Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau & Ilya Rozanov, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Svetlana Vetrova, Victor St. Simon, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Coach LeClaire (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Good Friend Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Good Friend Svetlana Vetrova, Boston Raiders will kill for Ilya Rozanov not questions asked, Found Family, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova Friendship, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau & Ilya Rozanov Friendship, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau Finds Out About Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Work in Progress, Smart Ilya Rozanov, Hockey Captain Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov is Trying His Best, Verbal Humiliation, Orgasm Denial, Discussions of hazing, Mentions of past hazing

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-08 Updated: 2026-09-01 Words: 58,888 Chapters: 9/?

Of all the Ships that Sail the Sea

Summary

"Holy shit!" Vic gasps, gaping at Ilya. "Holy shit," he repeats more slowly as realization dawns on him. "Shane Fucking Hollander is your Montreal girl?"

OR: Ilya's teammates go with him to visit Hollander at the hospital and a high-on-painkillers Shane can't keep his mouth shut. Ilya learns that when it comes down to it, ice is thicker than blood.

Notes

Not beta-read, we die like Shane's attempt at heterosexuality.

Chapter 1

"There are good ships and wood ships,
ships that sail the sea,
but the best ships are friendships,
and may they always be."

Irish proverb

"I'm coming with you," Marly says, standing up.

"What?! No. No! No need," Ilya protests, surprised that Marly is even offering.

"Come on, Rozy," Marly huffs. "I'm not letting you walk alone into a Montreal's hospital after last night's game." He waves his hands dismissively, shaking his head. "That place is brimming with Metro fans. They might kill you and make it look like an accident. Besides, it was me who hit Hollander. I should go, too."

"I can deal with puny Metro fans," Ilya says, slightly offended. "Am the captain. I go and say, 'get well soon, Hollander.' The press will eat it up." Ilya puts on a fake reporter's voice, "Good sportsmanship. Good Raiders. Awesome Captain Rozanov." He gives Marly a winning smile. "Easy peasy. In and out of hospital in five minutes."

"None of you should go," Oregon mumbles around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. "Who gives a fuck about Hollander? It was a clean hit. It's hockey, dude. Shit happens. People get hurt."

"Fuck off, Otter," Ilya snaps, voice sharper than he intends it to be.

He barely slept last night, tossing and turning, worrying about Shane. He feels like a hand grenade with the safety pin pulled, about to go off at any second. It takes monumental self control to put up with Oregon's bullshit.

He's painfully aware of everyone's eyes on him. Breakfast after game nights are almost mandatory, and half the team is raiding the buffet in the ever-lasting battle to keep up weight this late in the season with the playoffs about to start.

"I know everyone thinks we hate each other, and Hollander makes it very easy, being all Mr. Hockey Poster Boy TM. But..." Ilya stops, picking his words carefully. It's easy enough. You grow up with Grigori Rozanov for a father and you learn to pick your words carefully from a very young age, or else.

"We were drafted together," he goes on quietly. The best lies are usually also the best truths. "We've been playing against each other our whole lives. It fucked me up to see him lying unconscious on the ice." There's no denying that. Everyone saw. His team saw. The press fucking saw. All Ilya can do now is damage control.

"I kept thinking it could've been me." That lie is easy enough to sell, because it's what everyone already believes. Ilya is a selfish, arrogant asshole who only cares about himself. "Am going to the stupid hospital, see Hollander's stupid face, gloat about how easy it'll be for me to win scoring race now he's been knocked out of the season, and tell him to not get hit next time."

"Holy shit, Rozy, Marly's right," St-Simon groans. "You're gonna get yourself killed. Fuck this, I'm going with you, too."

"What? Come on, Vic. It's not that bad," Ilya says, looking around for support. "Fine, I'll tune down the gloating some." They all groan and Ilya gives them his best shit-eating grin. Now, he can go to the hospital and even if someone sees it, and it ends up on TMZ nobody on the team will suspect a fucking thing.

LeClaire snorts. "And then hell will freeze over. Alright, take the minivan. Let's make it a team event. Marly, Vic, Hammer, Connor, Otter, you're all going with Roz to the hospital. You were on the ice when Hollander got hit. It's a good enough reason to show your faces there, and Roz is right. It'll be good press. Just make sure he behaves." He points his fork at Ilya warningly.

"I don't need babysitters," Ilya protests, not that it'll help. Now that the coach has made it an order, there's no going back.

It's not that bad, though. Ilya visiting Shane all by himself would have been suspicious. A bunch of Raiders visiting an injured Hollander will look uncharacteristically nice for Boston, but it won't have anyone jumping to the wild conclusion that Ilya is having a secret affair with Shane Hollander. It'll seem like a PR stunt to soften the hatred everyone is feeling for Boston after knocking Hollander out of the playoffs. It's perfect.

It's a complete disaster.

"Iiilyyaaaaa," Shane calls in a high-pitched voice, with the widest smile Ilya's ever seen on his face, not caring one bit that the other Raiders are there.

"Hollander," Ilya puts extra emphasis on Shane's last name. "We," he stresses the word, trying to silently remind Shane that they're not alone. "We, uh, just wanted to..." he stops, trying to school his face into indifference as Marly walks in last and closes the door.

LeClaire or someone from backoffice had called ahead to warn the hospital they were coming, because the staff had been expecting them. The room seems impossibly crowded with all six of them inside, shuffling around the bed, mindful of the beeping monitor and the IV and cables attached to Hollander's arm.

Shane looks small and fragile, lying on the sterile hospital bed. Breakable. Ilya wonders if the others find it as jarring as he does to see Hollander like this, when they've only ever faced Hollander on the ice: invincible and larger than life.

"Are you okay?" Ilya asks, forgetting what he wanted to say. Shane looks horrible. He's grinning ear to ear but his face is heavily bruised, and his eyes aren't focusing properly.

"Concussion and a fractured collarbone," Shane babbles with that happy, wide smile that is totally at odds with the words coming out of his mouth. "Out for the playoffs, but..."

"It could've been worse," Ilya finishes for him, and the paralyzing fear that had been coiled tightly around his shoulders since Shane went down on the ice the night before eases at last.

"Could've been worse," Shane agrees happily. Ilya has never seen him look so carefree, not even after the seven-orgasms-in-two-hours marathon they had two years ago in an ill-advised competition to see who had the shortest refractory period.

"For what little it's worth, Hollander," Marly says from the other side of the bed, "I'm truly sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you... at least not that badly," he adds with a bit too much honestly.

Connor and Vic snicker and Ilya has to stomp on the sudden irrational anger welling inside him.

"I know," Shane answers, turning his goofy smile on Marleau. "Part of the game. We all get our bell rung eventually, right?"

"Right," Marly agrees, glancing uncertainly at Ilya.

"They have him on the good stuff," Connor whispers under his breath. "High as a kite." Otter, Hammer and Vic snort.

"Guys," Ilya warns.

"Hey!" Shane says, turning his attention back to Ilya. "Heeeeyyyyyyyyy," he repeats, raising his uninjured arm towards Ilya, beckoning him.

Ilya stays rooted on the spot, desperately wanting to take Shane's hand, to touch him, to reassure himself that Shane's alright. But whatever painkillers they have Shane on seem to have erased his compulsive paranoia, and right now, in a room filled with Ilya's teammates, Ilya needs Shane's paranoia to come back online.

Ilya's reluctance to go to him finally registers and the goofy smile on Shane's face falters. "I'm sorry I didn't text you last night."

Fuck. The words land like a punch to his gut, knocking the air out of Ilya. He doesn't dare look at any of his teammates, but he's painfully aware of how silent they've gone. "Hollander, shut up. We just came to see if you'd live or not." Ilya tries to make himself sound callous. "We're leaving now. See you next season."

"Noooo, Ilyaaaaa, don't go," Shanes whines, sounding truly distressed. "Please, Ilya, please, don't go. I'm really sorry about not texting. I wanted to, but they wouldn't let me. They took my phone away and everything. Concussions suck. Please don't be mad, Ilya. I really tried. Are you mad?"

Ilya swallows. It feels as though his heart is in his throat, pounding wildly, choking him. He should say something sharp, some kind of witty remark that will make Shane's words sound like a drug-induced, one-sided, delusional obsession. But he can't find the right words. He can't bring himself to leave Shane here, hurt, unable to even read the apology text Ilya would send afterward. He just can't.

"I'm not mad. It's okay. Don't worry about it," he reassures Shane, not daring to look at his teammates. He'll think of a plausible explanation later.

Shane waves his uninjured arm drunkenly, beckoning Ilya again, and this time Ilya doesn't have the strength to deny him. He takes Shane's hand.

The worried frown on Shane's face melts away to nothing, replaced by the same goofy, nothing-can't-ever-be-wrong-in-this-amazing-high-on-drugs-world-I'm-living-in smile he had before. "Yeeeeees," he sighs happily. "Better."

Fuck. Ilya wants to touch his face so badly. He wants to trace his fingers softly over the freckles on his cheeks and remind them both that everything will be okay. He clasps Shane's hand tighter but doesn't dare touch his face, no with his teammates there, watching, judging.

"I was excited about last night," Shane goes on, looking at Ilya as though he's the only person in the room, the only person in the world. "I'm mostly mad at Marleau for fucking that up," he adds, still smiling.

"Uh..." Marleau coughs. "I'm truly sorry?" He makes it sound like a question.

Ilya forces himself to look at them, trying to seem nonchalant. "Maybe you guys should leave."

"No way," Connor says. "This is gold. Hey, Hollander, what were your big plans for last night?"

Shane looks at Connor fuzzily and blinks, seeming confused by the fact that there are other people there. "Win the game, duh. Then," he turns to Ilya again and smiles brightly, "yooouuuu would have had to do whatever I wanted."

"Holy shit!" Vic gasps, gaping at Ilya. "Holy shit," he repeats more slowly as realization dawns on him. "Shane Fucking Hollander is your Montreal girl?"

"No way!" Marly protests. "It can't be Hollander. Ilya's been fucking that girl since forever. It started in his rookie season."

They all stare at him, maybe expecting Ilya to deny it, but Shane destroys any plausible deniability, by giggling, "the summer before." Then, proving that the drugs he's on are really messing with his stupidly concussed brain he brings his forefinger to his lips, and shushes them. "But we can't tell anyone. It's a secret. A biiiiiig secret. The biiiiiiiiigest. Shhh!"

"Hollander, you're so not helping," Ilya says, and snorts at the absurdity of it all. This, from the man that bought a sex condo because he was terrified of anyone seeing Ilya within a block of his actual apartment.

"Aren't you with Rose Landry?" Connor asks. He's a huge Rose Landry simp and had been weirdly obsessed watching every news about her and Hollander.

"Not anymore. Not compatible," Shane slurs. "She's nice. She's pretty. She's kind. She's a great friend. But she's not Ilya." He sighs dreamily. "Sex with Ilya is sooo much better. Thousand times better. A million times better. If there were a Stanley Cup for sex, he'd win it every year, back to back. The Art Ross and the Conn Smythe, too. No competition. Ilya would have his own league. Just for him."

Marly wolf-whistles, while Vic and Connor cackle. "Jeesh, Rozy," Hammer says reverently. "You must be a beast in the sack. Every single puck bunny that has a taste of the Rozanov cock gets addicted to it, and now I learn that you've had the Prince of Hockey, Shane fucking Hollander, gagging for it for years."

Something in Ilya eases. He waggles his eyebrows and grins smugly, "What can I say?" He lets his accent go extra thick. "I'm Russia's greatest sex machine." They're taking this way better than he could ever have dreamt. Only Oregon is quiet, watching everything with a frown. The goalie might be an issue, he's new to the team and he and Ilya don't really get along, but that's a problem for later.

Right now he has more important things to do. He finally gives in to the desire to touch Shane's face. He lets the back of his fingers graze softly over the bruises there, being careful not to cause any pain and smiles helplessly at Shane, unable to stop himself. "I might need to get you high more often. Have you spill all these secrets you've been keeping from me."

"Will you come to my cottage this summer, then?" Shane asks. "Don't go to Russia. Come to my house. We'll have so much fun. It's so private. No one will know."

"No one will know," Hammer chokes on a laugh. "We're no ones to Hollzy, guys," he gasps dramatically, clutching at his heart and wiping a fake tear out of his eyes.

Ilya glares at him, and makes a slashing gesture over his throat, ordering him to cut it out. Hammer raises his hands in mock surrender, and Ilya turns his attention back to Shane. "Hollander, you know we can't do that."

Shane ignores him, continuing with his drug-induced daydream of things that can't be. "We could have a week or even two. Be completely alone. Together."

Ilya peeks at his teammates; except for Oregon, they all seemed more amused than appalled. Still. "We can't."

"You have to. I have this whole plan. You coming to the cottage is step five," Shane insists.

A plan? God, that's so Hollander. Ilya is charmed despite himself. "Really? What were the first four steps of this master plan?"

Shane grins excitedly, as though he's been waiting all this time for Ilya to ask. "Step 1," he raises one finger. "Play really good hockey so that I get invited to the All Star Game. Check."

"That's an easy first step," Connor points out.

"Yeah, easy first steps are the key to successful planning," Shane explains earnestly. "By the time things get tough, you're already half way there and might as well continue. Thus, easy first step. Very important."

Ilya's heart skips a beat and his chest contracts with how much he loves this impossible man.

"Step 2," Shane goes on, undeterred. He turns his attention back to Ilya and raises a second finger to join the first. "Talk to Ilya at the All Star Game and apologize for freaking out." He exhales. "Much harder, but necessary. I'm really sorry about that, Ilya. You believe me, right?"

Ilya swallows. "Yes."

Shane beams at him. "Check!" A third finger joins the first two. "Step 3 is also easy. Have lots and lots and lots of super hot sex." He proudly wiggles his three raised fingers and grins. "My favorite step."

The guys guffaw and Ilya is surprised by how incredibly not bothered Shane seems by it all. What the fuck did they give him? He has zero filter and zero shame. If this is what a drunken Hollander acts like, it's no wonder he never drinks.

"And step 4?" Ilya prompts, incredibly curious.

Shane lets his hand fall and his smile wavers. "Yeah, that one was supposed to be... not easy, but doable. Montreal beats Boston, and then you'd have to do whatever I say." He huffs. "But you beat us last time. And yesterday we were totally going to win until Marleau fucked it up. And now, it's not gonna happen until next saison. That sucks."

"You were not going to win, Hollander," Ilya protests. "If there's something you want me to do to you in bed, you'll have to beg for it like a good boy."

"Called it! I knew Rozy was a freak in the sheets," Vic whispers soto-voice.

Ilya ignores him. "Waiting for Montreal to beat Boston is a stupid step," he tells Shane. "It was never gonna happen."

"Dream on, Rozanov. We've already beat you twice this season," Shane reminds him. "It was totally going to happen."

"Say, Hollzy," Vic pips in, louder this time. "Since you're in such a sharing mood. What would you have asked Rozy to do? I'm kinda dying of curiosity over here."

Shane's brow furrows and he scrunches his nose in a very cute way. "For him to come to the cottage. Even if it's just for a couple of days. I only need a couple of days."

"For what?" Ilya wonders. This obsession Shane has with Ilya visiting his cottage is new, and if there's a master plan behind it, then... "What's step six, Hollander?"

"If you come to the cottage... I... I will... That's the hardest step but... I will..." He looks wrecked, desperate. And suddenly Ilya doesn't want to know what step six is.

"It's okay."

"No, it's not," Shane says. "But it's scary and that's why we have to be at the cottage. It'll be easier there... to be brave. Brave enough to say it first. That's step six, the final step. I'll say it first, and I won't care if you say it back or not. I'll say it first anyway."

Ilya's heart starts beating so hard that he's sure everyone in the room can hear it, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all because... "It's a very stupid plan, Hollander," he says, his accent impossibly thick. "You'll never say it first."

"Yes, I will," Shane says, a stubborn set to his jaw.

"No, you won't," Ilya insists, smiling. "You can't."

"Of course I can!"

"No, you can't say it first, Hollander," Ilya tells him smugly, "because I already beat you to it."

"What?" Shane narrows his eyes with disbelief. "No, you did not! I'd remember that."

"Your memory is very faulty. Must be the concussion," Ilya grins. "I said it first, three days ago."

"No." Hollander's frown deepens. "You were in Russia three days ago. We talked on the phone after the funeral and..." He stops and gasps. "In Russian?! You said it in Russian! I don't speak Russian. That doesn't count."

"Of course it counts. It's not my fault you only speak inferior languages."

"That's... that's..." Shane splutters. "You... Oh, my God, I can't believe you said it in Russian. Scratch that. Of course I can believe it." He smiles helplessly. Dazedly, he repeats, "Of course I can believe it. You're such an asshole."

"You like it," Ilya reminds him.

"God help me, but I fucking do." Shane laughs. "Say it again, then. I want to hear it."

Ilya steps closer and leans over him to whisper in his ear, "Ya tebya lyublyu." Then he kisses Shane's cheek, right above his favorite constellation of freckles and breathes him in. He steps back reluctantly and smiles at Shane. "Another thing in which you only get to be second, moya zvezda. Second best player. Second draft pick. Second to get the Stanley Cup."

"Fuck you! I have two Stanley Cups. You only have the one," Shane reminds him.

And usually that smarts, but right now, it plays right into Ilya's hand. "Yes, because two is your favorite number."

Shane laughs again. "Asshole."

Ilya might have said something else, but in that moment the room door opens and a nurse comes in looking around curiously. "You're not gonna smother him with a pillow, are you Mr. Rozanov? Your coach said you came to apologize but it's taking so long that we were starting to wonder if you came to finish the job."

Ilya smiles at her and steps away from Shane's bed, praying to God that Shane doesn't say something incriminating. "No, no, no. Good thinking, but no, we were just leaving. Guys, let's go."

He tries to radiate his best, keep-your-mouth-shut-or-else, especially when his eyes catch Oregon's, and the message seems to get across because they all scurry out of the room with a cacophony of awkward, "Get well soon, Hollander" and "See you next season."

"Bye-bye," Shane says, his eyes only on Ilya. "See you next season."

"Yeah, get well soon, Hollander," Ilya says, and means it. He's the last to leave the room, closing the door behind himself as the nurse goes to check on Hollander's IV.

The others are all waiting outside, looking a bit wild, processing the shock of what they just witnessed.

Hammer is the first to recover. "Holy fuck, Roz. You—"

"Not here," Ilya cuts him off. It's his captain's voice, and Ilya is pleased to see how, despite everything, they all instinctively react to it. "I'll answer questions, but not here. Let's get back to the minivan. We'll talk there."

He glances at Oregon, but if the goalie was going to protest, he never gets to do it. Marly puts a hand on Oregon's shoulder and squeezes. "Roz it's right. Not here." He pushes Otter forward, and Otter goes.

Marly nods to Ilya once, and no more words are needed. Marly has been Ilya's right wing since Ilya's rookie season and after seven years playing together, it sometimes feels as though they have telepathy. All the best hockey lines do. They both look at Vic, who also nods, catching on immediately. He's been playing on their left for five years now, and he's just as locked in as Marly is.

That subtle exchange settles something in Ilya. Whatever happens next, Marly and Vic will have his back, just like they do on the ice.

Shane has always been the one with the overly complicated multi-step plans. Ilya prefers to wing it and yet, somehow, he ends up winning anyway. Shane Hollander loves him. Ilya is still reeling from that revelation, giddy with it. Of all the victories he never planned for, winning Shane's heart is the most unbelievable.

Here goes nothing, he thinks, as he follows his teammates out of the hospital, feeling surprisingly confident about the future.

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Vic goes into the minivan first and takes the corner seat. Marly, not so subtly, pushes Otter into the car, where Vic is already patting the space next to him, and Otter has no choice but to sit in the middle. Connor follows, picking the seat facing Vic.

Marly ruffles Ilya's hair, a well practiced and familiar gesture that demands instant retaliation. Ilya elbows him, or tries to, but Marly just laughs out loud and jumps away, wise to Ilya's antics. "Get in the car, Roz," he says, making it clear that he won't allow Ilya to go in last.

Fair. They've been good so far, but they all have questions, and Ilya promised them answers. The middle seat it is. He plasters the most obnoxious grin he can scrap together onto his face and ducks into the Ford Tourneo. He takes the place next to Connor and silently curses the Raiders for splurging on the custom conference seating option that allows passengers to sit facing each other. It leaves Ilya right in front of Otter. Joy.

Hammer squeezes himself next to Ilya, and Marly gets in last, like he always does. The van door slides shut with a quiet thump and the air sizzles with anticipation as everyone's attention zeros in on Ilya.

The carefully coordinated seating arrangement isn't lost on him. He's flanked by their two D-men, while Otter is sandwiched between Ilya's wingers. Marly and Hammer, the Raiders' closest answer to modern enforcers—aka very talented motherfuckers in their specific positions, who also happen to know how to level an opponent flat—are guarding the door. He wonders if Oregon realizes that he's sitting with a loaded gun pointed to the back of his head.

"Right," Ilya says, exuding as much confidence as he can. He opens his arms invitingly and stretches his legs, taking up all the space available. "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity: ask away."

"Are you gay?" Oregon shoots immediately, as though the question has been burning his mouth for the last half an hour and he can't wait another second to spit it out.

"Nope," Ilya says, popping the P. "I love eating pussy as much as I love sucking cock. Bisexual is the word you're looking for."

Vic chokes on a laugh. "Sorry, sorry. I just... Damn, Rozy, you're something else, kid."

"What?" Ilya pretends to be puzzled. "You just heard Hollander. I'm the uncontested winner of the Sex Stanley Cup. It'd be a crime to deprive half of mankind from experiencing the wonders of my dick." He says it with the same cocky confidence he uses to tell reporters he's the best hockey player in the MLH. Arrogance and confidence are his brand. He's been doing this for almost a decade now and he's very, very good at it.

The others laughs out loud, all of them except for Otter, whose frown grows deeper and angrier, a tight pressing of his lips that screams how very much not funny he finds it all.

Yeah, they're getting there now. Ilya is the biggest pest in the MLH; he's uncontested when it comes to getting under people's skin. He's been playing nice with Oregon for the sake of the team, ignoring all the little signals that let him know Oregon absolutely loathes him. They need a goalie, and with Smitty out of commission with a busted knee, Otter is what they got. Ilya was willing to play nice for as long as he had to, but it seems that today is the day when the gloves come off.

"Next question," Ilya says, eyes locked on Otter, his smile all teeth like the friendliest of sharks.

"Fine, I need to know," Vic jumps in, leaning forward on his seat with barely contained curiosity. "How did you manage to bag Mr. Prim and Proper before rookie season? I truly thought Hollander was an android programmed to play hockey, and yet, here he is, awarding Stanley Cups and Conn Smythes for hot sex. My world view has been shattered, Roz."

"Your world view! What about mine?" Connor whines. "Hollander could have given the Sex Stanley Cup to Rose Landry and he chose Rozy instead. I will never unlearn that fact. It's horrible."

And alright, Ilya is absolutely pleased with himself about that. Fuck you Rose Landry. I'm a million times better than you at sex, he thinks vindictively.

"I was seventeen and very horny," Ilya tells them with a shrug. "Hollander had a hot body, a pretty face and even prettier freckles. I saw him and I wanted him, so I went and got him. What can I say? I'm irresistible."

"When I grow up, I want to be like you," Hammer says earnestly. "Jesus, I thought that the puck bunnies went crazy for you because you're the captain, but back then you were a pimpled-face undrafted green boy and you still managed to pull Hollander."

"I never had pimples," Ilya lies. "Russians don't get pimples."

Marly snorts. "Alright, my turn now. How serious is this shit with Hollander? Because it looked serious to me."

Ilya's good humor disappears. "Uh... Next question?"

"Do you let him win games if he sucks your dick just right?" Otter asks meanly. "Ouch! What the fuck?" he hisses, when Marly and Vic punch his arms at the same time that Hammer and Connor kick his shins.

"Watch your mouth, Oregon," Hammer snarls. "That's our captain you're talking about. Show respect."

"It's a valid question, dude," Otter insists.

"It's a stupid question," Vic snaps, and gibs Otter's upper arm another unfriendly jab. "Anyone who's ever seen Rozy on the ice facing Hollander knows that Roz leaves everything out there trying to win. Whatever kinky foreplay they've got going when it comes to games, it only makes him play harder. You've seen us play against Montreal. You've been there on the ice, with us, with Rozy playing against Montreal. If you think that's Roz letting Hollander win, then what the fuck do you think the rest of us are doing, because no one on this team tries to beat Montreal harder than Roz does."

"Very ignorant question. Da," Ilya says, lips curling with distaste. "Only shows you don't understand hockey. Not at the level Hollander and I play it. We're the best in this league for a reason. Hollander would murder me if I ever let him win. He'd know immediately if I ever gave him less than my best on the ice. I would never disrespect him like that."

"Right, of course," Otter stammers. "Sorry."

"My turn to ask question," Ilya says, studying Otter carefully. "What's your problem with me? And don't say Hollander, or that I like sucking dick. You had a problem before you knew I was bi."

"I don't have a problem with you, and I don't give a shit if you're bi or gay or whatever the fuck you are," Oregon says mulishly.

Ilya rolls his eyes. "You're a very bad liar, Otter."

"I'm not lying!" Oregon snaps. "You're just stirring shit up, Rozanov. I've never done anything to you."

Ilya breathes out a derisive half-laugh. "You haven't done anything, true. But that's only because you know you wouldn't get away with it. But if you had the power, Otter, you'd beat shit out of me. I know that look; I'd recognize it anywhere."

"What the fuck, dude?" Oregon says, startled. "Like fine, yes. I don't like you, and I probably never will. But I didn't... Seriously, what the fuck? I'd never beat you up."

"Oh, I know." Ilya waves a hand dismissively. "There's only ever been one man who held that much power over me," he says in a flat, raw voice, "and I buried him three days ago."

"Shit." Connor's low curse startles Ilya, snapping him back into the reality of the moment.

His stomach churns as the words he just said register, at the implications behind them. "Блядь… ну вот нахуя ты это сказал," Ilya curses under his breath, angry at himself for opening his stupid mouth.

Their surprised, pitying stares burn. He wants the earth to open and swallow him whole. Shame crashes over him like a tidal wave. Ilya doesn't mind them knowing about his sex life, about him being bi, or even about Shane. He doesn't care if they all think he's a faggot and hate him for it. But this? They knowing this about him? About his father? About Ilya's piss-poor excuse for a childhood? He can't deal with that.

Suddenly, the minivan feels too crowded. Too many people in there. Too many arms and legs in Ilya's personal space. Not enough air. Everyone is watching him with condescension or sympathy. Fuck them!

He needs to get out. Now! He lurches for the handle of the door, but it won't fucking open. "Let me out!" he snarls, rattling the handle. The door doesn't fucking budge and Ilya almost smashes his fist against it but Hammer stops him.

"Ilya, wait. Don't." Hammer struggles to hold him. "Give us a fucking second. Marly open the stupid door already."

"On it," Marly says, fumbling for the key.

There's a beep and then the door starts to slide open slowly. Ilya crawls over Hammer and rushes out of the car, feeling nauseous. His breathing is ragged. He doesn't even know where he's going. The only destination that matters is away.

He comes to a sudden stop in front of the metal door that leads to the elevators and realizes with despair that there's no where for him to go. What's the fucking point? He can't leave forever. He'll have to go back eventually, and they will be there. Waiting. Knowing.

He places both his hands on the cold, concrete wall of the parking garage and lets his head rest against the rough surface. He breathes in and out, softly knocking his forehead against the wall. The repetitive thuds are strangely grounding. So he does it again, a bit harder. It rattles his brain, but the vibrations feel oddly soothing.

He keeps doing it until a large hand comes between him and the wall.

"No," Marly says. "Can't let you do that." Marly reels Ilya in and turns him around. He pulls Ilya against his chest, containing him, and closes his large arms around Ilya's body. "Hollander already beat you in the concussion competition. There's no point in you coming in second. That's Hollzy's favorite number, not yours."

Ilya snorts against Marly's chest before he chokes on a sob. To his absolute horror, he starts to cry, the tears coming unbidden, slipping past his control. Marly just holds him tighter, rocking gently back and forth, not saying anything, just holding him.

"I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me," Ilya mumbles wetly against Marly's chest. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'm just being stupid. It's embarrassing. Big Bad Ilya Rozanov bawling like little spoiled baby. It's okay if you laugh."

"Come on, Ilya, give me some credit," Marly says. "You've had a fucking rough week, Roz. First your father, then Hollander going down on the ice. And that's not counting the fact that you flew from Russia to Montreal to play one of the most intense games of the season, while still jet-lagged. And knowing what I do now, I'm willing to bet big money that you barely slept last night worrying about Hollander. It's alright if you aren't fine, Roz. Actually, I'd be more surprised if you were. Spoiler alert: the Big Bad Ilya Rozanov happens to be human. There's nothing wrong with that. And you needn't worry, if anyone asks, I'll tell them that you're the toughest Russian motherfucker alive and that I've never seen you shed a single tear in my entire life. Your secret is safe with me. All of your secrets."

"Okay." Ilya pulls way from him and wipes the tear tracks on his cheeks. "I look fine now. Da? Not like crying baby?"

"Yeah, toughest Russian motherfucker alive," Marly agrees. "Anyone says anything different, you point them my way and I'll teach them better."

"Okay," Ilya repeats, chest tight with a feeling he can't quite name. "I'm fine now."

"Of course," Marly agrees easily, and Ilya is painfully grateful for that small mercy.

He sighs and shakes the tension off, moving his head from side to side, enjoying the little clicking sounds his neck makes. They probably should head back to the hotel, but the idea of getting inside the minivan fills him with dread. "Need cigarette," he says, and rummages around his pockets until he finds the half empty package. "How much time left before we need to go?"

"About an hour if we stretch it," Marly answers, checking his phone. "We can always say we took a detour after the hospital to do some shopping. No one will care. The plane leaves in the afternoon; we're good."

Ilya nods. He walks away from the elevators until he finds a secluded spot behind a large column and rests his back against it.

It takes him a couple of tries to get the lighter to work, and Marly pretends to ignore how unsteady his hands are. He inhales deeply, letting the smoke fill his lungs. The familiar taste settles him and he exhales softly, watching the white puffs dance in the air before they disappear. Ilya takes a second drag and closes his eyes, enjoying the instant relief to his frayed nerves. The garage is oddly quiet. He'd have expected more people coming and going from the hospital, but their parking level is half empty and there's nobody around.

Marly stays close by, leaning casually against a large silver SUV while he watches Ilya smoke, letting Ilya have his peace. He's not one to speak out loud against the cigarettes the way Shane does, even though he doesn't approve either. Most people don't.

"You're angry with me," Ilya points out after a moment, finally calm enough to really study Marly's silence and connect the dots.

Marly huffs. "That skill of yours is really annoying. Useful, but annoying." He sighs. "Yeah, a bit. Mostly at myself, but also at you."

Ilya blows the smoke away from Marly and waits for it to dissipate before asking, "Is it the Hollander thing or the bi thing?"

"Neither. I mean, it bothers me that you didn't tell me, but that's just me behaving like a jilted bitch. I'll get over it."

"Jilted?" Ilya frowns. "Why? You aren't attracted to guys, or to me. I'd have noticed."

Marly laughs. "No, Mr. Sex Machine, I'm not attracted to you. These days I'm a one-pussy-only kind of guy, and it took me two years to convince the owner of that pussy to let me put a ring on her. I'm not risking that for anyone. Thanks, by no thanks."

"Nicole is great," Ilya agrees. "Better than you ten times. Hotter too."

"Tell me about it," Marly says with a slightly dazed expression on his face, the same he always gets whenever his wife walks into a room. "No, it's not because I'm attracted to you, you arrogant maniac. I just thought you and I were friends and it kinda hurts to realize it's not mutual, but that's my issue."

Ilya stops mid drag and gapes at Marly. "We are friends," he protests.

"Are we?" Marly asks quietly, staring at the rows of parked cars instead of at Ilya.

"Yes, of course," Ilya insists.

"I don't know. I just found out that there's this huge part of your life you've been keeping from me, and I get that I'm not entitled to your secrets, but damn it, Ilya," Marly exhales. He looks at Ilya, and the hurt on his face is unmistakable. "We've been playing 82 games together in the regular season for the past seven years, traveling, training, going on the ice together. And when you add the postseason to that, we spend eight to nine months every year practically living in each other's pockets. I see you more than I see my own fucking wife. So, yeah, I thought... wrongly... that if you ever needed someone to talk to, you'd come to me, the same way I go to you with my shit. So, you not telling me about the bi thing or the Hollander thing kinda sucks, even though I get why you didn't. Did I ever give you the impression I'd be an asshole about it? I need to know that."

"No," Ilya reassures him. "It's not that. The bi thing... It's not easy thing to admit if you play hockey, and for a Russian, it's a dangerous thing to admit. I just... It's not something I talk about. To anyone. It has nothing to do with you. And I wouldn't have told you who my Montreal girl was anyway. It wasn't my secret to tell. He's very paranoid about it, even more than me. He wasn't acting like himself today."

Marly laughs. "Oh, I noticed. That was hilarious. Prime comedy."

"Jerk." Ilya smiles, and takes the last drag out of his cigarette. He throws the butt to the ground and steps on it, crushing the ember out. "He won't be happy once the drugs are gone from his system and he remembers." Hollander will be absolutely terrified.

"Probably, but we won't tell anyone or even chirp him about it," Marly reassures him. "He'll get over it. Now, the Otter thing, that I'm mad about. You should've told me. If not as your friend, then at least as your alternate captain. What the fuck, Roz? You had a problem with him this whole time and you didn't think to mention it to me?"

"It wasn't problem," Ilya says. "He was being okay about it. Keeping it to himself. He never caused trouble."

"If it wasn't a problem, then you wouldn't have noticed it," Marly points out, gesturing wildly. He steps away from the SUV and starts to pace. "And fine, I'm not as fucking perceptive as you are. I'm just a dumb hockey player that they plastered the A on because of seniority. I might not be that good an alternate, but—"

"You're great alternate," Ilya interrupts.

"If I was a great alternate captain, I'd have noticed that you and Otter weren't getting along," Marly protests. "That little byplay you two had in there," he points in the direction of the minivan, "totally blindsided me. And that's on you, Roz. You should've told me. That, you should have trusted me with."

"I had it handled," Ilya says.

"You shouldn't have had to handle it alone, you moron!" Marly glowers at him. "Do you even trust me off the ice? Because right now, I'm not so sure."

"Of course." Ilya goes to Marly and clasps his shoulders, meeting his angry gaze straight on, willing him to believe Ilya's words. "Of course. This wasn't... It wasn't a big deal. It was nothing. No need to bother you."

"Right," Marly scoffs, looking down at Ilya. "That's good then. Great even. Then, I can tell you that I also have a problem with Otter, but I never mentioned it because it wasn't that big a deal. You aren't bothered by that, are you, Captain?"

"What! Since when?" Ilya lets go of Marly, startled. He tries to pinpoint a moment, an indication, any kind of clue, but can't. He's usually excellent at reading people, but he was off his game after the tuna melt shit show, too lost in his own head to pay attention to other things. "Fuck me. I didn't notice."

"Of course you didn't. I kept it hidden. I had it handled. All good. No need to get you involved. So happy I made the right call there, not telling you."

"What? No, you should've told me," Ilya hisses. "Who does that piece of shit good for nothing goalie think he is? Coming into the team, causing trouble. That's unacceptable. I'll have his head!" He's gonna fucking end Otter. How dare he? Ilya glares at Marly. "You should've told me."

"Ya think?" Marly says sarcastically, a smug, superior look on his face.

"Oh." Ilya stops in his tracks, feeling suddenly very stupid. "You don't have a problem with Otter. It was just... example?"

"I sure as hell have a problem with him now," Marly counters. "How did you phrased it again? Who does that piece of shit good for nothing goalie think he is? Coming into the team, causing trouble."

"You have very bad Russian accent," Ilya grumbles. "Fine. Maybe I should've told you. I get it. It wasn't... I do trust you." It's important for Ilya that Marly knows that. "I'm just... I don't... I'm captain! It's my responsibility. I don't want you to think I'm lazy, asking help for little things. I didn't need help. It wasn't about trust..." He notices the way Marly's face is closing off again and gives up, suddenly exhausted. "I'm not explaining well."

"You're explaining it fine," Marly says. "I just don't agree. And I don't think you agree either. I've asked for your help before... that shit that went down with Carmichael last season, I asked for your advice. Did you think that I was shirking my responsibility? Did you think I was being lazy?"

"No," Ilya admits in a small voice.

"So, it's fine for me to ask for help but not for you?" Marly pushes.

"Yes! That! It's fine if you do it, but I don't need to—"

"Why?" Marly doesn't let him finish. "Because you're the best player in the league? The best captain? And the rest of us are all idiots, and you don't need anything from any of us because you're the greatest," Marly mocks. "Is that it?"

Ilya shrinks. He wants to say yes, but Marly's thundering glare tells him it's not the right answer. "Maybe? It does feel like that sometimes. Not you being an idiot. Not that. But like I should be able to handle stuff by myself, without bothering you. Without help."

"Fine. You know what? Forget it," Marly sighs. "We obviously aren't gonna solve this today, and you've had a week from hell. I'm gonna cut you some slack and table this conversation for later. But here's one thing for you to consider. Yes, you're the best hockey player in the league right now, maybe even better than Hollander. You certainly have the most goals. 42 this season alone and we still have some games left, so I'm sure you're gonna crack the 50+ once again. But you know what? This fucking idiot talking to you right now, the one you want nothing from, gave you two thirds of the assists you needed to score those goals. So maybe... I don't know... consider that even the greatest hockey player of all times still needs assists, still needs a fucking team to help him win games. It's a team sport Ilya, hockey and life. Both. There's no shame in that. Nobody is gonna think less of you for needing fucking assists off the ice every now and then."

"Some might," Ilya says quietly, the ghost of Grigori Rozanov impossible to ignore.

"Sure, some might." Marly shrugs. "Miserable people whose only pleasure in life is making others miserable, too. You shouldn't care about their miserable opinion at all."

Ilya swallows on a suddenly too dry throat. His heart pounds like a horse at full gallop, and he feels like there are ants crawling underneath his skin. Marly's words hit him hard and he doesn't even know why. "I... " his voice cracks, and Ilya looks away, unable to meet Marly's gaze.

"Don't sweat it. I already said we were tabling the conversation." Marly checks his watch. "Let's head back. And for the record, even if you don't want my help, you're still getting it. Don't worry about Otter. If he opens his mouth about you and Hollzy, Hammer and I will kill him. Connor will provide the alibi, and we'll feed his remains to that family of coyotes that's constantly triggering Vic's backyard cameras."

Ilya chokes on a laugh. "Okay."

Marly ruffles Ilya's hair and cackles when Ilya tries to get away. They end roughhousing as Ilya tries to elbow him while Marly uses his superior height to keep Ilya in a headlock and ruffle his curls some more.

"Stop it, jerk!" Ilya laughs. "You'll make my hair look like bird nest."

"Your hair always looks like a bird nest," Marly says. "A very fluffy, very soft bird nest." He gives it a final rub before he lets Ilya go.

Ilya combs his fingers through his hair in an attempt to make it behave once more. "Jerk," he grouses, but he's grinning, feeling lighter than before.

Marly might claim he isn't too perceptive, but that was exactly what Ilya needed.

"Come on." Marly slaps Ilya's shoulder. "Put on your tough Russian motherfucker face on and let's go feed some coyotes."

Chapter End Notes

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Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

"Scoot over," Ilya tells Hammer as soon as he opens the van door. He isn't gonna let them trap him in the middle again.

Hammer doesn't protest, just shifts over easily, taking the spot in front of Otter and ceding the window to Ilya.

"We need to wrap this up," Marly says, reclaiming his seat and closing the door. "Otter—"

"Spare me," Otter cuts him off. "I've gotten more death threats in the last fifteen minutes than in my whole MLH career. I'm not gonna blab." He looks at Ilya with that intense, unhinged look goalies get when a game goes to shit early on and they've been blocking pucks left and right non-stop, knowing that they still have three more periods of hell left. "I tried not to let my personal feelings get in the way of us working together. Obviously, I failed, since..." He gestures vaguely in Ilya's direction. "... you know."

Otter presses his lips together angrily and shakes his head. "I just wanna play hockey, dude," he says at last, sounding as exhausted as Ilya feels. "I don't need to be your fucking best friend to do that. What do any of you know anyway? You've all been playing for Boston for years. Try being a journeyman. See how you like being traded every season, barely starting to get used to a team, when you're already being shoved to a different division, a different city, a different country. And it's not as if any of you want me here anyway. You're all counting the days until Smitty is back; none of you have been shy about it. I get it. He's your teammate and I'm just a temporary placeholder."

"So, it's not just Roz you have a problem with?" Marly asks.

"I don't have a problem with any of you!" Otter shouts. He forces himself to take a calming breath, visibly struggling to get himself under control. "I know how it goes," he continues more evenly. "I've been a journeyman for ten seasons. It's what it is. When I got the call from Boston I thought it'd be a nightmare. You guys are assholes on the ice. Rozanov is a pest; horrible to play against. I was surprised to learn that the assholery doesn't extend to the locker room." He closes his eyes, looking much older than a guy who just turned thirty-one two months ago. "It's been kinda nice actually, not having to put up with useless hazing and convoluted locker room politics. There are far worse teams out there."

Ilya watches him carefully. "Yes, at first. You were wary. Da. Newcomers usually are, but then it gets better. You were getting used to us and us to you. I thought, he's not Smitty, but he isn't too bad. Should probably learn how to block the upper right corner of the net better, instead of handing out engraved invitations for opponents to score, but I already knew that about you before you came to Boston, so—"

"For fuck's sake, Roz," Hammer groans. "Could you not criticize people's hockey skills for a second? See? This is why everyone outside of Boston thinks you're an asshole."

"I am an asshole," Ilya says. He doesn't want anyone to ever forget that, lest they start expecting things from him. Ilya is tired of impossible expectations.

The best thing about coming to the U.S. was that nobody expected him to succeed. No one believed him when he said he'd score 50 goals in his rookie season. No one believed that he'd carry Boston to the playoffs in his first year. No one believed that he'd get the Stanley Cup before perfect Hollander. And even now, with a C on his chest and Boston one of the top MLH teams, most people only see Ilya living in the fast lane and still expect him to crash and burn.

"See? That's what I can't stand about you," Otter says. "You are a fucking asshole. You don't even try to hide it, but everyone loves you anyway. The women. The Raiders. The fans. Management. Even fucking Hollander, who's supposed to be your archrival. You don't deserve half the things you have, and you take them all for granted."

"I deserve it all," Ilya states, because he fucking does. He fought tooth and nail to be where he is. He trained through exhaustion, through pain, through despair. Even on those bleak days when he almost understands why his mother swallowed a whole bottle of pills and called it quits, Ilya still forces himself to wake up, to go to the rink, to put his skates on and train some more. "Nobody has ever given me shit, Otter. Everything I got, I fought for. And I fucking deserve it. Tell yourself that it should've been yours, and life is fucking unfair because it's not. If that's the fairy tale you need to sleep at night, be my guest. Hate me for it if you must. What you think of me matters nothing."

"Damn, kid," Vic sighs. "So much for that. What? Don't look at me like that. I get where you're coming from, but we just spent the last fifteen minutes convincing Otter to keep his mouth shut about you and Hollander and just hosed it."

"I'm not gonna out them, dude," Otter says. "I already told you that. The last fifteen minutes were a total waste of time because I wasn't gonna out them anyway. Like, just 'cause Roz is an asshole, I don't have to be one, too. I'm from California, dude. They don't let you cross the state border if you're a homophobe. Outing people because you don't like them? Most homophobic bullshit ever. I'm not gonna sink that low."

Ilya raises an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to believe you?"

"Yes, you paranoid asshole, you're supposed to believe me! Here, how about this? I, Christopher Daniel Oregon, hereby swear by Lord Stanley and his Holy Grail that I will not out Ilya Rozanov or Shane Hollander. May my fingers never touch the Stanley Cup if I ever break my word. Cross my heart and hope to die. There! Are you happy now? Do you want me to sign it in blood somewhere?"

"Uh... no," Ilya says, taken aback. He looks at the others, but they seem as surprised as he is. Hockey players are notoriously superstitious and goalies even more so. You don't swear on the Stanley Cup unless you truly mean it. The fact that Otter did it's a huge statement. "Thank you," he forces himself to say, because yes, he's an asshole, but also... Otter didn't have to do that.

"Great, glad we have that behind us. Now we can go back to ignoring each other until I get traded."

Connor frowns. "Do we have to swear on the Stanley Cup, too?"

"No," Ilya reassures him.

"Might as well," Vic says. "I ain't letting some Californian surfboy show me up. Massachusetts approved same-sex marriage before California did. The first gay marriages in the U.S. were in Boston."

Otter looks upwards and sighs, as if asking for patience. "It's not a competition, dude."

"Of course not," Vic says. "But if it was, Boston would win it wicked easy."

"That's what Roz said," Hammer deadpans.

Connor snorts and that sets them all off. Suddenly, they're all laughing out loud, which is stupid, because it isn't that funny, but even Otter is laughing with them.

"How come you know so much about gay marriage?" Ilya asks Vic, once they've calmed down some.

He hadn't known that about Boston. It makes him feel oddly proud of this city that welcomed him with open arms seven years ago, when Ilya was just an explosive molotov cocktail of teenage arrogance, daddy issues and exceptionally good hockey skills. It warms him to learn that Boston would accept the parts of him that Moscow never will.

Vic shrugs. "My family's from Boston. My uncles married that day. They've been together since they were little pukes, longer than my parents've known each other. May 17, 2004, a bunch of queers married that day. My whole family went. Everyone was wicked happy for them."

Ilya's heart speeds up just imagining what that must have felt like. To not have to hide. To have all your friends and family know. To be able to kiss your husband in public and share a home with him, instead of having to hide in hotel rooms and use backdoor entrances because someone might see too much, might say too much.

"You've never told that story before," Ilya points out. He hadn't known that Victor's uncles were gay and married to each other. Victor talks about his parents and siblings non-stop but in his five years with the Raiders he's never mentioned his uncles.

Vic shrugs. "My uncle used to drive me to hockey practice when I was a mite, if my mom couldn't. I got into some scraps with kids who talked smack about him. He's not like you and Hollander. You see him and you know he's gay. The coach was a bigot, which didn't help. After my mom found out, she put me in a different team. Still, the ship had sailed." Vic looks away, embarrassed. "He never drove me to practice again and I learned to keep my mouth shut about him in the locker room."

"Well, fuck that," Marly snarls. "You're gonna talk about them and bring photos and tell stories where everyone can hear. If someone has a problem with it, we'll deal with it. I mean, you don't have to do it if you don't want to but... it'd be a great litmus test to know who in the team might be a problem, if certain information were to leak."

Otter huffs. "Oh, please, as if anyone among the Raiders would dare have an independent thought that's not dedicated to worshiping the ground Rozanov walks on. Even if you have a homophobe in the team, the moment he learns Roz is queer, he'll become the greatest ally ever. Roz's charisma is a weapon of mass destruction," he adds bitterly.

"Doesn't seem to work on you," Ilya grumbles.

"I avoid drinking Kool-Aid," Otter says, as if it means something. It probably does, judging by the tight press of Marly's lips or the anger on Vic's face. Some kind of American idiom flying over Ilya's head most probably. He'll google it later, but he gets the gist of it well enough.

"Is that a challenge?" Ilya quirks his left brow. The thing is, he's never particularly tried to make Otter like him. After those first weeks in which he did his captain duty to help Otter acclimate to the team, he let Otter be.

The realization that something wasn't quite right came later. Ilya had had other more important, Hollander-shaped problems to deal with when Otter joined the team. He was too heartbroken by Shane running away into Rose Landry's arms to waste emotional bandwidth trying to figure out Otter's issue with him.

"It's not a challenge, dude," Otter says exasperatedly.

Ilya studies him carefully, thinking about the things Otter has said and the things he hasn't. "You're jealous," Ilya states, suddenly sure of it. God, he really has been off his game, if it took him this long to figure that out.

"What? No! Of course not!" Otter splutters. "Oh my God, you're so fucking full of yourself. Leave me alone, dude."

"Roz," Marly says, stretching his name warningly.

"Okay," Ilya lets it go, raising both his palms in mock surrender. This isn't the time or the place.

However, Otter's vehement denial just confirms Ilya's suspicion. Oregon is your typical goalie, a bit too awkward, a bit too intense, not particularly good at social skills. Everyone familiar with hockey knows goalies are weird. Some, like Smitty, lean into it. They're brash and in-your-face about how fucking weird they are, and if you don't like it that's a you-problem. Otter, Ilya is starting to realize, falls on the other end of the spectrum. The type of weird who wants to fit-in but can't. The type of weird who wishes he wasn't.

No wonder Oregon dislikes him. Fitting in, making people laugh, charming them has always come easy to Ilya. Hooking up and pulling a girl at a bar is like breathing for him. Ilya knows how to read people, and half the magic to make someone like you is to give them exactly what they want. Ilya's great at that. He only ever struggles with the people who have seen beneath the mask. Those few unlucky sods who've had the misfortune to experience the parts of him that aren't perfectly curated. His father and his brother never liked the Ilya underneath. His mother did. Svetlana does. Maybe Shane?

"Can we leave now?" Otter asks hopefully. "I'll drive. Like, seriously, I still need to pack and... whatever... I'm not gonna rat you out. I already swore it. We're good. We're great. Next saison I'll get traded, and you won't have to see my face ever again."

"I'll drive," Connor protests. "I brought us here."

"Let Otter do it," Ilya orders, putting a stop to the discussion before it can heat up. He understands why Oregon doesn't want to be trapped in the back of the minivan with the rest of them. Ilya nods at Marly, who throws the key to Otter.

Oregon catches it, and whispers, "Fucking finally." He climbs over the seats and somehow manages to squeeze himself into the front of the van without using the door. Very impressive for such a large guy, but then again, goalies are all surprisingly limber. He starts the car immediately and picks up a random radio station to pretend to listen to.

"We're good, right?" Ilya asks quietly, glancing between Hammer and Connor. He supposes Marly and Vic are fine, but a part of him desperately needs verbal confirmation from the others, too.

Hammer places his palm over his heart. "By Lord Stanley and the Holy Grail, we're good."

Marly follows his lead. "All your secrets are safe with me." He winks at Ilya, and adds, "By Lord Stanley and the Holy Grail, I do so swear."

Connor seems to take it as a challenge. He delivers the most melodramatic vow ever, which leads to Victor upping the ante even more, refusing to be outdone. Ilya knows it's meant as a joke, except for how it also isn't.

"Спасибо." They are all familiar with the Russian word by now, but he repeats it in English, "Thank you." They were probably expecting some sort of dismissive joke from him, but the way his voice wavers and his eyes prickle give away how genuinely touched he is.

They take pity on him. Marly blurts a random question about the Raiders' current standing in the MLH and they latch onto the topic with visible relief. It quickly turns into all of them bantering about which team will be able to clinch a playoff spot and what the final bracket might look like.

Ilya claims that the Raiders will be the first team in the Eastern Conference to clinch a playoffs spot which has Otter piping in that it'll be the Admirals.

"Traitor," Ilya gasps, clutching his chest dramatically, as though wounded. "You're Raider now, Otter. Come on," he whines.

"It's simple math, dude, not high treason. They're seven points ahead of everyone in their division. The race in our division is much tighter," Otter defends himself.

"That's just three wins and some change," Ilya dismisses his very valid point. Fuck math. "We still have six weeks left. We'll catch up."

"Us winning isn't the issue," Otter explains. "They would still need to lose just as many games and they've been on fire lately. I'm not questioning that we'll clinch a spot. I know we will, but the Admirals will do it first. They only need a couple more points and they'll be there. Simple math."

"Grrrrrr," Ilya fakes a gag. "That's faulty American math. Very bad school system. You know nothing. Marly, support me."

"We're clinching it first," Marly agrees immediately.

"Fuck yeah!" Hammer and Connor cheer, at the same time Vic says, "We're wicked pissah. Hundred times better than those geezers. Of course we'll do it first."

"See, they get it." Ilya smacks Vic's knee and grins. "We just need to fix your upper right corner blocking issue and we'll be unstoppable."

"Fuck you! I don't have an upper right corner blocking issue," Otter snarls, and then cranks up the radio higher, obviously regretting having jumped into the conversation.

"He does," Ilya mouthes in the back of the minivan and Victor and Connor cover their mouths trying not to laugh out loud, while Hammer and Marly roll their eyes in exasperation.

The conversation shifts from there. Connor is renovating his house and Vic starts regaling him with horror stories of everything the contractors fucked up when he paid for his parents' house renovation two years ago.

Ilya closes his eyes and listens with a half an ear. It's the type of boring conversation Shane would probably love, but Ilya has nothing to contribute to. His mind wanders to Shane, as it tends to do these days. It hurts to remember how fragile he had looked on that hospital bed.

He smiles remembering Shane's stupid, overcomplicated plan to lure Ilya to his cottage. Shane loves him. He didn't actually say the words, as though even high on drugs, he couldn't quite abandon his original plan to wait to be in the cottage to do it.

Ilya can't help but be hopelessly charmed by Shane's complex mind, its rigid discipline and its tendency to overthink everything. A six-step-plan to say I love you. Ilya had just bursted the words out, unable to keep them in one second longer, safe in the knowledge that Shane wouldn't understand them anyway.

Shane knows now, though. Ilya can't even begin to imagine how that will change them. This thing between them was never supposed to have a future. Ilya thought he'd accepted that. But now he catches himself hoping that maybe it could?

His linemates know. Hammer and Connor know. Even Otter is being surprisingly chill about it. They swore on the Stanley Cup. If anyone had told that to Ilya yesterday, he wouldn't have believed them.

Boston was the first city in the U.S. to accept same-sex marriages. That new piece of information keeps randomly flaring up. Ilya doesn't understand why. It's not like he and Shane could ever... not really. Ilya misses Shane like a limb. It'll be months until they can see each other again.

"Will you come to my cottage this summer?" The question keeps replaying in his mind, even though Ilya knows he can't. There's no reason for Ilya Rozanov to visit Shane Hollander in the off-season. The risk of someone finding out is too high. They just can't. It's silly to even entertain the thought. It's torture. A starving man put in front of a buffet with a firing squad ordered to execute him if he dares to move towards it.

"We're there," Marly says, shaking him gently awake.

Ilya blinks with bleary eyes, surprised that they've arrived. He must have dozed off at some point without even noticing it. He feels groggy, as though his brain is stuffed with cotton. It takes him a moment too long to actually find the coordination to get out of the van.

The others walk past him in a hurry to finish packing before they have to leave for the airport. Otter's nowhere to be seen. He probably parked the car, gave the key back to Marly and legged it out of there before Ilya woke up.

Ilya rubs his face, trying to shake himself awake. He feels more tired now than he did this morning. He desperately needs a coffee. Or two. Maybe even a gallon. It's gonna be a fucking long day.

"You shouldn't play tonight," Marly says, walking beside Ilya. He's the only one who didn't hurry back into the hotel. Knowing him, he probably packed everything before breakfast.

"What?" Ilya mumbles, feeling like he's riding an old, rickety bike while everyone else is hooking it at a hundred on the Expressway.

"You should stay in your room and get some rest. It's just Buffalo. We'll beat them even if you aren't on the ice with us."

"I'm fine, Marly. I just need some coffee. You worry too much."

"I'm starting to realize that I don't worry enough," he grumbles. "Fuck it," he curses, and stops in front of Ilya, cutting off his path. "Obviously a subtle suggestion isn't gonna cut it. Here's the deal. When I said that you shouldn't play tonight, I actually meant that you aren't going to."

"What the actual fuck? I can play," Ilya snarls. At least this conversation is helping him wake up.

"You're jet-lagged. You didn't sleep well yesterday, and you look exhausted," Marly insists. "I'm not saying that you can't play, Roz. I'm saying that it's stupid for you to do so and that I won't let you. If this was a game against Pittsburgh, or NewYork, or Montreal, then sure. But it's fucking Buffalo. Use the night to rest so that tomorrow, when we play against Toronto you're at your peak again."

"I'm always at my peak," Ilya says.

Marly folds his arms and sighs. "Alright, let's play this game again. We'll pick Riksy this time. Our rookie gets a call from home. A family emergency. He flies to Sweden, stays there a week, deals with some heavy shit. Then he flies back, plays over 15 minutes of ice time against Montreal, gets in a fight during the game, barely sleeps the night. Do you waste him playing against Buffalo the next day?"

"It's not the same," Ilya snaps.

"That isn't the question," Marly corrects him calmly. "The question is, would you let him play against Buffalo the next day? Yes or no?"

"No," Ilya grits out. "He's a rookie. So, no, of course not."

"What about Victor? Same situation. Would you want him to play?"

"Fuck you!" Ilya growls.

"What about Hammer? What about Sebs? What about me? Any member of this team, really. Any Raider at all. Same situation. What's the answer, Roz? Yes or no?"

"No!" Ilya hisses, and in that moment he wants nothing more than to punch Marly in the face. Ilya's so fucking furious he can feel his blood boiling. "And I'm telling you it's not the same thing. I'm the fucking captain! It's my responsibility to be out there."

"And as the Alternate Captain it's my responsibility to help you manage this team," Marly counters, steady as a mountain. Unmovable. "Part of that is to speak up when you're using your power as a captain to mistreat a member of the team."

"What the... What? What the fuck are you talking about?" Ilya says, blindsided by the sudden turn in the conversation. "When have I ever abused my power?"

"Right now," Marly says. "As far as I know, Ilya, you are also a member of this team. You're also a fucking Raider. And if Captain Rozanov can look me in the eye and tell me that he wouldn't demand such a stupidly pointless waste from anyone among the Raiders, then I'm not letting him do it to you."

Ilya opens his mouth to say something but no words come out. After a moment he closes his mouth, still at a loss for what to say. The worst part is that Marly's right. Boston doesn't need Ilya to beat Buffalo. They probably could beat Buffalo with just their third and fourth line and some extra rookies fresh from the farm.

He closes his eyes and the anger seeps out of him, leaving only exhaustion behind. "Fuck. I really shouldn't be playing tonight, should I?" he realizes, subdued.

Marly's shoulders loosen, and only then does Ilya notice how tense and uncomfortable he'd been this whole time. "No, you really shouldn't. Will you speak to LeClaire or do you want me to do it?"

Ilya freezes. The idea of going to the head coach to tell him that Ilya is too fucking weak to deal with his private shit and wants to spend the night lazing around in bed sleeping instead of playing hockey as he should paralyzes him. He can't do that. He just can't.

"Ilya," Marly says carefully, "I need some help here. Does the look on your face mean, Marly, I'll kill you if you speak to the coach, or does it mean, Marly, I'll kill you if you make me speak to the coach?"

God, what does he look like? "The latter, probably," he forces himself to say.

"Alright, then I'll speak to him," Marly continues in that same smooth, steady tone. "Look, I'm just gonna tell him that you fell asleep on the way back from the hospital and mention that you seem a bit jet-lagged still. That's it. Nothing more than that. LeClaire isn't stupid. He'll tell you to rest because it's the logical, clever thing to do. This shit cumulates. You might not feel it with Buffalo but if you don't rest now, it'll catch up with you later, when it matters. A good night's sleep can be the difference between a bad hit and being the fraction of a second faster you need to be to avoid bruising or breaking something. You know this, Roz."

"Okay." Ilya breathes. "But if you lose against Buffalo, I won't forgive you. Also, we're never playing your stupid what-would-you-do game again."

"Oh, we're definitely playing it again," Marly grins. "It's becoming a new favorite."

"It's terrible game. I don't like it." God, he truly sounds like a cranky, sleep-deprived toddler about to have a tantrum.

"Why? Because you're terrible at it and keep losing?"

"I do not lose," Ilya automatically protests. "The game is very stupid."

"You should practice it in private. Get better at it." He flutters his eyelashes playfully. "Ask yourself more often, what would Marly do?"

"Fuck off! I'll never ask myself that." He kicks Marly's shin.

Marly just laughs it off, not even having the decency to pretend it hurt. "Then, you're just gonna keep losing, Roz. You're really bad at it."

Chapter End Notes

Marly: Why am I the only player on Team Ilya? What team is Roz playing for?

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

Ilya is usually one of the firsts to board the plane. He stuffs his bag in the overhead compartment and takes his usual seat, stretching out his legs. The others follow close behind with their usual chaotic efficiency. With how often they do it, they all have flying down to an art form.

It's rare for them to have an afternoon flight. More often than not, they fly out immediately after a game or in the early morning, but Montreal tends to be the exception to give the team more time to rest. Their games are intense and physically brutal, the historical rivalry between the two teams going back for decades. Ilya and Shane are just the newest faces on a franchise sport that loves to season its entertainment with blood, teeth and fist fights for that needed extra spice.

Until yesterday, Ilya was convinced that he liked the violence and the high stakes just as much as he liked the speed of the game. As it turns out, he has zero taste for it when it's Hollander's blood painting center ice red.

He keeps catching himself trying to text Shane only to remember that Hollander doesn't have his phone with him and will probably have very limited screen time, if any, for weeks to come. Team doctors are quite strict with concussions and Shane isn't one to go against medical orders, or against any orders really. Ilya's cock twitches slightly remembering some of the many orders Hollander has followed just because Ilya told him to.

Marly's rumbling voice precedes him, and Ilya hurriedly puts on the headphones resting around his neck. He chooses his "Fuck Off" playlist, an eclectic mix of Russian and American rap with a dose of reggaeton that's just the right kind of perfect for his current mood. Marly takes the seat next to Ilya without saying anything, respecting Ilya's clear signal that he doesn't wish to talk.

The Raiders' charter flight is an all-business cabin, customized to suit the team's needs and unforgiving schedules. The seats are wide and comfortable, with plenty of leg room to accommodate the large bodies of professional hockey players without cramming. Ilya wishes he could recline his seat and go to sleep but the flight is too short to bother and more importantly, he refuses to give Marly more ammunition for his Ilya-is-too-tired-to-play-hockey campaign. He fastens his seatbelt and looks through the window as the ramp crew does the last checks before they're allowed to start rolling.

He startles awake as the plane hits the ground with a hard thump, rattling him in his seat. It takes his brain a moment to remember which airport he is in and he blinks around disoriented, parsing his surroundings. Somehow, he ended up conked out on Marly's shoulder, drooling all over him.

"Uh, gross." Ilya wipes the spit from his mouth with the back of his hand. "Well, you wanted me to catch my zzzz," he adds with glee, feeling no guilt for the wet patch on Marly's t-shirt. "Hope you're happy now."

Marly rolls his eyes. "Delighted. So much so that I'll post a picture of you drooling on my Instagram."

"Please," Ilya scoffs, "you don't even know how to use Instagram."

"Hey, Connor!" Marly shouts through the aisle. "I've got pictures of Roz drooling! You'll show me how to post them on Instagram, won't you?"

"Hell, yeah!" Connor shouts back and at least six more guys volunteer at the same time in a dissonant chorus of, "Count me in!" and "I've got you, Marly."

Marly gives Ilya a shit-eating grin. "See, teamwork. Some people know how to ask for assists."

"Uggghhh." Ilya lets his head drop on the headrest. "Whatever. I look hot even when I'm drooling."

Marly exhales loudly and shakes his head in mock despair. "Your Montreal girl has a lot to answer for. We're gonna need to charter a second plane just to carry your ego."

Ilya's heart thumps, and warmth fills him when he remembers that Marly knows and that he's totally fine with it.

"Gosh, bro, you have it bad. The look on your face," Marly says fondly. "Well, I always knew she was a special one."

"No other girl in the world is quite like her." Ilya giggles, unable to help himself. It's fun to lie with the truth, especially when there's someone there to share the joke with. "I'm glad that you know. It feels good. You knowing; it feels good."

"Yeah," Marly agrees. "It does."

LeClaire corners Ilya in the lobby of their hotel, before he can go up to this room. "Roz, can I talk to you for a second?"

Ilya freezes and then forces his shoulders to relax. "What's up, Coach?" He pastes on his most polite smile.

LeClaire signals for Ilya to follow him, and Ilya does so silently while the guys pick up their room keys and disappear into the elevators. This is the hotel the Raiders always book when they are in Buffalo, and everyone is familiar with the layout. They still have a couple of hours before the game starts. Not enough for anyone to do anything too wild, but most players will meet in the bar to shoot some pool or play arcade games while they wait for the bus that will take them to the rink. Ilya has every intention of joining them even if the coach ends up benching him.

LeClaire guides him to a quiet corner of the lobby, away from the ruckus. "I've noticed that you still seem a bit tired," LeClaire starts with. More like Marly noticed, the fucking traitor, but whatever, Ilya is at least forewarned. "You should take the day off to get some rest," LeClaire continues. "No going out, no hooking up. I want you rested for Toronto. Check with medical. Charlie will give you something for the jet lag."

Ilya's smile fractures. "No! I mean," he hurries to correct, realizing that he just said No to the coach. "I'll rest, if that's what you want. But I won't go to medical and I won't take sleeping pills." If they give him pills, he'll just flush them.

"Oh, nothing like that," LeClair reassures him. "I talked to Charlie and he mentioned that melatonin would help to reset your circadian rhythm."

"I don't need it," Ilya says sharply. "I don't. As soon as I lay down I'll be out. I don't need any pills."

"That tired, huh?" LeClaire's lips quirk.

Well, fuck, that wasn't what Ilya was aiming for, but LeClaire doesn't know that Ilya has recurring nightmares about finding his mother's lifeless hand next to an empty bottle of pills.

"I'm fine."

"Very convincing." LeClaire sighs, looking wary. "Roz, you can... it's alright if you need more time before—"

"I don't need time," Ilya interrupts him. "I like playing hockey. Hockey helps more than time. You want to help? Don't give me time; give me hockey."

"Alright," LeClaire agrees easily.

Ilya perks up. "Does that mean I can play tonight?"

LeClaire chuckles. "No. Next time. Get some rest today. Coach's orders."

"Ugh." Ilya fails to hide his dejection. "Okay, but I'll be with the guys until you leave for the rink. I need to give tips so that they don't forget how to win. I told Otter we'll clinch the playoff spot before the Admirals and we can't afford to lose any games."

LeClaire's eyes soften with something that Ilya could almost believe is fondness. "I know better than to try and stop you. But the moment we're gone, you're off to bed. I don't want you watching the game in your room. Promise me."

Ilya wrinkles his nose, disgruntled. "I promise, but next game, you'll let me play."

"A promise for a promise."

Ilya checks his phone again while he waits for the elevator, but there are no new messages from Shane. He can't help the flash of disappointment at the lack of news, even though he knows that Shane is probably still high on painkillers and has no access to his phone. Knowing the reasons doesn't make it suck less.

What Ilya needs is a distraction.

Some of the guys are already in the bar when he arrives, shooting some pool. Otter and Stormy, their back-up goalie, are huddled in a corner playing Texas Hold'em with Segs and Cadyn. Otter's gaze catches Ilya's for a second and he immediately looks away, pretending to be engrossed in the hand he's holding. Business as usual then.

Ilya orders himself a Coke and heads to the arcade cabinets, where Zaddy and Kovar are trying to destroy each other at Street Fighter. The bar fills up little by little as more players come down.

Fifteen minutes before they have to leave for the stadium, Ilya tells the bartender to kill the music. The sudden silence has everyone looking around, trying to understand what's going on.

Ilya climbs on a table and clinks a spoon against his Coke bottle. "Okay, everyone, listen up!" he shouts, and immediately he's the focus of everyone's attention. "Most of you already know the sad news. I won't be able to help you destroy Buffalo tonight. Coach and Marly both think I need beauty sleep. Boooohhhhhh!"

The guys boo with him, which is exactly what he was aiming for. Marly gives Ilya an exasperated look and Ilya sticks his tongue out at him, because it's fun and makes Marly roll his eyes very hard like he's questioning all of his life's choices for picking Ilya as a friend. Serves him right.

"I know, I know," Ilya says to the team, upping the histrionics. "This is very sad. I'm already the hottest player on the team without beauty sleep. After beauty sleep, the ice on the rink will melt and we'll have to learn to play water polo."

The table under him vibrates as everyone guffaws. "Dream on, Roz," Segs calls out amidst the laughter. "I'm hotter than you!"

"Only thing you're more than me, Seggie, it's delusional," Ilya chirps him and the guys laugh some more.

Their joy is contagious and Ilya feels as good as he does after a good orgasm, his body singing with the sheer happiness of being alive.

"Okay, everyone!" The room goes quiet immediately, trained by now to pay attention the instant those two words leave Ilya's mouth. "Today is special day. Riksy! Where are you?" He knows exactly where Riksy is, but waits for the rookie to raise a timid hand. "Come here!"

Riksy flushes bright red as he walks towards the center of the room. He's a shy kid, and so fucking earnest about hockey that Ilya finds himself duty-bound to support him in all the ways he can. He reminds Ilya of a younger Hollander, if Hollander had been one foot taller at 17, blond and never had access to the best hockey trainers Canada had to offer. Riksy lacks Hollander's confidence and most of his skill at that age, but the potential. Fuck, his potential is insane. He's one of those players that the press will call a late bloomer two or three seasons down the road, but Ilya doesn't want Riksy to bloom late, he wants Riksy to bloom now. It pisses him off that he's the only one that recognizes how good the kid will be. Riksy should've been centering the Raiders' third line ten games ago. He's so much better than Carmichael.

"Today is special day for you, Riksy, and I brought you a present," Ilya says. He hands Riksy the badly wrapped box he's been carrying in his luggage since they left for this long road stretch. The trip to Russia and back didn't do the wrapping paper any favors, but whatever, it's the gift that counts.

Riksy looks at him with wide, surprised eyes, and picks the box warily. "Uh... my birthday is in July."

Ilya huffs. "I know when your birthday is. Today is better than birthday. Today's the day you'll score first hat trick on MLH."

Riksy drops the box as if it burns and looks at Ilya with large, betrayed eyes. "Don't joke about something like that, Roz. It's not funny."

Everyone is riveted watching the byplay. "I don't joke about hockey. I wouldn't give you special hat trick present if I didn't believe it's gonna be today. I know this." Ilya does. He's very sure of it. "Open the box, Riksy."

Riksy presses his lips and shakes his head. He steps back from the table and crosses his arms, tucking his hands underneath his armpits as if to stop himself from reaching out.

"Marly!" Ilya calls. "Open the box and show Risky his present."

Marly arches an eyebrow, questioning if Ilya is serious. Ilya levels him with his most yes-I'm-fucking-serious glare. Obediently, Marly picks up the gift and tears the wrapping paper open. The box has a picture of Princess Elsa from Frozen. Inside it, visible through the transparent plastic window, lies a perfect copy of Elsa's crown. Ilya spent a lot of time searching for the right one. He didn't want a fake crown for Riksy's first MLH hat trick.

Most of the guys have come closer, curious about the gift and when they see the tiara they laugh.

"Oh my god, Roz, you're such an asshole," Carmichael snorts, laughing louder than the rest. "Should we call Ricks Princess Elsa from now on?"

Riksy looks like he's about to cry, and it dawns on Ilya that maybe this isn't coming across as he intended it to, mostly because hockey players are weak idiots who feel threatened by anything remotely girly.

"Everyone shut up now," Ilya barks angrily and just like that the room goes deathly quiet. "If anyone calls Riksy Princess Elsa even once, I will find out and I will destroy. Is that clear?" He glowers at Carmichael, who folds like the wet blanket he is, raising both palms in surrender.

"Risky, ask me why Elsa's crown is the best gift." When Riksy looks away, refusing to meet his gaze, Ilya finds himself so fucking angry at everyone he wants to punch someone. He jumps down from the table and sprawls towards Riksy.

The crowd parts like the Red Sea, letting Ilya through. "Ask," he orders.

"Why?" Riksy says quietly among the heavy silence.

"Do you remember the game I taught you? The Anisimov game?" Ilya demands. He knows Riksy does. He trained like a man possessed for months, constantly pestering Ilya for tips about how to get better, until he actually got better.

"Yes," Riksy says and he looks slightly less wary now, as if maybe he's starting to understand the connection.

"When you billeted with me those first months after you got the call up, I told you the only rule in my house. Winner of the Anisimov game picks film to watch; loser takes out the trash. You took it seriously. You were out on my backyard rink almost every free moment, playing day after day."

Riksy shrugs, back to blushing, looking marginally less distraught. "I like that game. It's fun to play."

Ilya grins. "Yes, is the most fun. And what film did you pick when you won?"

"Wait, what?" Zaddy interrupts. "Riksy actually beat you at that stupid game?"

"Roz spotted me a six-point handicap," Riksy says too honestly. In his place, Ilya would've bragged about winning non-stop while forgetting to mention the handicap.

"Yes, he won. He trained hard. Don't feel bad, Zaddy," Ilya says. "You aren't the first, nor will you be the last who simply accepts that all you'll ever be good for is to take out my trash."

Marly slaps the back of Ilya's head. It's their signal for you're-crossing-a-line-stop-it. Sometimes Ilya has a hard time remembering that people get genuinely upset if he criticizes their hockey skills. Everyone on the team is aware that Ilya is an insensitive asshole who likes to chirp people about how bad they are at hockey, especially when compared to him. Marly knows this better than most, but he has some kind of invisible line that Ilya isn't allowed to cross when he's criticizing a Raider. If Ilya crosses it, he gets a jab to the arm, or a slap to the back of his head, or an elbow to the side. It works. Marly retaliates and the guys can live vicariously through him since none of them would dare hit Ilya. Ilya, for his part, is reminded that hockey players have very fragile egos.

"Ouch!" Ilya pretends it hurts, and blows a kiss at Zaddy to soften the asshole comment a bit. Zaddy huffs and shakes his head, his lips curling up slightly in a by now familiar gesture of Roz-being-Roz. Which. Fair.

"Okay." Ilya zeros back on the matter at hand, ignoring Zaddy. "Riksy, do you remember what film you picked when you won?"

"I'm never gonna live this down," Riksy mumbles, sounding resigned. "It was my little sister's sixth birthday," he explains a bit desperately to the rest of the team. "She wanted me to watch Frozen with her via Skype. So, yes, I won the game and I used my right to pick a movie to watch Frozen. Ilya watched the movie too, so it's not like he has a leg to stand on."

"It was great movie," Ilya admits, unconcerned. "Your sister has good taste. I told her this. I'd watch it again anytime. More importantly, I knew back then that you'll get a hat trick against Buffalo, so I got Elsa's crown for when you do. See? No joke. It's a proper present for important occasion."

"You don't know that!" Riksy says, sounding upset again. "Stop saying it! Even if you truly believed it, which you don't, you're just jinxing it."

Ilya glances at Marly because he doesn't know what he did now to upset Riksy. Yes, Riksy lacks confidence, but surely he'd know that... "Don't be stupid. I don't like stupid. I'm not jinxing anything. When you hear the weather forecast for the weekend saying it'll be warm and the sun will be out, you don't start crying and saying, 'Oh, no, the weather channel just jinxed the weekend! I'll have to stay home now'."The guys chuckle at his poor imitation of Riksy's Swedish accent. "You text everyone to say, 'Great weather this weekend. Who wants to do something?'" Ilya stares him down. "This isn't me jinxing you, Riksy. This is me giving you the hockey forecast."

"You don't have a hockey satellite," Riksy points out stubbornly.

"Of course I have hockey satellite!" Ilya snaps, gesturing wildly. "I'm best player in the MLH! I have best hockey satellite there is! I've seen you play. I've seen them play. You trained to win the Anisimov game using the B option. You won the Anisimov game against me using the B option. What the fuck do you think B stands for?"

"Uh... the letters have meaning?" Riksy asks, bewildered. "I thought they were just random."

"Oh my God!" Ilya raises his hands in despair. "Of course they have meaning. Stop being stupid. I don't like. The whole point of the game is to hone scoring skills. Why would I waste precious free time on random? B stands for Buffalo, Riksy," he finishes with exasperation.

"Oh," Riksy whispers and then seems to notice that everyone is watching the two of them like a tennis match and tries to make himself smaller, which is very hard to do for someone so tall. He eyes the box Marly's holding like it's a venomous snake about to strike, before he turns to Ilya. "You can't give it to me before the game. I haven't earned it yet. Afterwards, if I... I mean... I'll try my best... I'm not sure if—"

"Stop it!" Ilya doesn't want to listen to Riksy putting himself down. "If I say you'll do hat trick, you'll do hat trick. You'll earn the crown and when the press comes to ask you questions, you'll look straight into the camera and tell your sister in Swedish that you did hat trick for her, that you won Elsa's crown for her and she'll go to school tomorrow knowing she's got best big brother in the whole world. Then, only then, you'll answer the press boring questions. Is that clear!?"

Riksy straightens his spine. "Yes, Captain!"

"Damn right!" Ilya turns his attention to everyone else. "As for the rest of you? This is the hockey forecast for tonight," he says with all the confidence he can muster, which is a lot. If there's one thing Ilya never lacked in his life is absolute confidence in how good he's at this game. "The Raiders will win! We'll destroy Buffalo! I won't be there, and it won't matter, because you'll play like Raiders! Because you are Raiders! And to be a Raider you have to be amazing! And you are! All of you! Every! Single! One!" He shouts each word, and the team cheers. They shout back, stomping on the floor, on the tables, catching Ilya's fire, Ilya's confidence.

If he can't give them anything else tonight, he'll give them this.

"These aren't empty words," he continues. "I'm not nice captain. I don't say nice things. I'm asshole! I'm biggest asshole! I don't lie about hockey. If you can't handle the truth, don't ask me, but when I do tell, I'm not lying. When I say you're amazing, I mean you're amazing. When I say you'll win tonight, I know you'll win tonight! You'll take the victory and bring it home because that's what we do. We're fucking Raiders. We raid! We steal things nobody wants to give us and we destroy anyone who tries to get in our way! You think Buffalo wants us to steal victory from their home turf? Of course not! Are we gonna let that stop us? No! Raiders raid!"

He raises both his arms commandingly and they don't disappoint. "Raiders raid! Raiders raid! Raiders raid!" They shout again and again, together with Ilya, making the walls tremble with the strength of it.

"That's my fucking team! Now get into that bus, go to that rink, raid Buffalo for me! Bring me that win, fuckers! Go!"

They go, chorusing "Raiders raid!" again and again like they're about to storm the arena. Buffalo won't know what Ilya just unleashed upon them.

"Thanks," Marly says, sounding resigned while he watches the guys leave the bar chanting at the top of their lungs. "As revenge goes this one is particularly cruel, but I suppose I deserve it."

Ilya frowns. "What's problem now? You say I stay and sleep. I'll stay and sleep."

"You just riled them up like crazy, but we still have a 20 minute bus ride plus warm-up time. They'll calm down and when it's my time to give the captain's speech before the game starts, everything I say will just be flat compared to this."

"I did it for you," Ilya explains. "I know you don't like the speech part." Marly is great at one-on-ones. When there's someone in the team struggling who can't handle Ilya's tough love, it's Marly who takes over. He's good at that, but he dislikes being the center of everyone's attention, doesn't flourish and glow under the limelight the way Ilya does. Ilya has heard some of Marly's speeches and they're very Marly. All about teamwork and shit like that. Very professional. Very boring.

"You don't need to do fancy speech," Ilya tells him. "Just say, 'What did Roz say? Raiders raid!' and let them scream it again and again until they all feel it in their blood. Then, when you think they can't shout any louder you remind them that I'm sleeping in the hotel and can't hear them. Tell them that you want me to hear them. And they will roar for you. Only then, when they want to win so badly you can taste it yourself, only then you let them go through the tunnel. Speech done. Easy."

"Oh, that... that'll work," Marly says, sounding surprised, as though the idea hadn't occurred to him.

"Of course it'll work," Ilya huffs, offended. "I know my team." He pauses, thinks about it for a second, corrects, "I know our team."

Marly snorts. "Wow, finally learning to share," he jokes. "Your kindergarten teacher will be so proud."

"They don't teach to share in Russian kindergarten," Ilya says. "This is new, weak American thing I'm learning just for you. Appreciate."

"I appreciate it." The smile Marly gives him is cloyingly fond. Like someone poured too much syrup on his face and then added chocolate sprinkles on top. It's a good thing Ilya has a sweet tooth or he'd gag on reflex.

"What do you want me to do if Riksy doesn't get a hat trick?" Marly asks, hefting the box. "I can get the guys to leave him alone for the most part, but he'll be devastated if he disappoints you."

"He won't disappoint," Ilya says. "LeClaire will give the fourth line more ice time if I'm not there. Buffalo is a good team to experiment on. Carmy's line isn't doing too great, and having Zaddy move up to the second line to make up for Segs switching to first will only make them worse. Riksy's good; he won't disappoint."

"Good? Wow, I don't remember the last time you said anyone was good at hockey."

"That's because most people aren't." Ilya shrugs.

"Is he better than me?" Marly asks.

"Not yet," Ilya answers truthfully, but Marly has always been good at handling Ilya's unfiltered answers. "Maybe in a couple of years. But different kind of good. Less strength, more speed and... what is the name of the thing the press is always harping about when Hollander plays? Hockey IQ. But untouched? Untrained? Un-something. Wait! Untapped. English is very stupid."

"Hmm, interesting," Marly says. "So, you taking him under your wing is not just because he worships the ground you walk on?"

"He's a good kid. He'll go places. Watch him tonight and you might see what I see. Or you might not. You're all so fucking blind when it comes to hockey."

"Fuck you!"

"Think Nicole would share?" Ilya answers by rote.

"Oh, that chirp suddenly got a new meaning that it never had before," Marly says, looking a bit green.

Ilya winks at him. "It always had that meaning. Hockey isn't the only thing you're blind about."

"Urgghhh, no. No! Just don't. You're like my little brother, a very annoying little brother, but still. Don't. Don't fucking do that to me. I'm gonna need to scrub my brain clean now."

Ilya's peals of laughter echo through the empty bar. "Don't worry, Marly. I know you're not into guys. And even if you were, that ship sailed. These days, all I see when it comes to sex is all the ways in which people aren't Jane. It's big problem."

"Good. Just for that, I'll send Jane a gift basket."

Ilya frowns, unsure how to feel about it, but decides that it's probably okay. Hollander will hate it more than Ilya does, which makes it a great thing. "Do that. Now, be good big brother and go win me a fucking crown, Marly. I want this win."

Marly's lips curl into that same disgustingly fond smile. "You always want wins."

"'cause I'm spoiled and lazy. I know this already. Now go. The bus is about to leave."

Ilya watches the rear lights of the bus disappear and all the energy he had, all the cheer and good mood he put on for the guys, drains out of him like he's a glass with a crack at the bottom. He closes his eyes and sighs, feeling the exhaustion creep back in and steal away every other emotion. Sleep will help. Probably. Hockey and sex would help more, he knows this from experience, but none of those two things are on the table tonight.

He drags himself back to his room and takes a scalding hot shower, staying under the spray with his eyes closed until his skin is red and wrinkled and the bathroom is so thick with fog that he can't see himself in the mirror.

He drops on the hotel bed with a tired sigh and kicks the bed cover away, too lazy to do more than that. A quick check of his phone shows that there are still no new messages from Hollander. Deadspin and the other news channels don't have any updates on his condition either. He needs to stop worrying. Ilya saw Shane in the morning. He's in the hospital, with professionals. The worst part is over. Shane will heal. All will be good. Shane will text as soon as he can. Ilya just needs to wait.

He feels too jittery to go to sleep. What he needs is a good, hard orgasm to calm his body down. It's already been two days and Ilya isn't used to going so long without. The night before the game he'd been waiting to meet with Shane. The night after the game, well... orgasms had been the last thing on his mind.

His cock twitches in anticipation before Ilya has even touched it. The poor neglected thing is the true victim of Ilya falling head over heels in love with Shane without even noticing it. Then again, his cock is the one to blame for Ilya starting his ill-advised affair with Hollander, so as far as Ilya is concerned, it's reaping what it sowed.

Ilya switches the VPN location on his phone to Canada and opens a private browser window. In hindsight, he realizes, having a dedicated pinterest account to pin pictures, articles and videos of Hollander to secret boards should have been the first warning sign that he was falling deeper for Hollander than he ever intended to.

At least, he's been clever about it. No incriminating evidence on his phone tying him to Hollander. If for some reason pinterest gets hacked, all anyone will ever know is that there's a poor Canadian girl with the unlucky name of Jane Boring who happens to have an unhealthy obsession with Hollander. One among many, Ilya is sure. There's nothing that ties jane.boring24@gmail.com to Ilya in any way or form.

Her account consists of three secret boards and nothing more. One called "Very Boring" which contains pins of Hollander wearing suits, giving interviews and looking very proper. The second is titled "Still Boring" and contains hundreds of pins of Hollander playing hockey. Screenshots of camera closeups of Hollander tonguing his mouthguard. Compilations of Hollander scoring impossibly filthy goals against much less talented opponents. Pictures of Hollander with his hair plastered on his face, sweaty from a game, trying to hide his smugness after a victory, failing to hide his frustration after a defeat. Here, Ilya keeps every single photo he's found from the CCM add that started it all as well as screenshots from Hollander and Ilya playing against each other, face-offs, clips of Ilya slamming Hollander against the boards, of Hollander doing the same to him, that viral picture of Ilya kissing Shane's helm after their goal in the All-Star-Game. Every memento the Internet has of the two of them existing together in the same room, in the same space, breathing the same air.

Today, Ilya skips those boards and goes to his favorite one. "Less Boring" has more inspirational pictures. Every photo Ilya found of Shane dripping wet in that deliciously translucent white t-shirt he used to shoot the Orange Creme commercial. Screenshots and clips of him doing yoga. Photos of him without a t-shirt in the locker room that one time the press barged in too early after Montreal's first Stanley Cup win. His newest treasure is a secret screenshot Ilya took of Shane wearing his glasses when he called Ilya in Russia a couple of days ago.

He probably should delete that one, but Ilya can't make himself do it. It's not an incriminating picture, just Shane wearing glasses, but Shane doesn't know the picture exists. Ilya never asked for permission to take it or to keep it. It feels a bit naughty. A bit wrong. Ilya's dirty little secret. In the end, that's the picture he ends up choosing.

Something about Hollander in glasses gets Ilya incredibly worked up. The photo is perfect. Hollander's cheeks are flushed and his lips puffy and wet. The glasses make Shane's eyes look bigger and the gleam of hunger in them is unmistakable. Hollander had known how the video call would end and had been eager for it. Desperate to help Ilya. Desperate to please him.

Fuck! Ilya strokes his cock remembering the way Shane had sounded, breathless and needy, the way he'd gasped, "Ilya, please, I'm so close," arching his head back as his hand stroked faster. How he'd looked betrayed and desperate and ten times more perfect when Ilya growled, "No. You don't get to come yet. Not until I let you. Keep touching yourself. Be good for me, Shane." And Shane had, he'd been so incredibly good.

Ilya's hand moves faster, twisting on the upward stroke. He's so fucking close. It's not gonna take much more. He had plans for those glasses. He was going to make Shane wear them while he knelt in front of Ilya and swallowed his cock. Ilya had been looking forward to feeling the edges of the frames cut into his hips as he fucked Shane's throat, had wanted to hear Shane choked gasps and see his eyes well up with tears under the lenses when Ilya got so deep in him that he couldn't breathe. And then, in the last moment, when Ilya couldn't hold it in any more he'd have pulled out from that tight wetness and would have come all over Shane's face, painting his glasses with cum, his hair, his lovely freckles, those sinfully plush lips of his.

Ilya comes with a grunt, spurting all over his phone, covering Shane's picture with cum. He keeps stroking himself until his cock is empty and touching it starts to hurt. Ilya sprawls bonelessly on the mattress and lets his phone slip from limp fingers. Fuck. That was a good one. He'll definitely need to fuck Shane with his glasses on. The reality will be ten times better than the fantasy.

His body thrums with lingering pleasure, relaxed and sleepy. He absently thinks about lighting a cigarette but that would require moving. He closes his eyes and breathes in and out, waiting for his racing heart to slow down. He'll get up in a second.

He still needs to clean himself, clean his phone, get a towel to wipe the worst of the mess on the sheets, put on some pajamas, and set up his alarm clock. Ilya falls asleep between a moment and the next, still pondering what his to-do list ought to look like.

It's the best sleep he's had since Alexei called to tell him their father died.

Chapter End Notes

You guys continue to be so amazing. Thank you for the feedback and the comments. I read every single one and get giddy with happiness as soon as I get notifications of comments and/or kudos.

It's great to know that I'm not the only one obsessed with Ilya slowly figuring out that his team loves him and he has friends who care for him off the ice as well.

---

EDIT to add: People in the comments are cackling at the idea of Ilya having a pinterest dedicated to Hollander. But seriously, we all know our boy is obsessed. I'll die on the hill that Svetlana introduced Ilya to Pinterest when she was planning a kitchen do-over and Ilya saw the light and never went back.

Sveta: So, what do you think about these colors?
Ilya: And you can just save random pictures online into this thing?
Sveta: Yes, you can pin whatever you want. Videos, photos, articles. I really like this option here. Do you think it's too much?
Ilya: No, it's perfect. Very you. Can everyone see what you save? I mean, you wouldn't want weirdos online knowing what type of kitchen decor you like.
Sveta: You know I don't mind sharing. *wink* But also, you can make it private.
Ilya: I see. Interesting.

Ilya that very same night scouring the Internet like a squirrel gone mad for every single picture and clip of Hollander he can find. You know his three boards are perfectly curated and very very boring.

Chapter 5

Ilya wakes up the next day surprisingly well rested. The room smells of cum and stale air. He almost expects to find a naked body in bed next to him.

"Ughrrr," he makes a bleary, disgusted noise when he sees the cum-crusted screen of his phone. He checks the time and curses. He'll need to hurry, but if Marly isn't knocking on his hotel door, nobody's missed him so far. A small mercy.

Ilya shuffles into the bathroom, limbs still heavy with sleep, and takes a quick shower to finish waking up.

He cleans his phone as best he can, thinking with idle amusement that Shane would've had a fit if that ever happened to him. He'd have drowned his phone in sanitizer while blushing bright red with embarrassment.

"Would never happen to Mr. Perfect, though," Ilya mumbles fondly in Russian. Shane is very fussy about the messes they make in bed.

A quick check reveals that there are still no new messages from him. Ilya thumbs forlornly over their chat history even though he knows there's not much to read there. He manually deletes any dangerous or incriminating texts shortly after he receives them and has the chat set up to delete all messages automatically after seven days.

Their relationship can only exist in the subliminal spaces. Invisible to everyone. Sometimes even to themselves. It's the price they have to pay to be together and play hockey. Ilya doesn't want to be the reason the two of them get outed. There's too much at stake.

Whenever Ilya dared to think about worst-case scenarios, he always suspected that if their secret got out, it'd be because of something Shane did. Ilya grew up in Russia with a police officer for a father in a society in which you learn to be very careful about what to say and to whom from a very young age. Constant self-censoring was so deeply ingrained in their household that by the time Ilya was old enough to consciously understand what he was doing, he was already a champion at hiding his true thoughts behind a mask of carefree arrogance.

Shane being the one to out them wasn't really surprising. How little Ilya cares is. The relief of their secret no longer being a secret is staggering. Ilya spent seven years terrified of this moment only to realize that it isn't as bad as he thought it'd be. It's actually amazing. His heart swells with joy remembering how accepting his teammates had been, how supportive. Even Otter in his own weird goalie way.

"Fuck! The game!" Ilya curses, suddenly remembering. He opens his Twitter feed and cackles. "That's my fucking rookie!"

A 6-1 win for the Raiders, with Riksy scoring his first MLH hat trick. One goal by Marly, one by Vicky and one by Segs. Oh, those fuckers are gonna be insufferable.

Ilya starts to dance in the bathroom, feeling like his body can't physically contain the happiness inside. "We are the champions! We are the champions!" he sings, raising his arms and swaying his hips. "No time for losers, for we are the chaaaaampions… OF THE WORLD!"

Suddenly, Ilya can't stand to stay in his hotel room a second longer. He throws on some clothes, grabs the key card and goes down to breakfast.

Most of the team is there already, gulping down food like they're getting ready for the apocalypse and today is their last meal. Riksy is sitting in the far corner with his two linemates and Zaddy of all people. He's wearing Elsa's tiara on his head like a trophy, grinning from ear to ear, gesturing animatedly with his fork while he tells some kind of story.

"Riksy!" Ilya shouts with glee. Everyone immediately turns to him and Ilya opens his arms as wide as they go, thrusting his chest forward and taking up all the space in the room. "Who has the best fucking hockey satellite in the MLH? Me! That's who! Never doubt me again, fuckers!"

"What happened to that beauty sleep, Rozy?" Segs calls out. "I still look hotter than you."

"I kept hearing some idiots chanting Raiders raid over and over, followed by the loud wails of Buffalo crying. It was very distracting." The guys laugh and Ilya walks past Segs' table and ruffles his hair. "You managed to put a biscuit in the basket, Seggie. Papa is very proud."

Segs bats away his hand, snorting. "I'm three years older than you, asshole."

"They grow up so fast," Ilya says, wiping away a fake tear, and the guys chuckle.

Ilya drags an empty chair over and slides it next to Riksy. "That tiara looks great on you, Prince Riksy. Now, tell me everything."

"Roz, I did it!" Riksy's grin grows impossibly wider and he quivers with excitement like an overeager golden retriever puppy. "You were right!"

On cue, Zaddy cups his hands around his mouth and calls out, "Mayday, mayday. This is not a drill. We have a Code Red situation. Mayday, mayday."

Riksy flushes bright red and whimpers, "Oh, no," at the same time Cadyn and Kohnny start snickering.

"Leave him alone," Ilya tries to defend Riksy even though he knows it's a lost cause. No Raider worth his salt would allow such an easy opportunity to mock Ilya slide.

It doesn't take long for Marly to appear next to them. "Who did it?"

Cadyn, Kohnny and Zaddy point at Riksy immediately, barely containing their chuckles in a half-hearted attempt at seriousness.

"I'm sorry, Marly. I forgot." Riksy looks like he's about to combust. His pale, Nordic complexion makes his mortified blush impossible to hide.

"Erik Alexander Friedrichsen," Marly says, crossing his arms and pretending to be put upon. "You know the rules. Roz has an advanced case of swollenheadnitis. Everytime he hears someone say he's R.I.G.H.T. his condition worsens. Do you want his head to fall off?"

"Don't listen to him, Riks. It's all lies. I'm right all the time. They're just jealous."

"See what you've done?" Marly accuses dramatically. He tries to circle Ilya's head with his fingers, deftly ignoring Ilya's attempts to escape. "His head's grown at least two inches since last night."

Cadyn laughs so hard that he falls to the floor, which sets everyone off. Even Ilya joins in, unable to help himself.

"Hey, Marly, this is Riksy's third offense," Carmichael points out gleefully from two tables away. "You know what that means."

Marly takes out his phone to check the tally he keeps there. "Well, well, well, Riks, you're fucked. Boys, next night out, first round's on Prince Riksy. Gotta pay the piper, Rook."

There are some cat calls and shouts of excitement, because nothing makes hockey players happier than the prospect of free drinks.

Riksy rallies on. "You're only getting soft drinks and mocktails," he says loudly. "I'm not old enough to buy alcohol in the U.S."

"You aren't old enough to buy alcohol in any country, Rook," Zaddy chirps him. "You still got all your milk teeth."

"I'm almost nineteen," Riksy splutters. "I can buy alcohol in all civilized countries."

"Yeah, 'cause being eight and a half makes all the difference," Zaddy ribs him.

"And yet, the eight year-old is better at hockey than you are. Sucks to be you," Ilya defends Riksy.

"Marly, punch him," Zaddy demands.

Ilya swats Marly's hand away before it can connect with his shoulder. "Stop being mean to me and go back to your table. Risky, ignore these hosers and tell me everything about last night."

Riksy leans forward, eyes shining bright. "We were in our fourth shift," he recounts excitedly, "Buffalo's third line hadn't made the change yet and they were starting to slow down. We came in fresh and fired up. Cadyn stole the puck from Luciano and headmanned it to me. Perfect shot." He shakes Cadyn's shoulder, and the two of them grin at each other maniacally. "I dangled through the defense and lasered a shot to the bottom left of the net. The same spot that I trained to hit with the B board. And next thing I knew the lamp was lighting up. The goalie didn't see it coming."

Ilya's grin matches Riksy's. "See, I told you it'd work, and I'm always right." He thumbs his nose at Marly.

Riksy sniggers and then tries and fails to look serious when Marly narrows his eyes.

"You're on thin ice, Rook," Marly mock-threats, pointing a warning finger at him.

"I'll protect you, Riksy," Ilya promises, while Cadyn and Kohnny snigger.

Vic brings a plate filled with scrambled eggs, bacon and cheese and puts it in front of Ilya. "Eat," he orders in that no-nonsense bordering on rude tone most Boston native have. "If you wait for these morons to finish gossiping about last night, you'll starve, kid."

"Vicky, why are you being nice to me?" Ilya asks suspiciously, poking at the scrambled eggs with a fork, wary of any hidden surprises.

"Fuck off, kid! I'm not being nice. It's self-preservation," Vic bristles, like a cat whose tail got pulled. "If I'm stuck with Seggie on the first line one more game, I'm gonna run amok. Then Boston won't make the playoff because half of you hosers will be dead and I'll be in jail. My old man will never forgive me if I screw Boston's chances to win this year. Eat your fucking protein, Roz."

"Vic, come on, what the fuck? After I gave you that sweet assist yesterday?" Segs whines, not even pretending he wasn't listening in.

"Sorry, not sorry, Seggie," Vic says. "But Roz is my boy."

Vic and Marly never quite leave, and they end up with seven very large hockey players crammed around a tiny four-seat table, listening to Riksy, Cadyn and Kohnny recount the game. Vic and Zaddy rib Riksy whenever he provides an easy opening, which happens quite often. That kid's too sweet to be a Raider. Riksy just shrugs it off, though. Despite how easily he blushes, he's fucking teflon. He might not be good at chirping back, but he doesn't offend easily.

Kohnny and Cadyn are better at the banter than Riksy is, and they're not shy about stepping in to defend their center, starting to become his wingers off the ice, too. It's cute to see their dynamics developing. Marly, Vic and Ilya glance at each other every now and then, recognizing the pattern, remembering when it was them trying to find their footing around each other all those years ago.

"Roz," Rikys says, suddenly sounding serious. He fixes the tiara on his head when it starts to slide down, the gesture already half automatic. "Does T stand for Toronto?"

"Yeah," Ilya says, using a piece of bread to clean off the last bits of sauce from his plate.

"Can you show it to me again? I don't remember what that board looked like, only that it was a tough one."

"It's a tough one," Ilya concedes. "You shouldn't worry too much about it. If you see an opening go for it. The boards are just a guideline. A good sniper creates his own openings."

"Still, I'll take whatever advice you've got."

"Okay." Ilya steals a paper napkin from the dispenser. "Anyone got a pen?" He draws the outlines of a net and then something that roughly resembles the shape of a goalie at the front. He closes his eyes for a moment, remembering the dozens of games they've played against Toronto, and the hundreds more he's watched on TV, sometimes alone, sometimes with Sveta at his side providing her brutally honest commentary.

He circles the places on the net where he knows Toronto's goalie struggles with the most. Some are the typical openings most goalies struggle with: top shelf and anything too close to the pipes. He circles the bottom left corner of the net three times. "This is your best bet, if you can create the opening," he tells them. "Nilsson isn't terrible, but he relies too much on Toronto's defense. If it was Hayes on the net, it'd be a totally different animal; that guy is wasted as a back-up goalie. Toronto's third D-pair is weaker on the left. You'll be facing them the most on the ice. If you and Cadyn can fake them out coming in hot from right and pass to Kohnny in the last second, they won't be able to regroup. I've seen snails crawl faster than Miller skates. Use it against them."

"Let me see that." LaClaire sneaked in on them from behind, without Ilya noticing it. He takes the napkin before Riksy can reach for it, and studies it carefully. He takes a picture of it with his phone, before handing it back to Riksy.

"Any more insights you wish to share?" LeClaire asks.

Ilya clams up, feeling his throat tighten. "No. I didn't mean..." He fights the urge to apologize and loses the battle. "Sorry, I know game strategy is Coach's thing. Riks, you do whatever Coach says. He knows best." He stands up, painfully aware of the eyes on him. "I still need to pack." Ughrrr, he's now stealing Otter's lame-ass excuse, how embarrassing. "I'll catch you guys later."

Damn it. Of all the stupid things to do. It's one thing to give Riksy hockey advice when they're in Ilya's home and no one else is around, and it's another thing to do it in front of everyone where the Coach can hear. After all these years Ilya should know better.

He makes a quick escape before things can grow even more awkward, feeling rattled. He hopes LaClaire lets it slide without making a big fuss about it. He doesn't have a temper like Sasha's father, who always became furious whenever Ilya forgot to keep his stupid mouth shut. Dmitry Sokolov hated it when green-nosed teenagers who knew fuck-shit about hockey told other kids how to improve their game. He used to make Ilya run suicide drills until he puked whenever he caught him at it. It took a while for the lesson to sink in, because Ilya was a bratty kid who had a hard time following orders, but in the end he learned to keep his opinions to himself.

Ilya had tried his best to never antagonize LeClaire during his years in Boston. It had already been bad enough that his father told the GM and the Coach on the same day they drafted him that Ilya was lazy and lacked discipline. He'd been eighteen, alone in a foreign country whose language he barely spoke, terrified of fucking up. Working hard and doing what the Coach said was his only way to show LeClaire that Boston hadn't made a mistake choosing him.

Today had been a stupid slip. Ilya is usually more careful than that. He knows how to turn whatever weaknesses he sees in hockey players into a chirp nobody will think twice about. He has it down to an art form. Roz being Roz. Nobody takes it seriously.

He'd let his guard down. Something about the guys learning that Ilya and Shane are fucking and being cool with it has weakened Ilya's built-in defenses. Or maybe it's just Riksy's earnestness and the way he treats Ilya's hockey opinions like gospel instead of something to be dismissed as a chirp.

By the time he finishes packing he's more calm. He overreacted. Flying home always fucks him up. He's so pathetically hypersensitive whenever he comes back from Russia, like he's covered in imaginary bruises. Any little comment, no matter how harmless, has him either flinching or wanting to drop his gloves to fight. He needs to get his act together before he screws up again. Usually, he's only like this at the beginning of the pre-season and settles in after a couple of weeks in Boston. But Ilya doesn't have a couple of weeks to settle in. The playoffs are almost here and he needs to be at his fucking best.

After he finishes packing, he treats himself to the cigarette he's been craving since the night before. He puts on his coat and steps out into the tiny hotel balcony. He lights up the cigarette and lets the smoke fill his lungs while he watches the cars drive by, listening to the distant honks of the heavy commuting traffic. It's cold as fuck, but the crisp, fresh morning air feels great.

He thumbs his phone open and checks his messages. Shane's probably still at the hospital, or maybe he was already released the night before. Ilya doesn't know. The silence is killing him, and in the end he decides to be the one to break it, even if it takes Shane a while to answer.

Lily: I miss you. Get well soon.

It's not something he'd have allowed himself to write before, but it feels less daunting now that he knows Shane loves him, too. Ilya is not alone in this.

Lily: Call me when you can.

He rereads the texts and feels awkward about having sent them. It's too much. Too open. Too real.

Lily: I gave my nine-inch dildo an amazing workout thinking about you.

Lily: I learned a new English word. Pegging. Next time we see each other we try. 🍆🍑💦

There. Much better. Ilya grins imagining how Shane will blush and splutter when he reads the text. He might even get a bit hard, thinking about Ilya fucking him through the mattress. Ilya kinda hopes whoever is keeping custody of Shane's phone reads the texts, too, and teases the hell out of Shane about it. Shane would get so mad at Ilya, but the good kind of mad where he's horrified about how turned on he is by the naughtiness of it all.

As usual, teasing Shane puts Ilya in a fantastic mood. He finishes his cigarette and checks his watch. The guys are probably already heading to the bus. Ilya goes through his hotel room one last time to make sure he didn't forget anything, picks up his bags, plasters a confident smile on his face and saunters down to the lobby.

Time to face the music.

It's not as terrible as he feared. LeClaire is talking to the assistant coaches and though he glances up when Ilya passes by he doesn't comment or try to stop him. Good. Great. Excellent. All is well. LeClaire isn't Sokolov. He'll just ignore Ilya's comment and move on. He's never been one to humiliate a player in front of the whole team to teach them a lesson. That's not LeClaire's style. For fuck's sake, he told Ilya to rest because of some meaningless jet lag. Sokolov would never have done that.

Ilya hands his luggage to the driver who tosses the bags into the belly of the bus with practiced ease. Then, he slinks into his usual seat in the bus, ignoring everyone.

"You okay?" Marly asks a couple of minutes later as he takes the seat next to Ilya's.

"Sure. Slept like a baby. Ready to beat Toronto's ass tonight." He thinks twice about the next part but decides he owes it to Marly. "This is a once in a life time moment. If your head swells and falls off, too fucking bad. Also, if you tell anyone, I'll deny it, but..." he pauses and then powers on. "You were right. I needed the rest. I hope you're fucking happy."

"Holly shit." Marly sounds genuinely surprised. "God, I now understand why people force toddlers to take naps. It makes all the difference."

"Fuck off," Ilya says, but there's no heat in it.

Marly huffs a half chuckle. "About Toronto. Any tips about how to handle their first D-pair?"

Ilya tenses. He looks around but LeClaire is nowhere to be seen. "Be where I need you to be and I'll create the openings. That's how we've been doing it for the last seven years. But if you want to be an asshole, I have it on good authority that Haude is skating with a slightly injured left ankle. Do with that what you will."

"How the fuck do you know that?" Marly asks.

"A friend told me." Sveta is usually right about these things. She might not be a goalie, because she was born a woman in Russia in a time when girls were strongly discouraged from playing hockey, but she sure inherited her father's goalie eyes. She sees things nobody else does, not even Ilya.

"You have a friend in Toronto? Is this the Toronto equivalent of Jane?"

"No, ughrrr," he gags. "There's only one Jane, I already told you. Look, you asked, I answered. Either you believe me or you don't. I don't care."

"I believe you," he says easily. He studies Ilya with an odd expression, like Ilya is a riddle he's trying to put together.

"What?" Ilya snaps. "Do I have a pimple on my nose or something?"

"Russians don't get pimples," Marly reminds him.

Ilya huffs. He walked into that one. "Stop being weird or I'll go sit next to Connor."

"Please," Marly drawls confidently. "You'll be back in five minutes tops. All he talks about these days is his house renovation."

Ilya had forgotten that. "Can a captain ban a topic of conversation? Is that abuse of power?"

"Yes, it is," Marly tells him.

"Okay. You're stuck with me," Ilya says magnanimously.

"Lucky me," Marly deadpans.

Chapter 6

Chapter Notes

The visitors' locker room in Toronto is cramped and dingy. Half of it is psychology—make your opponents as uncomfortable as you can. The other half is greed—why waste good money on assholes you want to see gone as soon as possible, ideally after a harrowing loss. No MLH team goes out of its way to make rivals feel welcome, but Toronto takes it to the next level. They have the smallest, ugliest, unfriendliest visitors' room Ilya's ever had the displeasure of stepping into.

Just sitting down on the bench to lace his skates has him bumping elbows with Vicky and Marly every other second. It's made worse by the fact that Otter needs a whole bench to himself. Oregon gets twitchy if anyone gets too close to him during his pre-game routine and if there's one thing every hockey team knows and respects is that you don't fuck with your goalie before a game. If Otter wants a bench to himself, he gets a bench to himself. Period.

Ilya finishes tasting the tightness of his skates and stands up to give the others more space on the bench. He checks his phone for messages one last time. Still no news from Shane. But there's the usual message he gets from Sveta before difficult games.

Sveta: Ni pukha ni pera!

He grins as he types his answer.

Ilya: K chyortu!

He sets his phone to silent, locks it and places it face down on his stall.

"Hey, Roz," Seggie calls as soon as Ilya is done. He obviously had been waiting for Ilya to finish his minimal pre-game routine. "What's the hockey forecast for today?"

Ilya is startled by the question. Around them, the locker room goes quiet waiting for Ilya to answer. Ilya's eyes dart to Marly, but he, too, is looking at Ilya expectantly.

Shit. This is how superstitions are born. Yesterday, Ilya told them they'd win, and they did. Now they want to hear it again. If he doesn't tell them they'll win, they'll hit the ice thinking they've already lost. The worst kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Toronto isn't Buffalo, though; this game isn't a sure thing.

"You want hockey forecast?" Ilya repeats the question to give himself more time. Fuck it. He isn't gonna lie to his team. "Okay. I'll give you hockey forecast. Yesterday was good hockey weather for Boston. Da? Clear skies. Smooth sailing. Easy weather for a raid."

They guys nod and some snigger. They've all stopped what they were doing and are looking at him, even Otter.

"Tonight, not so clear. More windy. More rain. Bad visibility." He sees them tense, sees the doubt start to creep in. "Does it matter? No! Best raiding weather isn't sunny skies and calm seas. Anyone can do that. A bunch of 85 year-old grannies playing bingo in nursing homes can do that." The guys snort and the energy in the room shifts, brightening. "You want to know my favorite hockey weather? This one! Tonight! When you have to go out there and play your best. When it's not easy to win. When you have to fight for victory, not just steal candy from a child. And you know why I like it? Because it's fun. Because I know I can do it, because I'm the best. And I know you can do it, because you're best, too."

"Hear, hear!" Someone taps his hockey stick on the floor and the rest of the team follows, the noise getting louder and louder.

Ilya grins, starting to become electrified himself, riding the high, the power of knowing that it's him making them listen, him making them want, him making them believe.

"So what if it's windy? What if it's rainy? We go out there and destroy them anyway!" he promises them. "We go out there, find the biggest puddle and jump in it, splashing everyone. We laugh at the rain. Let the old grannies cry, 'Child, it's too wet, come inside, you're gonna get sick.' We're not gonna get sick. We're gonna have fun. We're gonna play our best! We're gonna teach them to fear the Raiders! This is Toronto. The crowd will be loud like thunder. But we're faster than the Guardians. We'll use speed to defeat them. If they're thunder, we'll be lightning! Let them scream long after we've struck."

The tapping gets louder.

This is what he needed. This feeling. The knowledge that his team trusts him. The roar of his teammates is enough to temporarily silence the voice of Grigori Rozanov in Ilya's head. The Raiders are direct, bordering on rude. They're violent on the ice and absolute fucking assholes to everyone who isn't a Raider, but not once in the seven years Ilya has played for Boston have they ever made him feel that he isn't good enough.

After Russia, Ilya needed this. He needs to remember who he is. He's Ilya Fucking Rozanov. The best player in the MLH. The captain of the best fucking team.

"Hammer, Con-Con, the Guardians' first line is their biggest threat, so you must neuter them before they even think to raise a leg to mark territory. Otter, you're the rock in the storm. Don't let them get one past you. I'm hungry for a tasty donut. You let anything in, and I'm attaching myself to you like a remora. I'll even trade places with Stormy. Good motivation. Da? I'll sit next to you on the bus, in the plane, at breakfast, on the bench, during practice, when the team watches tape. All the time."

"Dude, that's terrifying," Otter says. He looks at Stormy. "If I die tonight trying to keep the goose-egg alive, tell the police it's Roz's fault."

"Police will understand sacrifices need to be made for donuts," Ilya deadpans and the guys laugh. Otter rolls his eyes, but his lips quirk a bit, and hey, he isn't accusing Ilya of jinxing him by demanding a shutout game. Progress.

"Okay, everyone!" All of them stop laughing and immediately zero in on him. "This is hockey forecast. It won't be easy game, but we have what it takes to win it. Each of us knows what to do, and we all have the skills to fucking do it. So let's have fun playing hockey together and show the Guardians that they can't guard shit when the Raiders decide to come for it!"

The guys shout and stomp, tapping their hockey sticks on the floor once more. Over the noise, Marly's deep voice booms through the tiny locker room, "Raiders raid!"

And as though they've been practicing it for years, everyone chants it back in perfect unison.

"I can't hear you yet!" Marly tells them, and they shout it again, louder. "Roz can't hear you!" It makes them go wild. "Boston can't fucking hear you!" Marly eggs them on. And this time, Ilya joins them as they scream 'Raiders raid' at the top of their lungs.

Marly and Ilya lock eyes with each other, and even though they never practiced it before or agreed to do it, they grin madly at each other and command at the same time. "Let's fucking raid!"

The team marches through the tunnel ready to swallow the world whole.

Ilya loathes Dallas Kent. The captain of the Toronto Guardians is a bully and a bigot. The kind of man who only feels powerful when he's making others feel small. Ilya grew up with two of them; he recognizes the signs.

"Heard your father died, Rozanov," Kent says nastily, while they wait for the puck to drop. "You must be happy. One less person to disappoint."

The words cut, and Ilya lets them hit, rolls with the pain. He gives Kent his best Joker smile, "Yes."

The puck drops, and Ilya rips it clean back onto Hammer's blade, who immediately dishes it to Marly. They explode away from the neutral zone, flying across the ice. Haude goes after Marly, but Marly doesn't try to evade him, just skates faster, 100 kg of pure muscle at full speed. Haude closes the gap and slams into Marly, who shrugs it off like it's nothing. He presses on, muscling his way past the blue line as Haude stumbles and falls.

Toronto's second D-man closes in on him, desperate to interrupt the play, but it leaves Ilya open. Marly saucers the puck over the D-man's stick onto Ilya's blade who catches it like he breathes. He doesn't need to think. It's pure instinct, written with sweat, blood and bruises into Ilya's every cell. His body doing what it's been mercilessly trained to do for over two decades.

Behind him, Kent and Barrett try to catch up, but it's no use. Ilya is faster and there's no one between him and the goalie. Ilya fakes him out, aiming for the right end of the net. The goalie jumps, and on the last microsecond Ilya switches from a backhand to a forehand wrist shot towards the left. The puck flies over the goalie and lights up the lamp in a perfect Rozanov.

He starts his celly, drunk on adrenaline, as the goal horn blares. Less than a second later Marly, Vic, Hammer and Connor are slamming into him, hugging and kissing his helmet. Ilya laughs out loud, feeling as though his heart is about to burst with joy. "I told you, fuckers!" he shouts at them over the boos of the Toronto fans. "Listen to those grannies yelling at us to go back inside. Listen to them!"

Marly and Vic shake him, and it's perfect. Just ten seconds in and the score is already 1-0 for Boston. It's gotta be the fastest goal in Ilya's MLH career.

"Fucking hell, kid!" Vic laughs. "You know how to make a splash."

On the other end of the rink, Otter stands in front of their net, all alone. Ilya feels for him. Being a goalie must be so fucking lonely. The victories are always celebrated away from them, and the defeats right in their faces. "Hey, guys, let's blow Otter a kiss. He looks left out."

"What for?" Vic grouses. "Fucker doesn't even like us."

"Because I say so," Ilya orders, "and I'm captain. He's okay in my book. He's okay." He doesn't wait for them to agree, just catches Otter's attention across the rink and blows him a kiss. Then, he raises his right forefinger to signal one and shifts it to zero, mouthing "Donut" at him. On cue, the guys all blow Otter a kiss. Otter freezes for a second, before he gives them a sloppy military salute which has them all laughing.

They skate back to center ice, where the Guardians and the referee are already waiting to start the second faceoff of the game. Ilya takes his position in front of Kent.

He plasters his Joker smile back on, the one that says, 'I want to slit your throat with the blades of my skates and bathe in your blood while I laugh out loud.' It comes easy, because even though Ilya choses to be his mother's son every day, deep down he's still a Rozanov.

On the ice, with people who matter nothing and deserve even less, it's okay to loosen the tight leash Ilya keeps on his demons and let them run free for a while.

"My father would've been very disappointed it took me ten seconds to score instead of five," Ilya tells Kent. It's probably the truth, which makes the anger on Kent's face even more delightful. The man believes Ilya is mocking him. "Being a Rozanov is a heavy burden, da. But being a Kent, it's a disgrace."

The puck drops. Ilya wins the faceoff.

In the second period, Barrett manages to get past their defense and takes a shot at the net. Otter is too slow to stop it, but luck is on their side. The puck hits the top right corner of the pole and rebounds. Connor clears it, redirecting the rebound to Vic and that sparks the breakaway.

They rush up ice, tic-tac-toeing through the Guardians like they're dancing, from Vic to Ilya to Marly and back to Ilya. He dekes his way past Toronto's defense, creates a line that wasn't there seconds before and sends the puck to Vic who keeps it glued to his stick. Ilya rushes forward, using his speed to place himself in position, seeing the play in his mind's eye long before it happens. Vic sends the puck flying towards him, and Ilya catches and releases it, lasering it into the net so fast the goalie doesn't even move.

The horn blares and Ilya keeps skating, laughing wildly as he crashes into Vic, hugging him. Marly is there a second later and yeah, yeah, this is what it means to play hockey. The rush, the adrenaline, the fun.

They blow Otter a kiss, but this time Ilya refrains from raising two fingers and mouthing "donut." A little warning from their PR staff in between periods telling them that the broadcast caught the first byplay and took it as a taunt against Toronto. LeClaire ordered Ilya to quit it, worried that the referee could see a repeat offense as unsportsmanlike conduct. Whatever. But if LeClaire tells Ilya to play nice, he will.

They keep crashing against Toronto like waves. Ilya's line, then Seggie's, then Carmy's and finally Riksy's. Rinse and repeat. Again and again. A war of attrition. By the time the third period comes along, Toronto's defense is starting to show the cracks.

"We're up two. Great work so far," LeClaire tells them during the second break. "Keep pushing the pace. Carmy, Zaddy, Kovar, I'm sending your line in as soon as their third D-pair hits the ice. The speed mismatch between Miller and Girard is subtle, but it's definitely there if you know to look for it." He nods at Ilya. "Good call pointing that out. Zaddy, make Miller work for it. Tire him out. Riksy, Kohnny, Cadyn, keep it up. All six of you, work those two ragged. Stretch them thin and use the space. Create more traffic in front of the net before you take shots. Nilsson is seeing you coming."

They nod, taking in his instructions, getting ready for the final period.

LeClaire addresses Ilya's line next. "The three of you are on fire," he tells them. "That second goal was the filthiest thing I've seen in a while. More of that, if you can, and no shenanigans." His eyes linger on Ilya a bit longer. "They're down two and will be desperate in the third period. I don't want stupid penalties."

"But clever penalties are okay, da?" Ilya asks.

LeClaire snorts. "Save the clever penalties for when we need them. We don't tonight. I don't want you getting injured in a fight this close to the playoffs just because you enjoy riling Kent up. I've enough white hair."

"Boo. Spoilsport," Ilya says, but they all know that's his way of agreeing.

LeClaire's lips twitch. "Alright. Let's finish bringing this one home, boys. Go!"

It works, and Ilya can't help the spark of pride at seeing LeClaire's strategy play out. The man is so good at putting each of them where they need to be. Five minutes into the third period, Kohnny scores on an assist from Riksy, and eight minutes later Zaddy gets his chance, pivoting around Miller and smoking him out as he rushes forward and scores a fourth goal.

Their bench goes wild. Four nothing with less than eight minutes left on the clock is the kind of score you don't come back from. They've got this one in the bag. They know it and Toronto knows it, too.

The Guardians get more aggressive, trying to provoke penalties, but the Raiders hold steady, not taking the bait. LeClaire tightens the defense to protect the lead as the final minutes of the game tick away. When the buzzer finally goes off, they cheer, laughing and clapping each other, excited to know they're finally flying back home after a very successful road trip.

Ilya places himself at the bench gate while the team skates in. He bumps everyone's fists, telling them, "I love you," over and over. A tradition that is by now an intrinsic part of Boston's post game routine. When people ask, not that many do, he lies and says it's a Russian thing. It's not. It's an Ilya thing.

He spent his whole life hoping that if he played hockey good enough he could make his father love him, and no matter how hard he tried he always fell short. It's a failure that he'll always carry with him.

Ilya is and will always be an abrasive asshole when it comes to judging people's hockey skills, but he doesn't want his teammates to ever think that their hockey isn't good enough to merit love.

He'll always remember the first game the Raiders played after Ilya was given the C. They'd been amazing, giving everything they had on the ice to turn Ilya's first game as a captain into a victory. Ilya was barely 21 and had no business wearing that C after just two seasons with Boston, but all Raiders treated him like he'd earned it, even players with more seniority who had every right to feel slighted.

After the game was over, Ilya was overcome with pride and gratitude, and yes, love. Instead of swallowing the words and taking what they've done for him for granted, he placed himself at the bench gate and told each and every one of them that he loved them. He saw the way the words landed, how surprised and moved they were by them, and realized that maybe he wasn't the only one craving to hear someone say those words out loud after a game.

It was easy afterwards. Every game, win or lose, Ilya stays by the gate and tells each Raider, "I love you," again and again, hoping that if one of them doubts it, if one of them needs to hear it, Ilya's words will be enough to erase some of the hurt of that insidious doubt.

After five years, it's become routine. Most of the guys take the fist bump and the 'I love you' barely acknowledging it, eager to get into the locker room and get changed. Every now and then, though, there's a player who looks at Ilya with a hidden hunger, the words reaching places that are bruised inside. Often, it's a rookie missing home or a guy going through a rough time. Sometimes, it's just the loneliness of being constantly on the road or the fact that many of them only ever hear those words from Ilya and only after a game. More often than not, it's the guys who don't have family in Boston or those going through a breakup.

Whenever he notices it, Ilya makes a point of inviting them for a night out or organizes some kind of fun trip in the days off for them to join. This time it's Zaddy who falters for a microsecond, before he bumps Ilya's fist, looking away and hurrying inside. There's definitely something wrong there.

Marly comes in last, closing the line. "I love you," Ilya says. And Marly answers, "Love you, too." It's Ilya who startles then, eyes widening in surprise. That's not how the routine goes. He tells it to everyone, but no one ever says it back. He loses control of his carefully manufactured smile. There's a ripple on Marly's face Ilya can't quite interpret and then Marly repeats more strongly, "We love you, too, Roz."

Ilya doesn't know what to say to that. He feels capsized by the words, for all that he knows that Marly doesn't actually mean them. He keeps trying to come up with something witty to counter them with, but all he manages to croak out is a half chocked, "Okay," that probably reveals way too much.

Marly pulls him into a hug and whispers, "You're such a fucking idiot."

Surprisingly, that helps. Ilya is fine with being called an idiot and an asshole. It's familiar territory, easy to navigate. "You're very dumb, too," he counters, and his voice sounds normal again.

Marly breathes out a huff that's almost a chuckle. "Oh, absolutely. If they gave prizes for being dumb I'd probably win the Art Ross of dumbness. I would have my own league. No competition."

Ilya grins against Marly's chest, recognizing the echo of Hollander's words. "Maybe I give competition?"

"Maybe." He ruffles Ilya's sweaty curls playfully and that, too, it's familiar territory, helping ground Ilya further. "Come on, let's go inside. I'm sure the press will want a piece of you, Captain. Those two goals were wicked."

Ilya's phone pings when they're about to board the plane back to Boston, and his heart skips a beat when he sees the familiar name flash through his lock screen: Jane.

He thumbs the message open, chest tight with a mix of trepidation and excitement. He's desperate to hear from Shane but can't quite squash his fear that Hollander might panic after the drugs leave his system and the reality of what he said in the hospital comes crashing down on him. Ilya isn't sure if he can cope with Shane panicking and ghosting him again.

He loves me back, he reminds himself, while he braces to read the text.

Jane: My mom could have read your sext, asshole. It's a miracle she didn't. Stop it.

Jane: Also, you don't have a nine inch dildo. Quit lying to yourself.

Jane: I miss you, too.

Ilya's heart swells with joy. Shane isn't panicking. That's great. Quickly, he starts swiping out his reply.

Lily: I'll send a dildo pic to remind you of size. You're forgetting.

Jane: Do NOT send me dick pics.

Grinning from ear to ear, Ilya does a quick internet search until he finds a picture of a neon-pink, nine-inch dildo, takes a screenshot and sends it to Shane.

Jane: I'm gonna block your number.

Lily: You'd miss me 💅🏼

Jane: Yes, I would. Sorry, can't keep texting. My mom is nagging about screen time.

Jane: Call me when you're in Boston and we'll talk. No video.

Lily: Ok. About 2h more. I'll call.

He puts his phone away and finds that most of the team has already boarded.

"How is your Montreal girl doing?" Marly asks.

Ilya stumbles over the automatic denial that he isn't texting his Montreal girl and Marly should mind his own business. Right. Marly knows.

"What makes you think I'm texting her?" he asks suspiciously.

Marly rolls his eyes. "You have your Montreal-girl face on."

"I don't have a Montreal-girl face."

"You absolutely do," Seggie says with a laugh and claps Ilya's shoulder. "I have good money riding on that girl locking you down, Roz. Don't disappoint me."

Jesus. Seggie isn't even in the know. He's just messing with Ilya. "I don't have a Montreal-girl face," he insists. "Get your own sex life and stop betting on mine."

"But yours is so much more interesting," Seggie pouts.

"Ha! Did you guys hear that?" Ilya says loudly. "Seggie finally admitted that I'm hotter than he is."

"Fuck off, I did not."

"Come on, you two," Marly says, grabbing Seggie and Ilya and pushing them towards the plane. "It's too fucking late in the evening for this. I want to go home to my lovely wife, who happens to be hotter than both of you combined. If you wanna settle this discussion once and for all, ask PR to do a fan vote."

"Yes! A fan vote!" Ilya agrees immediately. He's gonna win it hands down. "Marly you have best ideas! I'll tell Carol to organize it."

"There's no way that's gonna be unbiased," Seggie protests and they continue bickering about it until they take their seats on the plane.

"So, how is Jane?" Marly asks again in a lower voice once the plane starts rolling.

"Fine. Probably. She didn't say, but she sounded fine. Herself again."

"That's good." Marly sounds relieved. "I don't want to be the reason she—" He stops abruptly when Ilya elbows him. "Right. Of course. Anyway, glad she's doing fine."

"Yeah, me too."

Ilya's engrossed playing Candy Crush on his phone while listening to Russian rap, when Marly taps his leg. He looks up, and notices the rookies cluttering the aisle, looking at Ilya expectantly.

He pauses the game and takes off his headphones. "Yes?"

Riksy opens his mouth, blushes and says, "Never mind. It's not that important." He makes a break for it, but Kohnny catches him before he can leave and pulls him back.

"Come on, Riks," Kohnny cajoles. "Ask him," he whispers in a low voice that still carries.

"You ask him," Riksy whispers back. They aren't being subtle at all.

"But you're the favorite child," Kohnny counters.

Ilya should probably say something about him not having favorites but that'd be a lie. "What do you want?"

"It's really not that important," Riksy claims, looking mortified.

"You came all the way here, and now I'm curious. Ask."

"Right." Riksy glares at Kohnny before he turns to Ilya, not quite meeting his eyes. "So… the guys and I were wondering if maybe... I mean... you can say no, obviously. You probably will say no and that's totally fine. Don't feel like you have to say yes. If it's an imposition, just say so. It's not a big deal at all. Like you know, it's fine. Totally fine. And you're very busy and probably have a bunch of stuff to do so, uh… so it's not like we wouldn't understand if you—"

"For fuck's sake, Riks, listening to you babble is giving me anxiety," Cadyn snaps. He squares his shoulders and faces Ilya. "Look, Riksy says the Anisimov game is the GOAT, and Kohnny and I are curious about it. And since Riksy confessed that he misses playing it now that he isn't billeting with you anymore, we—"

"I didn't say that!" Riksy hisses. Kohnny and Cadyn, both, give him disbelieving looks. Riksy slumps. "Okay, so maybe I did say it, but like... it's not a big deal."

Cadyn shakes his head while rolling his eyes. "Anyway," he says, turning his attention back to Ilya. "We wanted to ask if we could drop by one day to play it."

"Sure," Ilya agrees easily. "When do you wanna come?"

"Really?" Riksy perks up. "I mean, if you don't want to—"

"If I didn't want to, I'd've said so." Ilya shrugs. "I don't do things I don't want to do. I like playing the game, too, remember? We have tomorrow off. I don't have plans yet. If you want, tomorrow is good. If not, another day is fine, too."

"Tomorrow is perfect!" Riksy agrees immediately. "Right?" He looks at Kohnny and Cadyn excitedly.

"Sure," the two of them agree.

"Hey, Roz, can I tag along?" Zaddy asks from three rows away.

Ilya is suddenly reminded of that brief haunted look Zaddy gave him at the end of the game. He seems to need a distraction and Ilya is happy to provide him with one. "Sure! Mi casa es su casa. Whoever wants to come is welcome. 11 a.m. tomorrow."

"Yes!" Riksy, Kohnny and Cadyn chorus enthusiastically while Zaddy shouts, "Awesome. We'll be there." He hears some highfives in the background, and assumes a couple more of the guys will end up dropping by.

"If you wanna play, bring your gear," Ilya shouts. "There's no food at my place, so I'm ordering in. If you fuckers want something fancier, bring your own shit."

Riksy beams at Ilya. "Thank you! You're the best."

"Let's go back to our seats before Marly puts you down for a second round of drinks." Kohnny and Cadyn drag Riksy away.

"Totally worth it." He hears Risky say, back to his excited golden retriever puppy mode.

Ilya smiles, unable to stop himself. "What?" he asks self-consciously when he catches Marly's knowing smirk.

"Nothing," Marly lies.

Ilya narrows his eyes at him, not buying what he's selling. He puts his headphones back on and goes back to his Candy Crush game.

His gold black Bugatti is waiting for him at the airport, and stepping inside feels like finally coming home.

He turns on the car and the engine purrs to life, loud and obnoxious and his. He presses the gas pedal and the Bugatti lurches forward, accelerating with a roar. He drives into the city and Boston welcomes him back. After seven years its skyline is as familiar as Moscow's. He loves it here. With his father dead, Ilya can finally admit it. And yet, the thought still feels like a betrayal he ought to be punished for.

He's in a weird, melancholic mood when he walks into his home. The house feels foreign and familiar at once, like the result of a Schrödinger's experiment gone wrong.

He's too tired to make himself dinner, but there's cheese and ham in the fridge and six bottles of kefir—the ones that you can only get from the Russian specialty store downtown. He recognizes Svetlana in that small gesture. She must have come by earlier to restock his fridge with fresh food.

He drinks the kefir directly from the bottle, not bothering with a glass, while he makes himself two sandwiches. The kefir blunts the edge of his hunger enough that he decides to take the time to pop the sandwiches into the air-fryer until the cheese melts and the bread gets extra crispy.

He texts Shane while he waits.

Lily: I'm home. Call if you're still awake.

Almost immediately his phone starts ringing and the name Jane appears on the screen.

His heart beats loudly when Ilya accepts the call. "Hi," he greets Shane softly, wishing that he could see Shane's face.

"Hi," Shane answers back, just as softly.

"How are you feeling?" Ilya asks nervously, not sure how to address the elephant in the room, willing to let Shane set the pace. The last thing he wants is to spook him again.

"Better," Shane answers. "Head still hurts, but not too bad. The collarbone is the worst part. It doesn't hurt, but being unable to use my right arm is annoying."

"Have you jerked off yet? Doing it left-handed is fun. Very different. Almost like somebody else is doing it," Ilya says.

Shane barks a laugh. "No, I'm at my parent's. I'm not gonna jerk off while I'm here," he whispers into the phone, sounding appalled.

"There's no way you've never jerked off while living with your parents," Ilya points out. "That's the first place everyone jerks off in."

"Oh my god, shut up," Shane splutters.

"But, you did, right? Please tell me you didn't wait until you moved out to introduce your hand to your dick. Not even you can be that boring, Hollander."

"Of course I didn't wait to move out," Hollander hisses quietly. "Can we not talk about this anymore, please?"

Ilya grins, feeling accomplished. If Shane's annoyed at him about meaningless things, he isn't worrying about the bigger stuff. "Fine." He pretends to be put upon. "I suppose we can talk about how bad the Metros suck now that you aren't playing for them. 0-3 against Florida."

"The lines are new. They just need to find their groove, that's all," Shane defends his team.

"Yeah, their groove is on Ottawa with a broken collarbone. They suck without you," Ilya says.

"Boston would suck without you, too," Hollander points out like that's suppose to be a counterargument.

"Totally," Ilya agrees easily.

Hollander snorts. "I thought you were trying to expand your English vocabulary. Haven't you got to 'modesty' yet? It's spelled with an M."

"Nope," Ilya pops the P. "Got stuck at B for 'boring', haven't moved past that one yet."

Hollander laughs out loud. "Asshole." It warms Ilya's heart.

"My mom told me that you guys visited me at the hospital," Hollander says.

The warmth in Ilya's chest vanishes, leaving a chilly dread in its place. "Your mom told you?" he repeats slowly, trying to understand what that means. "You don't remember?"

"No," Shane says, "total blackout. I remember the beginning of our game, and that's it. I don't remember the hit or being taken to the hospital or anything that happened yesterday. My first memory is from today morning. I didn't want to believe my mom when she told me what happened, but the concussion and the broken collarbone are impossible to deny."

"Oh," Ilya says at a loss for words.

A couple of seconds later, the air-fryer beeps to let him know his sandwiches are ready and Ilya grabs the excuse like a lifeline. "My food is ready. I need to get it out. Be right back," he babbles and doesn't wait for a reply. He hits the mute button on the phone, double-checks it's actually on, and starts cursing in Russian.

After he gets the worst of it out of his system, he takes the sandwiches out, puts them on a plate and brings them back to the counter, where his phone is still waiting.

He still doesn't know what to do. He takes a calming breath and unmutes his phone. "I'm back. Sorry about that."

"It's fine."

"Is that normal?" Ilya asks the most pressing question. "Is it a bad sign? Are you gonna get the memories back?"

"It's not uncommon to experience post-concussion memory loss," Shane explains. "And sometimes the anesthesia complicates it. As long as I don't forget more things, the doctors told us not to worry. The memories might come back, but often they don't."

"Oh, that's... uh... Scary?" Fucking understatement.

"A bit, but... it could've been worse. Was I awake when you guys came by? I was hoping that maybe I was still out," he says.

"Oh, you were awake." Ilya's unable to stop the slightly mad-sounding chuckle that escapes him.

"Ilya." When Shane says his name, his voice has a terrifyingly familiar edge.

That's exactly how he sounded before he ran away from Ilya's house. Ilya replayed that memory in his head over and over, countless times, in a useless attempt to figure out if there was something he could have said or done to change the outcome. He recognizes the way his name sounds on Shane's lips when he's about to lose it.

"Did I say something?" Shane asks, the edge of panic in his voice growing stronger. This is how Shane sounded when he told Ilya he'd forgotten a team meeting. "What did I say?" This is how Shane sounds when he's about to make a run for it.

Ilya says the first outrageous thing that comes to his mind. "You told us you wanted to be a Raider." Shane will splutter and deny it and accuse Ilya of being an asshole but he won't panic. The only thing that matters is that he doesn't panic and disappear. Ilya won't survive being ghosted a second time.

"Oh, no," Shane says, appalled. "There's no fucking way I told you guys that. Oh, you aren't gonna let me live that down, are you? Fuck, that's embarrassing. For the record, I don't want to be a Raider. It was just for a couple of weeks and I got over it."

Wait. What? Ilya blinks, looking at the black screen of his phone in disbelief. Shane wanted to be a Raider? Since when?

"That's not what you said," he tells Shane, because he wants to know more and the best course of action for that, it's to give Shane more rope to hang himself with. "You said it was your secret dream to be one of us."

"For six weeks. And it wasn't about being a Raider," Shane clarifies. "It was about being first pick in the draft, asshole." He stops and sighs. "God, this is embarrassing. When the 2009-10 regular season ended and it was clear that the Raiders got first pick and they weren't gonna trade it... I thought... I can't believe you're making me say this out loud."

"I'm not making you do anything," Ilya says. It's strange how he never thought about the fact that if Hollander went to the draft convinced he was gonna be the first pick, he went to the draft believing he was gonna be a Raider. "You're the one who brought it up." And then because Ilya truly is an asshole he adds, "in front of Marleau, St-Simon, Hammersmith, Connors, Oregon and me. You made us promise to get you an honorary Raider's jersey for your birthday."

"Fuck you! I did not."

"Yes, you did. I have five witnesses, little Raider," Ilya teases him.

"Don't call me that!" Shane hisses.

"Anything for you, little Raider." Shane is right; Ilya is never gonna let him live this one down. And then, because after all these years, Ilya knows Shane's fascinatingly convoluted mind very well, he adds with delight, "Tell the truth, did you visit Boston and looked at house listings during those six weeks, Mr. Real Estate?"

"Shut up," Shane says.

"You did!" Ilya laughs out loud.

"I hate you so much right now," Shane grouses.

"No, you don't," Ilya says, sobering up. It's unfair that Ilya knows that and Shane doesn't. "Hey, I don't hate you either. You know that, don't you?"

"I know," Shane replies and suddenly the silence between them is heavy with the weight of all the things they've yet to say. "Ilya, I was thinking... before the game and everything that happened... I... uh… wanted to ask you... uh..."

Ilya's heart starts hammering inside his chest, blood pounding in his ears. He knows where this is going.

"Will you come to my cottage this summer? Instead of going to Russia. Come with me to the cottage. It's very private. You'll like it there. I know you will."

Ilya swallows and feels tears well in his eyes. For once, he's glad that the video is turned off and this is just a phone call. "You know we can't, Hollander." His voice breaks, and he's sure Shane can hear how much it hurts to admit that truth. "You know we can't. Don't ask, Hollander. Please."

"Okay, maybe next year then," Shane says, and his voice sounds wet, too. "But if you change your mind, the invitation is open, Ilya."

"I'll think about it," Ilya lies, and wipes away the tears falling down his cheeks.

"Do that," Shane says. "Uh... I gotta go. My mom is calling me." That, too, is a lie, but they've been lying to each other for almost a decade now. It's who they are. "Bye."

"Bye."

The phone goes silent and Ilya stays there for a while, staring at it, feeling gutted. He throws the cold sandwiches in the trash unable to stomach the sight of them and goes to bed.

He jerks off thinking of Hollander wearing gold and black and smiling at him across the rink. He imagines what it would feel like to skate with Hollander instead of against him, not once every seven years in an All-Star-Games that means nothing, but every day, every week, every season.

Ilya pumps his dick faster while he thinks of standing at the bench gate after a game telling Hollander in front of everyone, "I love you."

He comes with Shane's name on his lips, imagining Hollander looking at him, hunger in his eyes, saying, "I love you, too, Roz."

Chapter End Notes

I've enjoyed writing this chapter sooooo much. Thank you so much to all of you for the lovely comments. The oxytocin hit of reading your reactions to this story, carried me through a week from hell and gave me the strength to write every day.

 

If you think that Shane forgetting what happened at the hospital is too far-fetched, I must inform you that something similar happened to my father after a car accident that involved a nasty concussion and heavy pain medication. 36h total memory blackout. He didn't remember anything. Not the car accident or why he was in the hospital or that we and other friends had visited him the day before and spoken to him. And the doctors were all like, 'no, that can happen. don't worry about it.'

Chapter 7

Chapter Notes

The next day, the dim winter morning light creeps through the large windows in his bedroom and teases him awake. Ilya grunts in displeasure, grabs a pillow and buries his head in it, doing his best to ignore the sunlight and the chirping birds. He dozes off for a bit longer before his growling stomach and his bladder mount a combined attack and force him to leave the bed.

Ilya is on a scavenger hunt to find onions—he's sure he has some that must still be good—when his doorbell rings. Ilya frowns blearily. It's only half past nine, much too early for the rookies to be here. The front door camera shows him Nicole and Marly, and Ilya smiles, pleased with the unexpected visit.

"G' morning," he greets them. "Nicole! Have you grown since I last saw you?" he teases her, standing next to her and pretending to check her height. "I could've sworn last time you were only waist-high." She's small for a woman and next to Marly she looks downright tiny, but the one thing Nicole and Ilya have in common is that they both know how to forge armor out of things others would consider weaknesses.

"Skip the concussions and become a comedian." She rolls her eyes with a fond smile on her face. "You're wasted on hockey."

Ilya laughs and kisses her cheek, before dapping Marly. "Come in. You want food? I was about to make breakfast." He guides them to the kitchen island. "The coffee machine is on if you want some." To Nicole he says, "I brought you an amazing blend of Russian Caravan. You're gonna love it." She's a tea fiend and Ilya loves to indulge her vices.

"Oh! Really? Where is it?" She looks excitedly around.

"It's the fancy metal dose on the counter over there." He points her in the right direction and she hurries with the energy of a kid who just discovered an unopened pile of Christmas presents. "Marl, you know where everything is. Help her make tea."

Nicole makes a hissing sound. "He's not allowed to touch my tea."

"I try to be romantic," Marly says put-upon, "and bring her breakfast to bed, and all I get are complaints that I burnt the tea. She thinks you need a college degree before you're allowed to add dry leaves to boiling water."

Ilya winces. "Ouch. Was it green tea?"

"Yes! The really good one you got me for my birthday," Nicole complains.

"You don't need to go to college," Ilya reassures Marly, patting him on the shoulder. "I'll make you cheatsheet for black blends. You follow instructions, you score. Do not ever touch green or white tea. That's beyond your skill level."

Nicole sniffs. "See, Ilya understands." She cradles the tea dose like a mama bear whose cubs are being threatened.

"What even is my life? A cheatsheet for tea," Marly huffs. "And where the fuck did you learn so much about tea? You only drink coffee."

"I'm Russian. We're born knowing how to brew tea properly," Ilya says smugly.

"Of course you are," Marly drawls, unimpressed.

Ilya gets out the egg carton and shows it to Marly. "Breakfast? Yes or no?"

"No, we're good," Marly says. "Other than the stupid green tea thing, I nailed everything else. But you go ahead."

Oh, Marly is really bumped about the tea thing. This isn't just him going along with Nicole's chirping. Ilya angles his body away so that Marly can't see his face and narrows his eyes at Nicole, before making a subtle gesture in Marly's direction. She shrinks, because Ilya's fix-this-or-I'll-kill-you face is scary, but also because she's clever enough to realize that Marly is genuinely hurt.

She goes to him, rises to her toes and pulls him gently down so that she can kiss his cheek. "You can burn my whole collection of green teas and I'll still love you," she whispers in his ear, low enough that she probably believes Ilya can't hear it. "But if you stay away from it and use Ilya's cheatsheet for black blends I'll love you even more."

Marly snorts and Ilya has to bite his lips not to laugh out loud. Marly cradles her face, and says, "Okay," then gives her a proper kiss.

"I'm fine with you two putting on a show for me," Ilya says when it becomes obvious that they've forgotten he's there. "But my guest room is perfectly equipped and available if you want it."

"Sorry not sorry." Nicole gives him a cheeky grin, her eyes gleaming with a mix of mirth and desire. Marly sure worked her up.

"No need for apologies. I was enjoying the view." Ilya winks. "I'm surprised you're here at all. It's not even ten." He starts cracking the eggs. "What happened to the sex marathon you wanted to have after the roadie, Marly? Did you let a bit of burnt tea cockblock you?"

"Roz!" Marly protests.

"Gosh," Nicole groans. "I want to be appalled that Cliff talks to you about our sex life, but of course he does. Hockey players." She shakes her head in exasperation. "Why did I agree to marry one again?"

"Above average stamina, big paycheck, bigger dick—" Ilya ticks off the reasons on his fingers.

"Roz, shut the fuck up!" Marly interrupts him again, appalled.

"What?" Ilya feigns innocence, and busies himself with stirring the eggs, purposely ignoring Marly's I-can't-believe-you face.

"Don't talk with my wife about my dick," Marly hisses, like a pious grandmother with fifteen children pretending not to know what sex is.

Ilya gives him a crooked grin. "Why not? I've been sharing communal showers with hockey players my whole life. I've seen more dicks than Nicole ever has. I'm just giving her scoop. Yours is top-ten percentile. He's very proportional," he whispers to her, loudly enough that Marly can definitely hear, and winks salaciously.

Nicole giggles and Marly blushes bright red. Ilya didn't know he could do that. It's hilarious.

"You aren't supposed to look at guys' dicks in the showers," he complains feebly.

Ilya rolls his eyes, adding the grated cheese to his eggs. "Please. Like you weren't a willing participant in the Raiders' dick measuring contest."

Marly splutters and Nicole laughs so hard she starts wheezing. "You guys actually do that? I thought that was one of those things people believe happens in locker rooms but aren't actually true."

"It was stupid hazing ritual when I started with the team," Ilya explains while he puts the pan on the stove and drizzles olive oil on it. "But it backfired."

"Did it ever," Marly groans.

"I don't want to know," Nicole says, and then leans in, eyes wide with curiosity. "But tell me everything."

Marly lets his head drop on the kitchen island and covers it with his arms, probably wishing the earth would open up and swallow him.

Ilya grins meanly. No mercy for the weak. "Keller was captain," he explains as he adds bacon to the pan. "Very old school. Very proud. Terrible forward. Boston was last in the division under him, so I never understood why he was so proud."

Marly gives a choked laugh, face still hidden in his arms.

"It was very early in the pre-season. I'd been with the team just a week, maybe two. I don't remember," Ilya goes on. "They put me in second line right away and I had already scored more goals than Keller in the couple of games we've had. Anyone with eyes knew it was a matter of weeks before I'd be switched up to first line, and he'd be bumped down to second. There had been some hazing already. The usual stuff. Nothing I couldn't handle."

He pours the eggs in the pan while he continues with the story. "One day after training, I went to take my usual shower and the shower bay was completely empty. I knew something was up. Not typical routine. Usually some of the guys would've been there already, but they all stayed behind. I opened faucet warily and the water was cold as fuck. No matter how I turned it, no hot water came out. I resigned myself to drive home sweaty and call it a day, but when I tried to leave Keller and Campbell, the Alternate, were at the door grinning. A mean grin. The you're-in-for-it kind? They said I stink like Russian biohazard and need to finish showering before I'm allowed back in the locker room."

The smell of the sizzling bacon is making his mouth water and his stomach growl. "Uninspired hazing." Ilya shakes his head, using his favorite silicon spatula to help the omelet set faster. "I'd taken cold showers before."

He flips the omelet and continues with the story. "So I went back in and took cold shower, but when I tried to leave a second time they didn't let me. Said I still stunk like dirty Russian. They made me stay under cold water for forty minutes before I was allowed back in the locker room. I was a shivering mess. My fingers were pruning, nails blue from the cold, and my balls were crawling into my body like they wanted to disappear."

"I didn't know they made you stay in there so long," Marly says, straightening up, a bit of anger creeping into his voice. "They only made me take one cold shower."

Ilya shrugs. "I didn't give them what they wanted. I spent whole time singing Russian ballads like I was having the time of my life."

"Of course you did." Marly sounds more resigned than impressed.

Ilya plates the omelet and brings it to the island to sit with the two of them. "Anyways." He eats while he finishes the story, too hungry to bother with manners. "I walked into the locker room, shivering, muscles stiff, seizing up from the cold, and the whole team was there, waiting. So I knew that whatever they had planned wasn't quite over yet. Keller took out a measuring tape." Ilya gestures with his fork and swallows around a mouthful. "Said everyone on the team needed to get his dick measured to see how high or low they ranked in the roster. Tradition. Said he as Captain would measure me so that I don't cheat."

"Oh, I see where this is going," Nicole says, pity in her voice.

"No, you don't," Marly counters with a half-chocked laugh.

"I looked around at the team and saw their anticipatory smirks. They were all in on it. Haze the rookie is name of the game." Ilya shrugs. "Been there, done that. So I knew there was no point protesting, da? I let my towel fall, take my dick in hand and start stroking it."

"Oh my God, Roz," Nicole laughs, blushing.

"What? I thought that was what they wanted," Ilya defends himself. "See how long it takes the rookie to get hard after cold shower while everyone watches? Most people would find it humiliating and fail to get hard. Then they can laugh even more. I didn't care. I had good material in head. Many hot girls." And Shane. He used the memory of Shane sinking to his knees less than a minute after Ilya knocked in his hotel room, his mouth so hungry and eager that it completely erased his lack of experience. "I got hard very fast."

Marly groans. "That's what you thought it was about? Damn, Keller and Campbell truly underestimated how much of a manwhore you are."

Ilya grins, still proud of how he handled it. "By the time they started protesting it was too late. I was already half hard. Keller said something... I didn't really understand. My English was very bad, but I got part of it. Something about only soft dicks counting for measuring. Easy opening. My English wasn't good but I managed to scrap enough of it together to counter, 'That's dumb. Is that why you so old and still no wife? You fuck girls with limp dick?'"

Nicole laughs out loud and Marly pleads with her, "Don't encourage him. It gets worse."

"It was funny," Ilya tells her. "Everyone laughed, even Campbell. You laughed, too, Marly, I saw you. Anyway, Keller got very red and very angry. I stroked my dick a couple of times more until I finished getting hard all the way and told him I was ready for him to measure me. He got even redder and spluttered some complicated bullshit I didn't understand and then threw the tape measure at my face. I caught it, measured my dick, went to the paper with the team's ranking, read their numbers and put my name at the top with nine inches next to it."

"Nine inches," Nicole gasps, and her eyes skirt down to Ilya's crotch before she catches herself and looks up, blushing.

"It's a lie," Marly protests. "His dick isn't nine inches long."

"How would you know?" Ilya turns to Nicole. "Didn't he just say five minutes ago that he doesn't look at guys' dicks?"

She giggles. "He absolutely did."

"There are no words to describe how much I hate you both right now," Marly grumps in a low, resigned tone.

"Is a nine-inch long hate?" Nicole asks with a straight face that has Ilya hollering with laughter and Marly gaping at her in outraged disbelief.

"Nicole Marleau!"

"What?" she asks with a mock innocence that doesn't fool anyone.

"Burn," Ilya tells her with genuine admiration and they fistbump. "Ignore Marly. I'm officially down as the top ranking dick in the 2010 roster. Some of the guys protested, saying that I didn't measure it right, but when I offered them the tape and told them to check for themselves they refused. So, in the end, everyone on the team including Mr. Marleau here accepted the truth: The Earth is round and my dick is nine inches long."

Nicole laughs, cheeks pink, brown eyes gleaming with mirth. Marly absolutely hit the jackpot with her. She has a gorgeous laugh, warm and contagious, like she's laughing with her soul.

"You don't get it," Marly tries to explain to her. "The tape was dripping pre-come and he was rock hard. No one was gonna touch that."

"Excuses." Ilya dismisses his protest with a wave of his fork. "The moral of the story is—"

"That you have no shame," Marly tries again.

"No," Ilya huffs. "Everyone knows that already. The moral is that no matter how tall and strong and menacing Boston players look on the ice, they all cower in fear at the prospect of touching a hard dick that doesn't belong to them. Which means that most women, no matter how small and dainty, are at least nine times braver than they'll ever be."

Nicole cackles, holding her belly as she tries to breathe through her laughter. Marly grumbles, but fails to look annoyed. His eyes are soft and warm as he watches her laugh, drinking her in like he can't get enough. Nobody who's seen Marly merciless flatten opponents on the ice would believe he's the same guy. It's disgustingly sweet.

"You're just encouraging him," Marly protests feebly, when Nicole has calmed down some. "His head will grow so much it'll fall off. It's a very real danger. You just don't get the level of self-confidence and arrogance this idiot has. He was nineteen, didn't know anyone on the team, barely spoke English and he stood there, completely naked, in a room filled with twenty guys fully clothed, all of them at least three years older than him, and he still managed to make Keller look like an idiot."

"Keller was an idiot," Ilya says. "He humiliated the rookies to feel like a top dog, but no one on the team could stand him. Not even Campbell for all that he pretended to. Even his humiliation attempts weren't that creative."

"Sure felt creative to me," Marly says bitterly. "I fucking hated his hand touching my dick while everyone pointed and laughed. I wanted to crawl out of my skin."

"He did it to you?" Nicole asks, all traces of merriment gone from her voice; a cold, hard anger taking its place. The story is only funny when Ilya tells it, because Ilya wasn't bothered by it. Most other guys on the team were. That's why Keller did it.

"He hazed all rookies relentlessly for months, and Campbell was his dutiful enforcer," Marly says in a flat voice that lacks any emotion. "There were a bunch of other things he did, but that was a staple. He did it to everyone until this idiot came along and put a stop to it. After Roz turned the tables on him and humiliated him in front of everyone, he stopped doing it. And by the time the 2010-11 season was over, Keller's C was just a letter on his jersey. Roz was captain in everything but name."

"What?" Ilya says, startled. "I was not. They only made me captain in the 2012-13 season, after Keller retired."

"Roz, by the end of your first year, if you told anyone on the Raiders to jump the only question would've been how high," Marly says. "We were winning games because of you. Boston made the playoffs for the first time in a decade because of you. And whenever Keller tried to humiliate someone on the team you stepped in and made him look like a fool."

"He was fool," Ilya repeats. "I didn't need to make him look like one. I just had to point it out so that you guys could see it, and he made that very easy."

Marly is making Ilya seem like some kind of knight in shining armor, which is total bullshit. Keller was a bully who loved to dish it out but couldn't take it. Ilya just happened to be the bigger asshole and he knew how to work a locker room better. The whole team was desperate for an opportunity to turn on the guy, and Ilya was only too happy to provide them with one. Rage-baiting idiots has always been one of his best skills.

"You still haze the new guys, though," Nicole points out.

"Not like that," Marly defends them, sounding appalled.

"Nope," Ilya confirms in a calmer tone, once he's finished eating the last of his omelet. "No more dick measuring after stupid cold showers. I'll forever remain the top ranking dick among the Raiders and that's the way I like it."

She snorts before she sobers up. "But you still do it. The reason Laura doesn't like you is because of what you did to Fellsy."

Ilya sighs in contentment, remembering. "One of my most inspired hazings."

She looks upset for a moment, eyes glancing between Marly and Ilya. "Laura and I talk when the team gets together. She's one of the few WAGs with her own career. I don't have much in common with the others. Most of them just want to stay home and raise kids. Not that I'm judging."

Ilya half-snorts half-chuckles. "You're totally judging."

"I try not to. It's a valid choice and if that's what they want, more power to them. It's just not me. The point is that Laura told me what you did to Fellsy and it's hard to reconcile a person who'll do something like that with the guy who brings me rare teas whenever he travels and has proven to be a good friend again and again."

Ilya shrugs, uncomfortable with the praise. "I can be nice to you and an asshole to other people. That's not mutually exclusive."

"Bullshit!" She snaps. "Don't use that asshole line on me like it's a get-out-of-jail-free card in Monopoly."

"Nicole," Marly says in a warning tone. "We've had this discussion before. It's hockey business. Let it be."

"No! You both agree that this Keller guy was horrible and the whole team hated him, but Ilya can be as much of an asshole as he wants and that's fine. What happens when the next nineteen-year-old rookie comes along and puts a stop to it? Where's the line when he becomes Keller," she points at Ilya angrily, "and you're just another Campbell?" Her eyes are blazing when she looks at Marly.

"Nicole," Marly gasps, sounding hurt.

Ilya crosses his arms, feeling a prickle of something crawling underneath his skin. He has to swallow the snarl that wants to break free before he says in a steady, flat voice. "I'm not Keller."

"Then explain it to me, Ilya Rozanov. Because when I asked Cliff to do it all he said was that hazing it's part of hockey and that's the way it's always been and nobody is going to change it." She glares at the counter, not meeting their eyes. "And, you both know I have issues with hockey. I hate the fighting and I loathe the risk of concussions and long-term injuries. I'm a doctor; I can't put that fear aside. But Cliff loves hockey and he loved it long before we met. It's part of who he is. I'd never ask him to give it up." She looks at Marly and yeah, they're both absolutely gone on each other.

"I don't like fighting with Cliff," she says in a small voice. "Half of our disagreements when we started getting serious were about hockey."

Ilya knows this. Marly complained about it non-stop. Hockey was the main reason why it took him so long to convince her to marry him. Witnessing Marly struggling with the fact that his usual I'm-a-famous-hockey-player-with-a-lot-of-money shtick didn't get him any points with I-just-finished-medical-school-hockey-and-money-don't-impress-me Nicole had been very entertaining.

"We have this rule," Nicole says. "If he tells me it's hockey business I accept it and move on. I know it's his job and that the MLH is indeed a business," she says the word like it tastes rotten, "with its pros and cons. Just because I don't like the cons doesn't mean that—" She stops, breathes in and out, visibly fighting to calm herself, and then says, "Right. Hockey business."

She glares at Ilya, eyes burning with frustration. "Explain it to me, Ilya. And don't tell me it's because you're an asshole. Where's the line between you and Keller? Because Laura doesn't see it and if you'd done to Cliff what you did to Fellsy, I don't think I'd see it either. And don't tell me it's hockey business. That's Cliff's get-out-of-jail-free card, not yours."

"I wouldn't do to Marly what I did to Fellsy," Ilya says. Nicole glares at him even more as though Ilya just confirmed her worst fears. "That'd be like asking a guy who's been keeping pet tarantulas since he was a kid to touch a spider. It wouldn't count as hazing."

"You're not helping our case here, brother," Marly points out.

"Please," Ilya says with a roll of his eyes. "If I'd've ever told you to go talk to a girl you didn't know and make a fool of yourself for the team's entertainment you wouldn't have even blinked. The first four years of our friendship it's you doing that without me having to ask."

"Touché." Marly grins.

Ilya doesn't want to explain himself. How he rules the Raider's locker room is none of Nicole's business, but she's Marly's wife and Marly loves her. It'd be... inconvenient... if she thought less of them.

She's the kind of woman who believes in social justice. She went into medicine not for the money but out of a genuine desire to help people. According to Marly, she's eternally frustrated because the American health system is a money making machine that doesn't truly care about health.

"The thing you must understand," Ilya explains to her, eyes lost in the distance, "is that all MLH hockey players are, with very few exceptions, trashcan raccoons with rabies."

Marly snorts.

"We were, most of us, raised in locker rooms," Ilya continues, with a thin smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "To play hockey at the level we do, our parents start us very young. Anyone who doesn't know how to skate and hold a hockey stick by age five probably won't make it into the MLH. Marly started at four. Hollander started at two. I don't remember a time in my life in which I didn't know how to skate. My mom told me that her father custom-made me baby skates as soon as I learned how to stand. I was nine months old.

"The better we are," Ilya continues, "the less time we spend with our parents and the more time we spend with coaches and teammates, in development camps, living and breathing locker room. You train before school, after school, on the weekends. Every free hour. Hockey is everything. Your friends are hockey players. All adults around you only care about how good or how bad you're at hockey. Hockey controls everything. It's a hungry beast that devours every aspect of your life. You love it with everything you are and are happy to pay the price. Or you start resenting it because it demands too much and even after you've given it everything, it'll still want more."

That had been Sasha's story. He hit fourteen and was done with hockey, skipping practice, getting drunk, missing training until even his father was forced to accept that he couldn't turn his son into the hockey playing machine he wanted him to be.

Ilya had known other kids like him in Russia. He was sure there were some in the U.S. and Canada, too. Kids who hit puberty and decided that they didn't love the sport enough to wake up at 5 a.m. on a Saturday to drive to a tournament that was three hours away, who didn't want to do homework after four hours of grueling training, who just wanted to be kids and not professional athletes in the making.

"Children are cruel. Children in competitive environments with adults encouraging them to be cruel because they want to stomp weakness out of them even more so." It had been like that in Russia. Ilya never got the impression that it was any different on this side of the Atlantic. Didn't Vicky tell them that he was bullied because his uncle was gay?

"Locker rooms are harsh places." Survival of the fittest. Ilya learned that very young. You became the asshole everyone feared to cross, you were friends with the asshole everyone feared to cross, or you were at the mercy of the asshole everyone feared to cross. In Russia those were the only choices available.

Ilya already lived every waking hour at home at the mercy of his father. It was very satisfying to find a place where he could be the asshole for once. He relished the way older children learned to fear him instead of him being the one who had to cower and shrink and make himself small and less.

He chose to become the asshole and was surprised to learn that he was a natural at it, too. Rozanov's genetics at their peak.

"Hazing is a part of it. A ritual of passing. A bonding experience." That's what everyone claims, at least. "You have to show the team how far you're willing to go in order to belong. It's expected. It's encouraged. It's, to quote Marly, hockey business. You're new to a team and it's done to you. You're in a team long enough, and you do it to others. Guess which part people prefer?" Ilya says to Nicole with a crooked grin.

"It's supposed to cut. It's supposed to hurt. It should at least leave a scar," Ilya tells her, because it's the truth and she asked for it, didn't she? "A little memento to remind yourself that yes, you belong now. You have what it takes."

"That sounds horrible," Nicole says, but she seems more sad than angry.

Ilya shrugs. "Does it? You're training to become a surgeon. If you cut someone open with care, with precision, knowing exactly what you're doing, it'll still leave a scar, but with enough skill, the person might be better for it afterwards. The line between Keller and me it's the same line that divides a butcher from a surgeon."

His attention skirts to Marly, who's studying Ilya's face with a carefully neutral expression. "The turnover in MLH teams can be quite high. We now have a good stable core of 16 players who've been Raiders for longer than two seasons. That's rare in MLH. Other teams have much higher fluctuation. But we still have a bunch of fringe players filling the roster, in and out faster than you can blink. Emergency call-ups due to injuries, temporary trades to fill in specific needs, rentals for the playoffs. Usually rookies get the brunt of the hazing, but all new guys expect it to happen the moment they get a new jersey and enter a new locker room. That's how it tends to be."

Ilya never understood why bother. "I'm too lazy for that shit. If they're gonna wash out after a couple of weeks, what's the point in making them feel like they're one of us. Hazing players who'll be gone so soon is just a lot of work with no return on investment. So, the season I became captain I established a rule for the Raiders. The boys call it the Puppy Protection Period or the Triple P. All hazing is banned during the first three months a player is new to the team."

He glances at Marly again, expecting some kind of judgement from him. Ilya's reasons to establish the Triple P isn't something they've ever discussed. Ilya laid down the law and everyone followed it.

Ilya shrugs. "It's a win-win. I don't need to waste time with guys who won't matter in the long run and the new guys can relax and concentrate on doing what they came to do instead of constantly waiting to be jumped. And it has the added benefit that those who do cut it..." Ilya gives Nicole a wicked half-smirk. "They start craving it. The closer the three-month mark comes, the more they start anticipating the end of the Triple P with all it implies. They dread it a bit, of course. It wouldn't be fun if they weren't nervous about it, but the bigger part of them wants it, too. It's not just something that it's done to them. It's something that they've been actively working towards, a privilege they want to earn."

And Ilya makes it clear it's a privilege. He gives them the right to opt out, but by then they've been with the team long enough to know that there're perks only core Raiders get. They want to be part of the inner circle. No one likes to be outside, looking in. Being passable at hockey to make the three-month cut opens the door, but they have to prove they have what it takes to walk through it.

Besides, it's easier for the guys to relax into the hazing and take it in the right spirit—a bonding experience, a good laugh among friends—if they've had three months to get to know the team. Ilya hadn't accounted for that when he set up the Triple P but it's sure useful. Even more useful is the envy in the eyes of other fringe players, the ones who have yet to hit the three-month mark and probably never will. They look at the newly initiated Raiders with hunger in their eyes, with naked craving. It makes the hazing feel extra special. Humans so love to have things others don't.

"And the best part is," Ilya's grin widens and he winks at her, "that three months is plenty of time for me to figure out what their weak points are so that I can properly tailor the hazing. Like I said, there's no point in asking a guy who keeps pet tarantulas to hold a spider."

"Jesus," Nicole whispers. "That's... machiavellian."

Ilya laughs, unrepentant. "I told you I'm an asshole."

He's very pleased with how he handles the hazing. He loves finding the perfect challenge that will leave his new boys' stomachs churning with dread once they learn what they must do to earn their spot. But even more satisfying is the kick Ilya gets when he sees the pride in their eyes after they've succeeded. Ilya can ride that high for weeks.

"Normal people don't take pride in being assholes, Ilya," Nicole tells him. She leans into Marly and he puts his large arm around her, pulling her in.

"Nicole, normal means average. What's English word? Median? No, mediocre! I'd rather be an asshole. Normal is insulting." He pulls an extremely disgusted face, and she and Marly both laugh at his antics.

"I told you that the level of self-confidence and arrogance in this one is off the charts," Marly tells Nicole, still chuckling and leans over the kitchen island to ruffle Ilya's hair. Ilya tolerates it for a second or two before he bats Marly's hand away. Marly smiles at Ilya, and there's a bit of the warmth he reserves for Nicole still lingering in his gaze.

"We got Feller from Detroit two years ago," Ilya continues with the story. "Passable d-man. He could improve his pass accuracy, but beggars can be choosers and he's better than who we had before."

"Harsh." Nicole furrows her brow.

"Passable is high praise in Roz to English," Marly explains to her. "Fellsy would probably be in cloud nine if he knew Rozy thinks he's passable."

"If he improves his pass accuracy I'll tell him, until then, he can dream of getting a compliment from me," Ilya says with annoyance. Fellsy fumbles too many passes for Ilya's taste, even if his CA/FA stats are among the top 25 in the MLH and in any other team he'd probably be part of the top d-pair.

"We've had this conversation before, Rozy," Marly says with exasperation. "Not everyone can be a generational talent. Some of us mere mortals happen to exist."

"Whatever." Ilya rumples his nose. He's gonna call it like he sees it. "Fellsy came to the team and...you know he stutters, right?"

"Yeah, he doesn't talk much but I've talked to him a few times," Nicole says. "Laura is trying to convince him to get therapy for it but he doesn't want to."

Huh, that might be good. Maybe he'll give Fellsy a push to go for it.

Ilya stands up and goes to the coffee machine, needing something to do other than sit there and justify his actions to Nicole. He starts a cappuccino for Marly and then, since he's already up, pours water into the electric kettle for Nicole.

"Fellsy's stutter is bad but it's even worse when he's nervous," he says. "The first day he joined the team he was very nervous. Boston has a bit of a bad rap among other teams."

"I wonder why," she asks tastily.

Ilya nods sagely. "I do, too. We're very kind and loving. Never start fights. Never board players. Never commit faults. Barely get any penalties. Never chirp. We only ever want to braid the hair of opponents and paint their fingernails, carry their groceries, open doors for them, and still they reject us. Very sad."

Marly snorts. "Yeah, we're angels. I've told you this before, Nicole. It's them, not us."

"I've seen you guys play," Nicole says. "You're true angels indeed, who just happen to drop your gloves by mistake and then fall when you try to pick them up. Fallen angels."

Ilya and Marly laugh.

"Yes, fallen angels. I like that." Ilya hands Marly his cappuccino and decides this is the kind of conversation that deserves a treat so he gets out the ingredients to make himself a proper raf coffee in all its deliciously decadent sweetness. A taste of home.

"Back to story. The first day after he got traded he tried to introduce himself and stuttered so badly he couldn't finish." Fellsy's eyes had burned with frustration and his whole body language spoke of someone braced for impact. He knew what was coming, hated it, but was prepared to survive it yet again.

The guys in the locker room laughed, Carmy even started to fake-stutter back, in a poor imitation of Fellsy's hello. Trashcan raccoons with rabies all of them, Ilya thinks with no small amount of fondness. Fellsy went quiet immediately, giving up on finishing his failed attempt at greeting, lips pressed-tightly in a mix of impotent anger and defeat.

Ilya had been furious. 'What's so fucking funny?' he snapped, voice sharp like a whip. 'If I don't find it funny, none of you do.' He glared at them and immediately a chorus of chastised, 'Yes, Captain' filled the locker room.

Ilya understood early on that a team like the Raiders, which is loathed by everyone who isn't a Boston fan and booed in every arena they play except maybe Florida, can't afford to go on the ice divided. They have to have each other's backs—a monolith of strength that's perfectly attuned like the wheels of a Switch watch with flawless regulation, not twenty individual gears whose teeth only know how to cut and bite each other and never quite manage to fit.

Keller's mismanagement of the locker room put the Raiders at the bottom of the MLH rankings even though they had passable players on the team. It was a useful lesson in what not to do as a captain and Ilya took it to heart. The Raiders can't hit the ice with their fracture points on display or they'll crack and collapse the moment things get tough.

"All Raiders respect the Triple P, so no one picked on him." Disrespecting one of Ilya's rules would be like disrespecting Ilya and nobody is self-destructive enough to try that. "But he still barely spoke. He nodded, shrugged, shook his head and kept to himself, avoiding talking like it was torture. I'm pretty sure if given the option between talking and bag skates, he'd have picked bag skates."

Ilya disconnects the tea kettle a second before the water starts to boil. He pours the water over the loose tea leaves in a small tea pot and sets it aside to steep. He brings the raf coffee over to the kitchen counter and sips it, sighing in contentment.

"Then this idiot went and broke his ribs," he points at Marly, who immediately protests that it wasn't his fault. "And Vicky thought he had to step up and become Marly. Spoiler alert: Saint Vicky is many things but he ain't Marly. He doesn't know when to shut the fuck up." The three of them laugh, because they all know how much Vicky loves to talk.

Ilya is a social creature. He loves being loud and obnoxious and in your face. Except when he doesn't. Some days he just wants to become invisible, erase himself and disappear. Scraping the energy needed to plaster a smile on his face and be the class clown is beyond him then. He just wants to be left alone.

Vicky doesn't know how to handle Ilya when he's in such a mood. Ilya doesn't blame him. He should be able to snap out of it and function, but there's a reason why Ilya's father liked to warn his coaches about Ilya's lazy, undisciplined nature. There are days when no matter how hard he tries, Ilya just can't make himself care.

The quieter Ilya got, the more Vicky tried to get Ilya to talk, to joke, to laugh, and it only made Ilya miss Marly more. Marly would've known to chase Vic away without being obvious about it. He'd have sat next to Ilya and let him listen to sad Russian music without trying to engage him in conversation. He never treated Ilya going quiet like a failure on Ilya's part that needed to be fixed.

"So, I started to sit next to Fellsy when I needed a bit of quiet," Ilya explains and sips at his coffee to better ignore the way Marly's face goes carefully neutral.

They've never talked about what it means when Ilya goes quiet. He and Marly don't need to talk things to death, or at all, in order to understand each other. Marly doesn't push the way Shane does, always wanting to know more about Russia, about Ilya's family, about things Ilya would rather not talk about. Marly treats Ilya's evasions and silences like enemy defensemen on the ice, skating around them with practiced ease until he finds the perfect place where Ilya needs him to be.

"Mind you, Fellsy is terrible company," Ilya grumbles, because he can't bring himself to admit that he... appreciates the value of someone who can sit next to Ilya for hours without requiring Ilya to perform. "There's wanting a bit of quiet, and there's Fellsy." He exhales loudly, looking heavenwise, playing it up.

It took six weeks for Marly to get the all-clear and rejoin the team. Ilya mostly sat next to Vicky during that time, being his usual loud self. Except when he couldn't. Then he'd chase Varky—Fellsy's d-partner and usual seatmate—away and he and Fellsy would sit together in perfect silence for the duration of the flight. It became another routine. After a particular brutal loss against San Francisco, Ilya didn't even have to scare Varky away. He boarded the plane and found Fellsy already sitting on the aisle, quietly waiting for Ilya, Varky nowhere in sight. They didn't speak again until they landed in Boston six hours later. Ilya felt as though he'd been erased from existence, an empty window seat in an otherwise full plane. It was glorious.

Ilya stands up again, needing to move to dispel the bleak mood remembering has brought and strains the tea leaves carefully. He sets the pot, a tea cup and his favorite blackcurrant jam on a tablet and places it in front of Nicole. "Don't forget to add jam if you want true Russian experience."

"Thank you," she says. She takes a sip first and sighs. "It's so good." Then she adds a tiny bit of jam and tries it again and grins. "Wow, much better. I love it. Cliff, baby, please get his cheatsheet. Steal all his Russian tea brewing secrets for me."

"I will," Marly promises with a smile. "You're stalling, Rozy. Finish the story. We don't have all day."

"Right." Ilya sits back down. "Not much left to tell. He was worst seatmate ever. Don't scowl, Nicole, you don't get it." Ilya tries to sound extra whiny. "He'd watch these long-ass nature documentaries on his tablet. Fellsy's obsessed with sea animals: octopus, whales, jelly fish, sharks, sea horses, dolphins, you name it. It's all he ever watches and it's so boring." Ilya exhales dramatically. "All they do is swim, eat, and swim some more." They also reproduce in rather interesting ways, but Ilya isn't gonna admit that. "Instant cure for insomnia."

The documentaries fitted Ilya's melancholic mood. The camerawork was beautiful and otherworldly. Ilya enjoyed watching the animals swim. If he noticed Ilya watching, Fellsy would move his tablet to the middle and offer one of his earbuds without prompting. Every now and then, the English would be too difficult for Ilya to follow; the words long and unfamiliar, different from the everyday English Ilya learned by exposure living and working in Boston. He'd ask Fellsy to explain what the narrator said and Fellsy would, his words slow and careful but with barely any stuttering.

"So, on one hand, total obsession with sea creatures." Ilya lifts his right hand as if weighing something. "On other hand," he raises his left hand, "we have the fact that he never hit on girls when we went out. I once offered to be his wingman and he told me he hated talking to strangers and would rather be run over by a car than try to stutter his way through a hello with a girl." Ilya grins wickedly at Nicole. "RIP. He never should've given me that kind of ammunition."

"Ilya!" Nicole says with dismay. "That's... You just... Ughrr!"

"I know!" His grin widens. "I'm a genius!"

"That wasn't the word I wanted to use," Nicole clarifies.

"Look, it wasn't that he didn't like girls. I've seen him look," Ilya defends himself. "If he truly wasn't interested I'd've come up with a different idea, but he was interested." Fellsy looked at girls the way people look at art in museums: admiring the beauty from afar, but with the bone-deep, ingrained understanding that no matter how gorgeous the art is or how much you might like it, it'll never be yours, you'll never be allowed to touch it and you'll never be able to take it home.

"Laura probably told you the rest." Ilya shrugs. "A couple of weeks after his Triple P was over we went out to a restaurant. There was this cute girl with pretty glasses and leave-me-alone headphones on, sitting in a corner all by her lonesome, working on her laptop. And because I'm a genius, I told Fellsy that if he wanted to prove himself, he'd have to go talk to her for fifteen minutes and tell her all he knew about octopuses and sharks."

Ilya doesn't bother to explain to Nicole that he clocked the way the cute girl looked up when they entered the restaurant. That in itself isn't worth mentioning because hockey players are young, athletic and loud. Whenever they walk into a place anyone with a slight appreciation for the male anatomy will look. What was noticeable was that she barely glanced at Ilya—the hottest Raider by far—or at Seggie—who has a blink-and-miss-it resemblance to a young Jason Momoa and after one concussion too many believes that makes him hotter than Ilya—or even at Marly—who has that undeniable tall, dark and handsome thing going for him.

Her eyes, however, lingered on Fellsy before she went back to ignoring all of them. It wasn't obvious, and she probably hadn't even noticed it herself, but Ilya has a sixth sense for things like that. Whenever there was a break in her concentration, her eyes would skirt over to their table and they would inevitably seek out Fellsy. Ilya got it. Fellsy isn't classically handsome and his hair is a bit too orange to fit most common beauty standards, but it is very eye-catching, and his freckles sure are something, loud and everywhere, impossible to ignore.

As a fellow lover of freckles Ilya understands her, even if he much prefers Shane's more subtle, almost shy freckles. The little teases drive him crazy, almost disappearing in the depth of winter, only to come back with a vengeance after the summer break.

"Laura will never like me," Ilya admits, unconcerned. She matters only because Fellsy matters, but Fellsy isn't Marly. Ilya doesn't need to play nice with his girlfriend. "In her eyes, I'll always be an asshole." However, Fellsy had looked like he was gonna puke when Ilya told him what he had to do, like he'd meant his rather-be-run-over-by-a-car statement a bit too literally. It forced Ilya to troubleshoot on the fly.

He dragged Fellsy to her table and sat him down in front of her. Then Ilya cranked the asshole up to eleven. He played the bully who wanted to traumatize the stuttering, nice-looking, nerdy boy so perfectly someone should've given him an Oscar for it, and Laura's protective instincts flared up exactly like Ilya knew they would. When he insinuated that he and the pack of hyenas sitting two tables over were expecting her to laugh at Fellsy's face and send him packing so that they could make fun of Fellsy some more, her eyes blazed with righteous anger and she told Ilya that she happened to want to learn about octopuses and the only one who needed to leave her table and stop bothering her was him.

Ilya left, mission accomplished, and Fellsy remained, looking at Laura like she was the car that had run him over. Like a part of him couldn't believe that someone he'd never met before would stand up to Ilya Rozanov, the MLH biggest pest, to defend him.

"It all worked out in the end," Ilya tells Nicole. "It's been almost two years and they're still together. They're both crazy in love with each other, and we can all agree that the surgery was a success."

"It could have backfired, Ilya," Nicole protests.

"No, it couldn't. It was a no failure scenario. Never underestimate the lengths guys will go if you tell them that's what they need to do in order to belong." There's a bit of bitterness to Ilya's smile. "It'll make a 19 year-old sing songs under a freezing shower for over 40 minutes until his muscles start seizing. It'll make a 21 year-old guy let a-ready-for-retirement bully touch his dick in a room full of laughing idiots." He waves at Marly's direction casually. "And it'll make a terribly shy d-man talk to a strange girl and try to impress her with all he knows about octopuses and sharks."

Ilya shrugs. "There were only two possible outcomes. Either she talked back to him, or she refused and sent him packing. It wouldn't have mattered either way. I preferred the first outcome, obviously, but I could've made the second work, too. The hazing would've been over. We would've taken Fellsy to celebrate being a Raider and would've praised him for having survived the ordeal until he felt like he was the king of the world. A week later she'd have been one more girl among many he failed to talk to, easily forgotten. But Fellsy would've still been one of us. For a trashcan raccoon with rabies raised in a locker room that's everything."

Fellsy even got him a very expensive vodka the day he and Laura made the whole dating thing official. When Ilya denied having done anything to deserve it. Fellsy had the gall to laugh at him and say, "I-I didn't do anything either. F-found this b-bottle on the s-street. I-I j-just don't like v-vodka." Fucking asshole. It's a good thing he doesn't speak much or Ilya would have competition.

Whatever question Nicole might still have is interrupted by Ilya's phone ringing. He startles and his body seizes up. The only person who calls Ilya without texting first is his brother. Ilya hates when his phone rings without previous warning.

He gets it out of his pocket warily, almost expecting to see the dreaded name of Alexei on the screen. It reads Dubek instead. What the fuck? He meets Marly's gaze and shows him the screen but Marly shrugs, not knowing any better.

"Dobby, what's up?" Ilya greets him, accepting the call.

"Rozy, sorry, man!" Dubek says, sounding harried. "I know phone calls are a big no-no for you kids."

"I'm not a kid," Rozy counters. "You're just very old, Dobby."

Dubek laughs, used to Ilya's brand of humor. He's the oldest guy among the Raiders, but he takes pride in that so there's no point ribbing him about it.

"Make it to 36 uninjured, playing as well as I do and we'll talk in ten years," Dubek brushes Ilya off.

"You aren't that good," Ilya points out by rot.

Dubek laughs. "I'm seventh in the team in points as of last night and will end the regular season with more than 60 points total, God willing. I'm not that good compared to you; I'm amazing compared to pretty much any other second liner in the MLH and I've been doing it longer."

He pauses and then his tone gets serious. "Look, sorry for the call, but I need you to be the bad guy and tell Saul he can't go over to your place. He overheard me telling Maria I was gonna drop by today with the rest of the team and wants to come. Apparently last time I told him he couldn't come because the party was past his bed time and he informed me very logically that 11 a.m. isn't past his bed time. Kids, man, you tell them things thinking they won't remember but the bill always comes."

Ilya laughs at his plight.

"Rozy, don't laugh. Can you just please tell him that it's a grown-up thing and he can't come? He thinks I don't wanna bring him with me and is breaking my heart."

"Bring him," Ilya says. "I don't mind."

"Rozy, you can't do that," Dubek says. "Hammer's and Kovar's kids go to the same school. When they hear that Saul was allowed to tag along and they weren't, Hammer and Kovy are never gonna hear the end of it."

"Are Hammer and Kovar coming over, too?" Ilya hadn't thought they'd be interested. They like to spend their days off with their family.

"Huh... of course. I mean... Is Marly there?"

"Yeah," Ilya says slowly, thrown off-balance. Why would Dubek know that? Even Ilya hadn't known Marly was coming over.

"Uh... can I talk to him for a second?"

Ilya narrows his eyes, alarm bells ringing in the back of his mind. "Sure," he says. He considers putting the phone on speaker but then decides against it and hands it over to Marly. "Dobby wants to talk to you."

Marly takes the phone. "What's up?" He listens to Dubek talk before he says, "If he says it's okay, it's okay. Sure, I'll ask. I'll let you guys know in a couple of minutes. No, it's fine. I'll text." He hangs up and hands the phone back to Ilya.

"What the fuck is going on?" Ilya asks, because that was suspicious as hell.

"Just Dubek being his usual worry-wart," Marly huffs. "But I might as well double-check to ease his mind. You know everyone is coming over, right?"

"Who's everyone?" Ilya asks.

"Everyone," Marly says, like it costs him something not to tag a duh at the end. "Rozy, you told the team they could come. Of course they're gonna come."

"To play the Anisimov game?" Ilya furrows his face, failing to understand why they'd want to do that. It's fucking rare to have a day off without a game or practice this late in the season. "I get the rookies." He remembers being that young and wanting to breathe, eat, dream and shit ice time in the hopes it might make you that little bit better. "Maybe some of the singles, if they're bored. But why would the others come?"

Marly's face does a complicated thing that Ilya can't parse and that bothers him. He's usually very good at reading Marly.

"Rozy," Marly says slowly, like Ilya is a wild animal he doesn't want to spook. "It's been five months since the last time you organized a team event. That's the longest dry spell we've ever had during a season since you became captain. If you only wanted the rookies to come, then you shouldn't have invited everyone. The moment you said anyone could drop by the whole team cancelled whatever plans they had so that they could come. I'm not sure if everyone will want to skate—I didn't bring my gear—but they're all coming. Fuck, you truly didn't know?"

"Wait, five months? That can't be right," Ilya says, frowning. He tends to throw a team party once a month. Usually in the evening, on days the Raiders have an afternoon home game followed by a rest day. It doesn't happen that often, but every four or six weeks the stars align and Ilya uses the opportunity for a bit of old-fashioned team bonding.

Marly's face does that weird thing again. "Yeah, you cancelled the one we had planned in October last year because you were under the weather and then... there never was another one."

Fuck. Marly's right. He'd planned to throw a party after the October afternoon game with Montreal, but after Shane ran away his mood to host died. He played hockey so badly that day that LeClaire asked him if he was coming down with something and Ilya agreed he wasn't feeling well and used it as an excuse to cancel on the team.

And after that he… Yeah… Ilya checks his mental calendar and is once more surprised by the fact that March is about to end. The post-season will be starting soon.

"I'm gonna use your bathroom," Nicole says. "I'll be back in a moment."

Ilya watches her go. "That wasn't subtle at all."

Marly shrugs. "It wasn't meant to be." Marly sighs. "You have your guilty face on and you don't need to. We knew you were going through something so we tried to give you space and shit. Fuck. I feel like I fumbled an easy pass. Everyone kept asking me if you'd truly meant the invitation or if it was one of those times when you say one thing and mean another, and I kept confirming that you meant it. I feel so fucking stupid. Roz, you and I don't talk and that's usually fine. I know you don't like it and it's not my favorite thing either, but I feel like..."

"Like what?" Ilya prompts him when he stops speaking.

"Like I don't know you anymore or maybe never knew you at all." Marly drums his fingers on the counter, a clear signal that he's nervous. "I should've realized that you didn't mean to have everyone over and put a stop to it. Instead I made it worse by confirming to the guys that it was okay to drop by."

"It's okay for them to drop by and did mean it," Ilya reassures him. "I just wasn't expecting everyone to take me on it, but I'm kinda excited about it. You're right. It's been much too long since we all got together." He walks over to Marly and jabs his shoulder. "You haven't fumbled shit, Marl. It's me who's been giving you some terrible passes. Everyone else would've thrown their stick in frustration and skated away long ago."

"I'm not a quitter, brother," Marly says, squaring his shoulders the same way he does when they're down a couple of goals and it's their turn to jump on the ice and fix the mess before it's too late. "Okay, everyone's kids coming over, yes or no? Give it to me straight. I'm tired of second-guessing."

"I prefer am-bi-guous, but I can fake straight like a champion," Ilya teases him.

"Uhrggg," Marly groans. "That's a terrible pun."

Ilya laughs. "It's best pun ever."

"Asshole." Marly lurches and Ilya barely avoids him. They start roughhousing as Marly tries to get him in a headlock and Ilya kicks him. They end up rolling on the floor, laughing and trash-talking, while Ilya tries to wriggle away from Marly's hold.

"Wow," Nicole says a couple of minutes later, sounding absolutely unimpressed. "I thought you guys wanted to have a serious talk."

They both freeze and look up at her like kids caught stealing from the cookie jar. "We're having a very serious talk." Ilya tries his best to sound earnest. "This is how hockey players have serious talks."

"I actually believe that. Terrifying."

Marly laughs, stands up with surprising grace for someone so large and hauls Ilya up. "Come on, it's already ten. We have less than one hour before the locusts descend. You didn't answer. Yes or no to the kids' question?"

"Yes," Ilya says.

"Do you have stuff to entertain kids?" Nicole asks, looking around dubiously.

"I have a bunch of computer games and all kinds of streaming services. That should do. They can bring their hockey gear and play with the rookies in the backyard," Ilya offers. "Saul is eight, right? Just about Riksy's age."

Marly snorts. "I'm gonna tell Riksy you said that."

Ilya sticks out his tongue.

"Who's eight again?" Nicole asks rhetorically.

"Fine, I'll text the guys that children are welcome and desired." Marly starts typing on his phone. "Carmy wants to know if you're gonna invite girls over."

Ilya frowns. "Do I have to? It's not that kind of party. I don't want strangers here."

When Ilya hosts after afternoon games, he does it in his penthouse close to the TD Garden. Ilya bought and decorated the place to be the ultimate bachelor pad, designed for hosting huge parties.

This house is different. More private. More his. Not many people on the team have actually been here. He doesn't mind the boys and their families coming over but the idea of strangers entering his private space unsettles him.

"No, that's fine. It'll tell the guys it's a team, WAGs and family only event," Marly says and keeps typing. "Nicole, does Rozy's kitchen have an oven?"

"Why are you asking Nicole that?" Ilya protests, affronted. "Of course I have an oven. I have two actually." Ilya only ever uses one when he bothers to use one at all but the kitchen was already equipped with two when he bought the house.

"Varkov wants to know," Marly explains. "You said people could bring their own food and apparently his wife has been marinating a pork leg since this morning. Varky just realized that he should've asked if you had an oven first."

"A pork leg," Ilya repeats slowly, feeling like he's missing something. He looks around his kitchen worriedly.

"Wow, the WAGs chat just exploded," Nicole says. "Everyone is calling dibs on the second oven. We might need a referee for that wrestling match."

"Marly, what's going on?"

"Here," Marly says gleefully, "Read. It's entertaining." He hands his phone over, opened on the Rozless Raiders group chat. Messages keep popping up faster than Ilya can read.

The guys have gone crazy. Everyone wants to bring some kind of food and they're trying and failing to coordinate who gets to bring what. Apparently, Ilya's offhand remark about having no food at his place, telling the guys to bring their own fancy stuff, was taken as an order to show off the WAGs' cooking skills and the best dishes from favorite restaurants.

Vicky and Kohny are fighting because they both want to bring oysters and lobster rolls from Row 34 and can't agree on who gets dibs. Ilya scrolls up and reads through the insanity with awe. It seems it was Kohny's idea originally but Vicky is claiming that being a Boston native and having team seniority gives him priority and Kohny needs to find a different restaurant if he wants to show off.

Ilya slides the phone back to Marly and asks, "Have they all gone mad?"

Marly snorts. "Apparently. I'm surprised you haven't yet. I know you keep your penthouse stocked like it's a Prohibition-era speakeasy, but do you have enough drinks here for everyone? I know how you get when you don't have people's favorite drinks available."

Ilya snaps to attention. "Marly," he says with horror. "I don't have enough drinks for everyone. I have Coke and vodka, your stupid craft beer, Nicole's teas, Sveta's favorite wines, Vicki's watery beer, rum for Riksy and ginger ale."

"Isn't Riksy too young to drink alcohol?" Nicole asks.

"I'm Russian. He's Swedish. We don't believe in your arbitrary American drinking age."

"Does Riksy like ginger ale? I've never seen him order it," Marly says with a frown.

"Pay attention!" Ilya snaps. "What time is it? We only have 40 minutes left. We need to go get the stuff from the penthouse. No, wait, Bauer's is closer. We can buy everything there. We have to drop by your place to get the pick-up first. My beautiful, sexy girls aren't designed for something as undignified as hauling cargo."

"Twelve cars and all of them together barely have enough trunk space to carry a six-pack," Marly teases him. "I came with the pick-up. That's why we are early. I thought you'd panic once you realized that you didn't have enough drinks for everyone."

"I'm panicking," Ilya admits. "Marl, you're the best. Nicole, I wanna kiss your man. We should add he's best to reasons why you married him."

She laughs and kisses Marly. "Yes, and once you teach him how to brew tea properly, he'll be absolutely perfect. Now go. I'll hold the fort and let people in if they come before you're back."

Chapter End Notes

This chapter kept growing and growing and growing. I Mari-Kondo 5000+ words and it still went well over 10,000. I hope you enjoy it.

It was fun to explore how Ilya and Marly manage the locker room and things like hazing, which is such an intrinsic and heavily controversial part of hockey culture with many many documented cases of abuse.

No beta. We continue to die like Shane's attempt at heterosexuality. RIP spelling and grammar.

Ilya: Wow, I don't know why the older guys weren't upset with me when I was made captain after just two years.

Marly: You've been our captain even before the front office caught up and finally gave you the C, idiot.

Ilya: You're very wrong. You don't even know how to boil water. Shut up.

Chapter 8

Chapter Notes

Ilya had forgotten how much he loves to host the team, to see all of his boys together under his roof. It feels different this time. Better. It's strange to have them in his house and even stranger to see the sunlight streaming through the large windows, illuminating everything.

The house doesn't seem as large with 40 plus people laughing and talking, using every chair available. Ilya's too large couch is so crowded that some of the WAGs are sitting on their partners' lap while some of the guys sit on the floor, trashtalking each other while they play Rocket League on Ilya's PS4.

There are no disco lights, no couples making out in hidden corners, no puck bunnies throwing themselves at them to brag about having had sex with famous hockey players. The house smells of Anna's pork roast and Laura's amazing high protein garlic bread. His dining table—built for twelve people and never hosting more than four—has been transformed into a makeshift buffet, overflowing with everyone's favorite dishes.

The sun is surprisingly strong for late March, and outside the air smells of spring. The house is full and warm. Children are running around, chasing each other in between peals of laughter. It feels like a large family gathering, not like something a multimillionaire partyboy trying too hard to prove himself would ever organize.

Ilya catches himself smiling at the oddest times, standing still and looking around, surprised by how genuinely happy it makes him to have the team, their partners and children in his house, exactly like this. It's the first family-friendly event Ilya has ever hosted and he... loves it. There's a pang of sadness too whenever he sees Nicole, Maria, Laura and the other WAGs laughing and drinking wine, sitting close to their partners. Known. Accepted. Visible. He'll never have that with Shane. But the pain is old, familiar. A chronic illness that will never fully heal. Something Ilya needs to learn to live with.

He ends up in the backyard, surrounded by a gaggle of children, the rookies and Zaddy, all of them geared up, as excited to skate as Ilya himself is.

"Okay, everyone," he says, using his captain's voice. The children turn to look at him with wide, attentive eyes, listening raptly. "Are you ready to play?"

"Yes!" They shout excitedly.

"We start with the clown goalie." Ilya points to the plywood board covering the net. A large hole at the center of the board is painted to look like the mouth of a clown, the perfect round shape giving the clown face a surprised, almost offended look. When Ilya had been a kid, putting a puck through it had always made him proud. "He's such a bad goalie that everyone laughs at him."

The children giggle and Ilya feels warm remembering his grandfather. He made playing the game feel like an adventure for Ilya to embark on.

He's glad now that he took the time to rescue the few things he cared enough to bring over from his apartment in Russia before leaving everything to Alexei. The old boards had been stored in the basement, covered in dust, almost forgotten. Ilya had never managed to make himself throw them away, even long after he stopped playing children's games with hockey gear.

Alexei would have gotten rid of them, and Ilya couldn't bear the thought of the last few things he had from his mother's side of the family ending up in the trash. He paid an outrageous amount of money to fly the old boards overseas. Now, it feels like kismet: The last pieces of the only part of his family he cared about bringing joy to the children of his teammates in Boston.

"Okay, youngest kid first," Ilya calls. "Risky, you start."

"I'm not the youngest," Riksy protests, startled.

"What! Of course you are. Sophia, isn't he younger than you?" Ilya asks Hammer's daughter, who's four and by far the youngest of the lot.

She studies Riksy carefully and shakes her head. "No. He's very old."

The rookies cackle and Riksy looks momentarily confused, like he doesn't know if he should take that matter-of-fact statement as a compliment or an insult.

"Really?" Ilya pretends to ponder this, eying Riksy critically. "You're absolutely right," he finally agrees, nodding at Sophia like she's a scientist who just made a world-changing discovery. "He is very old. You should go first."

She grabs her hockey stick with both hands and states without the slightest trace of self-doubt, "Yes."

Ilya crouches down in front of her, balancing on his skates with ease. "Listen carefully." He lowers his voice, even though he knows the others can hear him. "I can teach you how to become scary ice monster. It's big Russian secret. Do you want to learn?"

She gives the question the same intense consideration she gave Riksy's age minutes before. "Yes."

"Great! First step. You must learn the scary ice monster secret greeting." Ilya makes a growling sound and scrunches his face, baring his teeth and widening his eyes as much as he can.

She giggles.

"Now you do it."

She growls making the cutest spooky face Ilya's ever seen.

Ilya lets himself fall on his butt and clutches his chest dramatically. "You scared me! That was impressive."

She giggles again, but when Ilya rightens himself and skates closer, she listens attentively, her eyes big and curious, taking everything in.

"Now, step two. This is the most important secret. The arms of a true ice monster end in the blade of the hockey stick," Ilya explains carefully. "This isn't just a stick. It must be part of you." He corrects her hold carefully and adjusts it, testing her grip. "If I touch the tip of your nose, do you feel it?" He boops her lightly and she nods. "If I touch the tip of your blade..." He grazes his own stick softly against the tip of her blade without pressure. "Do you feel it?" She shakes her head. "Then it's not part of you yet." He continues to adjust her grip making minor corrections until she can feel the touch.

"I felt it!" she exclaims excitedly, with the eternal wonder and pride of children who have mastered a new skill.

"Very well! Now, I teach you how to be so scary that the clown goalie will eat all the pucks you throw at him."

He makes her swing her hockey stick and corrects her hold after she moves, making sure it's properly aligned with her body. She absorbs the correction like a sponge, following Ilya's cues with blind trust.

When he's finally satisfied, he steps back and lets her alone in front of five pucks. "Remember, the hockey stick is part of you. It does what you want like your hands, arms and legs. It's not something you hold, it's something you are. Do you feel it?"

"Yes," she reassures him and by the way she's holding it, Ilya knows that she does.

"Okay, hit the puck and make the clown eat it."

She nods and locks in, gripping the handle exactly as he'd taught her, relaxed enough to free her wrist movements but with a precision that will stop anyone from trying to strip it away. She hits the puck perfectly and it lasers through the air right into the back of the net through the clown's mouth.

There's a moment of silence and then the children start cheering and her older brother says, "Sheesh! Soph, what a shot!"

She looks at Ilya with awe, like she can't believe it herself. "I did it!" Then she scans the backyard vibrating with excitement until she finds Hammer, who's watching from outside the rink. "Daddy, did you see me? I'm a scary ice monster now!"

Hammer looks as though she just won the Stanley Cup. "That was brilliant, babygirl! I couldn't have done it better."

"You really couldn't have, Hammy," Ilya shouts at him, unable to let such an easy opening pass. "It's good thing she takes after her mother."

Hammer rolls his eyes and rubs the tip of his nose with his middle finger, pretending to scratch an itch that isn't there. Ilya grins widens, realizing that nobody can tell him to fuck off while the children are present. What an amazing day!

"I'm gonna do it again," Sophia states and skates back into position, biting her lips in concentration.

Ilya knows just from how she's holding the stick—going through all the subtle checks he taught her minutes before—that she's gonna score. And she does, a second time, then a third. The fourth puck goes wide, but before Ilya can correct her grip she readjusts it herself, hits the fifth puck without waiting for Ilya's help, and buries it.

Ilya lifts her and throws her in the air—she weighs nothing—catches her and spins her around, chanting, "Ice monster! Ice monster!"

She laughs out loud, carefree and happy, the way children always are before the world forces them to grow up.

He puts her down after a couple of spins and when he asks, "Who wants to become next ice monster?" The clamor of voices redoubles with all the kids suddenly wanting Ilya to teach them. "Sophia, go with old man Risky over there and practice shooting on the other net."

Ilya loses track of time. The kids follow his instructions like ducklings and Ilya loves how easy it is to teach them. He can correct their mistakes without having to worry about offending anyone. When Ilya shows them a better way to hold their stick or a good trick to increase their skating speed and make their turns sharper, they listen attentively and try their best to implement his suggestions. The sheer joy in their eyes when they realize it works it's such a fucking rush that Ilya can't get enough.

Around one o'clock, the WAGs start herding them back into the house for lunch. Ilya feels as though he's a child himself, trying to cajole a bit more ice time, refusing to stop playing, but Maria is absolutely unmoved.

Ilya forgives her as soon as she puts a plate filled with pork and rice pilaf in front of him. A whiff of it makes his stomach growl. He inhales the food, demolishes seconds, and after some consideration decides that he can absolutely handle a third.

He's strategically crowding his plate with every side dish available, a masterpiece of architecture that is starting to resemble the Tower of Babel, when LeClaire's voice startles him. "You'll make a good coach, if you ever want to go that route after you retire."

His plate tilts precariously. "Coach!" Ilya steadies the food with his free hand before it can topple. "I didn't know you were here."

What the fuck? Why is LeClaire in his house? Ilya pastes the most brilliant smile he can muster on his face. "It's great to have you here," he lies with the ease of someone who spent his whole childhood training to hide his wariness from authority figures. "When did you arrive?"

"About an hour ago. You were in the rink with the kids," LeClaire says easily, unaware of Ilya's panic. He smiles at Ilya—Canadians smile so fucking much, all teeth and warmth and politeness. It still means nothing. "I hope you don't mind too much that Reilly and I took advantage of your open invitation."

The Assistant Coach is in his house, too? It takes all of Ilya's acting skills to keep the smile pasted on his face without it wavering. "No. Of course not. You're... what's English word?...welcome. Da. Very welcome." Ilya controls his expression like his life depends on it. Maybe it does. "Team will be fit for morning skate tomorrow despite alcohol. I make sure." English is deserting him. He keeps dropping stupid articles that he knows belong there and his accent is thick even to his own ears. This whole conversation is a disaster.

LeClaire's lips curl up, half amused. "Don't worry, Roz. I'm not so old that I've forgotten what it's like to be in your twenties and playing for an MLH team." His smile shifts into something mischievous. "Good times."

"Yes," Ilya agrees, relaxing some. Partying and alcohol is part of hockey. Boys being boys.

"Reilly and I will get out of your hair soon, but I didn't want to leave before saying at least hello. Too rude," LeClaire babbles. "If we'd known this was a team party we wouldn't have crashed it. God knows I wouldn't have wanted my coaches seeing some of the things we got up to when I was the one wearing a jersey." He lowers his voice and leans in as though to share a secret, "Although, if I'm being honest, this is much more wholesome than anything I expected from one of the infamous Rozanov's parties."

Ilya has the sudden realization that LeClaire is embarrassed to have come. "It's not really a party," Ilya reassures him, the ingrained Russian hospitality his mother instilled in him taking over. LeClaire is here now, in Ilya's house, which means he's Ilya's guest, which means it's Ilya's duty as a host to make him feel welcome. "Just getting together before things get serious with playoffs. More team bonding than party. Stay. We have enough food to feed an army and you and Coach Reilly are part of the team, too."

Loud shouts and laughter come from the living room followed by Zaddy's voice chanting victoriously, "Eat dirt, Carmy! I won!"

"Fucker, you cheated!" Carmichael complains.

"No swearing, boys," one of the WAGs reminds them. Ilya doesn't recognize her voice.

Seggie's mocking, loud laughter spills through the open door. "He wiped the floor with you, Carmy. Don't be a sore loser. Scoot over, crybaby. It's my turn now. I'll avenge you."

"I'm not a crybaby. He cheated," Carmy whines, but Ilya knows everyone will ignore him. Carmy is an incredibly sore loser.

Ilya gives LeClaire an apologetic face. "Stay. But maybe don't judge too hard?" he suggests tentatively.

"What happens at Rozy's stays at Rozy's. Don't worry," LeClaire reassures him, crossing his heart. "If I'm being honest, I knew you didn't actually mean us when you said anyone could drop by, but after Riksy's interview both Reilly and I were too curious and couldn't resist the temptation to snoop."

"What interview?" Ilya frowns, looking around for Riksy, but he's nowhere in sight.

"You didn't watch Riksy's post-game interview after he scored his hat trick?" LeClaire sounds surprised.

"No." Ilya huffs. "I don't watch post-games interviews. Reporters always ask same stupid questions and everyone always give same stupid answers." Ilya imitates the droning tone of reporters, "What do you think was the key to winning the game tonight?" Ilya scoffs. "Blah, blah, team play. Blah, blah, we could play our game. Blah, blah, credit to our goalie. Blah, blah, we just want to go take a shower but Carol will kill us if we tell that to your face so we'll blah blah some more."

LeClaire laughs. "Carol would indeed kill you if you ever said that to a reporter. For someone who knows so well how the shtick with the press should go you deviate from the script much too often for her comfort," he admonishes Ilya.

Ilya grins, unrepentant. "Carol can transfer to the Metros and do PR for them, if she wants boring captain who gives boring answers."

"Well, you've taught your young padawan well. Riksy's answers weren't boring." LeClaire pulls out his phone and starts searching. "Here. Watch. Reilly and I wanted to talk to you about it during the weekly check-in meeting anyway."

Ilya puts his plate down and takes the phone warily. "Is Riksy in trouble?"

Riksy wasn't withdrawn or worried after the Buffalo game, quite the contrary. He gets super anxious if he believes he did something wrong. Whatever he told the press can't be that bad.

"Nobody is in trouble, least of all Riksy. Just watch it," LeClaire says, amused. "I don't want to spoil the surprise."

Ilya glances at the thumbnail and gasps. A fifteen-minute interview for a regular-season game against Buffalo?! These things usually last five. Ilya hits play, curious despite himself.

Four minutes in, Ilya is starting to zone out. "Coach, you said his answers were not boring," Ilya complains. "He's one word away from hitting a Hollander bingo."

LeClaire spurts a mouthful of beer and coughs, chocking on a laugh. "A Hollander bingo?" He wipes his face with a paper napkin, still coughing and chuckling at the same time.

In the video, a reporter asks, "How does it feel to have broken Hollander's record as youngest player in the league to score a hat trick?"

"Really?" Ilya beams at LeClaire. "My rookie broke Hollander's precious record? I can't wait to rub that in Hollander's face."

In the video, Riksy looks clearly surprised and slightly overwhelmed. "Oh, wow, I don't know. Are you sure? I don't track such things. I just want to play my best game and be here for the team. Boston took a chance on me, allowing me to play at this level. I'm just thankful for the opportunity to contribute."

"No! Riksy, why?" Ilya puts a finger into his mouth and makes a gagging sound. "There goes the full Hollander bingo. Be here for the team." Ilya sighs and shakes his head in mock despair.

"He's about to take a U-turn from the Hollander script. Watch," LeClaire promises, an amused, indulgent tilt to his lips.

Another reporter asks, "You were a second-round draft pick, and yet you're the only player from your draft year currently playing in the MLH. What do you think Boston saw that others didn't?

Riksy looks nervously to the side to where Ilya knows LeClaire usually stands during interviews. The reporters' microphones inch closer to him, pressing in. Sharks that just sensed blood. It's obvious that Riksy doesn't quite know how to answer that question.

"I mean... I don't think anyone oversaw anything. I wasn't good." He gives a small half-chuckle and wipes the sweat from his forehead. "I only got the call-up because the Raiders were desperate. A lot of our key guys were injured early in the season and there weren't that many options available. I got lucky."

Ah, shucks. Boston's fans are gonna love that. A cute, nice, innocent baby rookie amidst the pack of savage big bad Boston Raiders.

The reporter calls Riksy on his bullshit. "Many players get called up to the MLH and have similar opportunities, but not many are good enough to stay permanently. That has nothing to do with luck."

Riksy gives the camera a shy smile. "My first weeks in the MLH weren't particularly impressive. People forget that." He shrugs. "If I hadn't started billeting with Rozy, it'd have taken me longer to get where I am today. That was luck."

"You're billeting with Rozanov?" Another reporter jumps in, honing in on a potential scoop. "How's that? Why do you believe that it impacted your game so much?" The guy is from a local Boston network and knows that adding Ilya's name to the story will make it more marketable.

Riksy looks a bit panicky, as though he isn't sure if he said a wrong thing or not. He glances off camera to his right again, checking with LeClaire and then visibly relaxes. "I only billeted with him for a couple of months."

Riksy had been stuck in an awkward limbo. After three weeks playing with the Raiders, his team-paid hotel housing in Boston was about to expire, but his roster spot was so precarious that he didn't want to waste money signing an expensive lease. He tried to hide it, but Ilya noticed how anxious he was about Boston's high rent prices and his inability to find something affordable. It took only minimal prodding for the kid to confess that he wanted to save as much money as he could to help his older brother pay for his postgraduate studies in the U.K.

Ilya knew from bitter experience that an entry salary, even at MLH level, drained quickly when you were sending large amounts of money home. He had room to spare at his place and even though it wasn't something he did too often he found himself offering his house.

"It was meant as a temporary thing," Risky explains. "I was searching for a place in Boston and Rozy told me to stay at his house until Seggie was cleared to play again and I was sent back down."

In the video, the journalist latches onto Riksy's words, trying to stir trouble the way journalists love to do. "It sounds as though Rozanov also failed to recognize your potential. Hearing that from your captain must have been discouraging."

Riksy shakes his head dismissively. "Nah, that's just Rozy. He has strong opinions about hockey and doesn't care to sugarcoat them. On my first day training with the team, he told me I skated like a stranded whale. Chirping is like breathing for Rozy; he can't turn it off."

Ilya grins proudly when he hears that.

In the video Riksy gives a half-embarrassed chuckle, before he goes on. "A couple of days after I moved into his place we watched a hockey game together and Rozy's commentary was so brutal that I blurted, 'Gosh, Roz, being called a stranded whale is starting to sound like a compliment.'"

The microphone catches chuckles from the off and it's hard to tell if it's the journalists or some of the Raiders listening in.

Riksy lowers his head a little and his cheeks go pink. "Rozy told me that it was a compliment." The background laughter gets louder. Definitely the guys, then. Riksy laughs, too, encouraged by the reaction. "He explained that sooner or later I'd get myself unstranded and become a dangerous killer whale." He cards his fingers through his hair nervously. "Roz doesn't say things like that unless he means them. He wouldn't say I had potential unless he saw it. So I did something every Raider warned me to never do: I asked Rozy what he thought I should improve. And boy did he deliver. He gave me the most thorough, ruthless, take-no-prisoners assessment ever. Now that was discouraging." There are some awkward chuckles.

Ilya's stomach twists with guilt. Another point to Marly's theory that he needs to be mindful of the Raiders' fragile self-esteem. He hadn't meant to hurt Riksy's feelings.

In the video Riksy shrugs. "Rozy will open his house for you and fedex your favorite drink through a specialty importer if you mention in an off-handed comment that you kinda miss that particular taste of home. He'll give you the keys to any of his super expensive cars without blinking, but he'll never be anything but brutally honest when it comes to hockey. It's not in his nature. So I swallowed my pride and asked him what I should tackle first if I wanted to get myself unstranded."

Riksy smiles shyly. "I thought he'd give me a list of things to focus on during training, but instead he went, 'Okay, I'll show you.' What followed what the most fun and yet intense hockey bootcamp of my life. So, yeah, I got lucky. None of those other rookies that are sent down after a short stint in the MLH had Ilya I'm-the-best-player-of-my-generation-frigging Rozanov giving them one-on-one tailored training. He made the difference." The video cuts off.

Ilya's heart beats faster and there's a warm sensation in his chest he can't name and doesn't know if he likes or not. Like getting a hug he didn't ask for. He's frozen with surprise, unsure how to react.

He hands LeClaire his phone back and falls back on flippancy to hide his strange reaction. "You're right. Hollander would never admit in front of reporters that I'm best player. Still, a Hollander bingo is unforgivable." He makes himself sound appalled, "Do you think Riksy is asking Carol for one-on-one tailored training, too?"

LeClaire snorts. Then, his expression shifts, and Ilya tenses. That's LeClaire's serious coach face. "Why didn't you tell us that there were things in training we weren't addressing properly?"

Ilya frowns. "I do not interfere with training."

"That's not—" LeClaire stops, visibly struggling to find the right words. "We asked Risky about the skill assessment you did with him."

"I did not do a skill assessment," Ilya defends himself. "I just mentioned things I'd exploit if he was on rival team. His technique was all... uhrg..." He makes a disgruntled sound. Riksy's technique had been painful for Ilya to watch. He didn't understand why nobody fixed it before. "Did you know he was trained by a fisherman until he was 16? It's no chirp. It's truth."

Riksy was born and raised in Gargnäs, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Northern Sweden, hours away from any major city. The town children were coached by an old fisherman who did it as a hobby. Riksy had his first professional hockey coach when he joined the Hockeygymnasium at sixteen. It was a miracle that barely two years later he'd already been good enough to make the draft. Shane and Ilya had been drafted young, but they'd had the best trainers Canada and Russia had to offer since they were children. Riksy's raw talent was impressive.

LeClaire raises his eyebrows and snorts. "Yes, we actually talk to prospects during the combine and study their background, Roz. He had talent but he lacked the necessary skills. Every scout knew that. We liked what we saw, but both the GM and the coaching staff thought he'd need a couple of years in the AHL to develop to his full potential. If we'd known that a more targeted, personal training would give us such a jump in performance, we would have arranged it sooner. He's become such a steal. Absolutely phenomenal in such a short time. I noticed it, Reilly noticed it, the GM, the analysts, the press, everyone. We just didn't know it was because you were training him on the side."

"I was not training him on the side," Ilya hurries to clarify. "He wanted to beat me at the Anisimov game and with his arthritic fisherman technique he was never going to. We only ever played here. Never in the arena. Zero training disruption. You cannot be angry with me for that."

"I'm not angry." LeClaire sounds surprised. "That assessment you did—"

"It was not assessment," Ilya interrupts him. "You're making it sound serious. It wasn't."

"Fine. The how-to-unstrand-your-whale checklist. Better?" Sarcasm drips from his voice. LeClaire studies him with a frown. "I'm not angry with you, Roz. Don't look like that."

Damn. Ilya schools expression to look more carefree, but it's probably too late.

LeClaire shakes his head and sighs. "This isn't the place to talk about this. We'll discuss it on Monday during our captain-coach weekly check-in."

"No. Now." Ilya knows himself. He won't be able to stop worrying about it. He'd rather get it over with. "Tell me what is problem. I will fix."

"There's no problem." LeClaire puts on his nice-and-supportive face. It's the one he uses when the Raiders get knocked out of the playoffs. It usually goes along with an almost believable speech about how proud he is that they made it so far. Total bullshit. No coach is proud of losers. Ilya prefers LeClaire's white lies over Sokolov's angry shouts and his father's icy disapproval, but that doesn't mean Ilya believes him.

"Roz," LeClaire explains, "Riksy wasn't advancing as fast as we needed him to. We have over twenty players to train and he wasn't a priority. If you hadn't helped him, we'd have sent him down to the AHL. That would've been a mistake. What I'm trying very badly to say is that we want you to keep working with him. Reilly and I realized you're a resource we haven't been using as much as we should have. Are there are other players you believe could be unstranded?" He smiles when he says the word.

"Some," Ilya admits carefully. He dislikes where this conversation is going. Marly probably wouldn't tell the coaches how bad everyone is at hockey. Unbidden, a part of him wonders: What would Marly do? Ilya doesn't know. "Maybe you're right. Now is not right time. We will discuss during weekly check-in meeting on Monday." That will give Ilya time to talk to Marly.

LeClaire nods. "That's fair. I look forward to it."

Ilya looks around, but nobody is paying attention to them. Most of the guys are in the backyard or in the living room playing with Ilya's PS4. Tentatively, despite his better judgement, he says, almost daringly, "If you give Riksy more ice time, he'll prove even better." He doesn't understand why LeClaire still has Riksy in the fourth line.

"I know. We've been increasing his ice time steadily," LeClaire agrees. "Reilly and I talked about it and decided not to rush it. We'll go deep in the playoffs this season. You and the other veterans know what that means. Playoff hockey demands more, physically and mentally. It's always a shock for rookies. Even great ones like you and Hollander struggled the first time. We're gonna need Riksy's line for depth and I want them as healthy and rested as possible before they get thrown into the deep end."

"Oh. That makes sense," Ilya admits. He's never been one for long-term planning, but a good head coach has to consider the end goal. The way to the Stanley Cup is grueling.

Ilya's first year playing for Boston had been amazing but the intensity of the playoffs hadn't been something he'd been prepared for. At the time, Ilya had been deeply disappointed in himself when Boston got knocked out after the first playoff round, even if they made it farther than Montreal.

In hindsight, he realized that the team didn't have all the pieces they needed. Smitty had been a monster defending the net and Ilya and Marly had been on fire, but their right winger was slower than molasses and Boston lacked depth in center. Keller's line had been a disaster. The fact that they—a rebuilding team that barely managed to clinch a wild card spot—forced the Admirals—the winner of the President's Trophy—into a game seven series had been a victory in itself and something no one had expected.

At nineteen, Ilya couldn't see it like that. He'd wanted so badly to win it all, to go home to Russia and have some physical proof of achievement. Instead, he'd gone back empty handed. No Cup. No MVP. Nothing. Even the Calder for best rookie of the year had gone to Hollander despite Montreal not making the playoffs.

It had been so hard to feel proud when no matter how hard he tried nothing he did was good enough. He gave his father the puck from his sixtieth goal and told him he'd been the youngest player to ever achieve over sixty goals as a rookie in the Raiders' franchise history and his father looked at Ilya with those cold eyes of his and said, 'If sixty goals weren't enough to make your team win, then you should have scored eighty. I expect better next season.' And all Ilya had been able to answer was, 'Yes, Papa.' Because the truth was that Ilya had expected better from himself, too.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" LeClaire asks, snapping Ilya back to the present. "Just because you have an opinion doesn't mean I'll agree with it blindly. You're right, game strategy is my responsibility as coach, but Ilya, a good strategist uses every resource at his disposal. Ignoring your opinion would be like taking a shot at the goal when I don't have a clear line just because I don't want to pass the puck to someone who's better positioned. You remember how hard we worked with you the first two years to stop you from doing that?"

"Yes," Ilya admits with chagrin, unable to meet LeClaire's eyes. He'd been a terrible puck-hugger when he first came from Russia. It had been hard to unlearn. He still preferred scoring over assisting, but he wasn't stupid about it anymore.

"It'd be very hypocritical of me to lecture you about that and then turn around and do the same thing," LeClaire teases him. "I'm passing you the puck, Roz. If you have a clearer line to score when it comes to improving the overall team performance during training then take the shot and tell me. Okay?"

"Okay," Ilya agrees, feeling overwhelmed.

Kovar and Dobby suddenly barge into the kitchen to get another round of beer for everyone. Ilya rescues his plate, adds another lobster roll to it and attaches himself to the guys. A perfect excuse to extricate himself from LeClaire.

He finds himself back on the rink when Sophia squeals his name and beckons him, her bright, eager smile impossible to deny.

He's keenly aware of LeClaire's and Reilly's eyes on him, but once the game gets going he forgets everything but the ice. The Anisimov game demands absolute concentration. It isn't a team sport, but a solo battle. Only skating skill, speed and shot accuracy matter—Ilya's best assets. Even saddled with an eight-point handicap, he keeps winning. Desperate to beat him, the rookies convince Ilya to transform the solo contest into a team showdown: Ilya and the kids against Zaddy and the rookies. Each member will play a round and tally the score for a final team total.

Ilya names his team Ice Monsters, and Zaddy in a surprising show of cleverness names his own team Monster Hunters.

Under Ilya's careful instruction, the kids set out on a mission to gather the adults and win them over. Their wide eyes and bright smiles work exactly as Ilya intended. Soon, everyone is in the backyard cheering loudly for the Ice Monsters while the Monster Hunters are booed without a single supporter to their name.

They're MLH players, though. Competitiveness runs in their blood. Neither the boos nor the fact that they're skating against children makes the rookies give quarter. Knowing that Ilya will never let them live it down if they're bested by a team of kindergartners is just additional incentive. By the time it's Ilya's turn to skate—he's the last player—the Monster Hunters are nineteen points up and the Ice Monsters are about to lose spectacularly.

This is Ilya's game, though. His grandfather taught it to him. He doesn't remember a time when he didn't know it. All he needs is a perfect run. Ilya has to bury his allotted five pucks through the smallest openings in the board—the eyes of the clown—which will earn him three points each. The rest comes down to pure speed. He must finish his five runs through the gauntlet in less than a minute without clipping a single cone to lock in five additional points.

"We're winning this one, Monsters!"

"Yes!" The children cheer him on.

The adults are more subdued, thinking it can't be done. But like Ilya told Otter, sometimes logic gets in the way of dreaming. Ilya's victories have only ever come from trying—no long-term plan, no caution, no buts—just sheer arrogance and enough spite to prove the naysayers wrong.

He centers himself, breathing in and out, until all that's left is the ice.

Connor, who volunteered to keep track of time and points, chants, "Ready. Steady. Go!"

Ilya explodes forward, flying through the gauntlet at breathtaking speed. His edge work is as precise as a surgeon's blade as he weaves the puck through the obstacles. He shaves off seconds with every tight turn, skating as though his life depends on it. The children scream and jump, cheering him on and Ilya grins madly, the speed and adrenaline getting to his head better than any drug ever could.

Sasha and Alexei never got it, how even cocaine seemed flat and unappealing, when Ilya could have this instead. The ice. The chase. The cheers of the crowd. Even their boos. And Ilya at the center of it all, burning bright, living on borrowed time, but living.

He makes it through the last obstacle and shoots the puck through the left eye with perfect accuracy, no hesitation, no doubt. One in. Four to go.

He skates back as fast as he can, lungs burning with exertion. The rookies boo him as he snatches the second puck, pivots and lurches forward again. His wrist movements precise and elegant like a symphony conductor. The second puck goes in. Another burst of speed, the gauntlet familiar now, his body adapting, learning, improving with every round. The third puck hits the back of the net at a perfect angle and fourteen seconds later the fourth puck follows. The children and his teammates spur him on, cheering loudly, chanting, "Go! Go! Go!" starting to believe, too. He picks up the last puck and flies through the obstacles at full speed. He clears the last cone and doesn't bother to break, aiming at the net mid motion. The puck lasers through the air like a high-precision missile, clears the three-point hole and buries itself into the net.

"Time!" Connor calls. "58.5 seconds! Holy f-puck!" Connor stops himself from swearing at the last moment. "Twenty points! The Ice Monsters wiiiiiiiiiin!"

The children shout and skate towards him and Ilya laughs as he spins with them in circles in an improvised celly.

"I can't even be mad that you won." Zaddy shakes his head, laughing. "That was amazing. Marly will kill me for worsening your swollenheadnitis, but damn. You gotta teach us your secrets, Rozy."

"Not today, he won't," LeClaire interrupts, coming closer. "Sorry, boys. I have to put my coach hat on despite having promised that I wouldn't. You've been skating too long and today it's supposed to be a rest day." He stares at Ilya and shakes his head, exasperatedly fond. "If you've twisted an ankle on that last turn I'd have been very displeased."

Ilya laughs, unconcerned. "That's just children's play, Coach. Could do it with my eyes closed."

"Alright," LeClaire says a bit louder, "Reilly and I will add some fun games into our practice with Rozy's help, but no more ice time for anyone today. The best team won. Now go celebrate." He gives Zaddy a mocking smirk and adds, "Or go lick your wounds."

"Burn," Carmichael laughs. "Oh, who's crying now, Zaddy?"

Zaddy rolls his eyes. "Like you could have done any better."

"We're best. We're awesome. We're fastest," Ilya sing-songs and the children join him in the chant.

"Marly," Carmy calls, "collect your toddler. He's out of control."

Ilya guffaws, but goes easily when Marly drags him away. They move inside and lose the hockey gear. Ilya's PS4 becomes the center of gravity once again, and they continue their uncoordinated yet highly effective combined raid on the food and drinks.

The children play hide and seek, shrieking and laughing loudly whenever the chase is on. Ilya waves away Maria's concerns that they might break something and even joins them for a couple of games, officially cementing his position as ultimate Child MVP.

Things wind down slowly. Around six, Sophia crashes on Hammer's chest, falling asleep between one breath and the next and that seems to be a signal for the guys with kids to start saying their goodbyes.

Half an hour later Stormy slams his hand on the table with a disgusted grunt and swears never to play poker with Fellsy again.

"I'll play with you," Ilya offers from the couch, batting his eyes at Fellsy.

"No, thank you." Fellsy collects his money and kisses Laura, grinning proudly. "I know b-better."

"Everyone knows better," Vicky grumbles. He'd folded a couple of minutes before, leaving Stormy and Fellsy to finish the game.

"Cluck, cluck, cluck," Ilya mocks, "I only hear chickens." It's not Ilya's fault that he can read everyone like an open book.

"Yes, but ch-chickens with fe-feathers still on," Fellsy says sagely and the guys laugh.

After that things die down fast. The WAGs distribute the leftovers and, using magical powers Ilya won't question, manage to dispel the chaos. The guys put the furniture and chairs back in their original place, following Ilya's instructions, and in less than twenty minutes Ilya's house looks exactly as it did before everyone arrived.

Ilya's left oddly bereft, as though something has been stolen from him. "Marly, am I becoming Scott Hunter?" he asks after everyone is gone. "I just turned down an invitation to go clubbing later tonight. You must do your duty for mankind and shoot me before I start killing people like a Jurassic Park dinosaur."

Nicole snorts. "It's called growing up and becoming a real boy, Pinocchio."

"I don't like this." Maybe being boring is a contagious STD and Shane failed to warn Ilya about it.

"You wanted to talk after the guys were gone," Marly reminds him. "What about?"

"Nothing. It's fine." Talking to Marly had seemed like a good idea at the time but now he realizes it's actually very stupid. "Go finish your sex marathon with Nicole. It's not important."

"You two talk," Nicole offers. "I'll use the time to do some ABSITE prep."

"You don't have to," Ilya reassures her.

"I definitely do," she tells him. "I do sixty qbank questions every day, come hell or high water. I haven't done today's set yet. Talk while I get my prep session in. That way, when Cliff and I finally get home I can put that above-average stamina to the test." She winks at Ilya.

Marly crosses his arms, looking very put-upon. "The two of you are hereby forbidden from talking, mentioning, alluding or in any way referring to my stamina when talking to each other."

Nicole laughs and high-fives Ilya, unrepentant, before she disappears in the direction of Ilya's office.

"So, what's up?" Marly asks after she's gone.

Ilya looks at his empty house. "Marly, am I truly getting old? The coaches were here. Nobody threw up. Not a single condom was used… and I still enjoyed it. I was not in the mood for big penthouse party, but this I liked."

"We've done so many penthouse parties since you bought that place that I've lost count. This was new." Marly looks around. "I enjoyed it, too. Nicole definitely liked it better. The guys with families as well. I've never seen Dobby, Hammer or Kovy stay for more than one or two hours at the penthouse. Maybe we're all growing up."

"Maybe," Ilya says dubiously, having a hard time reconciling this version of himself with the Ilya who came to the U.S. seven years ago—the one who thought fast cars, money, fame and sex was the recipe for happiness. It had been a bitter lesson to learn that happiness was like an Instagram cake. He got all the expensive ingredients, followed every step of the recipe, and his cake still tasted like shit.

"Do you think they would want to do it again? Come here, I mean." The penthouse parties are for the team. Loud music, women, alcohol. An opportunity for everyone to have fun without having to worry about paparazzis or overeager fans selling pictures of their shenanigans to TMZ and Puck Daddy. Wanting the team at his house feels like something he's doing for himself. Greedy. Selfish.

"100%. 200%. 500%."

"You don't know how to count, Marly. It's embarrassing." Ilya sighs, aware that he's stalling.

He pulls his favorite vodka out of the freezer and pours shots for the two of them. Over the years, he has successfully educated Marly to appreciate high-quality vodka the way Russians do. They toast, clink their glasses and down it in one gulp. It's crips and clean, so perfectly smooth that it doesn't burn going down, only leaving a pleasant warmth in its wake.

"Coach wants me to be a rat," Ilya confesses after they put the glasses down.

"More than you already are?" Marly asks with surprise.

"No. Not a chirping rat. Rat as in..." He searches for the right English word, angry when it doesn't come immediately. "Tattle rat?"

"Tattletale," Marly supplies immediately.

"Yes, that. Coach wants me to tell him when the guys are bad at hockey."

"Hmm." Marly plays with the empty shot glass, turning it around and around. "Makes sense."

Ilya furrows his brow. "Does it?"

Marly gives a half shrug, scrunching his nose. "Everyone knows Riks is your favorite. You aren't subtle, brother. But when being the favorite means a hat trick that beats Hollander's record..." He trails off and snorts. "Of course they want you to help."

"You think I should?" he asks dubiously.

"Yes, Roz, of course you should. Vicky and I wouldn't be nearly as effective if you weren't constantly pushing us to boost our speed and deking skills to meet your impossibly high standards."

"It's not the same," Ilya defends himself. "You're on my line. If Coach gives us a drill and our execution is shit, it's my responsibility to fix it. Besides, Seggie gets impossible if his line scores more points than ours. It can't be allowed."

Marly rolls his eyes. "Ah, the true rivalry. If only Hollander knew."

"Seggie wishes." The familiar humor helps. "I don't get it," Ilya admits after a moment, expression serious once more. "You always hit me when I tell our guys that they suck," he complains. "But it's fine if I tell the coaches instead?"

"Don't tell the coaches our guys suck," Marly hurries to say.

"Okay. Good. You don't approve either." Ilya is relieved. "I'll tell LeClaire that I cannot help. Our guys are awesome. None of them suck. LeClaire should not ask me to tattletale. "

"I'm having a déjà-vu of your first year in Boston, when I'd say something and you'd only understand half. What exactly does LeClaire want?"

"I already told you," Ilya snaps, frustrated. He glares at Marly. "This is your fault! If I'd played against Buffalo, I'd have been there to stop Riksy from babbling to stupid reporters." The more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that this is Marly's fault. "Now LeClaire wants me to... I don't know... tell him that everyone sucks and is stranded, too?"

"Let's see if I understand," Marly says calmly. "LeClaire talked to you about Riksy's interview. Yes?"

"Yes."

"And he wants you to... tell him if the other rookies are also... how did you put it?... stranded?"

"Yes. That. Not just the rookies," Ilya clarifies. "Everyone."

"Everyone?" Marly asks.

"Yes! What are you, echo now?" Ilya snaps. This is the price of being lazy and staying in bed. He should've played against Buffalo.

"So... LeClaire wants you to tell him if there are things the guys could improve. Is that it?" Marly speaks slowly, like Ilya is a rabid dog he doesn't want to provoke.

"Yes." Ilya pours himself another shot of vodka and gulps it down, not bothering with a toast.

"And are there?" Marly asks tentatively, cutting through the heavy silence. "Things that the guys should or could improve?"

Ilya glowers. "Of course! You know this. I say it all the time. Fellsy fumbles too many passes. Zaddy gives pucks away like he's a missionary trying to convert pagans and pucks are the Holy Bible. If a puck so much as smiles at Otter's right upper shoulder he lets it in like it's a VIP client and he's a bouncer desperate to earn a tip. Vicky overshoots three out four times and the only reason it doesn't affect our output is because I compensate for it. Hammer—"

"Okay, stop." Marly interrupts him. "Damn. I thought that was just you being the king of chirpers."

"Yes, that too," Ilya admits. "It's not my fault you're all blind and can't see how much you suck."

"It's a good thing that I know chirping is your love language, Roz," Marly points out drily.

Ilya rolls his eyes. "So... are you gonna give me one of your stupid off-ice assists and help me figure out how to tell LeClaire to go fuck himself in polite English?"

"Could you help Fellsy fumble less passes?"

"Probably. If he wants."

"Everyone knows Zaddy has too many turnovers. Hell, Zaddy knows it too. It's the reason why that chirp makes him so angry. Could you help him with that?"

"No!" Ilya cuts him off. "He doesn't want help. I've offered. He gets angry and complains to you that I'm an asshole."

"You are an asshole. There are constructive ways to tell people that there are things they can improve," Marly says curtly.

"If they want ego pats, they can go to you." Ilya refuses to compromise on this. "I already had to learn to chirp in second language. I'm not gonna waste time learning polite ways to tell people their hockey sucks. English is very stupid and people get offended by the smallest things."

"You were nice to the kids today," Marly points out.

"It's different. They wanted to learn." Ilya doesn't know how to explain it. "I asked! They said yes. I told them try this and they did. I didn't force them." Ilya presses his lips tightly, trying to control his anger. He breathes out slowly and adds in a clipped voice, "Look, if the guys on the team want to be lazy, they can. I'm not gonna beat them black and blue to make them become better hockey players. It's not worth it."

Marly blinks. "Right. And Riksy... He wanted to learn, too," he says slowly, "like the kids today."

"Yes."

Marly pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales deeply. "Alright. I get it. Write a list with the most annoying hockey mistakes you believe each of us should fix and we'll go from there."

"Why do I have to write the stupid assessment LeClaire wants? Just help me find a way for him to leave me alone."

"Because he's right. If there are things we can improve, we should. I want another Stanley Cup. We all do." Marly fixes Ilya with a stern look. "Nobody asks you for help because you mock everyone mercilessly. But Riksy said it in the interview: It's who you are. We should know better. We do know better. Write the list and I'll translate Roz-being-Roz into some kind of constructive criticism that won't make LeClaire want to trade the whole team to Winnipeg."

Ilya frowns. If Marly agrees with LeClaire then Ilya should probably listen. Ilya knows that. Still... "I don't like this. What if we lose a game and LeClaire blames me for disrupting training with stupid things?"

Marly gapes. "You're joking, right? Roz, you're a tyrant on the ice. Worst case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde I've ever seen. The moment that whistle blows and the coaches start giving instructions, you go full Russian war general on us and may God have mercy on anyone who doesn't train hard enough to impress you. LeClaire is never gonna blame you for disrupting training. You're the reason we train as hard as we do."

"It's not me the guys have to impress, but the coaches. I don't want LeClaire or Reilly mad at us because we aren't giving our best." It's his duty as captain to ensure everyone performs. The last thing Ilya wants is for the coaches to believe the team lacks discipline. It's the kind of bad rap one never recovers from, no matter how hard one tries. A black mark nothing can erase.

"Ilya, what's really going on here? You don't truly believe LeClaire is gonna be angry with you for helping out, do you?"

Ilya swallows, uncomfortable with Marly's serious face. He should have kept his mouth shut. He can still kill this whole conversation. Marly will accept it if Ilya changes the subject. He always does. Instead, Ilya confesses, "It happened before. In Russia." He huffs self-mockingly. "You know me. Big mouth. Arrogant. Disrespectful. I told some guys what they could do better and the coach hated it." He dismisses it with a shrug. "Learned my lesson."

"Well, your Russian coach wasn't trying to win a Stanley Cup," Marly says. "LeClaire would buy an ouija and talk to ghosts if someone told him it might get him that second Cup. What's the worst case scenario? He doesn't listen to you. I doubt that, since he's actively asking for your opinion. But even if he dismisses it, you aren't gonna be worse off."

"What if he gets mad?" He hates how small his voice sounds. He's fucking Ilya Rozanov. Why does he sound like he's twelve again?

"He won't. But even if he does, what's he gonna do? Bench his best player this close to the playoffs? Come on, Roz, that's never gonna happen."

He could punish me, Ilya thinks, but even he knows it's unlikely. He's not a kid any more. Besides, LeClaire isn't that kind of coach.

"Fine," he says with the same ill-grace with which he skates towards the penalty box after a blind referee refuses to listen to reason. "I'll write stupid list and you'll read over it, but we give it to LeClaire and Reilly together. Yes?"

"Yes, of course." Marly looks pleased. "See. That wasn't so hard. Not such a bad assist by yours truly."

"You have low American standards. I'll add it to the list. We need to fix it ASAP," Ilya lies. "Only high quality assists accepted."

"An assist is an assist. Some of us prefer results over showboating," Marly says haughtily.

"Some of us have the skill to get results and showboat at the same time," Ilya replies, matching his tone.

"Asshole."

"Jerk."

The two of them look at each other and crack up.

"Hey, Marly," Ilya says somberly, after they've calmed down. "Can I ask something else?"

"Sure."

"It's about... Jane," Ilya says quietly, looking around, the ingrained paranoia impossible to erase even though he knows they're alone. His study is on the second floor and Nicole isn't one to sneak up to eavesdrop.

"Oh... sure. Whatever you need, brother."

Ilya stops, unsure how to proceed. He wasn't going to say anything, but Marly is here and he already knows the truth about Shane. Ilya is tired of secrets. He didn't know how tired he was until the weight of them was taken off of him.

"Jane forgot."

"Forgot what?" Marly asks, alarmed.

"The hit. The hospital. Us being there. Her telling you guys everything. Me telling her that... She thinks... she thinks nobody knows... who she truly is... what we are to each other."

"Well, fuck," Marly says.

"Yeah," Ilya agrees despondently, "fuck." He couldn't have summarized it better. The heartbreak he's been running from since the night before finally catches up to him.

Chapter End Notes

I'll never tire of thanking you for your comments! 😍🥹 You don't know how often I get home after work to find a new comment in my inbox telling me what you liked about reading the story, which reminds me what I like about writing it and inspires me to sit down despite being tired and write some more.

This update would've taken way longer without you guys constantly watering and feeding my muses.

Ilya: I miss Shane. Why isn't there more Shane in this chapter?
Me: There will be Shane in the next chapter. It's been less than 24h since you last talked to him.
Ilya: It feels longer.
Me: It's not. You literally talked to him yesterday evening.
Ilya: Two months ago.
Me: Yesterday evening!
Ilya: Liar. A liar told you this. Write faster.
Me: I only have so many free hours available for writing. I have to work.
Ilya: Ah…I understand. You're lazy.
Me: 🤨🤬😔😭

Chapter 9

Chapter Notes

I raised the rating from Mature to Explicit, because apparently we have phone sex now. Also added the tags, "orgasm denial" and "verbal humiliation" (mild). Thank Ilya for that. Shane sure does.

The retelling of the call with Shane happens in a short burst of half-broken sentences. He leaves out more than he says. Still, the main points come across. Shane doesn't remember, and Ilya didn't tell him.

"I don't know what to do," Ilya confesses morosely, staring at his empty vodka glass.

"You should tell him the truth," Marly says.

"Her," Ilya corrects sharply.

"There's nobody here, Roz. Calm down."

"It's good habit. Less risk of mistakes when people can hear. You never know when someone is listening." Ilya is Russian. His father was police. His brother is police. Paranoia is a healthy survival trait.

"Fine," Marly says. "Tell her the truth. I understand if you want to keep the four-letter word for when you see each other in person. But Jane has a right to know that we know. It affects her, too."

Ilya presses his lips. "You don't know Jane. She'll panic. She... I cannot risk it. It'll be a repeat of the October disaster."

"Ah... I knew your Montreal girl was to blame for that. Am I allowed to ask about it now without you biting my head off?"

Ilya shrugs. "Nothing to tell. I knew I was just a convenient dick for Jane. Great fuck to get itch scratched. Should have kept it like that, but I got greedy. Wanted more. It backfired."

Marly jabs his shoulder not so softly. "Don't."

Ilya rubs his shoulder and glares at Marly. "What's that for?"

"Doing my job," Marly says. "You chirp Raiders too hard, I hit you. It's a thing."

"Who did I chirp?" Ilya protests, offended.

"Yourself. I told you, you're a Raider, too, Roz." Marly jabs him again for good measure. "Besides, I was in the hospital and I haven't forgotten. If Jane wanted convenient, she'd still be with Rose Landry. Convenient isn't something Jane wants. She wants you, and you, brother, are the most inconvenient dick she could have ever picked."

Warmth flutters in his chest. "Yes. It's true. I'm very inconvenient."

"Ah," Marly says, suddenly, "the apology step."

"What?"

"At the hospital, Jane said one of the steps of her masterplan was to apologize for freaking out," Marly reminds him. "The whole Otter shit distracted us from finishing our twenty questions. I never asked what that was about. Was that it? You asked to get serious and he—I mean she freaked out."

Ilya tries to scoff but the sound that comes out of his throat is hollow and wrong. "I said his fucking name. That's all I did." He forgets discretion and codenames. "Seven years of hookups and it's all Rozanov, Hollander, Rozanov, Hollander. Then, once, by mistake, I call him Shane while kissing him and he freaks out, runs away and two weeks later every news outlet is talking about him and Rose Fucking Landry. He's not...

"I can't tell him, Marly," Ilya beseeches. "If he finds out that five Raiders know, it'll destroy him. That's five strangers he doesn't trust with power to end his career. You don't understand what hockey means to him. It's everything. His life. His calling. Yes, he thinks he loves me. And he does. Maybe. Probably. But he loves hockey more. He will always love hockey more. That's fine." Everybody in Ilya's life loves hockey more.

"Roz, what if he—fuck this is hard—I mean she remembers," Marly points out. "She'll be furious that you lied."

"I did not lie. Much. Only a little bit. Almost nothing. I just didn't tell complete truth about what she told us in the hospital; it's not the same."

"Are you hearing the words coming out of your mouth? Anyone with a half-functioning brain cell knows that excuse is absolute bullshit," Marly counters.

Ilya shrugs. "I googled a bit yesterday." Shane's memory loss reminded him of his father—the steady decrease of his ability to recall things until he forgot everything. Ilya fell into a search rabbit hole, desperate to learn everything about post-concussion and post-anesthesia memory loss. "There's a high percentage chance that Jane won't remember. If she remembers then... I will explain that I didn't want to worry her while she was recovering. It might have set back recovery. Not good for brain. I read this, too."

"Okay, let's play your favorite game again." Marly sighs. "It helps to put things in perspective. If the roles were reversed, if it'd been you in the hospital, and Jane there with Pike & Co., if they all knew you were bi and in love with Jane and you were the only one who didn't, how would you feel?"

Ilya's stomach lurches and his chest tightens. "That's never gonna happen. Pike would never come visit me in a hospital."

"You realize that Jane probably thought the same about me, especially since I was the reason she was there to begin with," Marly says.

"You don't need to remind me of that," Ilya says darkly. "I'm still pissed about it. I know it was clean and you didn't mean it, but... part of me is fucking pissed."

"If you'd hit Nicole with your car by mistake and put her in the hospital, I'd be pissed as hell, too, so... I get it. Believe me. I do. Also, you're changing the subject," Marly tells him. "How would you feel?"

"I would scream at Hollander and never stop until I ran out of air, and then I'd take a deep breath and scream some more." Ilya scowls. "Look, I get it. I get it. You're fucking right and I hate it. But I can't tell Jane over the phone. She will panic and there will be nobody there to help. You don't know how she gets. If I'm there, I can distract her by being very sexy or very annoying. Maybe both things at the same time. It works every time. I'm very good at being sexy and very good at being annoying. Jane cannot resist."

Marly snorts. "Right. Stanley Cup of Sex according to very biased sources. I don't think that will work as well as you believe."

"If your game isn't good enough to distract Nicole, that's a you problem, Marly."

Marly jabs his shoulder again, softer this time. "Asshole." He rumples his nose disapprovingly. "I don't know, brother. I suppose you know Jane better, but the more you wait, the harder it'll be. What's your plan? Wait to be in the cottage to talk?"

The rush of anger blindsides him—gasoline in his blood and Marly's words the ember of a cigarette carelessly thrown away—an explosion that burns him from the inside and consumes everything.

"You know damn well I can't go, you fucking jerk! I can't be seen with Jane frolicking in some cottage." He throws the word like a punch, something he wants to slam into Marly's face again and again until he fucking gets that, "Jane isn't Nicole! She isn't a WAG! I can't bring her here to drink shitty ginger ale and exchange high-protein smoothie recipes with other WAGs while we get drunk in the backyard! I can't take her to team events or to games! Hell, I can't even say she isn't she inside walls of my own fucking house! The cottage is a pipe dream that will never happen. Fuck you! Fuck you! You know this! I get that Jane is so high on painkillers right now that she can't see it, but you aren't. So fuck you! This hurts enough without you pouring salt into the wound. Fuck you!" He breathes raggedly, blood pounding in his ears as though he just skated ten minutes at top speed without a break.

Marly's eyes are wide and his expression horrified. Ilya feels wretched, because none of this is Marly's fault. These are demons Ilya has been wrestling with for years, breaking free and escaping through the first crack in Ilya's walls only to fall upon Marly and tear him apart because he's stupid enough to be here, because he didn't punch Ilya in the face and called him a faggot when he found out that Ilya liked to kiss boys. Alexei had been wiser.

He stomps on the irrational urge to apologize. 'Apologies are useless. Razanovs don't apologize. Don't fail next time.' His father beat that lesson into him again and again from an early age until Ilya stopped forgetting it. He meets Marly's gaze unflinchingly. "I'm an asshole. We both know this," he says in a clipped voice.

"It's fine," Marly says. "I didn't realize—"

"It's not fine," Ilya cuts him off sharply. "Don't fucking say it's fine. It's not."

"It's not," Marly agrees. "But I'll take screaming over that bleak silence shit you do. So, it's fine. I can handle screaming. Hell, I can handle punches. I can handle them so well that they pay me to do it."

Ilya huffs and some of the coiled tension in his shoulders eases.

"So, my two cents. Scream at me if you must. It's fine." Marly looks more composed, back to his usual unflappable self.

When Alexei and Ilya were little, their mother used to take them to Lake Senezh in the summer. The three of them would find a good spot to throw pebbles into the water, making a game of who could skip them the farthest. Sometimes, they would switch games to see who could cause the biggest ripple. Ilya would find the largest stone he could carry and throw it into the lake, laughing. Alexei won almost every time, but back then Ilya had been too little and had loved his brother too much to resent him for it.

Sometimes Marly reminds Ilya of those days. Not of Alexei; never of Alexei. But of Lake Senezh under the summer light. Of little Ilya throwing the largest stones he could carry, watching the lake's surface ripple and ripple, the three of them laughing, counting out loud how many seconds it would take for the water to grow calm once more, and the certainty that no stone would ever be large enough to disturb the lake for long.

"Jane is paranoid. Even more paranoid than you, if I understand you right. Yes?"

"Yes," Ilya agrees.

"And Jane had this ass-long overcomplicated six-step plan to tell you how she feels. Step five includes the cottage," Marly reminds him. "Do you think that more-paranoid-than-you Jane, high-hockey-IQ-I-see-plays-and-counterplays-before-anyone-else Jane, that Jane, would include a step five cottage in her overcomplicated plan unless she was absolutely sure that it was safe for you to visit her there?"

Ilya opens his mouth to answer and then closes it again. His mind circles and circles around Marly's argument looking for the flaw. It has to have a flaw. It feels wrong. Every instinct Ilya has is screaming at him that it's too risky. But he can't find a logical reason to explain why. Which means...

This isn't Ilya being logical. This isn't Ilya being the rational one. This isn't Ilya being the only one not under the influence of pain medication. This is Ilya terrified, Ilya panicking, Ilya doing his own version of running away mid-conversation because Shane dared to be greedy enough to ask for more.

"I'm terrified." The confession escapes before he can reel it back in. He flinches and glances at Marly, expecting to see mockery. Ilya Rozanov, the Red Terror of Boston, Hockey Satan, admitting out loud he's terrified.

"Yeah, it's terrifying. Love always is. A bit. A lot. The Jane situation makes it worse. I won't say I get it, because I know I don't. You're right—there, my contribution to your swollenheadnitis—Jane isn't Nicole. It sucks. It sucks a lot that you'll never be able to do the things Nicole and I can, because the price of you doing those things is steep, and it's one Nicole and I will never have to pay."

"Why are you so good at this?" Ilya asks, baffled. "You open your mouth and your words make sense like a wise babushka. It's very annoying. I preferred it when we didn't talk."

Marly laughs. "The curse of having four older sisters and being the only boy in a family of strong, successful women. You learn to discuss emotions and confront feelings instead of running away in terror. It creates well-socialized trashcan raccoons who are vaccinated against rabies from an early age. Very useful when a rabid raccoon tries to bite your head off for no reason. You can stand there and go, 'There, there, it's fine,' without becoming infected yourself."

Ilya looks down at the marble counter, wrestling down the lingering desire to apologize. It won't change what he did. He'll do better next time. "So, you did know it wasn't fine."

"Idiot," Marly repeats softly. "It's not your fault. I'm better trained, that's all. Your new favorite game, the how-would-you-feel-if? Do you have any idea how often Mom forced Clara and me to answer that when we did some stupid shit as kids and ended up screaming at each other? I mean, Clara's a conniving bitch who faked tears to get me in trouble, but I gave as good as I got. All in all, I'm winning. If she ever tells you otherwise, she's lying and you should not trust her."

Ilya rolls his eyes. He's witnessed first-hand Marly's and Clara's relationship and though they constantly tease and poke at each other, the underlying love is undeniable. Ilya, who grew up with Alexei, knows from bitter experience how much crueler siblings can be.

"You think I should go to the cottage?" Just thinking about it makes his heart beat in a fast staccato and his hands grow clammy.

"Talk to Jane. Ask her why she's so sure nobody will know you're there," Marly says easily. "Let her walk you through all the reasons her paranoia isn't stopping her from inviting you. And if the only reason is that she's in love and wants to risk something for it, then you need to figure out if you're willing to risk something, too. Love isn't a game that you can play safely, Ilya. I don't know how it feels for you, but loving Nicole is like free-falling. The rush is amazing. And yes, a part of me knows that if it ever goes wrong, it'll hurt as nothing has before. But the bigger part chooses to take the jump anyway because I trust Nicole to be my parachute. Do you trust Jane?"

"Yes. Maybe. Probably." Ilya closes his eyes and exhales. "I don't know. I don't trust easily. But I want to. God, I want to. We've only ever had stolen moments. Hookups. Hotel rooms. This secret that kills me. What future can we have, Marl?"

"Two weeks in her cottage this summer," Marly offers. "That's more than hookups and hotel rooms. See how it feels. See how you like it. Fucking talk to each other. If nothing else, you owe her the truth about the hospital. Do it in person if you won't do it by phone, but you have to do it. Figure it out from there. It fucking sucks, and it's not fair, but spending the offseason together is a future. It's three months more than you have now, even more, depending on how deep Boston and Montreal go into the playoffs any given year."

Marly smiles at him sadly. "For me, if the choice was three months with Nicole or to not have her at all, I know what I'd choose. The shelf life of hockey players isn't that long. You're turning twenty-six this year. Most players retire by their mid or early thirties. After that, you can do whatever the fuck you want and nobody will give a shit. That's a future right there."

Ilya laughs brokenly. "You make it sound so easy. Do you think I can spend three months at the cottage for the next ten years without people figuring it out? What? Do I hide in the literal closet whenever visitors come? Do I never leave the cottage to go for a run, to go shopping, to breathe air? In what fantasy world can Ilya Rozanov and Shane Fucking Hollander be allowed to exist in the same place for three months, ten years, without paps or fans getting wind of it?"

"Then let them get wind of it. Buy your own fucking cottage." Marly waves his hands, like it's nothing. "If anyone sees you in the same city, say you live there, too. Nobody knows where Hollander's cottage is. If it ever comes out that Hollander lives nearby, you can genuinely say that you didn't know. What a coincidence—hahaha—would you look at that. You only need plausible deniability. No one will jump to the right conclusion unless they catch you making out. Do not get caught making out."

"I could buy my own sex cottage for the off-season," Ilya repeats, slowly, looking at Marly with wonder as the idea takes shape. Isn't that what Hollander did? He bought the sex condo to ensure nobody could see Ilya going into his actual apartment—a way for them to meet and have sex without anyone being the wiser, and it worked. Ilya can be Mr. Real Estate, too. He has the money. Marly is right. The documentary only said Hollander's cottage was in Ontario, but not where. Shane is very private. No one will think that Ilya bought a cottage near Hollander's on purpose.

"Three months," Ilya repeats slowly, savoring the idea. The impossibility of it. "Living close by. Same city. The whole off-season. Three months is better than zero months." Three whole months.

"See. A future," Marly says, looking pleased. Proud. "Not perfect. But a future. Better than no future."

"Yes," Ilya says, carefully, not quite daring to believe the possibility. "I—Yes." He stands up, paces around the kitchen, unable to sit still while whatever thing is happening inside of him happens. He can't process the feelings he's having right now. Too many. Too... hopeful. Ilya doesn't trust happiness. It always abandons him when it hurts the most.

"I think..." He pours himself another shot of vodka and downs it.

Marly shakes his head when Ilya slides the bottle towards him.

Ilya sits down, tries to find the words he wants to say in English. Maybe they would be hard to find in Russian, too. For this, silence has always been easier. But he has Marly's words already and those are easy enough to steal.

"I think that maybe I jumped a long time ago and have been free-falling ever since. When I'm with Jane it's like you said. The rush. Amazing. Nothing ever compares. No one. All the women I've had. The men. Hockey. The cars. The money. The fame. Nothing comes close. But then, afterwards, when Jane's gone and it's just me..." He swallows on a too-dry throat. "Maybe, this whole time, all these years, I've been bracing for impact, knowing it would kill me. It's very stupid, da?" He glances at Marly briefly, before he looks away, focusing on the whirling patterns of the marble on the kitchen counter. "Until the hospital... until Jane said that maybe, probably, she might feel similar, at least a little... I... I didn't think a parachute was an option. And now it feels... like I can't stop bracing for impact because it's all I know how to do."

"Maybe Jane is bracing for impact, too," Marly points out. "You don't make a six-step plan that expands for months to lure your rival-cum-hookup to a secret cottage in the wilderness unless you're bracing for impact, too. And now she doesn't even remember that the parachute is an option. So you need to grow a pair and pull the cord for both of you."

"Grow a pair?" Ilya bristles, the seriousness of the moment diffused. "That's your wise babushka advice. Grow a pair?"

"Yes, Ilya, that's my wise babushka advice. Grow a pair and stop making yourself miserable," Marly says, curtly. "Believe me, if the impact comes, it doesn't matter how much you brace for it, it'll still hurt like a motherfucker. So... grow a pair and do something other than brace for failure. You're Ilya Rozanov, the Red Terror of Boston. You don't go into a game seven for the Stanley Cup bracing for a loss. You go in guns blazing, with everything you have and every intention to win. A very arrogant man, with the worst case of swollenheadnitis I've ever encountered, once told me that if you step on the ice thinking you're gonna lose, you've already lost. If you won't listen to my wise babushka advice, then listen to his."

Ilya comes to attention, straightening his spine. The hockey parallel helps. Ilya doesn't know much about relationships. He knows hookups, casual sex and partying, but he's avoided relationships as much as he could... except for Shane... the exception to his every self-imposed rule is always Shane. But Ilya, Ilya knows hockey.

"Yes," he says, as certainty settles in his bones. He pushes his doubts and fears away, using them as fuel to feed his desire to win as he's done countless times before. "Okay. Simple plan. I grow a pair. Easy. Already done. I was born with the biggest pair of my generation." He winks at Marly, all Rozanov bravado.

"Yes, easy first steps are the key to successful planning," Marly says in a perfect imitation of Shane's half-stoned accent.

Ilya snorts and grins at him. "Second step. I find out where Jane's cottage is and buy sex cottage close by. Step three. We fuck a lot."

"Copying Jane? Her third step also involved a lot of fucking."

"Hush. You don't fix what works, Marleau. Fear not, my step three will still be superior." Ilya will ensure that cottage sex dominates All-Star-Rose-Landry-and-I-are-not-compatible-make-up sex and knocks it away from its as of now still uncontested first place as best sex ever. Ilya's step-three sex will defeat Shane's step-three sex.

"Step four. Once Jane has been distracted by amazing, Art-Ross and Conn-Smythe quality sex, I'll explain the hospital incident briefly. Then, I'll immediately follow it with a declaration of love to distract her some more. Done. Victory. Good, simple plan. I'm winning this."

Marly opens his mouth as if to say something and then closes it again. After a beat, he settles on, "Yeah. Just talk to Jane, alright?"

Ilya beams. "Yes, this is step four. Doable. Don't worry, Marly, I won't crash and burn at step four like Jane did."

Ilya loves the plan. If he has his own sex cottage, he won't need to leave after the two weeks are over. He could stay at his very own cottage and just casually drive by Shane's whenever Shane is alone. Shane will cave. There will be more sex. Shane always caves. When they are in the same room, everything disappears. They could have more than two weeks.

Three months.

Every year.

And then, after retirement, maybe, if Shane still wants him... impossible as it seems... if he doesn't grow bored or finds someone better—don't go into game seven bracing for a loss—then, more than just three months. Their whole lives. Maybe. Probably.

A future.

"Thank you," Ilya says to Marly. He probably should make it flippant, say something witty to remind Marly that he's still very much an asshole but nothing comes to mind. "This assist was not as bad. You're improving." There. A chirp. But also... not.

"Practice makes perfect," Marly says with an easy grin. "Keep giving me chances, okay. One day, I'll get you the high-quality assist you want."

Ilya's throat closes and he has to swallow to make it work. "I'll take it into consideration," he says, pleased when his voice comes out steady. "I'm a very charitable Captain. I might let you practice again."

Marly claps his back. His smile broadens into that cloyingly fond expression he wears so easily, so openly. Transparent and sincere. Someone who grew up never having to hide that he loved something because he never learned to fear that it might be taken away. "That's the spirit."

Grow a pair. Marly's voice echoes in his mind as he stares at his phone and rereads his texts with Shane. With the messages set to delete automatically after seven days, there are not many left. A philosopher might untangle that mess and turn it into something deep and meaningful: Texts mirroring life.

The thought hurts. The texts are them: existing in brief bursts of time and then auto-erasing themselves on a sick, mutually pre-agreed schedule, again and again, pretending all those instances of perfect connection never existed.

He rereads his last text.

Lily: I'm home. Call if you're still awake.

It, too, is a mirror. Ilya has always been the pursuer, the one who always initiated, cajoled, demanded: 'Meet me. Kiss me. Let me fuck you. Come for me. Text me. See me. Remember me. Meet me. Kiss me...' A never-ending vicious cycle of growing want that left him terrified of the day in which Shane would finally say 'No' and mean it.

Maybe that's the real reason why Shane running away hurt him so much. Ilya spent seven years waiting for Shane to wise up and put a stop to it, and when his worst fears finally came true he couldn't cope.

If the impact comes, it doesn't matter how much you brace for it, it'll still hurt like a motherfucker. It's so unbelievably annoying that Marly can be so dumb and so wise at the same time.

Grow a pair.

He checks the time. 8:37 pm. No texts from Shane. He hadn't expected any. Ilya is always the one who texts first. He starts typing.

Lily: Still awake? Wanna talk?

Grow a pair.

Lily: Miss you

His heart races. The last message is too much. He's about to turn it into something sexual, easier to dismiss, specify the parts of Shane's body he misses most and what he'd love to do to them when his phone starts ringing. On the screen, the only name that matters.

Jane.

Ilya accepts the call, ignoring the sudden surge of nerves. It's just Shane; he's done this before. Marly forcing him to accept that he not only wants more but is willing to risk something for it doesn't change anything. They've been risking everything from day one even when they thought it meant nothing.

"Hello, pretty boy," he says in his sultriest voice. "What a coincidence. I was just thinking of you."

Shane huffs, but sounds flustered when he says, "Yeah?"

Ilya closes his eyes and imagines the blush creeping up Shane's cheeks, highlighting his pretty freckles, making him more gorgeous than anyone has a right to be. "Are you in your room? All tucked in? Ready to go to sleep at 9:00 pm like a good, boring boy?"

He can almost hear Shane's eye-roll as annoyance erases his bashfulness. "I wasn't going to sleep. I was listening to a podcast."

"Boring," Ilya singsong. "Was it a curling podcast? Nope. Not boring enough. Oh, I know, I know. A hockey podcast!"

"Hockey isn't boring."

"I knew it! A hockey podcast," Ilya cackles. "Withdrawal must be killing you."

"Yeah," Shane agrees despondently. "I can't even watch games. It's the fucking worst. Podcasts are a good way to kill time. You'd probably like this one. It was about the Raiders."

"Oh, Hollander, why didn't you start with that? You weren't listening to a boring podcast about mediocre hockey. You were listening to a riveting podcast about amazing me."

"Riveting? Wow, that New Yorker subscription is really paying off. And by the way, you aren't the only player in Boston," Shane points out.

Cute. Any hockey podcast about the Raiders is in the end a hockey podcast about Ilya. "How long did they talk about me then? Whole time?" He taps the speaker button and sets his phone on the side table. Then, he kicks off his house shoes and stretches out along the couch, settling in to enjoy his conversation with Shane for as long as he can.

Shane's resigned sigh is easily heard through the speakers. "God, you're so arrogant. But also... yes. The hosts couldn't shut up about your first goal against Toronto. Half the podcast was them arguing about where it ranked among your top ten goals."

Ilya grins and lets his voice go dark and suggestive. "Don't get jealous, Hollander. I reserve my best scoring for when I'm in you."

"Gross, Ilya." Shane fake-gags. "You can't use English like that."

"Oh, are you Mr. English Teacher now?" Ilya teases him. He makes his voice go high and slutty when he adds, "Please Officer, don't put me in Grammar jail. We can come to an arrangement."

"Rozanov, you can't bribe the police," Shane says worriedly. "Please tell me you'll never do that. You could get in serious trouble."

"Of course not, Hollander," Ilya agrees indulgently. "I'd never give a Boston police officer free tickets to a Raiders' game so that he forgets I was speeding."

"You've done it already!?"

Ilya laughs at Shane's outrage. "You're such a goody-two-shoes, Hollander. Montreal police officers will also look the other way, if they ever catch you speeding."

"I don't speed!" Shane's voice is thick with indignation. "Speed limits are there for a reason."

Ilya wishes he could see Shane's angry kitten face. "Yes, this is true. They're there so that boring people don't fall asleep while they drive. Oh, look, a sign! I better adjust my speed to match it. Oh, another sign! I have to adjust it again. What a fun game!"

"Asshole," Shane grumbles.

Warmth fills Ilya's chest. The first 'asshole' in a conversation with Shane is its own victory.

"You love it," Ilya says daringly, and thinks, 'You love me'. "How are you feeling?"

"Better. My arm is itchy and I hate it. Head still hurts when the painkillers fade. But I'm less dizzy than yesterday, so, progress. Yay," he adds without enthusiasm.

Ilya wishes he could crawl through the phone and materialize next to Shane. He wants to kiss the headache away and hold Shane in his arms. He wants to comfort Shane the way Shane comforted him in Russia, when Ilya was the one hurting.

"Progress is progress." He tries to cheer up Shane. Ilya hasn't been injured much, but the few times he had to miss games due to injuries, he almost lost his mind with cabin fever. He can't imagine missing the playoffs.

"You had off today, didn't you? What did you do?" Shane changes the topic.

Ilya feels sheepish when he admits, "Yeah, it was great. Almost perfect."

Shane huffs. "Ilya Rozanov's perfect day. Let me guess. You went drinking with the Raiders and hooked up."

The words sting, and he doesn't know why. A year ago that would have been a perfect day for him; Shane isn't wrong. Ilya shrugs off the hurt like he would a hit on the ice. "Haven't hooked up yet," he tries to sound aloof. "Might do it still. Night is young for people who don't go to bed at 9 p.m."

"Of course," Hollander says drily. "I'm surprised you wanted to talk. Shouldn't you be getting ready to go out?"

"This is stupid," Ilya says, frustrated. "I—never mind." He sits up and picks up the phone. "I'll leave you to your podcast. Good-bye, Hollander."

"Wait. Ilya, wait!" Hollander demands, voice urgent, but Ilya's thumb was already hovering over the hang-up button and he brushes the screen before he can stop it. The call cuts off.

"Fuck." He breathes out, hurt and angry at once. "So much for that."

The phone starts ringing immediately. For a moment he considers letting it go to voicemail, but accepts the call instead. "What do you want, Hollander?" he asks tiredly, slumping back on the couch and closing his eyes.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," Ilya stops him. "Talking was stupid idea. We should stick to text."

"No," Hollander says. "I like talking to you. I like hearing your voice. I'm cranky and I took it out on you. It wasn't fair. You asking to talk was the highlight of my day. Please forgive me."

Hollander asks for forgiveness so easily. It disarms Ilya.

"Okay. What are you wearing?" Ilya asks.

"What?"

"I'm trying to have phone sex, Hollander," Ilya says waspishly. "Like we did when you called me in Russia? You'll feel good. I'll feel good. More orgasms; less fighting. Works well for us, da? What are you wearing?"

"I—No. Tell me about your perfect day, please. I want to hear about it. What did you do?"

Ilya wants to steer the conversation back to a safer topic. Sex works for them—always has—things only get messy when they veer off. But Ilya has never been good at refusing Shane.

"It wasn't perfect. It was almost perfect," Ilya corrects. "The team came to my house with the WAGs and the children. Even the coaches came. No wild parties for me today. Very boring." Grow a pair. "But you know my big secret: Sometimes, I like boring."

Shane huffs a little amused snort. "Do you?" he asks, a sliver of insecurity underneath.

"Yes, I do," Ilya reassures him. "Acquired taste. Like cigarettes."

"Fuck you, Rozanov. That's... Don't compare me to cigarettes!" Oh, angry kitten Shane.

"It fits. Can't quit liking boring. Don't want to. Don't care what people think. Don't care about consequences. Like cigarettes."

"That's not fair, asshole. You're making it sound romantic. Cigarettes aren't romantic. They're bad for you. You should most definitely quit them."

"You're bad for me, too, Hollander." The admission hurts. "Many people would want me to quit you. But I won't. I've tried before. So have you. And yet here we are."

"And yet here we are," Shane repeats, subdued. "I don't want to quit you either, even if the consequences are... not ideal." He pauses and then riles up again. "It's still nothing like cigarettes. Those will kill you. This... it's not the same. It's not. Don't say it is," he beseeches.

"Okay," Ilya agrees.

"Good. Thank you." The silence stretch between them for a moment, heavy with all the things they aren't quite saying. "Right. So... uh... back to your boring, almost perfect day," Shane finally speaks. "What did you guys do?"

Ilya tells him, glad for the distraction. He sinks into the couch cushions as he speaks, lying back with the phone on his chest, speaker on, one leg draped lazily over the backrest.

"That sounds like a perfect day," Shane agrees. "I didn't know you had a rink in your backyard."

"You ran away before I could show you," Ilya reminds him because he's an asshole. "Former owners were big into hockey. It came with the house," Ilya lies.

He's not going to admit that the garden landscaper conned him into installing a private rink, claiming all great MLH captains had one. Sveta laughed at him for a whole month, saying that it was the cheapest sales trick in the book. The joke is on her, though, because Ilya loves his backyard rink. Sometimes, when everything is too much and he needs to not think he puts his skates on and just glides over the ice as he did as a kid. No pressure. No coaches. No training. Just the joy of skating until the ice erases all his worries and self-doubts.

"Maybe next time I visit you can show me," Shane says softly. "I promise not to run again."

"Yes. Next time. I'd like that." Grow a pair. "Today, the only thing missing was you. I wanted you here. Then, the day would have been truly perfect."

"Fuck, Ilya, you can't say things like that." Shane sounds gutted. "Fuck."

"Would have been perfect," Ilya insists. "I'd show you off. Another competition for me to win: Ilya Rozanov wins trophy for having the hottest WAG in MLH."

"Oh, come on. I have the hottest WAG in the MLH," Shane protests, his Pavlovian competitiveness flaring up. "That trophy goes to me."

"No, Hollander. It's my trophy. I'm best player in the MLH and I have the hottest WAG. You are the second best player in the MLH and have the second hottest WAG," Ilya insists.

"You're just chirping yourself," Shane points out.

"Nope." Ilya pops the P. "I'm saying my game is way better. That's why I can pull the hottest WAG and you have to resign yourself with second hottest."

"Bullshit," Shane scoffs. "Mine is the hottest. You're sexy and funny and—"

"Oh, Hollander, the concussion must be really bad. You're being so nice to me. That's not like you at all," Ilya mocks him. If Shane keeps complimenting him, Ilya isn't going to be responsible for what he says next.

"Argh... I can't with you." Shane pauses and then adds in a small voice, "You know it's true, right? You're the hottest person in the world. All those women throwing themselves at you in every city are proof. I hate that I can't show you off. I'd love to show the world that you're at least a little bit mine, too."

Ilya swallows and closes his eyes, breathing in and out slowly. "Yeah?" His voice comes out uneven.

He needs to steer the conversation away from such a dangerous, uncharted territory towards a safer, more familiar road. "Is that what you'd have done if you'd been here today? Kiss me in front of all the Raiders? Mark me where they could see? Stake your claim?" Just imagining is making him hot. He squirms on the couch. "You'd show them how desperate for my cock you get. How hungry. I'd have kissed you in front of everyone. Show them how pretty you moan for me, how wanton and needy you get. The Raiders would've been so proud to learn that the great Shane Hollander is their captain's eager slut. A little tap to your ass and you'd have spread your legs for me in front of the whole team."

"Ilya," Shane moans. "God, yes. Fuck, why's that so hot?"

"You'd want?" Ilya asks, as arousal travels down his belly to his cock. He slides his hand down his chest and thumbs his jeans open, freeing his hardening cock. "You'd let me show you off, wouldn't you? My well-trained slut. Always so easy for me. So wet. Perfect. Mine."

"Fuck, Rozanov, yeah," Shane whines. "Damn it, I can't touch myself."

"Why?" Ilya teases him as he strokes himself slowly. "Afraid your parents will hear?"

"No, asshole," Shane hisses. "My right arm is in a cast and my left hand is holding the phone. I can't touch myself. Wait. Let me find my headphones."

"No," Ilya commands, and his cock hardens all the way as he imagines how frustrated and desperate Shane will get when he forces himself to obey Ilya. It's a heady thing, to have this much power over Shane, to know that Ilya only has it because Shane gives it. Nobody has ever given Ilya anything. All they ever want is to take. "Stay there. Stay right there and make my day perfect, Hollander. The only thing missing was you and you'll give yourself to me now. If you can come without touching yourself, good, but you do not get to touch. Not today. If I cannot touch you, then neither can you."

"Rozanov, come on," Shane whines. "Please. You can't ask that."

"Just did. You don't have to obey if it's too difficult," Ilya offers magnanimously, knowing that Shane won't be able to resist the challenge, even if it costs him his orgasm. "Are you gonna be a good boy for me, Hollander?"

"Yes. Damn you. Yeah." Shane whimpers.

Ilya groans lewdly, wanting Shane to know how much he's enjoying this. "So good for me, Hollander. Are you getting hard too, Котёнок? Tell me."

"Yes," Shane gasps.

"You can do better than that, Hollander." Ilya makes his voice demanding and cruel, a familiar cadence that all Rozanov men know only too well. "I'm trying to get off here. Give me more." He switches to a more teasing, playful tone, goading Hollander, "How does your poor neglected cock feel? Come on, Shane, tell me what I'd be seeing if I was there. Do you want me there?"

"Yes, Ilya," Shane whines. "So much. I want you here so much. Fuck, what you do to me. Even without touching, just your voice... I'm so hard. It's obscene. You can see the bulge growing. My pajamas are getting wet around the tip. Fuck, Rozanov, I haven't even touched myself," he says brokenly, like it's a betrayal, when it's always been Shane's greatest gift.

"Yeah, beautiful. Your cock loves me, Hollander," Ilya moans, stroking himself a bit faster, hips rising to meet his hand. "I don't even need to touch it to get it hard. It knows who owns it." Imagining Shane's pretty cock, dark and flushed under Ilya's touch rips a moan out of him. "It was made for me, Hollander," he growls. "Just for me. Pretty and eager for my touch, just like you."

"Fuck, Ilya, please. Yeah, it's yours. Just yours. Please."

"Are you humping the air, Hollander?" Ilya asks. "Can you come like that?"

"No. I don't know," Shane heaves. "I don't think so. I need to touch myself. Just a bit. Please, Ilya."

"No," Ilya denies him. "But I want to hear you beg anyway. Be a good boy for me and beg, Shane. Don't need to go out to club when I have an eager slut a phone call away." Ilya strokes himself faster. "Come on, Shane, prove to me you're best slut, better than anyone else I could have. Beg."

"Fuck, Ilya, God. Yes. I'm your slut. The best. Need you so much. Always. Please, please let me come. Please. I'm so hard." He whimpers. "It won't take much. Just a little touch. Please let me. I need it. I need you. So badly. Please, Ilya. I'm your slut. Yours."

"That's it, Shane," Ilya groans. "Nobody begs like you. My perfect boy. Made for me." Ilya strokes himself faster while he listens to Shane beg. So much better than masturbating to a picture. Shane's voice drives him wild. English deserts him and he doesn't bother with it. Russian is better anyway. He can be honest in Russian. He can tell Shane that Ilya can't get enough of him, that no one else compares, that all Ilya wants is to be by his side. "Мне тебя всё мало. Я всё время хочу быть рядом с тобой. Никто не сравнится с тобой."

He comes with Shane's name on his lips. Shane's moans and pleas are like gasoline making Ilya's own desire burn hotter. The orgasm crashes into him, and he rides the waves, milking his cock dry until it hurts to touch. He pants, out of breath, and the tension sips out of him as he relaxes back on the couch, satisfied.

Shane's little whimpers are a lovely background music as Ilya relishes that fleeting moment, directly after an orgasm, in which all worries disappear temporarily and only absolute, perfect contentment remains. He stretches languidly and grabs the pack of cigarettes on the side table.

He pulls one out and lights it up. He takes a deep drag and sighs it out, eyes still closed. "That was great."

"Ilya, please," Shane begs. "Let me touch myself. I need... please."

"Hush, Солнышко, I'm not going to change my mind and you're going to be good about it. Tomorrow... maybe..." He takes another drag of the cigarette, relaxing even more. "Once you're desperate enough that you stop caring about being at your parents'. I might let you come then."

"I don't care that I'm at my parents' now," Shane promises. "Ilya, please."

"Send me dick pic," Ilya demands. "Maybe if I see how hard you are, I'll take pity. Or I might not." Ilya will not change his mind. Shane wouldn't like it if he did anyway.

"You're such an asshole," Shane complains.

Ilya smiles, loving the way the word 'asshole' rolls off of Shane's tongue. He takes a final drag and squishes the ember even though half of the cigarette is still left. It'd make Shane happy for all that Ilya won't tell him. He wipes the worst of the mess he made with paper tissues and sighs blissfully.

"You need distraction, yes?" Ilya offers magnanimously. "Tell me about your cottage."

"What?" Shane asks, startled.

"Your cottage," Ilya repeats, faking indifference, as though this isn't a monumental step towards the unknown. "The one you want me to visit. Tell me about it... Unless you've changed your mind?" he adds, suddenly unsure. Maybe Shane has come to his senses now that he's had time to sleep over it.

"Of course I still want you to come!" Shane rushes to say. "Absolutely. Are you going to?" His voice comes out steady but Ilya can hear it underneath: Shane bracing for impact.

Ilya swallows. Grow a pair. "I wasn't going to," he answers truthfully. Not the lie of the 'maybe' he said the prior night. A lie Shane saw through. Of course he did. "I... I thought it was too risky. If we were to be seen."

"No, Ilya. It's very private! That's not an exaggeration. It's incredibly remote. You have to drive over an hour to get to the next town if you want to go to a store. It's in the woods, by a lake, and the lake is completely landlocked. Nobody ever comes here."

"Landlocked?" The word is unfamiliar.

"Yeah, it means there's no public access to the lake. It's 100% surrounded by private property with no public roads. All parcels were sold before 1900 and bypass Ontario's modern shoreline laws. Usually, all bodies of water in Canada have a mandatory 66-foot public strip of Crown land along the waterfront that ensures the public has access to the water. But Ontario introduced the law only gradually at the end of the 19th century and the cottage and neighboring properties were grandfathered under the old law. All parcels extend right until the water's edge. The public has zero legal way to access without trespassing. When I say it's private, I truly mean it, Ilya."

Ilya enjoys the excitement in Shane's voice as he continues explaining very complicated legalese about lakes and land use rights. "Wow, Mr. Real Estate, did you take online courses on boring Canadian property law?" he teases.

Shane stops. "Sorry. I got carried away," he says sheepishly.

"I like when you bore me," Ilya reminds him. "So, no one can come to your cottage unless they own a piece of lake." Ilya purposely says it wrong, knowing Shane won't be able to resist correcting him.

"No! You can't own the lake. All bodies of water belong to the Crown. I mean, technically, the neighbors could swim or use a boat just up to the water's edge, because the water is free for everyone, but no one does that. The lake is quite large. My parents own a cottage here, too, and I need to drive ten minutes by car until I'm at their place. It's really private. Very safe. I wouldn't risk you, Ilya."

Ilya smiles softly, even though Shane can't see it. "How many neighbors do you have?"

"There are eighteen parcels around the lake, but the lot sizes are huge. Modern developers would probably sell 70 or 80 cottages in just as much space and still market them as luxury properties. But back in 1900 not many people wanted to buy land so far away from the city. It was even harder to access back then. The roads to Ottawa weren't even developed. My great-grandfather on my father's side of the family loved to fish so he bought the property. That's how my parents got their cottage."

"Oh, old Canada money," Ilya teases him.

Shane snorts. "No. I mean. They were middle class, not rich. Back then properties weren't as expensive as they are today. Really, if they had to buy it today they wouldn't be able to afford it. Not without hockey money. I paid half a year's salary to get mine."

So around $5 million, Ilya quickly calculates. He'd have to liquidate some assets but he has the money. "So, what did you do? Knocked on neighbors' doors and told them, 'I have money; give me your rickety 1900 cottage'?" The Hollanders own two of the lots. That leaves only sixteen potential sellers for Ilya to convince. Buying a sex cottage might be harder than Ilya thought it'd be.

Shane snorts. "We aren't neighbors like in a city. The properties are too far away from each other. I contracted a realtor who works the area and she got it done. It took about three years. I came close once but the deal fell apart shortly before signing. I was so pissed. I'd already had inspectors and architects visit the property. The money was ready. And then, three days before signing, the sellers changed their mind."

Ilya perks up. "What happened?" Someone who thought about selling once might be convinced to go through with it more easily than someone who has never even entertained the idea.

"I don't know," Shane says frustrated. Knowing him, that particular failure to close probably hunts him still. Shane hates losing. "Everything was perfect. The owners are these two old sisters who have lived here since forever. They wanted to sell because keeping up with maintenance was becoming too hard. I met them. We got along well. They even liked hockey."

"They're Canadian, Shane." Ilya rolls his eyes. "Of course they like hockey."

"Everything was great," Shane continues, still sounding frustrated. "They were happy the house was going to go to someone who appreciated nature as they did. We agreed on the price. I even brought an environmental professional to inspect the property. Everything was green-lit."

Ilya blinks. "An environmental what?" What kind of crazy stuff do you need in Canada to buy a house?

"Their house is built right on the water, which is illegal to do now. If a renovation affects more than half of the structure, Ontario bylaws force you to tear it down and rebuild it back from the shoreline for environmental reasons. I needed an expert for the impact assessment."

"Shane," Ilya says with despair. "You brought a guy with you to assess best way to tear down the house before you signed the deed? Were the owners there while you and your environmental guy discussed how to destroy the place where their beloved Great-Great-Grandfather Scott Hunter taught them how to skate on the frozen lake back in the XVIII century?"

Shane snorts and then says, "Oh. They were there. The guy even asked them questions about the animals and insects in the area. Do you think that's the reason they decided not to sell?"

"Of course." Ilya chokes on a laugh. How can someone be able to read the ice so easily and not understand people at all? But hey, as usual, Hollander's loss is Ilya's win. He knows what he needs to do to get his sex cottage. Scott Hunter's great-great-granddaughters will not know what hit them.

"Well... their house is rather old. I was always going to tear it down," Shane explains. "It'd have been cruel to buy it under a false pretense. At least now I know what happened. It bothered me so much that I didn't get it."

Ilya smiles indulgently. "You're too good for this world, Hollander." Then he remembers what else he learned that day. "Too good for this world, but not good enough for hockey," he adds wickedly. "Did someone tell you that my rookie destroyed your record of youngest MLH player to score a hat trick? Or were they too worried about your poor concussed head hurting even more if you were to find out?"

"Asshole, no, no one told me. Was it Fridrichsen?" Shane asks.

"Who else?" Ilya confirms proudly.

"You guys got lucky with that one. Great pick. I'm gonna have so much tape to watch when they finally clear me." Shane sounds excited about the prospect, the lovely freak.

"Wasn't luck," Ilya corrects him.

Something suddenly occurs to Ilya. Shane is a fellow captain, arguably the best in the MLH. Like the Lady Byng trophy, best captain isn't a title Ilya wastes time competing for. He loves the C; he enjoys giving speeches and hyping the guys before games, but he's self-aware enough to accept that he isn't a good example. He parties too hard, drinks too much, is too obnoxious, too abrasive, and doesn't bother to play by the rules.

Boston gave him the C for marketing reasons: Ilya's jerseys sell, fans love him and he's very, very good at hockey. That doesn't make him a great captain, just an acceptable one. He takes the C seriously and tries his best to do for the Raiders what he wishes his former captains had done for him—he owes that to his boys—but that doesn't mean he's good at it.

Hollander, though, Hollander is everything an MLH captain should be. If you open the dictionary next to the word captain, there's probably a picture of Shane with his lovely freckles smiling back. After a brief hesitation, Ilya ventures, "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," Shane agrees.

"Do you help Metros train?" This is uncharted territory. They never discuss things like this, and Ilya realizes that he's genuinely curious about this part of Shane's life that overlaps so much with his. "Not just being good example. I know you are. They'd probably call police to report kidnapping if you ever are two seconds late to practice. I mean other stuff. Like... uh... telling coaches stuff to make the Metros play better? That kind of thing."

"Of course," Shane says. "Why do you think I watch so much tape?"

"'Cause you like boring things," Ilya teases him.

"You like boring things, too. Acquired taste, remember?" Shane points out, sounding almost shy.

"Hmm." Ilya pretends to think about it. "Yeah, I do remember saying something like that. Don't change the subject, Hollander. This is important question. How do you help?"

"I'm not gonna give you tips, Rozanov," Shane cuts him off.

"I don't need tips from you, Hollander." Ilya scoffs derisively. "Boston's playing style couldn't be more different from Montreal's. I can watch tape, too. Or make Svetlana watch it for me. She would give me tips. She's nice like that."

"I bet," Shane grouses.

Ilya should probably change the subject. Shane doesn't seem too keen on talking about it, judging by his tone. The sad truth is that they don't talk much. They fuck. They sext. They tease and rile each other up, but they don't really talk. Don't couples talk about their work? It feels very couple-y to talk shop with Hollander and not just tease him about who's best.

"Does your coach ask your opinion? I don't need you to tell me what you say to him, just if he asks you for help or not," Ilya clarifies before Hollander works himself up thinking Ilya wants classified information.

"Yes, it's half the reason I watch so much tape. It gives me insights into what works and what doesn't and then I discuss it with the coaches. I still can't believe that you don't do it," Shane comments.

Ilya rolls his eyes. "Of course I watch tape. You know damn well coaches force everyone to do video reviews."

"Yeah, but those are just standard training film sessions for every player," Shane points out. "You don't do it in your free time."

"Because it's boring, Hollander, and not even the good kind of boring." Ilya hates sitting still and being forced to rewatch the same thing over and over. He'd much rather be out on the ice, actually training.

"Well, some of us enjoy watching tape," Hollander says defensively. "It helps me see things differently. To become better."

"Yes, I know this. But why tell the coaches? Don't they worry you're stepping on their feet?"

"On their toes," Shane corrects automatically. "And no, why would they? At first, when I was still a rookie, they did look at me condescendingly when I came to them with new ideas and didn't really listen. It's been easier since I became captain. The key is to explain exactly what I see, show them the video evidence, and give them suggestions to counter the opposing team's play. These days, breaking down tape with them is part of my daily tasks."

"The famous Hollander hockey IQ," Ilya drawls, because he's heard countless reporters and hockey analysts drone on and on about it.

"Don't," Shane cuts him off. "Not you too."

"You don't like when they say this?" Over the years, Ilya has become an expert in the subtle nuances of Shane's voice. There's a way he speaks when something truly bothers him and another when he's just pretending to be bothered but actually likes it. This is the former.

"I don't mind it. I'm used to it. But also... it's just reporters reducing my hockey skills to my ethnicity. When I make a play happen, it's never because I'm faster and stronger and train ten times harder than everyone else on the ice. It's because I have high hockey IQ. The Asian kid outsmarting everyone with his brain but never with his athleticism." He stops and breathes out. "Fine, maybe it bothers me. Doesn't it bother you? They reduce you to a dirty playing brute who happens to be too fast for others to stop."

"I happen to be too fast for others to stop," Ilya agrees with a shrug. What others think of him doesn't bother him. He spent his whole life craving his father's approval—and to a lesser extent his brother's—and never got it. Compared to that, everybody else's opinion is meaningless.

"Yes, but whenever you check someone against the boards, everyone complains that you're a dirty player even if the hits are clean." Shane sounds peeved. "And they never point out how you just killed the play they were about to set ten seconds before it happened. No, it's just Rozanov being physical."

Ilya's lips twitch. "Most people don't recognize plays ten seconds before they happen, Shane. They only see them ten seconds after they're over and only if they use their silly cameras to watch the repeat in slow mo."

Shane sighs. "I know it's silly that it bothers me. That's why I never complain when people say it. I just... I don't want you to say it, too."

"For the record, you're faster and stronger and train fifty times harder than everyone else on the ice." Ilya pauses and adds, "Unless I'm on the ice with you, of course. Then you're only the second fastest, second strongest player."

"I don't hear you claiming that you train harder," Shane teases him.

Ilya shrugs. "You can have that one. I know I'm lazy. I don't watch hockey tape or read hockey books in my free time. I don't have my whole diet optimized for maximum hockey efficiency. I drink alcohol, eat junk food, smoke, and don't sleep enough. I do this so that you can be a close second-best player. A handicap to help you keep up. Don't want to get bored at the top all by myself."

"Fuck you, asshole. I don't need a handicap to be better than you," Shane retorts. "And don't bullshit me playing up your bad-boy persona TM. No one can be as good at hockey as you are unless they train consistently."

"I do what coaches say to do. No more," Ilya says.

"Your MLH coaches, who have incredibly high standards about what a player should be able to do? Hell, the amount of people on my team that struggle to do what the coaches want them to do is mind-blowing."

"Your team is filled with terrible players that you carry on your shoulders for extra weight training," Ilya points out. "This is not surprising."

"Fuck off, my team is great."

"If you say so." Ilya has never been too impressed by the Metros.

Alright. Ilya can help the coaches, too. He just hopes that LeClaire and Reilly don't think Ilya is gonna start watching tape all of a sudden, because he won't do that. He's not good at deconstructing plays the way Hollander is. That's Svetlana's strength. But Ilya can look at a player, any player, and recognize immediately their individual weaknesses. He'll share that with LeClaire and see where it gets them.

They keep talking about hockey and training, the parts they like, the parts they don't, their experiences as captains with two original six franchises resting on their shoulders.

Ilya has never talked to another MLH captain like this and it's nice. A part of him regrets that they never did this before. They wasted so many years refusing to admit that there was more between them than just sexual attraction. They could have called each other before, talked more before, gotten to know each other more before. In this, like in everything else, Shane has been waiting for Ilya to knock on his door, eager to open it.

When Shane yawns mid-sentence, Ilya checks his watch and realizes it's past 11 p.m. They've been talking for hours without noticing it. "Time to go to bed, Мой Любимый. You're falling asleep."

"I love it when you speak Russian. What does that mean?" Shane asks.

Ilya's heart skips a beat when he realizes what he's just said: My beloved. Even in Russian, where the words are used more commonly than their English counterparts, they still signal love and commitment. There's nothing casual about them. Nothing at all.

"It means second best," Ilya lies.

Shane laughs. "Asshole," he says softly. "You're right. I'm beat. Will you call tomorrow? I know you're playing New Jersey, but afterwards?"

"Yes, of course." Grow a pair. "Hey Shane, about the cottage. I'm thinking about it." He chokes on a laugh. "More like I can't stop thinking about it, really. I need some time. It's not a no. A maybe, probably. More than a maybe," he babbles, hating how unsure he sounds. Where's Mr. Smooth? "I've never not gone to Russian in the summer," he admits. "I... I just... I need some time," he repeats stupidly, "to think. Is that alright?"

"Of course, Ilya. Of course," Shane says. Gone is the sleepiness and there's so much hope in his voice. It guts Ilya. "Take all the time you need."

"Thank you. Now go to bed. Good night, Shane," Ilya says.

"Good night, Мой Любимый," Shane answers, his pronunciation stilted but good enough that the words pierce through Ilya's chest like a dagger, lodging themselves deep inside. The line goes dead as Shane hangs up, and Ilya is left unmoored, shaken, his heart beating madly.

He's so fucked. Shane was just teasing Ilya back, believing he was calling Ilya second best, too. But even though Shane hadn't meant the words, Ilya is unable to stop himself from craving to hear them again. God, Shane has no idea what he does to Ilya, how much Ilya would sacrifice for him. There's nothing Ilya wouldn't do to have Shane.

Marly is right. There's no going back from this. It doesn't matter if it's hopeless. It doesn't matter if he ends up failing and doesn't survive the impact. Now that he knows he can have this, he'll pay whatever price he has to pay to keep it. Whatever life demands of him, he will pay it gladly. He'll take how much or how little Shane agrees to give him and still call it a win. Even if it's just three months a year. Or two weeks. Or five days.

Ilya switches the keyboard of his phone to Cyrillic and opens up his chat with Svetlana. It's around seven in the morning in Moscow, so she's probably still asleep. Ilya starts swiping.

Ilya: Bored of Moscow yet?

Ilya: When are you flying back?

He hesitates briefly before he swipes his next words.

Ilya: I need a favor

He hits send.

Chapter End Notes

Welcome to all the new readers! I'm blown away that so many new people keep finding this story.

And to all the lovely persons who take the time to comment and/or kudos: You're the BEST! 😍🥹 May the joy you give me find you, too!

Me: I don't need to do this much research about Canadian water and land use rights. Google thinks I want to buy a cottage in Canada.
Shane: I refuse to spread wrong information.
Me: This is fanfiction. Nobody cares if it's accurate.
Shane: I care.
Me: That makes one of you.
Ilya: I care, too. He's very sexy when he's accurate.
Me: Shut up. You always think he's very sexy.
Ilya: 😏😈💦🍆🔥