Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov/Svetlana Vetrova

Characters:

Svetlana Vetrova, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

this is a friendship focused fic with a fair bit of sexual detail in it, and it is also about the shane/ilya relationship but shane isn't present, neither gen nor ship fic but a secret third thing, Unreliable Narrator, Multiple Unreliable Narrators, difficult to tag see notes for content preview, aromantic svetlana

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Series: Working Title "Ilya Rozanov, Public Bisexual Menace"

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-10 Words: 6,112 Chapters: 1/1

Hide nothing from your friend and from your friend fear nothing

Summary

If worst came to worst, Svetlana would either talk Ilya - and Jane - through humanitarian visa applications, or find them someone who could. That would involve making many things public that neither Ilya nor Jane would want public. She would marry Ilya before it came to that, for the sake of Jane and whatever he was protecting. If Jane wasn't Russian - if he was Indonesian or Saudi or even another athlete - she would still do whatever they needed. The fact of the matter was that Ilya Rozanov was the only man she could actually imagine marrying; but this was really the only scenario in which she could imagine marrying him.

Notes

This fic is difficult to tag; in lieu of tagging if you would like a sense of what you may find here, see endnotes for a list of working titles for the concept work from which this eventually cohered.

Many thanks to be_themoon for hashing out concepts (go read her take on the aromantic svetlana agenda when you're done here) and beta-reading.

Title loosely paraphrased from Book III para 6 of Aelred of Rievaulx's De Spirituali Amicitia, in a section which is itself loosely paraphrasing Book III para 134 of Ambrose of Milan's De Officiis. Be_themoon tried to find me nice, normal title sources, like songs and poetry, but I am incorrigible.

When Svetlana had said she was here for Ilya, whatever he needed, she meant it. She would marry him, if he needed it. She would definitely talk him through the other options first. Her Papa had gone back to Russia, unlike a lot of players of his era, but if Sergei Vetrov's daughter couldn't get a foot in the door with an immigration lawyer, Sergei Vetrov's daughter wouldn't be running her own business convincing rich men that sexy cars would make them sexy.

That didn't mean she wouldn't willingly be publicly linked to Ilya Rozanov, if what he - and Jane, whoever Jane was - needed it. Svetlana wasn't a fool: whoever Jane was, Jane needed the camouflage as much as Ilya. An actor, perhaps. Or maybe just some guy who happens to be Russian.

Svetlana liked the idea of that, for Ilya: someone he could talk to. Someone who had come to America and found he could be queer here, safely. Who loved that about America the same way she did (well, most of America. And even the worst parts of America, at this point, were not the worst of Russia, in that respect). But someone who - like her - would give up a lot for Ilya Rozanov. Maybe Jane could have had a fairly normal life, as an unremarkable guy with an unremarkable boyfriend; maybe his family back home wouldn't like it, or maybe they'd be okay but Jane and his family would know where to draw the line between Jane And His Boyfriend and Jane, Russian Son. Jane would be giving up that possibility, and risking worse for himself and his family, if he were dating Ilya Rozanov.

If worst came to worst, Svetlana would either talk Ilya - and Jane - through humanitarian visa applications, or find them someone who could. That would involve making many things public that neither Ilya nor Jane would want public. She would marry Ilya before it came to that, for the sake of Jane and whatever he was protecting. If Jane wasn't Russian - if he was Indonesian or Saudi or even another athlete - she would still do whatever they needed. The fact of the matter was that Ilya Rozanov was the only man she could actually imagine marrying; but this was really the only scenario in which she could imagine marrying him.

When she and Ilya flew back from Moscow - Ilya snoring on her shoulder like he hadn't slept for a week, and perhaps he hadn't - it didn't surprise her that he didn't say much upon landing, and didn't text her for a few days after. Barely hearing from him until his team was knocked out of the playoffs seemed normal.

Rozanov senior’s passing didn’t change much, back in Boston. None of Ilya’s paperwork needed to be updated, because Svetlana had walked into Raider’s headquarters during Ilya’s first week as a rookie, and signed the team lawyer’s recommended package of documents. That she was Sergei Vetrov’s daughter had probably helped: instead of explaining her family or his, they made it clear that they both knew that temporarily disabling concussions were a risk of the job, and Svetlana was, despite her age, both well informed about the medical needs of hockey players and better able to communicate with the Rozanov family than the Raiders were. The financial paperwork had slid past easily under that logic, although she and Ilya both knew that that would be the point of contention if something did happen to him. If Ilya had a will she didn’t know about it, and nor did she care. The important part was that the league would call her if he was hurt on American or Canadian ice. Grigori and Alexei would not have any say. If she had the final say, she would know when to contact them anyway, and when to ignore them. She would know when to call on Sergei Vetrov, if she had to.

None of that had changed. It wasn’t even unusual for Ilya to drop out of touch for a while. Svetlana considered her last serious conversation with Ilya and thought: she would know when to contact Jane, if Ilya gave her Jane’s number.

He didn’t. She resolved to sit him down and discuss practicalities over the summer, once the season was over and he’d had time to recover a little.

Not hearing from Ilya when Scott Hunter went and fucking kissed a man, on the ice, after winning the Stanley Cup? That was weird. It was so weird that Svetlana didn't message Ilya herself. Ilya must have been speaking to Jane about it instead.

She felt… not jealous, exactly. Lonely, perhaps. Disoriented, maybe. She knew he slept with men - and with other women. That had never caused the weird hollow feeling in her gut that she had now, when Scott Hunter had kissed a man on national TV and she was not the first person Ilya contacted. The feeling got worse when Ilya never contacted her about it. Not in fifteen minutes, or two days, or a week. Not "I had to talk to Jane first but…" Nothing.

Fuck's sake. It was all so long ago, but when Ilya had started hooking up with Sascha, Svetlana - back in Moscow after a year of American high school, armed with a whole new vocabulary and high on the possibilities that opened up - had been his confidante. She knew - she knew very well - that Ilya Rozanov had arrived in Boston unbothered by the fact that he both sucked dick and dined at the pussy buffet, and she credited her teenage self for facilitating that. She'd held his hand - hell, she'd fucked him in the ass - through a few more bisexual crises, since then. She'd taught him the fucking word bisexual.

She'd made sure he heard the word queer outside of locker room insults. Even if he never used it for himself; even if her hookup career with women had turned out to be less life-changing than she, as a teen, had hoped: he knew one person who could say “I’m here, and I’m queer”. Even - no, especially - given that Sergei Vetrov’s daughter was not and would never be in a position to be carrying placards in the Dyke March. She had to say it quietly, but she would say it. To Ilya. For Ilya. For herself, too; but she was not sure that she would have put the same weight on that side of herself, had she not seen that Ilya needed to hear from that fuzzy, possible, Americanised version of Svetlana.

Svetlana didn't know what words Jane used to describe himself, or how Ilya described himself to Jane. She didn't even know what language they spoke together. Ilya disappeared for a while that summer, and returned with a far-away look in his eyes, but when she asked him about Jane, he just shook his head. She didn't need to ask "are you and Jane exclusive": she could tell from the change in how he greeted her. Ilya kissed her cheek and told her she looked good, but the hug was lighter and less familiar. Sex was out of the question, and so too was lying around on his couch slumped into each other like teenagers who knew each other too well for personal space.

Svetlana had already realised and decided that she would do whatever Ilya Rozanov needed from her. She hadn't expected this, actually. She'd considered the possibility of a monogamous Ilya Rozanov - she'd thought about it the last time they'd fucked. It had been a lazy hookup, hardly either of their best efforts, but one of the benefits that came with their friendship was that they both knew they didn't need to impress one another in bed. She also knew Ilya well enough to know when he wasn't entirely present with her. Jane had been part of his life for years by then, but something had changed, and she had wondered if Ilya wanted to be monogamous with Jane. She'd wondered how long it would be before he realised that.

She hadn't expected this strange, closed-off Ilya, who didn't want to talk to her about the man who had clearly changed his life. But she knew herself and she knew her priorities: this hurt, but not as much as losing Ilya would hurt. If this was what he needed, this she could be. She sent him silly memes and hockey chat. They talked puck and traded complaints about the spartan amenities of charter airports (Ilya) and the tedium of commercial flights (Svetlana). When he went silent for days and whole weeks, she hoped he was with Jane.

When Svetlana did find out about Jane - or rather, find out who Jane was - it was baffling, and unpredicted, and so very Ilya.

Ilya had said to her, last time they hung out, "Hey, Sveta. I need to borrow your credit card. And your mailing address."

She had been a little surprised: Ilya Rozanov, freshly drafted Boston Raider and new-to-America baby bisexual, had used her card and her mailing address to buy toys. He'd bought her a significantly higher-end harness than she would have paid for on her own account, at the time. She still has it. It's her favourite, and she's since bought several more from the same boutique. Nevertheless, that was years ago; since then, Ilya had acquired assorted toys, including but not limited to nipple clamps, bullet vibes, and a Hitachi Wand under his own name, or by walking into a shop in person. She remembered the latter, specifically, because she had benefited from it a few times, and it stood out in comparison to the toys her other hookups were likely to own.

Of course, when Ilya asked, she had handed over her card. Anything he needed, and if what he needed was to order something very gay without linking it to the name "Ilya Rozanov", that's what she was there for. She would even give him and Jane the privacy of not enquiring what the gift was or which of them it was for, as long as she got to tease Ilya a little about needing to involve her in his sex toy purchases still.

She picked up the parcel from the mail room, honestly and truly expecting one of those unmarked boxes that mail order sex toys come in. She found a soft mailing bag very clearly labelled Boutique des Metros de Montréal.

Ilya was not expecting to find Svetlana in his house. The fact that this unsettled him rather than delighting him… well that just unsettled him more. He used to feel … warm, fond (and yes, turned on) by the way Sveta walked in and out of his house like she owned it. Since that conversation they had in Moscow - maybe before that, but definitely since then, she had given him space. She had given him and Shane space, even if she didn't know who Shane was.

Because she had been an angel about this, and because she had been an angel about so many things before this, and because Ilya had never been able to resist an opportunity to be a weird little shit, Ilya had asked something of her that he had not asked since his rookie year. Her credit card. Her mailing address.

And so, Svetlana was in his house - in his kitchen - in the dusk, holding … oh. Well. He learned something today. He learned that hockey merch didn’t come in boxes, and it came very clearly and enthusiastically branded. Ilya had not known this, because at no point since the age of fourteen had he needed to buy hockey merch. People drowned him in hockey merch. If there was a baseball cap out there that said "The MLH is A Good Institution", Ilya probably had one of it, sent to him for free and ignored for free.

"Rozanov," Sveta said to him, and unlike everyone else - except possibly Shane and even then Ilya wasn't always sure - she said it in a way that meant she knew he was up to something, but she also wasn't about to dress him down.

"You sent Montréal merch to my house. Are you testing me?"

Ilya pivoted to look at her. Svetlana met his eyes for a moment, then looked down at the mailing bag again.

"What, do you order me a Hollander jersey to see how I react?" That sentence was in English but just slightly wrong. It was a kind of wrong that was rare for her, because Sveta was truly bilingual. Ilya was just faking it - but he paid attention. He had always paid attention, and so he noticed which language Sveta used with him and in which context. He had already noticed that when she felt unsure of him, she tried to stick to Russian. He wasn’t sure what kind of anxiety this question betrayed, but it was an anxiety, certainly.

“No,” Ilya said, swiping the package from her. “Is for me.” Svetlana arched an eyebrow at him, and he realised she had known immediately, without opening the package, that it would be Hollander-specific, whatever was inside. He’d wondered, a few times - after she’d commented on Shane being hot in that stupid house-and-yoga video, for starters. Svetlana knew his type, or types. They hadn’t just fucked their way through their friendship, they’d wingmanned and gossiped throughout their teens and twenties. Ilya didn’t have one specific type, in either men or women, but nor did Svetlana, and on a purely aesthetic level their tastes overlapped.

The problem was, he’d never told Svetlana about Shane. He hadn’t told her after they met in boring Regina, Saskatchewan - because there was nothing to tell, but that in itself was weird. Svetlana knew puck. She hadn’t asked him about Hollander on a personal level, but she’d asked him about the Russia v Canada game. Ilya shit-talked to her about hockey players all the time: this guy snores, this guy talks too much, that stupid American assumed everyone would understand him. He also talked to her about his rivals - who (if anyone) in the JHL was a threat to him, what weaknesses he would exploit, and, yes, which of them were hot.

Shane hadn’t introduced himself to Ilya to flirt, of course not, and Ilya hadn’t fallen in love at first appallingly awkward encounter. But he hadn’t wanted to laugh at Shane, either - at least, not behind his back. Shane had walked up to introduce himself to Ilya, because they were both good at hockey and that was the polite and sportsmanlike thing to do (and Shane cared about that). Shane had been so obviously bad at choosing the right social register that somehow Ilya had the upper hand, even though Ilya’s English was terrible. (He knows now it wasn’t, not in the grand scale of things. But the Finns and the Swiss and the fucking Latvians outdid him - or at least, the talkative ones did, and those were the ones who were approaching other countries’ players, trying to bond.) Ilya had wanted to protect him, if only from the consequences of his own earnestness.

Ilya had wanted to thank him, too. He wasn’t thinking about it that logically at the time, but when he had given Shane shit about “you will not be so nice when we beat you”, it was a gesture, of a sort. Ilya hadn’t been able to keep up with the Americans, or the Finns, or even the fucking Latvians, enough to shit-talk them. He hadn’t known that Shane would struggle as much or more; he hadn’t known that it would take years before Shane figured him out enough to chirp back, but he’d wanted him to. He’d wanted to give Hollander shit and have Hollander dish it right back to him.

The real exception was that he hadn’t wanted to turn Hollander into a joke for Sveta. Or anyone else, really. He’d wanted to beat him on the ice, he’d wanted to show him up, and he’d wanted to get his attention, which necessitated talking shit about him as a competitor, but he hadn’t wanted to really mock him. Perhaps that’s how he landed on “boring”. The league had done half the work for them, at least by the time of their rookie All Star weekend. Ilya was flashy, aggressive, troublemaking. Shane was dedicated, humble, focused. “Boring” described all the things that people loved about Shane, rather than skewering his real vulnerabilities. But that he never even privately laughed about Shane with Sveta? That was unusual.

He also hadn’t told Sveta about Shane when they first hooked up. Or when Ilya first realised he wanted to fuck Shane, but Shane wouldn’t take that flying leap into the unknown with him on the spur of the moment. He hadn’t told her - even in vague terms - when he bluntly sat her down and asked her had she heard of pegging? Would she do this with him? He’d showed her informative websites and tasteful erotica, instead. In his head, at the time, Hollander was a hookup and Sveta was his best friend. He’d needed to know, before he fucked Hollander, in order to make it good for Hollander, who was scared and wanted Ilya anyway. Sveta hadn’t needed to know about Hollander any more details than he gave her about other hookups. If he’d given her fewer details, well, that was because Hollander was hockey famous.

In hindsight, he could probably track himself falling for Shane on a graph of things he’d chosen not to tell Svetlana. And after - well, after everything, it was hard to know where to start. After Shane had been hurt. After Scott fucking Hunter had kissed his unremarkable boyfriend on the ice. After Ilya agreed to spend two weeks with Shane. Also after “I love you” and after meeting Yuna and David and after Shane planning, after Shane’s terrifying beautiful many-year plan. But very significantly: after Shane had said “Don’t marry Svetlana,” and Ilya had felt relief, Ilya had had no idea how to talk to her about Shane.

Sveta hadn’t asked him. He hoped she might have put two and two together and figured everything out, the way she’d figured him out so many times.

Well. It was too late now to go back and tell her in 2008, or 2010, or six months ago. He could do her the favour of acknowledging that she fucking knew him, and he could be honest. He could do that in a moment, after he’d ripped the bag open with his teeth.

“It is for me,” he said, pulling out a Hollander 24 jersey. He couldn't quite look at her, but he kept talking anyway. “You know: I go to games and if Marleau has a girl this month she’s in a Marleau jersey. I watch all Shane’s games unless I am playing at the same time. He is the best, the best of everyone who is not me. But the team is not always all so good - you know this. So I cheer for the Metros. I even cheer for Hayden Pike.” Sveta had been silent throughout this speech, but she snorted at that. “But I cheer for the Metros because I want Hollander’s team to be good enough for him, I want that. I want that for my boyfriend.”

There was a pause and by the time Ilya forced himself to look at Sveta, she was … she was wide-eyed and open mouthed.

“Holy shit,” she said.

“You… you did not know?” That was on Ilya, he knew it was, but a small part of him was still disappointed she hadn’t figured him out.

“I knew you thought he was hot,” Sveta said, and she punched him in the arm. Christ. He’d missed her roughhousing with him. “I didn’t know… I didn’t know he was Jane.”

Later, Svetlana cast her mind back over her speculations about Ilya and “Jane”, and she did have to admit that it was a little odd that she had considered “another Russian” and “maybe an actor” but and even “another athlete”, but not “another hockey player”. It made sense of the secrecy, and now that she thought about it, she’d noticed that Ilya definitely found Hollander hot around the same time she started wondering about “Jane”. That weird period where Ilya was smoking again, and calling on the benefits part of their friends-with-benefits deal more often (she’d known something was wrong, but so many things periodically went slightly wrong with Ilya that she hadn’t found it unusual) was roughly when Hollander had been dating Rose Landry.

If someone had asked her to nominate a male athlete Ilya Rozanov would date, she might have picked… what was his name. Rippon? The figure skater whose costumes looked like clubwear. But Rippon was publicly out, in a way Ilya couldn’t be. So perhaps a footballer - any code, that would have seemed a good match. All of them soaked in sports bro bullshit, but maybe Ilya and the hypothetical football bro would both bond and learn from the differences between them. Oh - yes, of course. She would have expected that hypothetical football Jane would be less famous, less visible, less… well. Less good, but not because she would have expected Ilya to need the upper hand. She would have expected to find that Ilya and hypothetical football Jane had figured out that they were under such similar pressures, as sportsmen, despite the difference in skill and fame, that they could hash out the pressures of being queer sportsmen.

Svetlana had never considered the one person who did not need to figure out the similarity between the pressure on Ilya as the top of the top players and himself, because he was also the top of the top players, in the same fucking sport. Because she had never considered that, she was less pushy than she otherwise might have been. It took her a few days after to think it through, but her instincts on the spot had been right.

The long version was: Ilya talked to her about hockey. Ilya talked to her about sex. Ilya talked to her about family, about Russia, about all kinds of things, but not about love. Not about romance, all that shit. Their entire relationship hinged on neither of them asking if the other wanted that. If Ilya had found a woman to fall in love with, a woman to introduce to his teammates and mention to the media; a woman to marry, settle down with, take back home to Russia, it would have been easier to explain. At no point would Shane Hollander be easy to explain.

Svetlana couldn’t have understood or even asked about that, with Ilya standing in his kitchen, barely looking at her, clutching a Hollander jersey like it was a baby’s comforter and saying the word boyfriend. She had the good sense to make explaining or understanding a problem for later. Part of her remembered Ilya Rozanov, Boston’s All-Star Rookie, pestering his way into more of her life than was convenient for her college timetable, insisting she should fuck him and he’d buy the equipment to do so. That had been the last time she’d seen him so on edge, so uncertain and spiky about it. It made some kind of sense: he’d come to America and re-run the bisexual crisis, but all these years later they’d never really talked about romance, or commitment, or any of that. They certainly hadn’t talked about it in terms of “so what should a queer hockey player do if he falls in love with a man, who is also a hockey player”?

“Well, go on,” she had said. “Does it fit?”

It had fitted. Svetlana bothered Ilya for days until he agreed that she could come over and watch the next Metros game which didn’t conflict with a Raiders game. On the appointed day, she let herself into Ilya’s place, and he appeared already wearing the Hollander jersey. It looked terribly wrong on him, but the look on his face looked right.

She hadn’t worn a Rozanov jersey, that seemed too much. She wore a miscellaneous Raiders t-shirt instead.

Ilya had some kind of bi-weekly meal delivery service that met his training needs. When Svetlana called up a delivery app to bring her Chinese he whined and said he wanted to join in. She kicked him, and said no. She ordered extra spring rolls to split between them. Ilya smiled at her, and she knew he knew that she had long ago figured him out: it was always better to be a bit harsh on him, when they were at home alone, rather than fret about what he ate on road trips, or hassle him on nights out. The extra spring rolls wouldn’t hurt much; it was skipping the ultra-high-protein subscription meals that would let him down.

Did Jane - Hollander, no, shit, Shane - have someone to kick him and yet order extra spring rolls? Perhaps it was Ilya, although she had even more trouble wrapping her head around that idea than she had wrapping her head around the idea of Ilya and Shane as a couple.

Ilya started the ESPN coverage well before the puck drop. He looked cute, in his boyfriend’s jersey, so keen to watch him play. It was fucking weird, because it was Ilya and it was Hollander of all people, but Svetlana suddenly realised that Hunter’s husband - Grady, she remembered his name, Grady - had probably at some point sat at home alone like this, watching Admirals games. Her heart ached for him, even though it was far behind the times for that ache.

She pulled out her phone and caught a picture of Ilya in profile, his gaze locked on the TV as the players filed out.

“Hey,” she said, while the anthem played. Ilya looked to her, and his eyes widened seeing her phone in hand. “Look cute,” she told him. She had to correct him a few times, as his efforts came out too grumpy or too seductive.

She selected the cutest two and hit “share”. She typed “Go Metros” and sent them to him. “For Shane,” she said, in case that wasn’t obvious.

Ilya bit his lip for a moment. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t know if I…”

“You don’t want to spoil the surprise?” Svetlana asked him. “Planning on jumping on a video call after this wearing nothing but Hollander’s jersey?”

Ilya’s ears went red. He’d definitely thought about it. Svetlana curled the fingers of her mind around the look on his face and tucked it away in her heart. She knew him. She still knew her Ilyushka, even though she had not known that he was in love, or what he would be like in love.

“I might not tell him,” Ilya said, looking back at the screen. Hollander was lining up for the face-off. It wasn’t much of a challenge: Detroit’s top centre was out injured, and the fellow facing Hollander now didn’t have Hollander’s reflexes or his impassive, impossible-to-read face. The game wasn’t a sure thing - Detroit’s defence line was very strong this season - but Hollander won the face-off easily.

“It’s kind of… stupid,” Ilya said, after Hollander’s first shift had ended.

Svetlana looked back at him and his shoulders were hunching in a little.

“Ilya.” He spared her a look, before his eyes snapped back to the game. Montréal’s third line had lost the puck and Detroit was on a breakaway, but - ah, Boiziau had it. Another shift change and Hollander was back out there, taking the pass almost as soon as his skates hit the ice. Detroit had him on the boards in seconds, but Pike was just as fast, slamming into their winger and levering him just a bit off Hollander, enough for Hollander to wriggle his way out somehow with the puck still in his control. Pike went down - hard to say if that was Detroit’s doing, or if he’d tangled with Hollander as Hollander fought free - but practically bounced up again. Nevertheless, he was too far behind, leaving Hollander open on the left.

Hollander sent the puck around the boards, Taylor racing for it on the right and snatching it out of reach of Detroit’s d-men. He tucked it into the right corner of the net, under the goalie’s leg like it was easy. Svetlana gave a little yelping cheer, which felt weird. She’d admired Hollander’s game, of course. She’d admired his body, plastered around town on billboards. Cheering was new.

Ilya hadn’t cheered, but he’d made a soft pleased noise and leaned further forward on the couch.She gave him a moment to watch as the camera zoomed in on Hollander and Pike piling on top of Taylor. Pike - easily one of the smiliest guys in the league - was laughing like his face might split in two. Hollander’s usually impassive face lit up and he gave Taylor, or Taylor’s helmet, a noogie.

Ilya’s face had an expression she’d never seen him direct at a hockey game before: not a beaming celebration, not intense focus, just open and smiling and fond.

“Ilyushka,” she said, and Ilya looked over at her while the teams re-formed on the ice. “He’s your boyfriend. If you feel this… this way,” she said, waving her hand at the fact of Ilya Rozanov in a Metros jersey, “then it’s not stupid.” Sveta knew enough WAGS to know that Pike’s wife wasn’t turning up to games in his jersey, let alone sitting at home wearing one. This little fantasy Ilya had built was honestly puck-bunny-ish behaviour, but she wasn’t about to call him on it. More to the point, if Ilya was looking at his teammates’ wives and girlfriends and envying them, instead of relishing his own freedom, then Hollander probably was too. Maybe he had been even before Ilya; if he was gay, it had probably hurt a bit knowing that even if he had someone, he’d have to hide it.

“You’re allowed to give him this,” she said, a little awkwardly.

Ilya looked at her with an expression so familiar and yet unexpected that she couldn’t understand it at all. He looked at her like she’d brought him the moon. Then he turned back to watching the game, but he reached out with one of his big hands and pulled her legs out from where she had curled them underneath her, pulling her feet into his lap.

The Metros won, but it was a close thing. 2-1 at the end of the first period and a punishing grind to keep it that way for the rest of the game. Ilya didn’t send the photos until Hollander was back on the ice at the start of the third period - perhaps he didn’t want to distract Hollander if Hollander happened to look at his phone in the intermission. Hollander didn’t seem like the type of guy to do that, but then, Ilya didn’t seem like the type of guy to be cuddled up on a couch in his boyfriend’s jersey.

“Ugh, he’s so boring,” Ilya muttered, as Hollander gave some perfect, sportsmanly answer to the media. Credit to Taylor, credit to Detroit’s formidable defence.

“One of the best defensive line-ups in the league,” Hollander was saying. “They made us work for this win, that’s for sure. Hmm,” he says, and there’s a tiny shift in his stoic demeanour. “I think they play in Boston soon? Good. Rozanov’s been having too easy a time lately.” He had, too - Buffalo and Brooklyn last week, neither of whom had put up much of a fight. “Best of luck to Detroit in their upcoming games,” Hollander said, and disengaged from the press.

Svetlana snorted with laughter. “You’re at home cheering for him, and he’s barracking for Detroit against you!”

“That little shit,” Ilya said, tone vicious - but the look on his face was pure delight. Well, that made sense of one of the more puzzling aspects of this situation. Ilya loved devious little shits (case in point: Svetlana Vetrova). Clearly, he liked bringing that out in Canada’s most well-behaved hockey player.

Svetlana was gathering up the take-out boxes when Ilya’s phone dinged. She couldn’t resist looking over at him and watching as his face shifted from anticipation to glee, and then - shock? Not bad shock, no anxiety. Arousal, possibly. It had been a very, very long time since Svetlana had seen Ilya both shocked and aroused.

Ilya put the phone down and looked at the TV for another moment. Then he stood up.

“Sveta, I love you, but I’m going to need to kick you out.”

Svetlana snickered at him. “Oh, you are going to do that video call in nothing but the jersey after all, huh?”

Ilya glared at her. “No, because it’s a fucking away game and my boyfriend rooms with Hayden Pike.” Oh, that was even better. Terrible for Ilya and Shane; Svetlana would be very sympathetic, when it stopped being hilarious. “In fact, Shane is going out after the game even though he doesn’t drink and hates crowds, while Pike calls his wife!”

“Right. So you’re not calling him, but you’re kicking me out.” Svetlana did her best to sound offended, but this was just so funny. Adorable, and funny. Ilya Rozanov, absolutely whipped. “What did your boy send you, naked locker room selfies?”

“No. Just a text.” Ilya looked hesitant for a moment, and Svetlana dropped the take-out boxes in the trash. She wasn’t going to push. She didn’t actually need to know.

“Hey Sveta,” Ilya said, walking with her to the door. “The pictures you took? On your phone?”

Oh. Right. “I can delete them,” she offered.

“No.” Ilya handed her her coat. “Don’t do that. Keep them. I will delete these, after tonight. Shane will delete them too, along with the pictures I’m about to take.” He snuck her a sidelong grin, like he wanted her to know - maybe not so much that he wanted her to know what he was about to do, but that he wanted to gloat a little about Shane Hollander asking him for nudes. Or more likely, nude-except-for-jersey pics, if Svetlana was any judge of hockey players.

The grin faded into something like resignation. It was familiar: somewhere between ‘I’ve been fooling around with Sasha, I’m curious, but of course it’s just fooling around’ and Jane becoming a serious constant in Ilya’s life, there had been ‘of course I like men, but it can only be for fooling around’, and that look of resignation had crept in to replace the excitement and pleasure in rebellion.

“Never have the TSA searched my phone or my computer,” Ilya said, and they both know that the TSA was not the only state surveillance to keep in mind. “The pictures you took are not so bad. I could say ‘I lost a bet, my friend Svetlana, she humiliates me by making me wear the Hollander jersey.’ But… I do not want to. This is not for them.”

Svetlana had two phones; one of them did not travel outside North America. “I’ll keep them on a USB stick or something,” she says. “No phones, no cloud. Just a USB stick labelled porn.”

Ilya’s eyes crinkled in a laugh that didn’t quite dislodge the wistful resignation. He leaned down to hug her. “One day I’ll be able to ask for them back.” he said, into her shoulder. Svetlana didn’t ask when that would be, or point out that he could put the photos on a USB stick never to cross the US border just as easily as she. She was lower-profile than Ilya, for one thing, and the combination of her father’s position and her dual passports gave at least the illusion of safety. Perhaps it was less that Ilya needed her to keep the photos than that he needed someone other than he and Shane to know, to remember for him.

Svetlana stepped out into the cold Boston air and wondered if it was time to plan a holiday. Somewhere warm, where they didn’t care about hockey. Somewhere far enough away from Europe that there would be no logical reason to combine that trip with a visit home. Australia, perhaps. It wouldn’t be reasonable to plan a trip to Australia just to get a photo developed in a place where no one had ever heard of Ilya Rozanov or Shane Hollander. Certainly unreasonable if she was then going to hold onto it in the bottom of a drawer until an unspecified one day. She’d do a lot of unreasonable things for Ilya Rozanov, and now, apparently, Shane Hollander.