.”

“You’re a menace,” Hollander informs him and wriggles free, rising smoothly to his feet. He takes three quick strides backwards and skids to a stop, edges carving furrows in the ice, and waits until Ilya follows. “Bet you can’t hit the tape on the pole from the blue line.”

Ilya does not have a chance to find out. A single bark echoes across the ice. Ilya turns to see, and spots a man leaning up against the boards near where they left the dog, half-hidden in the dim.

“What the fuck is going on here?” The man eyes them both with obvious dislike. He hasn’t recognized Ilya yet. One concussion too many, maybe, or the longer hair that curls near Ilya’s chin. Perhaps it is too far outside of the realm of possibility to consider. “You too good for the rules now, Hollander? Bringing your new boy toy around? Maybe you spend less time sucking dick you’ll remember how to score a fucking goal.”

Ilya knows the panicky stillness that settles over Hollander. He wants to reach for his hand, but he waits to follow Hollander’s lead.

“Gagnon,” Hollander says, finally. Gagnon. Ilya never cared enough to learn any of his stats. He loosened one of Ilya’s teeth last year in a late hit. Ilya watched him hang back just two days before, ignoring the dirty hit on his own star center. He is staring at Ilya now with a flickering recognition on his face.

“Is that fucking Rozanov? You’re so fucked, Hollander. Bringing him here.”

Ilya squares his shoulders, teeth bared. It’s the feeling that comes before he drops his gloves, the tension winding up in his chest and arms. “Come out here,” he invites, knuckles itching. He wants to put his fist through Gagnon’s shiny fake teeth.

“Not helpful,” Hollander says, glaring at him before he turns back. “It’s not a closed facility. You bring your wife to practice all the time.”

“Yeah I know the rules, too.” Gagnon is drawn up like a hunting dog with its eye on its prey. “Spouses. Not Russian fuckbuddies on the run from their shithole countries. The press is going to have a field day with this shit.”

“Theriault is going to have your fucking balls if you go to the media. The league doesn’t want more attention.”

“Oh yeah? What do you think a photo’s worth?” He holds up his phone. “You don’t think management deserves to know you’re hanging out with him?”

“Of course they fucking know. I filed the paperwork with HR. They’re the ones that don’t want anyone to know.”

It’s not news to Ilya. Hollander does everything by the book. All of his paperwork is tidy and filed. Should any immigration officers call, they will find that Hollander has divulged exactly as much privileged information as was required. This does not make the slack-jawed surprise on Gagnon’s face any less sweet.

“You fucking married him?”

“Sorry we did not invite you,” Ilya says seriously. “Position of flower girl was taken.”

“Think maybe I’ll do a little announcement tomorrow. See what the boys think about this.”

Hollander rolls his eyes. “Your fucking funeral. Management doesn’t want it getting out. Don’t blame me when you get yourself benched.”

Hollander does not like to talk about his team. Ilya is starting to understand why. Gagnon wears his open malice on his face, equal disdain for the both of them. He doesn’t stay long. Maybe he thinks being gay is catching, or maybe, like Ilya, he doesn’t think he can spend another minute in the other man’s presence without spilling blood on the clean, white ice.

Hollander waits until the rink is quiet again, long after the door slams shut, before he puts his head on the caprail and draws in a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m fine,” he says, when Ilya puts a hand on his back. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”

Hollander comes home from his next game overstrung but grimly pleased. It is one more rip in the fragile fabric of their team, but Gagnon has not gone anywhere with it. A few of the guys know, Hollander tells him, twined together after Ilya has fucked the stress out of him. The rest of them know something is up. The team room got a lecture from Theriault threatening to gut anyone who so much as says the name Shane Hollander outside their locker room.

Hollander got his own lecture, called into a management office like a naughty child. No more ice time for Ilya Rozanov. Another rule made just for them.

Hollander has the morning after the game fully off, no morning practice or team responsibilities. He tries to crawl out of bed at his usual time, but Ilya catches him with his arm hooked around his middle and tugs him back into the bed.

“I have to pee,” Hollander grumbles, but he lets Ilya lay him out on his back, all morning breath and the rumpled hair. There is a dried patch of spit at the corner of his mouth and one eye is still half-closed against the morning light. Ilya props himself above him and drinks him in, committing the sight to memory.

Ilya kisses him on the cheek and then presses his mouth to the hollow place under Hollander’s jaw, tongues at his pulse and sucks a small purple mark into his skin, marking his claim. “He will see this,” he says, and Hollander’s breathing picks up, rapid, like a bird. Ilya does it again, lower and gentler, and again, leaving an ephemeral trail of marks down his chest. He licks his nipple slowly, tugs it between his teeth. Hollander is hard now, arching up under him. “You need to pee?” Ilya reminds him.

Hollander groans and shoves Ilya off him. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Ilya is half-asleep again when Hollander shows up again, shower-damp. His hair is still sticking up, a small patch of it over his right ear at an odd parallel. He crawls back under the covers and pokes Ilya until he wakes back up.

“Is early,” Ilya complains.

“How did you ever make it to practice? It’s the same time I get up every morning.”

“Leave me alone.”

“You started this,” Hollander informs him, and disappears under the covers. His tongue flicks over the crest of Ilya’s hip, replaced by a lingering kiss. Ilya stretches out, arms behind his head, languid and ready to take whatever Hollander wants to give him.

His whole body draws up at the first touch on his soft cock, and he shudders out an exhale when Hollander closes his lips around it, nearly all of Ilya’s cock held in the warm cavern of his mouth. He waits for Hollander to move, but he stays where he is, breathing softly through his nose. Ilya reaches down to touch, fingers moving blindly across Hollander’s face, his closed eyes, the edge of his lip. Hollander hums, and Ilya can feel it in his bones.

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya breathes out, and Hollander’s hand tightens on his thigh. Ilya isn’t quite hard yet. It’s an intimate feeling, to have Hollander hold his still-soft cock in his mouth, seemingly content to wait. Ilya breathes in shallow sips, trying to prolong the moment, but soon enough Hollander’s breathing starts to stutter and he has to pull back, just the tip of Ilya’s cock resting on his tongue.

“I am awake now,” Ilya tells him, and pulls the covers back. Hollander’s mouth is a deep red, slick with spit. He rests his cheek on Ilya’s thigh.

“I thought maybe we could go for a run.”

Ilya gapes at him, and Hollander grins. “Monster,” Ilya accuses. He reaches down for his own cock, and Hollander bats his hand away.

“Let me,” Hollander says, and crawls up Ilya’s body until he’s kneeling over Ilya’s stomach, muscled thighs flexed. He takes one of Ilya’s hands and guides it back, behind his balls, and Ilya’s mouth goes dry. He prods at the slick muscle, fingertips gliding over and in. Hollander’s breath comes in a stuttering little gasp, and he arches back insistently. He is loose enough for two immediately, and swallows hard when Ilya presses in a third.

“So wet.” Ilya’s voice is soft with reverence. He wants to flip Hollander over and see for himself the way the dark ring of muscle expands around his fingers. “You did this in the shower?”

Hollander nods, blinking. “I wanted to—” he reaches back, finds Ilya’s cock.

They’ve never done it like this before. Ilya grasps Hollander’s hips as he guides himself down onto Ilya’s cock, sinking slowly. Hollander breathes through the stretch, blinking, staring at some point on the wall.

It’s a familiar enough position. Most of them are, at this point, but it’s never been one of Ilya’s favorites. He prefers to set the pace. It has its upsides, of course. Hollander does not have tits, but Ilya reaches up and gets a handful of his pec, draws his hand closed until Hollander hisses his complaint. His body never stops moving, hips and thighs working in a clean, precise rhythm.

It’s not for Ilya, which makes it hotter. Hollander leans forward, braces his hand on Ilya’s chest. Ilya can see in Hollander’s parted mouth, the jerky hitch of his breath, when he finds the angle he’s looking for. Ilya wants to hold Hollander still and thrust up into him, but he stays still and lets Hollander use him. Hollander groans when Ilya gets a nipple between two fingers, pinching lightly.

“Good?” Ilya’s voice is tight from strain. He wants to move.

“So good.” Hollander’s cock is damp from precome, twitching. He drags Ilya’s dick against his prostate and catches his stuttering moan behind his teeth.

Ilya works his thumb between Hollander’s lips, dragging his jaw open. “I want to hear,” he says, and is delighted when the next moan comes out full-throated. Ilya wants to kiss him, but Hollander is so far away so he settles for touching all the places he wants to put his mouth: the curve of Hollander’s lip, the spatter of freckles on his cheekbone, the muscled ridge of shoulder.

“Are you going to come?”

“Yeah,” Hollander grits out. “Yeah, I’m gonna—” Ilya flips them, pins Hollander underneath him. Hollander whines, and Ilya shushes him with his mouth on his.

“I will give it to you.” Ilya rolls his hips, searching. Hollander’s mouth parts; he has always been easy like this, since the first time. Easy to read, easy to please. He pulls Hollander’s wrists together with one of his hands, holds them above his head the way Hollander likes.

Pleasure is a hot, rolling tide in Ilya’s gut. He pinches Hollander’s nipple again, harder, for the yelp it gets him. “Are you close?”

“Yeah, fuck,” Hollander manages. He presses one heel into the small of Ilya’s back, urging him on. “Please. Ilya, please.”

Ilya’s whole body tenses like he’s been struck. It’s only instinct and the sheer, blinding pleasure of Hollander’s body around his that keeps him going. He’s not sure if Hollander even knows he said it; his eyes are lust-blown, pupils like dark pools. He would do anything right now, Ilya thinks. Say anything.

“Come like this,” Ilya says, mouth right by Hollander’s ear. “On my cock, like you want to.”

Hollander bucks up underneath him, arms pulling against Ilya’s hold, and then his whole body clenches, tight, so tight, that it only takes Ilya a few strokes more until he spills over, too, all of that want tumbling out. He lays there over Hollander, catching his breath, until Hollander wiggles and complains about the come on his stomach.

In the shower, Ilya pins Hollander against the wall and washes him gently, rinsing the evidence away. There is a string of tiny bruises up his chest, already purpled, in the shape of Ilya’s mouth, and he adds one more, just above Hollander’s heart.

“You’re going to get me in trouble.” Hollander pushes half-heartedly at Ilya.

“They are jealous you have hottest husband on the team.”

“I have the only husband on the team,” Hollander says, but he’s smiling as he tips his head under the water.

Hollander is still toweling off when Ilya catches a muffled bark from downstairs. 

“I will take her out.” Ilya shrugs on one of Hollander’s shirts, soft blue linen, and gallops down the stairs. “Sorry, belka. I make you wait. We will—”

Ilya stops short. His dog is there, tail wagging, staring up at a stranger. No, he realizes, taking in her too-familiar features. Not a stranger at all. Hollander’s mother stares back at him with equal surprise, a paper bag clutched in the crook of one arm.

“Rozanov,” Hollander calls. Bare feet patter down the staircase. “While you’re out can you get—” Hollander skids to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, eyes widening. Ilya says a silent thanks that at least he’s put on black briefs, if nothing else. The bruise on his neck is livid, though Ilya thinks the blush that springs up might overpower it soon. “Mom? What are you doing here?”

Ilya takes the route of cowardice. “I will take the dog out.”

“I thought we could have lunch,” Hollander’s mother says. Her eyes flit between them. She has an intense, straight-backed presence, tall for a woman, though Ilya still has several inches on her. She looks at Ilya and he fights the urge to square his shoulders and stand at attention. “Don’t be long.”

“Okay,” he agrees meekly, and flees.

Ilya returns a precise eight minutes later to find Hollander, fully dressed, laying out takeout containers on the dining table while his mother fills glasses with water.

“I didn’t know what you eat so I got a bit of everything,” she says, and nods at the dog. “Your dog?”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees, reduced to monosyllables.

“I told my mom she should text next time,” Hollander says, and puts a plate down with a little more force than necessary.

“I did! I asked what you were doing today. You said you didn’t have any plans. I’ve always stopped by before.”

“Mom.”

She huffs. “You sound like your father.”

“Did he tell you not to come?”

“You know how he is. We need to talk about your career so I came by.”

Ilya looks around as though Hollander’s father could be hiding behind the kitchen island. “He is not here?”

“Just me,” she says, and gestures to the table. Ilya sits.

Ilya is used to being disliked. It comes with being hockey, with being Russian, with being the loudest, most obnoxious person on the team, always bigger and more, raising his hands to the home team’s crowd so they can boo him louder, grinning through his exultation, holding the spectacle up like a shield. Ilya keeps his hands on his lap and his mouth shut.

Yuna has seen more of him than any mother has a right to and by extension more of her son than she would ever want. He doesn’t know how much of the video she has seen. A screenshot would have been damning enough. Her fingerprints are all over Hollander, his career and his reputation, the golden darling of hockey before Ilya rubbed the grime in. 

She is the one Hollander came home to, crawling into his mother’s lap. She tended his wounds only for him to go off and welcome the man who put them there into his life. She sent him home on Christmas, Ilya reminds himself, rolling the memory under his fingers like rosary beads. She sent him back to Ilya.

“So this is cozy,” she announces, as though it will become fact under the force of her personality. “It’s nice to meet you properly.”

“Ah, yes,” Ilya says, and spoons couscous onto his plate. He knows his lines in this script. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

“Shane hasn’t told me much.”

“There’s nothing to say, mom.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“You said you wanted to talk about sponsors?” Hollander asks desperately.

“Oh, yes.” She leans in, takes a sip of her water. “You remember the rep at Reebok? Well, he called me, and they’re planning a pride line, and he wants to know if you would be interested.”

“Mom.”

“No, I know, but it's a good opportunity. We can go in a new direction.”

Hollander pushes a tomato across his place with the back of his fork. “I don’t want that to be the thing people know about me.”

“Well, the cat’s out of the bag with that one, honey. And now that your team knows about Rozanov—”

“Like three people know,” Hollander says, rolling his eyes. He’s a different person around his mother. It’s a different kind of tension that drags his spine into a slouch, all of his complaints gilt-edged with affection. He is younger like this, just a boy. Ilya wonders if his mother can see that Ilya, too, is just a boy, lost.

“For now,” Yuna says, and Ilya has the feeling that this is a long-standing disagreement. She turns her attention to him. “Does your family know?” 

“Ah, no,” Ilya says. “Is not a good idea, I do not think.”

“Your parents would not approve?”

Talking about his family is like pressing his thumb into a bruise. “My father is sick. Forgets I am gone. Brother hates me. Only wants money.”

“And your mother?”

“She is dead. For a long time now.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and manages to sound sincere.

“I didn’t know that,” Hollander says quietly. 

Yuna’s eyes flick between them. “Marriage is a big deal, you know. There are other ways to get citizenship. The US has visas for exceptional performance. You won a cup. You were the captain. It’s almost guaranteed.”

“It was my idea, mom.” Hollander puts his fork down. “We were scared. I made a backup plan when the video came out. Could you drop it? Please?”

“Did Shane tell you that most of his sponsors dropped him?” 

Ilya is a cornered animal. His heart kicks against his ribs. “He did not tell me, but I know.”

“His time on ice is down, too. Career prospects. You know Shane is risking everything for you, don’t you?”

“Mom.”

“Time on ice is back up,” Ilya says, because it’s true. “Twenty-one minutes yesterday. They are not too stupid to play best skater in the league.”

“Twenty forty-two,” Hollander says automatically. “I didn’t know you were watching.”

Her thumb taps against the edge of her plate. “And the rest?”

Ilya looks away, out the wide windows and over the cityscape of Montreal. The sky is a disarming blue, faint clouds skidding across the horizon. This at least is the same everywhere. The same sun, the same sky. Somewhere back in Russia, this sky is waiting for him. “Yes. I know.”

“Do you think you’re worth it?”

“No,” Ilya says honestly, and to his side Hollander makes a quiet, choked noise.

“Would you play again if you could?”

“He’s not here for twenty questions, mom.”

Ilya shrugs. It’s not the kind of question that needs answering. “Of course.”

“You had quite a reputation,” she says bluntly. “Are you being safe with my son?”

“Safe?”

“She wants to know if you’re fucking other people,” Hollander says. Ilya turns back to the table to find Hollander with his head in his hands, elbows sharply bent. His hair pokes out from between the lattice of his fingers and his voice comes out muffled. “Look, it’s fine. You don’t have to answer any of this.”

“Of course I am not.”

One of Hollander’s hands drops, far enough to reveal a slice of cheek, one brown eye. “You’re not?”

Ilya cannot hide the hurt that flickers over his face or the fresh tightness in his voice. “Did you think that I am? I know you can. On road trips. I am not.”

“I’m going to use the restroom,” Yuna says abruptly. Her chair clatters as she pushes up from the table. She takes the stairs up to the farther bathroom. She will see their toothbrushes there, side by side in Hollander’s little white cup.

“I’m not sleeping with anyone else,” Hollander says, when they’re alone. Hollander, who usually avoids eye contact, looks directly at Ilya like he needs to make sure that Ilya hears him. “I haven’t been.”

“I am not either,” Ilya says, arms over his chest.

“What about Alice?”

“Neighbor Alice?” Ilya asks, startled. “Neighbor Alice is five thousand years old. She wants me to meet her son and talk about hockey. She gave me very old dog. No, I am not fucking Neighbor Alice. This whole time, you think I sleep around?”

“I know I’ve never been your only one.”

Ilya grits his teeth. “You are now.”

“Okay,” Hollander says. He looks between Ilya’s eyes and his mouth and his cheeks, gaze darting frantically across Ilya’s face. The corners of his mouth twist up even as he tries to push them down. “Okay. Thank you. For telling me. I can’t believe you thought I was, um. That.”

Ilya nudges his chair fractionally closer to Hollander. He can feel every centimeter of the space between them. He presses his bare foot to Hollander’s calf. “You do not text when you are away.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

“It is,” Ilya says through a mouth gone thick, “not a bother. To talk to you.”

“Do you want me to?” Hollander’s brows inch together. He looks how Ilya feels, maybe. Adrift.

Ilya digs the tip of his thumbnail into his little finger. “I think maybe,” he admits. It is the most he can say. It was easy before, when he only had Hollander a few times a year. They saw each other in glances, snatching time away. He did not have to guard himself so carefully then. Now, his life is nested inside Hollander’s. He is aware of his presence all the time, even when he is away.

He has come to know Hollander, in deep, indelible ways. He knows the way he tastes and the way he rinses the sink twice after he brushes his teeth. He knows that Hollander will never wear socks that do not match, and he knows that Hollander would sooner throw himself into traffic than let Ilya win at anything, even the stupid plant game he likes. He knows that Hollander will break himself upon the ragged rules that guide his life before he ever thinks to bend. 

He doesn’t think he can explain the new fondness that has built up in him for Hollander and his particular habits, not even to himself. They don’t know each other properly, not yet, but he wants to so intensely that it has become a physical hurt. It is awful that love can sneak up like this, bullying its way in before Ilya has had a chance to defend against it. Offside, he thinks wildly. 

“We need a plan,” Yuna says, when the dishes are cleared away and the leftovers neatly packed. “Have you talked to Farah about a statement?”

Shane sucks in a breath, holds it for a long second, releases. “I haven’t told her.”

“Well, why not? She’s your agent. She needs to know these things. You need a backup plan for if this gets out past the team. You know how it goes.”

“It’s not going to get out.”

Ilya holds off on a number of responses, none of them particularly helpful. “Maybe yes, maybe no,” he offers. “I am careful.”

“You need to have something prepared,” Yuna insists. They are alike, she and her son. Both of them are stubborn and determined. There is an itch in her for action.

“It’s not going to get out,” Hollander repeats. His lip twitches. “It’s not.”

“You don’t know that, honey. You have to look at the possibilities”

Hollander blinks too fast. He wipes at his face with the heel of one hand. “I can't. If I think about that I'll lose it, and I can't afford that right now. I just need to get through the season, okay?”

Ilya does not know what Yuna sees now that melts her expression into tenderness. 

“That’s ok,” she says, even though none of it is. “We can talk about something else.”

Chapter 5

Chapter Notes

Astute observers may notice that the chapter count has increased by one. It will not increase further, I say with the same absolute conviction as when I first started writing this, my 10k max wordcount fic.

Spring settles on Montreal in a cold bluster.

The city is no different than the day before. The same scattered gray clouds haunt the landscape. The sidewalks are covered in the same ice. It is unfair, maybe, that the world continues to turn so cleanly when Ilya has survived a full season here, cut loose and rethreaded into the fabric of the landscape. A full winter, tucked close under Montreal’s wing.

He probes at the feeling like a loose tooth. Boston is a lifetime ago, Russia further still. Canada folds around him now. He knows the city in fragments. The apartment, a few stores, the walking distance of crowded, gray streets. Hockey, in silhouette.

It is still winter for the Metros, perhaps. There are twelve games left in their season, enough time to scrape up into a wild-card spot, or enough time to lose. Ilya hates the uncertainty. Their team is better than they were, but not good enough. It is a waste of their talents. A waste of Hollander’s talent. He complains about it vociferously to Svetlana, among other objections such as the weather, Hollander’s ridiculous diet, and the French language as a whole. It’s easy in Russian, the words smooth on his tongue.

“Grumpy old man,” she says, her voice tinny and faraway and dear. He settles on the couch and kicks his feet out on the coffee table. Lillian is a white splotch on the rug, snoring quietly. On the television, Montreal is losing. Her stream is a few seconds delayed, and she shouts at him when he ruins a goal for her.

“No surprise,” Ilya huffs, and chews a handful of popcorn, his fingers greasy with microwaved not-butter. “Pittsburgh wanders through their defense like they are going to a picnic. They should be better.”

Svetlana agrees with him, of course, because she has eyes and is smarter about hockey than anyone he has ever met except perhaps Hollander. And Hollander’s mother. Now Yuna is back home in Ottawa and Hollander is a thousand kilometers away, on the ice, a murderous look on his face. Ilya takes a selfie. It’s blurry but obvious. Ilya, on the sofa, in Hollander’s Montreal jersey. He grins and sends it off. Hollander will see it during intermission.

“How is Montreal?”

“Boring.” Ilya flops further into the cushions. “No one recognizes me. They have no taste in this city.”

“Maybe it’s the dog.”

Ilya glances down. Lillian is a puddle of white fur, a tiny pink bow perched between her ears. “My fierce dog? They should look at her and know.”

He can hear the shrug in her voice. “Not a bad thing, yes?”

“Alexei wants to know where I am.”

“Fuck him.”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “He thinks he knows something. I am not sure if he does.” Alexei, who had called three times the day before, longer messages each time. He has never learned to sweet-talk. Every sentence is a new accusation. Ilya is a coward. Ilya has abandoned his obligations. Ilya needs to send another wire transfer or he will not like the outcome. Alexei is on the other side of the world, his threats toothless. Ilya sends the money anyway.

“And what does Hollander think?”

Ilya brought it up with Hollander once. He would prefer to cut it off. His brother can rot in the bed he made, but Hollander is afraid of what Alexei may know, of what he might say. 

“He thinks about hockey.”

“And you?”
“I think Carolyn is a smart player. Final three, definitely. Don’t stick to alliances after the tribe swap. Max was stupid with the cooking pot.”

“You are an idiot,” Svetlana tells him fondly. “Stop watching that show.”

“It’s a good show. Oh, come on!” He shouts the last at the television, where Pittsburgh’s winger, and not even the good one, has snuck past their defense to take a too-predictable shot. Miitka, the only one on the Metros who seems to know what’s happening on the ice tonight, saves. “It is embarrassing,” Ilya says, with some real heat behind the words. “They cannot score. They cannot play defense. We could replace Montreal’s team with pylons and they would play better.”

Sveta sighs. “It was their year.”

“You think?”

“You didn’t? They could have taken the cup. Good composition, capable goaltender. No major injuries. Shane Hollander on the first line.”

“How would you fix them?” Ilya keeps his tone light.

She hums. Pittsburgh scores, the screen flashing past their jubilant fans. “Big question. They have depth. The team should work. You see there, though? They aren’t anticipating each other. Too many turnovers on nothing plays.”

“You can’t talk about a rebuild when they are on track for the playoffs.”

“They will make the playoffs because Hollander is carrying them on his back. The team does not work. Coach wants one thing, team does something else. Fire the coach or change up the team.”

“So?” She hesitates. Ilya is tired. “You can say it.”

“Montreal will riot, probably.”

“They love him.”

“His team does not. Look at them. If I had to pick? I choose to keep the team. Take the hit. Trade for someone else. Two, maybe. Three and a draft pick. He’s the best, but not with them.”

“Where, do you think?”

She is silent a minute, and they watch Hollander slice through the defense, a neat assist and a goal for Pike, fifteen seconds left in the period. “Any team will want him. You’ll have to try harder to ruin him next time.”

He sighs, deep and true. “I miss you.”

“I will visit,” Sveta promises. “If your husband will not kick me out.”

“He cannot complain if he is skating for Washington.”

“Ilyusha.”

“I need to take the dog out,” he says, and props the phone on his shoulder. Lillian follows him to the door, her stubby tail wagging. “Warn me before intermission ends.”

Hours later, Ilya is chopping tiny tomatoes when his phone buzzes. He swipes it open and accepts the call.

“Yes, this is Ilya,” he says, in Russian.

“You know I don’t understand you,” Hollander says. Ilya doesn’t understand his equanimity. If Ilya had played a game like that, he would have been neck-deep in cheap liquor. Hollander sounds—annoyed, maybe. Resigned.

“Sorry. I was talking to Svetlana.”

It has the desired effect. He can picture the way Hollander’s frown settles into his face, taking root around his plush mouth. The sigh is perfect. Lightly aggrieved. “Did you have a nice chat?”

“No. She only wants to talk about you. I say oh, Sveta, let me tell you about my dog. She has a new trick. She will sit when I make this gesture, and she says no, I want to talk about terrible hockey. All I do is suffer.”

“She sits now?”

“I will send a photo.”

“What did you do today?”

Ilya pops a tomato in his mouth and chews. “Jerked off. In your bed.” That sigh again. Ilya grins.

“Wash the sheets before I get back, please.”

“I washed your white towels. They are pink now?”

“I don’t believe you,” Hollander says flatly. “The laundry service knows how to separate colors.”

“Ah, and now we fail the interview already. They will see my pink shirt and know that you are a liar.”

“You’re awful,” Hollander informs him. “What’s today’s question?”

It was Yuna’s idea, which surprised Ilya. He had expected something else. A delivery of divorce papers, maybe, needing only Hollander’s signature. Instead, she had sent a deck of cards, each of them with a question. They are designed for couples, meant to spark conversation. What is your favorite type of music (“whatever’s on,” Hollander says) or do you have a favorite childhood memory (“ah,” Ilya says, stalling, searching for the words to encompass the pink glow of his mother’s face under a fur hood, the molten spice taste of sbiten on his tongue).

The thought of the interviews has started to keep him up at night. It is a little ridiculous. Ilya spent years fielding all manner of nonsense in the media scrum, and now an hour and a half of questioning has sunk into the back of his mind. Their dating history is, very publicly, a series of hookups, with only the barest conversation, and most of that around the logistics of when and where. And so they are practicing, in the way that Hollander practices, which is to throw himself at a problem until it cedes before him.

“What is your favorite sex position?” Ilya asks, and pops another tomato between his tongue and the top of his mouth.

“Fuck off, that’s not the question.”

“Says it right here.” The deck is on the coffee table, unopened. Ilya chews loudly. “We can try next question. How many fingers do you think I can get in you before you cry?”

“Jesus Christ. Now I know you’re lying. No, sorry,” Hollander says, his voice going distant as he pulls the phone away from his face. “It’s Ilya. Yeah. More of those. Uh, no. You don’t want to know, actually.”

Ilya. Ilya likes the way it sounds from Shane’s mouth. He says it wrong, too much emphasis on the first syllable, dragging it out. They’ve been practicing first names, too, because Hollander is nothing if not a perfectionist.

“Pike is there? Tell him his wife must stop texting me. I am married man. I do not need her, even if she begs.”

“He says no to the WAG chat,” Hollander translates. Ilya can’t hear Pike’s response. “Yeah, I don't know what they're texting about, either. No, don't worry about it, you can keep the movie on. It won’t take long. PG only.”

“Boring.”

“Shut up. Read the actual question.”

Ilya retrieves the cards. “Describe my perfect day,” he reads out, and frowns. “Does not make sense. Is opposite?”

“I think I’m supposed to describe yours and you say mine.”

“Ok, fine. Shane Hollander’s perfect day? Wake up very, very early. Too early. Make too much noise with the blender and drink awful smoothie. Yoga, probably. Morning practice, then nap. Very healthy lunch. Beat, uh, Tampa, eight goals all by himself.”

“Beating Tampa sounds fun. Why eight? Triple hat trick sounds nice.”

“Shut up, I am not done. After, probably practice again.”

“After the game?”

“Three hour practice,” Ilya agrees. “Bag skates. Then blowjob. Your mouth on my dick. Slow, while I hold your hair. Then I make you beg before I fuck you.”

“I don’t think this is in the spirit of the question.” Ilya imagines how Hollander must be turning away from Pike, hunching into himself to hide the way every thought flits across his face. Ilya cannot quite hear the click of his jaw, the thick swallow.

“Are you hard?”

“Fuck you,” Hollander says tightly. There’s a brief murmur of conversation, and then a door slams as Hollander shuffles out of his hotel room and into an empty stairwell. His voice echoes. “Ok, fine. Yes, I like all of that. I like some of that a lot.”

“Okay. Tell me what else,” Ilya prompts.

“I haven’t gotten to do this yet, but, well. I told you about my cottage. The builders only finished recently, and I just—” Hollander trails off. Ilya pictures him perched on the edge of a metal stair with the phone pressed against his cheekbone, the speaker up by ear and the gap of air between his mouth and the microphone. “I’d like to spend the off season there, as much as I can. It’s on a private lake. I want a little time to be alone. Away from the world. You’ll like it there.”

He says it just like that, heedless of what the easy assurance does to Ilya. Ilya is greedy. He knows this about himself. He will swallow up every scrap of Hollander he can get while he can, alone together in Hollander’s glass-faced house on the lake.

Ilya’s tongue flicks out to wet his lips. “I would like this, I think.”

“Maybe that’s your perfect day, too. Or nice, at least.”

“Mm, no. Perfect day starts with you on your knees.”

Hollander snorts. “I’ll be home in two days. I’m not doing this in a hotel staircase.”

“Maybe you want to listen, then. I will tell you all the things I would do.”

“Hayden’s still in my room,” Hollander says weakly. “I can’t do anything when I get back.”

Ilya palms himself through his sweats. “What else is in your cottage?”

“It’s got a gym.”

Ilya groans. “Hollander. Shane. Gym is not sexy. I want to jerk off. I do not want to think about your gym.”

“There’s a mirror in the gym. It takes up an entire wall.”

Ilya shimmies his hand under the waistband and gets a grip of himself. He thinks about Hollander spread across a bench, his fingertips pressing the ground and his hips spread. Ilya would tug his shirt up, tuck it between his teeth and make him hold it there.

“I will make you watch me fuck you,” Ilya says, sinking into the fantasy. In his mind, Hollander twists his face away and Ilya turns it back with his fingers dug into his jaw. He makes him meet his own eyes. Hollander should know the way that his own face goes slack with arousal, black pupils drowning out the deep brown of his iris. “You will see what you look like.”

“What do I look like?”

“Mine.”

“Oh, fuck.” Hollander’s voice shakes.

“Are you touching yourself?” Ilya asks, delighted.

“No.”

“Be quick or someone will see. Are you close?”

“Yes.” Hollander grits out.

“Someone will walk in.” Ilya strokes his own dick in quick movements. “People will know what a slut you are. So needy you cannot even wait two more days. Oh, fuck, Hollander.”

“Please,” Hollander says. It’s meaningless, but it shoots through Ilya like lightning. “Please, I need—”

“You will have to lick it clean.” It’s this edge of a snarl, but it’s enough. Hollander’s breathing goes rough and then stops. Ilya groans. “Did you?”

Ilya wants to see the white smear on Hollander’s palm. He wants to bring it to his own mouth and put his tongue to it, to coat his mouth with the bitterness. His hand works furiously between his legs, and if he groans Hollander's name when he comes it’s only them to hear it.

“This is so gross,” Hollander says, while Ilya is still trying to enjoy the afterglow, lying with his eyes closed and his sticky hand still down his pants.

“Shut up. Wipe it on your shirt.”

“I thought you wanted me to lick it clean.”

Ilya’s eyes snap open. “Will you?”

“Not tonight.” Ilya grins. Not tonight means later. He can wait for later. “We didn’t even go through the questions.”

“Stop complaining. We do one question. This is better. You can ask your boring questions at your cottage.”

“That’ll be nice. I liked the picture, by the way. In my jersey.”

Ilya wishes he could sweep him away here and now, hide him away in his lakefront house. Maybe Hollander would wear Ilya’s old jersey, the number 81 emblazoned across his back. Maybe it wouldn’t make Ilya’s throat go tight to think about it. There is hockey still, though. Twelve games, or nineteen with a first round of playoffs. Forty, if every series goes to seven games. Hollander will drag his team by their hair to the cup if he has to.

They sit in silence and time stretches like taffy. Ilya could fall asleep like this, but he can’t. He has to wash his hand and feed the dog and feed himself. His dinner is half-made in the kitchen. “You should sleep.”

Hollander yawns, a cracking sound that echoes out of Ilya’s own chest. “Yeah. See you soon.”

Ilya does not say miss you, but the words are thick on his tongue. He tucks them behind his molars to examine later. Missing Hollander is new and unexpected, but the apartment is too big without him. It should be enough to tease out a corner of Hollander’s evening and hear his voice, but there is no one to judge when Ilya eats twinkies for breakfast or braids patterns into Lilian’s hair. There is no one to lay beside him at night.

He’s still sleeping in Hollander’s bed, even now while Hollander is away. They didn’t talk about it, but he doesn’t think Hollander will mind. He will wash the sheets before Hollander comes back and pick up the blankets and his scattered plates before the cleaners come through and change the water filter in the fridge which started blinking orange two days ago.

Ilya is no longer a tourist in this land. He listens to Hollander’s breathing on the other end of the line. Neither of them hangs up.

Montreal wins two games and loses a third and Hollander sprawls across his bed and lets Ilya drag his tongue across the inside of his thigh, pulling fresh pinprick bruises up around the deep purple smear already there. Hollander’s whole body is a map of hurt. One finger is splinted, his knee wrapped and tender, bruises blossoming on his legs and torso. Ilya should not miss this, too, but he cannot help the wellspring of jealousy. The proof is written across Hollander’s body that he is still there, still playing, still wanted.

Time slows down, so it is both an hour and a year between the ding of Ilya’s phone notification and the front door opening, by which time Ilya has given up on fretting and settled in his usual corner of the couch. Hockey players are all unkempt louts, so he hasn’t bothered to change out of his sweats and tank.

“I’m back,” Hollander calls, and Ilya rolls his eyes. Who else would it be?

Three of the Metros follow behind Hollander, traipsing up the stairs in their sock feet like ducklings. Anxiety clings to Hollander like early fog, but he ushers them in with an outstretched hand. Ilya recognizes them. Miitka, the goalie, Boiziau, who Hollander has talked about before, one of the few true friends he has on this team and, unexpectedly, Nilsson, Ilya’s Boston rookie, recently demoted to Montreal’s team. Ilya flicks his fingers in a casual wave. “Hello, Metros. Rookie.”

“I didn’t believe it.” Mitty looks at Ilya like he is an escaped zoo animal. “You’re really here? On Hollzy’s couch. Wait, is that Survivor?”

“Is very serious.” Ilya gestures at the screen, now paused. He doesn’t want to miss tribal council. “Merge episode. Jenn has idol, but they do not know. Not good for Kelly.”

“My wife loves that show.”

“Yes, so your wife has good taste, but only in television. You come here to interrupt Survivor time or do you need something?”

“Don’t be rude.”

“No, this is good,” Mitty says. He hasn’t taken his eyes off Ilya. “I thought maybe it was like an impersonator or something. An extended practical joke.”

“No, too bad for me. They say Rozanov, you are too good, it makes the other skaters cry. No more hockey for you.” He shrugs one shoulder. “And still Metros suck.”

Boiziau shakes his head. “This is so weird.”

Ilya waits a beat for Hollander to chime in. These are his teammates, probably his friends if he has brought them to his home like this, but Hollander stands there with his thumbs in his pockets and his mouth pressed in a thin line.

Ilya sighs. “You want something? Beer? There is, uh, maybe one in the fridge. You can share.”

“Yeah, I’ll take it,” Mitty says, and Ilya levers himself off the couch. There’s a seasonal assortment of ale in the fridge. He doesn’t feel like sharing the good ones, so he grabs one of the beers that taste like pine needles and mouthwash. He snags a ginger ale, too, and shoves it into Hollander’s hands on the way past.

“There. All set. No beer for you two. Goalie privilege.”

“He always like this?” Boiziau asks it of Hollander, but it’s Ilya who answers.

“Yes. Is part of my charm. While you are here.” Ilya narrows his eyes at the rookie. “Hello again. Nice to see you.”

“Um. Hello,” Nilsson says in his accented English. He hasn’t lost the knack of looking terrified at Ilya’s attention.

“Remember what we talk about in preseason? Sit.” He flops back on the couch and flips the TV over to a game he had been watching earlier, San Jose against Colorado. Half of San Jose’s first line is out on injury, and still they outshot Colorado two to one. His notes are still out on the coffee table.

“Look. Do you see? Look how they screen. There, you see? They only do this against strong player. You are, eh, okay, but they will try. Are you paying attention? This is good information. San Jose is next week, and I will have to leave Montreal if you lose.”

“Oh my god.” Mitty sinks into the couch and takes a swig from his beer. “There are two of them.”

“You’re not our coach,” Hollander says, and wavers until he finally sits, as far away from Ilya as he can. It is unsustainable for him to be on the verge of a heart attack from being in the same room as other people.

“So tell coach this and he will tell you the same thing. Hollander, you want your notes now or later?”

Hollander looks startled that Ilya is still talking to him. Ilya wants to remind him that all of these men have seen Ilya’s dick in his mouth, though maybe that is the problem. Maybe Hollander is perched on the edge of his expensive sofa and thinking only of the angle of the video and whether these men could see through the dim light how much he wanted it, if they read the timbre of his moan and thought fag. Whether they still think it.

Ilya wants to ask him why these three. Boiziau is his friend, like Pike. Miitka, Ilya doesn’t know, but he is probably weird but harmless, like most goalies. Nilsson, the rookie, stands out in the trio, still with acne on his jaw and open worship when he looks at Hollander. Ilya had not expected to meet any of the Metros. Hollander has been coming home sour and miserable and trying to hide it as though Ilya cannot see it engraved in every line of his body. He wonders if there was a threat, clear enough for Hollander to perceive, that forced him to open his carefully guarded home, or if this is the culmination of some other conversation.

“Later,” Hollander says, and keeps his eyes trained on the television.

“What do you have for me?” Mitty is the only one who seems genuinely relaxed. He swings one arm out across the back of the couch and stretches his legs out in front of him. “If we’re doing tape I want pizza.”

“Crisse, I did not come here for video review,” Boiziau complains but sits anyway.  “Is this what you do all day?”

“Do you think my wife would start taking notes for me?” Mitty asks, already tapping on his phone. “Pepperoni? Hollzy what’s your address?”

“Special trick, only from Russian mail order husbands.”

“So you’re actually—” Nilsson looks back and forth between them. Hollander twitches like a rabbit.

“Yes, and? You think I am not pretty enough for Hollander?”

“With your ugly face? I bet you had to wear a veil so he didn’t run away before the vows.”

“I like you,” Ilya says, pointing at Mitty. “You can stay. No notes for you. No, one note. Start goalie fight. I want to watch.”

Mitty salutes. “On it.”

Nilsson sits finally, perched on the edge of the couch, watching Ilya with fresh confusion. “This is okay for you? You stay home and watch tape?” It is a dagger under the ribs, but Ilya has always been good at pressing down pain. 

“Your mother forget to teach you manners? What else do you want me to do? Hollander eats like a fucking bird. Cannot bake cookies for his team. Cleaners come on schedule. Dog child cannot read. I am terrible housewife.”

“Maybe Hollzy should suck some more dicks, see if you can get more people running tape for us. Anything for a competitive advantage, right?” It gets a laugh from them, even Hollander, but Ilya sees the flinch. He has to bite his tongue to stop from snapping back in his defense. It will not do Hollander any favors.

“Your turn next,” Ilya says instead, raising an eyebrow. “I can give you tips for this, too.”

Boizeau tells him to fuck off and Mitty does finally order pizza, thick and greasy with cheese baked into the crust, which is disgusting but doesn’t stop Ilya from eating two slices. Hollander gradually unclenches, slipping into himself and out of the tense, robotic version that he presents otherwise. He makes jokes and pays attention when Ilya stands up to point at the screen and smiles when Ilya draws their attention to himself.

Ilya leaves them alone when he takes the dog out, flipping a finger to the commentary about her appearance.

“Am not, uh, word? Needing big dog because my dick is small.”

“Compensating,” Mitty supplies with a grin.

“Yes, you all know. Finish watching game. I am kicking you out when I get back.”

“You got big plans, Roz?”

“Yes. Plan not to deal with your ugly face in my house. Bad enough to look at Hollander.”

“My wife is texting me anyway. Whole day off tomorrow, boys.”

“More time to disappoint her,” Ilya yells before the door closes behind him.

He lingers outside while Lillian sniffs at a lamppost. The air is crisp and cold, and thankfully the rain has stopped. He nods at a passing stranger and tucks his hands under his armpits to stay warm. Nothing here is really Ilya’s. He can remove himself, allow Hollander his space.

They need this time upstairs, he knows. Hollander is too shy while he is there. Ilya is a good shield, loud and unpredictable. He can draw their attention and be just another hockey player, the way he was before. He and Hollander could be roommates for all the attention they’ve paid each other over the last hours. Hockey players live together all the time. Hollander’s teammates, his friends, need time to needle at him now. They will ask him rude questions and he will snap back at them and they will believe, maybe, that there is some truth between them. 

Ilya does not care what these men think of him. He did not care when he played for Boston and he does not care now. His disaffection is a carefully cultivated tool, but Hollander feels every inch of the misery they have put him through. Maybe this is a turning point. The scale has tipped too far on the side of penance. Now they can begin to lift that weight. Besides, Ilya tells himself as he grinds his cigarette under his heel, maybe the immigration officers will talk to them, too. Do you believe their relationship is genuine? some government flunky will ask, and Miitka will look back at them with those clever brown eyes and say, Well, Rozanov did bring him ginger ale.

When they are alone again, Ilya asks Hollander why he brought them there. Hollander pauses in the middle of breaking down the pizza box. The leftovers are in the fridge, tidily packed in plastic. Hollander nibbled at the edge of a slice while they watched hockey. Ilya is finishing that same piece now.

“They won’t tell,” Hollander says, and folds the cardboard in two. “Gagnon told Mitty, before Theriault shut him up. I don't think—I think Comeau knows, too, but that's it. Mitty was trying to ask me about it. He didn’t realize Nilsson was there.”

“So you bring them here?”

“I needed them to shut up.” Hollander’s fingers are white on the cardboard. “They all kept talking. Someone else was going to walk in.”

“Okay,” Ilya says, and rests his hand on Hollander’s forearm, willing him to relax. “So you bring them here, is ok. Maybe next time tell them ‘shut the fuck up’. Is ok, though. I like them.”

“What if they say something?”

“They will not.” It might even be true. Mitty doesn’t seem the type, and Boiziau is one of Hollander’s few genuine friends. Ilya likes the rookie, but teenagers do stupid shit, say stupid things. He did.

Hollander finishes cleaning his kitchen. He resets the house, moving pillows into their regular order and putting empty cans in the recycling. Ilya’s notebooks go into a neat pile, the pens laid out in parallel lines on top. Ilya’s sunglasses at the edge of the counter, where he leaves them after carrying the grocery bags in. “It’s one time only, don’t worry. I won’t bring them here again. They’re better than they were. The team, that is, but it’s still. Not good. Generally.”

Ilya makes a noncommittal noise. “These ones are okay. Mitty is fine, for goalie. Weird. Bring him after next game, maybe.”

“That’s not a good idea.” Hollander folds a blanket and sets it over the arm of the couch. Ilya’s, though he pretends to keep it there for Hollander.

“Was not a good idea to bring him in the first place. Second time is not so bad. Maybe more tape?”

Hollander won’t bring him again. His body curls in on itself like a pillbug as he smooths invisible wrinkles from the blanket until he gives up and wanders over to the large windows. The days are still short, and the city is a mess of flickering light.

Ilya wants to bring it up again, the way it feels to pick at a scab. He hadn’t been part of a group, any group, since December. Even the Metros are better than the unending isolation. They are not his team. They never could be, but he would like to borrow the feeling, sweeter for the long hunger. He thinks, not for the first time, of the long stretch of life that hangs ahead of him, an endless path.

“Thank you,” Hollander says. “For everything. For handling them.”

“Is fine.”

“Spasibo,” Hollander adds. He isn’t looking at Ilya, so he can’t see the way that Ilya’s composure crumples.

“Where do you learn that word?”

“I got an app,” Hollander says, almost absently. He still won’t look at Ilya, so Ilya joins him by the window. He nudges him with his shoulder.

“You have bad accent.”

“Fuck off. Maybe you can teach me. I learned a couple of things.” Hollander demonstrates, introducing himself in mangled Russian and asking how Ilya is feeling.

“I like when you speak Russian,” Ilya says, but Hollander shakes his head in return.

“I haven’t gotten very far.”

“Say again,” Ilya says, and puts his thumb up against Hollander’s throat to hear the vibration. It feels the same as any language, vocal chords thrumming under the skin. Ilya puts his mouth there to taste. Hollander’s moan isn’t in any language Ilya knows.

Hollander only knows a few phrases, and he parrots the ones Ilya teaches him gamely. Harder and more and please. There is a new thrill in it, because Hollander did this on his own. Hollander cannot forget him now. Even later, after Ilya’s residency, after Hollander gets tired of him, he will always know this part of Ilya, can never shake it fully. 

Ilya knows language like a weed, how it roots under his tongue. Even after the blossoms die off he will know please and goodbye, the way Hollander will never rid himself of pozhaluysta.

Hayden Pike’s home is spacious, with a tidy kitchen, enough sofas to host an entire hockey team, and filled everywhere that Ilya can see with loud plastic toys that whirr and chime when his twin daughters press buttons. They show Ilya each one in turn, demonstrating the twenty different noises that the rotating wheel can make and the pastel blue microphone that sings about letting go. He sits politely, cross-legged on the floor, in a rug that he suspects holds more than its share of glitter.

“And what is this?” he asks when the one he thinks is Ruby shows him a sparkling pink hockey stick. “Is for drums?”

Both of them start talking at once. Between the limits of Ilya’s English and the unstaunched chatter from two toddlers, Ilya might get one of every five words, but he goes along gamely with his first hockey lesson and bats a stuffed cat along the floor at Jade’s direction.

“Am I doing it right?”

She giggles again. He’s amazed he managed to hold their attention this long, but then one of them remembers that his dog exists and they rush back over to where she’s sleeping in the bed Ilya brought with.

“Gently,” Jackie reminds them, and they trail chubby fingers down her side. She whuffs softly.

“Sorry,” she says, and settles on the couch near Ilya, one eye on the twins. “They’re a lot. I would put them to bed early, but they always know.”

“You are brave.”

“Yeah, well. This one was planned.” She hefts the baby, Arthur, and settles him on her lap. “Do you want kids?”

“Uh, have tried. No luck so far.”

She snorts, one hand up over her face. Ilya likes Jackie. He was angry when Shane succumbed to her harassment and gave up Ilya’s number, but now she is a reliable presence in his phone. She’s funny and level-headed and has all of the best gossip about Hollander’s team. He still won’t let her add him to the WAG chat because he does not think that most of them would welcome him, though he begrudgingly agreed to wear the jacket when the Metros make the playoffs.

“Hey,” Jackie says, and Ilya fully turns at her tone before he realizes she’s not talking to him. “The dog has had enough. Play with something else.”

Ilya’s poor dog has a set of sea green barrettes clipped into her hair, which she is nosing curiously at. He wiggles his fingers and she trots over to him.

The one Ilya thinks is Jade says something that Ilya thinks means that she wants to brush the dog. He repeats it to Jackie, and she confirms it with a nod while Ilya unpicks the clips from Lillian’s fur.

“You can brush my hair instead,” he says, and they squeal. He shimmies back against the couch, and the two of them sit behind him, teasing his curls into disarray with a jeweled doll brush. He passes the barrettes back to them and hides a wince when the first one pulls at the hair above his ear.

“Gently,” Jackie says. It’s a well-used word.

They chat about nothing while Ilya lets the girls paint his nails a bright, glittery blue. It overflows his nails and smears across his fingers, and Jackie assures him that she has enough polish remover to get it back off before he leaves. “Maybe I will keep it,” he says, and she grins.

“I’m going to dump these terrors at Shane’s place and let you manage them.”

“No, please,” he says dryly, ignoring the unhappy pang at Shane’s place. “What will I feed them? Lettuce? Girls, do you like lettuce?”

“No lettuce,” Ruby declares, and puts another sticker on Ilya’s thumbnail.

“Oh, so I will buy ice cream, then. We eat sugar and send them home.”

“Oh, shush. All right, Ruby, last stickers and then we’re going to brush our teeth.”

Ilya gets one last Elsa sticker on his pinky nail and a green star on his left pointer finger. He admires them solemnly and thanks the twins for the makeover. The game starts when Jackie is still putting them to bed, and Ilya watches the Metros stream onto the ice.

Ilya hates this part of the season. There is no slack left to reel up. Every game is a fight for points as the teams scrape their way towards a playoffs spot. Montreal is lingering on the edge. With three games left, they need to win tonight, and they need Toronto to lose over in Detroit.

“Beer’s in the fridge,” Jackie offers when she gets back. “It’s self-service around here.” 

Ilya finds the bottle opener on the fridge, a magnet in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. “You want?”

“Grab me one of the waters,” she calls back.

Ilya sits near her. “Ten dollars on San Jose.”

 “You’re on. The Metros shut them out last time.” Arthur fusses, and she rocks him against her shoulder. “They’ve got this one.”

Ilya has fresh thoughts about the Metros’ defense, none of them flattering. Everyone is injured to some extent, the way they always are at the end of the season. They’ll play through it if they make the playoffs, recover if they don’t. Hollander has a bruise over his ribs in the shape of Quebec. One of the defenseman is skating with a broken wrist, taped immobile.

“I hate when Hayden gets hurt,” Jackie sighs.

Ilya winks at her. “Bruises are sexy.”

“His dislocated shoulder was not.”

“I take?” He asks, gesturing to the baby, and settles him in his arms when Jackie hands him over. Ilya likes babies. His teammates were forever fathering more of them. He likes the chaos when they learn to talk, but Arthur is still full of newborn helplessness. Ilya coos back at him.

She takes the baby back near the end of the period, nose wrinkling when she sniffs. “Bedtime. Don’t let them win without me.”

Ilya watches the rest of the period alone. Hockey games are not well timed for the bedtime routines of three small children. It’s nearly the end of intermission when Jackie reappears and sets a baby monitor on the end table, the volume cranked up.

“Who scored?”

“Pike, assist from Hollander.”

“Oh, nice.” She has a nice smile, even if her taste in men is questionable. “He’ll be happy. Anything else I should know?”

“Do you care about San Jose defense?” 

“No.”

“Then no.”

Ilya has spent most of the season watching hockey with the volume off so that he doesn’t have to listen to the commentary. He leaves the subtitles on, but only glances at it when he has a question, which is rarely answered. Jackie leaves the sound on, and Ilya listens to the announcers talk about nothing, meaningless stats and replays of the single goal. The camera follows Hollander as he skates up for the faceoff, and Ilya grits his teeth as the commentary changes to euphemistic discourse about personal concerns he had earlier in the season. Ilya, who always liked hearing about himself on sports channels, now swallows down his discontent when they mention him.

On the screen, Shane scores. It’s a beautiful goal, snatching a blind pass from Hayden and sending it with impossible precision into the corner of the net. 

“They really have no idea.” Jackie leans over and picks a barrette out of his hair. “Sorry, I should ask first. I spend too much time with kids.”

“Is fine. Thank you.”

“How long are you going to keep it quiet?”

Ilya lays awake at night and thinks about that, long after Hollander’s breathing has evened out and his face slackened. He did this to himself, but more than that he did this to Hollander. Hollander who will forever be linked to Ilya Rozanov, first by a crafted rivalry that everyone believed was real, and then by a video that should never have been taken. And one day, maybe, by the knowledge of what Hollander did for him.

There are forty five seconds left on the period clock. Mitty smothers the puck under his pads. “Forever, if Hollander gets to choose.”

They watch the clock tick down. Jackie hits mute when the first ads creep onto the screen. “You smoke?”

Ilya blinks. “What?”

Jackie’s cigarettes come in bright pastels with gold filters. She cups one between her palms and Ilya flicks the lighter for her. The baby monitor is clipped to her shirt.

“It’s just sometimes,” she says, as though Ilya has any room to judge. He bums one off her, bright pink. “Hayden knows. I’m not hiding it.”

He makes a gesture he hopes expresses how very much he does not care if she smokes an occasional extravagant cigarette. There are many ways to fuck up children, and this is not one of them. “Maybe he wants you to have better cigarettes.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she says, and giggles like she’s pleased with herself for the profanity. “It’s so much sometimes, you know? The hockey lifestyle. We were just kids when we met, me and Hayden. Didn’t see any of this coming. Three kids and a minivan was not in the plans.”

“What was the plan?”

“Grad school, maybe. Meet a nice guy. See the world. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but sometimes I look at my life and I’m like wow, cliche, and it’s like—” she waves her cigarette, leaving a trail of smoke.

“Life happens to you.”

She sighs. “Yeah.”

“Like candyland,” he offers.

“I hate that game.”

“Yes, it is not good. So you want to be cool mom instead. Not go to book club.”

“Don’t talk about book club. Book club is great.”

Ilya holds his hands up in supplication. “I apologize to book club. Book club is best club.”

“You could come.”

“Ah, no. I think no. No English, sorry.”

“I didn’t get it at first,” she says, and tips her head back to look up at the stars. “You and Shane. I told him he didn’t have to do it. He likes you, though. You’re good for him.”

Ilya is so startled he nearly falls over. “Me?”

“Don’t ask me to explain it. He’s so sweet and shy and you’re, well. Not any of that.”

She has barely seen them together. He knows Hollander stops by the Pike household sometimes, and Jackie texts him intermittently. His skepticism must be clear, because she rolls her eyes and goes on. “Call it intuition. I feel kind of bad about trying to set him up with my yoga friends.”

“Can set me up instead,” Ilya offers, and winks. The joke falls flat, and he has to backpedal with, “Not really. No. Is just him.”

“Are you going to stay together after you get residency?”

Ilya takes another drag. “We have not talked about that.”

“That’s stupid,” Jackie tells him.

“Probably, yes.”

She has a little ash tray that looks like a pill box, gleaming and silver. She rolls the glowing end against the metal. “And?”

“Maybe.” Ilya takes a last, deep drag off his own stupid pink cigarette and grinds it against the heel of his shoe. “I would like that. I think maybe he would like that, too.” 

There are only a few months left, by their lawyer’s estimate, before Ilya’s residency decision comes through. Hollander’s single-minded determination has dragged his team this far, enough for a hundred-point season and a block of trade safety that lasts through June. After that is a mystery, as much the choice of his league’s management as anything he would pick for himself. Hope is heartache and sunrise, springing up together. He wants to keep Hollander so badly that it hurts. 

Ilya feels like a child again, hiding under the covers; if he cannot see the danger, it cannot find him. Hollander talks about next season in vagaries of we and us, but Ilya tries not to think about it at all. There are no good options. He cannot spend his life tucked away in Hollander’s gilded tower, but the thought of losing Hollander is—he looks away.

Jackie lets it slide. “You think they’ll make the playoffs?”

This is an easier topic. The math isn’t good. It’s possible, but it relies on a few difficult wins and some crucial losses for other teams. “Bad luck to say no, so yes. I hope yes. For Hollander. Rest of team, I do not care about.”

Her phone buzzes an alarm. “Back to it.”

The Metros are a different team than they were a few months ago. Ilya has watched every game, so he has seen over time how they have knit themselves back into cohesion. They are not quite the team they should have been, but it is close. Hollander takes a clean pass from his left wing and sinks a tidy short side goal.

“Your husband.”

“Only good player on Montreal.”

“You’re going to have to get over that.” Jackie sprawls on her end of the couch, feet tucked underneath her. “You’re not going to make any friends if you keep calling the team terrible.”

“I will call them good when they are better. If they win cup, I can wear Hollander jersey. Commenters will talk about how good my dick looks in the video.”

“You’re going to have to get over that. And it’s not even that impressive.”

Ilya gawks at her. “Did you watch wrong video? Other hockey player’s sex tape?”

She shrugs. “It’s fine.” Ilya can see the grin she’s trying to hide. Jackie Pike isn’t any good at chirping, but he likes that she’s trying. It makes him feel like he’s part of her crowd, that she can do this with him. “That video’s not going anywhere. You’ll need a better scandal to tune it out.”

“You have ideas?”

“I’m sure we can think of something. I still can’t believe how awful they were about it. Shane’s been with them for years. I know the sport is, well. It’s hockey. You know what hockey is like, but they’re his teammates.”

“Shane told me some.” Sometimes Ilya imagines how it would have been, had he been the one whose open mouth, whose glassy eyes had been on screen. If Hollander would have gotten high fives instead of iced out of his own team.

“Comeau said Shane should get his own locker room. Hayden won’t even tell me the worst of it. He tries to shut it down, but it’s all locker room talk.” She makes air quotes as she says it. “I think he should have filed a complaint.”

“Would have made it worse.”

She huffs and rolls her eyes. Ilya likes her immensely. He had not expected to find anything in common with Hayden Pike’s wife, but she is funny and generous, though he maintains his refusal to join the WAG group chat. He finds it undeniably strange that after a lifetime immersed in hockey now all of his friends are women. There is Alice who texts for updates on his dog and Yuna who is trying to make Ilya agree to come to dinner in Ottawa and Svetlana, the closest tie he has to his life before. He wonders if any of them would get along if he put them in the same room. Svetlana and Yuna, maybe, if they can agree on the value of stats models. 

Montreal goes into the third period up by one. San Jose is playing for the same stakes, so it’s not a surprise when the game gets chippier. Their first line stays out longer, hitting harder. Ilya thinks there’s going to be a fight when one of the San Jose defenseman takes Hollander into the boards. It takes him too long to get back up, on his hands and knees on the ice.

“He’s hurt.”

“Hockey hurt,” Ilya says, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Hollander, grimacing, hands splayed over the painted ice. “He is okay.”

“He’s not getting up.”

“He is okay,” Ilya says. His mouth floods bitter. “He is okay. Is he—”

The play is called. Across the continent, a medic kneels next to Hollander. The stream cuts.

Chapter 6

Chapter Notes

Hi all, sorry for the wait I had to rewrite 20k of act three and now it's back and longer than ever. Next chapter got split into two (save me from myself), and I'm going to redo some tags before I post the ending. Now accepting suggestions. (Ilya Rozanov Watches Survivor is not a canonical tag???)

Hollander’s house is a glass-fronted confection perched on a private lake. It comes into view as they trundle down the road, appearing out of the forest between one breath and the next. It sits amid neatly manicured grounds, just-planted bushes flush with the first bloom of spring, grass with the sod lines still visible.

“That’s it.” Hollander looks ready to bounce out of the car and run the rest of the way down the road. His fingers tighten around Ilya’s on the console. “That’s my cottage.”

“Cottage,” Ilya repeats, and rolls his eyes. “Means something different in Russia. We have dacha, not mansion in the woods.” He squeezes back with his right hand, his left resting at the top of the steering wheel.

They took Hollander’s sensible, good-in-the-snow car. Driving is still off limits, so Ilya is behind the wheel, suffering through Hollander’s exaggerated flinching whenever Ilya takes a turn he deems a little too close or exceeds the posted speed limit by even a single digit. Luckily the drive is not too long: barely far enough to need to stop for gas, but enough time for Ilya to swing through a McDonald’s drive-through and eat his nuggets while Hollander frowns at him and complains about greasy fingers in his car.

Hollander barely waits for Ilya to finish parking before he is hobbling on his crutches across the driveway. Ilya swings Hollander’s duffel over his shoulder and follows; he can come back for the rest of their luggage later. The back of the car is stuffed with it. Things Hollander wants for the summer, some things bought only for the cottage. Summer clothes and color matched towels and a new set of dog bowls.

He wants to tell Hollander to sit and rest his knee, but he is bouncing around like a puppy, broad delight planted on his face. He touches everything as he goes. His fingers trail over the counter and the walls and the mullions between the large windows. “I will get the groceries,” Ilya says, and leaves him to it.

Ilya locates the bedroom at the top of a short flight of stairs and drops their suitcases off. Hollander’s toiletries go in the attached bathroom, side by side with Ilya’s shaving kit. He puts the cooler of groceries in the fridge. The cottage is already stocked with nonperishables, oil and salt and canned goods, dropped off by a delivery service and packed in the cabinets in baffling disarray by the summer housekeeper.

Hollander finds him there, frowning at a can of chickpeas. “They finished the gym. I didn’t know if they would get it done in time. I told them June, but they rushed it. Do you want to see?”

Ilya submits to the tour, following as Hollander speaks energetically about the architect who designed it and the influences on the floor plan and materials. The wood details are based on a design that Ilya has never heard of and promptly forgets, and the stone tiles are sourced from somewhere that Ilya gives an equal lack of a shit about. The whole place has too many stairs. Everywhere there is a step up or down, no railings, and Hollander has to edge his way down carefully with his crutches under one arm, all of his weight on his good knee.

Hollander stops at the top of the stairs, so suddenly that Ilya nearly runs him over. “Do you like it?”

Ilya will never get used to the way Hollander asks questions, all earnest eyes. He doesn’t know how to respond sometimes, afraid that he will say the wrong thing and Hollander will stop asking.

“There is, uh, light. Many windows,” Ilya offers. Hollander frowns, and Ilya sighs. “Yes, is nice.” Ilya says finally, and slips his arm around Hollander’s waist. He guides him to the sprawling sofa. “Sit. Tell me more.”

“I can walk,” Hollander complains, but he winces when he bends his knee, still in the hinged brace. The crutches go on the ground by the couch. “I’m supposed to exercise.”

“Therapy exercise, not running up and down stairs.”

“There’s barely any stairs.”

“Oh,” Ilya says, and gestures. “This is not stairs? That is not stairs?”

“You’re such an asshole.”

“If you are hurt, who will support me? Who will buy fancy dog food? Who, Hollander?”

It’s a source of endless amusement for Ilya that Hollander has had to agree to support Ilya for the next three years, should he fail to support himself. Hollander, who treats this information with new exasperation each time, huffs and starts to get up. Ilya puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him back down.

“What do you want?”

“A glass of water. Please.”

Ilya fetches it, pebble ice to the halfway point of the glass and a straw poking out. Hollander accepts it with uncharacteristic grouchiness. He is not meant for convalescence. Every limitation is an insult to his perfectly tuned physical form. He follows his physical therapist’s routine religiously, elevates his knee for the precise time frame recommended and takes the minimum dose of pain relievers on the chart. After all of this, Hollander seems insulted every morning that his body has not finished recovering.

Ilya is not Hollander’s emergency contact.

This time, it did not make a difference. Hollander was awake and cognizant the whole way off the ice. The injury was bad enough to end his season, but not so bad that it required surgery. As injuries go, it was a best case scenario. His team trundled him to a local medical facility and flew him back to Montreal for a series of follow-ups with the team doctors, shuttled to and fro by a team-provided car service. It wasn’t even a dirty hit, just the unfortunate capstone to a season better left in the past.

For Ilya, watching from another country, white-knuckled and his jaw aching tight, waiting for someone to remember him, to update him, it was a nightmare.

The Metros’ season ended two games later, in a shootout against Columbus. Hollander was home by then, curled in a miserable ball on his end of the couch, his fist pressed against his closed mouth.

Ilya is glad to see the end of the season, the awful slog, the game that gave him so much and took it all away. He likes Hollander better here, on the sun-baked patio, sprawled out on his teak lounger in the unseasonable heat. The air is thick with competing scents: leathery wood, grass, the smell of growing things mingled with deep loam. Hollander slathers himself religiously in sunscreen each morning, white stripes of it across his cheeks and forehead, and lounges in pale linen shirts and shorts that ride up along the inside of his thigh. The sun bakes him pink anyway, and Ilya has to dig out the aloe from under the bathroom sink. He kneels above Hollander, holding him in place with his thighs, while he applies it in delicate strokes with the pad of his thumb.

Everything is new again. The hours are endless, melting into each other, but Hollander is there for all of them this time. It is still too cold for the lake, but they brought water shoes in every size, and Ilya splashes around at the end of the dock while Hollander sits, glowing in the ruby sunset, and mutters an “I told you so” when Ilya climbs out, shivering.

“Here, let me,” Ilya says the next morning, when Hollander pushes the covers back, reaching blindly for the crutches just out of reach. The light in the room is thin and gray. Rain patters against the wide windows, streaming down in rivers. 

“Thanks.” Hollander maneuvers himself up, sour as always at his own weakness. 

“No lake today,” Ilya comments, and follows Hollander into the bathroom. The hinged brace only comes off to shower, and Ilya turns the water on while Hollander leans against the wall, snapping the buckles free. He is supposed to use a plastic chair in the shower, but this is the one place where Hollander grinds against his doctor’s recommendations, so he slings one arm around Ilya’s waist instead and lets himself be helped under the running water.

“I hate this thing,” Hollander says after, when he buckles himself back into the brace.

“You ever break anything before?”

“Dislocated my shoulder in juniors,” Hollander says, and takes the crutch Ilya passes him. “Minor concussion last season. Couple of broken fingers.”

“Upper body.”

“All of them.”

“I break this wrist once,” Ilya says, and wiggles his hand for Hollander to see. “Not hockey. Much stupider.”

“You fall out of a tree?”
“Yes.”

Hollander laughs. “How old were you?”

“Twenty three.”

This time Hollander doesn’t stop laughing, nearly doubled over. It had been after Ilya’s cup win last season. He and Marleau had been drunk on free beer and ill-advised tequila shots, daring each other higher in a tree in some park Ilya can’t even remember the name of. He remembers laying on the ground clutching his wrist, watching the spinning stars, grinning, invincible.

Hollander is full of endlessly endearing quirks and habits. Ilya wants to put him under glass and study him like a bug, until the day that there is not enough dill in the fridge for the potatoes he wants to make and no amount of cajoling will convince him that the perfectly serviceable dried herbs in their little glass jars can replace it.

“Or parsley,” Ilya says, holding up the bunch. They brought it with from Montreal, and the stems are wilting across his knuckles in a flaccid bouquet. “Parsley is green. Tastes the same.”

It’s not a real argument. Hollander’s arms are crossed over his chest and his eyebrows are drawn close together in performative stubbornness. Ilya’s heart twists.

“I will plant you herb garden,” Ilya offers. “Dill whenever you want.”

“Just go to the store, Ilya.”

“The store is twenty minutes away. Fifteen minutes to buy thing of dill. Twenty minutes to get back. Potatoes are cold by then.”

“I haven’t put them in the water yet.”

Ilya throws his hands up. “Impossible.”

“I can go,” Shane says, and Ilya pushes him back with one finger.

“No. No driving. Sit on couch, and I will bring you potatoes with parsley.”

“We’re out of ginger ale,” Shane adds, and Ilya knows he’s lost the argument. He takes Hollander’s stupid, sensible car to the store and ends up cooking the rest of the meal anyway, because Hollander has fallen asleep on the sofa. He wakes blinking under Ilya’s hand, his mouth curling up when he sees him.

They are not puzzle pieces that fit together, but like one of the metal puzzles where the pieces slide into each other so indelibly that it is nearly impossible to separate them. 

Ilya knows Hollander likes him. Hollander, on his surface, is an open book. All of his emotions chase each other across his forehead and rest on the upturned pout of his bottom lip. Still, Ilya does not know what he wants. Ilya is not sure that Hollander knows, either. He is intent on putting one foot in front of the other in the same routine until the day he dies.

Maybe Ilya can sneak himself into that routine. He can make the awful green smoothies that Hollander likes and wait for him in his home and tie himself into smaller knots until he fits into Hollander’s life as neatly as though he belonged there all along.

The house is Hollander’s creation, but they are discovering it together. No one has lived here before, so they bicker gently over where the cups should live and whether Ilya can keep wooden spoons on the counter. There is no art yet, no framed photos on the walls. Ilya has to crawl behind the couch to find the outlets so they can charge their phones in the evening. They sit across from each other, legs stretched so their toes almost touch.

“We need a blanket for the couch.”

“You’re cold?”

“No,” Ilya lies. It’s only May, and the rain has brought with it a cloying humidity that settles in Ilya’s bones.

“Look at Pottery Barn,” Hollander says, and adds, when Ilya raises his eyebrows, “It’s a store. Furniture and stuff. The designer I used said I could order from there and most stuff would match.”

Ilya thumbs his browser open and skims through. “This?” He asks, holding it out, and laughs at Hollander’s expression when he sees the green and white clover-patterned throw. Ilya adds a set of beige blankets to his cart and flicks through the rest of the site. “Maybe? For leash at the door.” Ilya holds out his phone to show off a small wood shelf for the entryway with a set of metal hooks underneath.

“See if you can find a rug for the bedroom,” Hollander says, and yawns. “The floor is cold.”

A few days later, Ilya carries the delivery in from the doorway. Hollander watches unhelpfully as Ilya manoeuvres the bed around, trying to shuffle the rug with one foot. “It’s still crooked,” Hollander comments.

Ilya bites out a string of Russian profanity. “You move it, then.”

“Can’t,” Hollander says, and leans heavily on his crutches, sighing heavily. “It needs to line up with the wall. Shift it left.”

Ilya looks at the rug, which he has just moved right, under Hollander’s direction. He looks back up at Hollander, whose lower lip is trembling with repressed laughter.

“You—” Ilya says, and frowns at Hollander, who grins back at him. Ilya takes a step towards him and Hollander scampers backwards, as gracefully as a man still dependent on crutches can manage. Ilya follows in a slow-paced stalk as Hollander laughs and tries to dodge through the kitchen. Ilya pins him against the wall, a steadying hand around his waist, and nips at the edge of his jaw.

“Very mean,” Ilya says. “To lie about rugs.”

“Lie like a rug,” Hollander says, stifling another round of laughter. Ilya lifts his other hand to cup his jaw, tilting his head back and squeezing his lying mouth open. Hollander goes quiet and complacent, lips parted for Ilya’s thumb to press inside. He runs it across the ridge of Hollander’s teeth, feeling the sharp edge where one is chipped. Hollander’s breath is a hot rush, pushed out with a needy little whine.

“Now you want to be good?”

Hollander blinks slowly, like a cat. He closes his lips around Ilya’s thumb and sucks gently.

“Fuck,” Ilya groans. In a perfect world, he would sling Hollander over his shoulder, or carry him in his arms. He could probably manage either, on a good day, but Hollander’s knee is still in the brace so Ilya shepherds him up to the bedroom with little nudges on his thigh, his hip, the small of his back.

The bedroom is still in disarray. The bed is diagonal across the room, moved just enough each time for Ilya to shift the rug around underneath it. He motions towards it, and Hollander sits gingerly at the edge. Ilya tips him backward with a fingertip to his chest.

“Strip.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Hollander complains, even while he’s pulling his shirt over his head. He hesitates with his shorts. “I have a call with Farah.”

“Fine,” Ilya says, and tugs Hollander’s shorts down and under the swell of his ass. He pulls them lower until they’re around his thighs, just above the top of the brace. He taps a buckle. “Very inconvenient, Hollander.”

“Yeah, I got injured just for you.”

“Next time you are too embarrassed to skate, tell me,” Ilya says seriously. “I will give tips. Do not need to hurt yourself.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”

“Mm. Maybe later.” 

Hollander isn’t hard yet, which is nice because it gives Ilya a chance to get his mouth around the whole of him and feel him slowly stiffen on his tongue. It doesn’t take long.

“Fuck, Rozanov.” Hollander’s hands grip Ilya’s hair. He doesn’t have a lot of leverage, with only one knee working properly, but he tries to buck up and into Ilya’s mouth, hips thrusting in little jerky motions. Ilya pinches the soft skin at his inner thigh, and Hollander whines, a wanton, needy sound.

“I want to fuck you,” Ilya says against that same patch of skin. Hollander’s cock bobs up near his stomach, spit-slick and dark. It twitches with his breathing. He was close before Ilya pulled away, his balls drawn up tight. Hollander tries to slow his breathing, but it comes out in little hiccoughs for the effort. His whole body is a repressed tremor.

“We don’t have time,” Hollander says, like he’s waiting for Ilya to tell him otherwise. He would listen, Ilya thinks. Hollander would let Ilya undress him carefully and lie him on his side, or paint him across the back of an armchair. He would let Ilya fuck him while his agent waited in an empty Zoom call. It’s a heady privilege. Ilya licks another slow stripe up the side of his cock.

“I move the rug for you, over and over.” Ilya cups Hollander’s balls in his hand, feeling the motion under the skin. Hollander shivers. “I deserve treat for this, yes?”

“Yes,” Hollander agrees quietly. His good leg spreads further. Ilya pets at his rim with one finger.

“Stay,” Ilya says, and hauls himself up to find the lube. He has to halfway crawl over the bed to get to it; the nightstand is jutted up against the wall, nearly out of reach. Hollander doesn’t move, just watches him with wide eyes, his tongue flicking out to rest on his lip.

Sex is harder with an injury. All of Ilya’s favorite positions are out. Hollander can only bend his knee so far and can't put any weight on it at all. Ilya doesn’t mind. He would take Hollander any way he could get him, and this is fine: Hollander, on his back, one leg spread as wide as he can get it, panting as Ilya presses two fingers inside him, crooking them up to find his prostate in short, unerring strokes, each one pulling Hollander’s throat up into corded keens.

“‘M gonna,” Hollander says. His whole body arches up, and he chokes out a sob when Ilya pulls his hand away before he can come.

“You have very important meeting,” Ilya reminds him. He rests his cheek on Hollander’s good knee, forcing him further open.

“Fuck the meeting.”

“That is not very nice. Farah made time for you on her schedule.”

“Ilya.” Hollander says his name like a plea. Ilya’s heart could tear apart, all of its tightly woven threads undone. He sinks between Hollander’s thighs, his own bare knees picking up the pattern of the rug he chose for this house that feels like both of them.

“Shh,” Ilya soothes, and takes Hollander down his throat again. He likes the way Hollander’s whole body jostles up when Ilya starts to push the plug inside, and then again when it is seated fully, the curved base snug against his ass.

“What’re you—” Ilya swallows, and Hollander’s voice cracks and trails off. He knows this body, knows that Hollander likes when Ilya presses a finger just behind his balls, when he grips his hips to the point of pain. Hollander comes with a ragged gasp, his whole body convulsing.

“Stay,” Ilya says, and Hollander blinks dazedly after him while Ilya fetches a cloth and wipes him down, tugs his shorts back up his thighs and into place.

“You didn’t come,” Hollander says, and his tone is halfway to a question.

“No.” Ilya takes his hand and rests it on his own still-hard cock. Hollander tries to go further, reaching for more, but Ilya tuts and steps away.

“Where do you want to do meeting?”

“The living room, I guess. But I—” Hollander shifts, adjusting to the weight of the plug in his ass. It’s not a small one. “I can’t keep this in.”

“You can,” Ilya croons, and helps Hollander into his shirt, though it takes longer to get him dressed this way, with Ilya still hot and wanting, fingers drifting involuntarily to find his nipples. “I will fuck you later. Put the dildo in your hole and fuck your throat, maybe.”

“You can’t say that right now.” Hollander strains his neck to the side to look for the bedside clock and curses. “I have to get the computer set up.”

“Mm. Game is after,” Ilya says. “Who is playing?”

“Detroit and Washington.”

“Yes. No time to take this out.” He wrestles his hand down Hollander’s shorts. “You will have to wear it while we watch. Maybe I will blow you during intermission. Then, after Detroit beats Washington, maybe I will fuck you.”

“Washington’s going to win.”

Ilya fights down his fondness. “We should bet. Washington wins, you can come.”

Hollander is trying his best to look serious. He shoves himself to his feet, not looking at Ilya, and runs his fingers through his sweaty hair. He could be fresh from a shower, or a workout. “They’re going to win.”

Ilya makes a contemplative noise. “Maybe. If they do not, next game is in two days. You are very patient. Will not be a problem, I think.”

Hollander has just about managed to calm himself back down by the time his phone pings its reminder. His laptop is set up in the kitchen so he can perch on a stool, and he greets his agent with his usual careful professionalism. Only Ilya can see the minute shift when he rests a little too much of his weight in one spot.

Ilya has listened to these meetings before. Hollander is a diligent pupil of the machine that is professional athletics. Hockey can never just be hockey, not for Hollander, not before and certainly not now. There is the game, but there are also sponsorships and advertisements and his underused social media and a contract designed to wring as much money as he can out of his best playing years. This year’s injury will heal; he will be back on ice by training camp. The next one might not be as lucky, but Hollander’s contract is good. Farah saw to it. Hollander could spend the rest of his contracted years on injured reserve and be paid handsomely for the privilege.

Ilya probes curiously at his twinging jealousy. He hadn’t expected it over contracts. Over ice time and teams, but not for the meticulous bureaucracy of legality. Ilya spent his years doing as his betters told him, signing where they indicated. No one asked him about contract lengths or planned four seasons ahead for no-trade clauses.

“Recovering ok?” Farah asks. Ilya sneaks a glimpse over Hollander’s shoulder. She is younger than he expected.

“Better than it could be,” Hollander says with a shrug. “PT says it’s looking better. Would have been worse if it was the ACL, too.”

“Minor miracles. How’s your mobility?”

“Still on crutches.”

She makes a face. “Doc say anything about restrictions? Can you get on a plane?”

“What, now? It’s the middle of May.”

“No one’s expecting you to report to practice,” Farah reassures him. “So this is a bit unusual. I don’t usually have this much insight into mid-contract negotiations, which is to say I still don’t have a lot, but I can tell you that the Metros are in talks with San Jose and a few other teams. Minnesota, I know for sure. Ottawa and Nashville, probably, since they’ve got the cap space.”

“Should see if Boston wants you,” Ilya says, trying to pitch his voice low. “We can switch.”

“No, Boston isn't—" Farah’s brow furrows. She takes a breath. “Who do you have with you?”

Hollander glares over his shoulder, and Ilya holds his hands up in quiet supplication. He mimes zipping his mouth shut, and Hollander glares harder. Ilya steps sheepishly into frame. “Hello.”

Farah freezes for so long that Ilya thinks that the internet has cut out, then she visibly resets her composure, one hand coming up to pinch above her glasses. “Well, then. Hello, Mr. Rozanov.”

“Hello Ms. Farah,” Ilya says. He doesn’t know her last name. “It is nice to meet you. I have heard many good things.”

“I’m helping Rozanov with some immigration problems.” Hollander says it too quickly, the way he always lies, like if he shoves the words out fast enough they won’t pick up the tint.

“Immigration,” Farah repeats flatly. “To Canada?”

“I am learning a lot,” Ilya says seriously. “Moose. Milk that comes in bags. Maple syrup.” He steps out of the way of Hollander’s elbow.

“Right.”

“I will be permanent resident soon,” Ilya adds, because there aren’t many people he can say this to, and he likes the way she has to visibly reset to the news. “Do you know any Canadian teams that need hockey players? I am very good. Better than Hollander.”

“You’re going to go play for the ALH now?” Hollander asks, rolling his eyes.

“No,” Ilya says seriously. “Too easy. Like shooting fish.”

“In a barrel. Like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“Why are fish in barrel?”

“It’s a phrase, Rozanov. They’re not real. Can you just—?”

Ilya hovers in the background for the rest of the meeting, which goes on longer than he expected as Farah lays out the possibilities. The Metros are looking to retool without Hollander, which Ilya thinks is an idiotic decision, and Farah gives every indication of agreeing with him. Nothing will be finalized while playoffs are ongoing, which leaves a sliver of June between the finals and the draft for the two teams to come to a final agreement. What do the Metros think Hollander is worth, Ilya wonders. Draft capital and another mediocre forward. A handful of defensemen packaged up in a tidy trade. Maybe on the other side of the continent other players are packing up their lives, preparing to be sold off to Montreal.

The whole situation is unusual, Farah explains, but it’s not unheard of for an acquiring team to request a meeting with a player, and the Metros head office has already signed off. San Jose probably will not make it through the semifinals (“not that they’ll admit it,” Farah adds), so Hollander will meet her there afterwards, just a few days after Ilya’s citizenship interview.

Ilya mulls it over as Hollander wraps up their call and flips the television to the game. San Jose is a decent team. They’ll be better with Hollander on their first line, better still if they let some of their contracts expire. There’s a cup in it for him, probably. Another step back towards the destiny he built himself. 

Ilya lays across the couch lengthwise and Hollander settles against him, back to chest, his leg a careful line alongside Ilya’s own. His elbow is in Ilya’s ribs and his hair tickles his nose, and Ilya has to close his eyes and bury down the flood of longing that courses through him.

“Detroit looks like shit,” Hollander says after the third penalty. It’s sloppy, aggressive play. Ilya imagines himself on that ice, sweat–soaked, knuckles itching for a pointless fight. He had loved the playoffs, the whole postseason mess.

“Very important game for you,” he reminds Hollander, and relishes the choked little sound that it drags out of him. He had probably forgotten the plug was there, or at least tried to. There aren’t any teeth to Ilya’s threats; Washington is almost guaranteed the win. Detroit beat themselves to a seven-game froth against the division winner and they came into this series with nothing left in reserve.

This time next year, Hollander will be on that ice again. He will be the one raising his stick and bumping helmets with his new teammates. He will be far away, chiseling out a new home. Rebuilding his life.

Grief is a familiar feeling, beating through Ilya’s veins along with each pulse of blood. He mourns his mother every day, mourns in advance the father he has not lost yet and the niece he will never see again. 

The home he was building in Montreal is still only sticks, but the foundation was true. Over the months he has plastered his own life onto the one he borrowed from Hollander, small pieces. There is the old man who runs the convenience store and reaches for Ilya’s brand of cigarettes before he asks, and the back alley staircase, each of its twenty eight steps familiar. He still texts the rookie sometimes. He had been working up to asking for Miitka’s number. There was possibility there, but Hollander is unlikely to return to that apartment with its towering view and tight-lipped doormen. He will move to his new team and wipe his slate clean.

Maybe Ilya will stay in Montreal, even after Hollander goes. A clean break is easier to set. 

“I figured out the TiVo,” Hollander says, twisting to look back at Ilya. “I set it to record the finale.”

“Finale?”

“For Survivor. There’s a conference finals game at the same time.”

“You hate Survivor.”

Ilya feels Hollander shrug against his chest. “You like it. You can tell me all about why Mike should have been sent to the island or whatever.”

It hits Ilya, all over again, the desire to crawl inside of Hollander, to keep him forever, here, in this cottage where the morning light comes up clear and the last white blossoms cling to the tree branches, standing out like stars against the fresh spring green.

Ilya runs his fingers through Hollander’s cropped hair and drags his nails across his scalp. Hollander arches back into him. “Okay? You are quiet today.”

“Yeah. Thinking about San Jose.”

“You want to play with them?” One team is as good as another, generally. It’s one of San Jose’s defensemen who did this to Hollander, but they are all interchangeable on that stage. Ilya liked his time with Boston, but he would have liked any of them, probably. He would have twisted himself to fit.

“They’re fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Better than Montreal.” Hollander makes a little, aggrieved noise when Ilya pulls his hair. “What?”

“You think so?”

“I don’t know. I just want to get back to hockey.”

“When your knee is better?”

They watch Washington score on a breakaway. Ilya puts his mouth to the crown of Hollander’s head and waits.

“They’ve got another Asian player,” Hollander says finally. “Maybe I’ll fit in better. I’m the best player on that fucking team and the only thing they want to talk about is if I’m gay. Whether I’m sucking too much dick to be on the ice.”

“They do not see your fifty points?”

“Fuck you,” Hollander laughs, indignant. “Fifty?”

“So yes. You are better. Number two draft pick. Second best player.”

Hollander’s elbow finds Ilya’s ribs. “You’re an asshole.”

“So you go to California and be number one? Boring hockey player on bad team. Is better? Maybe you meet a pretty woman out there. Movie star. Marriage, three kids.” Ilya thinks about Jackie Pike. No one will ever look twice at Hayden Pike and think he is anything other than a hockey player, one of the team.

“I don’t want that,” Hollander says flatly. 

“No? No Hollywood movie star for Shane Hollander?”

“What are you going to do afterwards?” Hollander asks. It is easier that Ilya can only see the side of his face. Even so, the unhappy downturn of his mouth is impossible to miss.

“After I am Canadian? There are only two jobs here, hockey player or mounted police. I will learn to ride horses.”

“I’m serious.”

“Find job, maybe. I am homeless, I think. I had nice apartment in Montreal, you know, but my, what is the word? Sugar daddy? He will not live there anymore.”

“You need to stop calling me that.”

“Maybe you can get me nice apartment in Vancouver,” Ilya says. His heart pounds so violently that he worries Hollander will hear it through his chest.

“You gonna go play for the Bucks?”

Ilya snorts. “I look desperate to you?”

Hollander looks over his shoulder and grins. He wriggles a little, enough to push his ass up against Ilya’s crotch. “A little.”

Ilya has to stretch for it, but he can just reach the flat of the plug. He taps it deeper, and is rewarded with a breathy whine. Hollander blows him during the second intermission. Ilya holds him there, clinging desperately to his hair, needing to feel Shane Hollander under his hands.

The lazy summer days blur together, one coming on the heel of the other in a giddy, ever-speeding carousel of weeks, each Sunday hot on the heels of the next. Hollander turns a year older and the loons with their blood-red eyes build a nest on the edge of the lake and the blossoms drift down from the laden dogwoods and litter the grass in mounds. They drive to Montreal and the team doctor approves limited weight-bearing and sends Hollander home with a new set of exercises to follow. 

The sun is warm on Ilya’s arm through the open car window on the drive back. The back seat of the car is full of boxes. A moving service will handle most of it, but there are things Hollander does not want anyone to see. Sex toys are piled in with his tax filings, butted up against a framed photo of Hollander as a toddler, holding a stick taller than he is. Hollander’s single plant is buckled in the back seat, and Hollander shoots a quick glance back at it when Ilya turns too fast. It sits on the kitchen counter after that, a flourish of curled green leaves in a tidy blue pot.

They work out together in Hollander’s cottage gym, better equipped than the apartment had been. Hollander is allowed short bursts on an exercise bike, and Ilya spots him at the weight bench after. They do fuck in the gym, Ilya’s face pressed into the sweaty crook of Hollander’s neck, as he watches their bodies move together in the full-length mirror.

Each day dawns soft and comfortable, and Ilya would wrap himself in this if he could, would slip into this feeling like a second skin. It is a worn sweater of a life. He wants to stay until it wears away to threads, until it settles into his skin.

It is with surprise that he realizes how far the calendar has slipped. Their interview is in only a few days, and Hollander will be on a plane soon after that, off to woo and be wooed in San Jose. He will find a new home for himself somewhere that is not Montreal, and Ilya—

Ilya focuses on each day, as if he can slow the steady tick of time.

Hollander changes in the chrysalis of summer. Ilya likes all of the versions of Hollander that he knows, but this one has a special charm. Some of his restraint is left behind in the locker room, the responsible lacquer stripped away.

He is sun-flushed and smiling when his parents stop by to see the new house. Not for long, Hollander assures him, when Ilya flinches backwards at the news. Just to say hi on their way to their own summer cottage, a few miles down the road.

In Ilya’s mind, Hollander’s father has built to a mythological peak. It takes strong men to create strong sons, men with stern hands and authority. Ilya knows fathers and their disapproval. He knows, also, that Hollander squints over crossword clues that his father texts him and that he comes back from his parents’ home more relaxed than when he left.

No amount of knowing can untangle the tension in his shoulders. Dread sweeps through him in waves as their car crunches down the driveway, catching him up like the wind catches leaves. Ilya is surprised, then, to find himself greeted with gentle hands. Hollander’s father’s face is creased around his mouth and eyes, mouth quirked in a familiar half-smile, and more of Hollander reveals itself to Ilya.

They will meet for dinner properly, Yuna insists, and Hollander shifts on his feet, boyish, looking over at Ilya for approval. He is surrounded, all around, by the unearned glow of Hollander’s family. Ilya nods around the lump in his throat.

The summer drips between Ilya’s fingers, faster every time he tries to hold on. Their bags are packed for tomorrow’s visit back to Montreal: an immigration interview, another visit with the team doctor, and lunch at the Pike home. 

Now, Hollander sprawls out across the dock, his hands behind his head, eyes closed against the sun. He is allowed to swim, but only short distances, not the splashing horseplay that has Ilya shooting water up at him from between cupped hands. The water is still a touch past bracing, and Ilya crawls out eventually, goose-pimpled and smelling of lakewater. He drags Hollander up onto the grass and lays his body in a curve, his head in Hollander’s lap.

“This is nice,” Ilya says. The sun is bright past his eyelids and Hollander’s fingers are teasing his damp hair into frizz. “I like your cottage.”

“What do you like about it?”

Ilya thinks. “The quiet is nice. I like the lake. I learned to swim when I was little, but we did not go often. My mother taught me. I think maybe I have not swam since.”

Hollander’s fingers pause their movement. Ilya waits for the question. “How did she die?”

Ilya has had time to think about this answer. It was an accident. His beautiful, caring mother accidentally left him. He knows the truth, but sometimes he likes to believe the lie. Maybe it is easier here in the bright sunlight. 

“She killed herself,” he says. He keeps his eyes shut so the tears cannot leak out. “A long time ago.”

“How old were you?”

“Twelve.” He opens his eyes so he can see Hollander’s face. He needs to know that Hollander knows this next part. “She was the only good part of my family. She was pretty and funny and smart. I visited her every summer when I went home. I brought her flowers.”

“Now you can’t go back.”

“No,” Ilya says. His voice cracks. “I cannot.” 

She left him, but now Ilya has left her, too. Half his life and a world away and still every day he thinks of her. He wants to run back into the water where he can hide under the still surface, but Hollander wraps him in his arms and turns Ilya’s face into his shoulder. They stay there for long enough that Ilya’s hair dries, though Hollander’s shirt is still damp under Ilya’s cheek.

“Tell me something about you,” Ilya mumbles. “I want to know you.”

“You do know me.”

“I know some of you.” Ilya’s eyelashes drag against the fabric. The day has barely started and already he is worn out. “I want to know the rest of you. What you like. Who your grandparents are. Were you bad child? Tell me something stupid.”

“Something stupid?”

“Yes. Will be easy for you.”

Hollander’s breathing is even and steady under Ilya’s cheek. “I was scared of the car wash when I was a kid. The ones you drive through? They have the big sponges that hit the side of the car and you can’t see out of the windows and it was so loud. I was afraid it would break the glass and we would get stuck there.”

“You are right. That is stupid.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Hollander says, and shoves him away. Ilya sprawls on the grass beside him and looks up at Hollander, his freckles and the red of his lip where he bites it when he is nervous.

I love you. Ilya thinks. It is resounding in his heartbeat, each word thumping hot through his veins. It is an inexorable truth, kept close under his tongue, written along his sinews.

“I love you,” he says, out loud, so that there can be no question.

Time passes. Ilya considers getting up and throwing himself in the lake and never emerging. Hollander’s mouth parts ever so slightly, the pink of his tongue visible behind straight white teeth.

“I love you too,” he says finally, and he throws himself at Ilya, sprawling above him and kissing him. “Fuck, I love you so much.”

Hollander is crying now too, messy with it. Ilya tastes salt when they kiss. “We’re doing this backwards,” he says, when he pulls away. His jaw is pink from Ilya’s stubble. Ilya tries to put his mouth back there, but Hollander lays his forearm over his chest, holding him in place. He laughs wetly. “We got married first.”

“Yes, very stupid of you. Now you are stuck with me.”

“Shut up.” Hollander slips to the side. Green stains are blooming across his white shirt. “I want to be stuck with you. I wanted it the whole time, I think.”

“You think? You do not know?”

“What, you did?”

“Yes.” Ilya says it with surety. “I did not know the words, but I wanted this. You.”

“You were so unhappy all the time. I thought you hated me.”

Ilya can still see out the sheen of that misery. It overlays the last year like soap scum. Everything he had wanted had been torn away, revoked in the space of a breath, with only Hollander to anchor his new life around.

“I did not hate you,” Ilya says seriously. “I hated me, maybe. I hated league. I hated Russia. I did not hate you.”

“I’m scared all the time,” Hollander says in a small voice. “That this is going to go wrong. That we’ll get you residency and you’re going to leave because you don’t have to stay with me anymore.”

“No. I need you. Who will explain stupid Canadian things to me?”

“Oh, you just need me because you don’t want to use Google?”

“I want a ring,” Ilya says suddenly. He watches Hollander’s face while he says it. The lash of a smile that blooms as Ilya continues. “Wedding ring. Gold. On this finger.” He holds out his right hand, ring finger awkwardly tilted upward.

Hollander twists their hands together, catching Ilya’s fingers between his own, right hand to left. Ilya squeezes tight.

They lie there, breathing. “Vancouver is not so far,” Ilya says. “From San Jose.”

“They have nonstop flights.” Ilya can hear Hollander’s thoughts tumbling around in his head. Hollander had looked it up, pulling out his laptop for the occasion. He typed in Vancouver and San Jose and imagined, just as Ilya did, a life split between two cities. 

“I can come to California sometimes. Maybe they will not mind.”

“You’ll need a visa for it.”

Ilya kisses him again, drags him down. “I will get visa.”

“And I can come to Vancouver sometimes,” Hollander says, half against Ilya’s mouth. “The schedule’s going to be difficult.”

“How will you tell them?”

“Tell them what?” Hollander asks, distracted. And then: “We’ll have to figure out some excuse for why you’re in California. In case someone recognizes you.”

Ilya had not thought it would be so easy, not really. The freshly-budded hope shrivels away. He had thought, just for a moment, that he might be allowed to have this in the open, to take this summer sunshine with him when they leave.

He can’t. The world is waiting for them again, and an unfriendly league. Hollander will part himself out once more, a piece for Ilya and a piece for the media and the lion’s share reserved for hockey itself. Ilya will love him in secret, but at least this time he will know that Hollander feels it too.

He can feel the distance already, stretching between them even as Ilya is as close to Hollander as their bodies allow, warm and sun-drenched under the whispering wind. It is not enough, it may never be, but Ilya will be grateful for every hollow scrap.

The drive back to Montreal is too long. The road stretches like a river, a black winding trail. Ilya counts trees and drums his fingers on his knee and lowers and raises the window to hear the rush of wind, there and gone. He twists the skin-warmed metal on his finger around and around.

Hollander pulls into a parking lot and turns the key in the ignition. “My knee hurts. You drive.”

“Good,” Ilya agrees. “We will get there much faster.”

The immigration office is small and square, with a narrow window looking out directly into the side of another building. There is a water cooler,a stack of conical paper cups, and two seats in front of the desk, though Ilya only fills one of them. The other sits empty. Hollander has already done his separate interview.

The woman on the other side of the desk rifles through a thick stack of paperwork. She pulls out two pre-printed forms and slides one over. The signature he scrawls at the bottom is not the same as the one he developed to scrawl on hockey pucks and auctioned jerseys.

“Thank you for joining me, Mr. Rozanov.”

“Yes.” Ilya fidgets. “Thank you for your time.”

“I’m glad this appointment worked out. I understand that your husband’s career takes him on the road often.”

Ilya nods jerkily. “A lot, yes.”

“That must be difficult.”

Another nod. He swallows, and wishes he’d filled one of those tiny cups. He strains for his English, trying to remember participles and pronouns. He needs to be perfect. “It is part of the job. It is hard when he is away.” He adds, tacking the words on too quickly, “away from home. It is, uh. Hard.”

There is neither sympathy or suspicion on her face. The tip of her pen taps against her form once, twice, three times.

“You know why you’re here, Mr. Rozanov.”

“Yes.”

“We have a lot to get through, so let’s get started. So tell me, how would you describe your relationship with Shane Hollander?” 

The interview lasts for a small millenium, though every time Ilya glances at the black-edged clock only seconds have passed. They do not need to prove that they have known each other; the entire world knows the history of their hookups, down to dates and hotel room numbers. There are years of television coverage of their games, their press conferences, the rivalry between their teams. Ilya knows that somewhere within that stack of paperwork will be a printout of their messages, lodged between affidavits from Shane’s parents and the few teammates who know.

“What is your morning routine like?” she asks, which is easy, and then “How do you plan to handle your finances?” which is harder, because Shane is making millions from his contracts and his remaining sponsorships and Ilya is… a stay at home husband, maybe. A long distance concern.

“Did anyone oppose your relationship?” she asks, when the clock has ticked an excruciating minute further. Ilya’s thumbnail bites into his finger.

“My family does not approve,” he says slowly. “I do not speak with them. Hockey players do not approve. The league does not approve. Probably most of the hockey fans will not approve when they find out.”

“I understand that the circumstances around your marriage were unusual. A courthouse wedding after a public outing is not something we see very often. Would you have gotten married without that pressure?”

Ilya takes a sip of his water and holds it under his tongue. “I think so,” he says finally, truthfully. “Not yet. It would take me longer to convince him without that. But yes.”

There are more questions, but they are easy. Ilya talks easily about which side of the bed he sleeps on and how often they are intimate and his relationship with Hollander’s parents. The questions are the type of mundane, quotidian detail that he knows by heart; it is his life, after all. Another latch slides closed on his old life, and the fact of their marriage firms beneath his feet.

“I believe we can wrap this up for today,” she says finally, and marks a note on the paper in front of her. “I had my doubts, Mr. Rozanov. This is an unusual case, but I am happy to confirm your approval. Your documentation will clear the portal in the coming weeks, please watch your email for the notification.” Ilya doesn’t hear the rest of her speech. His head is ringing and the corners of his mouth creep up until his jaw could crack.

They celebrate in Hollander’s apartment that night, Ilya’s blood fizzing nearly as much as the champagne he insisted on. Champagne for marriages, for landmarks, for celebration. He kisses it into Hollander’s mouth, runs his sugar-sticky tongue over Hollander’s pulse.

The Hollanders’ cottage is a tidy, brick-faced single family home, nothing like their son’s modernist feat. Ilya steps awkwardly over the threshold. His shoes go in the rack by the door, his light jacket up on a wooden peg. He imagines Hollander, tiny, reaching up to pin his own winter coat on this same peg. Everywhere Ilya looks something new is explained. Hollander has his mother’s eyes and his father’s sensibility and an easy trust earned in a loving childhood. 

“There’s the Canadian,” Yuna says. “Lunch will be ready soon, I’m told.”

“Canadian resident.”

She shrugs. “Close enough. Do you want to sit?”

Hollander peels off to join his father in the kitchen, and Ilya follows Yuna through to the dining room. The walls are covered in photographs of Shane, tiny and wild-haired, gap-toothed. He can make out the cadence of Shane’s conversation with David in the kitchen but not the words. 

The air is thick with garlic and tomatoes, and Ilya drums his fingers carefully on the table. It still makes him uncomfortable to sit like this with Yuna. She is someone else’s mother. She does not belong to him, and all the same she looks at him with Shane’s brown eyes. Some of her ice has thawed, but he doubts she will ever be able to look at him cleanly.

“It’s nice to see you again.”

“Yes,” he agrees awkwardly.

She does not mention the ring on his finger, but she reaches to touch her own, the tip of her finger landing on the metal.

They are on their way out when Yuna stops them. “It’s a celebration. Let me take a photograph?” Ilya waits for the automatic refusal, but Hollander lets her arrange them in front of the azaleas. “Like you know each other,” she says with exasperated fondness, and Ilya wraps his arm around her son’s waist and pulls him close. The camera clicks twice, and then once more as Ilya kisses Hollander loudly on the cheek until he laughs and tries to push him away.

“I’ll send it to you,” Yuna promises.

It’s the first picture of them without hockey girdling the edges. If there could only be one, Ilya is glad it is this: Hollander, sun-drenched, his face creased with laughter, wrapped up in Ilya’s arms. Proof that, at least for now, he had this.

Chapter 7

Chapter Notes

Remember when you all wanted them to talk more?

There are four thousand, six hundred kilometers between Ottawa and San Jose. Eight hours of flight time. Three time zones. One reedy Skype connection.

Vancouver is the closest Canadian city to San Jose. One thousand, six hundred kilometers. No time zones. Two and a half hours of flight time.

Ilya flips through Zillow listings. “Here,” he says, holding one up to the webcam. The photo is of a palatial, glass-sided house. He flips through, showing off crystal chandeliers and a kidney-shaped saltwater pool surrounded by tall ornamental grasses. “Gated community,” Ilya says, reading off the notes. His phone rings with an unknown number, and Ilya swipes it away. “In-house theater. View of the city.”

Hollander leans close to the camera, which gives him a squashed look. Ilya will have to buy him a proper camera. Maybe a tripod. “How much do you think they’re paying me? It’s not that much.”

“Is nice,” Ilya protests. “I know how much you make. Is on PuckPedia. You do not want your trophy husband to have nice house? I see. I will live in cardboard box with my new roommates, polite Canadian rats.”

“I have to pay for a place in San Jose, too,” Hollander points out. “It’s not cheap down here. And don’t you have money? I can look you up, too. How many B bonuses did you get?”

Ilya makes a dismissive noise. “Rent storage locker. You can sleep at rink. They can put you away with the other hockey robots.”

“And where will you stay when you visit?”

“I will rent second apartment. Only one bedroom, so sorry. No hockey players allowed.”

“I see how it is. You only married me for my money.”

“Yes. Money and perfect ass. Pretty freckles.”

“And citizenship?”

“No, no.” Ilya rummages around in his wallet and holds up his PR card. “See? I do not need you.”

“Wow, I see how it is.”

“Is ok. I will visit. Maybe.”

It’s only been a few weeks since the first trade talks, but Hollander has already emptied out his Montreal apartment. The throw pillows are packed away, the trophies swaddled in bubble wrap and boxed up. All of the non-essentials were packed up by professionals, held in some storage unit waiting for the final determination of where it will all go.

The delay is an unimaginable luxury for most hockey trades. Ilya had teammates attend practice with Boston in the morning and skate with a different team the following night, caught by their elbow on the way out of the rink and informed that they no longer lived in Boston, could no longer call this team their brothers. Hollander, with all of the grace that his tarnished star allows, is in San Jose, being assessed before his move.

Not that he has any more choice in it, Ilya allows. Greater men than them will sign paperwork, and Hollander will go where he is told. Cards will turn and the Montreal apartment will be the next Zillow property for Ilya to muse over, the shell of his home laid out for anyone to see.

Ilya’s own memories of San Jose are mostly limited to the abrasive chemical smell of the visiting team’s locker room and their too-warm ice, but Hollander talks about the city and its too-wide roads and the street full of little shops, just around the corner from his hotel. “They’re trying to get me to go to this house,” he says, and his nose wrinkles. “I don’t know. It sounds like it’s just badly designed.”

“Mister real estate,” Ilya says, the words melting into fondness. His phone buzzes again, and, annoyed, he flicks it into silence. “How is team?”

“Management seems ok,” Hollander says unenthusiastically. “They want me to know how much they would be giving up to bring me in. No distractions. I think they’ll have an aneurysm when I fill out the HR paperwork.”

“Management can suck my dick.”

“The GM’s like eighty years old.”

“Shane Hollander, representative of management, can suck my dick.”

“Hard to do from a thousand kilometers away.”

“Yes, yes, I can also do math.” Ilya rolls his eyes. “When do you come home?”

“Two days. Then I’ve got a couple of weeks before I have to report for preseason.”

It’s a lot of time. Objectively, it’s more time than Ilya ever thought they would have. The distance isn’t even that bad. It could have been worse. There are direct flights, and Ilya can cross the border with only a little planning. And yet.

Ilya does not want to visit. Ilya wants to keep Hollander between his two hands and hide him away where the world cannot find them. He does not want to go back to furtive hotel rooms and moments scalloped from the edges of the training season and games.

He hates the new math of counting the days in Canada and out of it, trying not to jeopardize his citizenship application by spending too long away. Trying not to jeopardise Hollander’s career by spending too long there. No one from the Metros has said anything yet. Someone will, Ilya is fairly certain. Hockey players gossip like fishwives, but it will be an unsubstantiated rumor from a jilted team. Twitter will latch onto it for a few days before they roll over into their next conspiracy theory.

Someone will recognize Ilya in Vancouver eventually. It will be a minor news item, he thinks. Missing hockey player found safe, the headline buried below the stats of next season’s draft picks. A footnote in Hollander’s career and a tidy postscript to his own.

“If I come for month of October,” Ilya says, lip caught between his teeth. “Is mostly home games. Short roadie. Twenty three days.”

“You can stay in my storage locker.”

“No, I will have apartment, keep up.”

“How could I forget?” Hollander flops down next to his laptop, just barely in view. “I always thought I’d retire in Montreal. Is that stupid? I wasn’t even there that long.”

“Maybe a little.” 

“Asshole,” Hollander says, and flicks a single finger up in front of the webcam.

This is only one of a number of prices that hockey extracts. Their bodies are the first. His knees scrape when he walks, and his teeth are false. His shoulder hurts when it rains. The rootless, stochastic existence is part and parcel for most players, but Ilya had thought he would spend ten years in Boston, fifteen if he was lucky, scraping his bones onto the ice until the ice no longer loved him back. Of course Hollander had thought the same. He is Shane Hollander. They should be begging to keep him.

“You will be home soon.”

“For a while,” Hollander agrees. “Can you make that thing with the skewers again when I get back? I think we’re out of charcoal.”

Ilya is on his way back from the store, bag of charcoal in the back and Lillian napping in the passenger footwell, when his phone rings again. The call pops up on the console, muting his music, and he scowls at it. It’s the same unknown number with a Canadian area code.

He mutters under his breath in Russian and taps the green button on the screen. “Who is this?”

“Hi, Ilya,” comes a familiar voice. “This is Farah.”

“Hollander is not here,” Ilya says, already reaching to end the call. “Still in California.”

“I didn’t call to talk to Shane, actually. Is this a good time?”

“Good time for what?”

“A good time to talk.”

“Talk about what?”

Ilya is proud of the exasperated sigh he pulls out of her. She has the demeanor of a woman bolstered by her own professionalism. “Can you call me back when you have a few minutes to talk? It’s time sensitive.”
He flicks the indicator on with the tip of his pinky finger. There is no one on the road, probably for miles. He takes a moment to resent Hollander’s influence as he pulls off the road. “Is fine, can talk now. What is the problem?”

He hears the rustle of paper come through the car speakers. “You’re not working with anyone right now, right? This is a little out of my wheelhouse.”

“No.”

“Ok, great. Are you familiar with Brandon Wiebe?”

The arena in Ottawa is a concrete monolith set in a sea of empty asphalt. Ilya parks Hollander’s sensible black car near the employee entrance and loiters uncomfortably for a moment, fussing with the car’s settings.

He hasn’t spoken to anyone like this for so long that he isn’t sure how anymore. Ilya Rozanov is a skin he needs to slip back into, like pulling a winter coat back out of a closet. He has only been Ilya for so long that he has to think about what the brash persona is, and the precise level of rudeness he should tap into.

Here, he types on his phone, and the door opens. A dark-haired man in his thirties looks out, spots Ilya’s car, and waves. Ilya takes stock of him as he walks the short distance over. He still has a hockey player’s build, muscular legs and forearms. He has a Centaurs t-shirt on with the horrific black and red logo. Above all that, he is smiling. He looks genuinely pleased to see Ilya, and Ilya needs to remind himself that nothing here is certain. 

The Centaurs’ staff offices are in the same building as the rink, a few corridors down and out of sight of the public spaces. Their footsteps echo in the hallway; the entire building is shut down for the summer. There is a specific smell that Ilya associates with rinks, the one that comes with artificial ice and chemical cleaners. Without that, the unused building is stagnant.

“Not much going on here in June,” Wiebe says as he ushers Ilya through. “The guys are probably in Bali by now. Booked their tickets back in December, I’d guess. This team hasn’t made a cup run in twenty years.”

Ilya privately thinks that this must be some kind of sacrilege. Coaches aren’t meant to acknowledge their teams’ failings to outsiders. They got a lot of good looks, but they didn’t execute. Too much passing, not enough pressure in the dirty areas. They’ll get them in the third.

Wiebe must feel Ilya’s bemusement because he turns with his hand on his office door and grins, open and easy. “That’s last season. New season, new coach.”

Ilya holds his paper cup and sits in the padded chair in the Centaurs’ conference room. The room is too big for just the two of them, a dozen wheeled chairs next to a gray-topped table. The walls boast photographs of the team’s last cup win, dated sometime in Ilya’s early childhood, the ink slightly faded.

 Wiebe takes the seat next to him, like they’re friends catching up. He turns his chair to face Ilya, one ankle kicked up over his knee. 

“So, I hear you’re a Canadian now,” he says, making conversation. Ilya wishes he wouldn’t. He wants to get to the meat of this conversation, sink his teeth in and rip it off the bone to find the gleaming white truth.

“Permanent resident.”

Wiebe nods. “That’s good. I can’t imagine it’s easy for you, of course. It was a lot. It was, well. It was horrible watching it all go down last year. For what it’s worth, I think the suspension was a load of bullshit. Nothing you did that a hundred other players haven’t done first.”

Ilya’s eyebrows raise. “Nothing?”

“Targeted bullshit. It shouldn’t have hit either of you that way. Worse for you, of course, but Hollander didn’t have an easy time of it, either.”

“I do not know.”

“No, of course.” Wiebe waves his hand. “I don’t mean to assume. I just mean his season. Clearly things are going on with his team. I assume you were following the season.”

“Some,” Ilya allows. “Bad injury.”

Wiebe’s face twists. “The worst way to end it. Sorry, I know you didn’t come here to talk about that. Thank you for coming on such short notice. I must say, I didn’t expect you to be near Ottawa of all places. When Farah told me, I nearly fell out of my chair.”

“Not that near,” Ilya says and shrugs. “Few hours. Montreal is closest Canadian city to Boston.” 

Ilya practiced the lie, but Wiebe skims right past it, fingers tapping on the table. It is possible, Ilya thinks, that he is just as unsettled as Ilya himself, both of them hiding their nerves under hockey bravado.

“The last head coach took most of his team with him.” Wiebe says it in his brusque, matter-of-fact manner. Simple facts. “I’m not part of the coaching carousel, so I don’t have that luxury. I’m starting from a skeleton crew. Video review. A few people in stats. No complaints about their work, but I need to build a team. I need a strong assistant coach. Someone with leadership skills.”

“Why me?”

“I talked to your old coach back in Boston. Didn’t tell him why I was calling. He’s a character, isn’t it? Nothing good to say about your personal choices, which I don’t think is a surprise, but he was impressed with your leadership. I’ve heard that consistently about you. Good in the room. Smarter than you let on.”

Ilya is surprised to hear it. He spent his career cultivating a particular asshole persona. It’s almost disappointing to find out that it didn’t hold up. “I like hockey.”

“And people?”
“When they are not stupid. Like, eh,” Ilya waves a hand, “penalties for no reason. Lazy passing.”

“That’s specific.”

“We are here to talk about hockey, yes?”

Wiebe rolls his eyes, and Ilya likes him incrementally more. “Is everything they say about you true?”

Ilya grins. “Maybe. If they say I am very good at hockey.”

“I’ve heard it. Can I get you another of those?” Wiebe gestures, and Ilya gives up his coffee cup and accepts a Coke instead. It’s still early, but he had to get up before the sun to make it to Ottawa. His dog is with Hollander’s parents; he told them only that he had an appointment. The only people who know Ilya is here are the two people in this room and Farah, who set up the meeting.

“Have you been keeping up with the draft prospects?” Wiebe asks while he fusses with cables and a remote, trying to connect his laptop with the monitor up on the wall. “Summer problems. Whoever decided we need iPads on the bench should watch their back.”

“Some, not much. Russian players mostly.”

“There are some interesting prospects coming up this year. They’re comparing one of the Finnish players to you, actually.”

“Center?”

“D-man.”

Ilya shrugs. “Ottawa needs both. Needs whole team. Maybe you can borrow from, what do you call it? Timbits hockey?”

“Cute,” Wiebe says, and the monitor flickers on. His laptop screen is mirrored on it. His desktop background is a family photo, Wiebe and a woman that Ilya assumes is his wife. Three little girls are in front of them, one with her arms flung around a loll-tongued golden retriever. 

Wiebe clicks over into a folder with rows of labeled video files and thumps back into his chair, arms crossed. “This is an offer, but it’s also an interview. I asked you to bring any observations you had about the season. What do you have?”

This is easy. Ilya pulls his notebook out of his backpack, sticky notes tabbed throughout. He gestures to the screen. “You have Montreal-Ottawa game? March.”

Wiebe listens as Ilya tears down Montreal’s failures, their penalty kill and their positioning. The trust problems that plagued them that entire month. Together they watch Hollander pass to empty ice, and Ottawa’s goalie snatch the puck out of the air. Ilya has talked through all of this before with Hollander. Wiebe listens seriously and asks follow up questions, has Ilya explain how he would translate this to a petulant rookie or a vet who thinks he knows too much. Hollander is both of these by turns, and Ilya feels the answer like a lock clicking open.

“Would you be interested?” It’s three cans of Coke and four hours of hockey highlights and lowlights later. Wiebe’s finger taps on the side of his cup again, an unconscious movement. “The money isn’t what you’re used to, I’ll tell you that, but I have my own leeway with hiring decisions, and your suspension only applies to ice time. I won’t blame you if you don’t want to wade back into hockey after, well. Everything. I’d love to have you, though.”

“And Boston?”

“Lawyers said it’s clear. They have no claim on you as a coach.”

“I think yes,” Ilya says, and inside him an eggshell hesitation cracks. “I think. I think would be good. Maybe.”

“I’ll have them draw up an offer and send it to your agent.”

Ilya bites the laugh back. Farah is not his agent. He’ll sign a retroactive contract with her if she wants, though. He’ll sign away half his salary for this: a chance. A chance to be back on the ice, part of a team. It isn’t his whole life back, but it’s enough. A swallowing mouthful of joy thick enough to choke on.

“One last thing,” Wiebe says, unexpectedly serious, and Ilya tenses, waiting for the rug pull. Now is the moment when it’s all torn away, just when he thought something of his own was possible.

“This isn’t official, and I’ll thank you to keep it to yourself.” Wiebe waits for Ilya’s nod of agreement. “Montreal is shopping Hollander around. We’re not top of the list, but the front office is trying. Probably worth it, even if we scrape out all of our draft capital and the entire defense.”

“I have heard rumors of trade,” Ilya says, unsure where Wiebe is going with this. Two hours away in Montreal, Hollander’s flight is landing. He has a meeting with the team doctor, and paperwork to go over at their office. All preparation for his imminent departure from the team. 

“Is it a problem? That I was intimate with another player. It did not end well for him.” That I ruined him, Ilya wants to add. That my name is all over his. Are you worried I’m going to do that again here? 

“Only thing that ruined his season was the league,” Wiebe says bluntly. “If Montreal could control their locker room they would have kept him and done better. They failed him.”

“And you would not?”

“We have a good group. It’s still hockey, but I think we could do him justice here. I’m getting off track,” he says, and holds Ilya’s gaze. “This doesn’t change if we pick him up, God willing. I’ll expect you to work professionally with him no matter what’s in your history. I would expect the same of him, and of any other player on this roster. Can you manage that?”

Ilya chokes on his tongue. His empty can crumples under his fingertips. “Yes,” he finally manages. “Yes, of course. I can do this.”

Ilya meets Hollander at the nearly-empty apartment. Hollander is already there, creased and travel worn, waiting by the windows.

“Late, sorry,” Ilya says, stumbling out of his shoes and towards Hollander. They meet each other in the middle of the room. Hollander sinks into him, his forehead against Ilya’s neck, arms tight around his back. 

“I missed you,” he murmurs. His hair tickles Ilya’s chin, and Ilya holds him back just as tight.

“Flight is ok?”

“Yeah, it was fine.” Hollander leans into him further, all of his weight braced against Ilya. “There was a baby crying the whole way back. Just. The whole time.”

“You want me to fight him?”

“Fight the baby? You sure you’re up for that?”

“For you, I will try.” 

Exhaustion is a messy sheen across Hollander and Ilya wants to wipe it away, to run his hands over his face and arms and leave him better than he found him. “Visit was good? Team was good?”

“Yeah. It’s a lot. It’ll be better, I think.”

Ilya wants to tell him everything, blurt it all out, but he smothers down the brimming excitement. It’s not time yet. He can wait.

They take both cars back to the cottage this time. Ilya, in his orange Spyder, makes it there nearly a half hour before Hollander, and he has the grill pre-heating by the time Hollander makes it through the door.

“Go,” Ilya says, and waves him away. “Shower.”

Hollander feels grimy after flights, always wanting to shower as soon as he lands. He has too many neuroses to travel for a living, Ilya thinks, but it’s too late to change that. Ilya is buzzing under his skin. As a coach he would travel with Ottawa’s team. It is back to chartered planes and stuffy buses and overstarched hotel sheets that scratch at his skin. He wants and wants and wants, a greedy, overstuffed feeling. He can’t keep his grin down as he cuts peppers and pins vegetables on skewers.

“What’s up with you?” Hollander asks, wandering damp-haired back into the kitchen. He leans over and snags a washed mushroom from the cutting board.

“Happy to see you,” Ilya says. He washes his hands carefully and dries them on the kitchen towel, then turns and pins Hollander against the wall, his wrists held in one of Ilya’s hands. “Missed you,” he murmurs against Hollander’s neck, breathing in the cedar smell of his bodywash. He pushes one leg between Hollander’s until he is trapped between Ilya and the wall, his hardening cock up against Ilya’s thigh.

“Ilya.” Hollander breathes his name out. “Ilya, fuck. Please. Missed you so much.”

“How much?”
“What?” Hollander blinks slowly, his eyes glassy.

“How many times did you jerk off when you were in California?”

“I don’t know. A couple.”

“Twice over Skype. How many more? When you are alone in your hotel room, do you touch yourself?”

“Three times?”

“Is a question?”

“I wasn’t counting.” Ilya moves his thigh, jerking it up tight against Hollander’s straining dick. “Fuck. I didn’t—you didn’t say I couldn’t.”

Ilya hides his delight against the crook of Hollander’s shoulder, his mind buzzing with new possibilities. Ilya worries all the time that he will go too far, but Hollander is three steps further, spinning filthier fantasies than Ilya could dream up. “What did you think about?”

“You.”

“Good. Hands stay here,” he says, and taps Hollander’s palm to make his point. Hollander stays as he’s told, arching away from the wall when Ilya tugs his pants down. Ilya drops them to pool at his ankles. He falls to his knees and rucks his hands up Hollander’s stomach, feeling the summer softness over taut muscle.

“Three times,” he says against Hollander’s thigh, breath puffing against his hair. “You will have to come three times so I know you did not forget me.”

“Three?” Hollander sounds stricken. Ilya kisses him just below his belly button, drags his tongue down to the dark thatch of hair. He bites just above his knee, where the skin inside his thigh is soft and pale. Hollander whines when Ilya’s teeth sink in.

“One for now,” Ilya says, his breath drawing goosepebbles out of Hollander’s skin. “We still have to make dinner, Hollander. Don’t be greedy.”

It’s late into the night by the time Ilya wrests the third one out of him, and Hollander collapses, already half asleep before Ilya finishes wiping him down. He’s snoring softly when Ilya gets back, sprawled out on top of the pale blue sheets. Ilya debates waking him to change the linens, but decides against it. They can do it in the morning, strip the bed together, hands working side by side in mundane domesticity. This, he thinks, is what he will miss the most when the summer is done.

The moon is full-bellied above the trees, and the silver light falls through the wide windows in thick tangles. Ilya lays there for a long time, watching him breathe.

Ilya tells him in the morning, while the eggs are frying in the pan. Hollander looks up from the coffee pot, his face creased in confusion.

“What do you mean Ottawa?”

“Centaurs. Hockey team. Not very good, but, eh. Maybe next season.”

“You’re going to coach for them?”

Ilya nods. He scrapes the spatula under the dark edge to check. “New head coach, Wiebe? He called me. It is—” Ilya has to stop entirely, hold his breath for a moment to stop from laughing. It’s been bubbling under the surface since he left the meeting, a cleansing relief. “I can have hockey again,” he says. The words don’t encompass the depth of his feeling, but if anyone will understand, it is Hollander.

Hollander sets the mugs down with a dull thud. “How did he know you were here?”

“Farah. She told him that I am resident. That I am looking for a job.”

“But you’re not,” Hollander says.

“Shane.” Ilya turns the burner off and scrapes the eggs onto two plates, setting them onto two pieces of toast. There is fruit, too, which he cups that morning. The bland, watery melon that Hollander likes and sweet pink apple slices. “Now is when you say congratulations. This is big deal.”

“It is a big deal. What does he think you’re doing here?”

Ilya waves his hands up in the air. “Being resident. He did not ask. I did not say ‘yes, Mister Wiebe, I am here because I am fucking Shane Hollander.’ No, he says ‘Rozanov, you are the best hockey player and I will give you three Canadian dollars to fix my shitty team.’”

“And you want to do that?”

The golden shine is flaking off Ilya’s mood. “Yes, I want to do this. Do you think I would not want this?”

“No, I know.” Hollander shakes his head. “It’s great. That’s great. It’s a really—fuck, it’s a really good job, actually. You would be a great coach.

“So why do you look like I piss in your cereal?”

“Cornflakes,” Hollander says, and rubs his hand over his face. “You’re not going to take it, right?”

“Hollander. Shane. Of course I am going to take it.”

“Right. Right. Of course you are.” Hollander turns away. He reaches for the coffee again, but he knocks the mug and it falls to the floor. “Fuck.”

Ilya kneels to pick up the pieces, piling broken ceramic on his palm. Hollander makes no move to help, standing tall above him. The only sound for a long moment is the clink of broken pottery.

“We had a plan,” Hollander says, when Ilya dumps the pieces in the trash. His brows are furrowed, his eyes wet with unshed tears. “This isn’t the plan. You—you were going to go to Vancouver. To be close.”

“So now I am in Ottawa.” Ilya cups his palms around Hollander’s cheeks. “Ottawa is not so far.”

“How are we supposed to see each other?”

“There are planes, Hollander. I have vacation. You have time off. Sometimes Ottawa plays in California.”

Hollander sniffs. His eyes are wet but the taut line of his mouth is angry and his words come out thin and bitter. “Sometimes. A couple of times a season. We were going to be together. For real. I went through all of this, all of this shit, and you’re just going to ditch me?”

“I am not ditching you, Hollander,” Ilya says, baffled. His hands are still around Hollander’s face. He doesn’t want to drop them, but Hollander jerks backwards, breaking the contact. “I want you. I love you. I need this. We can do both things.”

“You think so? We had a plan, Ilya.” Hollander’s voice rises with each word. “It only worked because you dropped off the radar. You coaching is going to be on the front page of TSN. What are you going to tell them when they ask why you’re in San Jose? Fuck, what am I going to say if I’m in Ottawa all the time?”

“Say you are visiting your parents,” Ilya says helplessly. “Say it is for family.”

“A few times a year,” Hollander says. His voice cracks. “So we go back to that? Sneaking around in hotels?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“It’s a good plan,” Hollander says desperately. “Is it about money? I can pay for everything. I’ll buy the house in Vancouver.”

Ilya’s stomach wrenches. “I can’t do that.”

“I thought you wanted this. You said you loved me.”

“I do love you.” Ilya reaches for him, but Hollander steps out of reach, wiping the back of his hand across his cheek. “I love you.”

“So why?”

“Would you give up hockey for me?”

Hollander’s mouth gaps open. “What?”

“No,” Ilya answers for him. “You would not.”

“This isn’t the same. I’m not asking you to give anything up. I just want to stick to the plan we made. We, Ilya. It was our plan.”

Ilya’s composure is a rubber band, dragged to a snapping point. He hates the anger that springs out. It reminds him of his father, the man he sees more in the mirror with every passing year even as he wastes away on the other side of the world. His mouth twists up into a sneer. “You want me to stay at home while you play hockey? Like little housewife? Only good for fucking when you come home?”

“I’m not asking you to do that.”

“You want me to give up job. You want me to move to Vancouver and wait in apartment that you pay for. What do you think you are asking for, Hollander? I cannot wait for you. I have a chance,” he says, pleading now. “I can have my own life.” He stumbles for the words. Nothing he says is enough. He wishes he could say it in Russian, in the fluid words that he knows could fix this, but he can’t. He trips over English and watches Hollander’s face shut down further into the blank disaffect that only comes when he’s truly upset.

“We were going to have a life together,” Hollander says quietly.

“You want hockey,” Ilya says, and waits for Hollander’s grudging nod. “Yes, me too. I want me. I want team and friends. I want—I want, Hollander.”

“But you don’t want me.” Hollander is white-faced with anger, his eyes full of unshed tears.

The same anger from Sochi is clawing, scrabbling up his gorge, burning in his throat. Ilya’s mouth is full of words he cannot say, sour on his tongue, bubbling up against his soft palate. There are so many things he wants to say, words that would burn down their fragile potential.

“I am going out,” he says instead, and turns, gesturing for his dog to follow. He grabs his keys on the way, ignoring the protest from behind him.

He doesn’t come home until late, when the cottage is already dark. He crawls into the unused sheets in the guest room, turning over and over until sleep finally takes him.

Ilya wakes early after only a few hours of fitful sleep. He slouches, groggy and heartsore, through the house and into the early morning chill. The sun is only just rising, and the thin light glitters across the lake, skidding across the ripples. He sits on the edge of the dock, his hand cupped around the end of his cigarette to protect the flicker of his lighter.

He had been cutting back. Hollander doesn’t like cigarettes. He says they make his mouth taste like an ashtray. Ilya sucks smoke into his lungs in a hot, biting rush.

The dock sways slightly under the weight of approaching footsteps. Ilya doesn’t turn, and Hollander doesn’t say anything as he drops to sit next to Ilya.

“Other side. Wind is that direction.”

Hollander does as he’s told. He settles with his legs hanging off the side, bare toes dipping into the water. His eyes are red-rimmed, purple-smudged from exhaustion. Together they watch the ducks light on the water.

“I was worried you weren’t going to come back,” Hollander says quietly.

“I am still here,” Ilya snaps, harsher than he intends. Hollander’s face crumples.

Summer weighs inexorably on Ilya. He can count the days left, not on his fingers but that day is not far off. The cup finals are only a week away, the draft shortly after that. Hollander’s trade will be settled between the two, and they will need to pack in earnest. The lazy summer is sinking like a pebble to the bottom of a lake.

“I don’t want to fight,” Hollander says. He is staring somewhere over Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya’s heart twists. Hollander is always so open, his intentions impossibly clear.

“Okay,” Ilya agrees quietly. The wind whips his words away.

“Where did you go?”

He spent most of the day just driving, flinging his car around curves. He stopped at an overlook and let Lillian wander at the end of her tether. He stood for a long time and stared out at the impossible drop, the mountains painted in blues and greens until he could shake the torpor free. Ilya shrugs. “Not far.”

Hollander gestures at the cigarette between Ilya’s fingers. “Can I try one of those?”

“Bad for you. You tell me so.”

“Lots of things are bad for you. I want to know what they’re like.”

“You will hate it.”

“Just give me one, Rozanov.”

Ilya lights the cigarette for him, fumbling with the mechanism. Hollander doesn’t know how to hold a cigarette. He looks like a teenager trying it for the first time. Ilya had been thirteen and wild with grief, hidden behind the practice rink. Hollander, twenty four years old, professional athlete, sits on the edge of his private lake and draws too much smoke into his lungs. He coughs like he might die, and Ilya rubs his back while the spasm passes.

“That’s awful,” he says finally, looking at the cigarette like it wronged him. He takes another experimental drag before Ilya plucks it out of his fingers to finish himself.

“Bad habit,” Ilya says, and blows smoke away from Hollander.

“Maybe I need some bad habits.”

“San Jose will not like that.”

Hollander shrugs. “There are worse things.”

The sun rises slowly, the glowing morning sharpening against the whetstone of the treetops. Ilya finishes his cigarette and does not light another.

“San Jose is certain, yes? Other teams. Other teams are interested,” he says, not wanting to say what he really means, which is that Ottawa is interested, that Nashville is interested, that Boston would probably bend backwards to make it happen. Teams that are closer, scattered across the eastern seaboard.

Not that it matters. This is not a thing Hollander gets to choose.

“San Jose is a good team.”

A good team. Ilya knows what Hollander means. As trades go, this is a good outcome. They are a team that can win. Hollander has a career waiting for him there. He wants to hold the cup and see his number up in the rafters one day, the physical proof of his worth. He wants to be loved by an entire city, not just one man.

“And they will be good team for you?”

“They want the same thing I do,” Hollander says. He draws his legs up and curls his arms around them. “To focus on hockey. I can’t fuck this up. I might not get this chance again.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. His voice is gravel-deep. “Will be good for you.”

“You sure you can’t find something in Vancouver?” Hollander peers over at him, brown eyes damp. “There’s lots of hockey there. It’s still Canada.”

“Probably yes,” Ilya allows. “And then? You are right. Gagnon talks now, eh. I am in Ottawa or Vancouver or Toronto, no one knows. You are in California. Too far. No one believes him. If I take job, any hockey job, people will know. They will watch. You travel to Ottawa or Vancouver. I go to San Jose. It is news.”

“We wouldn’t be able to hide it.”

“No.”

“Fuck.” Hollander puts his forehead to his knees, breathing deep. Ilya rests his hand between his shoulderblades, feeling the juddering ridge of his spine. “What are we going to do?” Despite everything, Ilya is gratified that it is still, after all, we.

Hockey does not last forever. They both know this. Their bodies are fragile, fallible things. A career lasts ten seasons, maybe fifteen. Twenty if they’re lucky, if the injuries do not pile up. Each of those years will tear another piece of Ilya away with it, he knows. A lifetime where he can only have Hollander in snatches. Maybe there will be another trade, somewhere closer. There are no guarantees.

“Tell me about the job,” Hollander says, after a while. His freckles are darker from a summer spent out in the open air. Ilya reaches out to touch, joining the constellation across his cheeks.

They watch the season whittle down to an end at the Hollanders’ cottage, Ilya butted up against Hollander at the end of the couch. It’s nice, Ilya thinks, to experience it like this. Previous years he watched the finals with teammates, drunk and boisterous as they told each other how much better they were than any of the second-rate teams that had made it to the finals. Last year, they were on the ice, their resolve sharpened to a killing edge. Now, Ilya cradles a bowl of popcorn between his knees while Yuna excoriates the penalty kill.

They stay for dinner afterwards, and Ilya lets the rest of them make conversation, nodding along. He waits for Hollander to bring up Ottawa, the fresh fracture in their relationship, but he doesn’t. They chat about the grebes in the lake and how Hollander thinks he will fit into San Jose’s lines. Yuna looks at him curiously when Hollander demurs a question about Vancouver.

“What does that mean? You’re still looking for a house?”

Hollander isn’t a good liar, so he just shrugs.

“We are figuring it out,” Ilya says for him, and Hollander shoots him a grateful look.

Ilya soaks in the waning summer days, focused on the here, the now, the hot sway of Hollander under his hands. He wants to distill it to nothing and store it in his marrow, safe where no one else can find it.

They will not have this much time next summer. The time will be marked in days, not months. Hollander will drag his team to the playoffs; there is no question in Ilya’s mind on this. If they make it to the final series—Ilya adds up the days. Two weeks, maybe three, the time bitten into by sponsorships and training camps. There will always be more demands on his time. 

Maybe Ilya can find his way into Hollander’s bed at awards shows. Maybe he can argue his way to the All-Star hotel. Maybe, Ilya thinks, it would be better if he let Hollander go. If he unpeeled his sweat-slick fingers from Hollander’s skin and let him go on to be the man he is meant to be, two children and a wife, a shining legacy safe behind a picket fence. Gold medals and cup rings and an untarnished life.

The league awards are scheduled for before the fourth game of the series. They watch them from the cottage, just the two of them together. Hollander deserved at least a nomination, but the league couldn’t even throw him those scraps, so he is here instead, lounging in his flannel shirt instead of an expensive tuxedo.

Hollander might not even make it back onto the All Stars roster next year. He wasn’t invited this last season, the scandal too fresh. Someone on Twitter orchestrated a campaign to drag him in anyway. Hollander told him, months later, that he was glad it hadn’t worked. The wound was too fresh, the comments razor-edged. That is the difference between them. Ilya would rather be hated than forgotten.

They half-watch the awards. Hollander’s face is contemplative as he watches last year’s second round draft accept rookie of the year.

“Do you remember?” Ilya asks, and puts his hand on Hollander’s thigh, just below the hem of his shorts.

“Everyone remembers,” Hollander says, but doesn’t pull away.

Even without the video, Ilya would remember, the memory as clear as vision. Hollander, on the verge of tears in a conference hall bathroom. Ilya, pretending at nonchalance, as though his heart were not thrumming in his throat. He had wanted Hollander then. He wanted every part of him. He had thought that maybe time would have been enough to scour that longing away, but it swept back in an inexorable wave. With who, Hollander had asked, and all Ilya could think was no one, that no one in those months had folded so neatly under his hands, that no one could compare.

Ilya had wanted him, every fractional part. His hands and his hips and the sway-curve tilt of his shoulder. He had wanted to strip him down for parts and keep him for his own, to find the ways he ticked. Ilya had been meanly delighted to find that Hollander was soft and sweet even when he had been driven to the spitting edge of anger, still soluble under Ilya’s hand. He was so easy.

He had hurt both of them in those six months, but time cannot be unturned. Ilya had resolved to squeeze the minutes out of the hour, and all of Hollander’s hesitations turned to ash under Ilya’s warm attention. Ilya remembers him sprawled on the bed, his back a bow-strung arch, mouthing at Ilya’s dick through his pants.

If Ilya could only have this moment, he would have all of it. Hollander would tire of him after this. Ilya was an itch to him, a curiosity to sate. This time would be the last. It would be better that way, better for both of them. Better for Ilya to lock his capricious heart back behind his ribs.

So he had let Hollander suck, just a little, had let him take Ilya’s cock down his throat. Hollander had been full of that same unpracticed enthusiasm, all raw desire and a tongue curled under the head. Ilya had pulled him back by his hair, delighted to find Hollander already pink-flushed, docile and blinking. He slipped away so easily, his body and mind emptied out.

“You want to suck it?”

“Yeah,” Hollander had said, yanking forward.

“Slut.” Ilya had let him get his mouth over it again, then had yanked him back hard, mean. Hollander’s mouth had hung open, his breathing coming in hot panting bursts. He had pulled forward again, reaching.

“I want to remember this,” Ilya had said then. It was two presses with his thumb to snap his phone’s camera on, his other hand still tangled in Hollander’s hair. Hollander who had looked dumbly back at him, his mouth pink and wet, desire a physical weight across his skin.

You have to delete that, Hollander texted the next day, and Ilya could not contain the fizzing annoyance that this was the only thing that Hollander wanted to talk to him about. He kept it on his phone out of a combination of horniness and spite, looked at the video every time he jerked off, months of masturbatory fodder. 

When would have been early enough to delete it, he wonders. Was his phone compromised even before then? Did someone in their technological den thrill over the new addition to his camera roll, or would it have been fine if he deleted it the next day, or a month later. It doesn’t matter now. The damage is done. Two lives for one video.

Ilya puts his hand on Hollander’s face, teases his head back so he can see him. “I’m sorry,” Ilya says.

“For what?”

“Everything. I should not have done it.”

Hollander shrugs one shoulder. He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “It was hot.”

“Oh, so you will let me take another?”

The wet look in Hollander’s eyes is familiar now. The soft smile. “I don’t think I would survive another,” he says, and turns back to the show. Someone Ilya does not care about wins another award, grinning through his summer teeth.

When Ilya’s phone rings this time, he knows the number. Long distance, a Russian country code. It cuts through Ilya’s music on the speakers, and Hollander pauses on his exercise bike.

“Keep going,” Ilya says, and gestures. “Only a moment.”

He steps just outside the door and stops, his shoulders against the wall. He takes a deep, quavering breath. “This is Ilya.”

His father’s voice is still enough to lance right through the core of him. He is five years old again, standing with his hands clasped for his father’s appraisal. He is twelve and receiving a whip-crack rebuke, told that he is too grown to cry like this. He is eighteen and standing quietly as his father tells his new GM that Ilya can be lazy, as Ilya waits quietly while the adults talk about him.

This is a skin he thought he had shed, but here it is on him anyway, the scales hardening around him like one of the dog-day cicada bodies he picks from the trees around the cottage. He thought he had grown past this, but now he must shrink to fit.

He lets his father talk for a few minutes, rambling about nothing. He does not trust the new maid and thinks she is stealing from him. He saw Ilya’s game and he is disappointed in him. 

Ilya’s throat is thick around a sob that he chokes back down. He has never been able to help the way he loves. Maybe one day he will learn to harden his heart so that it cannot break like this, over and over again. His fingers find his necklace, warm gold at his throat.

“Where is Alexei, father? Is he there?”

“Alexei?” His father asks, unrecognizing. “Where are you?”

“I am in America,” Ilya reminds him, a soft lie. “I am here for work.”

“When are you coming home?”

“Soon. Soon. I miss you. Father. Is your nurse there?”

He translates afterwards for Hollander, staring straight ahead so he does not need to look at Hollander’s stricken face.

“He is sick,” Ilya says. The dumbbells are abandoned in the middle of the room. Ilya’s back is against the wall, knees up by his chin. “He is sick, and I can never go home.”

“I’m sorry.”
“Is not your fault. Is mine, maybe. I should not have—” he takes a shuddering breath. There is no end to that sentence. He should never have made eyes at a polite Canadian boy. He should never have turned that card.

He has no family left, and soon he will lose Hollander and the lease he had on Hollander’s perfect family. Ilya is no stranger to starting from scratch, but he does not want to do it again.

Hollander sits next to him, skin warm against Ilya’s side. “Is he going to get better?”

“No,” Ilya says. “He will die, and I will not go back.”

Hollander spends the rest of the day unsettled. He is antsy, startled by Lillian, by a bird outside the window. Ilya tries to calm him down with his mouth on his dick, but it only works for a few minutes before Hollander is back to climbing the walls. Ilya goes for a run and comes back to find that Hollander has meals prepped for the rest of the week. Diced carrots and peppers are in neat glass containers, ready to be sauteed.

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Hollander looks startled to be asked it, as though Ilya would not notice his tangled nerves.

“Okay,” Ilya agrees.

He should not have told Hollander, he thinks. He has shown him too much of himself. Ilya should have held this particular pain back and borne it alone. Hollander has seen through to his sticky, desperate heart.

Hockey is over, so they watch a movie instead. Ilya catches maybe one word in three, eyes glazing as he watches things explode on the screen. Hollander eats the popcorn Ilya makes, and Lillian dozes on the couch between them, whuffing softly when Ilya reaches over to scratch behind her ears. It is the same scene as a dozen times before, the same domestic print laid out over and over through the long, loose summer. Each time Ilya is struck by the same breath-stealing awe that he has borrowed someone else’s happy life.

“I’m going to stay up for a bit,” Hollander says when the movie is over, and Ilya knows that borrowed things must be returned.

Chapter End Notes

Lil clarifying note for everyone screaming at Shane to choose Ottawa: he does not get to make this decision. If Montreal and San Jose come to an agreement, that's where he's going.

Chapter 8

Hollander is still on the couch when Ilya yawns into the living room. His neck is at an odd angle, his mouth partly open as he snores. Ilya’s little dog is asleep at his feet.

He startles when Ilya puts a hand on his shoulder. “Go to bed,” Ilya suggests, and Hollander shrugs into a yawn of his own, shoulders cracking.

“‘M ok,” he says, his words slurred. Ilya snorts and throws a blanket at him. His dog follows at a gesture, and he takes her on a looping tour of the grassy lawn, down the drive and back, though she stops halfway through the way back, intent on a squirrel.

He is only building bad habits to let her do it, but he waits while she barks at the squirrel and then sniffs the dry grass at the side of the road until she is satisfied. He can spoil her in small ways, so he will, as they walk together in the thin morning light. He takes her down to the lake and he smokes a cigarette, looking out over the water. 

He has watched a pair of loons nest in the time he has been there. They built a shaggy nest by the water’s edge. Two speckled brown eggs followed, visible in snatches as the adults left the nest in short intervals. They drift past, the pair of hatchling chicks sleeping on a parent’s back. 

Ilya grew up in the concrete confines of Moscow. He spent his childhood shuttled between apartment and school and a series of rinks, always in cars and trains. When hockey had gotten serious, he had looked out from airplane windows, finger-painted splotches of green and blue marking the forests and rivers. He still does not know how to feel about the open spaces of this country. They are too much, the sky too wide. It helps, maybe, that the trees are so close around him here, the flaking white birch and the spruce. He knows their names because Hollander knows their names, knows the names of all the living things, the peeping frogs and the birds trilling their morning song and the buckthorn that he frowns at, an invasive species in this land.

 Maybe, he thinks, if he sits here for long enough, the world will melt away around him until the only things remaining are the rippling water, him, and the hot glow of his cigarette.

He summons his strength and his courage. He does not want to think about his father now, but it is his lessons that come back to him. Ilya needs to be as strong as his father wanted him to be, self-reliant and unfaltering. He has more than he ever thought he might. More than he deserves. Money and safety.

Wealth, he thinks, is an empty bed.

Hollander is up when Ilya gets back, hands clasped around a pottery mug, the end of a tea bag caught under his fingers. A matching mug is waiting on the counter, thick steam curling out in ribbons.

“My neck is killing me,” Hollander says, rueful. “I didn’t mean to stay out here all night.”

“Go to bed,” Ilya suggests, and gestures with his mug, sloshing a drip of coffee down over the edge. It runs hot over his knuckles.

“No, I—I think we should talk.”

Ilya schools his features. This is the end of it, then, the dissolving stitch of their relationship. His body is an unknit wound. “Probably, yes.”

“I don’t think I can do this,” Hollander says, matter-of-fact tone at odds with his exhausted crouch. “I can’t live across the country from you and see you three times a year. I can’t—I can’t live like that.”

Ilya blinks dry eyes. He will not beg. “No.”

Knowing the pain is coming does not lessen the bite. Ilya had prepared to do this himself. It is not fair to either of them. Hollander cannot spend his life caught between two time zones, two lives. 

Ilya cannot do this either, he knows. He tasted it briefly when he watched Hollander go down on live television, his face twisted in pain, and then again and again as he refreshed TSN, Twitter, ESPN, hoping for an update that did not come. He will not be Hollander’s emergency contact next season. He will not be able to fly across the country to sit by his hospital bed. He is a kite tangled on a very long string. It is two pains that bleed into each other. One, the having, the other, the losing. It is amazing how he can cram so much hurt into a body that is only flesh and bone.

“And I can’t ask you not to take the job.” Hollander is reciting now. He has practiced his speech. It is one of those things that Ilya loves about him, the practice and the perfect. Hollander always needs to know his lines.

Ilya’s resolve loses its edge. “I need to,” he says, in an aimless sort of plea. Maybe, he thinks. Maybe there is something for him in Vancouver. It will not be hockey, but he can pour himself into a new mold. Even as he thinks it, he knows it is not true. He cannot breathe for the depth of his wanting.

“San Jose only plays Ottawa twice next season. I wouldn’t get to come back here until Christmas. You would be on the road with Ottawa.” Hollander is looking at his tea. The leaves are tied up in a little bag, his fortune hidden. “Other guys have families in other places. Stedlund got traded to Montreal last year. His wife wanted to keep the kids in their school, so he flies out to Philly a couple of times a month.”

“But we can not.”

“No,” Hollander agrees. He sucks in a shuddering breath. “We can’t.”

Ilya keeps his hands clasped carefully around the mug so that they can’t reach for Hollander. He wonders if the spare room at the cottage will feel quite as lonely as the one in Montreal, or if it will be worse now that he knows how it feels to wake next to Hollander’s morning-sour breath and mussed hair.

“I love you,” Hollander says. Ilya doesn’t trust his voice to respond. His mouth is a tight line, his eyes sandy.

“I’m going to do something stupid,” Hollander says. “Is that ok?”

Ilya’s voice shakes, ever so slightly. “You mean will I still love you if you are stupid? I love you now. How much worse can it be?”

Hollander’s phone is on the counter. He has to brush past Ilya to reach it. Ilya watches him swipe through his lock code. He pulls up a photo: the two of them, the azaleas in full bloom. 

“I like this one,” Hollander says. His mouth quirks up. “I was going to delete it so no one ever saw it. In case my phone got hacked, like—” he looks at Ilya. “I was sitting here last night and I was going to.”

Ilya imagines Hollander, his face lit by the blue glow of his phone, sitting on the couch by himself in the early hours. “You did not.”

“No,” Hollander says. “I didn’t. I’m waiting for Farah to call me. I was going to ask my mom to find a publicist. It might tank the trade,” he says, and looks up. His smile is wet. “Maybe I don’t want to go there if I have to keep hiding.”

“Hollander.” Ilya can’t find other words. He tugs the phone out of Hollander’s hand and stares. It isn’t, as he had thought, Hollander’s camera roll. He hadn’t even known that Hollander knew his own Instagram password; the only thing he has ever seen on it is team media and sponsored content.

Ilya scrolls lower, so, so careful to keep his thumb away from the post button. There isn’t much else, just a few short words. Last season, part of my life was revealed without my permission. I would like to share some more of it.

“Is that okay?” Hollander reaches for his phone, and then pulls his hand back as though he’s been shocked. “I don’t have to. And that’s not—I’m going to write a better caption. I wouldn’t post it if you didn’t want it. And that’s—that’s ok. I don’t want to fuck things up for you. For Ottawa.”

“Hollander,” Ilya chokes out. His vision swims. “You do not have to do this.”

“I know.”

“Hollander. Shane. No.”

“Ilya.”

Ilya forces the words out. “This does not fix things, Hollander. You will still go to San Jose. I will still stay in Ottawa. You cannot do this.”

Hollander laughs shakily. “I don’t know. Maybe San Jose won’t want me if I’m already causing problems. Montreal probably wishes they could send me to Laval at this point and be done with it.”

“So why? You do not want to play hockey? You do not want to win cup? You cannot do this for me.”

“I’m not doing it for you. I’m—fuck, I’m always going to be the token kid in the peewee league. I’m so tired of hiding, Ilya.”

“You can’t—” Ilya is crying properly now, the way he hasn’t let himself, fearing that he would drown himself in his tears. He can’t let Hollander do this. He can’t let Hollander throw his life away over Ilya again and again. 

“I have to,” Hollander says. His phone is somewhere, skittering across the counter. His hands are in Ilya’s hair, pulling him close. Hollander pants in his ear like he’s running, or like he’s sobbing. “I have to. Ilya, I can’t lose you. I couldn’t lose you in December and I can’t lose you now.”

“You are not losing me.” Ilya’s grip is bruise-tight on Hollander’s waist. “You are not.”

“I want to do it,” Hollander says into Ilya’s neck. “I want everyone to know.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re you, and I can’t—fuck, Ilya. I can’t imagine a life where I don’t get to have you. I don’t want to pretend I’m someone else anymore.”

Hollander has always been more than himself. He is a brand, an athlete, the amalgamation of his mother’s careful plans. Shane, Ilya’s Shane, looks at him now as though his world will end if Ilya does not agree. “I don’t want to live without you,” he says, in his straightforward way. “I can’t. We couldn’t even visit.”

“You can have more.” Ilya thinks of a house in California with a picket fence. Children with dark hair and freckles. A woman, waiting for him. Hollander’s face, flushed and wet with sweat, his hair sticking to his face as he hoists a cup above his head. He shares that vision in stuttering, careful English. “You want that, yes? You do not have to do this. You are ok now.”

“I want you.”

Determination is a physical presence in Hollander’s body. Ilya catalogues the whole of him. Eyes the brown of the loam at the waters edge. Freckles like the stars that spill across the sky. His sturdy body and gentle heart. He will not be swayed, Ilya realizes. It is the same gilt determination as when Hollander thought that Ilya would leave for Russia, given over to an unknown fate.

He had thought it was pity, then. Hollander had wanted to save him from his fate and had thrown himself down in front of the play, trading shot for shot the only way he knew how. Ilya sees it now: the year, recast. Hollander, who had not wanted to let Ilya slip out of his reach. Not pity at all, but the same deep, selfish well that runs in Ilya.

“I’m not giving anything up,” Hollander says. He sits back, holding one of Ilya’s hands between his own callused palms. “I want this, and you need to tell me if you want it, too. I don’t get to choose a lot of things. You know that.”

“Your team,” Ilya tries, his resolve crumbling.

“There’s nothing anyone can say that I haven’t heard a hundred times already.”

Ilya thinks distantly that this should not be the tipping point of the argument. How much worse could it be is not a declaration. And yet—

“Okay,” Ilya says, the last of his restraint dissolving like sugar into tea. “Okay.”

Ilya has been less inconspicuous than he thought. 

There are only a few pictures, but he had not noticed the cameras raised. There is him with his little white dog on a sidewalk in Montreal. Him bundled up in a thick scarf, Hollander’s square-rimmed glasses on his face. Him standing in front of the produce section at the grocery store at Lanaudiere, a slight frown on his face as he tried to remember which one was cilantro versus parsley. 

He downloads each one to his phone. They are the only proof he has of the last year. He has been too scared to take photos of anything. His camera roll is approximately six thousand pictures of his dog, carefully arranged so that only unidentifiable slices of sidewalk or grass are visible behind her.

It is only him in each photo. He and Hollander did not go out together. He wonders how the last six months would have gone if these people had posted their suppositions to Reddit. Might have seen Rozanov in Montreal, what do you think?

 Any of them could have been waved away as geographic coincidence, if they did not now accompany a headline. Hockey Honeymoon: Hollander and Rozanov Married, says The Post. Ilya orders a physical copy. He intends to hang it in his house in Ottawa.

There are other, less flattering, headlines. Ilya reads them out loud to Hollander. He follows him around the house and informs him that it is a publicity stunt; that Hollander has slept his way through the MHL; that he, Ilya, has seduced and ensnared him into a loveless marriage.

“That makes you sound like some kind of witch,” Hollander says, and tries to duck past Ilya into the laundry room. Ilya jams the door open with his foot.

“No, no, is not best part yet. Rozanov, known playboy and unscrupulous Lothario has made left his mark upon—”

“Stop,” Hollander complains, and shoves half-heartedly at Ilya. “I don’t need to know whatever they’re about to say about me.”

“Only good things,” Ilya says, and crosses his heart dramatically. “You are innocent virgin. I have seduced you.”

“They’re not wrong about that part,” Hollander mutters. “If you’re here, can you at least fold the towels?”

“Oh, no,” Ilya says, turning dramatically. “My dog is calling me.”

“Tell her to stop reading the headlines.”

“I cannot,” Ilya tells him seriously. “She cannot hear me.”

“Just, fucking—ok, do whatever you want. Stop telling me which networks think I was a virgin.”

“I will tell you which ones think my dick was so good you marry me for it.”

“You’re making that up.”

“You will never know,” Ilya sing-songs on his way back down the hallway.

Montreal’s GM calls the day after their announcement drops. Ilya watches as Hollander’s face goes pale behind his freckles.

Ilya catches his wrist before can answer the call. “What is worst that can happen?”

“They’ll have me murdered.”

“Contract,” Ilya reminds him. “They put you on waivers and so? You go to team that wants you.”

The phone buzzes again and then the screen goes dark. “Fuck,” Hollander says, juggling it to his other hand. “I have to call him back.”

“Ok, so call. You are Shane Hollander. What can they do?”

Not much, in Ilya’s estimate. Hollander spends a half hour pacing on the patio, the phone up by his ear. Ilya watches him from the kitchen. It’s late morning, and Hollander forgot to put on his sunglasses. He squints out at the lake, frowning. Ilya can’t make out the shape of his words, but the rising irritation is obvious.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Hollander says when he comes inside. He closes the door too hard.

“Talk about what?”

“That fucking asshole,” Hollander seethes. “Fuck them.”

“You want to talk about it or no?”

“No,” Hollander says determinedly, but he drags his lip between his teeth like he has to fight the words back.

Hollander has spent the last two days soaked in a familiar knife-edged anxiety. It reminds Ilya of when all of this first started. Back before their rookie season, when Hollander had answered Ilya’s knock with a denial already prepared. Back in December, when Ilya had walked through the door of Hollander’s Montreal apartment, newly wed. 

Ilya knows how to tear it out of him, at least.

“Maybe,” Ilya says, and pushes Hollander slowly to his knees. “I will give you something else to think about. “

Hollander tells him about it later, when his anger has dulled into resentment. He drags Ilya to the cottage’s contained gym and pulls out his trainer’s exercise plan while he talks. His version of combating anxiety is a punishing exercise routine; Ilya fears for anyone who will have to face him in the preseason.

Montreal’s management is coldly furious and exploring nebulous and undefined consequences for trying to subvert a trade. Hollander will never see time on their ice again, Hollander relays, spinning closer to bitter amusement.

“I told them that was the best outcome as far as I’m concerned,” he says, stretching down to his toes. “You can put music on if you want. No, not that.”

Ilya rolls his eyes and swaps the playlist to something less aggressively Russian. “They talk about trade?” He tosses a resistance band at Hollander, who barely catches it before it smacks him in the face. “Warm up your knee.”

“They won’t tell me anything, but I’m guessing San Jose isn’t thrilled.”

San Jose’s loss, as far as Ilya is concerned. They still need a forward, and this year’s draft won’t shake out to much by the time San Jose gets to pick. He doesn't know what the other side of that trade would have been. A few of San Jose’s players might do better under Montreal’s system, but the machinations of trades are something he never put much thought into, confident that Boston would hang onto him for as long as they could.

“Not scared?” Ilya asks, when Hollander has had enough time to work up a sweat. 

“Scared,” Hollander says. He tugs his shirt up to wipe the sweat away, revealing the taut, muscled line of his abdomen. “Scared all the time. I hate not being able to control things.”

“Think you get traded to Tampa instead?”
“You’d have to buy a good swimsuit,” Hollander says, and drops back into a squat, thighs straining.

Ilya wishes the world were larger, big enough for hockey and for them. They cannot change the math of contracts and hours. Hollander may not retire crowned with golden laurels, but he can still play. He will still be the best. No matter what they say about him, no one can deny that.

It’s idiotic, Ilya thinks, that any team would hesitate. Hollander is all of the things they say about him. Generational talent. Proven leader. It was the two of them at the top, Hollander and Rozanov, and then the two of them tangled in the same downward spiral. None of it should matter on the ice, not the sex tape and not the marriage, but hockey holds its conservative morality in the same hands that permit its players wide latitude with their more palatable vices.

Whatever team picks him up will need to prepare in advance. Hollander, the quiet and polite golden boy of hockey, has developed a reputation for being bad for team dynamics. Montreal wasn’t the team they should have been last season. This would make any other player an undesirable prospect, but for Hollander it is balanced out by his undeniable power on the ice.

Ilya is grimly amused at the thought of Hollander getting sold for less than he’s worth, with Montreal stuck paying his contract for years to go.

“Where do you want to go?” Ilya asks, and swaps with Hollander. He can bench a little more, squat a little less. The competitive spark in him is hot, and he waves Hollander off when he moves to adjust the weights.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Hollander says, and leans heavily against the wall. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll make it work.”

In Ilya’s heart, the sun is rising, bright and hot. If this is love, it is too much, suffusing through him and burning in his veins. It doesn’t matter where Hollander goes, because they will make it work. The distance does not feel as daunting as the last year, which Ilya spent tucked up like a secret. Ilya can get on a plane and be picked up at the airport by his husband. He can sit in the stands and wear Hollander’s jersey. He can wear his wedding ring proudly on his right hand, the gold gleaming for the world to see. 

There is a paper calendar open on the kitchen table. Ilya has blocked out the times he knows he has free, and Hollander marked in blue highlighter all the days that Ottawa plays at home. When they know where Hollander is going, they will overlay it with his team calendar and find the places where they fit together. There will not be enough. Ilya knows this already, but it’s only the first step in a lifetime. Ilya will do a year in Ottawa, holed up in Hollander’s hometown, and earn his place on the bench, then they will reassess, revise the play, mix up the lines. 

It is an odd limbo as they wait for Hollander’s phone to ring. Montreal’s management will call him first, and then his new team. Then Hollander will pull out another color of highlighter, and Ilya will sit next to him and watch him trace out their future in his messy penmanship.

Spring gives way to the hot flush of summer. It happens all at once, the sun suddenly brighter, the air thick with humidity. Ilya drags Hollander out to the lake as the sun rises and swims lazy laps around him as Hollander listens to the birds and identifies them by their song. There are song sparrows and finches and the short, quick call of a hairy woodpecker, at which Ilya turns to Hollander and declares that he’s making this one up.

“It’s probably up that way,” Hollander says, and points to one of the indeterminate trees on the bank.

“I will show you a hairy woodpecker,” Ilya says. Hollander’s face does something complicated between amusement and annoyance, but he lets Ilya drag him up into the house anyway.

They nearly don’t make it to the bedroom at all. Hollander insists they shower after the lake, so that Ilya doesn’t track pond scum into their bed, and Ilya is, as always, struck by the sight of him as he shucks shirt and shorts, the swell of his stomach and the broad expanse of his thighs. Ilya plasters Hollander up against the wall, puts his mouth to his skin, hands roaming.

Already Ilya is awash in the little things that he will miss when the summer ends. Hollander in their bed every morning, lazy afternoons playing video games and mornings working out together, competing in everything. Ilya intends to use up every last scrap while they have it. He intends to see how far he can push this thing, how much he can wring out of Hollander and himself. He will set Hollander loose at the end of it, sore and fucked-out, so that his body will remember Ilya long after they have parted to their separate cities.

It is with this thought that he untangles them, draws back from Hollander’s open, panting mouth and shoves him, still damp, onto their bed.

“I love you,” Ilya murmurs into Hollander’s hip. It might be an hour later, or a day. The sun falls in ribbons, filtered through the slatted trees the way it does in the afternoons. Ilya has never been good at tracking time. Hollander’s only response is a high, tight whine. Ilya’s fingers press deeper, stroking like he is trying to dislodge a knot, and Hollander twists, trying to get away from the sensation. Ilya holds him tight with one hand on his stomach. It doesn’t take much, not with Hollander’s wrists secured above his head, tied neatly to the headboard.

“Ilya please.” Ilya likes the way his name sounds on Hollander’s tongue. He likes the way Hollander begs. He strokes gently, drawing out another plea, an animal sound.

“Please what?” Ilya licks Hollander from root to tip. He presses his tongue into the ridge of scar tissue under the head and Hollander shakes.

“I’m so close.” Hollander’s voice is barely a whisper.

“This is my problem?”

“You’re such an asshole,” Hollander manages between whines. Ilya sucks the head of his cock for a bare moment and pulls away when Hollander’s hips judder upward.

“Do you need a break?”

Hollander’s face is a mask of misery when he nods, and Ilya draws his fingers out. He pillows his face on Hollander’s thigh, cheek against the wiry hair, and watches as Hollander’s cock jerks with his breathing. His balls are tight against his body. “You are doing so well.”

“Fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.”

“Mm. No.” Ilya pets the soft skin of his asshole to feel the heat. Hollander is so sensitive. Ilya came twice already, rutting against Hollander’s thigh and once jerking off into his mouth. Hollander has been so good. Ilya can see how much it hurts him to tell Ilya to stop, but it will be worth it when he finally comes. When Ilya finally lets him.

“Ilya. Please.”

“One more.”

“I can’t.” Hollander’s whole body is taut, his breathing, his voice. His muscles tremble involuntarily. Ilya catches his knee between his own elbow and thigh, holding him open. “Ilya. I can’t.”

Ilya’s hand closes around Hollander’s cock and strokes twice, three times, before Hollander is babbling again, warning him that he’s too close, that he’s going to come.

“Ask me to stop.”

“Please stop.” Hollander’s voice cracks. “Please. I can’t.”

Ilya isn’t sure he knows what he’s asking for anymore. He would say anything Ilya prompted by now. He gives Hollander a moment to come down from the edge. His cheeks are candy red, his eyes glazed with tears. Ilya considers his own cock, deciding if he can come again. Yes, he decides, and bends Hollander’s legs up until his thighs are nearly flush with his chest.

“You can come if you want,” Ilya says, It’s so easy to thrust into Hollander. He’s loose and wet and clenching hard around him in a vice grip.

Hollander’s hands first in their bindings and he looks up like he’s surprised to find them caught. “I can’t—”

“You do not need those.” Ilya bites the inside of Hollander’s thigh and sucks a livid bruise to the surface. He shifts his angle, testing, and is gratified when Hollander’s eyes go wide, his pupils a pool of black.

“I can’t. Ilya, I can’t. Please. Please.” Ilya loves to hear him beg. They will need to do this again. It is incredible to think that he will have this forever. Hollander is his now, all of him.

“You can,” Ilya informs him. He thrusts harder, dragging his cock over Hollander’s prostate. “If you do not come before I do, you will have to wait.”

The threat is enough to send Hollander spiraling over. He clenches hard around Ilya, his whole body seizing up as his orgasm drags through him. Ilya worries for a moment he might pass out, but Hollander shudders again, his eyes half-lidded. He winces when Ilya pulls out and can’t muster anything other than senseless murmurs when Ilya finishes himself with his hand, striping come over Hollander’s chest.

“I’m disgusting,” Hollander mutters while Ilya unties his hands.

“You are beautiful,” Ilya informs him, and tugs him carefully up to wrap him in his arms. They’re both disgusting, but the water pressure is good and Ilya found a new soap with a faint lavender scent that clings to Hollander. He likes the way it lingers, maybe more because Hollander complains that he smells like a flower after using it. He uses it anyway, because Ilya likes it.

They are out of towels, so Ilya takes the last clean one and goes to fetch another from the guest bathroom. It is like that, damp, still-sex drunk, and with only a towel around his waist, that he finds Yuna Hollander waiting in their kitchen.

Her mouth opens, closes. “I’ll wait outside,” she says.

“You said you were going to text,” Hollander says, clean and dressed and murder-eyed on the patio.

“It’s three in the afternoon!”

Ilya snorts, and quickly covers his mouth with his hand. “Sorry,” he manages, and bites his tongue hard when Hollander glares at him.

“Do you want—” Hollander waves his hand generally towards the house, which is how they end up all three at the kitchen table, Ilya’s knees knocked up against Hollander’s, three identical glasses of lemonade between them on three identical coasters.

“Have you talked to Farah?” Yuna asks, when it’s become evident that none of them can think of any small talk appropriate for the circumstance.

“Not today,” Hollander says. His nose crinkles. “I need to get her a fruit basket or something.”

“She’s doing her job.”

“Well she’s got him now, so I think I owe her something,” Hollander says, jerking his thumb over at Ilya. The ink on that particular contract is barely dry. He won’t get the endorsements that Hollander does, and he certainly won’t be posing in his underwear on any billboards, but Farah seems to think that there's money to be made on his name. Ilya has his doubts, but he’ll give her a long leash and see where it gets them.

“Will be nice for her to have a real hockey player,” Ilya adds.

“You’re such an asshole.”

“Ottawa will announce today, I think. That I will be coach.”

“Sure,” Hollander says dryly. “Why not. That’ll help.”

“Has Farah said anything about San Jose?” Yuna asks, politely ignoring their bickering.

Hollander makes an uncertain gesture. “No news. Not since.”

“I wish you’d talked to me first.”

Hollander stiffens. “So you could talk me out of it?”

“Shane,” she says, with a mother’s exasperation.

“You would have tried.”

She gives him a half shrug of agreement. The skin around her eyes creases when she smiles. “Your sponsors would have appreciated a heads-up. I’ve been talking contracts with that new company, the one in California. There are some interesting local opportunities. It’s not—” She holds up her hand to forestall his objection. “Just hockey. No rainbows.”

“Farah wanted me to wait, too. She doesn’t know what they're going to do.”

“Well at least they can’t suspend you this time.” Yuna’s disapproval is blunted by the overt love she has for her son. It wreaths everything she does, an impossible outswell of affection in every glance. “We’ll figure it out, whatever it is. I didn’t think this would be—” she trails off, looks between them.

“Wouldn’t be what?”

Her expression is wry, her mouth twisted familiarly up. “You always surprise me, do you know that? Every day.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Yes.” She reaches across the table for his hand. “It’s a great thing, Shane.”

“I had to do it,” Hollander says softly.

They have had this conversation before, these two, and they will have it again. Yuna was the original architect of his life. She sank years of her life into building Shane Hollander into the golden boy of hockey, rich and beloved. Ilya undercut it first, but Hollander made his own choices, too. He chose Ilya. The thought of it sets a shiver through Ilya’s nerves.

“We are going to look at houses tomorrow,” Ilya says, cutting into the quiet. “I start work soon. Important job. Someone must tell hockey players what to do.”

“Those who can’t do, teach,” Hollander tells him.

“Suck my dick,” Ilya suggests in Russian. Hollander turns bright red, and Yuna looks between them, eyebrows raised.

“I’m not going to ask.”

“You will tell me if you get the little green bird, yes?” He pats Hollander on the shoulder and leaves them there. He has his own phone calls to respond to. Ottawa’s HR department has sent him another document to sign, and Marleau has been texting him bullshit, like they never stopped. They are going to get drinks when Ottawa and Boston play, and Ilya feels as though he is surfacing from deep waters.

They spend two days in Ottawa stuffed in the back of an overly chatty real estate agent’s car, traipsing through one house after another. Ilya’s requirements are minimal. His instincts lean to the gaudy. He likes large, flashy architecture, the tangible tackiness of gilded molding; big windows and expensive appliances that he’ll never use. A pool. He doesn’t have a hockey player’s salary anymore, so they look at a series of more reasonable offerings, and Ilya ignores Hollander as he pulls up house after house on Zillow, sensible choices in expensive areas.

“This is nice,” Ilya says, as they walk through a tiny bungalow in a dreary residential wasteland.

“It’s fine,” Hollander says, his jaw tight. The agent’s heels clack on the hardwood as she precedes them through the house. She points out a kitchen that might have been refinished in the last half century and the house’s modern landscaping, which consists of a lawn with mottled brown grass and a few anemic peonies. 

“Oh, you like?”

“If you like it.” Hollander refuses to be baited, which cuts down Ilya’s enjoyment by at least half. Ilya wants to needle him more, but the house was only on the list for its proximity to the stadium, and Ilya doesn’t mind driving.

“Ah, Anita?” Ilya waves to catch their agent’s attention. “Maybe not here. Hollander says the paint does not match my eyes.”

“I did not say that.”

“Hollander?” She looks at him, taking him in. Hollander is starting to slip into his PR expression when she snaps her fingers, recognition caught. “I used to work with your father. You’re David’s boy?”

“Ottawa,” Ilya says, rolling his eyes, and Hollander grins.

The next houses are nicer, in a lively neighborhood near the river. Ilya wanders in and out of kitchens and bathrooms and home offices until they all blur together. Hollander, with a pen behind his ear and a spiral-edged notebook in his hand, asks questions about roof maintenance and appliance warranties.

Ilya’s eyes are glazed over by the time they reach a brick-fronted rowhouse with a bright blue door. It’s on the end of the street, with a compact garden in the back.

“It’s kind of small,” Hollander says, as they walk through. The kitchen is small, but Ilya likes it immediately, the veined marble countertops and the large window above the sink. The bedroom is up a set of stairs, less of a concern now that he is not playing hockey professionally, and opens onto a small deck with a slivered view of the river.

“Only one of me,” Ilya says. There is room enough for him. He can put a small gym in one of the downstairs rooms, maybe. There is another room that could be a guest room.

Ilya imagines his dog running in the yard. He thinks of Svetlana posted up against the bar counter in the kitchen, and Hollander on the deck with a cup of coffee between his hands, steam rising into the morning air.

“This house,” he tells Anita, when she circles back to check on them.

Hollander sucks in a breath. “Can you give us a second?”

They argue in low, hushed tones. It is equally endearing and infuriating. Hollander thinks he needs more. It’s guilt, Ilya thinks, that drives him to it. Hollander will buy a hockey captain’s house wherever he goes, big enough to host a whole team, and he wants Ilya to have the same.

“I can pay for a bigger place,” Hollander says, arms crossed. “It’s fine.”

“Is my house,” Ilya says, exasperated. “I will buy it. What do I need big house for? I will be gone most of the year.”

“And what about the summers?”

“You are selling the cottage? No? Okay, fine. No problem then.”

“But what about—”

“Hollander.” Ilya cuts him off. “It is my house.”

“We’re married.”

“Ok? So? You will live here?”

“I might one day,” Hollander says mulishly. “What about when I retire?”

“You will have to pay rent.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Yes, ok. So I can buy house now? Look, has windows. You love windows. Good, uh. Light.”

“You’re hopeless.”

“I like it.” Ilya shrugs. “Feels like could be home, maybe.”

The house next door is also for sale, the agent mentions on the way out, and Ilya can see the gears in Hollander’s head work in real time. “No,” Ilya says firmly.

Ilya might spend the next ten years here, or he might not. His contract with Ottawa is only for a year, but he has a good feeling about it. He stands on the narrow sidewalk and takes a final look at the house, imagining the way he will fill it out, turn it into a home. It is good to have something that is just his, his own life, intertwined with Hollander’s but distinct. Ilya takes a moment to absorb the novelty of making his own decisions, stacking his own deck.

He will buy the house. It will hollow out his savings, but money comes and money goes. More is going these days. He gritted his teeth through a call with Alexei after the news dropped, another set of remonstrations on his character, how he abandoned his family for his perversions. “We are done,” he told Alexei, when they’d both finished shouting. “Done. No more. I will pay the doctors directly. Do not call me again, Alyosha. I will not answer.”

He has nothing left on Ilya. There is nothing more that he can threaten him with. It is a nearly unbearable grief to know that he will never go back. No matter his failings, Grigori is still his father, the half of him still on this earth.

A small part of Ilya had held out hope that things would blow over. Russia is a part of him. It is his heritage and his childhood and the language that he finds first on his tongue each morning. It might have been safe in time, if Ilya had made the right motions and kept himself out of further trouble. He had known, as he watched Hollander post the announcement, that this was the clean end to that hope. 

He doesn’t know how it is possible to feel so deeply, all at once. Each crush of grief comes backended by a relief so overwhelming it threatens to drown him. And love, a tender, fluttering thing, the kick in his heart when he meets Hollander’s eyes in the backseat of the agent’s car.

Ilya starts to tease out the things that are his from the mix of their possessions, piling them into an open cardboard box in the kitchen.

“There’s another week before the draft,” Hollander complains, when Ilya forces him to strip off a stolen shirt, ostensibly so Ilya can pack it up.

“Oh, now you hate planning.”

“Such an asshole,” Hollander says, and grabs the shirt back. “Go pack something else. You can take the plant if you want.”

“Bug plant?”

“Spider.”

“Plant has no legs,” Ilya says sensibly, and dances out of reach. “This is mine,” he says, pointing at the bookshelf. His cup ring is there in a little glass display box. “Only for winners, sorry.”

“Fuck you. I’m going to win it next year.” 

“You think so? You think new team will make it to playoffs? I think maybe it is Vancouver’s year.”

“You’re the fucking coach, shouldn’t you be telling me Ottawa’s going to win? Where’s your team spirit?”

“Yes, Ottawa’s number one draft pick will score three hundred goals and win the cup. Easy season.”

“See? Don’t know why they even need you.”

“If you win,” Ilya says, his heart kicking double time, “I will be there. I will come on the ice.”

Hollander nods seriously. “We’ll get you one of the jackets.”

“I will join your WAG group chat.”

“They’ll kick you out after like two days.”

Ilya gasps. “Me? I am, what is the word? Best for it. Very charming. Big dick.”

“Obnoxious.”

Ilya knows that word well. He’s been called it more times than he can count, in every version of hockey commentary. It’s never come with a toothy grin the way it does from Hollander, who flops down onto the sofa and kicks his leg up. It still gives him trouble some days, an ache that has yet to heal. Ilya rearranges them so that Hollander’s knee is on his lap so he can dig his thumb into the tight muscle.

“Job starts after the draft,” he says, pensive. “I will have to go to work.”

“I’ll help you put your IKEA couch together,” Hollander says, and grunts when Ilya’s thumb digs deeper.

“Wiebe says I can stay with him while I buy the house. Like billet for coaches. You want to fuck in his guest room?”

“He’ll love that.”

“You have heard from Farah?” Ilya has been trying to hold back on asking it. He knows it’s on Hollander’s mind every day. The draft is just a few days away. Every day there are new trades, draft picks and middling players shuttling across the continent. Ottawa picked up a two-way defenseman from Toronto for a third round pick, and Ilya thinks he might make a good fit on the special teams. Ilya’s Boston-then-Montreal rookie moved again, to Toronto this time, his third team in two seasons. Ilya wonders if he’ll bother unpacking this time.

“Nothing,” Hollander says. His leg jiggles under Ilya’s hands. They’re both impatient for it. 

Ilya touches his necklace. He knows better than to peg his hopes on it, but there are several teams in the Eastern Conference with cap space and offensive gaps. There is luck to everything: there are 32 teams in the league, seven of them in Canada. Eight, if he counts Buffalo, practically Canadians by proximity. Twelve teams are an easy trip from Ottawa. Three of those have cap space, two are on a known rebuild. 

He recites these facts every morning, trying, trying, not to hope too closely.

After all of the waiting, learning the result is almost underwhelming. San Jose makes a decision. Montreal makes another. Hollander gets a call early on the morning of the draft day, and stumbles to his feet, his voice still raspy with sleep. He wakes quickly, the expected deference of yes sir and it was an honor to represent the Metros making their way from his mouth.

He stares at his phone for a moment after he hangs up, like he’s confused, or like he’s upset, and for a moment Ilya worries that something awful has happened. 

“Is ok?” Ilya reaches for him, but Hollander holds his hand up.

A second later, his phone rings again. That is the pattern, Ilya knows. Two phone calls. One from the departing team’s GM, then another from the new team.

Hollander leaves the room to take the second call. Ilya can just hear the rise and fall of his voice. It goes longer than he expected. Maybe Hollander is being warned against being a distraction again. Maybe he is being told to keep his husband out of public sight.

Ilya’s stomach flips. He makes himself useful. He gets up and makes the bed and starts on coffee. He is cracking eggs and forcing his trembling hands to dice peppers when Hollander appears in the entryway. His face is pale and his mouth pressed tight. His eyes are wide and damp.

“So?” Ilya asks, braced for the worst. “Arizona? You will be Road Runner?” It’s the hardest team to get to from Ottawa. He knows all of them in order. He spent hours looking up flights, planning for contingencies.

“Not Arizona,” Hollander says, and takes an unsteady step into the kitchen. “Can I—is the coffee ready?”

“Hollander.”

“No, sorry. I’m just. In shock, I think.”

Ilya steps close and catches his face between his hands. “Is ok. Tell me.”

“Ottawa.”

Ilya frowns. “What about Ottawa? Me in Ottawa is a problem for them?”

“No, no.” Hollander’s face is open, his eyes brimming. “It’s Ottawa.”

“No,” Ilya says. The world tilts under his feet and he reaches for the counter to steady himself. “Say it again.”

“It’s Ottawa,” Hollander says, and his voice is thick like he’s been crying or like he’s about to, and Ilya thinks he might as well. “I’m going to Ottawa.”

“Fuck,” Ilya says, and closes his eyes. Hollander’s arms wind around his neck, and then Hollander is kissing him, wet and messy, his mouth still morning-sour. I can have this, Ilya thinks, dazed. Every morning.

“How?” Ilya asks, desperate. “How?”
“Does it matter?”

“No,” Ilya says decisively, and abandons the coffee and the eggs and drags Hollander by the wrist towards the bedroom.

“I have to call my mom before she finds out on TSN,” Hollander says, though he gives only the barest resistance.

Ilya shoves his hand down Hollander’s boxers. He might die, he thinks, if he doesn’t get his mouth on him right now, here, in the hallway, or in the bed, or in his new house, every day for the rest of their lives.

“I have to—”

“You have to shut up,” Ilya tells him. His mind is everywhere, bounding from hope and love and a relief that sets every muscle lax. “Oh, shit,” he says, his thoughts settling suddenly. “Do you think house next door is still for sale?”

Ilya gets the details later that afternoon, when they’re both cleaned up and sitting in the Hollanders’ homey cottage. Hollander was, very briefly, part of San Jose’s team, a three-way deal between Ottawa and San Jose and Montreal, draft picks and packaged up players shuffling between the teams. Ottawa traded their first pick, something so rare that Ilya’s stomach clenches just to think about it. Wiebe’s Finnish player will go somewhere else to be someone else’s franchise-making bet. Ottawa will have Shane Hollander. Ottawa will have Ilya Rozanov on the bench.

Ilya knows that it is, in some ways, a sour trade. Hollander wants to win cups. He wants to be the best, and it is a difficult thing to be an exceptional player on a middling team. Ilya does not know if he would have chosen this if he had been given the choice—maybe Toronto or Nashville, established teams with deep cup runs. But maybe that is a gift as well, that they will never have to grapple with that choice. Another card turns, the decision made for them.

They will win for him, Ilya resolves. It may take years to build the team around him, but there are years to come.

“I told you this house was too small,” Hollander says, as he lugs another box through the door. The movers won’t be there until the next day with the furniture. Hollander wanted to get a hotel for the night, but Ilya wants to stay in his new house. He would sleep on the floor if he had to. They compromised with an air mattress, which means they will probably be sleeping on the floor by the morning anyway.

“Not my fault you are hoarder,” Ilya says, and settles the white-striped plant on the kitchen counter. “Is good here?”

Hollander brushes damp hair back from his face. The day is over-warm, a baking heat that wafts in through the open door. “Yeah. That’s enough sun.”

“Good for the air,” Ilya says thoughtfully. “Maybe we get another.”

“Where would you put it?” Hollander leans one hip against the counter. “By the time we get furniture in here there’s not going to be any room left. I’ve got a call out to a broker for gym equipment. Same stuff as the cottage okay?”

“Is fine,” Ilya confirms. Already the house is starting to fill in with the detritus of two lives. Hollander’s boxed up possessions are piled in the bedroom. Lillian’s food bowl sits next to the fridge in the kitchen. Ilya has a list of things they need: shower curtain and a broom and tea towels for the kitchen. It is the type of shopping that Hollander would hire someone for, but Ilya wants to go to the supermarket with him, wants to wander the aisles and bicker over the color of the bath mat.

They haven’t decided yet whether they’ll keep Ilya’s house, and Ilya is secretly glad that the unit next door was already under contract by the time Hollander asked. For all his complaining, the rowhouse is barely smaller than Hollander’s Montreal apartment, and neither of them have the time to devote to managing construction. 

Hollander should have somewhere bigger, though. Already they have found people waiting outside, phone cameras raised to capture the scandal of Rozanov and Hollander carrying cardboard boxes. Ilya is glad they have his house for now. It feels like he has splashed forward in time, skipping ahead twenty spaces and dragging Hollander into his Ottawa home.

“Rent is due on the first,” Ilya says.

“What?” Hollander splutters it through laughter. The chime of an ice cream truck trickles in through the open door.

“Mm, yes,” Ilya says, and drags Hollander in by his hips. “I know you do not have money, though. Poor hockey player. We will find other ways for you to pay.”

“Oh,” Hollander says. His tongue rests briefly on his lower lip. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, and leans in to kiss him, deep and filthy. Hollander is panting slightly when they part, his lips shiny. “Manual labor. Go fetch boxes.”

“Oh, fuck you.”
“Later,” Ilya promises with a wink.

They go for lunch when the car is empty. The neighborhood is compact with tree-lined streets, and they walk side by side past the trendy shops with their chalkboard signs. Ilya reaches out and Hollander takes a step to the side.

“Hollander,” Ilya reproaches, and Hollander won’t look at him. “They have seen you suck my dick. You can hold my hand on the sidewalk.”

“That's not helping,” Hollander says. They stop there, in front of a tiny flower shop. Ilya puts his hands on his hips.

“No?”

Hollander’s eyes close, just for a moment. He sucks in a breath. He is counting things, Ilya knows. The bird songs and the smell of the blooming roses. The weight of his shirt on his skin. The heat of the sun. “Okay,” he agrees, and Ilya beams.

“Very brave,” he says, and tugs Hollander by the hand down the street.

They have another few days together before it all starts up again. The seasons come and the seasons go. Ilya is expected at Ottawa’s development camp to back up Wiebe and corral the wet-behind-the-ears prospects through drills and scrimmages. 

Hollander hasn’t quite said goodbye to the cottage for the season. He bounces back and forth between Ottawa and Lanaudiere for a month, most of his time spent in the rink or the gym as he bulks up his muscle for the season.

 “I have real job,” Ilya tells him one day, when he comes home to find Hollander in his gym clothes, downing a disgusting protein smoothie. “Cannot sit on the couch all day like you.” All the same, Ilya wraps his hands around his thighs in the evenings and marks how the gap grows as Hollander puts on a mouth-watering array of muscle. 

Regular training camp doesn’t start until September, but Ilya’s job keeps him busy. He spends long days reviewing tape and working with Wiebe and the special teams coaches he has pulled together. It feels as though every day he comes home to something new in the house: a piece of art that Hollander doesn’t understand, but thinks Ilya would like, or a plant with glossy green leaves and white blossoms which fall off one by one over the next two weeks.

He is happy, he realizes with a start one evening, as he pulls his obnoxiously orange car into the garage of his small, sensible house. It is the happiness that filters through contentment, inviting as deep water.

Ilya thinks sometimes about his mother. He wants to believe that she would have been proud of him. She would have loved Hollander. Shane. That much he is sure of. Ilya cannot fathom anyone would not not. He doesn’t know what she would have thought of the rest of it. His memories of her are seen as through frosted glass. He remembers her smile and her hand on his hair during thunderstorms when Ilya huddled under the blankets. She would have liked the house, he thinks. She always liked the river.

Training camp comes before Ilya is really ready for it. They have their end of summer lunch with the Pikes in Montreal the week before, and Ilya says a quiet farewell to the city that was his unwitting host for so long. The twins do not care that Ilya is famous again, but Ilya has always enjoyed the rush of being stopped for autographs and photos. He makes Hollander take the photographs whenever he can, delighted by the mingled amusement and annoyance that it incites in him.

“Have to stop at old apartment,” Ilya tells Hollander when they emerge from the Pike household, Ilya’s fingernails a vibrant blue. Hollander is by all appearances unaware that he has glitter in his hair, and Ilya does not intend to tell him. Ilya settles Lillian into her carrier.

“I sold it,” Hollander says, as though Ilya does not know this.

“Quick visit,” Ilya says, and bustles Hollander into the passenger side of the car where he cannot waylay their plans.

“Why?”

“Alice, you know? Neighbor? Give me dog?”

“Neighbor Alice who is five thousand years old,” Hollander agrees. “Why? She have another dog for you?”

“Would be nice, yes? Friend for Lily?” Hollander gives him a familiar unimpressed look. “No, not for new dog. Her son is visiting.”

“Do you know him?”

“No.” Ilya grins. “Is big surprise for him.”

As they walk through the apartment door, Ilya thinks, briefly, that Alice’s son is going to pass out. He tells them how had been horrified to learn that his mother was friends with Ilya Rozanov and hadn’t told him. Alice holds her hands up at this with a how was I supposed to know who he was that has Ilya cackling.

Hollander, as is usual for him, looks mildly constipated to be recognized. He would play hockey in an empty stadium, Ilya thinks, if he did not need so badly to prove that he is worthy of this place he has tunneled out.

They carpool to the first day of camp. Ilya needs to be there earlier, but Hollander wants to go together, to walk into the building side by side even if there is no one to see them arrive, and Ilya cannot think of a reason to say no.

“Bus is leaving,” Ilya calls into the house, keys jangling from his fingers. The blender whirrs inside the house—Hollander must be rinsing out the last of his disgusting goop. “I am going without you! Three. Two.”

Hollander flicks him a single finger as he appears in the entryway and rummages for his shoes. It’s earlier than Ilya needs to leave, but he feels like a child on the first day of school. He’s met most of the players already. He and Wiebe settled into a rhythm during the development camp, and he has high hopes for the rookies. Hollander is not technically required at this stage of camp, but Ilya does not think he will ever shake his need to prove himself.

Ilya takes a moment before they leave to survey the house, the sliver of it he can see from the entry. His things are mingled with Hollander’s throughout. Their trophies are next to each other on a cramped shelf. Hollander will have more of them soon. There is a bookcase in the living room with Hollander’s hockey books alongside an elementary Russian primer. Ilya likes to tease him for his baby’s vocabulary, but every time Hollander sounds out a new word, another piece of the crystalline fear inside Ilya cracks and drops away.

Ilya does not have everything he thought his life would turn out to be. He had expected women and hockey and wealth, fast cars and a faster lifestyle. He has, if he counts them, a tiny white dog and a husband and a gold ring around one finger. He has a quiet that rests in the hollow of his bones and a contentment he thought would never come.

He had expected to spend his life following orders and going where he was told, selling his body to hockey at the varied whims of his agent and his father and whichever GM owned his contract for that year, all while trying to carve out a corner of his life for himself.

He does not need to do that now. He still has the fast car, the bright orange beast that Hollander hates. His life still revolves around the rhythms of the sport, but he is no longer turning cards that someone else has dealt. This is a life he built for himself with his own determination, not hidden away inside Hollander’s, but adjacent. They are linked rings, intertwined. Inextricable.

He has hockey. It is a different feeling to stand by the ice and watch a team execute the strategy that he has dictated for them. He misses playing, but he finds he doesn’t mind as much as he might have expected. It is a new life, forged from the scraps of the old, stronger for the remaking.

Hollander finishes tying his shoes and tugs the edge of his knee brace up. “Ready?”

“I have been ready, Hollander. We would already be gone if you did not move at a teaspoon an hour.”

Hollander kisses him, there by the open door. “You’re an asshole,” he says, but all Ilya can hear is I love you.

“Come.” Ilya jerks his head to the door. They need to go before he makes them late. “Let’s go meet your team.”

“What is the point of preseason,” Ilya asks Wiebe, leaning heavily against the boards, “if we drag only newbies to New York. Need to see how the top line plays.”

Hollander is back in Ottawa, and a cloying longing has been crawling up Ilya’s skin since their plane left. They haven’t even been apart for forty-eight hours yet. It’s embarrassing.

“Should be glad we brought you,” Wiebe says. He has his arms crossed against the rink-side chill, eyes on a recent call-up, a promising third liner. “I know you’re enjoying the attention.”

Ilya has already had a series of baffling encounters, not least of them Scott Hunter dragging his ossified carcass over to tell Ilya that he was inspired by him. He shouldn’t even be playing in this game.

“Is not my fault,” Ilya protests, though it is, if he’s being honest. It’s fun to catch the attention from the crowd. A pair of girls had posted up behind the team benches with the type of signs that he’s used to seeing during warmups, offering a trade of friendship bracelets for signed pucks. Ilya has two string bracelets knotted around his left wrist now, hollanov displayed in clever knots.

Wiebe jerks his chin at a winger they’re trying out on the first line. “What do you think about him?”

“Too slow,” is Ilya’s honest assessment. “Cannot keep up with Hollander. Will be passing to air all season if you pair them.”

None of them are really good enough to keep up. There are a few shining points of talent on the team, but Ilya’s hopes are riding on mid-season trades. Next season, maybe, if they draw another good draft pick.

On the ice, the players are finishing warmups. Their second round draft pick, a pink-faced eighteen-year-old from Finland who, irritatingly, already has a better grasp of English than Ilya, passes one of the pucks through the camera cutout to a little girl in pigtails and an Admirals shirsey.

“Traitor.”

“Remember being that young?”

Ilya doesn’t feel that much older. He remembers his first warmup on Boston ice. He remembers the first pretty girl he saw wearing a Rozanov jersey, and the way it had sent a thrill through him that had nothing to do with the eyes she was making at him. “No. Is embarassing. Only pucks for Centaurs fans. I will talk to him after the game.”

“You do that. Think we’ll win this one?”

“No,” Ilya says honestly. It’s a lopsided matchup. Hunter, somehow still on the ice with bones that should have crumbled to dust years ago, is leading up a most-vets lineup. It will be an educational experience for the rookies.

“Maybe if we brought Hollander.”

“Hollander? Who is that? New fourth liner? Backup goalie?”

Wiebe doesn’t take the bait, just smiles cryptically. “I’ve been thinking about that first line.”

“Why? Find another Hollander to trade for?”

“I thought we might try a Rozanov,” Wiebe says, staring out at the ice.

“What?”

“Legal has some thoughts,” Wiebe says. He raps twice on the cap rail, knuckles sharp on the plastic. “They think we can appeal your suspension. Get the players’ union involved.”

“They said I cannot skate,” Ilya says through numb lips.

“League says a lot of things,” Wiebe says. On the jumbotron, warmup time is ticking down. “No guarantees. Boston terminated your contract, but I’m sure they’d have things to say if you were back on the ice. You were on a bridge contract, so worst case we wait it out. Interested?”

Ilya looks out at the ice where the skaters, his skaters are circling each other, half of them laid out in frog stretches on the ice. He’s so close he can taste it. He wants everything, a greedy, gulping feeling. He wants to swallow it all down, gorge himself on this feeling. He wants hockey and Hollander and this life, this precious thing that flutters in the palm of his hands.

“Yes,” he says, his voice thin. “Yes, please.”

“Good,” Wiebe says. He taps on the plastic again, looks at Ilya and grins. “Now get your shit together. We’ve got a game to win.”