Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova, Farah Jalali, Other Character Tags to Be Added

Additional Tags:

Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov in Las Vegas 2014, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Accidental Marriage, Fake Marriage, Sort Of, Outing, Found Family, Angst with a Happy Ending, Work in Progress, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of Inty's Gay Hockey Boys (Heated Rivalry fics)

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-12 Updated: 2026-09-02 Words: 60,495 Chapters: 7/?

Maybe I Will Do More Than Suck Your Dick

Summary

HOLLANDER AND ROZANOV IN SHOCKING VEGAS PHOTOS!

Star Players Have Yet to Issue Comment on Alleged Wedding Photos Leaked Online.

The photo below was of the two of them in their tuxes, with dopey, boozed-out, lust-drunk expressions on their faces. Rozanov’s hand was gripped tightly—possessively—around Shane’s jaw, their mouths inches apart, clearly about to kiss.

Rozanov’s hand had a wedding ring on it.

Shane sends the “we didn’t even kiss” text. Their night in Vegas doesn’t end there. And their lives will never be the same…

Notes

I absolutely loved ExtraStep’s fluffy Married in Vegas fic and got inspired to write a version where our boys go through just a little bit more torture on their way to happiness.

(Okay, I lied. It’s a lot of torture. But only the emotional kind, don’t worry! Author's fic perfec t size for put reader i/n...)

• Inspired by making love out of nothing at all by ExtraSteps

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

Shane wasn’t sure at what moment he’d crossed the line into consciousness. In one moment, he’d been running around Bell Centre in nothing but his underwear, with an achingly full bladder, trying to get away from the Metros fans as they pointed, laughed, and asked him for selfies. And in the next, he was finally in a bathroom, and he had braced one hand on the wall and one on his dick, and he was sighing with deep and profound relief as a stream of piss hit the toilet bowl with a loud ringing sound. 

And then he saw a bright gold ring on his left hand that he’d never seen before. 

And so he wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t still dreaming. 

“Are you done? Hollander! Wake up!” Not waiting for his answer, Rozanov shouldered him out of the way and began to empty his own bladder, groaning in a familiar tone that made Shane’s dick twitch up and take notice. 

He yelled at it internally—this was so not the time—and staggered back against the wall, closing his eyes. God, but he felt like crap. He wasn’t in all that much pain, but his head was swimming and his mouth felt like something had died in it. Was he still drunk? 

“What did we do last night?” he asked, scrubbing both hands across his face. 

He remembered sending that stupid, drunken text from the elevator, pouting at Ilya because he hadn’t made Shane feel quite as good as usual. He remembered Rozanov catching up to him just as he’d been about to exit the stairwell into the lobby, pinning him to the wall and kissing him breathless. He remembered gasping out, ‘not here,’ panic spiking through his veins. He didn’t remember why they hadn’t just come back to the room… But he remembered Rozanov tugging him out onto the strip, the warm desert air blowing through his hair. He remembered downing shots, Rozanov’s laughing face inches away from his. 

Everything else was a blur of faces and bodies and booze. 

“We drank too much vodka,” Rozanov grunted. He finished peeing and went over to the sink, fiddling around with the complimentary toiletries until he found a bottle of mouthwash. He gulped half of it, then leaned back and gargled for half a minute before leaning forward and spitting into the sink. “I don’t know what else. Fuck!” 

“Did we go out?” Shane muttered, horrified. “Together?”

There was a long silence. “Yes. I think so,” Rozanov said. “Don’t panic yet. I will check phone.” He turned and walked out of the bathroom, handing Shane the bottle of mouthwash on the way. 

Heart pounding, Shane emptied the rest of it into his mouth. But the second he started gargling, his gag reflex rebelled. He spat it out—let it fall out of his mouth into the sink, really—and then threw up what seemed like an entire bottle of vodka after it, his stomach twisting painfully as it turned itself inside out. 

“Hey, hey, Hollander.” Large, warm hands kneaded at his neck and shoulders as he heaved. Tears of humiliation stung his eyes—but at the same time, he could only be grateful that Rozanov had come back. “You’re okay. That’s right, get it out. Is better for you that way—” 

“Fuck you,” Shane gasped out, between spasms. “I don’t see you throwing up.” 

“I was drinking vodka at twelve,” Rozanov said, matter-of-factly. “My grandfather would roll over in his grave if I did this.” 

“Jesus, twelve?!” Shane asked, successfully distracted from his vomiting. He stayed bent over the sink for a second longer, but his stomach seemed to have settled, and he finally straightened up, groaning as he wiped his face. “That’s insane. Or do you mean, like, trying out your parents’ drinks?” 

Shane thought he’d been a little older when his parents had started letting him have a little sip of their wine or beer during dinner, although probably not by much. But he hadn’t started drinking on his own until several years later.

Rozanov stayed silent as Shane unwrapped one of the little plastic cups the hotel provided, filled it up from the sink, and washed his mouth out. By the time Rozanov finally spoke, Shane had given up on getting an answer to the question. 

“Is traditional, in Russia, to drink vodka at the dinner after a funeral,” he said. “My father wanted me to do it… properly.” 

Shane refilled the cup, sipping from it slowly this time. “Oh. Uh, I’m sorry. Was it your grand—” 

“I still need to check news.” And Rozanov left again in a swirl of golden curls and stale sweat. 

Shane sighed and turned back to the sink. There was a leather bag sitting out on the counter, and after a minute spent struggling with his conscience, he started rifling through it. Rozanov had fucked him. Rozanov had gotten him drunk. His mind shied away from what else Rozanov might have gotten him into. Rozanov could damn well put up with Shane using his toothbrush. 

Shane groaned again as he started to brush his teeth. He’d really thought he had a chance at the Hart. Sure, Rozanov had edged him out—just barely—in the scoring race, but Shane had had more assists, and Montreal had had a great season, leading the League right up until Mitty had been hurt. Even after that, they’d finished first in their division, second in the conference, and had made it to the third round before exiting the playoffs! And the PHWA almost never awarded the same player with both the Conn Smythe and Hart trophies in the same season. It had only happened four—now five—times. 

Wayne Gretzky, Guy Lafleur, and Bobby Orr—twice. And now… Ilya Rozanov. 

“He’s never going to let me forget this,” Shane muttered around a mouthful of toothpaste. 

He spat and then looked up in the mirror. He looked strung out, with bloodshot eyes. But as he watched himself, a fond, exasperated smile spread across his face, and he shook his head, laughing a little at himself. The truth was, he was happy for Ilya’s victories, even if he had every intention of outdoing him at the next possible opportunity. Shaking out the rest of Rozanov’s toiletries, he sifted through the ones the hotel had provided. As he did, the ring on his finger caught the light again, and he stopped for a second, trying to make sense of it. What the hell had he and Rozanov gotten up to last night? Was it some kind of arcade game prize? God forbid they’d actually sat down at the poker tables and robbed some poor soul of his worldly belongings…

Shuddering, he dismissed the mystery for the moment. Leaving the ring where it was, he went through as much of his normal morning routine as he could duplicate—flossing, washing and moisturizing his face, putting on deodorant. 

Afterward, he felt much better, more grounded. Almost human. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered to himself. 

Famous last words. 

“Hollander,” Rozanov called from the bedroom, his voice sharp. “Get out here. Now.” 

Shane rolled his eyes, but his feet were already propelling him despite himself, moving out to the main room. When he got there, Rozanov was wearing a pair of tight, black-washed jeans and tugging on a black exercise shirt. Seeing him getting dressed made Shane aware of his own nakedness in a way he hadn’t been before. He barely resisted the urge to clasp his hands in front of his dick. 

“Um,” he said, looking around the huge hotel suite for his own clothes, and not finding them. “Could I borrow something to wear?” 

“Yes,” Rozanov said shortly, waving his hand at a small black suitcase lying open on a nearby bureau. As Shane crossed over and began rifling through it, Rozanov cleared his throat. “Hollander. We need to talk.” 

Shane swallowed hard. Rozanov sounded… not good. Oh, fuck. 

“Someone saw us,” he whispered, turning around. 

“Yes,” Rozanov said. His face was stone, giving nothing away. “Put clothes on. You do not want to hear this naked.” 

Part of Shane wanted to protest, to demand all the information immediately. The other part of him was glad to obey the command, numbly choosing a pair of jeans and a sleeveless gray shirt as he tried to slowly digest the part of the nightmare that he already knew. 

Someone had seen them. And obviously, had seen them being more than just friendly—not that Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov partying together wouldn’t have made news all by itself, but only a little. Maybe a blurb on page 6 of the sports section—”Hockey Rivals Paint the Town Red,” or “Hollander/Rozanov Rivalry Takes a New Turn.” A week ago, Shane would have dreaded even that—he hated headlines that weren’t about his achievements on ice, hated even the inevitable think pieces about him making history as an Asian-Canadian playing Major League Hockey. But now he wished, devoutly, that Rozanov was going to reveal that instead of what had clearly happened… 

Which was that they’d been outed. Together. 

Shane felt his breath coming quicker. He’d finished getting dressed, but he kept standing with his back to Rozanov, staring down at the suitcase. Trying—and failing—to keep from freaking out, even as gray clouds closed in at the edges of his vision. Fuck. His parents would know. His coach, his teammates…

“Hey. Hollander. Try not to have panic attack before I even tell you how fucking bad it is,” Rozanov said. For once, he didn’t even sound like he was chirping—his voice was dead-on serious, no lilt or amusement hiding underneath it. That, more than anything else, told Hollander how badly he’d fucked up. 

How badly they’d fucked up. No matter what had happened, they were at least in this together, and Shane let himself take a certain backhanded comfort in that. 

“Okay,” he said, taking long, slow breaths, as his parents had taught him. “Okay.” He forced strength into his shaking knees and crossed the room. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, facing Rozanov, he made himself look up, although he couldn’t—quite—meet Rozanov’s eyes. “Lay it on me.” 

Rozanov looked briefly confused. Shane cursed himself for using the idiom, but Rozanov’s face quickly cleared, and he nodded. “Is… fuck. Is probably better if you see it yourself,” he said quietly, holding out his phone. 

Shane took it with a trembling hand, and looked down to see the familiar red and black of ESPN. 

HOLLANDER AND ROZANOV IN SHOCKING VEGAS PHOTOS! the headline screamed at him. 

Shane brought the phone up to his forehead, pressing the cool glass to his skin. Tears pressed behind his eyes, stinging. Photos? His heart pounded loudly inside his head. God, but this was a nightmare. No. This was worse. This was more horrible than the worst fucking nightmare he’d ever had. They had photos.

“Hollander. Are you okay?” 

Rozanov’s voice was distant, almost burning behind the high, shrill ringing in Shane’s ears and the deep drumbeat of his heart. His hands felt slightly more real, kneading gently against the tight muscles of Shane’s neck and shoulders. When had Rozanov gotten onto the bed? 

“Hollander. Shane. Come back, please. I need… I need you to be okay right now.” 

Rozanov’s right hand pressed down harder on Shane’s neck, sending a sharp, grounding pain stabbing up into his head. He took a deep breath. He had to keep it together. 

“Okay,” he managed to say. His voice echoed tinnily in his ears. “I’m okay.” 

He lowered the phone, but the screen was black. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d raised it. Rozanov shifted even closer, basically draping himself over Shane’s shoulders, and reached over to press his finger to the home button. He tried to pull back, after, but Shane grabbed his wrist and held him in place, pressing back into the comfort of his warmth. 

When he scrolled past the giant, screaming title, the subheadline read, “Star Players Have Yet to Issue Comment on Alleged Wedding Photos Leaked Online.” 

The photo below was of the two of them—in their tuxes with dopey, boozed-out, lust-drunk expressions on their faces. Rozanov’s hand was gripped tightly—possessively—around Shane’s jaw, their mouths inches apart, clearly about to kiss. Rozanov’s hand had a wedding ring on it. 

Shane’s brain went grey and blank with static for the third time. The phone dropped out of his numb fingers and fell to the mattress between his thighs. Rozanov’s arms tightened around him. The rest of the world vanished for a brief, merciful span.  

“No,” Shane rasped, some minutes later. 

“Yes,” Rozanov said, his own voice bleak. He reached around Shane’s shoulder and lifted Shane’s left hand, showing him the ring he’d seen earlier and almost immediately forgotten. Almost immediately repressed. There was the matching ring on Rozanov, the same as in the photograph, glinting in the light as he entwined his right hand with Shane’s left. 

“How could we have—wait a minute. We can’t be married. It’s not even legal here,” Shane said, gasping with relief. 

“No,” Rozanov confirmed. “Is not legal. Is fake, play wedding, just for Vegas. They say this, lower down in the article. Even if it was allowed, it would require paperwork at courthouse, preparation, and then more after to make it legal elsewhere, because we are not citizens. But they have more photos, and video, of us coming out of chapel. That it is not real… makes it even worse.” 

“Worse?” Shane demanded, in what would have been a shout, had his voice not cracked in the middle. He twisted around in Rozanov’s arms and glared at him—their faces were inches apart, Shane practically sitting in Rozanov’s lap at this point. “How can this be worse than if we’d actually gotten permanently, legally tied to each other?” 

Rozanov flinched, slumping back. His arms dropped down from Shane’s shoulders, falling to the mattress behind him. Shane wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Rozanov react like that—certainly not on the ice, and not when facing the media… not in bed. It sent a bucket of cold water over Shane’s hysteria-fueled anger. 

“Is worse for me,” Rozanov said finally. “Better for you, probably. But, men together is not okay in Russia. And I can only stay here, in America, while I am under contract to Boston. Until 2018. If they keep me on at all, after this. My agent is Russian, my manager is Russian. My family… I cannot go home, now. Ever.” 

Shane stared at him, horror crawling over his shoulders and down his back. For the first time since Rozanov had yelled at him to come out of the bathroom, he stopped thinking about what this would mean for him.

“What would happen if you did?” he whispered. He remembered, suddenly, how he’d been so anxious about Rozanov’s safety, after Carter had talked about how brave gay people had to be, to be out in Russia. He tried to imagine a world in which his parents would never want to see him again. 

Rozanov shuddered. “Fines, definitely, no playing hockey again. Prison, maybe. Or… I don’t want to find out. If… If Boston drops me, I need to find other way to stay. If we had gotten married for real, that would be easier. I could go to Canada with you.” 

Shane closed his eyes. If Boston drops him… 

There had never been an openly gay player in the MLH. Homophobia was ubiquitous, on the ice, in the locker rooms, in the stands… In the management offices. The fact that Shane and Rozanov were two of the best players in the League might—might—grant them some leeway. But only if they could prove that they could still win games, despite having delivered what might well be a deathblow to the chemistry and cohesion of their teams. If not, they could very well be staring down the barrel of a gun, loaded with the end of their careers. 

“I’m not trying to pressure you into anything,” Rozanov said, breaking into Shane’s thoughts. 

“You—what?” Shane opened his eyes, confused. What did he mean by… “Oh! No, I… I didn’t think you were. I’m just… freaking out a little, here. How the hell are are you so fucking calm, anyway?”

“You’re ‘freaking out’ enough for both of us,” Rozanov said, smirking. 

“Fuck off!” Shane snapped. “I’m freaking out a perfectly reasonable amount! Seriously, how are you just…”

“I don’t fucking know!” Rozanov said, finally raising his voice. “Maybe is just—” He threw his hands up into the air, laughing bitterly. “So, the worst possible thing has happened. It’s almost… relief? Nothing more to fear, now. I am Russian. We are good at… Fuck! It’s too early for this much English. What do you say, dark emotion, no hope left—”  

“Despair?” Shane asked, incredulous that Rozanov’s ego could even extend to this. “You’re better than me at despair? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Rozanov shrugged fatalistically. “Yes. Russians are very good at despair.” 

Somewhere nearby, Shane’s phone was ringing, very faintly. 

“Oh, god,” Shane whispered. He pressed the base of his palms into his eyes, hard enough that white sparkles flashed in front of his eyes. His mind spun in frantic circles, thinking about who it could be. Each option seemed worse than the next. A reporter. His agent. His coach. Hayds, J.J., or Mitty. 

His parents.

The phone stopped ringing, only to immediately start again. 

“Has been ringing since you woke me up,” said Rozanov.  

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Shane whispered, rocking back and forth. 

Rozanov’s hands rubbed up and down his arms. “Hollander. Hollander. Shit.” He muttered something else in Russian. 

Shane tried, again, to push down his panic. To keep calm and carry on. He failed. His entire mind was spinning, spiraling through catastrophe after catastrophe. What if all his sponsors dropped him? What if none of his teammates would speak to him? What if the Metros used the excuse of his drunken exploits to put him on waivers immediately, refusing to risk their team’s chemistry or a discrimination lawsuit? What if Ilya got deported to Russia and imprisoned, or worse? 

Rozanov suddenly grabbed Shane’s wrists, jerking them away from his eyes. Working his massive strength against Shane’s rigid muscles, Rozanov twisted Shane’s arms behind him. As Shane started shaking, fighting a losing battle against hyperventilation, Rozanov pushed himself up on his knees and leaned forward, tilting Shane toward the bed; resting his forehead against the front of Shane’s shoulder, he pinned Shane’s wrists against the mattress. With Rozanov’s hard body pressing against his, Rozanov’s deep breaths falling hotly against his neck, Rozanov’s long fingers still gripping tightly around his wrists, Shane felt his tremors slowly, gradually, ebb.  

He ducked his chin and pushed his forehead against Ilya’s curls—searching for warmth, reassurance, the grounding sensation of skin against skin. Rozanov painstakingly transferred both of Shane’s wrists into one of his wide, strong hands; then he brought his other hand up to Shane’s chin and pulled him down into a wet, messy kiss. Despite the guilt tugging at the back of his mind, Shane gave himself up to it, unable to resist the lure of forgetfulness of self that Rozanov offered; he needed the brief respite in which he could let all of his worries go, and lose himself in the lust that Rozanov never failed to ignite in him. The fear frozen around his heart slowly melted away beneath the heat of Rozanov’s hands, in the way Rozanov’s tongue and lips dazzled and clouded his senses, until he finally felt capable of pulling away; at least, just far enough to press their foreheads together. 

The one benefit of the panic attack had been that the faint ringing of the phone had been blocked out again. Now, as it ebbed, the sound registered on Shane’s ears again, and he groaned, pressing harder into Rozanov’s warmth. 

“I should… probably answer that,” he whispered finally, a long moment later. 

Rozanov nodded. He slowly disengaged from Shane, laying him gently against the mattress, then sat upright, wiping his hand briefly across his eyes. “I have not talked to anyone yet, but… Almost all the messages just said, call them. No specifics. I put phone on not disturb until we talked.” 

“Fuck,” Shane said, pushing himself up on his elbows. No specifics was bad. No specifics meant that no one wanted to commit themselves to anything in writing. “Almost?” 

Rozanov’s mouth quirked to the side in a crooked smile. “Svetlana. Friend from childhood. She is happy for us; says photos were very hot.” 

Shane laughed weakly. He envied Rozanov that, a little. He was confident that his parents would support him, in the end—despite the lectures and hurt feelings he was expecting, for lying to them and acting so recklessly and stupidly, he knew they would forgive him eventually, and they would present a united front to the world from the start. But no one in his life would be happy for him about this. Certainly, there was no one who would text congratulations that his husband—however fake the marriage was—was hot. 

A sudden, visceral memory flashed in front of his eyes: Rozanov, staring at him—his eyes for once without a hint of brown in them, just endless depths of sea green—as he pushed a ring up Shane’s finger. It got caught for a second on Shane’s knuckle, slightly swollen from an old break, but neither of them looked away from each other as Rozanov shoved it over, until it spun around the base of Shane’s finger.

The phone rang again.

Rozanov swore in Russian—not that Shane understood it, but the tone was unmistakable—and clambered off the bed. He hunted across the floor, half vent over, until he finally straightened up, all the way over at the door to the hotel room, with Shane’s merrily ringing pants held up victoriously in his fist.

Another flash of recall—Rozanov slamming him against that same door and falling to his knees in front of him, working Shane’s pants off slowly, without undoing the waistband, pulling them down one teasing inch at a time, his smirking face all that Shane could see…

Shane took a deep breath as Rozanov came back to the bed, pulling Shane’s phone out of one of the pockets of the crumpled suit trousers and tossing them to the floor. 

He sat down next to Shane, slinging his arm over his shoulder, and handed him the phone. He said quietly, “Is your mother.” 

The words were redundant—Shane could see his mom’s face all too well, staring pitilessly up at him from the video call request. He closed his eyes, blocking it out. 

“You want me to leave?” Rozanov asked, still in that gentle, careful voice, that Shane had only heard before when they were in bed together. 

Well, he supposed they were technically still in bed together right now, but…

Rozanov said his name again, then began to pull away, pushing himself off the bed. Shane quickly grabbed Rozanov’s hand and held him in place, shaking his head convulsively. He could feel the spiraling anxiety swirling around him again—so tempting, to just let the world go away for a little bit longer, to stop fighting it for a little while. But he’d been a coward enough today already. Rozanov settled back down, his shoulder a solid bulwark against Shane’s side, and Shane leaned into it, took strength from it, and laced his left hand around Rozanov’s right. 

And then he hit accept.

Chapter End Notes

Okay, I've watched this show five times in the last three weeks and read through half the books already. I'm obsesssseedddd! Many thanks to my dedicated beta team, hopelessscribe, multifandomhomo, and phoenix_ascended.

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Please come scream with me in the comments! I have a good idea where this fic is going, but no clue how many chapters it's going to take me to get there...

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Ilya had to steel his spine in order to not pull away from Hollander’s sweaty hand as a somewhat familiar face filled the phone screen, a woman with long dark hair lightly streaked with gray, her face elegantly sculpted. He didn’t know why Hollander hadn’t sent him away before accepting the call with his mother, but he wasn’t going to abandon his—whatever the fuck they were to each other, now. No matter how much his heart was pounding as he thought of what his own father would have said in such a situation.

Which only made him think of the fact that if he was lucky, he would never have another conversation with his own father again.  

But as he’d said to Hollander, the worst had happened; and there was some freedom in that. It hadn’t truly sunk in, yet, how much this changed things—he could feel the revelations that hadn’t yet unraveled waiting to ambush him, down in his gut and deep in his brain. But for now, he was living solely in the moment. Still, the knowledge that he would never get his father’s approval, never get his family’s acceptance—and that he could stop trying… It was an almost heady thing, despair mixed with an odd sort of exultation. 

But right now, he needed to be there for Hollander. For his husband. And anyway, from the small preview at the bottom right of Hollander’s phone, Ilya wasn’t even in the picture. Good for him.

The woman gasped almost before the image had even stabilized, and when she spoke, her voice was shaky—nothing like the calm, reassuring tone he’d heard in interviews, or the couple of occasions he’d heard her speak in person. 

“Shane. Oh, god. Are you okay? You… you look… okay. Well, actually you look like shit.” Hollander scoffed, a little unsteadily, and his mother added, “I’m sorry, but it’s true! But still, you’re… you’re okay.” There was a long pause, then she added, “What the hell, Shane?” 

“Hey, Mom,” Hollander said, his voice cracking. “Um. I’m… Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Shane,” his mother said, with a bit more of an edge to her voice. “We’ve been trying to reach you for hours. You weren’t answering your phone. You weren’t in your hotel room. Your agent and the League didn’t know where you were, I’ve been calling around to every place in town—” 

Hollander tilted the phone away—no, he was tilting his wrist, to check his watch. Ilya took a surreptitious glance at his own phone. It wasn’t that late. Ah, but of course, Hollander’s parents were probably still on Eastern time.  

As was most everyone else that Ilya knew. His own phone had also been blowing up for hours before Hollander’s flight from his bed had woken him up. After reading the short, noncommittal, and almost identical orders to call in immediately from his coach, agent, and manager, he hadn’t had the courage to face the Raiders’ team chat or the dozens of direct texts from his teammates, no doubt demanding to know what the hell was going on. 

“Shit,” Hollander was saying. “I—I’m really sorry I didn’t pick up the phone earlier, Mom, we—I just woke up.” 

“You just woke up?” she said sharply. “Shane, it’s—” she paused, then continued, a little more flatly, “after eight in the morning.”  

Hollander choked out a choppy, high-pitched burst of laughter. “Yeah, well. I had a late night.” 

The woman pressed her lips together and turned her face away. There was a long pause. 

Ilya had been a little surprised, in fact, that Hollander’s parents hadn’t been at the award ceremony. But then, it wasn’t as if Hollander had been going to be anything but a disappointment to them, this year—not with Ilya’s dominant performance. So there had been no reason for him to fly them out to Vegas. Not like when Hollander had won Rookie of the Year, and Ilya had been forced to watch as he floated gracefully down the stairs with his proud parents flanking him on either side, beaming happily. 

Ilya had never felt so alone in his life as he had in that moment. Even Svetlana hadn’t been able to make it that year, with her presence demanded by her father in Moscow. And Ilya had stopped offering to fly his own father out for games or ceremonies after the first International Prospect Cup, when even a gold medal hadn’t been enough to keep him from harshly criticizing Ilya’s performance. 

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Hollander said again. His voice sounded wet, and Ilya squeezed his hand in reflexive response. “I didn’t… I didn’t want you to find out this way. I mean, obviously, I didn’t want anyone to find out this way, I just meant… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, sooner—”

“No,” she said immediately. “No, don’t apologize for that, honey, I—Okay, look. I don’t want you to get me wrong, because over the next few hours, I’m going to express to you in many ways how stupid it was to get photographed pretending to marry Ilya Rozanov in Vegas, Shane.” 

Hollander laughed, even wetter than before. “Yeah, I figured.” 

“But that part of it, no. You should have been able to tell us when you were ready, sweetheart. And you know that we love you, so, so much—” 

Hollander wasn’t quite able to strangle his sob. He bent forward, over the phone, bracing his arm on his bent knee and hiding his face in his forearm, showing off that impressive flexibility. Ilya rubbed the back of his neck, feeling rather useless. At that, he somewhat envied Hollander the ability to fall apart like this. Ilya’s own emotions felt very far away right now, as if on the other side of a high, spiked wall. 

Hollander’s mother didn’t say anything that Ilya could hear while Hollander was folded over the phone. He managed to pull himself together faster than he had the previous times, inhaling sharply and sitting back up, keeping the phone pressed to his chest until he was fully upright. 

“Sorry, Mom,” he said unsteadily. “Sorry, I just… It’s been a pretty weird morning.” 

Now it was her turn to laugh, a little hysterically,  but she recovered quickly, taking a deep breath and running her hands across her face. “Okay. Okay. Tell me what happened. What you were thinking, everything. We’ll work out a plan, alright? It’s going to be okay.” 

“I’m, um. I’m not… really sure what happened?” Hollander said. “We were… We were really drunk. I don’t really… I don’t remember much of anything.” 

Ilya closed his eyes, fighting with himself for a second. He remembered everything that had happened the night before—and had the whole time, from the moment he’d woken up to find Hollander bolting away from his bed. He’d just hoped—had prayed, with utter desperation—that it had been some kind of incredibly vivid dream, until he’d gotten out his phone and confirmed how unspeakably weak he’d been.

But even if he volunteered his memories of what had happened, that would only tell Hollander and his mother what they had done, not why. Ilya didn’t know that, himself. It had been such a very stupid thing for Hollander to do. 

“Right,” Hollander’s mother muttered. “Okay. Give—give me a second, here.” 

She put the phone down, the screen showing nothing but a featureless white ceiling. Hollander cursed and raised his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, then stabbed his finger on the mute button. “Well, this is going great,” he muttered. 

It was, in fact, going incredibly well from Ilya’s point of view—no yelling, no accusations, or threats, just instant acceptance and reassurance of support. The fact that Hollander was unhappy with it told him more about his relationship with his parents—or his mother, at least, Ilya corrected himself, with a brief flash of curiosity about Hollander’s father’s whereabouts—than anything else could have. 

“Okay,” Hollander’s mother said, abruptly returning to the screen. Hollander hastily turned the mute off. “Let’s start from the last thing you remember, then.” 

They stared at each other for another long moment, then Hollander pulled his hand out of Ilya’s long enough to wipe his eyes. “Um. Where’s Dad?” 

His mother paused for a second—looking somewhat guilty—then admitted, “He’s on his way out to you, honey. His plane just took off about twenty minutes ago. When you didn’t answer your phone, and we couldn’t find you—we knew that someone had to stay here, in case you called, but we decided that one of us needed… Well, needed to get to you as quickly as possible. Just in case…” 

Hollander looked… relieved? Surprised? “How long ago did you hear about…”

“The photos hit the net about four in the morning, our time,” she said, her voice strengthening. “We weren't up, of course—they didn't have a time stamp, but I assume whoever it was who took them must have posted them immediately after taking them. We got the first call about seven, when ESPN started poking around the story. They ran with it a little after nine.” 

“And it’s… what, eleven there, now?” Hollander muttered, rubbing his thumb across his eyebrow. He winced as his mother nodded. “Jesus, Mom, you must have been going crazy. I’m so sorry.” 

“Yes, well. We agree that you’re never allowed to take four hours to answer your phone again, alright?” 

Shane laughed weakly. “Agreed. When will Dad be here?” 

“Not until dinner time, honey, I’m sorry. If you want to go out and meet him at the airport—” 

“I don’t have a rental car,” Hollander said immediately, shaking his head. “I took the shuttle from the airport. And I don’t think it’s really a good idea for me to show up at a rental place right now—” 

“No, of course not,” she said immediately. “Well, what with going through customs, picking up a car… He should get to you around eight or nine your time, then.” 

“Okay,” Hollander inhaled sharply, then blew out his cheeks. “Okay. Twelve hours. Fuck.” 

“I have car,” Rozanov offered quietly.

“What was that?” Hollander’s mother asked, the edge coming back into her voice. 

“Um. Right,” Hollander blew out his cheeks again. “One second.” 

He lowered the phone and rubbed his hand across his face. Ilya wished he’d retaken his hand, now. 

Hollander got up and walked over to the wide bay windows, propping the phone up on the edge and kneeling in front of it. Looking back, he waved his hand, gesturing for Ilya to join him. Ilya couldn’t stop himself from raising his eyebrows entreatingly, begging for a reprieve; but after Hollander threw his hand up next to his face, spreading his fingers wide in exasperation, Ilya groaned and nodded. 

Getting up off the bed and walking over to join Hollander on his knees in front of the window was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. He did notice that Hollander had positioned things so that the bed wasn’t in frame, and mentally applauded. 

“Mom, this is, uh. Ilya Rozanov.” 

“Yes, Shane, I know who he is,” she said. 

Ilya wasn’t sure if the edge in her voice was teasing or genuine anger. Perhaps it was a little of both.

“Um, Ro—Ilya, this is my mom, Yuna.” 

Ilya raised his eyebrows again at the sound of his first name coming from Hollander’s mouth. Not that it didn’t sound good, however bad his pronunciation was, but… 

Hollander shrugged and rolled his eyes a little. Ilya was forced to nod, conceding the point. She’d seen photos of them kissing outside a wedding chapel—and had to guess that they had slept together. Calling each other by their last names could hardly help the situation. 

It was just Ilya’s worst instincts at play, wanting to make sure that if he was uncomfortable, everyone else was as uncomfortable as possible, too. 

“ … Ilya,” she said, nodding. “I can’t really say it’s a pleasure to meet you, under the circumstances—” 

“Mom!” Hollander protested. 

“What, Shane, am I supposed to lie?” 

“Yuna Hollander,” Ilya said, nodding respectfully. “We have met before, actually. A few times.” 

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” she said, eyeing him appraisingly. “At the draft, and when Shane won the Calder—” 

“Oh god, Mom, please don’t bring that up, it’s kinda a sore point—” 

“Is not,” Ilya protested immediately, “I have forgotten this, entirely.” 

“Oh, please, you have not—” 

“Mm. Well,” Yuna interrupted them. “I suppose it’s good to know the rivalry wasn’t entirely fake.” 

“No, of course it wasn’t—” Hollander said.  

“Was not fake at all,” Ilya said at the same time, happy there was something he could say to reassure her. 

“Okay,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “Well, when did it start being not a rivalry?” 

“Um,” Hollander said. Ilya rubbed the back of his head, uncomfortable. 

“I know it’s embarrassing, Shane, but there are going to be pictures of you on the front page of the Gazette tomorrow kissing him, so we’re going to need to put together some kind of narrative…” 

“Oh god,” Hollander said, rubbing his hand across his eyes. “It’s just… It’s kind of a long story, Mom.” 

“Well, we’ve got quite a bit of time until your dad gets there.” 

Hollander groaned. 

From Ilya’s point of view, it was a pretty short story—he thought I was hot, we fucked for a few years, and then got very drunk last night—but he appreciated that Hollander was likely not eager to say that to his mother. 

“Dammit, that’s Farah, again,” Yuna said suddenly. “I should answer—” 

“Oh god,” Hollander muttered again. “Mom, no, you can’t tell her where we are—” 

“I can text her that I’ll call her back, Shane, but I have to tell her that we’ve found you, at least. She’s been walking around the strip, asking if anyone has seen you.” 

“Who is Farah?” Ilya asked quietly, leaning toward Hollander. 

“My agent. She was invited to the ceremony—she represents a bunch of the other players, too.” 

“Ah.” 

“Yeah, so—” 

“We should meet with her,” Ilya put in.

“What? Why?”

Ilya rolled his eyes. “My agent is Russian,” he reiterated. “He will probably drop me. I will need new agent. Perhaps yours, if she is… okay with things.” 

“Oh,” Hollander said. “Right.” 

“Well, that brings us back to the narrative,” Yuna said, bringing both of their heads—which had turned toward each other at some point during the conversation—swiveling back. “I need some kind of guidance from you two on what kind of story you want me to tell.” 

“What kind of story?” Ilya asked, confused. The implication seemed clear—she was offering to lie for them? But what kind of lie could possibly explain away the photos and video showing them together?

“She means—how we present this to the media, what kind of statement we want to make,” Hollander clarified. 

“Ah, okay,” Ilya said, nodding. He usually managed the media well—they loved him for his snark and willingness to go past the very boring statements that all other players usually stuck to, that they were honored to play for their team, they just wanted to work hard and win games, blah blah blah. But in this instance, Hollander’s blandness would likely work better than Ilya’s habitual irreverence. Although he couldn’t think of a way that even Hollander would be able to make this story boring. 

“The way I see it, you have three basic options, with several minor variations on each one,” Hollander’s mother said, eyeing them through the screen in a thoughtful way that made Ilya’s skin itch. “The first—and I have to say, I don’t like this option personally, but it’s almost certainly the one that your teams and the League will want to push—is to claim that it was all a prank that got taken much too far.” 

Ilya felt his head jerk around. That was an option he hadn’t even considered, and for just a second, he felt the terrible lure of it, dragging him back toward his cage of safety. They could claim that it had all been some kind of joke! Hockey players often played ridiculous, elaborate pranks on each other, especially after winning the Cup—

“The biggest downside of that approach is that while I can’t speak for Rozanov, no one who really knows you would believe it, Shane,” Yuna went on, puncturing Ilya’s temporary bubble. “Which I assume includes at least some of your teammates.” 

“Uh, yeah,” Hollander said, rubbing the back of his head. “Hayden and J.J. would never buy it, for sure. Probably most of the others, too. I mean, who here would I have even been pranking?” 

“Scott Hunter?” Ilya murmured, too low to be overheard over the phone. Hollander choked a little. 

“Exactly,” Yuna agreed. “It would probably pass for the fans, which is what the League cares about. But in a lot of ways, you’d be buying yourselves the worst of both worlds. You’d likely still end up facing a lot of homophobia from other players, but at the same time, you’d still have to hide. And if you end up facing discrimination from within the franchise, it would be very hard to fight back without outing yourselves.” 

“Okay, so that’s not a good option,” Hollander said. “What else?” 

His mother nodded, a faint smile appearing on her lips. This was a woman, Ilya was realizing, who was very good at getting her son to do what she wanted. 

“The next option would be to stick as close to the truth as possible. You admit that you’re…” She raised her eyebrows at her son, waving her fingers through the air in slow circles. 

“That we’re what?” Hollander asked, finally, when she didn’t go on. 

“I was hoping you would tell me, Shane,” she said, staring him down. “Gay? Bisexual?”

“Oh,” Hollander said, flushing a little. It was only really visible under his freckles, and it immediately made Rozanov want to stroke his fingers along them, and then bite them. “Um. Yeah, I… I don’t really…” 

“Bisexual,” Ilya offered. “For me.” 

“Um. Probably? Yeah? For me, too?” Hollander rubbed the back of his head again, and Ilya eyed him concernedly. 

He wished he had the courage to put his hand on the back of Hollander’s neck. 

Yuna nodded. “If that’s the label you want to use. It… It would be best to settle on something, for the statement.” 

“Fuck,” Hollander muttered. 

“So. In option 2, you come out as bisexual, which—in Canada, at least—puts the anti-discrimination laws on your side, makes it harder for management to do anything to discipline you without hurting their image, and allows you to date men openly in the future, if you want to. But otherwise, you would treat the incident the same if it happened with a woman. Apologize for your inappropriate public behavior and move on with your lives. When they ask if the two of you have been in a relationship, you would say that no, the two of you just happened to party a little too hard after the award ceremony and did something drunken and stupid, which you’ll be resolving privately.”

Hollander nodded slowly. Ilya’s stomach felt queasy. 

“The advantages of this approach are,” Yuna went on, “well, firstly, that players getting drunk and doing stupid shit is something that fans are used to.” 

“Gee, thanks, Mom,” Hollander said.  

“You’d be fitting into a familiar narrative, Shane, that’s all I’m saying,” Yuna said. “And secondly, it might lessen the shock to those who have always believed that two of you hated each other. Some fans might worry that the two of you let each other win, or were being disloyal to your teams by getting involved with each other.” 

“Some fans?” Hollander raised his eyebrows at his mother. “Seriously, Mom?” 

“It would also avoid potential complications in the future,” Yuna said, ignoring her son’s sarcasm. “This will get brought up when you play against each other in the future no matter what, of course, but making it clear that there has not been and will not be a romantic relationship there will help a lot with people questioning your willingness to play hard against each other. If… If that’s the truth.”  

“ … Ah,” Ilya said again, to… all of that. 

Hollander took a deep breath. “No, it’s not.” 

Ilya glanced over at Hollander, surprised. Seeing him face-on, rather than in the tiny phone preview and out of the corner of his eyes, he realized how stressed Hollander was—he was breathing hard, and he was bouncing a little on his knees. 

“I mean, we haven’t been in a… relationship, exactly,” Hollander went on, his voice steady despite its stiffness. “But we have been… involved, for a while. But no, Mom, I’ve never let him win!” 

“Okay.” Yuna blinked rapidly. Ilya was a bit amused that this information seemed to take her significantly longer to digest than the fact that her son was attracted to men. “Okay. How long is a while?” 

“Um. it’s been about… What, four years?” Hollander asked, turning to Ilya. 

“Yes, almost four.” Ilya confirmed. “Off and on.” 

“Four years?” Hollander’s mother gasped. “Shane, that’s… since your rookie season?” 

“Summer before,” Ilya corrected. 

“Not helpful,” Hollander growled quietly at him. 

“What, don’t you remember?” Ilya asked, making an innocent face. 

“Oh my god, you’re such an asshole,” Hollander muttered, almost under his breath. But a smile was tugging at the sides of his face, and Ilya’s belly warmed happily in response. 

“Wow,” Yuna said, and their heads snapped back toward the phone. Her face was scrunched up, her eyes turned inward. “I can’t believe—wait. That CCM commercial!” 

Hollander moaned quietly. 

“Yes, that night was first time,” Ilya said, hugely entertained. 

“I’m going to kill you,” Hollander hissed. 

“Well,” Yuna said, pressing her lips together. “That would lend itself to the third option, at least.” 

Again, Ilya had to be impressed at the speed of Hollander’s mother’s recovery. It was obvious where he got his ability to speak smoothly to the media, despite his usual awkwardness. 

“What’s the third option?” Hollander asked, clearly eager to shift topics. 

“We could present this as… intentional,” Yuna said, watching her son intently. “Impulsive, obviously, but not a drunken mistake. We’d claim that the two of you have been dating—privately, but not secretly—this entire time. I may be able to get Theriault to go along with claiming that he knew: he won’t be thrilled, but he’d hate looking like an idiot who wasn’t in control of his star player even more. I don’t know about LeClaire—”

“I can get him to play along,” Ilya said, more confidently than he actually was. Granted, he and the Bear’s head coach had always gotten along fine, their personal styles melding well. And Ilya’s credit in Boston had never been higher, after carrying his team on his back all the way to the MLH Championship Cup. Surely, LeClaire wouldn’t want to do anything to alienate his golden goose?

But Ilya’s stomach was a hard ball of ice, remembering every other time in his life that he’d expected praise and celebration—and support—from those closest to him for his achievements, only to be met with scorn and hostility, instead. 

“That will help,” Yuna said. “Obviously, the League will be very against it—they’ll have to come up with some kind of policy for cross-team relationships, put out statements, figure out how to deal with the media storm. But it would be the best option for your personal images. We could present you as a family-friendly couple, good role models for LGBT youth, pick up additional sponsorships there. But—” 

“But what?” Hollander asked warily. 

“It would be a very difficult narrative to… extricate yourselves from,” Hollander’s mother said finally. “We’d essentially be melding your brands and presenting you as the poster image for gay hockey players.” 

Ilya turned to Hollander, raising his eyebrows in a desperate request for assistance—he’d barely managed to follow half of that. 

“She’s saying that if we did that, we’d be stuck together,” Hollander summarized. “For the rest of our careers, at least. Even if we split up at some point, the media will always tie us together. And if we did split up, it would be a huge public shitshow. Like with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.” 

“Yes, okay. I understand,” Ilya said, grimacing. Hollander had already made it clear that he didn’t want to be stuck together permanently, when Ilya had suggested that a legal tie would make things easier for him. 

“Look,” Yuna said, after another pause. “Why don’t I start putting together some meetings? With your agents, coaches, the League… Farah and I can start working on a timeline for the next few hours, at least, even without knowing… And in the meantime, the two of you can talk it over. Figure out how you want to proceed.” 

“Yeah,” Hollander said. “Yeah, okay, that sounds good. Um… When do you need an answer by?” 

“An hour at the very most,” his mother said firmly. “The sooner the better. The story’s already been out there for hours, Shane. We can excuse a short delay because of the time difference, and that you didn’t know that someone was going to post the photos, but the longer we wait, the more it will look as if we’re scrambling to respond.”  

“Right,” Hollander muttered, “Yeah, I get it.” 

“Do not call my agent or manager,” Ilya said quickly, belatedly parsing their plan. “I will not—they would not be interested in anything but the first option. Would be waste of time.” 

For the first time, Yuna looked at him without any hint of dislike on her face. “I’m sorry that’s the case, Ilya,” she said, her eyes sympathetic. “You should be able to depend on your representation to have your back.” 

“Thank you,” he managed to get out, feeling winded. 

After a few more assurances of love on both sides, Hollander finally got his mother off the phone. The two of them climbed off of their knees, Ilya groaning a little. Hollander was, of course, entirely fine. The annoyingly perfect asshole. 

And then they stood there and stared at each other, entirely at a loss.

Chapter End Notes

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Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

Trigger warning for this chapter: Anger expressed as physical violence toward an inanimate object. Click the triangle for more details.

During a conversation in which he learns that someone he trusted lied to him, Ilya gets angry, walks away from Shane, and pounds his fist against a wall. Shane does not feel physically threatened during the scene. If this is a trigger for you, please stop reading at [“I was so very stupid,” Rozanov muttered], skip the next two paragraphs, and resume at [“After an interminable time spent facing the wall”.

“We should drink some more water,” Shane said, trying to break through the awkwardness. But the way Rozanov’s eyes widened made Shane think of the night of the draft: Rozanov shaking the water bottle at him; his commanding, intense gaze as he’d urged Shane to drink; and the incomprehensible urge Shane had felt to obey.

“I need coffee, not water,” Rozanov said finally. “I will order room service. You are hungry, or still not feeling good?” 

Shane opened his mouth, with a protest springing to his tongue; what would happen if the hotel staff saw them together? And then he remembered that there were photographs of them kissing on the homepage of fucking ESPN—that there was video, and why, why wasn’t it possible to die of embarrassment?

“Yeah, I think could eat,” he said, instead. “Can you get me some oatmeal and fruit, please? Maybe some smoked salmon, if they have it. Uh, they might call it lox on the menu.” 

Rozanov wrinkled his nose, but nodded, padding over to the fancy, modernist landline that sat on a sideboard just inside the front door. Along with Shane’s order, he asked for sausage, eggs, and pancakes for himself, making Shane shake his head in disbelief. Granted, he loosened up considerably on his diet in the off-season, allowing himself larger portions of seafood and more frequent cheat days for meat or alcohol. But he couldn’t imagine sitting down to a meal like that. Even as a child, his mother had prepared largely Japanese meals, with minimal protein and fat; moving to a full macrobiotic diet as an athlete had largely been a shift in intentionality and timing, not of content. 

And Shane was fixating on the differences between their diets to distract himself from the other conversation they needed to have. Which was cowardly, but… He also didn’t feel ready to have it. 

“I’m still going to go refill the ice bucket,” he said, as Rozanov put the phone down. “For the water.” 

Rozanov looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay,” he said, already turning away.

It wasn’t until Shane was down two floors and standing in front of the ice machine, leaning nervously against the button as it slowly filled up, that he realized the penthouse probably had its own kitchen and its own ice. Well. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t already been a pretty transparent excuse to escape and get some alone time, even without that particular gaffe.

Once he’d filled up the bucket, he went back to the stairwell; he’d rather not risk getting into an elevator with someone who might recognize him from the news, or worst, another player. But instead of climbing them right away, he leaned against the wall for a moment. Just breathing. Trying to process everything that had happened in the last… had it even been thirty minutes? How had Shane’s life—once so predictable and entirely under control—been so quickly turned completely upside down? And how long would it be until he managed to right it? 

If he ever even could. Fuck!

After not really very long, Shane couldn’t handle the noisy, echoing silence between his ears any longer, and pulled out his phone. He made a conscious decision to avoid his email (he didn’t need to know what the League or the Metros’ management were saying, his mom and Farah had that covered for the moment) and social media (God, no) and set up some filters on his notification settings so he could turn the ringer back on without his phone blowing up for the rest of the morning. With that necessity taken care of, he took a deep breath and tapped on the icon for his text messages, with its bright red “795” badge.

He normally got a couple dozen text messages a day, max. Mostly from the team and his parents. He basically didn't know anybody else. 

After a brief hesitation, he scrolled past the ninety-eight text messages in the group chat with his parents (Jesus Christ, Mom), then shook his head immediately at the Metros team chat (three-hundred and seventy-eight messages, although hopefully most of them were the team talking to each other rather than yelling at him) and quickly skipped through several dozen individual messages from his teammates and various requests from unknown numbers. He breathed in another long, slow inhale before opening the thread from his coach, with only two messages. The first one had come in at 6:45 am, which was even earlier than Shane’s parents had gotten their first call. 

Theriault: Hollander. Call me immediately when you get this. 

The next message had followed about ninety minutes later. 

Theriault: I’ve been talking to Yuna and Farah. I understand that you’ll need to speak with them before you call me back, but expect a meeting with me and management before EOD. 

Well. Wasn’t that ominous. Shane closed his eyes, feeling queasy again. When Rozanov had talked about his family and his legal status, it had been easy to focus on how this was so much worse for him, personally. But professionally, Rozanov was in a much better situation than Shane; he’d just had a banner year, winning the Art Ross and the Conn Smythe and Hart Trophies, and basically carrying his team on his back all the way to the Championship Cup, despite a less than perfect season. He was Boston’s hero right now, their golden boy. The Raiders’ management surely wouldn’t want to risk the bad press that would come with getting rid of him. 

The Metros had certainly been doing better with Shane at the helm: before he'd been drafted, they'd missed the playoffs several seasons in a row. He'd gotten them back there in his sophomore season, and this year, he’d taken them all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals before they’d been knocked out. But management might largely chalk that improvement up to the team’s rebuild, which had already been well underway when Shane had been drafted. He was still a young player, two months away from turning twenty-three, and had only just been made captain; he wasn’t invaluable to Montreal yet. Not the way that Rozanov had just made himself indispensable to Boston. And the disappointment the Metros had just been handed in the playoffs made it even worse. Granted, Mitty had been hurt, and there was only so much that a team could do with a backup in the crease, but… Shane marrying the same man who had just delivered a heartbreaking death blow to his team’s Cup dreams wasn’t going to be easy for anyone to take. 

Swallowing hard, he scrolled back up and opened up his messages with Hayden, after all. If he was going to lose everything, he might as well know about it now… 

Hayden: BOO
—shit I meant bro
—like dude
—BRO
—holy fuck
—like holy fucking shit
—what the actual fuck?

There was a gap of about ten minutes before the next message. 

Hayden: oh fuck
—you know I don’t care about the gay thing, right?
—I mean, more power to you bro
—you know the hardest orgasm I’ve ever had was when Jackie put a vibrator up my ass
—like holy fucking shit right?
—i mean you got to have done that right?
—like that video did NOT look like a first time
—have you ever had a guy put his tongue up there?
—sorry never mind man
—Jackie says thats not cool to ask

Shane choked out a laugh, relief skittering through his veins. But there were several messages left in the thread. 

—it’s the Rozanov of it all that I’m having some trouble with
—I mean you HATE him
—you said you hated him like a WEEK ago
—because he’s an ASSHOLE? Right?
—RIGHT?!?!
—ok Jackie says it’s not a real wedding
—does that mean you’re not like actually dating him?
—like you got shitfaced and did a hatesex thing?
—NGL that’d be a helluva relief dude
—I mean I’ll learn to get along with him if I have to
—we’re brothers and you can’t pick your in-laws okay? I got you.
—But if not you know my cousin Ben is gay?

Shane shook his head, but a weak smile flitted across his face nonetheless. Good old Hayds. Knowing that at least one of his friends was still on his side carried him back up to the penthouse and through the door back into the suite with Rozanov. He’d already wasted enough of the hour time limit his mother had given them. They needed to hash this out. 

“So what, they are out of ice in entire hotel?” Rozanov asked, turning from the open window as Shane came in. He hurriedly licked the end of his cigarette—or sort of tapped it against his tongue, anyway—and shoved it into his pocket. “You had to go next door?” 

“Oh, my god,” Shane said, almost gagging. “What the fuck did you just do? Didn’t that hurt?” 

“No?” Rozanov looked down at the cigarette, as if he was surprised at Shane’s disgust, then shrugged. “Is thing I learned as teenager. Useful when there is no ashtray. You get little bit of spit on your tongue, put it out there. Does not hurt.” 

“That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever seen,” Shane said. “And what do you mean—why isn’t there an ashtray? Isn’t this a smoking room?” He dimly remembered Rozanov smoking the night before, too, when they’d been drinking together in bed. Surely he wouldn’t have—

Rozanov shrugged. “All hotel rooms are smoking. Just, in some, it costs thousand dollars if they catch you.” 

It took Shane a moment to parse that, even as he scooped some ice into a glass and grabbed one of the bottles of water sitting on the sidebar. Once he did, he shook his head, snorting. He’d run into that attitude before—that something being punishable with nothing but a fine meant it was actually only a rule for poor people. Mostly from people he’d met through his sponsors. He should have known that Rozanov would be that type. He thought that way about hockey, too, after all; if your team was good enough at killing penalties, or was up by enough goals, then it meant you could do whatever you wanted, so long as you stopped short of a game misconduct. 

Such a fucking asshole. 

“Okay, so,” Shane said, taking a seat in a chair near where Rozanov was leaning against the windowsill. He poured some of the water from the bottle into his glass, then put the cap back on and tossed it to Rozanov, who caught it with a nod of thanks. “What are we going to do?” 

Rozanov opened the bottle of water and drank, swallowing in heavy gulps that made his throat bob in… interesting ways. Once he’d drained it, he let it fall to the floor and took the cigarette back out of his pocket. Shane opened his mouth to protest, but Rozanov only looked at it longingly before putting it away again. Shaking his head, he pushed himself off the window ledge and stalked off to the bedroom. Shane had about ten seconds to feel offended—was he just walking away from Shane’s attempt to have an adult conversation about this?—before he heard Rozanov dragging that damn chair across the floor again, and felt blood rush to his cheeks. 

“I don’t know,” Rozanov said, as he pulled the chair up perpendicular to Shane’s and sat down. He threw his legs over Shane’s lap as he did so, laughing at Shane’s startled yelp. 

“What the hell!” Shane said, shoving them off. “You think I want your stinky feet on me?” Even in his own ears, his voice didn’t sound angry at all, and Rozanov just laughed again and lifted them right back up, tapping his bare toes against Shane’s cheek and playfully shoving his face to the side before setting his foot back down against Shane’s thigh. 

“Asshole,” Shane muttered, resting his arms on top of Rozanov’s legs. 

“You put my cock in your mouth, but do not want my feet on your leg? Is stupid.”  

“Oh yeah? You drag your dick across the dirty floor a lot, then?” 

“Maybe so.” 

“Shut up, you do not.” 

“You do not know, maybe I put my dick in all kinds of places.” 

“Yeah, I really don’t want to know anything about where else you stick your dick, thanks.” 

“Do not worry. I always wash before I come to spend evening with you.” 

The banter felt good. Familiar. Grounding. But Shane knew they were going to have to actually talk about things, and so instead of responding with another jibe, he leaned his head back, closing his eyes for a second. He rubbed his hands nervously up and down Ilya’s shins, working one hand across his bare ankle and under the leg of his tight jeans. 

“So, uh. The three options my mom mentioned,” he said finally. “It sounded like neither of us were wild about number one, right?” 

Rozanov was silent for a long moment, nodded once, and then shrugged. “Yes and no. Is not horrible option for me. I could convince my team that it was a prank. If you wanted this option, I would be willing. But I would not go home to Russia with only this for… how you say, covering?” 

“A cover story,” Shane corrected. “Yeah.” 

“Would be too dangerous,” Rozanov said, nodding. “So. Not great option, either. And you do not like?” 

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t really think any of my teammates would believe it,” Shane said, thinking back to the text thread with Hayden. Even as he’d questioned whether Rozanov and Shane were actually together, the idea that Shane had done the entire thing as a prank didn’t appear to have occurred to him. “I’ve always shut down, like, hazing or that kind of stuff, unless it was really harmless, you know? And what my mom said, about how it would be the worst of both worlds… I’m worried about that with my team. I mean, not my teammates, but management... I don’t know if… I think Montreal might hesitate to get rid of me if they think they’d look like they’re trading a player because he’s gay. Otherwise…” 

“They would be stupid to get rid of you,” Rozanov said immediately. “You are their best player.” 

“Yeah, well. Teams have been stupid before. And it’s not like I just won a Cup for them,” Shane couldn’t stop himself from adding. 

Rozanov smirked. “True. But you do not have no-trade?” 

“Not active, of course not!” 

“Why, of course? You beat me in scoring race three times, no? I only win once. Next time you are negotiating contract, you tell them you are best scorer in League, better even than Ilya Rozanov, and he has no-trade clause, so if they want to keep you, they give you this, too.” 

Shane’s head jerked back involuntarily. “What? You do not have a no-trade! And did you just say that I’m a better player than you?” he asked incredulously. 

“No, no,” Rozanov said immediately. “No. I did not say this. Scoring points is only small part of playing hockey. I am better at blocking shots, checking, playing different positions on ice. Motivating other players.” 

Shane felt a wide grin spreading across his face. “Okay, but—and I’m not saying I agree that you’re better than me at those things, but even if you were, I think scoring goals is a pretty big part of hockey—” 

“I am also better at scoring goals. I score two more goals than you this season—” 

“While I had four more assists! A good player has to know when making the pass is the better play, that’s why assists count just as much as goals in the—” 

“Fine, yes, you are a very little bit better at making the pass, this is one tiny little thing—” 

“Nope, no, you said I’m better, end of subject, you agreed—” 

Rozanov surged up and threw one leg over Shane’s lap entirely, straddling him, and cut off his teasing with a heated kiss. Despite the taste of the cigarette still lacing the edges of Rozanov’s mouth, Shane couldn’t stop himself from opening up needily—he felt greedy for the touches, the reassurance, for the flash of heat that Ilya never failed to inspire in him. In the end, it was Rozanov who pulled back, pressing their foreheads together, his nose and lips still brushing against the side of Shane’s face. 

“Okay. So, no option one, we are agreed?” 

“Uh,” Shane said. God, but how much he wanted to push Ilya back and sink to his knees, fill up his mouth with his cock, let him drive the thoughts from Shane’s brain the way he always did so well… He dragged his mind back from the gutter it had fled to. “Hold on a second. Go back. You don’t have a no-trade clause. Not active, anyway.” 

Rozanov laughed quietly, then worked his way down to Shane’s neck, kissing him there softly. “Yes, I do.” 

Shane groaned and tilted his head to the side, giving Rozanov more room; trying to keep his mind on the conversation felt like a losing battle, but at the same time, he couldn’t let the blatant lie stand. “No, you don’t!” 

“Oh, you know my contract better than me?” 

“I mean, I guess I do, or at least I know the MHL-MHLPA CBA better than you do!” 

Rozanov leaned back, face scrunching up in confusion. “What the fuck! What are these letters?” 

“The collective bargaining agreement between the League and the Players’ Association,” Shane explained, squinting right back. “We’re not eligible for no-trade or no-movement clauses, not until after our seventh season. In 2017. Like, yeah, my contract has one in it, but it won't kick in until the 2017–2018 season—for the second half of the eight-year contract. Is that what you meant?” 

Rozanov stared down at him, visibly doing translations in his head. Shane opened his mouth, but Rozanov put his hand over it, stopping him. “No. My contract is up that season, anyway. My agent told me I had no-trade clause,” he said finally. “That I had it now. I told him, this is what I want—no moving from Boston, from Svetlana and from team, no being forced to go to bad team in crappy town. He said no, is not possible, better to ask for more money. My father taught me, men in business always say this, it makes them look better when they get it done anyway. So I said no, is his job to make it happen. He said fine, he will try. Brings me contract next week, says it is done. I give him bonus.” 

Shane looked up at him and swallowed hard, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut. He nudged his head to the side, just enough to get Rozanov to drop his hand from over Shane’s mouth. “Did… did you read it?”

Rozanov shook his head silently. “I tried,” he said finally. “But it was so much English, so many pages. My agent is old friend of my father, of Svetlana’s father. I thought…” 

—that you could trust him, Shane finished mentally.

“Ilya, I… I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. He couldn’t imagine dealing with such a betrayal from Farah, and he’d only just met her barely two years ago, when—especially with the expiration of his entry-level rookie contract looming—his mother had finally decided that his portfolio had grown too much for her to manage everything alone. 

Ilya shook his head again and leaned over Shane, pressing his forehead into the back of Shane’s neck. Shane wrapped his arms around Ilya’s back and hugged him tightly, rocking slightly back and forth. 

“I was so fucking stupid,” Rozanov muttered. “I should have read it. Or asked someone else to read for me. Fuck!” 

He pulled away, climbing off of Shane’s lap, and, before Shane could try to draw him back, stalked over to the fancy gas fireplace and leaned against it, pressing his forehead into the veneered surface and bracing his arms on either side of his head, hiding his face. Shane watched as Ilya’s fists clenched and unclenched, his heart twisting violently with sympathy and anger and frustration at his own utter helplessness and inability to help. Ilya shouted something in Russian, his voice raw, and pounded his fist impotently against the wall. 

Shane just kept watching, unable to look away despite the ache in his chest. He wished he was brave enough to stand up and go to him, to pull Ilya back into his arms. But it felt like there was suddenly an insurmountable distance between them. 

After an interminable time spent facing the fireplace, his shoulders shaking minutely, Rozanov finally turned and came back, his face now a blank mask. His eyes were a little red and wet, but there were no tears on his cheeks. “So, no option one?” he said smoothly, echoing his question from before. 

“Ilya…” Shane said, but Rozanov just closed his eyes and shook his head, still expressionless. Shane gave up with a sigh. “Yeah. No on option one.” 

“Okay, so that leaves…” Rozanov cocked his head. 

“Two or three. Either way, we come out. It’s basically a question of whether we do that together… or apart.” 

Rozanov turned and started pacing back and forth across the hotel room. Shane started counting his own breaths to keep himself from saying anything: in, two, three, four, five; out, two, three, four, five; in, two, three, four, five; out—

“Is better for me if we stay together,” Rozanov said, finally. “If we get married for real, in Canada. Because of Russia. I am afraid to have only Russian passport, with all of… this. But… I do not want you to feel like you have to do this. If you want to do it alone, I will call Svetlana. She is Russian, but she was born here, while her father played for Boston, after glasnost. So she has American citizenship. She will marry me, if I ask. I will not be in danger.” 

Shane let himself sit with that for a few minutes; thankfully, Rozanov didn’t seem to feel any need to pressure him to speak. Shane’s relief that saving Rozanov from Russia wasn’t solely up to him warred with his absurd feeling of jealousy that Rozanov had a friend who would do such a thing for him. He felt almost disappointed that the only reason Rozanov wanted to stay together was for a visa; but at the same time, he knew he would have been alarmed at any suggestion that Rozanov wanted to get married—after what, four encounters over almost the same number of years? And he was equally terrified at the thought of telling people that they were really together, or of lying and telling people they were nothing to each other. 

Even if, for Rozanov, that last might well be true. 

“So, then… Why wouldn’t you prefer to do that?” Shane finally asked. “Like, you said that Svetlana is a friend from childhood, right? So you clearly… I mean, it sounds like the two of you are close. Why wouldn’t you rather marry her? If you need to marry someone?” 

Rozanov shrugged. “She is friend, yes, I love her, but… like sister? I mean, not completely, sometimes we fuck, but it is not, uh, not romantic. For either of us. And I do not want to put her or her family in danger, or fuck up her life. She just finished with university, is looking for work, maybe with Russian companies. She goes often to Moscow, to visit her family.” 

Shane nodded slowly, digesting that. He got up from the chair and did some pacing himself, thinking furiously. His mother had clearly preferred option three, herself. And maybe that was because she didn’t like the idea of damaging Shane’s brand with an idiotic drunken incident, but… Well, he didn’t like the idea of damaging his brand with an idiotic drunken incident, either. A lot of his sponsors liked him particularly because he had such a squeaky-clean image, especially for a hockey player. And if he was coming out as… whatever… no matter what, then anything he could do to keep his brand strong would probably be smart. It would make it harder for the Metros to retaliate. And a husband… That would put things on a formal, official basis, in a way that a fling or a boyfriend wouldn’t. His mom had thought it might make things more difficult in some ways, that people would say they wouldn’t play hard against each other or something—but wouldn’t it also make it harder for anyone to claim that openly? It would look extra bad for their teams or the League to discriminate against a married couple. And it wasn’t as if family members hadn’t competed against each other in sports before. There had been plenty of times when brothers or cousins had played for rival hockey teams, even in the final round of the playoffs—the MLH loved being able to use it for ratings, drumming up extra drama. No one ever suggested that they might throw games for each other. 

“Okay. If we do this,” he said, turning back toward Rozanov, “if we get married for real, then you can’t sleep around. I mean, I’m not going to put up with everyone laughing at me because my husband is cheating on me three months after the wedding, you know?” 

That seemed a safe way to put it—reputation, branding, saving face. Not emotion. 

Rozanov’s eyebrows rose, and he leaned his hip against the windowsill again, folding his arms across his chest. “And you would not mind this? Going months without sex?” 

Shane couldn’t exactly admit that he only had sex a few times a year as it was. If Rozanov ever found out that Shane had never met anyone else who could do it for him like he could, he would be insufferable. 

“I’d rather deal with that than being a national laughingstock,” he said instead. “And it’s not like Boston and Montreal are that far from each other. If we’re married, we have a perfect reason to spend the offseason and breaks together—we could even fly out whenever we have a few days off. Or we could get a place halfway between—in some tiny town in New Hampshire or Connecticut, where it would only take a couple hours for each of us to get there.” 

Rozanov perked up at that. “Yes, that could work,” he agreed. “And maybe—” 

Shane cocked his head when Rozanov paused. “Maybe what?” 

Rozanov shrugged. “Someone we trust, could be okay? A friend, so even if we are seen together in public, is no scandal as long as we only fuck in private. Like Sveta—we have been friends for many years, no one would be surprised to see us together. And she would never tell anyone. I could introduce you to people like this. I could introduce you to Sveta—she thinks you are very pretty, too.” 

Shane just barely kept himself from frowning. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know. Only if both of us know about it, and we agree that it’s safe.” 

“Yes, okay,” Rozanov said. “Fine.” He moved forward and laid his hand on the back of Shane’s neck, pulling him closer. “But we can sext, too, right?” he murmured against Shane’s lips, then kissed him slowly. Seductively. “Maybe call each other? Sex with you is very good, but I cannot go weeks without, this is not fair.” 

Shane snorted, although he didn’t pull away from the kisses. “You know, maybe exercising a little restraint would be good for you,” he suggested. 

“Hollander,” Rozanov complained, a whining note in his voice. 

“Look, you can have me any time you want to do a ten-hour round-trip drive, how about that?” 

Rozanov didn’t say anything for a second, his breath hot against Shane’s face. “Any time?” he asked. His lips moved down to Shane’s jaw, and once again, Shane couldn’t help but arch back, allowing him free access to his neck. God, it felt so good. “I can fuck you any time?” 

“I mean,” Shane said, backpedaling his words quickly, “obviously not on game days. And I’m not going to skip practice, or—” 

“No, no, you said anytime, you cannot take this back,” Ilya said, his lips moving deliciously against Shane’s neck as he spoke. His hands slid around Shane’s waist, working their way under the shirt he was wearing. Ilya’s shirt. “If I want to show up to Centre Bell and fuck you against the boards—” 

“Well, that’s definitely not happening—” Shane said breathlessly. 

“—then you say, yes husband, take me, harder, please—” 

“In your dreams, asshole—” Shane retorted, even as he felt his spine melt at the word ‘husband,’ said in Ilya’s sexy accent.

“Yes,” Rozanov said, pulling back and looking at him with an intent expression, “is good dream, no?” 

Shane responded instinctively to the heated look in Rozanov’s eyes and the minute nudges of his hands— without conscious thought, he looped his arms around Rozanov’s neck and shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, just before Rozanov picked him up and started carrying him back toward the bedroom. He moaned into Rozanov’s mouth as their lips met again, wetter and messier than before. 

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya breathed. 

They fell down to the bed together, Ilya landing on top of him, a solid, reassuring weight between Shane’s widespread thighs. Rozanov rocked forward, grinding down into Shane’s rapidly hardening dick, and broke the kiss to attack Shane’s neck again, biting down into the muscle and making Shane whine helplessly, lust shooting through him as he bucked his hips up into—

From the other room, his phone’s text message tone sounded. 

“Fuck,” Shane cursed. 

“Ignore it,” Ilya ordered shortly, his hands busy tugging at Shane’s waistband. 

It was so hard to push him away, but Shane did it. “I set it so it would only go off for my parents, my agent, or my coach,” he said. “I can’t ignore it.” 

Ilya rolled off of him, landing heavily on the mattress, and put his hands over his eyes, groaning loudly. Swearing again under his breath—he was already so fucking hard, dammit—Shane got off the bed and went to retrieve his phone from where he’d abandoned it, back on the chair. 

There was a new message in the group chat with his mother and Farah, his agent. 

Mom: Shane, Farah would like to meet with you this morning. She’s hoping to put together some plans before the group call with team management. She wants to get a look at how you interact in person before she makes any recommendations on how we shape the narrative. 

Even as Shane finished reading it, more dots started bouncing at the bottom of the screen. 

Farah: I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with this, Shane
—But it will really help if I can coach you and Rozanov a bit before you talk to the media
—And your coaches, if possible
—And if we could do it in private, that would be best. I can get a meeting room at my hotel, or…?

Shane breathed in slowly. “Remember how I said my agent is here in Vegas?” he said, looking over his shoulder. “She wants to meet in person—I think she wants to come here, if you’re okay with that?” 

Rozanov opened his mouth to answer, but before he could say anything, someone knocked briskly at the door. Shane swung around, his anxiety spiking. It couldn’t be Farah—she didn’t know what hotel they were at. Who else could possibly have found them, already?

Chapter End Notes

In case anyone is curious just how far the gay hockey rabbit hole I've fallen, I literally downloaded and keyword-searched the NHL-NHLPA CBA while writing this chapter. I'm down deep here, friends.

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Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who commented on the last chapter. I adore you all. 🥹

Chapter 4

Chapter Summary

I don't have the next chapter quite ready yet (I've been trying to stay one full chapter ahead of myself), but I just decided that my workplace has gotten toxic enough that I have to quit my job tomorrow, so. Fuck it.

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Thank you to everyone who is following along with this story, I love all of your comments so much! Honestly all the positive energy from this fandom has been all that's been keeping me going these last few weeks.

Chapter Notes

Ilya was wildly entertained when Hollander jumped at the loud knock on the front door, spinning around in the air and bristling like a startled kitten. But his humor died down when Hollander just looked frantically at him, his eyes big and frightened. 

“Relax, Hollander,” he said, climbing off the bed. “Is just breakfast.” 

Hollander’s shoulders slowly came down from his ears. As Ilya moved past the bed, heading toward the front room, Hollander chuckled a little, running his hand through his hair. “Right, okay. I… forgot we ordered that, actually.” 

“Is probably better that you stopped me,” Ilya admitted, adjusting himself in his pants as he neared the front door, with Hollander trailing after him like a baby duck. “I will need to carb load, so I have enough strength to treat you properly.” 

It was worth it, pulling out the bizarre American term that the Raiders’ trainers used, just to see the way Hollander choked and blushed, the skin behind his freckles turning a delicate, dusky pink.

“Carb loading doesn’t actually do anything,” Hollander was protesting, as Ilya opened the door and let the waiter—or were they called something different in a hotel? He wasn’t sure—in with his cart of dishes. “Unless you do it over a longer period of—” 

“Oh my god, Hollander, you are so boring,” Ilya said, rolling his eyes. 

A moment later, he regretted his word choice—from the way the waiter was glancing back and forth between them, he definitely knew who they were, and had almost certainly seen the ESPN story. The last thing Hollander needed right now was a media story talking about how they were still using last names and chirping each other the morning after their supposed marriage. As the waiter finished unloading their breakfast dishes on the small table, Ilya pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed the man some cash, too much for the simple chore he’d performed.

“And I don’t see anything on the news, yes?” he murmured, putting his arm about the man’s shoulders and steering him toward the door. 

“Of course not, Mr. Rozanov,” the man assured him, pocketing the cash with a nod of thanks. “Nothing like that will happen here. Our guests’ privacy is very important to us.”  

He made direct and sustained eye contact with Ilya as he said it, making it seem like a bit more than a rote phrase—although that too, clearly—and Ilya allowed himself to relax somewhat as he turned back toward the table. 

But not too much. Hollander was far more aware of the power imbalance that lay between them now than Ilya would have liked; for all that Ilya had tried to downplay it, he couldn’t have escaped realizing how desperate Ilya’s situation was. How reliant on Hollander’s protection he had become. How hungry he was for anything Hollander would give him. Ilya’s vulnerability itched under his own skin, making him want to lash out with harsh words—or better yet, have Hollander underneath him again, boneless and wanting, matching his hunger and his neediness, begging Ilya to take him, again and again… 

He tried his best to shake off the unsettled feeling as he sat down at the table and began eating. He’d barely picked at the hors d'oeuvres at the afterparty the night before, too distracted by imagining everything that he was going to do with Hollander afterward. And the bar they’d gone to before the wedding hadn’t offered food. He was genuinely starving. 

“I can’t believe you’re eating all of that,” Hollander muttered, giving Ilya’s plate a disgusted glance. 

Ilya took a long swig of his coffee. “Why? Is very good,” he said, sticking another bite of eggs into his mouth with relish. They had some kind of thick, spicy green sauce on them, with peppers and bits of pork in it; it was delicious. “I like the sausages—they are not too sweet, not like most I have here. You want to try?” 

Hollander looked briefly tempted, then shook his head, taking another bite of his own boring breakfast, instead. 

In truth, Ilya ate porridge for breakfast most days himself, with some fruit and eggs, maybe some smoked fish or just protein powder. Sausage or McDonald's only on weight training days, or when he really needed a treat, and never before a game. He didn’t entirely ignore the Raiders’ nutritionist. But other than some interviews and photoshoots—and, of course, the parade in Boston, with the Cup—he had the next two months off except for training, until preseason started. Why shouldn’t he live it up a little? 

And this sausage was very good. He stabbed another link with his fork, bit off half of it, and then held out the fork with the remaining half to Hollander. Hollander shook his head—but he didn’t turn away, and his eyes met Ilya’s for a split second before his gaze shifted back down to the fork. Ilya felt his heartbeat pick up. 

“Come on, Shane,” he urged, trying to get used to the feeling of the other man’s first name in his mouth. He nudged the bit of meat closer to Hollander’s mouth, until it almost touched his lips. His next words came out low and soft. Imploring. “Season is over, yes? No hockey for weeks. You can have little bite of sausage. Nothing bad will happen. Eat.” 

Hollander’s eyelashes fluttered at the last entreating command, and his lips parted. Holding his breath, Ilya moved the fork forward, pushing the sausage into Hollander’s mouth. His teeth bit into it. Ilya slowly pulled the fork back, and Hollander closed his lips around the hunk of meat and chewed, his eyes half-lidded.

The lust that stirred inside Ilya then was a wild, relentless, hungry thing, like a predator with a small, helpless animal in its sights. He barely kept himself from shoving the table out from between the two of them, snatching up his prize, and carrying him off. He took a deep breath and shoved it back down. 

“Good?” he asked. 

Shane nodded and swallowed. “Yeah, It’s good.” After another pause, full of silent tension, he opened his eyes. “So, uh. Are you okay with meeting with my agent here, or…? I guess I should probably go back to my hotel room and get some clothes—” 

“No,” Ilya said immediately. “You look good in my clothes.” 

“The jeans are too big. They keep trying to slide down. Oh, shut up!” 

“I said nothing!” Ilya said, although he knew his eyes were still dancing. He pressed his lips together and conceded, “I have a belt. Or you can wear sweats.” 

“You brought sweats to Vegas?” 

“More comfortable to sleep in.” 

“I don’t remember you sleeping in anything last night.” 

Ilya bit his lower lip, grinning. “Good memory, yes?” 

Their eyes met again. Fuck.

“We’re not starting that up again,” Hollander said. “I can go meet my agent somewhere else, if—” 

“No,” Ilya said immediately. Instinctively. “Tell her to come here. We can order more breakfast.” 

He didn’t dare let Hollander out of his sight; not until things were more settled between them. Preferably not until he had a piece of paper locking him down, although Ilya knew that wasn’t actually feasible. No doubt this agent would have plenty to say about how stupid it would be for her prize client to permanently tie himself to a countryless, homeless, family-less Russian hated by most everyone in North America. Ilya still couldn’t quite believe that Hollander’s mother hadn’t been more against the idea. But perhaps she hadn’t had a legal marriage in mind—Ilya had done his best to plant that idea with Hollander after the call, and was still a little incredulous at how well it had worked. Hollander had to have a savior complex the size of the Sulak Canyon; it was the only explanation that made sense. Certainly no one would choose Ilya if they had a choice. 

“She’s probably been up since five,” Hollander muttered, starting to type into his phone. “I can’t believe that I slept this late, even after drinking so much. And I am sending someone to go get my clothes, I can get a guy from Taskrabbit—” 

“Eight in the morning is late for you?” Ilya shook his head. “So boring.” 

“With a three-hour time difference, it is! What, do you sleep until noon on your days off?” 

Ilya shrugged. “Sometimes. I can be lazy.” 

Hollander scoffed. “Well maybe if you got up earlier, you would beat me in the scoring race more often.” He shook his head and took another bite of his breakfast.  

“Maybe if you got more sleep, you would not have such a weak backhand,” Ilya retorted. 

“I have the best fucking backhand in the League, and you know it,” Hollander said, grinning. 

“No, this is lie,” Ilya said, smiling back. “My backhand is much better—” 

“Like hell it is—” 

They had both been leaning forward across the table as they bantered, getting closer and closer, and now Ilya surrendered to temptation, dipping his head and bringing their lips together. Hollander tasted of sausage and oats and sweetness. Fuck. Ilya was so screwed. 

“We need to eat,” Hollander said, unconvincingly. His lips moved delightfully against Ilya’s as he spoke, without pulling back even a little. 

“Maybe you are less hungry for food,” Ilya suggested, letting his voice deepen, “and more hungry for my cock.” 

Hollander huffed out a laugh; but to Ilya’s disappointment, he sat back in his chair and took a large bite of his porridge, despite how his eyes were still fixed on Ilya’s lips. 

“I told you,” he said, once he’d chewed and swallowed. “We can’t, not right now. I can’t still be hard when my agent gets here.” 

Ilya was a little tempted to tell Hollander that he could easily make him come before his agent arrived. Granted, they weren’t nineteen any more, and Ilya preferred to take his time, to have Hollander begging and whining and desperate for it, when he finally came. But the wild thing living in Ilya’s chest desperately wanted to lay a further claim on Shane before this agent of his got there. Wanted to have him sit through a meeting with his ass still sore, with the taste of Ilya still in his mouth, with Ilya’s spit still drying on his skin. 

However he knew this meeting was already going to be hard enough for Hollander; and anyway, Ilya needed to make a good impression on this agent of his. And so he turned back to his own breakfast and wolfed down the first pancake. They weren’t like the ones he’d grown up with—bigger and fluffier and blander—but they were still tasty, especially when wrapped around a bit of sausage. Ilya reached out, trying to steal a bit of salmon from Hollander’s plate, only to be thwarted as Hollander slapped his fork away. He sighed and went back to his sausages. But the food settled heavily in his stomach as he started to think about the upcoming meeting. 

“I don’t want your agent to know,” he said finally, breaking through the silence that had settled awkwardly between them. “About the no-trade clause, I mean. That I thought…” 

Hollander put his spoon down, looking at Ilya with that too-perceptive, too-sympathetic gaze. Ilya didn’t want his pity. 

“She won’t think any less of you for it,” Hollander said. He lifted his hand, beginning to reach for where Ilya’s hand was sitting next to his fork. Ilya picked up his fork and took another bite, trying to make it look like he hadn’t seen the gesture at all, and Hollander let his hand fall back into his lap. “Ilya, it wasn’t your fault.” 

“I know whose fault it was,” Ilya snarled. 

Hollander pressed his lips together. Ilya felt an unaccustomed emotion stirring in his belly; guilt, he thought. 

“Fine,” Hollander said. “I won’t tell her.” 

“Okay. Good,” Ilya said, trying to drive the feeling away. He’d done nothing wrong. “Thank you.”

They’d been eating in silence for several minutes when Hollander’s phone dinged. “Farah’s in the lobby,” he said quietly. 

Ilya took a deep breath. “So? Send her room number.” 

Hollander nodded, tapping something on his phone, then stood up and started moving around all the breakfast dishes, stacking them on top of each other. Ilya just barely managed to grab his plate before Hollander could take it. 

“Hollander,” he said. “What are you doing?” 

“Cleaning up,” Hollander said, looking at Ilya as if that should have been obvious.  

“I am not done!” 

Hollander rolled his eyes. “You can’t sit and eat breakfast while having a business meeting. At least not if you didn’t order enough for her to share, and we forgot to actually do that. Mostly because you kept trying to fuck me.”

That was, unfortunately, inarguable. Well, the first part was, anyway; they should have ordered her food, or at least gotten tea ready, since Americans didn’t like to drink vodka while doing business. Ilya’s father would have strapped him for such rudeness. He groaned and picked up his plate, following Hollander to the penthouse’s kitchen. He filled the electric kettle for tea, then leaned against the counter as Hollander finished wrapping the remaining food in tinfoil and packing it away in the fridge and moved to stacking the dirty dishes on a tray, for housekeeping to deal with later. His movements were confident and economical, reminding Ilya of his hands on a hockey stick. There was something… nice… about watching him as he did this. It felt comfortable. Cozy. Safe. 

The knock they’d been expecting came, followed quickly by a buzz from the doorbell. Hollander’s hands shook a little as he dried them off. 

“Hey,” Ilya said. He squeezed Hollander’s shoulder. “Is okay. Your parents support you, yes? If agent is asshole, you fire her.” 

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” Hollander said, shrugging off his hand. 

Ilya didn’t take offense. It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand not wanting to show weakness. Instead, he just grabbed the kettle and a couple of cups, and followed Hollander as he headed for the door. 

Hollander’s agent was a tall, somewhat older woman—probably about Scott Hunter’s age—with dark skin and long, wavy hair that was mostly pinned up in a knot, although a few strands had escaped. Attractive enough that Ilya had to fight off a surge of territoriality as she gently asked if she could give Hollander a hug. 

“Thank you, Shane,” she said, as she finally pulled back from their embrace. Her eyes were glistening with sympathy. “I’m so sorry that you’re having to deal with this. I’m here to help with anything you need, okay?” 

He nodded. “I’m so sorry. I know… I know this will make your job a lot more difficult, and I understand if you want to—” 

“Absolutely not,” she said immediately. “Shane. Of course not. I’m with you through thick or thin, okay? And yeah, okay, I admit I would have rather helped draft a statement announcing that the two of you were burying the hatchet and… I don’t know, starting a nonprofit together or something, instead of that you got married in Vegas! But you don’t give me the big bucks because it’s easy, okay?” 

“Okay,” Hollander muttered, wiping his fingers just below his lower eyelid, and Ilya had finally had enough. 

He stepped forward, thrusting his hand into the scant space between them. “Hello. I am Ilya Rozanov.” 

She smiled. “Yes, I know who you are. I’m Farah.” 

She shook his hand. She had a good handshake. Reassuring, dry, firm. 

Hollander played the host, offering her tea or coffee and asking if she was hungry, while she and Ilya sized each other up. With tea poured and food politely declined, they all sat down, Ilya and Hollander on the long couch, while Farah pulled over the same armchair Ilya had pulled out of the bedroom earlier. He noticed, with some amusement, that Hollander seemed to be having trouble looking at it. 

“Alright, first things first,” she said. “Have the two of you made a decision on how you’re going to present yourselves to the media?” 

Ilya and Hollander looked at each other. Ilya tilted his head toward Hollander, holding his breath. 

Hollander rubbed the back of his head.  “Uh, we’re planning to tell a… variation of the truth, I guess.” 

Ilya tensed. Was Hollander changing the plan after all, then? Going with option two, the worst option of all for Ilya… It wasn’t as if it would be a nightmare for him to marry Svetlana, he reminded himself frantically. Their families had talked about it before. And it was even, very probably, the only way that he would ever be able to return to Russia, to speak with his family again. But he despised the thought of the snickers that she would have to endure, the harassment from men who would think she must be desperate for a real lover, the pity from her family and friends. Hated the idea of having to look her father in the eyes after doing such a thing; Sergei Vetrov had always liked Ilya, had been kind to him, even played interference for him with his father—

“—that we’ve been dating in secret since before we even started playing with the Metros and the Raiders,” Hollander went on, after what seemed like an eternity, but couldn’t have been more than seconds. 

Farah’s eyebrows shot up. Apparently Yuna hadn’t mentioned that part to her? 

“And while last night was an… impulsive choice, it was real to us, and we’re planning to get married legally in Canada. Later this summer, I guess. Or earlier, if Roz—if Ilya’s visa situation looks like it’s getting risky.” 

Ilya reached for Shane’s hand, unable to hide his relief. Hollander shifted slightly closer to him on the couch to take it, and Ilya just barely kept himself from smirking in Farah’s direction.

“Yes, this summer,” he said, instead of anything more revealing. Already mentally planning for it to be more like much earlier that summer. Preferably within the next two weeks—before the draft, when teams would start more seriously considering their next-season rosters. 

“Wow,” Farah said. “Wow. Well. Congratulations, to both of you!” 

“Thank you,” Hollander said—actually smiling, even. 

“Yes. Thank you very much,” Ilya said. 

“Okay,” Farah said, visibly shifting gears in her head. She pulled out her phone. “Let me just text Yuna. Unless you’ve already…?” 

“Uh, no, not yet,” Hollander admitted. “I, uh—had a feeling that once we told her, everything would start moving really fast, you know? And we kinda just… wanted to eat breakfast first?” 

Farah put her hand over her mouth, but not in time to entirely stifle her snort. “That’s fair,” she acknowledged. “Well. She can probably wait a little longer without exploding.” 

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Hollander muttered. 

Farah pressed her lips together, utterly failing to hide the grin this time, as she put her phone down on her lap. “Alright then. Ilya,” she said, pronouncing it correctly on the first time. His eyebrows rose involuntarily. “Yuna also told me that you were interested in signing me as your agent.” 

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “My agent will cut ties with me shortly, if he has not already.” 

She pressed her lips together briefly. “I understand, and I’m sorry that you don’t have more supportive representation. That’s not fair to you. However, I’m not positive whether having me as your agent would be the best move, either.” 

“What? Why?” Hollander asked, before Rozanov could respond. 

“If she does not want—” Ilya started, only to break off as Farah raised her hand. 

“Let me be clear, representing you would be any agent’s dream! And I’ve only been in the hockey business for a few years. Agents across North America would scream if you announced that you’d chosen me as your new representation. I’m not going to lie, my ego hates the idea of turning that down.” She laughed a little, shaking her head. “But the truth is, it could be a conflict of interest, and I wouldn’t have even considered it if it weren’t for the circumstances.  I’m an independent agent—not like someone with Wasserman or Newport, giant firms who can assign players to separate agents and quarantine information between them as needed. I have a very small portfolio—only two other hockey players other than Shane, a few figure skaters, and one speed skater. And that’s because I’ve specifically avoided taking on anyone who might end in a position to compete with one of my other clients for a position. It would be one thing if the two of you both played for the Metros—it’s becoming more common for teammates to coordinate their salary negotiations, especially longtime linemates. But I can’t think of a team that could afford to pay you both what you're worth—well, unless they seriously underpaid their defense.” 

“Yeah, or we took team-friendly,” Hollander said—as if he’d actually thought about it. “And the League could challenge that, if we both suddenly moved to another team, with below-market salaries. It’s kinda exactly what the salary caps are meant to prevent—keeping one team from getting all the best players, so no one has a chance against them.” 

“We cannot play on same team, anyway,” Ilya pointed out, not sure why he was having to. “We are under contract to Montreal and Boston.” 

“That’s true,” Farah agreed. “And you both being just out of your ELCs definitely helps—that means you wouldn't be negotiating new contracts anytime soon, anyway. Shane re-signed for eight years in 2013, that takes him through to 2021, and Ilya, I believe yours was for five? Through 2018?” 

“Yes,” Ilya said, his stomach churning slightly. He wished the hotel room wasn’t quite so modern. There was nothing wooden nearby to knock on. He reminded himself, again, of the unlikelihood of the Raiders choosing to buy out the rest of his contract. Unless the team turned against him, and they felt they had to free up the cap space…

Shane put his hand on Ilya’s thigh, rubbing gently. Ilya’s mind focused down on the touch, his dick twitching inside his jeans. 

“That said, the two of you still occupy much the same niche,” Farah was saying. “Both star forwards, first-liners, who want to stay on the East Coast… Yes, Ilya?” 

“What?” Ilya said, still catching up. “Oh, yes. I want to stay in Boston.” 

Farah nodded. “So, that means that even putting aside your actual roster spots, you’d be competing for a lot of the same other opportunities. To be honest, I’m surprised you haven’t already—I know you did that one joint shoot before your rookie season, but otherwise, I haven’t really seen you in much, Ilya.” 

Her tone made it a question, and Ilya shrugged. “I have manager in Russia. He takes care of my money and property there, my—how do you say, when they use your picture, name, to sell things?”

“Endorsements,” Farah suggested. “Or sponsorships.”

“Yes. This, he manages—I do commercials in summer, events. Adidas, but they are German company, who talk to my manager in Russia. My agent in Boston, he does nothing but my contract with the Raiders. I have not done many other things here in America—only for cars, games, vodka. Things that I would buy anyway, and so, when they call to offer insane money if I let them take photos and tell people what I like, I say yes, sure, no problem.” 

Farah nodded and made a note on her phone. “Have you officially cut ties with your agent here? Or your manager?” 

“No,” Ilya said shortly. “I have not spoken to either, yet.” 

“That should be one of your first priorities, then,” Farah said. “If you choose to sign with me you’d have to, of course, but even if you don’t—I can recommend several agents who would be able to offer you better representation than what you’re currently getting, from the sound of it.” 

Ilya could say nothing to that, and so he chose to respond to a different part. “And this is the only reason you think I should not sign with you? Because you might favor Hollander over me?” 

“Of course she wouldn’t—” Hollander started. 

“No? You think I would be her favorite, instead? I am very attractive, charming, best player in League—” 

Ilya laughed as Hollander hit him with one of the small pillows from the couch. 

Farah raised her eyebrows, looking amused. “Since you shouldn’t have to worry about contracts any time soon, I’m most concerned about your privacy with regard to your sponsorships. Realistically, it wouldn’t be possible for me to go after the same company for both of you. So, if we were going to proceed, you would need to agree to let me share confidential information. For example, Shane, I would need to amend your contract to allow me to disclose to Ilya if any brands he asked me to pursue have already been in talks with you.” 

“I don’t have a problem with that,” Hollander started, then went on, “Oh. That’s what you meant, saying that you wouldn’t be willing to work with Ilya under any other circumstances? Because as husbands, we’ll be sharing financial information anyway. Making decisions about what teams we play on together…” 

“And I could market the two of you to potential partners together,” Farah said, actually rubbing her hands together at the prospect. “Co-branded opportunities, joint sponsorships—family members do that all the time, especially in sports. The Stahls, the Sedins, of course—or Agassi and Graf, to steal an example from another sport. Two of my other clients are a husband and wife, in fact—that’s a little different since they’re pairs figure skaters, so it’s natural for them to do commercials together. No one wants them separately, which is its own problem. But I can imagine some great prospects for the two of you—I mean, goodness, look at how well that CCM feature did! And the MLH has been shoving the two of you together to raise ratings for years. I think we could make a lot of hay on the media storm around your marriage, do a bunch of romantic and wedding-related stuff, rings, tuxedos, flowers. Mmm. I bet Rolex would be interested in getting in on that—”  

Hollander made a soft keening noise and pulled his hand away from Ilya’s. When Ilya looked over, Shane had crumpled over himself, burying his face in his hands. 

“Hey,” Ilya said, shuffling even closer, until their thighs pressed against each other. He put his arm over Shane’s shoulders. Touch had worked to jar him out of his panic before, right? “Shane—” 

“I’m okay,” he muttered. “Just freaking out a little.” 

Ilya rubbed the back of his neck, wishing he dared climb on top of him, like he had earlier. Farah got up and walked away—Ilya had just a moment to wonder if she was actually giving them space to fuck?—and then came back with a bottle of whiskey from the sidebar. She poured a measure into Shane’s teacup, then pressed it into his hands, pulling them one-by-one away from his face. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, taking a small sip. 

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “You’ve had a crazy day!” 

Hollander laughed wetly. “Yeah, well. I guess I had to make up for being boring with a vengeance.” 

Ilya laughed as well. “Don’t worry, you are still boring one in marriage. Just less boring than before.” 

Hollander leaned harder against him. “Craziest morning of all time,” he muttered. 

Farah looked at the two of them for a long moment, then nodded again, typing another note on her phone. “Alright,” she said. “Well, if that sounds good to you, I’ll draft up some joint confidentiality and information sharing agreements, then. Shane, ah… Maybe this would be a good time for me to speak to Ilya alone for a bit?” 

“Why?” Hollander asked, before Ilya could do more than tense slightly. 

Farah was unflapped. “It’s a normal part of creating a joint representation agreement of this type; as a professional with fiduciary responsibilities, I have obligations to the two of you, both individually and together, and I need to clear those with you both, separately, before I can proceed. It won’t take long.” 

Christ. Ilya’s agent may have lied to his face, but at least Ilya had always understood what he was saying. Ilya looked at Hollander, hoping that he would put a stop to this; but Hollander looked approximately as stymied as Ilya felt. 

“Okay, I guess,” he said finally, pulling away. Ilya’s side felt cold. “I’ll just… go take a shower. I need one, anyway.” 

Ilya took a deep breath, watching as Hollander walked away. He’d expected Farah to want to talk to Hollander alone, to try to talk him out of getting married. Perhaps she was only suggesting that she speak to both of them to disguise her real motivation? Or…

“You want to give Hollander time alone?” Ilya asked, turning back to Farah. “To recover?” 

“Yes,” she admitted freely, smiling winningly at him. “But I also wanted to talk to you about your citizenship status.” 

Ilya refused to be charmed. “Citizenship?” he asked, scowling. 

“Yes. From what Shane just said—I take it that one reason the two of you want to get legally married is so that you can apply for Canadian citizenship,” she said. 

It was impossible to read any judgment in her tone; but it had to be there, didn’t it? Still, there was a little point in denying it, not when Hollander had already mentioned Ilya’s visa as a motivator for potential haste.  

“Yes,” Ilya said, folding his arms across his chest. “Shane does not want me to be forced to return to Russia—he is afraid for me, there.” 

Farah nodded. ‘I understand that, but… What kind of visa do you have, do you know?” 

Ilya raised his eyebrows. Of course he knew—he had to reiterate it every time he traveled back and forth to Moscow. “P1-A.” 

“And has anyone ever talked about the possibility of applying for an EB-1 to you?” 

Ilya shook his head, frowning. “What is?” 

“It’s an easy path to US citizenship,” Farah said bluntly, and Ilya’s brain… stopped. “On the basis of extraordinary ability. No one mentioned this to you, when you did your visa paperwork?” 

Ilya picked up his teacup with a shaking hand. “I do not… The team tells me, my agent is taking care of it. My agent tells me, P1-A is easy. Best way for a player like me.” 

“I see. Well, it is certainly the easiest, and if your agent had reason to think that you planned to return to Russia when you retired, then it likely wouldn’t have made much sense to go another route. But Ilya, I believe you would have almost certainly been granted an EB-1 green card if you’d applied for it at any point since the draft. And after the year you’ve just had? With all due respect to Shane, you’ve just established yourself as the top player in the entire League—on the same level as Lafleur or Orr. No immigration agent in the country would deny your application. You can have a green card within six months. Probably faster, if we grease a few palms, keep pressure on them, especially with your coming out in the news. It will still take about five years to obtain US citizenship, but you wouldn’t be dependent on the Raiders keeping you in active roster while you wait. And while yes, you could also get a Canadian permanent resident card by marrying Shane, you wouldn’t be eligible for citizenship without living in Canada, at least for part of the year. You might still be able to fulfill the residency requirements while still playing for Boston—I’d have to do some math and look at your schedule to see how much time you spend in Canada throughout the year—but it would certainly be easier and likely faster to go the US citizenship route. And you don’t need to marry Shane to do it.”

“Oh,” Ilya said, his mind spinning. The truth was, he’d never asked his agent about citizenship. While he’d thought about staying in the US after his career, that future had seemed so impossibly far away… And in the back of his head, he had always assumed that he would have to return to Russia. His family obligations had always been a tight noose around his ankle, drawing him back. Probably he wouldn't make it to be that old, anyway.

But now… 

He’d expected to have missed calls from his brother or father, when he’d looked at his phone that morning. Alexei rarely texted, and his father, never, and they knew better than to leave voicemails on Ilya’s machine. When they wanted to get a hold of Ilya, they would call over and over, until he finally answered the phone out of sheer annoyance. Moscow was almost half a day ahead of Vegas—it would have been afternoon there when the news had broken, and Ilya had expected to have dozens of missed calls—his father wanting to shout at him for playing such a stupid, dangerous prank (because surely his father would never believe that Ilya could have meant it), and Alexei ready to laugh at him for being a foolish faggot, because Alexei would believe it instantly. 

But there had been nothing. Only calls from unknown numbers—reporters, almost certainly—and from his coach and agent. His family had dropped him entirely, without a word. 

“So, then—with that in mind, do you want me to call Shane back in here and tell him you want to go a different route, after all?” Farah asked. 

“No,” Ilya blurted out immediately. 

Farah raised her eyebrows again. 

“I… “ Ilya groped for words. For understanding. He’d been so focused on needing a visa. On that being a reasonable, practical, safe reason to get married right away. “No. I want to marry him.” 

He closed his eyes, lost in memory for a moment. Remembering the wild, heady joy, more powerful than the vodka, that had run through his veins when Shane had let Ilya tug him into that chapel. 

When he opened his eyes, Farah was looking at him with an almost unbearably soft expression in her eyes. “Well,” she said, gently. “You can do an EB-1 application and a Canadian marriage visa at the same time—it will make things easier, in fact. With permanent residency in both countries, you’ll be able to travel back and forth without using your Russian passport, even before you obtain citizenship. You’d only need to use your Russian papers for travel to other countries. I can take care of it for you.”

Ilya buried his face in his teacup for a moment, trying to let the unfamiliar flood of emotions pass over him. Finally, he cleared his throat, still staring down at the cup. “Okay. Good. We do that then. You have other questions?” 

It turned out she did, in fact, have many other questions—about his financial lifestyle, his retirement plans, his boundaries with sponsors, his politics, his comfort level with nudity. By the time she was finally done, Ilya’s tea was gone, and he was seriously considering drinking the spiked one that Hollander had left behind, despite how much he disliked whiskey.  

“Are you guys about done?” Hollander said, sticking his head back into the room as Ilya answered yet another question. “I thought it wasn’t going to take long—my mom’s texted me like five times already.” 

“So that means it’s been, what, five minutes?” Farah asked him, her eyes dancing. She glanced back down at her phone and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Ilya—I really didn’t intend to get into all of this right now, I just got on a roll. Come on in, Shane—yours really will be shorter, I promise, since I already know your sponsorship preferences.” 

“Oh God, you went through that entire thing with him?” Hollander asked, looking dismayed. “I’m sorry, Ro—Ilya. I wouldn’t have left you alone with her if I’d known she was going to torture you.”

Ilya laughed, loud and choppy. Hollander so rarely chirped, it made his occasional exceptions all the more entertaining. 

Hollander sat down next to him—almost as close as he’d been before he’d left, practically snuggling into Ilya’s side. He picked up his abandoned cup of tea and took a sip, then made a face and put it back down—Ilya wasn’t sure if it was because he’d forgotten the alcohol, or because it was cold, now. Then he leaned over and sniffed Ilya’s neck; Ilya turned, startled at the boldness of the advance, then realized, from the mischievous look on Hollander’s face, that he hadn’t meant it sexually. 

“You need a shower, too,” Hollander said, his eyes crinkling prettily. “You stink.” 

“Oh, I see,” Ilya said, shaking his head. “You are asshole now, hmm?” 

“Mmm, I think it’s still you,” Hollander said, grinning at him. 

Unable to resist the temptation any longer, Ilya leaned down, cupped Shane’s face, and kissed him. He stiffened at first, clearly conscious of their audience, but after Ilya gripped his jaw harder, showing him that he wouldn’t let him pull away, he relaxed convulsively, melting into it. Ilya slipped his tongue past Shane’s suddenly slack lips, taking his time with it, savoring the surrender. Only when Shane was clearly starting to have trouble staying upright did Ilya break the kiss, nuzzling at Shane’s temple for a second before pulling away entirely. 

“Have good meeting, husband,” he murmured, and thoroughly enjoyed the look of shocked, lust-filled annoyance that crossed Hollander’s face in the instant before Ilya turned and flounced to the bathroom. 

At least, if he had to give Hollander’s agent the opportunity to sway him back to the side of rationality, he’d been able to present the strongest argument for sticking with insanity, first. 

Once in the bathroom, he fought the urge to eavesdrop by actually stripping off his clothes and getting into the shower. They were probably having their talk in more of that unintelligible lawyer-speak, anyway. Or Hollander’s irritatingly perfect French. 

Not that Ilya could actually distinguish between a good French accent and a bad one. Perhaps he should have Sasha come visit, as he kept threatening to do, and tell him whether all the reporters praising his husband’s French were just sucking up, or not. 

He’d always been quick to shower—when not sharing a locker room with an aggravatingly good hockey phenomenon with adorable freckles, at least—and Hollander and his agent were still murmuring quietly together when Ilya shut off the water.  As he toweled himself off, his phone started buzzing, and he groaned. After checking the news, earlier, and realizing what had happened, he’d put it on a temporary do not disturb—it must have expired while he’d been in the shower. He pulled it out of his pocket and eyed it like a poisonous snake. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to do much more than skim through the thousands of notifications, earlier—but it was likely time to face the music. 

He picked it up. The preview picture on the screen showed his teammate Marly’s face, an unflattering picture of him with his lips wrapped around a long, thick sausage—the food kind, sadly; Ilya had taken it at a Renaissance Festival, one early fall day when he and Marly had taken some of the rooks there after training camp and before preseason started. 

It had been a good day. Ilya closed his eyes for a second, praying that it wouldn’t be the last good day he’d have with the lanky defenseman. Cliff Marleau was probably Ilya’s best friend on the Raiders. Although he was a couple of years older, they’d started the same season—Cliff having spent a little more time than Ilya with the Raiders’ affiliates in the minors—and the franchise had housed both of them with the same older mentor, the Raiders’ then-captain, who had retired just a couple years later. Ilya had never told Marly anything about him liking men, but he wouldn’t be surprised if the other player suspected—they’d lived in each other’s pockets enough that it would have been hard to shield everything. If Cliff had turned against him, he had no hope with the rest of the team. 

The phone stopped ringing. A second later, a flurry of text messages started came through. 

Marley: cmon man
—call me back
—I know you’re probably snuggled up with your hubby 😉
—That or piss drunk still 👏
—But idk how much longer I can hold the boys back
—so call me okay?!?

Ilya took a deep breath and pressed the call button. 

“He lives!” Marly crowed in his ear. “Jesus, man, I know it’s still early there, but I swear to fucking God I was about to send in the Marines, you know?” 

“Sure,” Ilya said, running his hand through his wet hair. “Marines. Yes.” 

“Okay, dude, I know you’re probably sick as a dog,” Marly said. “So just let me know what's what so I can take care of things here, okay?” 

“Let you know?” Ilya echoed, utterly lost. 

“Uhhh… Dude, you have seen the news already, right?” 

“Yes, of course.” 

“So? Is it real? Or was it a prank? Or I don't know, some impersonators, or something like that?” 

Ilya closed his eyes again, understanding rippling through him. He’d been encouraged, at first, by Marly’s still-friendly words and jovial tone. He hadn’t realized that, of course, Cliff might have assumed it was all a prank. 

“It was real,” he said, refusing to continue with such cowardice. “We will be getting married again, for real. Later in the summer.” 

“Fuck, yeah!” Marly said, without a second’s hesitation. “Now, look, if you want to ask one of the other guys to be your best man—well, I won’t understand, and I will be planning to slip some sleeping pills in their beer and tip them into the harbor, so maybe tell me now so I can take care of that while there’s plenty of time to replace them before next season, okay?” 

Ilya choked out a rough laugh, then lowered the phone and pressed it to his forehead, refusing to give in to the tears of relief pressing behind his eyes. Marly, at least, was behind him. “Yes, okay,” he said, knowing and not caring, for once, that his emotion showed clearly in his voice. “You are the one, of course.” 

“Gonna be fucking epic, bro,” Cliff enthused, his voice tinny with the distance. Ilya hurriedly raised the phone back up to his ear. “Okay, so. I can tell the rest of the boys, right?” 

Ilya swallowed. “You don’t think… Would not be better to wait?” 

“Nah, man. Speculation’s been going wild, here, you know? Better to settle it now, let them know where you stand.” 

Ilya nodded. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Okay.” 

“Awesome, dude. Alright, stay on the line for a second, put me on speaker or something, but take a look at the big team chat, okay?” 

Ilya raised his eyebrows. The Raiders had easily more than half a dozen team chats—current starting lineup, full current roster, everyone who traveled with the team to away games, just offense, just defense, everyone but the Americans, etc.—but there was only one that Cliff would refer to as the “big team chat.” It was a huge text chain that every single player, all the coaches, and most of the support staff were in, and that no one ever got forced out of, which meant that it included several players who had retired or moved to other franchises. As a result, it was rarely used, and pretty much never had anything but jokes and trash talking in it, other than the occasional pet photo or family update. Ilya swiped out of his DMs with Marly and scrolled until he found the big chat. It was surprisingly close to the top. As soon as he’d tapped on it, he saw the reason—Cliff had just posted a wall of megaphones, and the dancing dots at the bottom showed that he was already typing another.

Marly: ALRIGHT BOYS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL
—Our captain got fucking MARRIED last night. 🤵💍🍷🎉👏
—And turns out he bagged the second best player in the entire fucking league
—Props to that fucking beautician, right?
—Now. I want to see every single person in this chat post one thing about Ilya Rozanov.
—Tell that man EXACTLY what you think about him, right now.
—Yes, it can be a gif or an emoji. I know you fuckers aren’t here for your great skills in literature.
—Just one post per person. I don’t want this taking all fucking morning.
—Okay? Sound off. 

More bouncing dots appeared almost immediately. Ilya watched, his thumb shaking slightly and making the screen wobble. The first response was from Victor St-Simone, Marly’s usual partner on defense. Given that it came in less than a second after Marly’s message, Ilya would have bet a million dollars that the two of them were together right now, and had plotted this all out in advance. 

St-Simon’s post was nothing but a gif, one that Ilya vaguely recognized, although he didn’t know where it came from. It showed a young, handsome man, barely more than a boy, climbing onto a table, then turning around with a teary expression on his face. The words in white over it said, “Oh Captain, My Captain.” 

Ilya swallowed, hard.  

The next responses took a little while—perhaps a minute—to come in. But once they started, they came fast and furious, a flood of GIFs with the very occasional text comment. Many of his teammates used the same exact gif as Victor, or gifs of different characters saying the same words. Others changed it up, using images Ilya was familiar with from the many movies he’d watched on the endless flights back and forth across the country: there were multiples of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli offering Frodo their weapons; Dominic Toretto talking about family, the Mighty Ducks quacking, and the inevitable gifs from the Canadians of the Great One lifting the Cup. Ilya lost track of who was sending what fairly quickly, his vision blurring—but while some of the retired players or older employees might have sat out the chorus, he quickly tallied up messages from each of his twenty-two active teammates, matching them up against his mental roster. 

Every single one acclaiming Ilya as their captain. Still. 

“Marly,” Ilya said, choked and rasping. “You—you did this.” 

“I mean, only a little, man,” Cliff said, his voice also wet. “Like. Yeah, I talked to all the boys this morning to make sure that none of them were gonna be a problem, talk about expectations. But I didn’t force anyone to do that. I didn’t even have to shame or scold anybody. They love you, man.” 

Ilya put his hand over his face. He hadn’t cried in… how long? He didn’t even remember. 

“Thank you,” he said, when he was certain he could speak without sobbing. 

“I got your back, Rozy,” Cliff said. “You just let me know what you need, okay?” 

Ilya nodded, forgetting that the other player couldn’t see him. After a moment, he managed to choke out a short yes. 

Cliff laughed. “Alright. I bet you gotta get back to that absolutely peach you married—” 

“My peach,” Ilya was quick to remind him.

“Oh, no doubt about that at all,” Marly said, still chuckling. “I’ll let you go, brother. Let me know when you decide on your travel plans for this summer. If you spend any time in Boston after the parade and all, we’ll have to get together. Hell, I could probably even be convinced to take the train up to Montreal. I  keep hearing that it’s nice.” 

“A train? No,” Ilya said immediately. “I will get you a flight.” 

“Trains are nice!” Marly insisted. 

Once they’d ended the call, Ilya started shaving, checking the chat every couple of minutes to see the gifs still trickling in. After perhaps ten minutes, when he had entirely lost track of how many messages had come in, there was a message from LeClaire, his coach. It was a gif from one of those sitcoms that old people loved, Ilya thought, what was it called? Couples? No, Friends. It showed two men in a living room: one had his hand raised above his head in a fist, while the other—while looking somewhat skeptical—had his arms held out in front of his chest, both hands showing thumbs up. 

When Shane knocked on the door a couple of minutes later, Ilya’s cheeks were still streaming. He grabbed a washcloth and wiped at them impatiently as he turned, refusing to be caught crying like a baby. 

“Ilya?” Hollander called through the door. “Are you done yet?” 

Ilya hurriedly wrapped a towel around his waist and went to open the door.  

“Hey,” Hollander said, coming in. “Farah says that—are you okay?” 

“Yes, okay,” Ilya said, blinking rapidly. “I am fine. Just watching videos of your backhand. Is so weak, it made me cry.” 

Hollander scoffed, a slow smile spreading across his face. He drifted closer. “You’re such an asshole,” he said, the epithet sounding like an endearment. 

“I think you like it,” Ilya murmured, drawing him closer. 

Shane came where Ilya led, as he always did, willing and pliable in his hands. Ilya pinned him against the sink and nuzzled at his neck, enjoying the smell of him, still a little damp from his own shower, mixed with the scent of Ilya’s clothes. 

“We can’t,” Shane said breathlessly, despite his utter lack of resistance. “Farah still needs to coach us for the meeting with our coaches.” 

“Mmm, so much coaching,” Ilya murmured, catching Shane’s earlobe in his teeth. Shane shivered convulsively. “But we are on honeymoon, no? Husband? Surely no one will mind if we take a little time to enjoy it?” 

“Ilya…” Shane moaned. It was the first time Ilya’s name had sounded entirely natural in Shane’s mouth—he’d even mostly gotten the intonation correct—and Ilya groaned and pressed closer, his hand dipping into Shane’s waistband. 

“I want to fuck you,” Ilya muttered, sliding his other hand up Shane’s back, under his shirt. Under Ilya’s shirt. There was no reason the hunger inside him should be so unrelenting, already; he’d fucked Hollander twice in the last twelve hours already. But it was as if it just built higher the longer they spent in one another’s presence—his desire growing stronger instead of satiated with the more he had of the taste of Shane in his mouth, the feel of his skin under his hands, the grip of his hole around his cock. 

“We can’t,” Shane said again. “Farah’s only what, eight meters away? She’d hear…” 

“So we must be very quiet,” Ilya whispered. He yanked Shane’s jeans open and shoved them down, the towel falling from his waist at the same time, and then lifted Shane up to sit on the sink. When he let his fingers dip between his thighs, feeling for his hole, it was still loose and a little slick from the night before, allowing him to slip two fingers inside easily. 

“I don’t—I don’t have a condom—” Shane gasped, even as his legs spread, inviting Ilya inside. 

Ilya groaned again, pressing his forehead to Shane’s chest, the soft, warm cotton of his shirt confirming and familiar. He got tested a few times a year—the team doctors were always happy to run some extra labs, in addition to the two required drug tests a year—but he also had a lot of sex, and he wasn’t going to risk Shane catching something from him. On second thought, however—he groped on the side of the sink, sifting through his toiletries bag. Sure enough, there were a couple packets in it, down at the bottom. Huffing out a short exhale of victory, he ripped one open and pulled it over his cock with shaking hands. 

“Fuck, Rozanov—” Shane whispered, as Ilya pulled him forward onto his cock. 

He had to hold up most of Shane’s weight to do it—there wasn’t enough room on the sink counter to allow him to lean back far enough to get the angle right, otherwise—and after a couple of awkward thrusts, Ilya swore softly and pulled out, then manhandled Shane around, letting his feet touch the ground and bending him forward, instead. 

“Ilya—” Shane moaned, louder and high-pitched, as Ilya pushed back in. 

Ilya covered Shane’s mouth with his palm, shushing him. “Look at yourself,” he whispered, his voice shaking even harder than his hands had. He took a moment to pull the shirt off over Shane’s head, leaving him naked above the knees, with his jeans puddled around his calves. “Look how well you take my cock, how easy you are for me.” 

He stared at Shane’s face in the mirror as he began to roll his hips, in deep, slow thrusts. It took a long couple of minutes, but finally Shane’s eyes flicked up, meeting his through the reflective silver. They’d never looked each other in the eyes as they did this, not for more than a split second between kisses, and Ilya’s heart suddenly felt like there was a fist around it, squeezing tightly. God, this was going to kill him. 

It couldn’t possibly last very long—not with how keyed up they both were, after they’d waiting all morning, after the roller-coaster of emotions that they’d already been through today. 

It lasted forever. 

After they’d both come, Ilya collapsed on the floor, with Shane curled up in his lap. 

“Gross,” Shane said quietly, wrinkling his nose at the toilet, barely a foot away. “We really need to get back out there. Farah’s gonna guess what we were doing, even if she didn’t overhear.” 

“Good,” Ilya said, his brain too fucked out to properly filter. “She will know you are mine.”

Chapter End Notes

To everyone who guessed that it would be Scott at the door—we're going to get some outside POVs next chapter, including his!

To everyone who said it had to be room service—yes, you're very smart. Now shut up. (h/t Princess Bride)

---

This is the gif Ilya’s coach sent, by the way. He literally just searched “supportive” in the gif keyboard and then sent the first one that seemed appropriate.

---

Ilya in the first half of this chapter: Oh yes. I am in such danger, being openly queer and Russian. Too bad that my only available choice is to have an immediate green card marriage. Nope, definitely no good options except wedding this boring Canadian with pretty freckles. So sad for me and my swinging bachelor lifestyle.
Ilya in the second half of the chapter, after Farah explains that he absolutely doesn’t need Shane to get a green card: You will have to pry my husband out of my cold, dead hands. 👉👈 🥺 Please don’t tell him.

Chapter 5

Chapter Notes

Chapter beta'd by the inimitable HopelessScribe, multifandomhomo, and Phoenix_Ascended!

Farah Jalali. Five Hours After the Story Hit ESPN. Las Vegas.

Oh yeah, those two were definitely having sex. As another soft bump sounded from the bathroom, Farah lifted her hand from her keyboard and covered her mouth, stifling the snickers that wanted to come out. She would have guessed even without the noises—the vibe between the two boys had been unmistakable, and anyway, why else would Shane still be in the bathroom with Ilya ten minutes after he’d gone in to see what was taking his new husband so long? But the noises were definitely adding a certain je ne sais quoi to her entertainment factor. 

God, the two of them were going to make so much money together. She closed her eyes for a moment, a pitch for a commercial taking place behind her eyes. Some kind of luxury men’s product, something that would make a good gift… Rolex would be perfect for it, but given their competition fetish, they might shoot down the softer tone Farah wanted for this one. Perhaps Monbray—one of their top line colognes could definitely work. Or, she wondered if Ecksand might… Ooh, yes, that would be perfect. The locals in Montreal loved sponsoring their boys, and they could capitalize on the media buzz that this whole marriage scandal would produce without ever actually mentioning it. 

An opening in their shop, then: some attractive young woman excited to help Shane, showing him ring after ring while he feigned cluelessness—that shouldn’t be difficult for him, even though he hated shoots that involved actual acting. It would be a good opportunity for Ecksand to drop some slogans, play up their custom work, and give Shane the chance to melt hearts all over Quebec by looking exactly as lovesick as he had when he’d told Farah that he was planning on marrying Ilya for real. And then the scene would shift to a fancy restaurant, or perhaps their home. No, definitely a restaurant, that would let them avoid the cliche of getting down on one knee and the resultant conversations about who was the ‘man’ in the relationship. Shane placing the jewelry box on Ilya’s plate, instead: perhaps making a joke about it being better late than never; Ilya’s eyes lighting up as he unwrapped his gift; Shane’s face as he watched him try the ring on; the two of them leaning in for a kiss… 

Farah shivered as a tingle went up her spine and across her skull, then began making notes, getting her idea down on the screen before she could forget any of it. This was going to be so good. She couldn’t wait to show more people what she’d seen today. The chemistry the two of them had, the clear devotion between them—it was visceral and electric. She wasn’t about to underestimate the challenges they’d face, but she was damn well going to make sure they were protected from as much of the hate as possible. And that they got to see the full measure of the outpouring of support and delight from the people who would love them.  

Her phone buzzed yet again. 

“Oh for god’s sake, Yuna, stop living up to the stereotype,” she muttered, and accepted the video call.

“Finally,” Yuna said immediately. She was sitting in her living room, the phone propped up far enough away from her face that Farah could see the afternoon sun streaming in through the bay window behind her. Or maybe she was calling from her laptop… “You got there forty minutes ago, Farah! How long does it take to get an answer out of these boys? We have the call with the teams at three, and I don’t even know—” 

“Yuna,” Farah said sternly. Pretending, for a few minutes, that this wasn’t her mentor and most prominent client. “Breathe.” 

Yuna closed her eyes and breathed in, slowly. Then out. Then in. Then opened her eyes and glared bloody murder again. But at least she didn’t look quite so close to a nervous breakdown. 

“They’ve made a decision,” Farah admitted, wishing that she hadn’t set herself up for this. But if she’d kept refusing Yuna’s calls, she wouldn’t have put it past Shane’s momager to find a way to talk the hotel into sending someone in to check on them. “But they’re not ready to share it yet. They just need a little more time to process and discuss things before they face the outside world again.” 

“They’re not ready—” Yuna stopped talking, her expression slowly turned devastated. It was like watching a glacier melt on a time-lapse video, and Farah dug her nails into her palms, her heart twisting with empathy. 

Finally, Yuna spoke, her voice uncharacteristically soft and hesitant. “Farah… Am I really such a horrible mother?”

“What?” Farah asked, shocked. “Of course not! Yuna, where on earth are you—” 

“Shane didn’t even feel like he could tell me that he’s attracted to men,” Yuna said, and pressed her lips together, rolling her eyes back and forth. “I’ve tried to hint, to show him that we were okay with it—it’s not as if we didn’t guess that he had a… nonstandard orientation. But with him playing hockey, it was so hard…”

“It’s an incredibly hard culture to be queer in,” Farah agreed immediately. “I don’t think it was your fault that—” 

Yuna shook her head, cutting Farah off. “And with everything he already has to deal with… I thought, maybe he’s really just that focused on hockey, right now? Maybe he’s sowing his wild oats, doesn’t see a reason to come out until he meets the right person? Or, I thought he might be asexual! I even left pamphlets out…” 

Farah covered her mouth with her fist again, pursing her lips and pressing them against her index finger. Yuna and Shane really were two peas in a pod… Unfortunately, her attempt at hiding her amusement was clearly ineffective, as Yuna groaned and put her head in her hands. 

“I know! David wanted to talk to him about it. I argued with him, Farah. I thought it was better to wait until Shane felt comfortable coming to us. That confronting him would just make him turtle harder about it, you know how he gets…”

Farah nodded, opening her mouth to reassure Yuna that it had been an entirely reasonable approach, but Yuna started talking again before she could find the words, straightening up and rubbing her forehead with a rueful expression. 

“Or that’s… That’s what I told David. That’s what I told myself. But now, I have to wonder, if maybe a part of me was just… hoping that he’d stay closeted until he was done with his career. Or maybe I was partly in denial, still, too, hoping it wouldn’t be true… It’s not that I have a problem with it, Farah, I swear. I just wanted an easier life for him. It’s already so hard for him, being a record-setter and a visible minority, I can see how it wears on him…” 

“Yuna—” Farah attempted. 

“But now… Knowing that he’s been seeing someone for four years. That he feels strongly enough about Rozanov that he married him.” 

“Well, I don’t think he exactly decided to get married,” Farah said, trying to defuse the situation with a little weak humor. “Or at least—there was a whole lot of alcohol involved in that particular decision.” 

It didn’t work. “I know my son,” Yuna said, scowling. “Alcohol may lower his inhibitions, but it wouldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do, deep down. Am I wrong?” 

“I—” Farah said, struggling briefly with her conscience. 

“Farah,” Yuna said, widening her eyes at Farah imploringly. 

Fuck. It was always so hard to say no to her. 

Finally, unable to look away, Farah shook her head. “No, she confessed. “I don’t think you’re wrong.” 

After all, it was only Ilya who had actually confided anything in her—her conviction that Shane returned his new husband’s feelings in full measure had come solely from her observations of the two of them. She wasn’t violating Shane’s trust by passing her conclusions on to Yuna.  

Unfortunately, Yuna barely took a second to savor her victory before she was catastrophizing again. “He felt that strongly about him, and he didn’t feel like he could tell me. I made him feel like he couldn’t tell me. Like he wasn’t safe. ” 

“Yuna—” Farah tried again to interject. Yuna’s eyes were swimming, now, and Farah’s heart felt like it was twisting inside her chest. 

“And when I think about all the horrible things I’ve said about Rozanov,” Yuna said, her voice cracking. “And how Shane must have felt, every time. When I video-called with them, earlier, I could see how much they care about each other. Rozanov kept looking at Shane to see if he was alright, if he needed support… And Shane knew every time Rozanov was confused without being asked. When Dave and I got married, my mother took every opportunity to let me know that she didn’t think he was good enough for me, to tell me how much she didn’t like him. And I did that to my own son, when I swore I would never—” 

“Yuna!” 

Farah’s shout finally broke through the steadily escalating spiral of hysteria—Yuna leaned forward again, pressing her hands against her eyes, and breathed for a moment. 

“Yuna, it wasn’t your fault,” Farah said. “How could you have possibly known?”

“I should have made sure he felt safe to come to me with anything,” Yuna said, her eyes still brimming but not quite overflowing. “I shouldn’t have… I’m too mean, too judgmental about people I don’t even know, and I made Shane think he had to be perfect to win my approval.” 

Farah sighed. “You raised Shane to strive for excellence, and you know that he’s grateful for that! He always attributes his success to you. It was the world that taught him that excellence meant being straight—you didn’t do that.” 

Yuna shook her head. “I didn’t do enough to combat it. I put too much pressure on him.” 

“Maybe,” Farah admitted. “So what are you going to do about it?” 

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Yuna nodded firmly and wiped her fingertips gingerly under her eyes. “You’re right,” she agreed. “I need to fix it, not whine about it.” 

That wasn’t at all what Farah meant, but she could tell that trying to talk Yuna out of it at this point was wasted effort. 

“Okay,” Yuna said, closing her eyes. She breathed in once, sharply, then out. “Okay. Where are the boys, anyway? Did you step out to take my call?”

Farah couldn’t stop herself from smirking, and Yuna’s eyes went wide with indignation. “You must be joking! With you there?”  

“It is their honeymoon,” Farah couldn’t stop herself from pointing out. 

“Dave’s going to be so smug…”  Yuna muttered. Farah cocked her hand in question, and Yuna waved a dismissive hand in the air. “He kept telling me there was no way that Shane was asexual. I thought it was just a male pride thing. You know, unconsciously wanting his son to be virile, sexually successful, and all that biological bullshit…”

“That could still have been part of it,” Farah pointed out. “Although in that case, Shane bagging Ilya Rozanov should certainly make him happy…”  

“So smug,” Yuna growled. 

Farah snorted with laughter. 

Yuna sighed and leaned forward again, looking intently at Farah. Usually that wasn’t possible on a video call, but somehow Yuna had perfected the trick of seeming to make direct eye contact. It was unnerving. 

“Farah, are you… I understand you can’t tell me what decision they made, but like I said, I know my son. Do you think that Rozanov returns his feelings? That this isn’t just sex for him, or some way of fucking with the competition? If he was just trying to mess with Shane’s focus, screw with the only player in the League who’s better than him—I’ll find a way to murder him so no one will ever suspect—” 

“Yuna, come on,” Farah interjected, “I know you take hockey seriously, but no one would out themselves just to screw with an opponent—especially not someone from Russia!” 

“Well, no, obviously not,” Yuna conceded. “I didn’t mean that he leaked it, or anything. Just that it could have started that way.” 

“Maybe,” Farah conceded. “I doubt it, but maybe. They haven’t told me anything more about the story of their relationship, yet. We’ve been focusing on—” She stopped short, realizing what she’d been about to give away.

“What?” Yuna asked, peering at her. Her eyes narrowed almost immediately. “You’ve been focusing on what Rozanov wants to do for his sponsorships. Which means they’re going with option three—you wouldn’t have agreed to represent him unless they told you they’re staying together.” 

“How do you even do that?” Farah demanded, too aghast to try to deny it. 

“Ha! I knew it!” Yuna crows. 

God, she had a gorgeous smile… No! Bad Farah. No biscuit. “Goddamn it,” she said, rubbing a hand across her face. “David’s right, you’re a witch.” 

Yuna waved that off with a shake of her head. She took a couple more slow breaths, then said, “Okay. Option 3, then. That’s… good, I think. If Rozanov really… Did you do like we talked about?”

“I did,” Farah reassured her, giving up the attempt to keep anything from her. No point in locking the barn after the horse had bolted. “And you really don’t have anything to worry about there, Yuna. He’s head over heels for Shane. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone down so bad.” 

Yuna raised a single eyebrow—Farah would have given a lot to know how long it had taken her to learn how to do that, and if it had anything to do with being a little girl in the late sixties, when Star Trek: The Original Series had first been airing. 

(Alright, fine. Maybe she liked Yuna Hollander a little bit too much. But she had it entirely under control. They were both married, to husbands they loved. Yuna was fifteen years older than she was. It was nothing but a harmless workplace crush.)

“He is,” Farah insisted. 

“Alright, then,” Yuna said, showing off the ability to instantly change tact that Farah was in awe of. “Well, in that case. I’ve heard some troublings things from the Commissioner’s Office—” 

Hayden Pike. Four Hours After the Story Hit ESPN. Montreal. 

“J.J., you’ve got to get them to knock it off,” Hayden said, speaking urgently into the speaker phone while helping Jade on with her shoes. “Put your foot in there, sweetheart—yes, good job!” 

“Sweetheart?” J.J. repeated, laughing. “You’re such a good little house-husband.” 

“Shut the fuck up, man.” Hayden rolled his eyes. 

He was so fucking sick of the team’s attitude toward him occasionally taking care of his own damn kids so his wife could get a break. She took care of them constantly during the season, while he was on the ice and out on roadies; the least he could do was let her have some spa days on his off days and take some classes during the summer. 

“We’re talking about Shane right now, not me,” he went on, “I mean, come on, dude, you know that even if he’s not paying attention to the team chat now, he’ll read back through eventually. We’ve got to get the guys to stop trashing him in there!”

God, Hayden hoped that Shane wasn’t paying attention to the team chat now. When he’d first gotten the news that morning, and Shane hadn’t been responding to his texts, he’d been near-frantic. He’d even started looking up flights to Vegas, until Yuna had finally come through with the welcome news that she’d spoken to him. At least he wasn’t having a panic attack alone in some hotel room somewhere. Hayden would even rather that he be with Rozanov—ugh—than alone. Not that Yuna had been willing to confirm that he was with Rozanov, but her face had done it for her. 

“Tabernak de câlice, you think I have magic powers?” J.J asked. “I love the guy, but he went and fucking married the ostie de bâtard who just knocked us out of the fucking playoffs!” 

“We don’t know for sure yet if he actually—” 

“Fuck off, Pike,” J.J. cut him off. “You can keep that shit up in the chat, if you want, but it will only make things worse when the truth comes out. You saw that video, the same as me. You really want to tell me that was fucking fake?” 

Hayden stayed silent as he finished Jade’s shoes and let her go, grabbing Ruby’s foot and dragging her over, instead. The video had been… Well. At least it hadn’t shown anything too explicit. There was no nudity, thank god. It mostly showed Shane and Rozanov from behind—kissing, then laughing and holding hands as they ran away from the photographer and across the hotel lobby, weaving around other guests before getting into an elevator. But then, as the doors started to close, Rozanov picked Shane up and pressed him against the far wall of the elevator; and the very last second showed Shane arching backward, slamming his head against the stainless steel as Rozanov buried his face in his neck.

And there was no way that it had been a fake, although Hayden had tried to stir up some doubt in the team chat about it, just in case Shane wanted to try and deny it. But after four years living out of each other’s pockets—playing on the same line, training together, rooming together—he knew Shane too well. He knew how Shane’s body moved, how Shane laughed, how Shane ran, how Shane breathed. The video was definitely him. 

And yet somehow, Hayden hadn’t known that Shane was gay. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to know.

“I know it wasn’t fake,” he said, more quietly. “I know everybody’s gonna talk about it. But can’t we at least get them to move it to another chat? Just… somewhere he won’t see it, J.J., that’s all I’m asking.” 

“They want him to see it,” J.J. said, matching his dispirited tone. “They’re pissed, Pike. Wouldn’t you be? If he wasn’t your friend?” 

“Our friend,” Hayden growled. “Jesus Christ, Boizy!” 

J.J. didn’t say anything at all in response. Hayden finished with Ruby’s shoes and stood up, grabbing the girls’ jackets, still cursing internally. 

The worst part of it all was that the team had finally been starting to really come together. Last year, the Metros had made the playoffs for the first time in four years, which was longer than most of its current players had been there—while they’d only made it to the second round, it had still felt like a victory. This year, with Shane as their newly minted captain, bringing a young, invigorated energy to the team, they’d all felt like they had the momentum on their side; they’d led their division for the first time in a decade, and until Mitty had been hurt, they’d all thought they had a good chance to go all the way. Their loss to Boston in the playoffs had been heartbreaking, but no one had blamed it on Shane, not with a hurt tendy… Not then, at least. The Metros were young, they were skilled, they were hungry—they’d take the championship next year, with Mitty was better. And while it had hurt to see Rozanov, of all fucking people, lift the Cup, it had been a sop to their ego at the same time. At least they’d only lost to the best. 

But now…  

“Have you seen some of the chatter online?” Hayden asked tightly. “On the fansites, and the Metros subReddit…” 

J.J. cursed quietly. “Yeah,” he said heavily. “Yeah, I’ve seen it.” 

“J.J.,” Hayden said. “C’mon, dude. We lost because Mitty was hurt, you know that! And you know how fucking competitive Hollzy is. Christ, he led the team in goals and assists—what the fuck does that say about the rest of us, if you think he wasn’t playing to win?” 

“I know, I know—”  

As J.J. kept protesting his own innocence, Ruby tugged at Hayden’s shirt sleeve. “Daddy,” she whispered, in her high, lisping voice. “You owe the jar two dollars.” 

Hayden groaned, pinching his nose. “How about I buy you and Jade ice cream on the way home from the park, and you don’t tell your mom about any cursing today?” 

Ruby nodded enthusiastically. “Okay, Daddy!” 

“That’s my girl. Not a fucking word, J.J.” 

J.J. cackled. “I’m not a narc. You know, you should bring them by the arena some time. Can you imagine what kind of numbers a clip of Ruby busting out a bunch of hockey slang on the ice would do?” 

Hayden groaned. He could, in fact, imagine exactly what numbers it would do, since it had been a clip of the twins yelling obscenities at the TV two playoff seasons ago that had made Jackie so draconian about him and the guys cursing around them. Her parents—who had always thought their brilliant, gorgeous daughter could do better than a dumb jock who’d dropped out of his third year of college to join MLH—had been politely, condescendingly, icily concerned about what it meant for the environment their grandchildren were being raised in. 

For a second, he missed Shane, who would have gently reminded him not to swear, and then tattled to Jackie when he did anyway. But really, didn’t that just illustrate the whole problem? Shane was just so… Shane. On the ice, he was a perfect captain: he got the best out of every player, teaching them to compensate for weaknesses they hadn’t even recognized; he came up with brilliant strategies and plays; he set an example with his insane work ethic, and made sure that everyone else stepped up to try to match it. The guys had come to adore him, they really had—he was their brilliant star, their savant captain, their adorably naive prodigy. But off the ice… Shane just wasn’t like the rest of the guys. He reported on Hayden’s cursing to Jackie, instead of egging him on. He didn’t enjoy bars or clubs or loud parties; he was quiet, private, a little awkward. He was a stickler for rules, always showing his disapproval when guys started careless fights or got drunk. It had been made him a shoo-in for the captaincy, and the team had certainly bonded under his leadership, but… They’d bonded beneath him, not with him; he was always a little apart, a little separate, a little different. It made it all-too-easy to imagine them turning on him. 

Not that Hayden had to imagine it, unfortunately. 

“Have any of the team said anything like that?” he asked J.J. urgently. 

J.J. hesitated, his intake of breath audible over the line. 

No one had said anything in the big team chat about Shane throwing the series, or any of the other games they’d played against Boston over the years. Their ire had been focused on how he’d “betrayed” them by “sleeping with the enemy.” But Hayden wasn’t at all confident that it would stay there. Not given what he’d seen online. Oh, the general attitude—on the ESPN article itself, or when Hayden had scrolled through Shane’s mentions on Twitter and Instagram—had been positive. There’d been lots of commenters who seemed to have just discovered hockey talking about how hot Hollander and Rozanov were together, or how sweet and passionate and happy they seemed. From people who actually knew hockey, there’d been confusion, questioning of whether it had been a prank, and of course, a few haters, but not that many. It was 2014, after all, not 1984! 

But in the more niche Metro spaces? The sites where the die-hard fans hung out and dissected every aspect of every game, where people got shit if they even suggested that the City of Boston, let alone the team, had any redeeming factors at all? Where you weren’t a real fan if you didn’t have baby pictures of yourself in the jersey? Those spaces were pissed. 

“Nah,” J.J. said finally. “Like you said, it’d be pretty stupid when he’s the best criss de joueur on the team, right?” 

Hayden pressed the cool glass of the phone screen to his forehead. He’d fucking hesitated. 

“Heyla, Hayden,” J.J. said suddenly, his voice coming in loudly over the speaker. “Have you talked to Hollander today, then? Or heard from him?” 

J.J. sounded a little offended, like he didn’t like the idea that Shane might have talked to Hayden, but not him or the rest of the team, and Hayden was almost relieved that he could answer honestly. 

“No. I sent him a bunch of texts, but he hasn’t answered any of them,” he said, not mentioning the read receipt he’d seen pop up about an hour ago. It wasn’t as if Shane had answered the texts, even if just knowing that his best friend had his head on straight enough to read them had sent some warm fuzzies through Hayden’s belly. 

“Well, he needs to get fucking on that,” J.J. muttered. “What does he think will happen if he keeps ignoring the whole team after a crazy fucking stunt like this? Tabernak.” 

Hayden bit off the part of him that wanted to snarl that Shane obviously had more important things than the team to think about right now. That wouldn’t exactly help matters, given that it was the exact thing that the team was mad at him for. 

“Look, I gotta take the twins to the park,” he said instead. “Let’s both keep texting Shane, okay? Just… let him know he has our support.” 

J.J. sighed, but then said, “Yeah, okay. Maybe I could go out to Vegas? See if… I don’t know. I can help somehow. I know it would be hard for you to go, with the kids, and he should have a friend with him.”  

Hayden felt a swell of warmth for his fellow teammates. “Yeah,” he said quickly. “That’s a good idea, if he’s not getting on a plane tomorrow or something. You should offer.” 

They exchanged a few more pleasantries before finally hanging up, and Hayden had to bustle to get the girls out the door before they’d run up too close against their afternoon nap to actually make it to the park and back. But as he was sitting on a bench watching the girls terrorize the playground, he couldn’t help but pull out his phone and start reading through the group chat again. He was briefly encouraged to see that J.J. had actually tried to pull the guys out of the vicious spiral they’d gotten themselves into—but the brief lift of hope those messages gave him just made the fall hurt more when he read on and saw that it had only backlashed against them. Comeau and Drapeau, in particular, had gotten even more pissed at J.J. attempting to defend their captain—they’d doubled down, using some truly ugly language and insinuations against both J.J. and Shane. 

“Fuck,” he muttered. “What the hell am I going to do?” 

Scott Hunter. Three Hours After the Story Hit ESPN. Las Vegas. 

There was a loud noise happening. Very loud. Rudely loud. Painfully loud. Why?

The noise stopped. Scott let out an appreciative rasp—which might have resembled a groan if had been significantly louder, but he couldn’t force his dry, aching throat to make much more noise than a whisper—and burrowed deeper into the cozy nest of pillows and blankets. 

The noise started again. 

“Why?” Scott croaked. 

The noise didn’t pay any attention to his distress. Actually, had it gotten even louder? And now there was a very harsh, evil light stabbing directly into the corner of his eye, making his stomach churn in protest. Scott pulled a pillow over his head with a small whimper. 

Adding insult to injury, when the noise finally gave up this time, it didn’t truly stop—in fact, it barely even paused before it started again. Finally driven beyond his endurance, Scott squeezed his eyes closed and rolled over, groping blindly for the source of the noise. He managed to knock over the pillow that had been on his head, the hotel’s alarm clock, the hotel phone, his watch, and his glasses—the items falling to the floor with varying loud thumps and crashes—before he finally managed to grab his cell phone and silence it. 

With the noise blessedly abated, he let himself collapse back onto the mattress, face up this time. He almost, almost, said fuck it and let himself fall back asleep. But in the end, his sense of responsibility—well, and the pounding ache in his head, pressure behind his bladder, and horrific taste in his mouth—drove him back to consciousness. He groaned aloud—making an audible sound this time, even!—and pried his eyes open. 

Oh, fuck. That was… too much light. Way too much light. Why did the sun hate him? More importantly, why had Yesterday’s Scott hated Today’s Scott so much that he hadn’t even spent the forty-five seconds it would have taken to close the curtains before passing out? Scott managed to sit up—fuck, his head was still swimming, how much had he drunk last night?—and hauled the blanket over his head, forming a protective, shadowy tent. 

“Much better,” he muttered, and turned a baleful eye on the phone screen. 

It was Kip. 

“Oh, shit,” Scott swore, and quickly swiped to accept the call. “Kip? Are you okay?” 

“Scott?” Kip’s voice came through loud and clear, and heartbreakingly familiar. 

“Kip,” Scott choked out, his eyes burning. Kip had asked for space, and Scott had had little choice but to give it to him—the long and short of which meant that he hadn’t heard that voice since the fight they’d had just before Kip’s birthday in March. 

 

“Hey,” Kip said awkwardly. “So, I know we haven’t talked in a while, but—”

“I’m not in town right now, but I can get back in a few hours if you need anything. Before that, the building manager has your name and will let you in,” Scott rattled off frantically. 

“What are you—” Kip attempted to interject, but Scott was already continuing. 

“My car keys are on the hook just inside the door. There’s twenty thousand dollars in cash—” 

“What?” 

“—in the bag on the very bottom of the stack of vacuum bags on the second cubby from the top in the left shelf unit inside the cleaning closet, or—” 

“Oh my god, babe, stop!” 

Scott stopped talking; his heart rate and breathing slowed down as he recognized the amusement—and more importantly, the lack of panic—in Kip’s voice. Fuck, but he’d missed that laugh.

Had Kip just called him babe? Did he mean that in, like, a generic filler way, or…?

“Girl,” Kip went on, when it was clear that he’d managed to successfully stop Scott’s monologue. “You have twenty thousand dollars in cash hidden in a closet in your condo? I mean, we should also probably talk about the potential symbolism of that decision, but for the moment—why?” 

Scott opened his mouth. Closed it. “Uh. Well…” It was probably not a good time to mention the several other caches of bills and other easily liquidable high-value items that he had secreted in various places in his apartment. And in a couple of safe deposits elsewhere in the city. It had never before occurred to him that someone who wasn’t a multi-millionaire with a giant gaping target for blackmail painted on his back might think that was a little… intense. “For emergencies? I mean, I travel a lot, and if you needed help—”

“Scott. Do you seriously think I would call you out of the blue for the kind of emergency that would require twenty thousand dollars in cash?”

“I mean, I hope you would.” Scott slowly tipped back down to lie in a fetal position on the bed, curled around his phone. Like this, with the blanket sheltering him from the light, he felt almost human, the headache and nausea receding to manageable levels. “If Shawn got arrested and needed bail money, or if Elena got hit by a car and the driver’s insurance wouldn’t cover something, or a raccoon tore a hole in your dad’s attic in order to have a safe place to eat king crab legs—” 

“Wow. That was suspiciously specific—” 

“I hope you would call me. I know I… I can’t offer what you really need, but you get into a tight spot and there’s something I can do to help, Kip… Please let me.” 

There was a long silence. Scott could hear Kip breathing, so he knew he hadn’t hung up at least. 

“Please, Kip,” he repeated, softer. 

Kip sniffed. “God, Scott, how do you keep doing this to me?” 

Scott felt his heart twist at the wet devastation in Kip’s voice. “I never wanted to,” he said, tears burning behind his own eyes again as well. “I only wanted to make you…” 

Scott cut himself off. After all, if making Kip happy had really been all he’d wanted, wouldn’t he have left him alone in the first place?

“I know you did, babe,” Kip said charitably, then cleared his throat. “And, uh, speaking of which—I saw the news this morning. That’s why I’m calling, actually—” 

“Oh.” Scott felt himself deflate. “You really didn’t have to. It really wasn’t anything, you know, that important—” 

“Shit,” Kip said. “It wasn’t?” 

Scott groaned and buried his face in the pillow. “I don’t know, I guess it is, technically, but like… I guess I just always wanted to get it after winning the Cup, or at least the President’s Trophy, you know? Not after one of the worst seasons I’ve ever played. I know the Olympics were a big deal for everyone, first time the Americans took the gold since Lake Placid and all, but—” 

“Oh my god, Scott,” Kip interrupted him. “Are you talking about the award with the funny name you got last night?” 

“The award with the funny name?” Scott repeated. He pulled the phone away from his ear and peered at it, as if the black screen could provide any insight on whether Kip was pulling his leg or not.  “The Mark Messier Leadership Award, is that what you’re talking about? Are you kidding me?” 

“Oh, is that what it was called?” Kip asked, his voice far too innocent. 

Scott’s eyes narrowed. “Kip. Tell me that you know who Mark Messier is.” 

“Uhhh…” Kip drawled. “Should I?” 

Scott inhaled deeply, but before he could say anything else, Kip started laughing. 

“Oh my god,” Scott hissed. “You almost gave me a heart attack!” 

“Babe, my dad literally has a print of Messier getting the Cup framed in the living room. And he wasn’t even there when it happened—we watched it together at a sports bar, even though I was, like, six years old.” 

“Your dad has good taste,” Scott said, finally laughing. He closed his eyes again, hugging the phone between his cheek and hand, sandwiched against the pillow. “I was fourteen, captaining my bantam team at St. Thomas. Our coach took me to game seven; he had an old student on the team who got us tickets in the family section, and we got to go out on the ice after they brought the Cup out. Messier came over and shook my hand—said he hoped he’d see me in the same jersey one day.” 

“Holy shit,” Kip said. “That must have been… incredibly cool.” 

“Yeah,” Scott whispered, remembering that night. It had been the first time he’d felt truly, uncomplicatedly happy since his parents’ death; but the next day, he’d felt worse than he had since the first week of it—torn between guilt that he’d let himself forget his parents for even a moment and grief that they hadn’t been there to share that moment with him. 

“Well, I guess I can understand why you have, uh, complicated feelings about the award, then. Even if it does have a funny name.” 

“They all have funny names! Selke, Vézina, King Clancy, Calder, Conn Smythe, Clarence Campbell—well, okay that last one isn’t that weird, but once I got going with the alliteration I couldn’t stop.” 

“You know, you’re lucky you’re cute.” 

“I’m not cute,” Scott argued. “And I can get about eight hundred hockey players who will back me up on that.” 

“I have a feeling that those eight hundred hockey players haven’t seen you trying to change a lightbulb standing on a laundry basket and wearing nothing but one white sock.” 

“You’d be surprised at some of the dumb-ass shit I’ve done while surrounded by mostly naked hockey players. But that said, I don’t think it counts as a sense of humor if I didn’t mean to be funny.”

Kip laughed. “Okay, well. Dragging you kicking and screaming back to the point here—” 

“I don’t know…” Scott mused, trying to hang on to the playful, flirty vibe they’d fallen back into for as long as possible. “That sounds fun, but I’m not sure you can actually drag me on your own, hon, especially if I’m kicking and screaming. Maybe if you got Elena to help you—” 

“Please,” Kip retorted. “Elena would never do something so sweaty and undignified. She’ll just mentally juijitsu you into doing whatever she wants. Or maybe stab you with a stiletto.” 

“That does sound like something she’d do,” Scott admitted.

“Anyway,” Kip said again, with an edge of genuine frustration this time. “With my finely honed skills of deduction, I have determined that you have not, in fact, read the news this morning. But, you know, congratulations on the award.” 

Scott felt a slight chill. “What do you mean? What should I have seen on the news?”

“I’m genuinely impressed that you somehow managed to avoid it,” Kip said teasingly. 

“Have mercy, please,” Scott begged. “I have the worst hangover of my life, and I don’t think I got to bed before… Fuck, I don’t even know. Two or three?” 

“Oh, poor baby,” Kip said. “Hungover after partying in Vegas with a bunch of millionaires… I’m playing a song on the world’s smallest violin for you…” 

Scott couldn’t help but laugh. “I miss you keeping me from taking myself too seriously,” he said, a bit too fondly. A slightly awkward silence fell. 

“Well,” Kip said finally. “On that note… I’m sending you an article.” 

Scott’s phone dinged while he was still kicking himself for letting things get too intense. Again. He reluctantly pulled it away from his face again and turned the speaker on before clicking through to the article Kip had sent him. 

He had to read it three times before he was certain he wasn’t somehow hallucinating. 

“This can’t be real,” he said numbly. “It’s… It’s some kind of April Fool’s Day article that got posted early by accident. Or a prank!” 

Yes, a prank. That would make sense. Or, could it be some kind of comedic kickoff to an new advertising campaign? If Hollander and Rozanov had started some kind of partnership with a men’s formal wear brand, perhaps they’d slipped this in as a red herring, to keep people from realizing the truth if anything ever leaked…? 

“What, you think it’s impossible that two hockey players could be gay for each other?” Kip asked, with heavy irony. 

“I know that they’re gay for each other,” Scott snapped. “I just can’t believe they’d be stupid enough to let it get out!” 

“You… Okay, that’s some more trauma we’re going to have to come back to later,” Kip muttered. “I really don’t think it’s a prank or a PR snafu, babe. It’s already been out for a couple of hours, and there’s been no comment or update from either of them. Wouldn’t they be out doing damage control if it wasn’t true?” 

“They should be out doing damage control no matter what. Jesus!” 

“Wow,” Kip said, in a less than impressed voice, and for the first time since he’d read the article, Scott thought about how what he was saying might sound from Kip’s point of view. 

“That’s not… I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said lamely. “I mean… Look, this isn’t just about them being gay. It’s about the narrative of them being huge rivals, it’s about them being twenty-three! If either of them had just suddenly gotten married to, I don’t know, a woman who worked for the rival team, with no announcement, no soft launch, no introduction of even dating the person first—they would still need to be doing damage control! Or, Hollander would, anyway. Rozanov could probably get away with it, it fits into his brand anyway. But Hollander has sponsors who would expect to be looped in before anything this big! If this is real… He’s probably lost millions of dollars in future earnings in the last couple of hours alone. And that’s not even getting into the career implications. I mean, hell, even if they really did just get drunk and lose their minds, they should probably—” 

“Okay, fine,” Kip interrupted, an edge in his voice. “But what if they were that stupid, Scott? What does it mean for you?” After a beat, he added. “What could it mean for us?”  

Scott didn’t say anything for a long time, his groggy mind working so hard he was a little surprised his head didn’t actually start to overheat. 

“I have absolutely no idea,” he said finally. 

Svetlana Vetrova. Two Hours After the Story Hit ESPN. Moscow. 

“—so then I told him, if you think that I’m going to—” 

“Oh my god,” Marya blurted out, eyes fixed on her phone.

Svetlana stopped mid-story and glanced at her, annoyed. She’d never really liked Marya all that much; but they’d been in the same small clique during their teenage years, and if Svetlana had left her out, the rest of their friends would think she was being rude; or worse, snobbish. Svetlana had always been at a disadvantage in their rather exclusive little school as it was: half-American, half-Black, and the daughter of a former hockey player instead of a real soldier. As her father had risen in the ranks of the Ministry of the Interior, the other girls’ condescension and prejudice had quickly transformed into resentment and envy. Svetlana had been left with a small enough social circle in those days that she did not care to alienate the few who had been willing to champion her. 

Even if Marya was a shallow, small-minded gossip, who did not seem to have matured in any measurable amount since their school days. And who was still scrolling on her phone, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the entire table was now staring at her. Svetlana didn’t bother to hold back from rolling her eyes. Fortunately, while snobbery wasn’t appreciated in their clique, bitchiness very much was, or Svetlana would never have fit in.  

“Well?” Oksana leaned forward, tapping her nails impatient on the marble tabletop. “What is so shocking, Mashka?” 

“Oh,” Marya blushed as she finally looked up and found herself at the receiving end of seven annoyed glances. Her expression quickly shifted from surprised to delighted, because of course she loved to be at the center of attention, even if it was only because she was being violently annoying. But then she looked quickly over at Svetlana before jerking her gaze away, and then she winced as she looked down at her phone again, seeming suddenly… sympathetic? 

That, by itself, was enough to send a shiver of foreboding down Svetlana’s spine—but it quickly got worse, as Marya passed her phone over to Ksenia with another sidelong glance at Svetlana. 

“I don’t think I should say aloud,” she murmured, still with that strangely discomfitted air. 

Ksenia’s brow furrowed, but she took the phone—and after she’d scanned the screen, her eyes growing wider with every second, she looked up at Svetlana with that same squelched sort of look. 

It couldn’t be pity. Svetlana did not allow anyone to pity her. These girls knew that better than anyone. 

(Yes, even better than Ilya. Ilya knew that she hated pity, yes; but he knew it only as an abstract concept, because Ilya had never once offered her pity, any more than she had offered it to him. That had been the basis of their friendship, ever since they’d first met.)

Once Ksenia had passed the phone to Anzhelina, making three of them looking at her with that stomach-curdling expression, she had had enough. As Anzhelina passed it to Mila, Svetlana dug out her own phone and began searching to figure out what the hell was going on. Her own name, and her father’s, didn’t turn up anything unexpected. She bit her lip as she typed in Sasha’s name, next—the girls wouldn’t know that she still talked to him, but they knew they’d been childhood friends, and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been waiting for the day that Sasha’s risks would catch up to him… But his name didn’t pull up anything but the old tired scandals, and her shoulders slowly came down from her ears. Perhaps another brown person had been killed by the police in America, and the girls were pitying her because they believed Putin’s propaganda of how much worse things were there for minorities? 

When she thought back later, she wasn’t sure why his name wasn’t the first thing she’d checked. Perhaps it was because he’d promised her, so many times, that he wouldn’t do that—that he wouldn’t leave her as both of their mothers had left them—and somehow, her brain had managed to interpret that vow to mean that he would never break her heart in any other way, either. Perhaps it was simply because he’d been doing so well, with his new home in Boston, staying calm under Alexei and his father’s tirades—even winning the Cup!—that she’d simply gotten complacent. 

But as it was, it still hadn’t occurred to her to search for news results on Ilya Rozanov when the phone had made its way three-quarters around the table and was finally passing her—with Valentina trying to actually lift it over Svetlana’s plate to give it to Oksana, the cunt. 

“Vala!” Svetlana scolded, snatching the phone from her before Oksana could take it. “You do not think I need to see what you all are so fascinated about?” 

She caught several silent conversations happening across the table before she lowered her gaze to the phone screen, and she was sure that several more occurred as she took in the tweet that had caused all of the drama. The byplay happening between her school friends quickly became one of her smallest concerns, however. She tossed Marya’s phone to the table, ignoring both Marya’s yelp of disapproval and Oksana’s eager grab for it as she went back to her own phone, now with the knowledge of what search terms to use. Unfortunately, both Google and Yandex—when she flipped over to the Russian engine to see any differences—only confirmed and added details to the bare bones of the tweet. Admittedly, it was a very attractive set of bones… She quickly swiped over to Whatsapp and messaged Ilya with her congratulations. 

Their text messages had been full of congratulations recently, going both ways. To him for winning the scoring race, for each of the three preliminary rounds of the playoffs, for the Cup. To her on her graduation from Harvard with honors, on the number of interview requests she had received from headhunters, on kicking a frat boy in the balls after he’d tried to slip a roofie in her drink. And now, finally, to him, on landing the only player in the League who could give him a run for his money—in both looks and talent—as his husband. 

She was so fucking proud of him. And so furious. He knew she was in Russia—they had planned it together! She had stayed in Boston for the parade, and then flown out to Moscow early to celebrate her graduation with family and friends while he did media and the MLH awards. He was supposed to fly out next week, with the Cup, taking advantage of the League’s tradition of letting each player take a day with the Cup anywhere in the world they wanted. There were plans for a grand celebration, for him to be received by city and country leaders and hailed as a conquering hero.

A celebration, she realized with a cold shiver, that was almost certainly never going to happen. Why had he done this at a time when she could not be there to support him?

She finished the text to Ilya with a remonstrance for his foolhardiness, and looked up at her friends. “And so?” she challenged. 

***

Of course, that didn’t shut down her friends’ speculation, or their malicious and salacious gossip, and Svetlana was exhausted by the time she finally got home. She crashed in the door, trading her heels for a pair of house shoes and tossing her keys into the basket next to the door before heading for the stairs that led up to her room. 

“Did you have fun with your friends, Svetulya?” her dad asked quietly, as she passed the archway that led to the living room. 

She spun around, putting her hand over her heart. “Papa. You startled me.” 

He was almost always to be found in his study when she was out; she could only think of one reason why he would be sitting in his big chair in front of the fireplace, in perfect position to catch her when she came home. She closed her eyes for a moment before gathering her courage and walking to sit on the ottoman at his feet. She had hoped to have more time before this conversation. 

“I have had better times,” she admitted. 

He nodded and leaned back in his chair, visibly thinking. She waited patiently. They had always done a great deal of their communication without speech. “Did you know?” he asked, a good five minutes later. 

“That he liked men sometimes, yes. About Hollander? No. He would never have told me something that would share another man’s secret.”

Her father sighed. “I would expect nothing else from him. I wish the two of you had told me. But I understand why you didn’t. I cannot be as open about where I stand as I would like.” 

“I asked him if I could tell you, once,” she said quietly. “I have never seen him have a panic attack, but he came close, that night. He values your good opinion very highly. But he judges you based on his own experiences. On his own father.” 

A brief look of frustration passed across Sergei Vetrov’s face. “Grigori Alexeyevich might have been a good father, if his wife had lived. He loves his boys. But he does not know how to guide them other than how his own father taught him. And he has feared this day for twenty years.” 

“He knew?” Svetlana asked, gritting her teeth. She had long suspected as much—the manner of Ilya’s father’s constant criticisms, the types of faults he chose to find, had certain significant commonalities. “Papa…” 

“He suspected,” he corrected, holding up a hand, palm out. “It is not as if it was ever confirmed. Before now.” 

She shook her head, her curls bouncing against her ears. She wanted to say a hundred different things. She wanted to light Grigori Rozanov’s toes on fire. But she knew that any further criticism of her father’s subordinate would make him feel that he had to go on the defensive. 

“It is not yet truly confirmed,” she pointed out, instead. “Ilyukha could claim that it was a prank, or computer-edited graphics.” 

Her father raised his eyebrows. “He could. Do you think he is likely to?” Before she could answer, he added, “I would not feel confident to guarantee his safety in such a scenario, unless…” 

“Hmm?” 

“Unless he married a woman,” her father said, his raised eyebrows and crooked smile making the implication clear, “if he can find one who would have him. And he would have to issue several statements apologizing for his behavior and condemning homosexuality. Likely he would need to speak strongly in support of our beloved leader’s—” 

“He will not do that,” she said, with certainty, thinking of Sasha. Thinking of the way that Ilya had hidden Hollander’s real name, even from her. “Even if it was a prank, he would not throw other people to the lions like that.” 

Her father just nodded. “I will miss him,” he said, after another long pause. And then he stood up, kissed her on the forehead, and walked quietly out of the room. 

She sat looking into the fire for a long time. And then she pulled out her phone and started looking at flights back to North America. 

Aida Gueye. Three Hours Before the Story Hit ESPN. New York City. 

It wasn’t as if Aida had been anticipating a light work day—it was the busiest time of the year, after all, with the playoffs and award ceremonies only just past, and the rookie draft and the end of MLH’s contractual year only days away. Besides which, travel days for the Commissioner were always a bitch and a half for his team, and eastbound travel days were the worst, despite getting to sleep in by an extra hour or two. Roger hated to fly—not because of any fear or discomfort, but because of the limitations on his ability to exert his control over his petty empire. And he tended to vent his frustration with the wasted daylight and enforced boredom out on his staff. 

So yeah, Aida had known it was going to be a day. But she still hadn’t been expecting the phone to ring at five in the morning, as she was enjoying a rare morning cuddle with her girlfriend and their two cats. 

“Fout tonè,” she swore, groping for her phone. The first one she came up with wasn’t ringing, and it took her a second to realize that she had her personal cell in her hand, while her work phone was still buzzing away on the nightstand. She caught it up just before it could vibrate itself off the wooden surface entirely and onto the floor. 

“Who the fuck is calling you right now?” Marisol asked, her own voice thick and groggy with sleep. 

“I don’t know, cherie mwen,” she said, pressing a kiss to her lover’s shoulder blade along with the endearment. She sat up, only groaning a little as she rubbed sleep out of her eyes, then swiped accept on the call. “Bon matin, c’est Aida.” 

“Ah… Aida? It’s Kristen Kaplan,” the caller said. “From ESPN—we met at the draft last year?” 

Aida swore under her breath as she realized that she’d answered the phone in French. At least she’d shifted her dialect on autopilot, although considerably more of her native Creole accent had seeped in than she normally allowed. She cleared her throat and went on in English, shaking her head to dispel the early morning fogginess. “Sorry about that—Kristen, yes, of course, I remember you. You’re out in LA, right? What are you doing up so early?” 

“Oh, I’m up late, actually,” the reporter said. “I drew the short straw to cover the awards this year.”

“You were upset to get a free trip to Vegas?” Aida checked the time and did some quick mental meath. It was past three in the morning in Nevada, which wasn’t ridiculous for a party night out, but was certainly an absurd time to still be working. Granted, Kristen would have been racing to file her story after the ceremony, but she should have had most of it written already, with paragraphs that could be cycled in or out depending on who’d won the half-dozen awards that didn’t get announced in advance. 

Kristen snorted. “Well, I’m sure not mad about it now, but normally, it’s the most boring article to write ever; you know how hockey players usually insist on sticking to their scripts. And I’ve never really liked Vegas—I prefer more outdoorsy vacations.” 

“Fair,” Aida said. “So… I take it that someone went off script, then?” 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mari groaned. 

Her heart pounding, Aida slapped the mute on and glared at her. Marisol glared right back. 

“Oh, not just off script, I think they’re in a completely different movie,” Kristen was saying gleefully. “No, a whole different genre—” 

“Go on, then,” Mari said, folding her arms across her chest. “Can’t let anyone know you’ve got a dyke in your bed.” 

Aida bit her lip, her anger turning to guilt on the spot. Being closeted at work came naturally to her; it wasn’t like she’d ever been out to her family, either, before her parents had passed on and she’d ghosted most of her cousins. If anything, it would have made her more uncomfortable to try to talk about her personal life at the office, even without thinking of possible repercussions. But Mari’s family was warm and welcoming; Mari wore rainbow pins and went to Pride every year; Mari worked at a queer-friendly engineering firm where her boss routinely handed her a gift card after long weeks with an order to “take that girl of yours out somewhere nice.” And Mari hated it more every time Aida had to shush her on a call; every time Aida introduced her at a mixer as a friend, because she thought a professional acquaintance might be present; and every time Aida put on a suit for a work event that her girlfriend could have attended, if she’d been just a little bit braver. 

“Cherie—” Aida attempted. 

“Aida?” Kristen asked, her voice tinny but audible from the phone in Aida’s hand. “Did I lose you?”

“Go,” Mari said again, turning over. 

Aida squeezed her girlfriend’s arm in silent apology and clambered off the bed, grabbing her bathrobe off the back of their bedroom door before closing it behind her.  

“Sorry about that, Kristen,” she said, heading into the kitchen. At least she could make some breakfast as an apology. “Crappy reception in this place. Go on.” 

“No worries—I didn’t catch you at a bad time, did I? Crowell’s always bragging on how his team all voluntarily comes in at six every morning because they’re so excited to get to work, so I figured you’d already be at work…” 

Aida managed to hide her snort. Sure, it was entirely voluntary. HR made it very clear to everyone during onboarding that there was a choice of schedule. It was just pure coincidence that no one who chose anything other than 6:00 am to 4:00 pm made it longer than six weeks. 

“Yeah, I normally get in at six. Since Roger’s still in Vegas, we’re working a bit of a later schedule today. But it’s fine, I was about to head in,” she lied. “So, what happened?” 

“Well,” Kristen said. “I was hoping we could strike a bit of a deal. Say, I give you a heads’ up on some real crazy shit coming your way, and you ensure that I get a quote before anyone else?” 

Aida pursed her lips, making a rapid fire decision. “I can’t promise something that specific without knowing what this is all about. But I can guarantee that we’ll repay what the information is worth, whether it’s with an early quote now or an exclusive down the road.” 

There was a brief silence, then Kristen said, “Yeah, okay. I trust you to be fair. Anyway, I wanted to give you a heads’ up on this, specifically. I’m going to send you a link, okay? It went up about a couple hours ago on Twitter. Some gossip sites picked it almost immediately, so I’m guessing the person who posted it was calling around, and it’s been spreading like wildfire on social media. I don’t know if anyone else major has it, yet, but I have to assume they do—I found it when I was scrolling through the mentions on my article and saw a comment talking about it.” 

“Okay,” Aida drawled, raising her eyebrows. She switched Kristen to speaker, lowering the phone so she could look up whatever mystery item the reporter was going to send. 

Thirty seconds later, she felt like her eyebrows might never come down. 

“This is real?” she breathed. 

“It seems to be,” Kristen said, her own voice echoing Aida’s shock. “I don’t think anyone who has the technology to do CGI this good would be wasting it on some hockey players, right? No matter how big of stars they are. I guess it could still be a prank—that’s what a bunch of people were saying at first, or thinking it was Photoshop or something. But then the original poster put up  a video update, in response to the people calling them a liar, I guess. Watching that… I don’t know. I think if it was a prank, they’d either be playing it up more, or playing it up less, you know what I mean? Plus… I started out in Detroit and they used to play the Metros all the time. I could believe that Rozanov could sell a show like this, but Hollander? He used to get so awkward whenever someone would catch him with a question he hadn’t prepped for, you know?” 

Aida did know. Not that she’d ever spoken to Hollander personally—she didn’t have the same level of exposure to players that a sports reporter had, being much more likely to talk to their agents or managers—but she’d grown up in Montreal and lived there until her promotion, four years back. She hadn’t overlapped much with Hollander, but she still watched his games more than anyone else’s. 

That had to be what Kristen had meant, about wanting to tell Aida about this specifically. Please, God, let that be what she meant.

“Our East Coast teams are still waking people up and trying to figure out whether it’s real, but—I think it is. I think this is going to be huge,” Kristen went on. 

Aida just barely managed not to respond with a sarcastic, “Oh, you really think so?” 

“Agreed,” she said instead. “And if it’s not, it’s even more important that we get out ahead of it. We owe you big time, Kristen, and I’m going to make sure Roger knows it.” 

She would never remember the rest of the call, her mind spinning in self-involved spirals. Once she finally hung up, she finished the coffee and started on some eggs, her hands moving on automatic while her brain tried to figure out what her next steps should be. 

The Commissioner was not going to be happy about this. Not happy at all. And there wasn’t a lot Aida could do to change that, even if she stuck her neck far out enough to get it chopped off. But Marisol would never forgive her if she didn’t do something.

Aida would never forgive herself. 

It was still the wee hours in Vegas—Roger was going to be cranky as hell if they woke him up, but crankier still if he wasn’t involved in the decisions that were about to get made. On the other hand, ESPN would probably hold the story until the West Coast started to wake up, giving them a chance to try to get comments from everyone involved. She had a couple of hours. 

Finally, she woke up the head of Roger’s travel team and told them to move the Commissioner’s wake call up to 4:00 am, and get her a quarter-hour on his schedule as soon as he’d dressed. That wasn’t too much earlier than he normally got up, but gave him at least an hour to respond before anyone was likely to post a major news story. A reasoned response. She hoped. 

And then, Aida starting going through the retweets of the original post, and every gossip site that had picked it up without bothering with confirmations or comments from the relevant parties, and started to put together a very carefully metered briefing book. She couldn’t keep it to positive responses and information only—that would be far too obviously biased, and would backfire. Roger was never more stubborn than when someone was too clearly trying to get him to do something he didn’t want to do. 

Plus, it would get Aida fired, and then she wouldn’t be able to help anyone. 

No, she made sure she had an exactly equal amount of positive and negative responses—that way, if anyone asked, she would be able to say that she’d been trying to be completely objective. But she selected the positive responses that were the most measured, articulate (god, she hated that word), and credible: from Hollywood stars like Rose Landry, who was tweeting out rapturous comments about how much this would mean to hockey; to brand influencers and fansites, who were just excited to have something so juicy and photogenic to talk about; and to the couple of actual pundits or analysts who had weighed in with anything remotely positive (there were, unfortunately, fewer of those than she would have liked, but she dug up a couple, and prayed that there would be more as people woke up). And with the negatives, she picked the most obscenity-laden, bigoted, idiotic commentary she could find, the kind of language that would make Roger immediately recoil—not because he disagreed with any of the content, but because he despised such “white trash” behavior. And while she couldn’t avoid the people talking about ethics and integrity entirely—it would be just too obvious a gap—she tried to steer away from anyone who sounded too reasonable. There, at least, the early hour and sheer improbability of it all helped her—the more rational analysts would wait to post, trying to figure out if it was real. 

And then, once she’d finished the response summary and sent it off, she started putting together a statistics analysis. That wasn’t her job, really, but she’d seen too many pass her desk to not know how to do it, and she had all the numbers right there in the database, after all. If Hollander and Rozanov had been throwing games for each other, or playing distracted, there was nothing she could do for them—but having seen them play for years, she was willing to bet her entire 401K that the numbers would bear them up. 

When she’d finished that, queued it up in Roger’s inbox, and done one more sweep for updates, she still had twenty minutes left before the wake up call. She briefly considered going into the office, then dismissed it; she didn’t want to risk being caught in the subway when Roger reached out. Instead, she grabbed a candle and went to the breakfast nook, kneeling down in front of the windowsill and sticking the candle on top of the ruins of its predecessors. 

Up until this point, she hadn’t spared a moment to think about how this might affect her own life. Now, she could take just a little time, to wrestle through her own thoughts. To question what Mari would think of it. To think about the worst and the best case scenarios. To ask what the backlash might look like, what horrors were going to enter her life because of this. To wonder if she was being an insanely optimistic dreamer, to think that this could possibly make things easier. To imagine a better world—or was that only wishful thinking? 

And, finally, to light the candle, and to pray. 

Chapter End Notes

My apologies for the long wait for an update, everyone—this chapter really fought me! Hopefully the next one will come faster, but my attention is being fractured over several different works-in-progress right now. If you get too hard up, please consider reading my other longfic, or one of my completed short fics!

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I deeply appreciate everyone who's commented or left kudos on this fic so far—your encouragement keeps me going!

Chapter 6

Chapter Notes

It’s been significantly longer than I’d hoped to make y’all wait for this chapter, and I so appreciate everyone who subscribed to or bookmarked this fic and hasn’t given up on it! What happened, you see, is I wrote a bunch of stuff that was going to be Chapter 6, but it just didn’t quite seem to be working right, so I said “you know what we need, is a few paragraphs bridging where we were in Chapter 4 (before the interludes) with where we’re resuming with the main story” — and then I practically stream-of-consciousness wrote eight thousand of some of the most angsty, load-bearing, emotionally heavy words I’ve ever come up with. 😂

So, anyway, good news, the next chapter is already significantly underway, and I’m very hopeful that it’ll be going a lot quicker now! Bad news, I also started like four other WIPs while I was struggling with it, so it will probably still be another month before I update this one again. But please don’t worry that I’ve abandoned you! I just am the ADHD writer from hell, lmao. 😅

As always, big thanks to my betas and cheerreaders: phoenix_ascended, HopelessScribe, Sunless_Garden, and Vee Dragonmuse.

TW for some heavy conversations in this chapter, including depictions and discussions of homophobia, toxic masculinity, and racism in sports; use of homophobic and misogynistic slurs; and internalized homophobia and misogyny.

Ilya shifted restlessly on the couch. He told himself that he was only moving because he was uncomfortable, and it was not untrue: for an expensive penthouse, the couch was much better looking than it was comfortable. But if he had been entirely honest with himself—which obviously he hadn’t been and wasn’t going to be—the greater part of his motivation came from a desire—a need—to recapture Hollander’s attention. His husband had been ignoring him for what felt like hours now—too caught up in long, involved conversations with their agent and the apparently endless stream of businessmen conferencing into her laptop, at least half of whom Ilya had been explicitly forbidden from speaking to. 

He was so very bored. And not even the good kind of bored, like listening to Svetlana or Hollander talk about hockey statistics or posing for a photoshoot—some situation where he could zone out and occupy his mind with fantasies about fucking a vast array of infinitely gorgeous and eager partners (or, recently, just Hollander. Hollander in the kitchen, Hollander on the floor… ). No, this was a much worse kind of boredom, where Ilya had to keep his attention sharply focused on very important conversations that he didn’t understand in the slightest.

He heaved a gusty sigh and shifted positions again—surely only for about the seventeenth time in the last hour. The other two people on the long, sinuous couch didn’t even glance his way, too focused on their current heated argument with whoever-it-was. Farah started talking again, a long stream of rapid-fire phrases aimed down at the laptop screen nestled in her lap, and laden with so much unintelligible jargon that Ilya couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Not that he would have been able to follow it even if it had been plain speech, probably. His brain had decided that it was done processing English barely twenty minutes into this nightmare, and ever since then, it had been a struggle just to stay awake, let alone keep up with the conversation. It certainly didn’t help that he’d had barely five hours of sleep, and while he wasn’t hungover, precisely—Russians did not get hangovers—he could still feel the effects of the alcohol in his system, combining with the dehydration and exhaustion to slow his reaction times and fog up his brain. 

Groaning, Ilya finally just surrendered, flopping down lengthwise on the couch and resting his head on Hollander’s—on Shane’s—lap. He’d expected to be shoved off immediately, even though he’d made sure he wasn’t in frame of the laptop camera before he’d done it. A rejection would have still been a reaction, at least. But instead, Shane just lifted his arms a bit, allowing Ilya to settle into position, and then rested one hand on Ilya’s waist and the other on his head, stroking absently through his short curls. Ilya’s eyes slammed closed, pure bliss drifting down from every one of Shane's fingers to flood his body with sleepy pleasure. The position felt as terrifyingly vulnerable as it was enjoyable. Despite the limited number of encounters they’d had to date, he and Hollander had touched every part of each other’s bodies, had done things to and with one another that neither of them had ever shared with anyone else; and yet somehow, this felt more intimate than anything they’d done before. 

Oddly enough, Ilya found his ability to pay attention to the conversation increasing now that his eyes were closed. Or perhaps it was the very fact that he couldn’t see that allowed him to finally start parsing the conversation. 

Or, well—some of it? 

Yuna Hollander’s voice was being transmitted cleanly through the live connection, without any static or distortion, yet Ilya couldn’t make any sense of it. The last thing she had said had sounded like “call is data or neck,” but that was obviously nonsense. The only thing that Ilya understood  for sure was her exasperation, which stood out as clearly in her voice as the meaning did not. 

“We’ve already told you that isn’t an option,” Shane’s mother went on, Ilya’s tired brain finally started to parse the words. “My son is not going to go in front of the entire nation and tell a story so goddamn fucking stupid that the most idiotic hack at the worst sports rag in Quebec will be able to tell that he’s lying!” 

“Hollander, are you going to do nothing but sit there? Letting ta maman speak for you?” a male voice sneered in response, making Ilya startle slightly. And then the man went on to say something else unintelligible, in—Ilya was fairly sure— the same nasally accented, half-slurred sort of phrases Shane’s мама had been using. 

Okay, if they’d been speaking partly in some other language this entire time, then Ilya was not nearly as much to blame for his inability to keep up as he’d thought. Also, he had really not been expecting Hollander’s mother to have such a potty mouth. 

“I think my manager put it perfectly, sir,” Hollander said evenly, his thigh shifting under Ilya’s head as he leaned to the side to get further into frame. “You know I’ve gone above and beyond for our team, and I’d happily do it again. But I can’t go out there and try to sell a lie that no one on the team is going to believe.” 

“The team will believe whatever I fucking tell them to believe,” the man shot back, getting louder.

Ilya mentally raised his eyebrows. Who were they even speaking to? It was clearly someone who was confident that he could boss the Metros—and Hollander—around, but Ilya had heard Hollander’s coach shout across the ice many times, and this voice seemed different. He pried his eyes open, peering up and to the side, but couldn’t quite see the laptop screen without lifting his head. When he tried, Hollander tightened his left hand in Ilya’s curls and moved his right from Ilya’s waist to his shoulder, pushing him back down. Ilya cast his eyes upward, next, trying to catch a glimpse of Hollander’s face. It was stiff and cold, unreadable. 

“With all due respect, sir,” Hollander said to the screen, his voice twisting disrespectfully. “You can’t change reality just because you want to.” 

“Although we’re sure if anyone could, it would be you, Mr. Bergeron,” Farah put in. Her light tone, along with the charming and only somewhat forced chuckle she added, were clearly intended to defuse the situation. “But we need to deal with the situation we’ve found ourselves in. And I’m afraid that Shane’s public persona and brand don’t quite align with the prank narrative you’re wanting him to proceed with.”

“His public persona! Ah, oui, certainement, it does not align, we are agreed,” Bergeron said, even louder. When he went on, the English words were heavily interspersed with the French, leaving Ilya fuming in frustrated incomprehension. The only things he caught for sure were something about a “Vegas wedding” and “with a man” and then Ilya’s last name, all said in undeviating tones of utter disgust and contempt. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Hollander muttered under his breath, just barely loud enough for Ilya to hear. His hands tightened their grip in Ilya’s curls and on his shoulder, until Ilya could feel every individual nail digging into his skin. 

“Excuse me?” Yuna said, over the digital connection. “What did you just say?”

Something about the way she said it—her voice so icily low that Ilya felt himself shiver—told him that she had understood the French just fine, regardless of her pretended incomprehension. Or was that pretended disbelief? Hollander had clearly understood it, too,  because when he spoke—sounding more pissed off than Ilya had ever heard him—it was in the same language, and Ilya wished now that he could just zone out completely again, rather than being in this tense and confusing half-and-half state. 

“We’ve presented the plan we believe will be best—” Farah started, coming in neatly at the end of whatever Hollander had said in French. 

“Stop,” Yuna said abruptly, cutting Farah off. She paused for just a little longer than felt natural, the sound of her slow breathing audible even through the computer. No one else dared speak. “I think we need to take a break, and come back to this when tempers have cooled.” 

“We do not have so much time left before the meeting,” the man said—civilly, now, although the effort he was expending to keep it so was evident. “You will have heard, I think, that Commissioner Crowell is to attend?” 

“We’re well aware,” Yuna said. Her voice was so dry and cold, it could have been used to chill vodka. “And I would suggest, Monsieur Bergeron, that you spend that time deciding whether or not you want my son on your team—and how greatly you value your career.”  

Ilya felt Hollander jerk below him; a slow, quiet inhale was the only noise his husband made. 

“You know, as a longtime Metros fan, I really thought that no one would ever beat out Réjean Houle as the most hated man in Quebec,” Yuna barreled on, a little liveliness returning to her tone, “but the man responsible for sending Shane Hollander to another city might well give him a run for his money.” 

“Mom—” Hollander hissed through gritted teeth. Ilya looked up at him again, craning his neck, but Shane pressed his lips together tightly and didn’t say anything else.

“I have led this team for five years, and three different minor league and major junior teams in the decade before that,” the man said, his voice rising nasally again. “I am not some newcomer with milk behind my ears—” 

“Mr. Bergeron,” Farah interjected quickly, her voice carefully dispassionate, “Shane is ready and willing to work with you, and the entire Metros franchise, to mitigate the damage done by this… unplanned media storm. What he can’t do is make it as if it never happened at all. Your proposal doesn’t make sense for the man people believe him to be—and that’s true for his teammates and the public. And frankly, it’s a narrative that will not land at all well across certain key Montreal interest groups. I’m not certain it’s a direction you want to commit the franchise to without speaking to the full ownership board.” 

“Mais—” the man cut himself off. When he continued, it was again in that strained, barely neutral voice. “I will speak to Monsieur Bouchard before the meeting, bien sur. I understand he has been in touch with the rest of the board.” 

He added something else in French, and then there was another pause, longer and more tense than the first, interrupted only by Farah putting the laptop down on the glass coffee table with an audible click. Ilya could see the screen from the new position, and there was now only one face filling it: Yuna Hollander—now looking perfectly composed despite the tense conversation they’d just endured—looked at her son with deep concern and empathy written clearly across her face.

“Shane?” she asked finally, her voice tentative and soft. 

Hollander’s hands finally loosened on Ilya’s shoulder and hair, letting him slither away from his prone position on the couch. As soon as he was free, Ilya pushed himself upright and turned to look at his husband. Hollander was staring down into his own lap, his eyes red and his lips pressed so tightly together that the edges were almost white. Ilya put his hand tentatively on Shane’s leg, where his own head had rested a moment earlier, stroking his thigh through the denim of his own borrowed jeans. Shane exhaled slowly and swayed, almost imperceptibly, toward him. Ilya immediately shuffled closer, moving his hand from Shane’s thigh to the small of his back and lining up their bodies from shoulder to knee, providing a solid bulwark of support. 

“Okay,” Hollander said down to his knees. He finally looked up. “Okay. What the hell, Mom?”

Yuna blinked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, sounding more shocked than offended by her son’s profanity. 

“What do you think I mean?” Hollander snapped. “You basically dared him to trade me! So what do you think he’s going to want to do next? What’s the plan if he actually does?” 

Yuna took a deep breath, then said, in a calm, matter-of-fact tone, “Shane… The plan is that when he trades you, we’re going to eviscerate him in the media until we destroy his career.” 

Ilya felt his own head jerk back as his mind went white with static—with a supreme effort of will, he managed to keep the shock from transmitting to Shane through their physical connection, keeping his body still and firm against his husband’s. 

“When he trades me—” Shane repeated, his eyes going wide. “No. No, we can still fight this.” He turned to Farah, his voice gaining a frantic edge. “Tell her! We can talk him down—like you were saying, we can prove that the fans are mostly okay with it, that the owners wouldn’t want to lose me over this… We could tell him I’ll do extra media, give up the C, or… God, I don’t know, but there has to be a way.”

“I—” Farah glanced back and forth between Hollander and his mother, her expression wary. 

“Sweetheart, Bergeron came onto that call with his mind already made up,” Yuna cut back in. “Couldn’t you see that he’s not remotely open to the possibility of managing a team with an openly gay captain? That’s why he got so angry with you—he doesn’t want to lose you, but he doesn’t see any other option if you won’t buckle under and do things his way.” 

“We can still try go over his head to the ownership board—” Farah suggested. 

“That was a good attempt, and we should absolutely keep pushing there.” The words were encouraging, but Yuna was shaking her head as she said it, making Ilya wonder if he'd misheard her again. “It will make it easier to get him fired once the consequences start blowing up in his face. But it’s just not likely that the Board will overrule the GM in time to do any good—that’s the problem with a hockey team run by committee. And even if they tell him he can’t trade you—which again, I don’t think is going to happen. It’s his prerogative to run the team as he likes as long as he has a contract. But even if they do, if you stay, there won’t be any negative consequences for him to be scapegoated for! You’d have to keep working for a hostile GM, and worse, you’ll have made him even more your enemy by going over his head. He’d make being there a nightmare for you, and then take credit for any success you achieve in spite of him, while blaming you for any failures.”  

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Hollander said. He bent forward, planting his elbows on his thighs and burying his head in his hands. Ilya rubbed harder at his back, exchanging a concerned look with Farah over his shoulders. 

“Shane, sweetheart, listen to me,” Yuna said. “Leaving Montreal isn’t the end of the world—” 

“It’s not?” Hollander yelped, jerking his head up. “Since when?”

“Shane—” 

“No, I’m serious. Who are you, and what have you done with my mother?” 

Farah audibly choked down an ill-timed laugh; Ilya glanced her way, and found her leaning her head into her hand, hiding her face. Fortunately, Hollander and his mother were so focused on each other, neither of them appeared to notice. 

“Shane, I need you to take a deep breath right now,” Yuna was saying. “This is your career we’re talking about—” 

“Fucking hell, Mom, are you saying that because you think I don’t know?” Hollander asked, his voice rising bitterly. He sprang to his feet, pulling abruptly away from Ilya’s caressing hand. 

“Of course not, Shane, but—”

Farah silently reached out, turning the laptop so that it faced where Shane was now pacing furiously, back and forth in front of the fire feature. Ilya shuffled to the far side of the couch, where he could watch Hollander and the screen both. 

“What do you think it’ll do to my career for the Metros to get rid of me like this? Maybe if I was still on an ELC, I’d have a chance, but with my salary where it is? No one’s going to trade any decent, upstanding, straight players for an expensive faggot.” 

“Shane Yukio Hollander,” Yuna said, spacing every syllable out with slow, deliberate tension. “I don’t want to ever hear you—” 

“No, I’ll have to hope that some other team will think it’s worth the transfer fee to pick up my contract when the Metros put me on waivers,” Shane said, raising his voice to drown out his mother’s objections. “If not, it’ll be down to Trois-Rivières, and if you think the MLH locker rooms are bad, just fucking wait until I’m in the minors—”

“Shane, I think you’re catastrophizing a little,” Farah said. She got up and moved toward him, holding her hands out in a soothing gesture. “I know the League on the whole is very conservative, but there are some more liberal teams, with GMs who will bid for—” 

“Absolutely there are. I mean, look at Boston!” Yuna interrupted. “Not that I really want you playing in the States; maybe Vancouver or… But that’s not the point. Rozanov’s coach and management have been great about—” 

“Goddamnit!” Hollander yelled. 

He turned away from Farah and, snatching up one of the small pillows that had long since been knocked down from the couch to the floor, he buried his face in the stiff fabric. It only somewhat muffled the exasperated scream he let out. 

Ilya and Farah exchanged another worried glance, this time with Yuna participating from the laptop screen.

“Rozanov just won his city the Cup,” Hollander snarled, dragging their attention back. “By beating my team, by the way, which makes everything even worse for me. Rozanov is a big, tough Russian, who gets in lots of fights and sleeps with lots of women and is every-fucking-thing a hockey player is supposed to be—” 

“Hey,” Ilya objected. Not that he disagreed with any of that—well, he really didn’t get in all that many fights—but the way Hollander had said it, bitter and unhappy, wasn’t ever how he wanted his husband to speak about him. 

“Of course his management has supported him, he’s a winner,” Shane went on, ignoring Ilya’s interjection. “I’m not, not yet. Maybe I’ll never be. And don’t forget all those other reasons I’ve never really been what they want. I’m too small, remember? Too soft, too smart. Not big enough, not tough enough, not white enough, too focused on fancy skating, not a fighter, a fucking pretty boy—”

Ilya shriveled inside, thinking of that day at the CCM photoshoot. 

“Shane,” his mother protested again, her own voice quietly breaking now. 

“And even if I do get traded, it’s not going to be any better wherever I end up! You’re acting like… like just because the GM used a little locker room talk on a call, that means that Montreal isn’t the best team I’ve ever had, as if I haven’t heard that kind of thing every fucking day since I was twelve years old—” 

“Shane,” his mom interrupted again. “I wish you didn’t have to hear that sort of thing anywhere. But there is a difference between players using those kinds of insults in a locker room or on the ice, and hearing it from your general manager on a professional call. You know there is. You’ve worked so hard to change the culture in Montreal for the better, and I’ve supported you every step of the way, but if I’d known it was this bad at the top… It’s not that I don’t think you can handle it, but for what? You can’t change this level of institutional toxicity except by walking away, by going somewhere else and proving you’re the best there, making them regret missing out on their chance to cash in on your—” 

“Oh, like you did, Mom?” Hollander challenged. 

The two of them stared at each other for a long, charged moment of silence. 

“I don’t care about changing things,” Hollander said. His tone was softer now, pleading. “I know I’m supposed to care. I’m supposed to be this big role model, I’m supposed to prove that Asian kids can do everything the white kids can do, but I’m so tired of it, Mom. I’m not like you, it doesn’t make me happy to prove people wrong. I just want to play hockey. I can’t deal with being the poster child for gay rights on top of everything else. I can deal with all this other bullshit—” 

“Well, I’m sorry, Shane, but you can’t always get what you want,” Yuna snapped. “I’m sorry that I pushed you too hard, sometimes, and I’m sorry that it made you incomparably better than this world will ever deserve, and I’m sorry that people won’t ever forget that you did it all while being my son—”

“For god’s sake, Mom—” 

“But you need to prepare yourself for this to go the wrong way, no matter how hard we fight it. I am telling you that men like Bergeron don’t just forget themselves during professional meetings, and you can’t—

“Oh for crying out loud,” Hollander said. “Rozanov, will you please tell her that shit like what Bergeron said is totally normal for hockey guys?” 

“Ah—” Ilya fumbled, unprepared to be suddenly thrust into the center of a family squabble. “Sorry. What did he say?” 

“Oh,” Yuna said quietly. “Of course you didn’t—I apologize, Rozanov, we shouldn’t have been excluding you by speaking French—” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mom, we didn’t even tell Bergeron he was on the call, how could we have told him not to speak French?” Hollander said dismissively. “Rozanov, you get called a cocksucker and faggot and shit like that all the time, right? Even before they knew you actually were one?” 

“Ah… yes?” Ilya said, glancing back and forth between his husband and his mother-in-law. “Sure? Not usually teammates, unless it is joke. They are more likely to call me asshole or motherfucker, names like this. The others, they are usually from opposing side.” 

“But not always,” Hollander said. Ilya nodded in concession, and Hollander went on, “And you’ve been called that by your coaches before too, right?” 

“Yes, sometimes,” Ilya agreed. “More often back in Russia… Shane, what did he say to you?” 

“It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that it’s not like any other team is better than the Metros, and if Montreal drops me—” 

“No, hold on, that’s not—Ilya, when your coach called you that, you were horsing around on the ice or something, right? It wasn’t on a call with your agent—” 

“Look, I was pissed that he said it in front of you too, Mom, but he lost his temper! It’s not any kind of proof that—”   

“Quiet!” Ilya said loudly, standing up. The Hollanders both shut their mouths, looking somewhat shocked. Ilya exhaled. “Good. Thank you. Sorry. Hollander, what—fuck, I meant Shane. Shane, what did your—who was this man?” 

“Francis Bergeron,” Farah provided quietly. “General Manager of the Metros.” 

“—What did your team boss say to you?” 

Hollander sighed. “We were trying to explain to him why playing off our marriage as a prank wouldn’t work with the Canadian golden boy image I’ve built up. He pointed out that acting like a faggot isn’t exactly great for my image, either. And he called you a… well, a piece of shit, basically, in a pretty nasty way.” 

“Okay,” Ilya said, his guts twisting. “I understand. Thank you.” 

Hollander shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He turned half away, his back a long crooked line of discomfort and unhappiness. 

“So team management is not happy with you,” Ilya went on, calling him back. “What about team? Other players, your lineys, they have reached out? Offered support?” 

“I… “ Shane rubbed his head. “I don’t know. Hayden did message me, yeah, but… I haven’t really had the time to check through my other messages.” 

“Maybe important to do this,” Ilya said quietly. “All teams use language like this, yes, okay, is just locker room talk, but…Sometimes means more. If you will not be safe with your team, with players who have your back on the ice, we need to know that.” 

Shane stared back at him, then took a deep breath. “I—yeah. Fuck. Okay. You’re right.” 

He walked back to the coffee table, reaching for his phone, abandoned on the floor next to the couch. As Ilya sat back down, closer to the middle again, Farah turned the laptop screen back to face them, and he found Yuna looking at him with something that might have been surprise, or might have been respect, or might have even been approval. Or some odd combination of the three. He had only started getting to know Yuna Hollander a few hours ago, but he already knew that she was not a simple person. 

“Hayden and J.J. both messaged me to say they’ve got my back,” Hollander said triumphantly. “J.J. even offered to fly out here, if I need any support. He says Hayden would, but he’s got the kids—” 

“Well, that’s a good start,” Yuna started, in a way that made it sound like her next word would be “but.” 

“Uh,” Shane added. “They both said not to read the team chat.”  

They all sat with that for a moment. 

“I’m gonna call J.J.,” Shane said. “Are you all okay with that?” 

Ilya nodded silently. Boiziau was a good choice—Hollander’s friend, clearly, but not his linemate, and so hopefully not so closely tied to him that the rest of the team would hesitate to speak their minds around him. And while Boiziau was too talented to be called an enforcer, he was a big, strong, tough d-man, part of the backbone of the team, tasked with ensuring that their opponents didn’t take too many liberties with their stars. 

Hollander started the call, the ring quiet but audible in the large room, then put the phone down on the laptop, positioning it near the front edge and tilting the screen down over it. 

“He’s alive!” Boiziau crowed. “Hollander, where have you been? We have been trying to reach you for hours.” 

“We?” Hollander asked. “And yeah, sorry man, it’s, uh. Been kind of a crazy morning.” 

“Hey, Shane,” a new voice responded. “I had J.J. come over here—just, uh, felt better to be together when we didn’t know anything, you know? It’s really good to hear your voice, man.” 

“Hey, Hayd,” Hollander said. “I really appreciated your texts, I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you.” 

“Hey, no worries, dude,” Pike said. “I know you’ve, ah. Been dealing with a lot. Um. Speaking of which…” 

“Is it true, mon frére?” Boiziau cut in. “Have you been fucking the enemy?”

“Fucking hell, Boizy,” Pike swore. 

“Uh,” Hollander said, rubbing the back of his head. “Yeah? Not that he’s actually… Anyway, um. He’s here, actually. With my mom, and our—my agent, Farah Jalali, you remember her?” 

“Oh,” Pike said, sounding guilty. “Uh. Sure. Hi, Mrs. Hollander, Ms. Jalali. And… um. hey, Rozanov.” 

“Câlisse,” Boiziau muttered. 

“Hi boys,” Yuna said, her voice warmer than Ilya had heard it all day. “It means so much, the way you’ve stepped up to support Shane. We won’t forget it.” 

“Hello, fourth and fifteenth-best Metros,” Ilya said tauntingly, grinning widely to make sure they could hear it in his voice. “Did you have as good of a night as me and your captain?” 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Pike said. 

“Fuck off, Rozanov,” Hollander said, but he was smiling as he said it. “So look, guys, we’re, uh, kinda trying to figure out where we go from here?” 

“And you called J.J.?” Pike said, sounding a little hurt. 

Ilya rolled his eyes. 

“No, man, it—I was gonna call you next, just. Kinda wanted to get an idea of how the room was taking it? And I thought, you know, the guys might have talked to J.J. more than you… Since you’re my liney, and you’ve got the A and all…” 

“Oh,” Pike said, sounding distinctly guilty. “Yeah, that makes sense.” 

“And I wanted to thank J.J. for offering to fly out here—that means a lot, man.” 

“Of course, capitaine,” Boiziau said easily. “Pike would come too, if it were not for the kids.” 

“So then—does that mean that you two are, like… together?” Pike asked awkwardly. “For real?”

Hollander rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he said, a little hoarsely. “For a while now. I mean, we, um, we were originally just… you know, hooking up, whenever we were in the same city. But I guess we, uh, weren’t really that good at keeping it casual.” 

There was a pause, and then, to Ilya’s surprise, Boiziau started laughing. “Ah oui, is that what you guess, Hollander?” he got out, between chuckles. 

“Shut up,” Hollander said, but he was smiling sheepishly. 

“Yeah, gotta say, Hollzy, getting married is pretty much the farthest from casual you could have gotten, there,” Pike said, laughing as well.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Hollander said, groaning. “I’d had a lot to drink.” 

“See, now if you’d just gone out with us a little more during the season, you wouldn’t have been such a lightweight,” Pike said. “You could’ve avoided all of this by just drinking a few more beers, man! So much for your performance diet, huh?” 

It was Ilya’s turn to join the laughter, now. He felt a little bad for it as Shane shot him a betrayed look, but couldn’t stop himself from laughing harder at the pouting kitten expression. “Is true,” he said, shrugging. “You drink one glass of vodka and almost fall over.” 

“Fuck off,” Hollander muttered. “You got just as drunk as me, remember?” 

That cut off Ilya’s chuckles quickly—because it wasn’t true, and Hollander didn’t know that. 

“Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of time,” Yuna cut in. “Metros management is playing hardball with Shane, and we need information to decide how hard we’re going to push back.” 

“Shit,” Pike said, after another short pause. “Are you saying… You might not be staying in Montreal for next season, man?” 

Hollander sighed. “I don’t know, Hayds. It’s… You know I love it there, man, but I’m not sure how the guys are gonna take me being married to Rozanov. And I can’t play with a team that doesn’t want me.” 

The silence was almost deafening, this time. 

“You are… ” Boiziau said finally. “You want to play against each other, like before? While being married?” 

“Will the League even… let you do that?” Pike asked doubtfully. 

Hollander scrubbed his hands across his face. “I want to try,” he said finally, muffled but comprehensible. “If… if the guys would be okay with it. Eventually.” 

“Fuck, dude,” Pike said, and exhaled audibly. “You know J.J. and I will have your back—” 

“Toujours, captain,” Boiziau said fervently. 

“But the rest of the guys… They’ve been saying a lot of fucking awful shit, Shane. I know you haven't looked at the group chat, but—”

“Shit about me being gay?” Hollander said tightly. “Or me and Rozanov.” 

“More Rozanov,” Boiziau said. “But… There has been some ostie de merde like… I do not know if you want me to say this out loud.” 

“I’ve been around hockey locker rooms for thirty-five years, boys, you’re not going to shock me,” Yuna said acerbically. “Shane needs to know exactly what they’re saying about him.”

“A lot of slurs. The worst ones,” Hayden said tonelessly. “Some threats. Only like, in hypotheticals, but… Talking about what a traitor deserved, that kind of thing. Some guys talking about how they wouldn’t want to share a locker room with you. Saying that everyone better watch their back in the showers.” 

“The worst of it was Comeau,” Boiziau put in. “Saying… If he knew you give it up to anyone like this, are such a slut, maybe he has—had… have? Fucking English. He would have tried you out. That if you come back in the fall, maybe they should all pass you around.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Pike blurted out. “Where the fuck—where did he say that? Did I miss that? Holy shit. J.J.—” 

“No,” Boiziau said shortly. “It was not in the team chat, only to small group, him and his fucking tabernak de crisse friends. Laine sent me a screenshot.” 

Hollander stuffed the side of his hand in his mouth and bit down. Ilya tried to shuffle closer, wanting to offer comfort as he had before, but Shane flinched away from him.  

“Bottom line, boys,” Yuna put in, even her calm voice showing strain. “Do you think Shane would be safe in that locker room, if he goes back in the fall?”

There was a long, tense pause, and then—

“No,” Pike muttered, almost too quietly to be heard.

---

After Hollander finally hung up with his teammates, he dropped the phone onto the coffee table, bent over his knees again, and hid his face in his arms. 

“Shane,” his mother started. “It’s not—

“I need a minute,” Hollander said, cutting her off. “Just… I know we don’t have a lot of time, but just give me… I’ll be back in a second, okay?” 

As he closed the bedroom door firmly behind him, Farah turned back to Yuna, her dark head bent toward the laptop screen. “Should I…?”

“No, give him a moment,” Yuna answered, with a small sigh. “He gets a little overwhelmed, sometimes. Lost in his head. We can spare five or ten minutes; hopefully, that’s all he needs. It gets worse if you try to rush him through it.” 

Ilya obeyed, figuring that Hollander’s mother knew him better, and sat stewing silently on the couch as the two women started muttering about long-term strategies and manipulating the League; he really only paid attention long enough to determine the subject before tuning it out. 

He knew exactly how painful it must have been for Hollander to hear that his teammates—the men who were supposed to have his back in any situation—had thought those things about him, had said those things about him. It hit all the harder because Ilya knew perfectly well that he would have been in the exact same boat as Shane—there but for the grace of the God—if their positions had been reversed. If Ilya had been photographed allowing Hollander to pick him up and grind him against an elevator wall, wearing the man’s ring on his finger, less than a month after his team had been eliminated by Hollander’s? The Raiders would have dumped him even faster and more cruelly than the Metros had Shane. It was pure luck—if it could be called that—that Ilya had been framed as the conquering hero in their story, while Hollander was branded as the traitorous whore. 

Fuck, Ilya couldn’t even say for certain that he would have supported a teammate in Hollander’s position. He wanted to think that he wouldn’t have been such a hypocrite—but then he imagined how he would have felt if he had found out that Connors had gotten down on his knees and sucked Dallas Kent’s dick after the Raiders had been eliminated by Toronto in the Eastern Conference finals in 2012, two years ago—imagined seeing photographs of the event in those miserable two weeks when he was at home watching the Cup Final and stewing over the ignominious loss—and he had to clench his fists together to keep from showing the bolt of rage that flashed through him at the idea.

Which illustrated Hollander’s point, really. If even Ilya, who damn well knew better, had such thoughts, how could Hollander expect better treatment from any other team in the League? And it wasn’t as if Ilya was much better liked in other cities than he was in Montreal—he’d been voted in the top three most punchable players in the League for the last three years running. He’d never used to care that people hated him everywhere; fuck, he had gloried in it. But now, he had to watch Hollander bear the brunt of that hatred instead of him, and it felt bitter and sour in his mouth. 

“I go talk to him,” Ilya said, pushing himself up from the couch. 

Farah and Yuna barely paused in their strategizing as he left, which he supposed was indicative of some kind of trust, at least. 

“I said I wanted to be alone,” Shane said, as Ilya entered. 

He was sitting crosslegged in the middle of the bed, with the thick duvet wrapped around his head and shoulders; although he shrugged it off almost as soon as Ilya walked in and scrubbed at his face. He wasn’t actively crying, to Ilya’s moderate relief, but his eyes were very red. 

 “Maybe I need to not be left alone with Yuna and Farah,” Ilya said. “Very scary women.” 

That at least earned him a weak smile. “You calling my mother scary, Rozanov?” 

“Yes!” Ilya said, nodding emphatically, and felt the guilt swelling in his gut ease a little more as Shane smiled wider. “Obviously your mama is scary. Maybe scariest woman I have ever met. But do not tell Svetlana I said this. She will take it as challenge, and we will all be fucked.” 

Unfortunately, this last effort barely got him a lip twitch—worse, because Hollander’s smile faded entirely moments later. 

“Listen,” Ilya said quickly, trying to bring it back. “If Montreal puts you on waivers, I will tell Boston to pick you up. My team already accepts us, yes? And probably this is only because I won them the Cup, yes, but that will give us a year, at least. Is all we need. We will be unstoppable on the ice, we will win Cup next year, together, and then no one will ever give us shit again.” 

Shane just shook his head, going back to staring at the white sheets. “Boston can’t afford me.” 

Ilya bit his lip, because of course, this was true. Hollander’s current contract guaranteed him a little over eight million dollars a year. Which wasn’t all that much, given that the salary cap for the upcoming 2014–2015 season was set at sixty-nine million; except when you considered that amount had to be spread among twenty-three players, all of whom were guaranteed at least half a million dollars every year. Ilya’s own contract guaranteed him a cool ten million a season; not because he was a better player—no matter what he liked to claim—but rather, because Hollander had purposefully taken a cheaper contract in order to give the Metros more room to sign other good players. Unfortunately, Ilya was not allowed to amend his own contract to allow the Raiders to pay him less, or he would have done so in an instant. 

To make matters worse, most players had performance bonuses written into their contracts—such as hitting the top five in scoring, for example—and those bonuses counted against the cap, requiring the team to subtract them from the next season's cap if they did not leave enough space for the bonuses they ended up paying out. In the upcoming season, the Raiders would carry over about nine million dollars in unusable cap space because of performance bonuses they were required to pay out to their Cup-winning team this season. Again, a large part of that was thanks to Ilya—his bonuses for winning the Conn Smythe, Hart, Art Ross, and Rocket Richard trophies all in one year had been substantial. Again, he would have gladly returned the money to make it possible for the two of them to play on the same team. And again, he didn’t have the power to do so; the League’s salary rules were ironclad, built to prevent players from circumventing the salary cap to build up an unbeatable team. 

Which was, of course, what Ilya would have given his arm and leg to do. 

“They will manage it somehow,” he told Shane, nonetheless. “If I tell them now, they can move players before free agency hits, put some on waivers if needed—” 

“—you know the League has collusion rules—” 

“Or I tell them to trade me to make space.” 

“Rozanov,” Shane said, his head coming up sharply. “You can’t do that. Even if you asked them to, Boston would never trade you—not in a million years! After you just won them a cup? They’d be crucified—”

“They will do it, if I tell them I will retire if they do not.” 

“You can’t,” Shane repeated, even louder, “they’d never believe you—” 

“I will,” Ilya said, looking his husband straight in the eyes. In this, at least, he could be a decent person, and fix what he had broken. “If I have to, to make sure you keep playing—” 

Hollander started laughing, half snorting, half-scoffing. “Rozanov, think for a half-second before you say this shit. If everyone else in hockey hates me for being gay, how much do you think Boston would hate me for being the reason Ilya Rozanov retires from hockey more than a decade early? You think I want to move to a city where everyone will hate me, instead of just the bigots?”  

Ilya opened his mouth. Closed it. “Ah,” he said finally. 

“And even if Boston could somehow swing paying both our salaries at once—” Hollander shook his head. “If I move to your team, after this? I’ll never be anything other than Ilya Rozanov’s boytoy, the guy who couldn’t hack it in the League without his strong Russian husband to protect him. The cleanup guy, the second string, and no one will ever really know if I had what it takes to take a team all the way on my own or not.” 

Ilya frowned. “People who really know hockey will know better—” 

“Bergeron knows hockey,” Shane said sharply. “My teammates know hockey. And even if—what people who don’t know hockey think still matters. Most hockey fans don’t really understand the game. They can’t read everything that’s happening during a play, they can’t tell a great player from a decent one. But they’re the ones who buy tickets and merch and vote for who plays at All Stars. If the fans don’t think you’re worth that much, it doesn’t matter what the people who know hockey think!” 

Ilya was forced to nod, conceding the point. 

Hollander passed a tired hand over his eyes. “And even if that didn’t happen, if you and I were both on the Raiders and people didn’t treat me like shit—you’d still be captain. I’d never be the star, the most important player on the team, the face of the franchise. In Boston, that’ll always be you.” 

“Oh, yes, and you have so many opportunities to be captain, star for other teams?” Ilya challenged. 

He regretted it almost before the words had even escaped his mouth, well before Shane’s face went white and he bowed forward, even farther than he’d had it before, until he was practically breathing into his own crotch, in a spectacular display of flexibility.  

Ilya had just gotten frustrated—angry and fed up with Hollander twisting his arguments and shooting down his every idea, refusing to let him fix things. And maybe, he was just a little upset—hurt that Shane wouldn’t even consider the benefits of the two of them playing on the same team, such as the series of Cups they would be guaranteed to win, and getting to live together, and being able to fuck all the time and fall asleep together every night… 

“I… Hollander,” he attempted, inching forward. “That wasn’t what…”

He wanted to move forward and join Shane on the bed; to comfort him physically, as he had earlier in the morning. The knowledge of how profoundly he had screwed Hollander over held him frozen in the middle of the room. 

Ilya closed his eyes for a moment, giving in to the guilt that had been swirling inside him all morning. Last night, all he’d been thinking of was how much he wanted to keep Hollander: his impossible boy with beautiful freckles, the only player who’d ever truly challenged him on the ice, the only person who’d truly wanted to keep Ilya since his mother had died. Because Hollander wanted him: not just his body, because Hollander could have his pick of attractive men and women; not his hockey skills, which actively made Hollander’s life harder; not his protection, which Hollander had no need of; not out of pity, nostalgia, or obligation: and certainly not for his money or fame, which Hollander had more of, anyway. Just Ilya. 

But Ilya had forgotten how he ruined everyone he loved. 

“Rozanov, this is—this is crazy,” last night’s Hollander said, resurfacing in Ilya’s memory. 

Yesterday’s Ilya ignored him until Hollander stopped short, forcing Ilya to turn and talk to him—unless he wanted to drop the hand that he’d been using to tug Hollander down the sidewalk, back toward the casino-resort that had hosted the awards, that also hosted a small wedding chapel. 

“This was your idea,” Ilya retorted. 

“I wasn’t being… I mean, I didn’t think, I just thought that it would be, I don’t know, nice,” Hollander said, slurring his sibilants slightly as he swayed in place. “If we could, you know, one day! I wasn’t saying ‘yes, I’ll marry you’ right now!” 

Ilya pushed forward, getting his hands on Hollander’s hips, and walked him backward, until Hollander’s shoulders hit the faux-stone facade of the building they’d been passing. Hollander went easily, eyes going wide and dark as Ilya pressed him into the hard surface. Ilya crowded him even closer and bent his head down, getting his mouth on Hollander’s neck, relishing the way Hollander shivered and moaned at every minute movement of his lips and teeth and tongue. 

Behind them, the Vegas late night crowd passed by, taking no notice of the two young men huddled up against the building. 

Once Ilya had feasted his fill, he worked his mouth up to taste the skin just under Hollander’s ear, prepping the most absolutely convincing, seductive tone he could muster. 

“So do it now,” he whispered pleadingly. “Shane. Say yes.” 

“Don’t strain something trying to apologize,” Hollander said, summoning Ilya back to the present. “You’re right, I’m never going to be captain again. I guess I should just stop playing pretend, right?” 

He crawled forward (fuck), until he reached the edge of the bed and clambered off. Ilya made an abortive gesture toward him, unsure what he wanted, knowing only that the sudden wall that he had unintentionally erected between them was intolerable. Hollander pretended he didn’t see it—or maybe he really hadn’t—and walked over to the closet, where he’d hung up his suit earlier, as soon as the kid Farah had hired had run over his suitcase. Moving with slow, carefully controlled movements, he got out of Ilya’s borrowed clothes and folded them on top of the dresser. Naked, he bent over his suitcase, giving Ilya a spectacular view of his ass.  

“Hollander…” Ilya said, still groping for a hole in the wall between them even as he fought the urge to grope something else entirely. “I didn’t…” 

“We need to get dressed for the meeting,” Hollander said, pulling on a pair of black briefs. As Ilya swayed in place, he shrugged into his dress shirt, a crisp-looking ice-blue button up, and started doing it up, speaking to Ilya over his shoulder, “Gotta look our best, right?” 

He turned fully toward Ilya as he stepped into his suit pants. Ilya swayed forward and then jerked backward, arousal and foreboding swirling around one another like two snakes in his gut, as he took in the look on Hollander's face. His eyes were dark and determined: the same expression he wore at a faceoff when the game had truly pissed him off, and he was about to tear up the ice and score all on his own, and to hell with anyone who got in his way. 

“If I’m going down, I’m going to drag at least some of these assholes down with me.”

---

Notes

I originally wrote out the whole conversation with Bergeron with the Quebecois French intact, and then I ended up going back and erasing any of it that was more than a couple simple syllables. I generally try to be fairly strict about my narratives containing only what the POV character would actually know, and realistically, if Ilya didn’t understand it, his POV wouldn’t retain it enough to write it out even phonetically, let alone with correct French spelling and accents!

But in case anyone’s curious, here’s the whole conversation, along with translations (click the triangle to expand). 

Disclaimer that it’s been well over ten years since I last spoke French on a daily basis and I’ve <em>never</em> spoken Quebecois French; I used Wikipedia, newspaper articles, social media results, and reddit threads as a guide, so some of it may be incorrect or just not exactly how actual native speakers would say it. Corrections are welcome!

Yuna: Câlisse de tabarnak, Bergeron, we’ve already told you that isn’t an option. Shane is not going to go in front of the entire nation and tell a story so fucking stupid that the most idiotic hack at the worst sports rag in Quebec will be able to tell that he’s lying!
^{Câlisse de tabarnak - Literally, chalice of the tabernacle. In context, it’s profanity roughly equivalent to saying “god fucking dammit.”} 

Bergeron: Hollander, are you going to do nothing but sit there and let ta maman speak for you? Tu n’as pas un criss de mot à dire?
^{Ta maman = your mommy, very insultingly condescending in context.
Tu n’as pas un criss de mot à dire = You don’t have a fucking word to say?} 

Shane: I think my manager put it perfectly, sir. You know I’ve gone above and beyond for our team, and I’d happily do it again. But I can’t go out there and try to sell a lie that no one on the team is going to believe. 

Bergeron: The team will believe whatever I fucking tell them to believe.

Hollander: With all due respect, sir, you can’t change reality just because you want to.

Farah: Although we’re sure if anyone could, it would be you, Mr. Bergeron. But we need to deal with the situation we’ve found ourselves in. And I’m afraid that Shane’s public persona and brand don’t quite align with the prank narrative you’re wanting him to proceed with.

Bergeron: His public persona! Ah, oui, certainement, it does not align, we are agreed. But this…quickie Vegas wedding quand il était sur la brosse! With a man, with Rozanov, cet osti de Russe de marde! Ça pose aucun problème? Son image publique va pas souffrir s’il se présente comme un maudit fif en crisse?
^{Oui, certainement = yes, certainly.
Quand il était ur la brosse = literally, "when he was on the brush," but roughly equivalent to “while he was three sheets to the wind,” or “when he was on a bender.”
Cet esti de câlice Russe de marde = literally, esti de câlice means the chalice of the host and marde means shit. Strung together and in context, this is roughly equivalent to “that goddamn fucking Russian piece of shit.”
Ça pose aucune problème? Son image publique va pas souffrir s’il se présente comme un maudit fif en crisse? = That isn’t a problem? His public persona isn’t going suffer if he acts like a total fucking faggot?}

Hollander: Jesus fucking Christ. 

Yuna: Excuse me? What did you just say?”

Hollander: Devant ma mère, Bergeron, vraiment?
^{In front of my mother, Bergeron, really?}

Farah: We’ve presented the plan we believe will best— 

Yuna: Stop. I think we need to take a break, and come back to this when tempers have cooled.

Bergeron: We do not have so much time left before the meeting. You will have heard, I think, that Commissioner Crowell is to attend? 

Yuna: We’re well aware. And I would suggest, Monsieur Bergeron, that you spend that time deciding whether or not you want my son on your team—and how greatly you value your career. You know, as a longtime Metros fan, I really thought that no one would ever beat out Réjean Houle as the most hated man in Quebec, but the man responsible for sending Shane Hollander to another city might well give him a run for his money. 

Hollander (under his breath): Mom—

Bergeron: I have led this team for five years, and three different minor league and major junior teams in the decade before that. I am not some newcomer with milk behind my ears—” 

Farah: Mr. Bergeron, Shane is ready and willing to work with you, and the entire Metros franchise, to mitigate the damage done by this… unplanned media storm. What he can’t do is make it as if it never happened at all. Your proposal doesn’t make sense for the man people believe him to be—and that’s true for his teammates and the public. And frankly, it’s a narrative that will not land at all well across certain key Montreal interest groups. I’m not certain it’s a direction you want to commit the franchise to without speaking to the full ownership board. 

Bergeron: Mais… I will speak to Monsieur Bouchard before the meeting, bien sur. I understand he has been in touch with the rest of the board. On verra ce qu’il dise.
^{Mais = But.
Bien sur = Of course.
On verra ce qu’il dise = We’ll see what he says.}

Chapter End Notes

I honestly can't believe that I'm about to hit 50K in my draft for this story and it's been less than six hours for these characters!

Next up: the boys finally leave their hotel room!

Comments give me life. If you rec this fic on tumblr or threads, please give me a shout out! I'm @internerdionality (or @internerdional for places that don't give you more than 15 characters) everywhere.

Chapter 7

Chapter Notes

I realized as I was writing this chapter that I screwed up last chapter. 😭 I wrote Shane as being in a separate bedroom with a door, forgetting that the hotel suite they’re supposed to be in—i.e., Ilya’s hotel suite that we see in Episode 2—is open plan, with the bedroom and main room divided only by a fire feature/half wall.
Unfortunately, there’s really no way for me to go back and change that without making major edits, so instead, I’m declaring that the ACTUAL point of divergence in this fic is that Ilya’s penthouse suite was designed with a separate bedroom. It was having that one extra door to close that actually prompted Shane to send the ‘we didn’t even kiss’ text in this AU.

I did go back to previous chapters and make a couple very minor changes where I had previously written them as being in the open plan suite.

(Yes, I am fully aware that I’m a ridiculous human being).

---

As always, many thanks to my incredibly dedicated beta and cheer-reader squad, Phoenix_Ascended, Sunless_Garden, Vee Dragonmuse, and FlyingCat.

Previously on Maybe I Will Do More than Suck Your Dick: 

• Midnight PST (3:00 AM EST): Ilya and Shane are photographed kissing outside of a Vegas wedding chapel. 
• 1:00 AM PST (4:00 AM EST): Photographs are posted online
• 3:00 AM PST (5:00 AM EST): ESPN starts poking around the story. 
• 4:00 AM PST (7:00 AM EST): ESPN makes official requests for comment to relevant parties. Yuna, David, Farah, and other East Coast parties are made aware of the situation. 
• 6:00 AM PST (9:00 AM EST): ESPN runs with the story. 
• 7:00 AM PST (10:00 AM EST): David leaves for the Ottawa airport to fly to Vegas (no nonstop flights; he will not land until after 6:00 pm local time). 
• 8:00 AM PST (11:00 AM EST): The story breaks in Russia. Shane and Ilya wake up in bed together and become aware of the situation; panic ensues. They speak with Yuna on the phone and discuss options for handling the media fallout. Shane reads some of his texts and is heartened by support from Hayden, but chilled by curt messages from his coach. 
• 9:00 AM PST (12:00 PM EST): Ilya and Shane have breakfast and talk over the situation. Farah arrives at the boys’ hotel and they begin to develop a plan. Farah explains to Ilya that he has an excellent case for US citizenship regardless of his marriage status; Ilya tells her that he wants to get married to Shane nonetheless. He and Shane have an emotional moment in the bathroom. 
• 10:00 AM PST (1:00 PM EST): Farah continues to brainstorm with Shane and Ilya, now with Yuna on a video call. They have several calls with relevant parties, including one with the general manager of the Metros that does not go well. Yuna tells Shane that she believes the Metros are going to trade him; they call Hayden and J.J., who confirm the hostile nature of the Metros’ team. Shane expresses his frustration with the situation and states his intention to retaliate against Metros’ management. 
• 12:00 PM PST (3:00 PM EST): A hybrid virtual/in-person meeting is held with representatives from both teams and League Commissioner Roger Crowell.

---

People generally didn’t think of Shane as an angry person. 

Which was not to say—look, when a guy pushed him, he was going to push back, right? He might not be the master chirper Rozanov was, but he could tell someone to fuck off with the best of them. He was a hockey player. No one expected him to be Gandhi. 

But by the same measure, Shane had built a reputation as one of the more placid, gentlemanly players in the sport. He’d been in the League four seasons, and he’d already won the Lady Byng twice. With less than a handful of exceptions, he’d never been the guy to drop gloves first. He’d always been the guy who everyone liked and nobody feared—except for goalies, when they saw him winding up to take a slapshot. 

What people didn’t realize was that Shane did get angry, all the fucking time. Every time he got called a slur—on the ice, or in the locker room, or, fuck!, even by his teammates’ parents, back when he’d been a kid pissing everyone off with how good he was. Every time someone hinted that his hard-won achievements had been due to him “checking a box” or “getting extra help.” Every time he had to work twice as hard and be five times better than any other player to get half the amount of respect. 

But Shane didn’t show that anger. He didn’t let it govern him. He used it as fuel, instead—kept it tightly under wraps, like a steam engine, powering his drive onward. Instead of responding to every slight and snub, he focused on proving them wrong—on winning by being the best, just as his mother had taught him. 

And then today, he’d found out where all of that careful restraint, where all his determination and patience and self-denial had led him. He finally looked at what all those years spent maintaining the perfect reputation, building all the right relationships, and being everything anyone had ever asked of him had gotten him. Teammates who hated him, management eager to drop him, and a husband who was only with him through self-preservation. 

And look, it wasn’t like—he’d always known what might happen if anyone found out that he liked dick. He’d tried so fucking hard not to… But Rozanov was gay, too—or at least, he liked dick just as much as Shane did, and everyone knew that was what really mattered. And Rozanov wasn’t losing everything. Rozanov’s team wasn’t turning on him. 

Fuck, on draft day, Shane had stood in front of Martin Bouchard, president of the Metros’ ownership board, while his mom had talked about how the Metros were her favorite team, how they’d been his first choice before the results of the draft lottery had come out. He’d listened in silence while Bouchard had gone on and on about how they were just thrilled to have an Asian-Canadian player, how the Metros were a font of diversity and loved breaking down barriers, and apparently it had all been fucking bullshit the entire time. Just lies, the whole time. A facade they’d put on, and Shane had fallen for it, like a fucking chump.

And so for the first time in his life, Shane didn’t know what to do with his anger. Couldn’t channel it, couldn’t sand off those sharp edges, couldn’t find a way to contain and direct it for his own ends. It fucking hurt, burning inside him, and he couldn’t find a way to excise it. He just wanted to go back to when his life made sense. 

“Shane?” 

Shane jerked his head up—only just then realizing that he’d had it bent down toward his lap, with two fingers from one hand rubbing slowly back and forth across the back right side of his skull, where the pain always liked to pool when he was stressed. His mom was looking at him from out of Farah’s laptop screen with an odd expression, caught somewhere between her usual manager’s intensity and an almost tender motherly concern that he hadn’t seen from her in a long while. 

“Yeah, Mom,” he said quickly, knowing from the tone of her voice that she’d already repeated his name a few times. “I’m here.” 

“Are you ready?” she asked quietly, “They haven’t come back with anything new, and it’s about time for you all to head down there, so… Barring any last-minute changes, we’re going to be going with Plan A.” 

It wasn’t really Plan A, at this point—more like Plan C, or even D, and that was counting just the plans they’d made today. But Shane wasn’t going to quibble if relettering made his mother feel better. 

“Yeah,” he said evenly. “I’m ready.” 

A well-coiffed woman guided them deep into the bowels of the huge resort casino and showed them to a small room, dominated by a fifteen-seat conference table with barely two feet of clearance around the chairs that ringed three sides—the fourth faced a wall busily crammed with floor to ceiling cabinets, except where they gapped to display a large television monitor and a counter stuffed full of various esoteric pieces of conferencing equipment. 

“I’m so sorry that we don’t have a bigger room available for you on such short notice, Mr. Hollander,” the hotel staffer apologized—directly to him, as if he’d had anything to do with arranging this. “We do still have time to take out some of the leaves, if you’d like a little more space to gather around the table?”  

“I’d like nothing better, but I’m afraid we may fill it up,” Farah said, grimacing as she stepped in to take the question. “We’ll make do, and we do appreciate you making it available last minute like this. Would you mind showing me—” 

Shane tuned out the rest of the conversation as Farah guided the hotel representative over to the counter with the conferencing equipment, turning his attention to the rest of the room. It was well-appointed, at least, despite being too small for the table—the chairs looked comfortable, and they had some nice artwork on the walls, with a real carpet underneath them instead of the usual Vegas bling or industrial patterned greige. It would definitely be better if they took some of the leaves out of the table, though. Why did Farah think they needed to seat fifteen people? Shane cast his mind back over the intense, if rushed, strategizing session they’d just finished, but couldn’t come up with more than eight people who were supposed to attend in person, including the three of them. 

“How many people are coming?” Rozanov asked quietly, sidling up next to him. “Our coaches, and…?” 

Well, at least Shane wasn’t alone in his cluelessness. He shrugged helplessly and turned to the other end of the room. Thankfully, it looked like they hadn’t gotten the conference call up yet, so at least his mother wasn’t going to be witnessing Shane’s ignorance. 

“Farah, who all are we expecting? Besides the coaches, GMs, and Commissioner Crowell, I mean?” he asked, just as the hotel representative apparently gave up on getting the conferencing equipment working and left the room. 

“Mmm, well. It’s easier to say who we’re not expecting.” Farah said, speaking over her shoulder as she continue to fiddle with the equipment. “We’d originally set it up with just Boston and Montreal management, to discuss a joint media response, but once the League got wind of it… I honestly don’t know who all might be coming from their side—or who they might have told.” 

Shane grimaced and nodded—it wasn’t as if they could say no to the man who ran all of Major League Hockey, no matter how much they’d have liked to. Instead, his mother and Farah had been forced to move up their timeline, cramming in individual meetings with Shane and Ilya’s respective team managers to ensure that everyone would all be on the same page before they met with the League Commissioner. 

Unfortunately, while Rozanov’s team had been as accommodating as they could have hoped, Shane’s… hadn’t.

“Definitely no one from the media, at least. And no one is in town from the Metros’ ownership board,” Farah continued, “which I suppose is unsurprising, given that you were the only Metro up for an award last night. I don’t know whether to hope that they show up virtually or not, at this point. We sent an invite, of course, but I have a feeling at this point that they’re hoping they can claim that any decision made today was without their involvement, for what good it may do them. From Boston, obviously, Ira Isaacs is here and will likely attend. Hopefully he doesn’t bring any of his children with him; at least five attended the ceremony last night, and some grandchildren.” 

“Jesus. Isn’t he like ninety?” Shane asked. He winced at the idea of the white-haired Bostonian who owned the Raiders tottering in to demand why his star player had married another (male) player. The crotchety old man reminded Shane of Dick Van Dyke’s character from Mary Poppins—and not the dashing chimney sweep. “And why is his whole family here?” 

“He’s only seventy-three,” Farah said, turning her head over her shoulder just to roll her eyes at him, “and did you not notice him receiving the Outstanding Service award last night? They spent about ten minutes on it.” 

Shane felt himself flush, the tips of his ears and the skin over his cheekbones growing warm. He definitely didn’t want to explain to Farah why he hadn’t exactly been paying much attention to the long, boring award show last night… 

“It was a long program,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his head. “Uh, what was he being recognized for, again?” 

“Officially? Longtime service to the game,” Farah said. She moved her laptop from the counter under the television monitor to the table and sat down, frowning down at the smaller screen. “Unofficially, it was a quid pro quo for him brokering the compromise with the players’ association that prevented a lockout last season. I’m assuming that he’ll be a supportive voice today, despite usually being… well, a bit of a crank, to be honest.” 

“Why?” Rozanov asked, pulling up a chair next to her. “I know Isaacs—I mean, I have met him only a few times, but he seems… old-fashioned, no?” 

Shane sat down as well, taking a seat on the opposite side of the table. Rozanov pouted briefly at him, but Shane just shook his head. During the meeting, they’d have to sit together to present a united front. Right now, that particular distraction was the last thing they needed. 

“Normally, yes,” Farah replied, “Although old-fashioned in Boston—or Montreal, for that matter—doesn’t always mean the same thing that it does in more conservative parts of either country. Or Russia, certainly. In my opinion, Ira Isaacs cares about his family, his business interests, his reputation, and his city, in that order. Politics only interest him insofar as they touch on those priorities. Ilya, in his mind, you’re one of his people—you represent his team and his city, and so your success reflects well on him, and any criticism of you is an attack on him. And you just brought the Cup back to Boston and made the Raiders winners again. So he’s predisposed to like and defend you. Your coach and your GM have both been outspoken in their support, and I don’t believe they would have done that if they weren’t confident that the man who signs their paychecks has their backs. And finally, one of his daughters is married to another woman.” 

“Ah,” Rozanov said, nodding. “Yes, this helps.” 

“Must be nice,” Shane muttered.

“So, there’s the three of us. We’ll have at least three people from Boston—owner, GM, and coach—and potentially several more. Two from Montreal, the GM and your coach, Shane, which brings us to eight. And at least one from the League, but I’m assuming that Commissioner Crowell may bring some of his staff with him; he doesn’t usually travel light. So,” Farah shrugged. “At least ten, so I figure, keep all the chairs, just in case—worse to not have a chair for everyone, especially staff—it’s just a bad look to make assistants stand on the wall. Shane, can you help me get this thing working? I can’t figure out how to get the screen to pick up my laptop.” 

“I’ve never used one of those,” Shane demurred. “I don’t have one at home, and our coaches use a white board or a short throw projector, not a monitor like that.”

“I will try,” Rozanov volunteered, to Shane’s surprise. “We use this in Boston, for team meetings.” 

Someone knocked on the door as Rozanov moved to peer over Farah’s shoulder. Shane went around to open it, assuming it was the hotel representative returning, only to step backward in surprise as one of the last people he would ever have expected walked in the door. 

“Hunter? What are you doing here?” he asked, too shocked to think of a more polite way to open the conversation. 

On the ice during their altercation earlier that season, Shane had been absolutely convinced that Hunter knew about him and Rozanov; even further, he’d assumed that the older player’s contemptuous response to a mild chirp could only mean that he disapproved of Shane’s taste in men. And probably was disgusted by him fucking men at all. But after talking to his mother and Hayden and Farah about it, it had started to seem like maybe Hunter had only been referencing the rivalry, and Shane had massively overreacted. After a couple of days, Shane had reached out through their agents and apologized for his uncharacteristic behavior. Hunter had written back quickly with his forgiveness, but in perfect, media-neutral language that had given nothing away about what he really thought. 

Whether Hunter had figured it out before or not, he definitely knew about them now, of course. But that didn’t begin to explain what he thought he was doing, showing up at their meeting uninvited! 

Shane was barely aware of Rozanov coming up behind him, taking position just behind his shoulder—in the wingman’s spot, as if he wanted to make sure that Hunter knew he had Shane’s back (or as if he wanted to make sure that Scott Hunter knew that Shane was his… But no, that was a ridiculous thought).  

“Hey, Hollander,” Hunter responded, nodding with a charming smile. “Rozanov. I hope you don’t mind me crashing your party.” 

Shane cocked his head to the side, still utterly confused. “Uh. How did you even know we were having a… party?”  he asked, overriding the rude noise Rozanov had made. 

The older player smiled down at him, making Shane feel even more awkward. Every time he talked to Hunter, he ended up feeling like a pimply, sweaty-palmed teenage boy again, meeting the man whose poster had hung above his bed.

“Someone on Crowell’s staff tipped off the PA,” Hunter explained. “We’ve got a quorum here, of course—pretty much the entire Executive Board is in town, actually. But we figured it wouldn’t be too helpful to have a bunch of us try to sit in, so I volunteered to come alone and offer to be… Well, the way I’ll put it to the Commissioner is that the Board sent me as a neutral observer. It’s not like he can claim this doesn’t concern us! But look, no matter how some of the guys may feel about you and Rozanov hooking up, none of us want to see pressure being put on players to act a certain way in their private lives, or have the League calling relationships of any type between players a conflict of interest. We all have friends or family members on other teams, you know?” 

Shane gaped at him. He and his mother had talked about looping in the MLH Players’ Association—essentially the union that represented all players good enough to play in Major League Hockey—eventually. But they hadn’t even considered doing so for this meeting; he hadn’t thought that anyone would be willing to stick their neck out for two cocksuckers, even if they were among the best players in the League. 

“So you are here to… help?” Rozanov asked Hunter; his voice was cold, echoing Shane’s own confusion and suspicion. “Why? For real, not bullshit about union.” 

“I …Yes!” Hunter said, looking oddly conflicted. “I mean, it’s not bullshit, I am here to help.” 

Rozanov just made a scoffing noise, and Hunter half-turned away, rubbing the back of his head. Shane wondered if he was privately disgusted by them, and helping only because he thought it was the right thing to do for the players. It would make some sense with what Shane knew of the man. 

 “I… Look, guys,” Hunter continued. “It’s… Hollander, could I maybe talk to you in private, really quickly?”

Shane stared at him incredulously for a moment, then glanced down at his watch. “Hunter, we’ve got like… maybe five minutes before somebody else shows up here. And Rozanov is literally my husband. Anything you want to say to me, you can say to him.” 

“Jesus,” Hunter muttered, rubbing his forehead. “Still can’t quite believe that. Fuck.”

“Is true whether you believe or no,” Rozanov said, looming even closer behind Shane. 

Shane let himself lean back against his husband, because seriously, why the fuck not at this point? If he didn’t get a straight answer out of Hunter in the next minute, he might try to punch him. Again.

And then, the memory of the last time he tried to punch this guy made Shane’s fists start to clench; even though there was, objectively, no longer any secret for Hunter to reveal. 

“Hunter,” he repeated. “Spit it out.” 

“And this is…” Hunter asks, looking past Shane. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Shane said, after having to actually turn to figure out what the hell Hunter was talking about now. “This is Farah. My agent. Rozanov’s, now, too. Didn’t you two meet at All Stars this year, anyway?” 

“Briefly,” Farah confirmed, snaking her way past Shane to offer her hand. “Good to see you again, Mr. Hunter—” 

“Anyway, she had to sign an NDA just to get in this room, we all did, and if you want to stay you’re going to have to sign one, so whatever it is you think you need to say first—” 

“I’m gay, too,” Hunter said, letting Farah’s hand drop quickly. 

The second moment of silence was significantly longer and deeper than the first. 

“Holy shit,” Shane said finally, his mind a gray screen full of buzzing static. 

“Makes sense,” Rozanov said. 

“It does not make—are you fucking with me right now, asshole?” Shane demanded, wheeling on his husband. 

“No, I had thought, probably, he was,” Rozanov said. “I told you so, in Nashville, you remember? He is pretty good at not checking men out in public, better than you, but not so good at pretending to check women out.” 

“Jesus,” Hunter said again, running his hand through his hair.

“I like both,” Rozanov clarified unnecessarily, turning back to Hunter. “Bisexual.” 

“Yeah, I know,” Hunter said, scoffing. 

“You know?” Shane asked stridently. He felt like he was in one of those arcade games where a puppet kept poking its head through various different holes and getting whacked. Except that he was the puppet. “What do you—you mean, you assumed, after seeing the news this morning, that we were—” 

“No,” Hunter said, giving him another one of those weird looks, “I mean I knew Rozanov was bisexual, because I knew the two of you had a thing, obviously, but then Rozanov gets papped gagging over women all the time, so I figured… And look, I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about me before, but given how careless you were being about your own secret, no offense—” 

“Wait,” Shane said, gaping at the older player. “So you did know about us, when you chirped me last fall? I thought for sure I was overreacting, but you were actually threatening to fucking out us?” 

Hunter’s face turned devastated, as if Shane had taken out a puppy and shot it right in front of him. “What? No! Of course not, I would never have outed you…! I thought you knew that I knew! I told you that I overheard Rozanov telling you his hotel room number—” 

“You fought Hunter about me?” Rozanov asked. 

“You did not tell me that,” Shane said to Hunter, absolutely positive on that point. “I would remember—All you said was that you had the room next door to him, you were complaining about it—”

Hunter shook his head. “Why else would I have mentioned it, except that I was trying to warn you that I might overhear you if you tried anything? Which I absolutely did, by the way…”  

“I don’t have any—I don’t go around wondering why people say shit!” Shane said, even as he cringed inwardly with the humiliation of that last revelation. 

Only to have Hunter and Rozanov and Farah all stare at him like he was the crazy one. 

“Hollander. Hunter threatened to out us?” Rozanov said, his own voice dangerously calm and even. “That was why you fought him?” 

“I apologized afterward!” Hunter said, throwing his hands up defensively. “I didn’t think Hollander would take it that way, when I hadn’t said anything in three years—” 

Someone else knocked on the door. 

“Fucking hell,” Shane muttered, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Alright, you can stay for the meeting, Hunter, we’ll finish this after. Tabernak de crisse.” 

“I’ll just have you sign a quick copy of this NDA, if you don’t mind, Mr. Hunter…” Farah murmured to Scott, getting out of Shane’s way as he crossed to open the door. 

This time it was the hotel representative—whose name Shane still hadn’t gotten—along with an extra adaptor cable for the conferencing setup and a coffee service on a cart. 

Shane went to help her unload it onto the table—there wasn’t any room for her to leave the entire cart—and, a moment later, found Hunter helping him, while Rozanov kibbitzed with Farah and the hotel staff, finally getting her laptop hooked up. 

“I really am sorry,” Hunter whispered. “I didn’t—it never occurred to me that you’d take it that way. I really did think that—” 

“I can’t talk about this right now,” Shane said, as levelly as he could manage. He was still grappling with the knowledge that his childhood hero was gay. He didn’t think he could deal with the fact that apparently, Hunter had also known about Rozanov and Shane almost the entire time they’d been… something. 

“Right. Sorry. I just, I can’t even imagine—never mind. I’m sorry.” 

Shane closed his eyes for a second. Jesus. At least he wasn’t the awkward one anymore…

“What’s the plan here, then?” Hunter asked suddenly. “For dealing with the League, I mean. I’ve heard… I mean, I can’t imagine they’re happy with—” 

Thankfully for Shane’s stress level, someone else knocked on the door just then, and the next several minutes were taken up with handshakes and small talk, everyone seeming to arrive at once. And fortunately, Farah’s worst predictions didn’t come true: Crowell only brought one other League official with him; no one brought any secretaries or other staff; and Ira Isaacs showed up sans any grandchildren, and with only one daughter. And then Bergeron and Theriault arrived, close behind the Bostonians, with no one from the ownership board of the Metros accompanying them. 

Which was when Shane realized that despite his anger, despite the confident claims he’d made to Farah and his mother about his preparedness, he hadn’t actually come to grips with the idea that he wasn’t going to be able to stay a Metro. But perhaps he couldn’t be blamed for taking more than four hours to accept that the men who’d feted him just yesterday as the future of their franchise had now decided to discard him like so much mud dragged in on their shoes. There had still been a lingering warmth in his chest, a little wistful ache that was waiting for someone to tell him that all of this had been a terrible mistake: that while of course he’d screwed up and would have to face the consequences, things would blow over eventually. That Montreal still wanted him, and one day, his life would go back to normal. 

But when Theriault stalked straight toward the table without giving Shane a second glance, apparently determined to ignore his star player’s existence entirely, it wasn’t possible to pretend anymore. 

At that point, it would have probably been more bearable if Bergeron had walked by without acknowledging him, too. But instead, the big, blocky former hockey player thrust his hand in Shane’s direction first thing. If only the man had looked like a villain: grotesquely ugly, or at least fat and balding; or perhaps like a stereotypical Quebecois, with suspenders and a stupid-looking mustache. But he was actually very attractive for an older man, with a powerful frame and thick, silver-streaked dark hair, which he wore swept to the side in a loose wave that just brushed the top of his collar. If he had a stereotypical French look, it was Gerard Depardieu, not Marcel Marceau. Shane had had Bergeron’s playing card as a kid; he’d been a defenseman for a half-dozen teams over his career, including the Metros. It had been one of Shane’s favorites, thanks to the piercing blue eyes staring out over the red and white home Metros jersey, and the five o’clock shadow on his upper lip. At least he was wearing a badly tailored ice-blue suit today, with too-tight arms, too-wide shoulders, and sleeves that ended at least three inches above his wrists. It made him look like he was overcompensating.  

Shane took his hand reluctantly, planning to shake and drop as quickly as possible, only to get caught as Bergeron squeezed his hand tightly, working his fingers around the edges for the crusher grip. Shane barely kept himself from rolling his eyes. Had the GM seriously convinced himself that he was somehow stronger than an active pro thirty years younger than him? Shane beat off the temptation to break the man’s fingers and instead returned the grip with the exact same amount of pressure being applied against him. Or perhaps a little more, because Bergeron paled and winced, and quickly pulled at his hand to free it, and Shane had to force himself to let go. 

Shane kept his eyes peeled on the door for the next few minutes, as everyone sat down and let the hotel representative play hostess, serving out coffee and donuts to everyone, but to his mingled relief and disappointment, they didn’t have any other unexpected arrivals.  

(It was ridiculous. It had only been six hours since ESPN had broken the story. No one could have gotten here from Montreal this fast. If anyone from the ownership board was going to make a dramatic surprise entrance, it was going to be virtual. And yet Shane hadn’t been able to take his eyes off the door, nonetheless.)

“Right,” Crowell said, as the small talk began to die down. He’d taken a spot at the head of the table—of course—and now settled heavily into his chair, laying his palms flat on the polished surface. “I think we can get started.” 

“Thank you, Commissioner,” Yuna cut in from the foot. Or rather, from the TV monitor mounted on the wall above it. Around the room, heads snapped back and forth, weighing the tension between the two ends of the table. “We’re so grateful that you could take the time out of your busy schedule to attend our boys’ strategy session.” 

“Of course,” Crowell said. “Obviously, this… incident… affects the League as a whole, as well as the individual players and teams.” 

“Certainly,” Yuna agreed. “We’re breaking ground for the League here today, and I expect a lot of historical and legal precedents will be set by what we decide. On that note, Farah, are we recording?” 

“We are, as of… now,” Farah said smoothly. “This is a recording of a meeting to strategize a joint response to the recent wedding between Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. It is June 25, 2014 at… 12:17 PM, in the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. Shane and Ilya are physically present, along with registered player’s agent Farah Jalali—that’s myself—acting on behalf of both players, and Mr. Hollander’s manager, Yuna Hollander, attending virtually.” 

No one interrupted her; they were undoubtedly too well schooled by their legal departments to even think of doing such a thing. Shane found himself smiling grimly, despite the chaos still churning in his chest. 

“Scott Hunter is here as a neutral representative of the MLHPA,” Farah continued, switching directions and working her way clockwise around the other side of the table. “Also physically present are GM Francis Bergeron and Head Coach Jacques Theriault, representing the Montreal Metros; Joseph Quincy, EVP of Hockey Operations, and Roger Crowell, Commissioner, representing the League; and from the Boston Raiders, owners Ira and Miriam Isaacs, GM Nathan Ford, and Head Coach Robert LeClaire. The Montreal Metro’s ownership board were sent a link to participate virtually, but no one responded to the invitation.”  

“Monsieur Bouchard is vacationing on his yacht in the Mediterranean, with poor cell reception,” Bergeron said, almost stepping on Farah’s last words. “I spoke to him this morning by phone, however, and he concurred with my read on the situation. The other members of the executive board are also unavailable today, but per my contract with the Club, I have full authority to determine our media strategy and make decisions regarding our players.” 

Shane stared at the top of the table. The Metros were owned by a consortium of the Quebec province’s most successful business moguls, an arrangement intended to ensure that the risk and expense of running the team didn’t hang on only one individual or family, who might be forced into unfortunate, selfish decisions. Hockey had gone through a rough time in Quebec during the economic downturn of the nineties, with the Ramparts exiled to the States, and the Metros only kept in the country through an arrangement with an American billionaire. Full control of the franchise had only returned to Canada the year before Shane had been drafted, and no one wanted to risk a recurrence—next time, they might not be so lucky in finding a new owner willing to promise to keep the team in Montreal. And as his mother liked to misquote, an ownership board was the only life form with six or more heads but no brain.

Shane had known that the board wouldn’t intervene. He hadn’t expected anything else. 

“Well, I think we should—” Crowell started. 

“Uh—sorry, Commissioner,” Shane broke in, realizing that he’d missed his cue. “Actually, Ilya and I wanted to say something before we really get into it..” 

By the end of the sentence, he was pitching his voice just a hair deeper than normal, ensuring that it wasn’t phrased as a question. He leaned forward at the same time, keeping his back straight and planting his palms flat down on the table. All tricks his father had taught him to command a meeting room, and they worked—after a short beat, Crowell nodded and sat back, granting Shane the floor. 

Shane didn’t think he could manage a believable smile, so he didn’t try, keeping his face neutral. “We’d like to begin by offering you all an apology.” 

From next to Shane, Rozanov cleared his throat. “Yes. We feel bad.” 

Shane nodded. They’d agreed that it was better for Shane to take the lead on this—well, once Rozanov had finally finished arguing that they shouldn’t be doing it at all—but that they had to be seen as taking equal responsibility. 

“I know that you’re all used to dealing with hockey players getting drunk and doing stupid things,” Shane continued, forcing a self-deprecatory chuckle through numb lips. He could only hope that it didn’t sound as fake as it felt. “But that’s never been my style, and I deeply regret letting things get quite this out of hand.”  

He paused for just a moment, watching the Metros contingent’s reaction to this: Bergeron’s eyes were widening, the corners of his lips twitching up smugly, while Theriault squinted at Shane skeptically. No surprise which one of them was smarter, although perhaps Shane was being unfair; his coach knew him a lot better than the GM, who had little to do with the day-to-day running of the team. 

By contrast, Ilya’s coach had a confused, unhappy expression; as Shane’s eyes passed over him, LeClaire leaned over to Miriam Isaacs and muttered something, and the two of them both glanced over at Crowell, frowning. 

“Ilya and I have kept our relationship on the down-low for the last several years because we realized what a PR issue it could be for the League,” Shane went on, shifting his gaze back to Bergeron, “and while we’d discussed marriage, we’d always planned to give our teams and the League a heads’ up and time to discuss a media plan before going ahead with it. I’m afraid that in all the excitement last night, we just, ah, lost our heads a bit.” 

“There was a lot to celebrate,” Rozanov said, with a cocky smile.

They’d planned for Farah to break in, but to Shane’s surprise, it was LeClaire who chuckled and said, “I’d say so, with—what was it, half a dozen trophies between the two of you?” 

“Seven,” and now it was Farah, “Shane took home the Lindsay, Byng, and the Skittles Plus-Minus Award, while Rozanov won the Hart, Conn Smythe, Art Ross, and Rocket Richard. Of course, those are just the individual awards.” 

The MLH Championship Cup Rozanov had so recently won hung over them all for a moment, made all the more pointed by not being specifically mentioned. 

Crowell coughed suddenly, one loud hack followed by several more wheezing ones, as if he’d choked on his own spit and had been struggling to get it out for the last several seconds. “Are you—you’re saying the two of you have been… fraternizing… for years?”

Shane felt his stomach sink. The commissioner looked like he was being forced to swallow a whole, unbroken lemon, and fraternizing had come out as if it had had to go through several washes before Crowell had finally landed upon a word he could say during a recorded meeting. Shane inhaled slowly, holding his chest as still as possible to avoid it being noticed and taken as a sign of his anxiety. 

Which, of course, it was. 

He raised his head and looked Crowell directly in the eyes, feeling like he might die a little under those beady, shit-brown eyes. “Yes, Ilya and I have been romantically involved since before we were drafted into Major League Hockey,” he lied smoothly. 

The commissioner’s thin, sallow face darkened slightly. “And you kept it a secret from everyone,” he said, phrasing it more as a statement than a question. “Hiding a conflict of interest of that scale and a potential media landmine from your teams is a violation of your contract—” 

“Pah, I knew the boy was a fruit when we drafted him,” Ford interjected—managing, despite his strong nasal accent and the way he’d raised his voice to be heard over Crowell’s choleric complaint, to sound surprisingly calm. 

There was a deep silence, broken only by Bergeron swearing, hushed but not at all under his breath. Shane, with willpower he hadn’t been sure he had, didn’t twitch a muscle. They’d abandoned Yuna’s plan to pretend that they’d never lied to their teams earlier that morning, when Montreal had first started being difficult—it would hardly work if only the Raiders were willing to lie about it! But it seemed as if Boston’s General Manager had decided to put his own spin on a similar idea?

Ford bore up well under the eyes of everyone in the room; but then, enduring criticism and scrutiny was a large part of his job. “It was obvious,” he said, spreading his hands in the air. “No offense, kid.” 

“Ah… that’s okay,” Rozanov said helplessly, mirroring his boss’s shrug. 

“We didn’t have a problem with it then, and we don’t have a problem with him not saying anything about it, either,” Ford went on, sweeping his gaze challengingly around the table. “What was he gonna do, tell everyone he was gay while in the country on a Russian visa? Mmph. For that matter, have we gotten the kid sponsored for citizenship yet, Bob?” 

“You know, I’ll need to have Nancy look into that, Nathan,” LeClaire answered, grinning.  

“We’re already on top of it,” Farah assured them.  

Crowell’s gaze was swinging like a pendulum—specifically, the knife-edged one in the Vincent Price film—going back and forth between the two Raiders officials. He finally settled on Isaacs, instead, who was sitting with his elbows planted on the table and his chin perched on clasped hands, watching the conversation between his employees like it was a daytime soap opera. 

“And you, Ira?” Crowell asked, narrowing his eyes. “You don’t have any problems with this?” 

Isaacs shrugged, then said, in his raspy old man’s voice, “What my players do in the bedroom isn’t any of my business as far as I’m concerned, Roger,” he said. “Hell, half of them are cheating on their wives—I’d rather deal with this than have another woman crying in my office because her husband decided to trade her in for a younger model.” 

To Shane’s amazement, Crowell snorted at that before scrubbing his hand over his face. 

“Of course these Boston gentlemen don’t see the problem,” Bergeron said, in a tone that made the profanity he’d left out in courtesy to Farah’s recording device seem somehow all the louder for being unspoken. “They just won the Cup. If Hollander had been the one sealing the deal for us, instead of bending over and letting his boyfriend walk straight over him to the finals, maybe I’d be willing to overlook his disloyalty, too.” 

Isaacs looked questioningly left and right at his daughter and general manager with an expressive look of mingled contempt and disbelief on his face; if Shane had had to caption it, he would have made it something like, “is this guy really that much of an idiot?” 

“Are you saying you think they’ve been throwing games for each other?” Isaacs asked finally. “Why the hell would they do that? If they wanted to gamble, there are much easier ways.” 

“There are plenty of easier ways to get their dicks wet, too,” Bergeron shot back. “Who knows why they did anything?” 

Shane closed his eyes. This was exactly what he’d feared, from the moment when even his mother had felt she had to ask—

“I’m sorry, but did you watch the same series I did?” Scott Hunter asked from his spot on Rozanov’s other side, his voice carefully dispassionate. “Maybe you were too close to it, but Hollander was clearly the best player you had on the ice, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him play better. The Metros lost because they had too many defensive breakdowns, and Miitka couldn’t raise that injured left shoulder fast enough to block top shelf shots. I don’t see any way Hollander could have had an impact on either situation. Do you?”  

“On that note,” Farah interjected smoothly, “just to make sure we put any such concerns to rest, I ran a performance analysis for Ilya and Shane over the last four years, comparing Boston-Montreal games with those they’ve both played against other teams.” 

She clicked on her laptop for a moment, shrinking Yuna’s face on the projector screen down to the bottom right corner and revealing several attractively laid out charts and tables. “The data shows a slight but measurable improvement in points earned, shots against, hits delivered, blocked shots, and shooting percentage for both players during head-to-head games,” Farah continued. “Interestingly, while all of these stats rose for both players, and by roughly equal margins in most cases, Ilya had a much higher increase in shooting percentage than Shane—a 0.6 increase compared to Shane’s 0.3; while Shane had a higher increase in blocked shots per sixty, 0.4 versus 0.2 for Ilya.” 

There was a long moment of silence as the meeting attendants slowly digested the large chunk of stats Farah had just force fed them, their eyes scanning the charts on the slide. The numbers went down very easily for Shane, but then, he’d run this analysis several times before it ever became media relevant; he was the one who’d given it to Farah, after all. 

“So… The better defensive player got stronger offensively, and the better offensive player got better defensively, whenever they played each other?” Miriam Isaacs tentatively summed up. 

“Holl—Shane is not better offensive player than I am,” Ilya objected immediately. 

“The three times I’ve beaten you in the scoring race would disagree,” Shane fired back, his own ego smarting from the comment, even as he had to acknowledge—privately—that Rozanov was a slightly better two-way player than he was. 

Only because he was a bit bigger and a lot more foolhardy. Shane didn’t hesitate to put his body on the line when it really counted, but as his team’s leading scorer—and Shane’s line had been responsible for fifty-two percent of the Metros’ points last year—he had no business risking his legs by blocking numerous shots every game, or his hands on petty fights, or his hips and shoulders on gratuitous checks. 

“Never by more than five points,” Rozanov grumbled. “Basically four ties. And defense is also very important!” 

“Yeah, well, maybe if you trusted your defensemen to actually do their jobs, you’d have more than one Art Ross.” 

“In any case,” Farah said, stressing every word as she scowled performatively at them, quite as if they weren’t following her instructions to the letter, “we believe that the data clearly refutes any suggestion that Ilya and Shane have ever so much as gone easy on each other, let alone thrown any games.” 

“Our team ran a similar analysis,” Joe Quincy suddenly put in. “She’s correct; there’s no evidence that supports wrongdoing, at least as far as their on-ice performance goes.” 

Shane could have lived without the careful qualifications in that statement; but he would gladly take them, given that he hadn’t expected anyone from Crowell’s team to say anything supportive at all.

“Maybe they weren’t intentionally cheating,” Bergeron said, with a contemptuous twist in his voice. “But you expect us to believe that it’s just a coincidence that Hollander went and married the captain of the team that just beat him in the third round?” 

“No,” Shane found himself firing back, “it’s not a coincidence, because it was hot as hell. I’d rather die than let Ilya win anything, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a turn-on to compete against him at his best.” Bergeron just gaped back at him, and Shane turned his attention to Theriault, who had said little so far, and was now looking rather shellshocked. “And after coaching me for four years, I don’t believe for a second that you haven’t noticed that I play better against Boston than anyone else. For that matter, you’ve said as much to me before! Remember, after game six of the first round last year? When we took them out in Montreal, you made a whole speech about how you liked how fired up the rivalry got me!” 

Theriault glared back at him, but didn’t try to deny it; smart of him, since Shane would have been overjoyed at the chance to call up Hayden or JJ to get their corroboration—the remarks had been made during the celebration afterward, with most of the team present. 

“Monsieur Bergeron,” Yuna said, breaking into the heavy tension hanging in the air between Shane and his coach. “I asked you this morning to think about whether you wanted Shane on your team. Can I take it from these baseless accusations that you do not? Because, frankly, if the Metros intend to trade Shane’s contract before next season, I don’t see a need to involve you or Coach Theriault in this discussion any further.” 

Shane hadn’t realized he’d been picking at a bleeding hangnail on his thumb until Ilya grabbed his hand and pulled it under the table. Thankfully, everyone was waiting to see how Bergeron would answer the question, and so no one noticed their star players holding hands. 

Bergeron laced his hands together and rested them on the table in front of him. “On the contrary. We are willing to keep Hollander—although not as captain—as long as he and Rozanov make a public statement, today, claiming that this entire mess was a prank taken too far.”

Ilya let out a subvocal pained gasp as Shane’s hand clenched down on his. Shane quickly lightened up the pressure and shot Ilya a quick apologetic glance. 

Bergeron took advantage of Shane’s lack of immediate response to press his case, leaning across the table and tapping his fingernail on the polished wood. 

“Listen, Hollander,” he said. “You must see that this entire situation is absurd! The captains of Boston and Montreal cannot be married to each other! It would make a laughingstock of the rivalry, the division—the press would eat us all alive at every game!”

“There are siblings and other family members who play against each other in MLH all the time,” Farah cut in, before Shane could answer. “All it ever does is drum up ratings. For that matter, there have even been couples who have competed against each other before, in the Olympics and other international events—Camilla Andersen and Mia Hundvin were in a registered partnership when they both won medals playing against each other during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, and Sports Illustrated did an entire feature article on them! Just think about how good the ratings have been from just the rivalry—and then imagine how much better they’ll be when you can market these two faces doing more than just shooting pucks at each other!” 

It was a good try. If it had worked, Shane might have even forgiven Farah for attempting to use his and Ilya’s relationship as marketing fodder, like chum spread on water. 

“Shane,” Theriault said, leaning slightly in front of Bergeron’s horrified face. “Listen to me. I know you feel like you’ve been painted into a corner, and maybe some people have given you some bad advice about what your options are. You can’t really want to give up the Metros. Your captaincy? Getting traded to some team where you’ll have to start over from scratch, prove yourself to the room all over again? And you sure as hell don’t want to do it as the gay player, let alone Rozanov’s husband. Calling this all a prank, sweeping it under the rug, it’s in your best interest. You come back to the team, you pay your dues, you keep things chill on the ice, no distractions—and we can talk about giving you the C back as the season progresses. I know you can do that. And whatever you… get up to, off the ice… Well, as long as you keep it on the down-low, where it belongs, no one will care. Think about what you’re throwing away here, and for what? For Rozanov? You’ve got to be kidding me, Hollzy!” 

He wasn’t proud of it, but for a moment, Shane struggled with the temptation to just give in. Or perhaps it couldn’t be called a temptation, exactly, because nothing about the picture Theriault had just painted was remotely appealing. But for four years, this man had given him a nod of approval after every practice, stood behind him on every bench, clapped his shoulder after every game—obeying him was a deeply ingrained, well-trodden road in Shane’s mind. And so, for that moment, agreeing to the bleak, cold future Theriault had just described seemed like the only possible way forward, and Shane felt like there was a massive weight pressing down on his chest, squeezing out all the air. 

And then Ilya’s hand tightened around his, and he could breathe again. 

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” he said to Theriault, not bothering to hide the bitterness. “But I would need to receive assurances regarding substantial changes to the team culture before I would feel safe walking back into the Metros locker room.” 

These words had an immediately chilling effect on the already tense room. 

“That’s a very strong accusation against the team that drafted you, son,” Quincy said quietly. 

“I grew up as the son of the world’s biggest Metros’ fan,” Shane said, shifting his gaze away from Theriault and forcing himself to look Quincy straight in the eyes. “As soon as I started playing hockey, I was dreaming about being a Metro one day. Getting drafted by them was almost enough to make up for not coming in first.”  

“Liar,” Ilya said, disguising it—badly—as a cough into his fist. 

Several lips quirked around the table, but no one took their eyes off of Shane. 

“But the truth is, while I’ve loved a lot about being a Metro, the team has never been entirely welcoming of me,” Shane went on. “I wasn’t on site on my first day for more than an hour before there were racist, misogynistic, and homophobic slurs being thrown at me—” 

“Come on!” Theriault protested immediately, “it’s a locker room, Hollander, not the floor of Parliament! Chirping is part of the game. If you can’t take the heat, you don’t belong in the majors. You’re certainly not going to get any better on any other team.” 

“I think I’ve proven that I can take it fine,” Shane said drily, knowing that no one would be able to call him out on the innuendo. 

Sure enough—other than Ilya letting out a tiny whimper, which Shane was fairly sure no one else heard—no one reacted beyond a few flinches and flared nostrils. 

Well, and Miriam Isaacs wheezing with laughter, but she managed to cover it fairly well as a cough, groping for her water glass. 

“It’s news to the Players’ Association that our members should expect to face slurs in their day-to-day workplace,” Hunter said nonchalantly. “Given that such language is explicitly penalized in the Rulebook, as well as being forbidden in the Club Rules of every team I’ve heard of. Murdock certainly doesn't allow it in the Admirals’ locker room. LeClaire?”

“My boys know better,” LeClaire lied boldly. 

(Shane was willing to give Hunter the benefit of the doubt—the Admirals did have a reputation for running a particularly clean locker room, no doubt in large part because they had the only not-white head coach in the League. Boston, on the other hand… The only reason they weren’t using slurs constantly was that Rozanov had convinced them that more creative and well-researched insults were better. Shane would honestly rather be called a cocksucker or a chink and call it a day than have a player ask if his mother had a Jocasta complex.) 

Before Theriault could bring up another argument, Shane went on, “In any case, given the well-documented nature of the problem, I think the public would understand why I wasn’t in a rush to come out of the closet… and why, now that I am, I don’t feel able to rejoin the team with nothing but a threadbare lie about it being a prank, which no one who knows me is going to buy for more than a minute.” 

The intense silence that followed this thinly veiled threat dwarfed the previous awkward pauses. 

Finally, Crowell shifted in his seat, leaning forward. “Could you give me an example of exactly how this team culture was… documented, Shane? Just so that I can understand the full scope of the… problem.”

Shane smiled thinly. Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine, he thought. “Of course, Commissioner,” he said, out loud. “In fact, there was a thing that happened this past season, between my teammate, Patrice Drapeau, and Colin Kaepernick, the center from San Francisco…?”  

Perhaps unconsciously, Crowell drummed his fingers against the table. “Yes, I recall that incident. As Theirault said, chirps are a part of the game. Sometimes players go too far in the heat of the moment, which is when the League steps in, as happened in that case. That’s hardly—” 

“I had an email conversation with Coach Theriault about our team’s response to the incident the next day,” Shane interjected, “which I think pretty well illustrates what I was dealing with.” 

Shane lifted up his phone ostentatiously and pulled up the screenshots he’d prepared. Farah threw the same images up on the display as he started to read, but he wasn’t sure anyone noticed—every eye in the room was still fixed on him, making sweat bead at the back of his neck. 

“October 27, 2013, email from Shane Hollander to Jacques Theriault: I’d like to have your support when I send my recommendation to management—” 

“Hold on right there,” Theriault said belatedly. “That isn’t—that was an internal matter—”

Someone on his end of the table shushed him. Shane ignored the byplay and picked back up with his reading as soon as his erstwhile coach’s voice died down. “I think we should bench Drapeau for the rest of the roadie, if not send him straight home. Or if not—I know it means starting Mitty for three games in a row, unless we want to call up Wally from Trois-Rivières—perhaps the franchise could require him to match the League’s $10K fine with a charitable donation to a relevant cause, in addition to a public apology." 

Dum-dum-dum, went Crowell’s fingers on the table. “The League had already taken action against Drapeau. It would be unusual for his team to issue an additional penalty—” 

“Maybe,” Shane said, daring to cut off the commissioner for a second time. “On the other hand, it’s usual for players in similar situations to make public demonstrations of their remorse in order to rehabilitate their image without being required to do so. Making statements, doing sensitivity training, volunteer work, meeting with the targeted player to give an in-person apology, make it clear that there’s no hard feelings… But Drapeau had already refused to apologize to Kaepernick, or even make any kind of public statement beyond what he’d said to the media immediately after the game.” 

Which had essentially amounted to Drapeau apologizing for the bad judgment of having made the remark within the hearing of a referee, rather than for having made it in the first place. 

“It was only after several opinion pieces were published in Montreal newspapers condemning the language he used that franchise management met with Drapeau and… convinced… him to take more public steps to help the incident blow over. The rest of this communication took place before that, however.” 

“Yes, I see,” Crowell said and gestured at Shane to go on, a little irritable wiggle of his fingers.

“Reply from Theriault, October 24,” Shane read, “I’m happy to see you taking a stand as captain, Shane—we definitely want to see you play a bigger role in leadership this year. However, I think the game misconduct Drapeau received, combined with your after-game lecture, was enough of a crackdown for a first offense, especially so early in the season. It’s not as if he wasn’t provoked, after all—that thug Kaepernick should never have been yapping in his crease, getting in his face, trying to intimidate him.” 

Down the table from Shane, Bob LeClaire planted his elbow on the table and lowered his head into his raised hand, rubbing at the skin between his brows. 

“If more of our players had stepped up to protect their tendy, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” Shane continued reading. “Obviously, I’ll be speaking to Drapeau to make sure he realizes he was out of line, but I’m not going to recommend any fines or suspensions to management. 

“Reply from Hollander, same day: With respect, Coach, it’s not a first offense—it’s only the first time it’s been caught by the refs and drawn League attention. I’ve mentioned this issue several times before, from Drapeau and several of the other guys on the team, including Tremblay. I think it’s important that now that Tremblay has retired, we make it clear that racial slurs are no longer going to be tolerated in this franchise, whether on the ice or not.”

“Reply from Theriault on October 27: Tremblay was an outstanding captain for this franchise for twenty-two years. You haven’t earned the right to criticize him yet, much less try to tear down his legacy a month after we retired his jersey. As captain, you should be defending your teammates, current and former, not attacking them. This matter is closed as far as I’m concerned. If you want to send a different recommendation to management, that’s your choice, but I trust you’ll think better of it.”

Shane lowered his phone. “This is the most well-documented instance of the institutional nature of the problem, because prior to becoming captain, it was made clear to me that my input off the ice wasn’t welcome, and I didn’t want to rock the boat or single myself out for potential retaliation. But I do have screenshots of slurs being used in the group chat and in videos from team celebrations going back years. I think it’s clear to anyone who knows hockey that that kind of behavior wouldn’t have been so common unless management was willing to turn a blind eye.” 

He took another breath, belatedly taking in the reactions from the rest of the room. Bergeron and Theriault both looked furious, but that was to be expected. Shane had hoped that this example would be enough for the commissioner—

Not that he thought Theriault’s behavior—or even Drapeau’s, for that matter—had been all that horrific. Shane had only made a big deal out of it at the time because a ref had overheard it. It had felt like the perfect opportunity to start nudging the Metros’ room in the direction Shane would have preferred: something like the Admirals’ culture was rumored to be, or a handful of other teams around the League, where there was a line chirping didn’t cross, minimal hazing, and fewer on-ice fouls. But even for a team that didn’t have a particularly clean reputation, not cracking down harder on Drapeau had just been stupid. Slurs on the ice weren’t rare, but on the occasions when they were overheard by the wrong people—or worse, caught on tape—there was a certain script that everyone knew to follow. Drapeau refusing to do his part should have pissed off hockey management just as much as Shane’s own recalcitrance. 

—but Crowell just looked somewhat annoyed. And so Shane reached for another trick out of his hat—the one he’d hoped to keep hidden there forever, like a rabbit that had kicked the bucket before it could be used in the show. The idea of all the men in this room reading what his own teammates had said about him made Shane want to die inside. And like the other half-lies and slanted truths Shane had wielded as weapons today, it wasn’t as if it was actually management’s fault that their players were bigoted idiots. 

But Shane didn’t have a choice, anymore—he’d already thrown a lit match onto his career with the Metros, and letting the flame be snuffed out before it all burned down would just buy Shane the worst of both worlds. 

“Unfortunately, the team chats this morning pretty well demonstrate that I was right to keep this to myself,” he said, and this time, instead of reading them aloud—because like hell—he gestured toward the screen. 

They’d put Comeau’s remark about passing Shane around front and center, but J.J. and Hayden had come through with plenty of other disgusting, hateful comments to fill around it, so that it didn’t look too targeted. Unfortunately—or fortunately, taking the long view of things— the Metros had given them plenty of work with. 

“These were sent in a team chat?” Crowell bit out. The glare he aimed down the table at Bergeron could have stripped paint. 

“A few of these messages are from the official team chat, and some are from personal messages,” Shane explained. “Some of my teammates who felt like things had gone too far sent me screenshots from the chats I wasn’t in. However, they appear to have been shared to a significant segment of the players and support staff—including Coach Theriault.”  

Shane carefully didn’t look at the man himself when he said this, but out of his peripheral vision, he saw Theriault half-rise from his chair, his face brick red, before Quincy got a hand around his forearm and jerked him back down.

From what J.J. had shared of his conversation with Laine, Shane honestly didn’t think that the Metros’ coach had been in the chat with Comeau where the worst of the remarks had been made. But of course, the only way he could prove it would be to hand over all of his communications. Shane had a feeling he wouldn’t be doing that. 

“You little fucking twerp,” Theriault said fervently, leaning forward across the table toward Shane.

Ilya pulled his hand away from Shane’s grip; Shane grabbed the top of his thigh and slammed it back down to his chair as Ilya tried to stand.  

“I should have kicked you out of my locker room the day you arrived, with that stuck-up, sissy attitude of yours—” Theriault went on, spittle flying out of his mouth and landing on the table between them. 

“Ta gueule, criss de toton,” Bergeron hissed. The GM grabbed the back of his head coach’s neck and leaned in to whisper fervently in his ear. The rest of what he had to say was unintelligible, but at least Theriault stopped talking, bracing his fist against his mouth and slouching down in his chair.

Crowell put a hand over his eyes, massaging at the furrows between his brows. “Alright, Hollander,” he said harshly. “What’s your play?” 

When Shane had been three years old, he’d scored a goal on the ice for the first time. 

Not in a game, or against an actual player, of course. No one was letting toddlers with knives on their feet and clubs in their hands hit live projectiles at each other, even if they were the lighter-weight pucks used in kid games. That particular milestone hadn’t come until he was six, allowed onto a mite team two years early. No, this had just been against one of those lightweight training nets, with the fabric outline of a goalie stretched across it to teach kids how to aim. But the shot of pure triumph that had run through Shane’s veins when he saw his blue training puck disappear had held the same caliber of deep, raw, uncut joy that he’d been addicted to ever since. He’d spun around in a victorious celly, arms raised to the sky, and then raced the few feet over to a hovering Yuna, tugging on her sleeve, demanding, “didja see, Mommy? I skwahed, I skwahed! I’m be da bes’ ‘ockey playah evah!” 

And his mother had knelt down in front of him, heedless of the cold ice pressing into her jeans, and told him, very seriously, that she was very proud of him, and he was already a very good player, but that becoming the best was going to be very hard. And it would make some people very angry, and they would be mean to him. But that if he was strong, and determined, and patient, she knew he could do it anyway. 

Realistically, three-year-old Shane probably hadn’t understood much of what she was telling him. He’d just beamed and told her, in his toddler English that only mothers could reliably interpret, that he would do whatever it took. And she’d wiped the tears from her eyes and told him how much she loved him, and how great he was going to be. But in Shane’s formative memory of the event, he knew exactly what she meant. He’d understood that she was offering him a deal. That the universe had made him a bargain by putting this talent in his hands. That becoming a pro hockey player, let alone the kind of star Shane had always dreamed of being, wasn’t going to be easy. He’d known that going in, been told it a thousand times in a hundred different ways, and he’d been fine with that. No, he’d been happy about that. It wasn’t supposed to be easy. That was what made it worthwhile. It had been the deal. 

It hadn’t been a part of the deal that even after he’d finally made it—captain of an MLH team, multiple recordholder, Olympian, with a trophy shelf already collapsing under its own weight—his own teammates, his fucking brothers, would turn on him literally overnight. It hadn’t been a part of the deal that after he’d become, objectively, one of the five best active forwards in the game, he would still be in danger of losing his career over a fucking PR snafu. It hadn’t been a part of the deal that after he’d worked his ass off and taken Montreal from the worst team in the League into a top Cup contender in four fucking seasons, franchise management still wouldn’t have his back. 

And what made it worse was that he really had thought… Montreal was the best team he’d ever been on. The Metros had trusted him; they had even liked him… He’d thought. How many times had Theriault slapped Shane on the back and told him that they were partners? How many interviews had Bergeron given where he’d called Shane the future of the franchise? How many nights had Comeau called him for a ride home when he’d drunk too much to find his own way home? How many days where Shane had stayed late to help Drapeau and Mitty practice shootouts? Was there any player on that team who hadn’t leaned on Shane for hockey and real estate advice, a couch to sleep on, even bail money? He’d thought that they were friends. That when they’d protected him on the ice, cheered for his goals, chanted his title, praised him in public, deferred to his judgment… That it had all meant something. 

But apparently, it had all been fake the entire time. Last season, Shane had handed the Metros their first division title in almost a decade, and the Centre Bell had rung with the cheers when they’d handed him the captaincy as a reward. This season, he’d taken them on their deepest playoff run of the new millenium, all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals, with an injured goaltender. Shane wasn’t arrogant, but he damn well knew his worth on the ice. He was the best player on the team by far, and he was a damn good captain, and until last night, everyone around him had known that. He’d proved it to them. He’d made it. He’d lived up to his end of the bargain and beyond. 

And now they were going to take it all away, toss him away, just because he liked to get fucked? Because he liked to get fucked by Rozanov, who everybody fucking knew was hot as hell, and a better hockey player than anyone but Shane himself? They were going to throw him away for that? Well, fuck them. 

Right up the butt. 

“Shane?” Crowell repeated. “I hope you realize that you don’t have a future with the Metros. Leaving aside whether they’d even take you back, at this point—” he shook his head, glancing down the table where Theriault was still shaking with rage, and Bergeron didn’t look all that much better, even if he’d been smart enough to realize the virtue of silence, “We really can’t have the captains of the biggest rival teams in the League married to each other. It would be a media firestorm every time your teams faced off—and imagine a playoff series against each other! No one would be paying any attention to the hockey.” 

Shane breathed out slowly. “I don’t believe it would be a good idea for me to stay in Montreal at this point, no,” he said steadily, instead of demanding why—after years of milking Shane’s identity and emotions for ratings—it was suddenly so important to the League to exclude non-hockey narratives. Or why Crowell assumed that Shane had to be the one to move teams. After all, Shane knew the answers to those questions perfectly well. He just didn’t like them. 

“If the League gives Boston relief on cap space for next season, we’d be happy to—” Ford started eagerly. 

“Absolutely not,” Bergeron snarled. “We’re not rewarding them for this by putting them on a Cup-winning team together.” He leaned back in his chair, transferring his scowl to Shane. “You’ll be lucky if we trade you at all after this, Hollander, instead of sending you down to the minors. If it were up to me, you would never play in this League again. On this continent again. We should ship you off to the KHL, where they know how to deal with—” 

“Yeah, well, it’s not up to you,” Quincy interrupted, his voice hard. “Montreal will deal with Hollander’s contract however the League directs. This is too big to let one team determine how we move forward, especially when your lack of control over your own players has already made this twice as hard as it needed to be.” 

“Agreed,” Crowell said, nodding, “but the League also can’t be seen to be playing favorites. There won’t be any cap relief; and there aren’t a lot of teams that can afford to take on Hollander’s current hit, especially given the off-ice distractions that will currently come with it. He’s not going to be able to choose to go anywhere he wants, anymore than any traded player gets to decide—” 

“Shane is very aware of the requirements of his contract, Commissioner,” Farah interjected, “and to that end, we have a proposal—” 

Shane reached out and stopped Farah with a light touch to the back of her hand. His rage, which had been burning merrily in his belly for the last few hours, now felt ice-cold.  

“Yes, I’m very aware of the reality of the situation,” he said, looking steadily across the table at the commissioner. Demanding that he talk to him, instead of over him.

“Alright, good,” Crowell said, nodding back. “I’m glad you’re going to be reasonable about this. If you have any preferences on where they trade you, I’m listening; I can’t make any guarantees, but once I speak to the Board of Governors—” 

“Which is why I don’t want to be traded,” Shane interjected. He allowed himself a split-second glance at the TV monitor; his mother nodded firmly back at him. “I want Montreal to buy out my contract.” 

Crowell sat back in his chair hard enough that it thumped against the floor. Theriault choked, and groped for his coffee to cover the resultant hacking cough. Bergeron swore, almost under his breath, a long string of sacres that tumbled against each other until they devolved into incoherent hisses. 

The rest of the meeting participants seemed wrapped up in their thoughts—undoubtedly following the logic of Shane’s request to its ultimate conclusion—and so Shane allowed himself to catch Bergeron’s eye, and let one corner of his mouth tip up in a subtle smirk. 

Before the meeting, he had been willing to settle for Montreal severing his contract. The Metros technically had grounds to do so under the morality clause of his contract—just like any hockey player, he had signed away a big chunk of his rights when he’d entered the League, including promising to avoid any conduct, on or off the ice, that was “detrimental to the best interest of the Club, the League or professional hockey generally.”  And if Shane didn’t contest the severance, it wouldn’t matter if he could have proven that being gay, or in a relationship with another player, wasn’t actually detrimental. 

It would have been a clean, easy solution; Montreal would have no further rights to Shane, and he would be free to sign with any team in the League that would take him, no longer tied to his cap-heavy contract. And while Montreal wouldn’t have any further responsibilities to him, either, at least they wouldn’t receive anything in exchange for offloading him. 

But right now, sitting across the table from Bergeron and Theriault—knowing that the Metros’ ownership must have known perfectly well how deep their poison ran, and had left them in charge anyway—Shane didn’t want to settle, anymore. He wanted the Metros to pay for promising him a family and a home, and reneging on both; he wanted to bleed them. And since they wouldn’t come out on the ice for him to drop gloves and punch them in their smug, self-satisfied faces, forcing them to buy out his contract—draining the franchise of just over one-third of the salary they would have paid him, if he were staying on the team, working out to an average of one and half million dollars a year for the next fourteen years—well, that would just have to do. 

“That… seems like a reasonable solution,” Joe Quincy said slowly, glancing aside to check Crowell’s reaction. The Commissioner’s face was neutral, his eyes seemingly lost in thought. 

“Je m'en calice ce que vous pensez est raisonnable…” Bergeron exploded, leaning forward across the table again. 

Shane slumped down wearily in his chair and braced his hand wearily against his temple. His head hurt. Montreal would take the deal eventually—it was the only way to get Shane to sign an NDA about those texts, and they’d probably hope they could bribe some other team to claim him off waivers and prevent them from having to pay out. All that was left now was how much bitching and moaning it would take before they settled. And then Shane would be a free agent. Exactly what he’d wanted. Right?

As Ford and Bergeron continued shouting at each other, Ilya’s other hand settled over the back of Shane's neck, massaging gently into the tender stress knots there. And in spite of everything, Shane managed to smile.

Meta and Further Hockey Discussion

I owe a hat tip in this chapter to mashawisotsky’s brilliant fic, Halt and Catch Fire, which I very much hope we all get to read again one day. Reminder to please be kind to your local fanfic authors!

The rest of my notes here got kinda… long. 😅 Too long, in fact, to actually fit in the notes section, which is a first for me! So I’ve put them under a few expansions to make it easier to skip some or all, as your interests lead you to do. 

Character References

Ira Isaacs is a play on the IRL owner of the Boston Bruins, Jeremy Jacobs Sr. (🎵John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt/Your name is my name too 🎶).

Joe Quincy is a throwaway character from West Wing, played by Matthew Perry; I wanted a somewhat sympathetic conservative politician (the NHL is often used as a stepstone toward political office), and he was handy. 

Nathan Ford is from Leverage. I pulled him in because he’s canonically from Boston and is believable as a hockey club official. If you want to read this chapter as the Leverage team pulling some kind of long con on one of the douchebag millionaires in the room, I certainly don’t object. 

Colin Kaepernick is, of course, a former American football player, not a hockey player, but I thought the hat-tip was appropriate, given the subject matter. 

The incident where Drapeau got caught using a racial slur on the ice was based on a real-life incident involving Washington Capitals’ player Chris Simon. Of course, Drapeau got a lighter punishment, since unlike Simon, he’s white. But yeah, seriously, the fact that the only case I could easily find of the NHL actually punishing a player for racist behavior was an instance where the perpetrator was also not white is… pretty fucking telling. Not surprising, but definitely telling. Especially given that we know, thanks to multiple accounts from non-white former players, that racial slurs are used constantly in the NHL. 

Francis Bergeron was inspired by the real-life Marc Bergevin, who was the General Manager of the Montreal Canadiens from 2012–2021, including overseeing the trade of P. K. Subban. This press pic was my source for his physical  description—seriously, what is going on with that suit? I’m not sure if Reid has actually confirmed that Subban’s tumultuous relationship with Bergevin and Canadiens’ coach Michel Therrien and his subsequent controversial trade was a heavy inspiration for Shane’s story, but, uhhhhh. Well. I will say that I have not watched any interviews of Bergeron or done anything more than read his wikipedia page and a few articles about the Subban trade, so this is certainly not meant to be any kind of a true-to-life depiction. 

NHL Contract Buyouts

My original draft of this chapter had some additional detail on Shane’s buyout that I ended up deleting, because I figured that all most readers would need or want to know was the ultimate result for the Metros, e.g., they have to pay lots of money and get nothing in return, mwah-ha-ha. 

But in case you’re interested…

NHL player contracts are ironclad. Once they’re signed, they cannot be renegotiated, altered, or amended in pretty much any way (basically the only thing that can change is that a team can grant a player a no-move or no-trade clause, once they’re eligible for it, and a player can waive such a clause that’s already been granted). Even if both the team and player agree that they no longer want to be under contract to each other, there’s only a few ways out: 

1. Trade: the team can trade the player to another team. Even then, however, the contract stays in place, exactly as it was—but the player is now under the same contract to a different team. 
2. Reassignment/loaning: the team can assign the player to a team in a different hockey league—usually the AHL or ECHL, but some European players have clauses that allow them to play or be loaned to a team in their home country. No player can be loaned to another NHL team, however. 
3. Severance: the team can sever the contract for cause. This can and has been done consensually, as Shane speculates in this fic, but the player still has to have violated their contract in some way, even if it’s only by skipping a required practice (which is usually what’s used, if it’s being done by mutual agreement—the player just leaves the team, and then the team severs his contract for not being there). The player can appeal a severance if they feel the grounds for it were flimsy—the League and the Players' Association have structures set up for arbitration. 
4. Buyout: the team can buy out the rest of the player’s contract. To do this, the team takes the full salary they would be required to pay the player for the rest of their contact, divides it by one-third (if the player is 25 or younger) or two-thirds (if the player is over 25) and pays it out over twice the length of the remaining contract. This option is further complicated because many NHL players’ contracts are split between a yearly signing bonus and base salary, and the signing bonus is “buyout proof,” meaning that it’s required to be paid even if the team buys the player out. 

It’s worth noting that for options 2-4, the player has to clear waivers first—but we’ll have a bunch more about that in a future chapter. 

So, in this verse, I’m assuming that Shane signed an eight-year, $67 million dollar contract in 2013 (taking heavy inspiration from our model hockey robot Sidney Crosby, here). I chose eight years because it’s heavily implied in book canon that Shane becomes UFA in 2021. This is a fairly team-friendly deal for a player of Shane’s caliber at that time, and since the 2013 CBA wouldn’t have yet been in effect when he signed it, he could have taken a frontloaded contract to give Montreal more cap flexibility in later years; quid pro quo, they might have granted him a similarly frontloaded signing bonus, which Shane would have wanted for all those real estate investments. So, let’s say he’s getting $12M a year in the early years, $8M in the middle, and then slipping down to $4M at the end, with part of those totals including a $2M signing bonus every year. He’s already been paid $12M for 2013 and is owed the $2M bonus every year regardless, so that’s $26M that’s “buyout proof”, leaving $41M for Montreal to buy out. One-third of that is $14M (obviously we’re rounding these totals throughout, here), which gets divided over fourteen years (double the seven years remaining in Shane’s contract). So for the first few years, Shane is going to get a heavy paycheck of over $3M a year from a team he’s not playing for , which will then taper down to just under $1M a year at the end, until Montreal finally finishes paying him off in 2028. And he can sign with and play for another team and collect his salary from them at the same time. Fuck the Metros. 

There was a cap compliance buyout amnesty available in 2014 due to the salary cap going down, and I’m going to assume that was also the case here, despite the lack of a lockout in 2012. So even though they would still have had to pay out the money, Montreal wouldn’t have had to count the buyout against their cap space. That said, you can bet that after screwing up to this extent, Bergeron and Theriault would get get fired, and it’s nice that their stupidity won’t be screwing the team over for the next fourteen years—only the ownership board. 

Playoff Seeding

It’s worth noting (just in case anyone else is as anal about hockey when they read HR fics as I am 🤣😅) that I’m aware that it’s highly unlikely that Boston and Montreal would face each other in the Eastern Conference Finals in the IRL playoff structure that actually existed in 2014, especially if both were Cup contenders, as the seeding and bracket system that was introduced that season and persists today forces teams in the same division to meet each other in the first or second round unless one of them is a wild card. However, the analysis that Svetlana lays out in Episode 2 heavily implies that Montreal would play New York before they would play Boston, which is also highly unlikely under the current structure. Therefore, I’m assuming that the previous structure—in which the winners of the three Eastern divisions were seeded 1, 2, and 3, respectively, after which the rest of the conference seeded strictly according to regular season points—held on for longer in the Heated Rivalry ‘verse than it did in ours, potentially until the current day. This actually makes sense to me since A. the more heavily divisional structure is Bettman’s baby, (that’s the real-life Commissioner, e.g., our world’s Roger Crowell) and B. was a product of the 2012–2013 lockout, which doesn’t appear to have occurred in the Heated Rivalry ‘verse (and which I explicitly did away with in this chapter, in case you noticed!). In the pre-2013 seeding/bracket system, even if Montreal and Boston finished 1 and 2 in the entire Eastern Conference, because they are in the same division, they would have been seeded first and fourth in the playoffs. In which case, them not playing each other until the third round is entirely possible—they would have only needed one higher seeded team to be upset in the first round, and then the first seed would have played the lower-seeded team that managed the upset, while the fourth seed played either the second or third seed. 

Trophies 

I touched on this in an earlier chapter, but it is actually incredibly unusual that Rozanov would have won the Hart (MVP during the regular season) and the Conn Smythe (MVP for the playoffs) in the same year, as he presumably did in 2014. Those are two separate awards for a reason, and they’re almost never awarded to the same player in the same year. So it definitely wasn't a fool’s bet for Shane! 

Now, of course, we don’t know that MLH uses a similar same award set up as the NHL. That said, as a general approach to my writing in this fic—given that the Heated Rivalry ‘verse seems very similar to world—any place where canon doesn’t explicitly establish differences, I assume things operate just as they do IRL. It’s just easier and gives me a solid foundation to write from. And the books do explicitly establish that the Hart Award exists—Scott wins it in Game Changers—and that separate awards for regular season and playoff MVPs are a thing, because Ilya and Shane both win both MVPs in their respective Leagues during their last year on the Junior level. So I’m going to assume that except where otherwise stated, the awards for MLH are the same, and work the same, as in the real world. 

With that assumption made, however—the books and show only definitively establish that Ilya won an MVP award, which could technically refer to any one of three IRL trophies—the Hart Memorial Trophy, the Ted Lindsay Award, and the Conn Smythe Trophy. So how do I know he actually won two, and which ones? 

Well. The Conn Smythe is awarded to the most valuable player in the post-season, as voted by hockey journalists. So, based on the announcer banter in Episode 2 (“the captain did absolutely everything in these playoffs”), I can’t think how Rozanov wouldn’t have won it. But the Conn Smythe can’t be the award Ilya and Shane bet on at the award ceremony, because the Conn Smythe is awarded on the ice right after the Cup is won, not at the award ceremony (which, contrary to what we see in the books, is frequently held before the end of the playoffs). Which means Ilya has to have won at least two MVP awards—the Conn Smythe and at least one other. 

The Lindsay and Hart are both awarded to the most valuable player in the regular season. They differ only in how the winners are determined—the Lindsay is voted on by members of the hockey players’ union, while the Hart is voted on by hockey journalists, the same as the Conn Smythe—and they are awarded to the same player 67% of the time. The Hart is the older and more prestigious of the two awards by far—it’s arguably the most prestigious of all the individual NHL awards—and so it seemed more likely that if Shane and Ilya were just talking about “winning MVP” without specifying what they meant, they’d be referring to the Hart. 

So, then—Ilya’s won both the Hart and the Conn Smythe, which has only ever been done by three players.  To do that, he must have had an utterly dominant performance in the 2013–14 season, which I depicted in earlier chapters by having him have won both the overall scoring race (goals + assists, which gets him the Art Ross Trophy) and the most goals scored (Rocket Richard Trophy), although he only narrowly edged Shane out (heh) for both. Four trophies for Ilya!

And then, you know, I wanted Shane to have won a few things, ‘cause I felt bad for my boy! 😂 Since he was one of the nominees and presumably  a strong contender for this Hart, in this chapter I showed him having won the Lindsay. My logic here is that I think Shane was probably clearly outperforming Ilya until the Olympic Break, after which Ilya went on an utter tear and managed to end the season just ahead of Shane in the scoring race. Given what we’re told about their rookie years, I’m imagining they both had 130+ points and finished within a couple points of each other, with Ilya having slightly more goals and Shane slightly more assists. Thus, other players award Shane’s reliability and consistent outstanding performance with the Lindsay, while the sports reporters award Ilya’s dramatic finish with the Hart. 

I thought about also giving Shane the Selke—because Nick Suzuki, the real-life Captain of the Montreal Canadiens, won it this year, I thought it would be a nice little easter egg! However, canon is relatively clear that Ilya is seen as the better two-way or defensive forward—more on that below. So instead, I resurrected the Plus-Minus Award (known in varying years as the Alka-Seltzer Plus Award and the Bud Light Plus-Minus Award, depending on what company was sponsoring the NHL at the time) and decided to call it the Skittles Plus-Minus Award for reasons that anyone who has read thepolysyndetonaddictsupportgroup’s snapping birch will well understand.

(I gotta tell you again, Syn—in the incredibly unlikely instance that you ever happen across this note—that I swear to god that line is going to live rent-free in my head for the rest of time). 

And then I added the Lady Byng to that, just to be funny! It’s honestly even more of a stretch, given that we see Ilya and Shane presenting the Lord Talon Award (which is fairly clearly the Heated Rivalry analog of the Lady Byng, and indeed, in the book it’s just referred to as the “award for Most Sportsmanlike”), so clearly neither of them win it that year, but look—the real-life NHL has three different awards that mention sportsmanship in the description, so I figure the MLH can have two. 🤣I’m going to say that the Lord Talon is more about leadership, demonstrating sportsmanship at a team level and running a friendly locker room (and so the MLH having Rozanov and Hollander present it is even more of a pointed joke), while the Lady Byng is, as per real life, more about individual exceptionalism and “gentlemanly conduct.”

Hence, three trophies for Shane. The 2014 shelf in that future trophy room scene must be very weighed down!

Ilya and Shane’s Playing Styles

In Watsonian terms, Farah’s somewhat ridiculous exegesis on stats, and the follow-up banter on whether Ilya or Shane is stronger defensively, happened because our boys and their team wanted to make absolutely sure that everyone in that room was clear that the rivalry is real, and these guys never go easy on each other! 

But on a Doylist note, it took that particularly form because I wanted to make a hat tip to one of my absolute pet peeves about the show, which is that all the “Man in the Crease” and hockey announcer banter that they put in makes no goddamn sense in terms of actual hockey. Like, I genuinely watch the show and find myself asking whether anyone who understands hockey was involved in the writing and editing processes at all. And one of the worst instances is when they say that Rozanov “did absolutely everything in these playoffs, leading his team in both blocked shots and shots against.” 

That doesn’t make any fucking sense. One of those is a defensive statistic and one is an offensive statistic. Now, look, I’m not saying that two-way forwards don’t exist, and obviously, they wanted to show that Ilya is the best player on his team and was on an absolute fucking tear to prove his worth, but here’s the thing. Do you know how far you have to scroll down the NHL list of blocked shots leaders for last season before you hit a forward? 70. That’s right, there are sixty-nine defensemen (nice) before you get to the first forward to rank on that list, and let me just say that Elias Pettersson isn’t fucking leading his team in shots against! I’m sorry, but if the Boston Raiders don’t have a defenseman who can block more shots than their star forward, they aren’t winning the Stanley fucking Cup. 

*breathes deeply*

That said, this bit of banter does make it clear that Ilya is seen as a strong two-way forward and has some mad defensive skills. Mad in the sense of crazy, as in “Ilya, what are you doing, stop repeatedly trying to prevent the other team from scoring through literally flinging your body between the puck and the net, and instead maybe learn some playmaking skills so the puck doesn’t end up in your opponent’s zone in the first place!” 

Oh wait, sorry, I channeled Shane there for a second. 😂

Ownership Structure of the Montreal Canadiens (Note: TLG spoilers)

One of the many reasons I found The Long Game unrealistic is that Shane seems to have little to no agency or business savvy when it comes to his position on his team. We don’t at any point see him speaking to the General Manager, other officials, or owner(s) of the club—the only authority we see is Shane’s coach, despite the fact that coaches are generally treated just as disposably as players in major league hockey; while the coach’s input on player management might well be solicited, Theriault would absolutely not be making decisions in isolation about how to handle their star player getting outed as gay! And Shane seems to make the decision to move to Ottawa based solely on his coach, his teammates, and the media response in Montreal after he trips—he is never shown to consider speaking to the owners or other officials and attempting to make change from within.

Since I wanted to make this fic canon compliant up to the point of departure, I tried to theorize about why this might have been. The Canadiens are indeed technically owned by a business consortium, which was, in fact, created in part to ensure that the team wasn’t again sold to an American billionaire, as happened in the early aughts in this universe. However, the Molson family dominates that consortium, and the current president and CEO of the Club does, in fact, take an active role. And given his public stance and Montreal’s historical support for LGBT rights, I really can’t see that owner standing by and watching as three-time Cup winning Captain Shane Hollander just rides off into the sunset with his Ottawa fiancé. He would be shishkebobbed and set aflame in the parking lot of Centre Bell, and I don’t care how brutal the Montreal media was about the trip—the fans would still be rioting if Shane left.

So, in this fic, I made the sale have happened a bit earlier, and the consortium that manages to repurchase the Metros is more a committee, with a committee’s inherent lack of decisiveness. This creates an atmosphere in which a pair of highly bigoted and egotistical men, working together as GM and coach, could potentially make such a stupid, shortsighted, and career-suicidal decision. 

Roger Crowell  (Note: TLG Spoilers)

In other character notes, I know that Crowell may come across as a somewhat “better” person (or at least, more benign toward our boys) in this chapter than he does in most fics (or canon, for that matter), and I wanted to address that briefly, because I very much do not intend for him to read as any less awful of a human being here than he is in canon. Here is my take on Crowwell: he is absolutely a misogynistic, homophobic, and racist shitbag of a human being; however, I don’t think that his bigotry is the primary driver of the majority of his actions. Rather, I think that, like most rich and powerful men, he is primarily motivated by his ego, and secondly by power and money. Having worked for several rich and powerful men (and one rich and powerful woman), I can say with confidence that there are a few things they have in common: 

1. There is nothing that gets them angrier faster than the idea that someone may be ‘taking advantage’ of them or showing them disrespect (and most of them subscribe to the “you treating me with respect means treating me like an authority but me treating you with respect means treating you like a human” school of delusionary cognitive dissonance). 
2. They believe that everything they have is the product of their own excellence and hard work; that anyone as talented and industrious as they are could duplicate their efforts and does not solely because they are lazy and unskilled; and that many, if not most, people around them are out to steal or take advantage of their hard-earned rewards. 
3. If you flatter their ego and present yourself/your ideas such that they fit well with their worldview (see #2), they can be incredibly gullible and easy to manipulate. 

Thus, Crowell’s bigoted behavior toward Ilya and Shane wouldn’t have come solely from bigotry. It was also heavily based on: 

1. Hunter came out on-ice in 2017 with Crowell literally right there (the Commissioner awards the Cup), which made him look like he wasn’t in control of his own League: media and sponsors were sent scrambling by having something that momentous happen with no heads’ up, they blamed Crowell, and so Crowell was already personally pissed at The Gays ™ in the League as well as being generally prejudiced against them. 
2. He was told that Shane was gay months before Shane was outed, by Montreal management, who presented it in the worst possible light, after which he specifically told Shane not to come out publicly, and then, after Shane was outed anyway, Crowell  spent significant time and effort (well, his staff, but he signed off on it!) coming up with a plan to fix it after Shane was outed anyway, and Shane said no to him. 
3. All of this happened in a time of growing anti-gay sentiment globally. 

On that last point—obviously, 2016 was a turning point for reactionary views of all kinds in the US, but also, I went to a major league hockey game in 2015 and then not again until 2022 (both times I was gifted tickets), and I want to emphasize how much more conservative the sport and its fanbase grew during that time. Like, just to give one example, during the singing of the national anthem at the game in 2015, almost everyone was milling around (finding seats and buying beer and chatting with other people), with only occasional people standing and paying attention. In 2022, almost everyone was standing, taking hats off, putting their hands over their hearts, and as one of the few people not standing, I got several glares and weird looks. In seven years. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that one individual in the sport would have changed his positions—but it does mean that pressures the commissioner would be under, due to fans and sponsors, the players’ union, other owners/stakeholders, etc., would be very different. In 2014, Obama was president, the Black Lives Matter movement had just gotten underway, YouCanPlay had just started partnering with the NHL, there was a lot of rainbow capitalism going on, and in general, the vast majority of big brands were either going all-in on being inclusive (e.g., Nike, Pepsi, Skittles!) or they were trying to walk a line where they could appear queer-friendly to queers and neutral to homophobes so they could continue to take everyone’s money. 

So, essentially—Crowell reacts differently to Ilya and Shane being outed in this fic in 2014 than he does to it happening in canon in 2018 because he doesn’t see it as a personal affront to his authority or a threat to his power in the same way, the pressures around him are significantly less homophobic, and he’s being manipulated by different people inside of his staff/organization. 

Chapter End Notes

Next up—if everything goes to plan this time, lol—David finally arrives in Vegas!

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