Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova, Ilya Rozanov/Other(s)

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Model Ilya Rozanov, Hockey Player Shane Hollander, New York Admirals Player Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov Was Never a Professional Hockey Player, POV Ilya Rozanov, Angst with a Happy Ending, Situationships, Pining, Pining While Fucking, Friends with Benefits, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Depressed Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug, Recreational Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of in new york, you can try things

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-29 Updated: 2026-10-23 Words: 74,029 Chapters: 6/10

In Pursuit of a God

Summary

Hollander watched him through the screen, face flushed and dark eyes half-lidded, heavy from the powerful orgasm that had just rocked him on the other side of the country. “I guess I won’t see you until next season, then.”

Ilya snorted, dropping the towel onto the floor. “I don’t have seasons. At least not the same ones you do.”

----

Ilya didn't regret leaving hockey behind. His life was his own now, inconsistent, frustrating, and difficult as it was.

His fascination with Shane Hollander, then, was just that—a fascination, a curiosity about the world that could have been, a glimpse of the life that he might have had. But fascination could grow, when there was somewhere to take root.

Shane Hollander was a garden.

Notes

This is an Ilya-centric companion to the first in this series, Into the Blue, which is told from Shane’s point of view. I highly encourage you to read Into the Blue first, because this may not make sense without its context, but I am (probably) not your boss and can’t stop you from doing what you want.

On the Ilya/Others tag, this fic will have references to Ilya sleeping with other people (Svetlana and original male and female characters), but the only sex written in the story will be Shane/Ilya. Think of it as canon-typical promiscuity for Ilya.

Chapter 1: abdication

Chapter Summary

Ilya Rozanov goes to the gym.

Chapter Notes

JUNE 2010, LOS ANGELES

The hotel was nice. At least, nicer than what he was used to. 

Ilya didn’t stay in hotels often. Unless he could stay with Sveta, he usually opted for travel that could get him in and out of a place as quickly as possible, cutting out the need to pay for an overnight stay. It had meant many hours spent at airports, waiting in uncomfortable chairs, only to get in an uncomfortable airplane seat for anywhere from two to eight hours, sometimes more. 

But Vika had made a great deal for the shoot this time. Hotel and travel on top of the regular compensation, she had said. 

He hoped it had been part of the deal she had made, at least. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d paid for something out of her own pocket for him, though he’d told her not to do it anymore. That he’d drop her and find a new agent if she ever did it again. Both of them knew it was an empty threat. 

It was a good hotel, though. A bit corporate, but clean. There was space between the bed and the window, enough for a small couch to fit. The bed was big—a king size, for once. He’d napped off the flight, stretching his limbs out across the whole expanse, taking up all the room he wanted after six hours squeezing his long limbs and bulky frame into an economy seat. 

When he’d ventured downstairs to find food, though, the downside had arrived with the force of a punch to the face. 

They were all over the place, the NHL prospects—thick-bodied and empty-headed, squeezed into the polo shirts and khakis they wore to look presentable in case they ran into anyone from the teams or the league. Another sign of idiocy: nobody important would be staying here. They’d be at the Four Seasons, the Beverly Hilton, any of the other assorted luxury choices to be found outside of downtown Los Angeles. 

This was a place for well-off parents, cloistering their spoiled little boys for a few more nights in a middle-market business hotel, before they lost them to the inevitable cascade of brain injuries and sex addiction that would greet them in the NHL. If they made it in at all. 

Weaving through all of them and their happy families made him almost wish that he had been stuck in some shitty two-star hotel, instead. 

Ilya didn’t dwell on hockey. Most of the time it was a relief to be away from it: the pressure, the anger, the squeezing exertion of authority. 

What he was doing now was harder, in many ways. The path was less certain. And despite what his father said, it was no more or less frivolous than hockey: both were putting his body out to the public for consumption. One just took a lot more beatings while doing it. 

It was different today, when he added up the math. Today would have been his draft day, too. 

If he had kept playing, he had no doubt that he would be staying here, too, buttoned-up, clean and proper, eyeing up his competition, full of the confidence—earned or not—that every single one of them would be chosen after him.  

It left him with a strange, sour feeling. Not regret. Not jealousy. It felt almost like grief—Ilya was familiar with grief. Grief for the person he once was, for the person he could have been. 

So—best not to dwell. 

He returned to his room with a handful of energy bars and a few bags of chips that he figured would work for dinner. He sat on his bed with the food spread around him, and told himself that he wouldn’t watch the draft. 

His self-control made it until approximately forty seconds before the program started, and he changed the channel from whatever bullshit he’d been pretending to watch. He would just see who got picked first, and then he’d turn it off. That would be it. 

He kept it muted through the blustering speeches and other inane bullshit the American network played before they actually got to the point. He watched, in between bites of a bar that tasted like cardboard, as they finally announced the first overall pick. 

A shell-shocked boy with black hair, awkward in his suit, pasted on a fake smile as he stood between the Commissioner and the GM of the team that had taken him. His hair was terrible. But he had a nice face, Ilya noticed. 

It was a surprising face for hockey, with his wide, brown eyes, and long, straight nose. Never broken, Ilya assumed. His lips were thick, too. Plush. He would have fit in well at any of the jobs Ilya was doing these days—certainly better than any of the locker rooms he had ever been in. 

He heard the name, Shane Hollander, and wondered for a moment why it sounded familiar. 

The memory came back quickly enough: his old teammates, Max and Dima, griping after World Juniors in 2008 and 2009. Two losses in a row, the same culprit both times. 

Shane Hollander, they had complained to Ilya. They treat him like a fucking god and he’s not even half as good as you. You would have fucking crushed him. 

They had said other things, too, but he had stopped listening. He’d been confused, thinking they had been saying Jane. He had wondered what kind of name that was for a boy. 

Well, he thought, as he changed the channel from the grimacing boy standing between two old men to something else—American baseball, only slightly more interesting than what he had been watching before. Congratulations to Shane Hollander.

It was a lot easier to be number one when there wasn’t any real competition. 

Napping in the afternoon had been a stupid idea, though. He was still awake much later that night, watching some crime procedural now, getting hungry again. He didn’t want to order overpriced room service—he wouldn’t have known how to pay for it, and he wasn’t so sure that he should eat, either. 

He had started to think about his body differently lately. It made him feel strange. 

He had always been comfortable enough in his body. Maybe more accurate to say that he was comfortable with what his body could do for him: speed and strength on the ice; pleasure off it. The ice wasn’t a factor anymore, but he didn’t doubt his solidity. 

But his focus had been on performance, sensation. What made his thighs burn, how to stop his thighs from burning, what made his dick hard, what to do with his body when his dick was hard. Recently, it had stopped being about simply a feeling or the execution of skill—his focus on his body had turned to how it looked, too.  

It didn’t feel like vanity. There was a coldness to it, a calculation. Ilya looked at himself the way he knew others would look at him when booking him for a job. There was a small voice in his head, cruel sometimes but keenly observant nonetheless, that did the work he needed, naming the flaws that someone would immediately identify. Mimicking their judgment and appraisal, he found, blunted some of its power. 

It gave him, he had come to realize, a little bit of an edge. So he kept his sharp corners on full display when he went into bookings now, letting them see the bit of challenge in him, the defensiveness. They always seemed to like it. 

And in any case, he wasn’t treating his body any differently than he had before. He was working out nearly as much he had when he was playing hockey, keeping himself fit in the same ways. There was less time on the ice, to be sure, but he made up for it on the treadmill, in the weight room. 

That was a good idea, he realized. Tire himself out, expend the energy again, and have the benefit of a last workout before tomorrow’s shoot. He shifted off the bed, gathering the food wrappers to toss into the garbage, and went to find his gym clothes. 

He had pushed open the door and made it all the way inside before he realized that someone was already there. Even from a passing glance at the physique he could tell it was a hockey player—thick thighs pumping on a stationary bike, bulky arms braced on the bars above. 

The last fucking thing Ilya wanted was to deal with one of these empty-headed fuckers right now. He was half a step from turning around to exit the way he had just come, when he noticed a dark-eyed glare swoop in his direction. 

All Ilya saw was a glimpse of the big, brown eyes peeking over the shoulder of a compression shirt—they were gone before he could make contact. 

It was Hollander. 

Ilya paused. There was no reason for it; Hollander shouldn’t have been any more interesting to him than any of the people who had been selected 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 tonight. Admittedly, he didn’t know any of their names, so perhaps that was enough to distinguish him. 

The pause made Hollander look up again, this time for longer. He turned his head to look at Ilya directly, trying, perhaps, to identify him as another league prospect. Ilya, however, was distracted. 

He had already learned earlier today that Shane Hollander had a perfect face. But the television had not shown him the freckles. 

He was getting on the second bike before he realized what his legs were doing. 

So what if he sat directly next to him as half challenge, half delirium at the sight of one of the most gorgeous people he had ever seen, a smooth, lush face with fucking freckles all over it, currently furled into a funny, agitated scowl? It was a gym. People were allowed to use the equipment they wanted at the gym. 

Sitting on the bike next to him, though, he quickly felt it. 

There was a simmering kind of vibration coming off the boy next to him. He didn’t even need to look at him—though he did, every once in a while, just to see. But he could simply feel it in the air, directed out from the boy, directed towards Ilya. 

Focus, intensity, adrenaline. It was a familiar combination, a little concoction that made Ilya feel like the back of his neck was buzzing as he pushed his legs on the bike next to Shane Hollander. He used to feel that very same buzz once before, all on his own. 

Oh, he thought. You want to be one of the great ones. 

I used to want that too.

The thought pushed his legs to go faster. And when Hollander looked up at him again, Ilya smiled. 

When they stumbled off the bikes, Hollander looked for a moment like he might vomit on the floor of the gym. 

Ilya threw himself down onto the mat directly across from him, beaming at the exertion, at the competition, at the look of frustration he had drawn out of the little prince in front of him. 

He took a sip of water, allowing himself a moment for his heart rate to come down while he examined Hollander. His face was red and sweaty, his chest was heaving. His short hair spiked up in every direction. He was even prettier from this close.  

“Woo!” Ilya said, his thick accent wrapping up the words as he spoke. “What a fucking city, huh?” 

Shane Hollander was fun to fuck with. He was flustered, Ilya could tell as the conversation went on. His eyes couldn’t stay in one place. 

Ilya’s face. The weight rack next to him. Ilya’s throat. The kettlebells. Ilya’s face again. The exercise ball in the corner. Ilya’s dick. 

Ah.

It happened a second time, after Hollander had scoffed and said, “You didn’t beat me and we weren’t racing.” 

Hollander’s eyes flickered down, between Ilya’s open thighs. 

Ilya was seized with the urge to push him backwards onto the mat and get his tongue in his mouth. He had a feeling, too, that Hollander’s muscular legs would open up to welcome the effort before wrapping around his waist. 

But when Hollander told him that he would be going to New York, Ilya felt something different settle over him. He hadn’t been paying enough attention to the television—he hadn’t noticed the team, hadn’t cared to remember the details of the jersey he’d seen Hollander hold up for the camera. 

The feeling wasn’t fate—he didn’t believe in it. But nor was it coincidence, because Ilya wasn’t sure he believed in those, either. The feeling settling over him seemed like a chance, and Ilya had always been very good at stealing chances, plucking them straight out of thin air and turning them into treasure. It was one of the things that had made him a very good hockey player.  

He took the first one a short time later, passing his water bottle over their legs, taking care to brush the tips of his fingers lightly over the back of Hollander’s hand. Hollander’s eyes jumped up straight to Ilya’s, then back down to his dick. 

He had big hands, with long fingers. They looked elegant, but strong. Watching them wrapped around the water bottle, Ilya could imagine them wrapped around a hockey stick. He could imagine them wrapped around his dick. 

“More,” Ilya said, because Hollander’s face was still red, and he had barely had any water. 

He went back to his room soon after that, leaving Ilya to the free weights, half hard, and with Shane Hollander’s phone number burning in his pocket. 

Ilya thought about him for hours afterwards. It might have been pathetic, perhaps, but it didn’t feel that way. He was grinning, actually, when he did a quick set of exercises for his arms and chest, and while he was in the shower after, and then again in his bed, finally getting his hand on his cock. He was thinking of his eyes, his mouth, and even his nose, smattered with those fucking freckles. It took only minutes. 

He wondered if Hollander had done the same thing in his room. He thought so—Ilya had a good sense for these things. 

The sense seemed confirmed, too, when he ran into Hollander in the elevator the next morning. 

He hadn’t expected to see him, or to see anyone; he’d been preoccupied with the need to get into a car and make his way to the photoshoot. He was worried that he hadn’t left enough time with everything he’d heard about LA traffic. 

He thought that his eyes might have been as wide as Hollander’s as he walked into the elevator, but Ilya was quicker to normalize. Hollander continued to blink at him like a wide-eyed baby deer hiding in the skin of a jock. 

And yes, Ilya could see, from the faint flush creeping into Hollander’s cheeks, that last night’s encounter had had an effect on him too. Ilya wondered if he had been in the shower or in his bed when the full effect had spilled out of him. 

The elevator ride could not have been more than thirty seconds, certainly under a minute, but still—it was enough for Ilya to feel the intensity again, the shift of energy between them, as Hollander tried to chirp him, not once, but twice. He was fucking terrible at it, and he looked miserable when Ilya responded in kind. 

For the first time in a long time, Ilya wondered. What would it have been like to look up from the ice and see him looking back? 

So Ilya plucked another chance out of the air, brushing his hand against Hollander’s as he left the elevator, this time without the excuse of a water bottle between them. He felt the tremor from Hollander, a small shift in the air behind him before he entered the lobby.

If this was the last time he ever saw or heard from the hockey prince, he was sure he had left an impression. 

_____

OCTOBER 2010, NEW YORK CITY

He showed excellent self control after that, by waiting for Hollander to text him. Which he fucking didn’t, even by the time Ilya moved to New York in September. 

It was strange to have one place to live, after the in-between space he had occupied for nearly three years now, constantly moving between cities and houses. Svetlana’s home in Boston. Hostels in various cities he visited for a few days or maybe a week. His father’s house in Moscow, which may as well have been any random government building in the city for the treatment and consideration he received there. Any other places he could, for the time he could be there. 

The place in New York was familiar to him, too—he had spent many nights in this very apartment already, since Svetlana’s family had bought it for her almost two years ago as a soft landing for when she was working in New York.

It bothered him that she was moving to LA just as his visa had come through, just as he was ready to settle himself in New York like they had talked about for over a year. But a part of him understood, too. 

Svetlana wasn’t like him. She was beautiful, of course; he was only doing this now because she had led him into it by the elbow, yanking him along with her even when he faltered and she was rising higher. But all of her actions were against the backdrop of a family that would not only catch her if she fell, but would build her the ladder to help her climb higher. Ilya’s family, such that it was, was standing next to him with a saw. 

He understood that she was tired of traveling cross-country—or at least wanted to change her view for a little while, as she moved from coast-to-coast. He could understand, too, the call of the California sunshine after a youth spent in the cold misery of Moscow and Boston. 

Part of him had considered whether he should ask to go with her. But he didn’t like LA, he had realized, the few times that he had spent more than a few days there. He didn’t want to get a driver’s license, he didn’t want to struggle surrounded by other beautiful, struggling people. 

There were lots of people who struggled in New York. It was different, though. They hid it better, maybe, or they didn’t shy away from it, the way that the eager, fresh faces in LA did. There was a shamelessness, or a viciousness, that made him uncomfortable in LA. In New York, people seemed to simply exist, and allow the people beside them to exist the way that they wanted to, too. Ilya liked it. 

Still, he was sad not to have Sveta’s company. But he was thankful for her generosity with the apartment. 

She had taken care to remove all of her things, leaving only the furniture and other utilitarian necessities: pots, curtains, olive oil. She had even taken the sheets and towels. 

This had shocked him on the first night: he had gotten naked and wet in the shower before he discovered it, and had been forced to dry off on a sweatshirt. He didn’t even know where to buy fucking sheets and towels. But he didn’t begrudge her; he understood that this was her way of inviting him to make the space his own home. 

But was it that? A home? If Ilya was only moving into a home now, then it meant that he had been homeless these past three years. 

Maybe, yes. Maybe he was running away from a label that had already suited him for a long time. In which case, there was nothing for him to do except be grateful to Svetlana and her family for giving him this, and to find somewhere to go and buy sheets. 

Shane Hollander hadn’t texted him, but he hadn’t stopped thinking about Shane Hollander. 

He didn’t know which was more embarrassing: the fact that he did it so much, or the fact that he knew it was loneliness that was driving him to do it. 

Whichever it was, Ilya couldn’t stop looking him up online. There was enough information to choose from, between the hockey forums and the profiles that had been written about him in advance of his rookie season in the league. 

He was Canadian, from Ottawa, born May 10, 1991. Mother of Japanese-Canadian heritage, father of Boring-Canadian heritage. 5’11”, 190 lbs (86 kgs). He was best known for his speed and his shot accuracy, and he captained his team to two gold medals at World Juniors in 2008 and 2009, both games against Russia.  

Ilya read through every stat available. They were pretty fucking good. 

He was starting to wonder if he was almost working himself into a genuine interest in hockey as a fan when the most startling thing of all landed on a web page in front of him. 

A fucking Rolex ambassador.

What the fuck would Rolex want with a nineteen-year-old hockey player who had just barely started his professional career, stunning though he may have been? 

Ilya couldn’t believe it, actually. He stared at the single picture, contained in the page announcing Hollander as a new ambassador for the company. 

His face was what it was, but everything else was horrifying. He was wearing a plain black suit, and absolutely nothing could be done to make his terrible haircut look any better. The watch was wearing him, completely. He may as well have had a mechanical fucking arm. 

Ilya immediately picked up his phone to text him. 

Hollander. Are you stealing my job.
[LINK: Rolex]
How the fuck did you book this

SH
Can’t give away my trade secrets. 

The response arrived no less than fifteen seconds after Ilya’s third text. Ah. So he was curious, too. 

They texted all the time after that. Ilya was usually the one to initiate, and he didn’t mind it—he spent a lot of time bored, waiting in uncomfortable chairs or on his couch, waiting for his next job. 

He was lucky, he knew—there weren’t many other models (aspiring models? Was he aspiring? Did he aspire? Had Ilya ever aspired for anything in his entire life?) who had the benefit of sitting around and waiting for work without a second job as a server, or a bartender, or whatever other opportunities they could cobble together. If it hadn’t been for Svetlana and the apartment, he would have been one of them too. 

But in this one way, at least, Ilya was lucky. And so, he spent a high percentage of his waiting time dedicated to a growing fascination with Shane Hollander. And he was becoming increasingly perturbed by it. 

Was it about hockey? Was it the phantom of Ilya’s rookie season creeping up behind him that was causing this? Was Hollander simply an effigy that Ilya had built to hold all of the guilt and resentment that he pretended he didn’t still feel about walking away from it? 

If that was an explanation, it didn’t account for the memory that came to him sometimes, perhaps even often. Wide, brown eyes, a creased forehead, a thick shoulder as he settled on the bike. The flushed face across from him, breathing hard as their hands touched around a bottle. 

So he was fucking beautiful. There were other beautiful people in the world. Ilya had seen and fucked some of them recently, in fact. Being beautiful didn’t make Shane Hollander special. 

_____

DECEMBER 2010, LOS ANGELES

But were there any other beautiful people who played such beautiful hockey? 

He hadn’t intended to watch the game. He was just out of the shower after another long day in Los Angeles, another job that had required hours of waiting, standing, sweating, keeping his mouth shut, listening, turning, blinking, posing, changing his face, changing his body, waiting, waiting, waiting. 

He was only here because Svetlana was in Paris, and then on her way to Moscow, and he couldn’t stay in her house because he didn’t drive and he had no idea how to get a fucking cab on his own in LA. The hotel was fine—not as nice as the one he had stayed at when he was here in June—but the bathroom was clean and the view of the sprawling lights and palm trees was nicer than the back of a building. 

He was sprawled out on the bed, taking up as much space as he could on it, tired of feeling small and tightly coiled from the job all day today and from the flight from New York yesterday. He was flipping channels. 

It would be lying to say anything stopped his attention other than Shane Hollander. He froze as soon as he saw him, the remote tilting down towards the bed as he stared at the television. 

He was already mid-flight when Ilya switched the channel onto the game, HOLLANDER 24 emblazoned on the back of his white jersey in blue and red. He wove around the LA players scrambling after him, practically liquid as he soared across the ice. 

He was a beautiful skater. 

Ilya had not watched hockey, not really, since the last day he watched his own game tape. But he sat on the edge of his bed now, watching this game, the remote forgotten next to him. 

He made a noise in his throat each time Hollander missed a shot, exhaled when an obvious trip against him wasn’t called. He leaned forward onto his elbows when Hollander stretched his stick out to receive a sloppy pass from a player who had no business being on a line with him. 

Hollander was a ferocious player. Nobody had ever mentioned that before, not in anything he had ever seen or heard about him—Ilya only saw words about his Hockey IQ, how graceful he was, how he played with such good sportsmanship. It was all bullshit. Hollander was a terror: Ilya could see it in every movement. 

When he scored, Ilya slapped the bed so hard the remote wobbled to the floor. He left it on the ground, watching Hollander pump one fist in the air, beaming at the teammates coming for him. When the bodies piled on top of him, his beaming smile was barely visible between the crush of white, red, and blue. 

Ilya watched his second goal, too. He liked that one even more. 

When the game finished, he felt like he had been wrung out. He wasn’t hard—he hadn’t been at any point, even when Hollander had ducked out from an attempt to check him into the boards and shot down the rink like he was made of fucking air. That wasn’t what the feeling had been. 

It felt more like his body was burning. His thighs, his calves, his shoulders. A phantom pain, maybe, the memory of a shared experience. 

He texted Hollander an hour after the game. 

He didn’t think he would actually come. It wasn’t simple, after all—maybe it had been a dare, even. Sending him the name of a hotel and the room number: 1410. 

He would have to travel through Los Angeles to get there from their fancier team hotel, in a taxi, probably, to come and meet someone who was still a stranger to him, who he had met for no more than twenty minutes, maybe, split between an elevator and a gym in a nice Marriott not far from here. 

It was an extremely stupid idea, actually. Sheltered, perfect, boring Canadian Shane Hollander was surely too smart, or timid, to actually do it. 

Then, at seven minutes past the hour, a knock. 

Wow, brave. 

He looked smug when he came in. Not obviously, not the way Ilya would have, if he’d just played a road game the way Hollander had, two months into his first season in the league. If it had been Ilya, he would have walked into the room, simply taken his dick out, and told him to get on his knees. 

Hollander’s cockiness had a veneer over it, a gloss, like he was trying to pretend it was something other than it was. Like he was trying to convince the other person, Oh, I’m pretty good, when his entire body was screaming, that’s right, I really am that fucking great. 

And Ilya felt it again, the rush of resentment—the sudden urge to take him down a peg, this boy who was only the best because Ilya had stopped trying to be. 

He kissed him against the wall, seeking his tongue immediately. Hollander was sloppy—he hadn’t kissed many people, Ilya thought. But he didn’t mind the spit and the teeth he got along with Hollander’s soft lips. It was better to kiss someone hungry. 

But then, Hollander dropped to his knees at a speed that made Ilya’s head rock back, and he suddenly wondered if he had misjudged him—the arrogant hockey prince, who Ilya would need to fight to crack open, bit by bit—and if there was more to be found underneath the surface. 

Ilya would bet money (actual, American dollars, which he had very few of) that Hollander had never done this before. But he was grasping for it, clutching at him, and his mouth was warm, wet, and eager.

Ilya saw, suddenly, with his dick inching its way towards the back of Hollander’s mouth, the depth within him, just a glimpse of an aching, open soul. 

He wasn’t just hungry, he was starving. 

It made him so dizzy that he worried for a moment that he might come right there. He pulled Hollander up, quickly, wondering if he had somehow gotten this all wrong. 

But then Hollander stood in front of him a few minutes later, naked, and Ilya saw something new again, all at once, like light refracting quickly off glass. 

Ilya had imagined this body during all six months since he had first seen it, in this same city, but his imagination had not even come close to reality. 

Every single inch of him was gorgeous—muscular legs, thick arms and chest, still a little boyish, maybe, but clear about the power he already had and would only gain more of over time. A round ass, which he wanted to slap, and spread apart. A big, perfect, curved cock, which Ilya was already impatient to get his hands on. 

Hollander stood there in front of him with his arms out. Yeah, he said. I can see that you want me. They all do. I am the fucking best. 

It was confident, it was arrogant, it was eager, it was open, it was starving. It was every one of those things at once, because, Ilya had now discovered, Shane Hollander was not one simple thing. 

For the first time in four years, Ilya yearned to put on skates. He yearned to chase him until his legs were burning, to smash him into the boards before stripping the puck from him, and to make him scowl when he scored goal after goal after goal against him. He yearned to win a thousand faceoffs against him. 

He settled for giving him, he thought, the strongest orgasm of his life. 

Chapter End Notes

If you are here from Into the Blue… hi! Nice to see you!! Thoughts or feelings after getting a peek into Ilya’s head?

This is also a bit more focused on Ilya's internal monologue than future chapters will be, since Ilya's mostly on his own right now. Too bad Shane Hollander didn't text him when he got to New York, am I right?

Also -- my current plan is for this to be 9 chapters, but it's plausible that I will need to increase the chapter count. Turns out this guy has a lot to say.

Chapter 2: complicated people

Chapter Summary

Ilya Rozanov gets used to life in New York City.

Chapter Notes

Where dialogue uses « » as quotation marks, the characters are speaking Russian.

This chapter covers Chapter 3 – the middle of Chapter 4 of Into the Blue.

MARCH 2011, NEW YORK CITY

Shane Hollander had a dirty mind. 

It delighted Ilya. It had taken a little effort to dig it out, to scrape off the outer layers of shyness and repression to get to the good stuff underneath. 

It was like a treasure when he found it: one to match his own. 

When he’d returned from their encounter in Los Angeles and Hollander still hadn’t texted him about anything other than the movies he’d watched on his recent flights, Ilya had assumed that would be it. 

It was true, there had been a glimpse of something enticing—and it was true, he had thought about it too often. Hollander’s flushed face, the muscles of his abs contracting under Ilya’s hand. Hollander’s thumb, covered in Ilya’s come, slipping into his mouth, a pink tongue. 

Still, he tried to put it out of his mind, even as the city had conspired against him: a subway car filled to bursting with Admirals fans waiting to get out at Penn Station, at least half of them draped in the name and number of their new star, Ilya holding onto the pole near the door surrounded by 24s. A rare cab ride instead of walking or the train, the sound of Hollander wins the faceoff, Hollander dekes, Hollander scores over and over from the radio commentary of the Admirals’ game against New Jersey. 

So Ilya texted him about movies, and tried not to think about the thumb, the come, the tongue. 

But then, Canada. 

Toronto had tested his considerations about fate or coincidence, because it seemed uncanny for the first time he’d ever been in Canada to be on the same night Shane Hollander had arrived in the same city for a game the next day. Ilya wasn’t even really supposed to be there—it was a last minute booking for a boring job that paid well. It had ended earlier in the day, but his flight to New York wasn’t until morning. 

If there had been a chance in the air, one of them—Hollander or Ilya, maybe both—had seized it. He’d been bitching about the Canadian coins as a joke, simply to pass the time while he lay on his bed in the hotel room, and somehow he’d ended up with his fingers in Hollander’s asshole. 

And clearly he had pressed on the right spot, so to speak, because finally, finally, Hollander had texted him to meet up in the city. 

Ilya had been in Los Angeles, eating lunch with Sveta at a cafe filled with beautiful people with shining faces who were pretending to eat from bowls of lettuce. He had easily abandoned his unsatisfying sandwich to check his buzzing phone. 

Svetlana had glanced over at his phone with interest, double-taking when she noticed Ilya tilt the screen away from her. 

He’d said nothing, because there was nothing to look at and no reason for her to be looking at him that way. She’d raised her eyebrows in response. 

«Keep your little secrets,» she’d smirked. 

Ilya’s first glimpse of what was contained in the secret recesses of Hollander’s mind came six days after the text, when he had shown up at the apartment and scowled at Ilya all the way up until they fucked. 

And for the third time, he’d been able to see the change come over Hollander afterwards, the loosening in his shoulders and jaw, the lines easing from his forehead. When they were finished, he’d rolled his head back against Ilya so easily that Ilya wondered if he even knew he was doing it—the loose motion was completely at odds with the stiff, awkward boy who had walked in through his door scarcely an hour earlier.

He would return to himself soon enough, though, become inscrutable and quiet again, wrapped up in a thin layer of defensiveness. There was something about this shift, closed to open and back again, that intrigued Ilya. 

You like complicated people, Sveta would have said. Which couldn’t have been entirely true, because while wonderful in nearly every aspect, Svetlana was not complicated. Not in that way, at least. And Ilya liked her very much. 

But maybe it was true about Shane Hollander. He was complicated. And Ilya liked looking at his closed door and thinking about ways to pry it open. 

He still refused to tell Ilya where he lived. It had been funny at first, but soon it would get fucking annoying. For now, though, it didn’t matter—Ilya’s apartment was comfortable, and he’d welcome Hollander here if he wanted to come. 

And yes, Shane Hollander really wanted to come right now. 

Today, Hollander was underneath him. It was the second time he’d been in Ilya’s bed, and Ilya had welcomed him in generally the same fashion. He had taken this new opportunity, the suddenly open door, to enjoy something a little different. 

Ilya pushed his mouth down over him, relaxing his throat to take him in as deeply as he could. Over the wet sucking noises in the room, he heard Hollander groaning from the bed above him. His balls were tight in Ilya’s hand, and a brief glance across his body showed Ilya the same twitches in his abs that he’d noticed the last time Hollander had come like this, stretched out below him. 

So Ilya pulled his mouth away, making Hollander squirm as he tried to chase the sensation, ultimately dropping his head back onto the pillow as he lost it. He groaned into the air, shifting his hips up, towards Ilya’s face. 

The frustration was what Ilya liked the most. He didn’t think that made him cruel—he would always give Hollander the sensation back, was always ready to take him back into his mouth and graze his fingers over his balls again. He would give him the good feelings again every single time, even if he took them away right at the end. 

The third time Ilya pulled away, Hollander couldn’t even bring himself to groan. He let out a stuttered breath instead, hips dropping back onto the mattress, shifting slowly against the sheets. When Ilya finally glanced at him, Hollander looked wrecked. He was panting, and his entire face was red, trailing down in splotches past his neck and below his collarbone. 

Ilya observed the harsh breaths he sucked in, the way his chest was heaving. 

“Hollander, you are okay? You can breathe?” 

“I mean,” Hollander exhaled over three long seconds, like he was trying to do an exercise for his lungs. “Basically no, you’re basically killing me.” 

“And not even letting me come,” he added in complaint, huffing out a shorter breath. 

Ilya laughed, somewhat surprised at the bluntness of the statement. Hollander did that sometimes—oscillated between a blushing, stuttering version of himself, and blurting something out that went straight to Ilya’s dick. Ilya wanted to understand exactly what made the difference, so that he could figure out how to pull out each reaction whenever he wanted it. 

For now, he reached up, fingers splayed out as he rested his hand on Hollander’s abdomen like he was checking his lungs. Then he put his mouth back on his cock. 

When he pulled away a few seconds later, again, Hollander groaned like he had been physically maimed. 

“Oh my fucking God,” he groaned. 

Ilya watched him reach down to grab his own dick, apparently seizing the task for himself since he was unhappy with how Ilya was doing it. 

“Hey! Didn’t say you could do that.” Ilya knocked Hollander’s hand away. 

He expected a snarling response, something like you don’t fucking tell me what to do, for Hollander to grab it back, for them to come to blows over his cock. 

Instead, Hollander dropped back, panting, spreading his legs wider for Ilya, pulling his knees towards his chest as he dug his heels into the mattress. He stared at him, eyes glassy, as his hand reached out again. 

But this time he reached for Ilya. The long fingers of both his hands grasped at Ilya’s hair, finding purchase around the curly strands, and gripping him tightly as he pulled him in closer again.  

Ilya, somewhat dumbstruck by the contact, allowed himself to be led. He was no stranger to a lover’s hand in his hair, but something about Hollander’s strong grip, the direct way he tugged him back between his legs, the twist of his fingers turning into two fists clutching as he got better hold—Ilya had to exhale slowly through his nose for a moment of control. 

He found himself with his face pressed into the crease of Hollander’s hip, cheek resting against his cock, hard and throbbing from Ilya’s earlier efforts. With Hollander’s tight hold on his hair, Ilya couldn’t move his head far—so he only tilted it up slightly for a glimpse of the man underneath him. 

The look on his face sent a jolt down into Ilya’s abdomen. He was already hard, but his cock jumped at the sight of Hollander, the open need painted all over him, in the depths of his wide, wet eyes. He was staring directly back at Ilya: greedy, impatient, wanting. 

“Please,” Hollander breathed. 

Ilya had to look away as ducked his head, tugging it out of the grasp around him. He kept his eyes averted as he shifted up the bed, stretching across Hollander to reach into the nightstand. 

He just needed a moment away—a moment when he wasn’t looking. He was starting to think about Hollander’s eyes at strange times of the day and night, especially when he remembered them looking at him like that.  

_____

APRIL 2011, NEW YORK CITY

“Okay, now turn—no, not that way. No, turn, okay, no—stop!” 

The girl next to him was essentially jerking in midair under the so-called instructions of the photographer, trying to follow the incoherent directions being barked at her from several feet away. Ilya would have helped if he could, but it was impossible to tell the direction she was expected to turn. The photographer hadn’t even looked up to indicate if he meant left or right. 

He put his camera down now, shaking his head in disgust as he muttered something to one of the assistants with him. 

Ilya took the opportunity to relax how he held his upper body, rolling his head back on his neck for a quick stretch. He glanced at the girl out of the corner of his eye, and saw her panicked look. Her body language was completely tense, her narrow shoulders hunching towards her ears. That wasn’t going to help anything. He breathed out slowly, hoping that she would follow suit and let herself relax. 

It was a good job—one of the better ones he’d booked recently. This made it important, he thought, for him to keep his mouth shut and his expression clear enough to get to the end and go home with the check that he needed. 

The model with him was also Eastern European. Latvian, he thought. Her English wasn’t good. 

She hadn’t spoken a word to him other than a mumbled hello when they’d first arrived, but he could read her uncertainty from how she kept looking between him, the photographers, and the assistant directors on the set, eyes flickering nervously in all directions. It seemed like more than a language barrier, though—clearly, she could intuit that this good job would not be one that was also straightforward or easy. She was correct in that regard. 

“Jesus, can they fucking listen? I mean, they have to be able to understand ‘TURN’ and ‘NO,’ you would think.” 

“You’d think, but who the fuck knows. They aren’t here because of their language abilities.” 

It was far from the first time he had been at a job where the people around him spoke as if he wasn’t there, like they assumed their rapid, vulgar English couldn’t—or wouldn’t—be understood. It had happened often enough that he now knew it was because they simply didn’t care whether or not they could be properly interpreted. 

Ilya had spoken English well enough when he’d started modeling. It had largely been down to natural aptitude for language—a career in the NHL had been only slightly more than an idle thought at the time, certainly not enough to motivate him into improving his linguistic skills. 

But learning had come easily to him at one point in his life. His accent was choppy, and he found the rules of English confounding to the point of infuriating, but he had always been better at picking it up than most of his peers. He liked that it let him watch movies with Svetlana when she visited from Boston. He liked that it helped him understand the commentary on clips he found of Stanley Cup games. He liked that it meant that he could understand some of the funny things on the Internet. 

Vika had remarked on it, early on after they’d met. 

“Your English is good,” she’d said, carefully enunciating the words. “That will be good for you, it will help you.” 

But when he’d actually started working, he’d realize that Vika’s view was skewed. His English was better, probably, than most of the young people that she saw straight from Russia. 

It was not even close to enough. He remembered the early shoots, when he’d stood, half-naked, body shifting in stuttered movements just like the Latvian girl next to him now, trying to understand the conversation around him and trying not to fuck up the job he was desperate to do correctly.

It was not the most powerless he’d ever felt in his life, but it evoked enough of the feeling for him to resolve to do whatever he could to change it. 

Pouring himself into studying English had been good—it allowed him to use his brain, something he had never really done enough of, before. He read books now. He never would have read books if he was playing hockey. 

But the hard work only took him so far. There were still moments—these moments—when it didn’t matter how much English he knew, because he held his tongue anyway. 

One of the assistants came up to them then. They weren’t asked anything; the hands came onto their skin anyway, moving their limbs, turning their hips, tilting their chins. Ilya could see the Latvian girl’s eyes flickering nervously at him, but he kept his gaze steadily ahead, looking into the air. 

He could feel the heat of the indignity building inside him, and he worked to suppress it—breathing out slowly through his nose, keeping his face impassive. Showing any emotion would only make this take longer. The sooner this was over, the sooner he could leave. 

“There, Jesus, thank you,” the photographer said, looking at them through the camera.

Another assistant agreed, “Fucking finally.” 

The camera shots started again. Ilya held his pose, shifting only when the photographer said to. The Latvian girl followed his lead, lagging a second behind. 

The photographer’s face was blocked by the camera again when he said it, loud enough to carry through the several feet between them.

“Yeah, that’s good now. Much more fuckable.” 

The assistant director wasn’t even looking at them when he answered. “I mean, someone’s definitely going to want to fuck them.” 

Ilya kept looking forward until there was a long enough pause between photos to blink. He slid his eyes over then, holding the gaze of the model next to him. 

He couldn’t tell if she had understood, but there was a pinched, unhappy look lurking at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Even if the words hadn’t translated perfectly, the sentiment had. 

It was strange, when he stood outside of his body long enough to look at something like this. He understood exactly what they were saying, how they were saying it, at its deepest level. It was the same thing he’d been around for most of his life, the way his friends and teammates would talk about girls in the locker room, or leering after school, trading stories that half of them were probably making up. Had he ever even considered being on this side of it? Of course not. 

He wanted to say he hadn’t participated in it, but he couldn’t—of course he couldn’t. The pressure to fit in was strong for a young boy. But he’d stopped talking like that long ago, all the more since he’d found himself in the middle of incidents like this one. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen it. He was sure it wouldn’t be the last. 

What did it mean, that he didn’t speak up? The easy answer was that it meant nothing—he had little to gain by saying anything, except ruining the job for himself and probably the model with him. 

The complicated answer, the more truthful one, was that it cost him a few dollars-worth of his own self respect, proportional to whatever check he would be taking home with him at the end of the day. 

«Do you know why I do this job?» Vika had asked him during the third conversation they had ever had, more than three years ago. 

He’d shaken his head. He had wanted to say money, but it wasn’t clear to him how much money Vika really had. Her suits seemed unfashionable to him, ill-fitting in the shoulders and the hips. He knew little about women’s hair, but the cut of hers—short, tightly curled against her scalp—seemed like a choice for ease of maintenance, not appearance. 

The story she told him about her ex-husband, who had been an agent when she was a model herself—yes, back in the Stone Age, I know you are thinking it—had unsettled him. The matter-of-fact way she had spoken about what her husband had done to the young models, the way they’d been treated by designers, photographers, any powerful men that crossed their paths. It wasn’t a shocking story, necessarily, but he’d listened to every word of it nonetheless, understanding that Vika was giving him a lesson that she found meaningful, and that he should take seriously. 

«He may be dead, but the shit slides on,» Vika told him. «Your friend Svetlana is lucky, though her family helps in that regard. Kolya will always look after her, too. Other girls are not so lucky. I do this job for them, but I also do this job for you, so that you understand that you have to look after them, too.»

What the fuck am I supposed to do? 

He had thought it even then, as Vika had stared at him seriously over the desk between them, wearing a bright red pantsuit. He had thought it every time he’d heard something profane said about one of them, every time he’d seen a hand slide over an ass or across a chest. What the fuck had he ever done about it? Not ever enough. 

He looked at the Latvian model now, holding her gaze—it was the most he could ever really do. But maybe it was enough to say, this is vile bullshit, and we are here together in it. He thought he saw her shoulders relax, even as the photographer and his assistant laughed together about something several feet away. 

They made it through the day eventually, and left, checks in their hands. He waited for her after they had wrapped up, hovering in the hallway while she changed and collected her bags. They exited the building together, and he saw her narrow shoulders finally relax as they let the heavy door swing shut behind them and stepped into the street. He wondered if she felt like he did: like emerging into the sunshine, the sound of the metal door banging behind him, allowed him to become a person again. 

She smiled at him when she saw that he had pulled out a pack of cigarettes, making a grabbing motion in his direction with her hand. His lips quirked around the cigarette already in his mouth, and he obliged, handing her one before he pulled out his lighter. 

“What a terrible day,” she remarked brightly, in heavily accented English, letting him light the cigarette. 

He had to agree, but it already felt better in the sun, as they walked down the block and left the building behind them. 

And what did it matter if she invited him back to the cramped Brooklyn apartment she shared with two other women? It was nobody’s business, anyway. 

_____

“I got tacos.” 

Hollander came back into the apartment, his arms full. Without turning around, Ilya listened as he let the door close behind him, giving it a gentle nudge with his hip or his foot until the latch clicked. 

Ilya turned then, to watch Hollander carefully take his shoes off, balancing the bag in his hands so the takeout container inside of it didn’t tilt. He was so fucking meticulous about that kind of thing. Ilya watched, too, as he replaced the keys in exactly the place on the table where he had taken them from.  

Ilya was still on the sofa, still where Hollander had left him twenty minutes ago. And though Hollander had told him that he was going to get food before leaving with Ilya’s only set of keys, he still found himself mildly surprised to see that he had come back. 

His mind had been preoccupied today, and clearly Hollander had been able to tell. It was clearly something Ilya, himself, couldn’t see—or something he felt too tired to hide better, today. Whatever it was, Hollander had noticed. 

A part of Ilya felt self-conscious to be seen through so easily, to be treated as something to be taken care of. A part of him was still too distracted to give a shit. 

It was money, money, always fucking money. At least, he was pinning the grey feeling on money, today. The feeling was about more than that—it was always about more than that. 

He was feeling worn down by all of it. The long days between jobs, wondering if he should have been finding other work. The credit card bill on his coffee table—what the fuck had he even bought? Food, shoes, bullshit—and the phone calls from Alexei, holding over him the money he had asked for, once, that he had already repaid. Constant phone calls, always probing to see if Ilya had more to send back.  

A ticket to Moscow—that was what he had bought on the fucking credit card. 

Hollander brought the container of food over to the coffee table with a handful of napkins. For a moment, they both stared at the piles of paper covering the surface of the table—magazines and mail, half of it Svetlana’s. Ilya finally urged himself into action, pushing everything into a pile on one side. The motion left a space large enough for Hollander to put down the container between them. 

Ilya could see his eyes darting towards the pile of papers like he wanted to tell him to move it somewhere else. He could look all he wanted, Ilya wasn’t doing shit. 

But Hollander said nothing as he settled on the couch next to him. 

“Should I get plates?” 

Ilya shrugged, reaching for the food. Hollander was already getting up to get plates. 

He hadn’t been kidding when he said he wanted McDonald’s, but tacos were better than whatever athlete-meal-plan bullshit he had guessed Hollander might return with. When he opened the cover of the takeout box to reveal nearly a dozen tacos inside, though, the sheer volume of them pulled an unexpected laugh out of him.

“Wow, wow—you think this will be enough?”

Hollander was already returning, two plates in hand. He looked from Ilya to the container and back, brows furrowing in confusion. 

“Fuck off,” he said after a moment, handing Ilya a plate as he sat down again. “You’re probably going to try to eat six of these. You only get five.” 

“Oh, math lessons with Shane Hollander,” Ilya remarked, helping himself to the two best looking tacos, filled with pork. Hollander quickly reached in to grab two for himself. 

They ate in silence for a while. Ilya was conscious of Hollander glancing at him every few moments. 

It was unsettling to be observed like this, especially when Ilya was used to being the one to observe. Especially when he didn’t know what Hollander was seeing, or what had called for such observation in the first place. 

Ilya had never been one to second guess anything he had ever done in bed with someone. But with the tension creeping up his spine from Hollander’s quiet looks, he wondered if there had been something there that he hadn’t noticed, some signal that he had emitted that now had the dull heat of Hollander’s focus fixed intently onto him. 

He was starting to get agitated by it, and he was a hairsbreadth away from asking Hollander what his fucking problem was, when the silence was unexpectedly broken. 

“What’s your favorite place that you’ve traveled?” Hollander wiped his mouth carefully with a napkin, finished with the first of his tacos, pausing before going in for the second. 

Ilya squinted as he chewed, trying to decipher the question. “Favorite, what kind of favorite?” 

“Like… the place that you liked going to the most.” 

Hollander was avoiding using any of the extra salsa that had come in the takeout container with the food. Ilya wondered if it was because of something bizarre in his nutrition plan, or if he didn’t like spice. Or if he didn’t like sauce. Hollander always seemed to eat his food so much plainer than Ilya did. 

“New York,” Ilya answered, finishing his second taco and reaching for two more that he wanted with his mouth still full. 

Hollander had his second taco halfway to his mouth, but brought it back down to his plate as he rolled his eyes at Ilya. 

“Okay, well, that’s not what I fucking meant. You live here.” 

When Ilya just raised his eyebrows at him, Hollander jutted his chin out at him. “I mean a place that you’ve visited, not where you currently live.”

Ilya dropped his eyes back to his plate, considering the question, thinking of the places he had been and the ones he had liked. There had been a lot of them, actually, these past few years. And he’d been truthful—he liked New York the best. 

But after a moment he answered. “Berlin.” 

“Oh. I’ve never been.” 

“Good clubs.” 

“Oh. You go to clubs?” Hollander looked over at him again, with his wide, earnest brown eyes. Ilya wanted to laugh at the doe-eyed look and the simple, stupid question. 

But he only shrugged instead. “I did in Berlin.” 

He ate another taco, chicken this time. “What city do you like?”

Hollander seemed to give the question a lot of thought, which was strange since he had asked it in the first place. Ilya watched his throat bob as he swallowed before he spoke. 

“I guess…” He looked sheepish. “New York is probably the most interesting place I’ve been to, too.” 

Ilya smirked, but graciously let this go without comment. 

“No clubbing in Berlin?” He asked instead. 

“No, I’ve never been to Berlin,” Hollander repeated. He reached for another taco. “Or a club.” 

Nothing about this was surprising—Ilya couldn’t imagine Shane Hollander, in his gym clothes and baseball cap, anywhere near any of the clubs he had been to, let alone any of the ones in Europe. As fluid as his movements were on the ice, or in a bed with Ilya’s dick inside of him, there was no way Hollander could dance. Ilya couldn’t picture it at all. He had once said he didn’t even listen to music.

“You are so boring,” Ilya mused, finishing his fourth taco in one big bite. 

He reached for two more, and Hollander immediately swatted him away from the takeout container. Ilya took one, instead.   

“I like Seattle,” Hollander said thoughtfully. “And Vancouver.” 

Ilya had been to neither. But even if he had, he didn’t think he could have guessed what would make Shane Hollander like one place more than any other. It was one of the ways Hollander was still a mystery to him—what did he like, besides hockey and sex? What made him emerge from a building and look at the sky and think, I like it here? 

“What do you like?” Ilya asked. 

Hollander ate for some time while he spoke. It gave Ilya the opportunity to look at him again, studying his thick black hair, still damp from the shower, the expanse of his shoulders underneath the sweatshirt, plain blue with a Reebok logo, his jeans and plain white socks. So fucking boring. 

“They’re… I don’t know,” Hollander said finally. “They’re big, and open. There’s lots of trees and mountains and the ocean. It feels different from here, with all the buildings and all the people. It feels like you can hear yourself think there.” 

Hollander didn’t usually speak so much. He rambled sometimes, usually when Ilya asked him something that made him nervous. But he usually didn’t speak in this kind of long, considered way. So when he did, now, Ilya listened. 

A crowded mind, he thought. Ilya would have guessed this about him. He understood what that was like, though he wondered if the thoughts inside Hollander’s mind were ever as cruel as the ones in his own. What would the inner thoughts have to be cruel about to Shane Hollander, the little prince, the golden boy? 

He watched as Hollander took a sixth taco from the takeout container and put it on Ilya’s plate. When Ilya looked at him, Hollander shrugged. 

“What games do you have for the XBox?” He asked, bypassing any explanation altogether. 

Ilya stared down at the taco on his plate. Inexplicably, he felt a heaviness in the space between his eyes, inside of his skull. He also felt, suddenly, like he should give it back. 

But Hollander was already getting up with his plate, taking it back towards the kitchen. Ilya listened to the sound of the sink turning on, and Hollander washing the plate. 

He only picked up the taco when he heard the water turn off. 

“FIFA,” Ilya called out before he took a bite. “Will kick your ass at it.” 

Hollander came back into the room, wiping his damp hands on the front of his sweatshirt. 

“I mean, yeah, you might. I fucking suck at FIFA. You don’t have Chel?” 

Ilya did, but he wasn’t going to play it with him. Hollander didn’t push the issue, anyway. Ilya finished his taco as he watched him turn on the console and grab two controllers, bringing them back to the sofa and dropping back into the spot he had recently vacated. 

Now done with his food, Ilya went to reach for the controller—but Hollander immediately snatched it away from him. 

“You’re not going to wash your hands?” He was staring at Ilya with his nose wrinkled, making the smattering of freckles across his face bunch together absurdly. 

Ilya stared at him for a long moment. He was sure that his face showed only disdain—especially judging from the small flush slowly creeping into Hollander’s cheeks—but he felt a sudden surge of something that might have been closer to fondness, or at the very least, amusement. He was such a strange, finicky person. 

Ilya leaned over to close the now-empty takeout container, placing his empty plate on top of it. He stood up, ready to take both of them with him to the kitchen so that he could put them in the sink and wash his hands properly, as directed. 

Before he did, though, he turned around and wiped his greasy hands on Hollander’s pink cheeks. 

“You fucking asshole,” Hollander sputtered, yanking his head out of Ilya’s grip. 

“Hands are clean now,” Ilya replied. 

He quickly grabbed the plate and container, anticipating that Hollander would move quickly—and he did. Ilya barely made it to the kitchen before he felt the strong forearm of a hockey player digging into his back, trying to shove him away from the sink. 

Ilya stood his ground, boxing his arm out to fend Hollander off as he washed his hands. He waited until he was finished before dropping his arm and stepping to the side, letting Hollander take the sink to wash his face. 

It was hard not to grin, listening to him grumble as he splashed soapy water onto his cheeks. Ilya couldn’t help himself: he grabbed Hollander’s ass as he passed, getting exactly the reaction—a leg kicking out towards him—that he’d thought he would. He avoided it easily, since Hollander couldn’t even see which direction he was supposed to be kicking, with soap and water in his eyes. 

He returned to the sofa, dropping down and picking up the controller that Hollander had tried to keep away from him before. He fiddled with the game, getting it to the opening screen. 

While he waited for it to load, his eyes fell on the pile of mail on the coffee table again. He remembered, distantly, about the things he had been worrying about before—about money, about his next job, about Alexei, about his father, about his impending trip to Moscow. 

He didn’t feel quite so heavy as he had when the day had started. Shane Hollander and his little scowls, his six tacos, his insistence on cleaning up properly, had actually managed to create some kind of distraction. 

So he smiled when Hollander came back to the sofa, clearly still smarting from the dirty face trick. Ilya gave him a peace offering—the controller—and after a moment Hollander accepted it with an even tinier scowl. 

Ilya kicked his ass in the game. That made him feel better, too.

_____

JUNE 2011, MOSCOW

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to come back here if he didn’t have to sleep in his old bedroom. 

If he had money—like a maximum value rookie contract, the small voice in his head supplied—he could have had his own apartment instead. It might have been different to return, then, if he had his own space. If he wasn’t stuck within these four walls thinking of all of the phases of life they had seen, nearly every one of them fucking awful. 

In truth, he didn’t know why he’d come back at all. There was nothing for him here. Being here, actually, was costing him, literally. He’d had to turn down two jobs that had come up during the time he’d planned to be away from New York. When he’s said no to the second one, Vika had been quiet in response, her judgment etched into every beat of the silence that stretched out between them on the phone. 

«I know,» Ilya said irritably, as angry with himself as he was with the people he was trapped in this house with. «I know. It won’t happen again like this.»

And what was he even doing here? Nothing. Sveta was in New York, of all places, sending him updates about the pigeons that had made a nest on the fire escape outside of the bedroom window, and the cafe that had just opened down the street. 

All the while, he was here, in Moscow, avoiding Sasha, avoiding Alexei, Polina, his father. 

It was easier said than done. Alexei theoretically had a job—which he could have only ever gotten through nepotism, considering the amount of drugs in his system—but he seemed to be around all the fucking time. 

Alexei knew about the work he’d done this spring—bigger jobs than before, and more of them, which meant that the money was better than it had been before he’d moved to New York. 

«Bringing home big checks now, Hugo?» He had sneered the other day. «Living your big life, are you? Don’t forget how you got there, you ungrateful shit. Don’t forget who you owe for it.»

Four years, and it always came back to that. Because Ilya had asked for money once, for the first plane ticket to get him the fuck out of here. Sometimes he wished he had never done it. But where would he be now, if he hadn’t? 

Maybe he would have swallowed down the pride and gone back to the rink, apologized to his coach, put his head down through whatever bullshit they wanted him to suffer until he could play properly again. Maybe if he had done that, he would be in the same place he was now anyway—in New York, but with Shane Hollander’s maximum value rookie contract and endorsement deals attached to his name, instead. 

Or maybe not. Maybe Ilya wouldn’t have gotten on the plane to New York, and maybe he wouldn’t have gone back to hockey. And then where the fuck would he be? In Moscow, doing what? 

No thought filled him with so much dread as that one. 

His sleeping schedule in Moscow was fucked. It had started as jet lag, maybe, but it should have gone away by now. But he was still staying up late into the night, sometimes going out with friends he’d known before, some of whom were in the offseason with the KHL. Most nights, though, he was just at home, fucking around, doing nothing, waiting for the time to end and wondering why he had planned this trip in the first place. 

He woke up late every day, staying in bed for hours sometimes before dragging himself out from under the blanket. He would wind up for the day slowly, doing what he could to skirt around the house’s other occupants. Eventually, he’d go to the gym and spend as much time there as he could—on the treadmill, with the weights, in the sauna. Then he would come home, check if there was an invitation to go anywhere later, and start the cycle again. 

On the morning of June 23, there was something different on the phone when he woke up. He saw the name on the message first, and spent a long time looking at the two letters before he actually opened the text to see what had been sent. 

Ilya stared at the blurry picture, taken outside in Las Vegas, apparently. It was a photo of himself for Hugo Boss, though the details were barely visible. He recognized the pose first, his legs stretched out as he leaned back on his elbows, his chin pointed down towards his chest. He recognized it mostly because it had given him a strange feeling the first time he’d seen it: a mixture of shock and fierce, wild pride that he was the face of something this big. Like he had been working hard to be, like he’d always known he would be. 

No wonder Vika was upset with him, for wasting the momentum like this, all to sit around in Moscow. 

SH
Saw you in Vegas. 

There was something about the message that struck him. Perhaps because Hollander rarely texted him first. Or perhaps because Hollander was in Las Vegas, of all places—the most improbable place for him to be—and he had been thinking about Ilya. 

He had been thinking about him because he’d seen him, to be sure. But he still didn’t need to text him. Ilya certainly hadn’t been texting Hollander every time he had thought of him. 

He had a sense of why Hollander might be in Las Vegas, and pulled over his laptop to confirm his suspicion. He found the ESPN website, navigating to the NHL section, and yes, there it was: Shane Hollander Wins Calder Memorial Trophy. 

Hardly a surprise, from the way he had played this season. Ilya hadn’t even heard of the other two nominees, though it wasn’t as if he really followed hockey. 

It was deserved, sure. Ilya was proud of him, even. But he was well aware of the other feelings mingling together inside of him, and knew that one of them was envy. He also knew that the envy was a byproduct of the boredom and low-grade simmering anger he felt at being here—in the place where the path-not-taken loomed larger than ever. Here, where he stood in the same hallways and passed the same streets that he had wandered when he’d made the decision to walk away in the first place. 

He was distracted by these thoughts when his bedroom door opened so suddenly that it slammed against the wall. Ilya jumped at the sudden bang, at the intrusion that followed immediately after—he usually locked the door, and hadn’t realized that he’d forgotten to last night. He pushed his laptop away, frowning at the unwelcome sight of his father’s angry, red face. 

What the fuck had he done now? 

Ilya had known that his inconsistent schedule and general avoidance would test his father’s patience eventually—Grigori wanted order, consistency, commitment. It had been a long time since Ilya had successfully done any of those things in his eyes, and disregarding them so blatantly under his nose had been bound to lead to something like this. 

He sat up as his father approached the bed, already anticipating what was next. Still, he flinched as his father batted the phone out of his hand. 

«What the fuck are you doing? Still in bed, at this fucking hour?»

Ilya opened his mouth to respond, but his father was already yelling over him. 

«I already told you, if you miss another fucking practice, you are out of my house.»

His mouth stayed open, but nothing came out as Ilya stared. Was he talking about a fucking hockey practice? 

«After the way you played that game. Lazy, sloppy, disgraceful,» his father snarled, looming over Ilya from next to the bed. He was not a large man—Ilya had surpassed his height years ago—but it always felt the opposite in moments like these. «An embarrassment.»

There was something wrong about his eyes. It wasn’t the first time Ilya had seen it, but to be confronted with it so suddenly, and so aggressively, was taking the wind out of him. 

«Papa, I—» Ilya hadn’t called him Papa in years, but it popped out of him as he stared at the sweaty face standing above him, so familiar, but with a strange vacancy behind it. He felt cold. 

«A fucking embarrassment,» he raised his voice, the words shaking into the room. «Everybody waiting for the talent you’re supposed to have, waiting to see if you can do a fucking thing. And you don’t even bother to show up.»

Ilya stood then, holding his hands out to take his father by the arms and gently steer him away. But his father thrust his arms out to push him back, making Ilya drop onto the bed—not from the force of the shove, but out of surprise from it. 

He struggled to keep control of his breath, trying not to get angry, or to let the sudden shock of fear overwhelm him. He simply looked up at his father, trying to steadily hold his gaze. 

Grigori blinked back, and Ilya thought that he saw something coming back to him. 

After a long moment, his father spoke again in a low, rumbling growl. 

«Wasted potential.»

And that didn’t sound like it was coming from the past. That sounded lucid, like it was from today. 

When Ilya looked at his father’s eyes again, he saw the man he expected to see staring back at him. And so Ilya knew that both of those words had been meant wholeheartedly. That they had come from his father’s most essential self. 

«Yes, father,» Ilya said dully. 

«Come out of this fucking room. Make yourself useful.»

He still sounded angry, but there was a tremor in his voice this time. He sounded like the old man that he was becoming. 

Ilya watched as he turned, faltering halfway to glance back with a trace of uncertainty. But the pause only lasted a moment before he continued on his way out of the room, leaving the door open behind him. 

Ilya exhaled. 

The yelling was familiar. It made him feel like shit, but it was something he could handle. He had handled it plenty of times. 

This—the vacancy, the regurgitation from the past—was something else. It wasn’t the first time he had seen it happen. But it was, perhaps, the most troubling. More troubling, certainly, than being asked to bring home bread while he sat in New York. This time, it felt directly designed to bore into the soft, exposed parts of him. 

Was that really where his father went, when he lost his hold over the current day? Back to a place where Ilya had been nothing but a disappointment to him? 

Then again, the message had been clear—Ilya was still a disappointment in the current day, too. 

Wasted potential.

His laptop was still open next to him, to ESPN and the article about Hollander. He stared at it for a second, then closed the screen. 

He had to stop thinking about hockey like this. 

Because the truth was, he had been a good player. The best, maybe, yes—at 15 and 16. He probably would have continued to be good after that. Good enough for World Juniors, yes. The draft? Probably. 

Better than Hollander? He didn’t know. 

Maybe Ilya would have been drafted first. Maybe he would have won Rookie of the Year. He didn’t know. That was the truth of it: he didn’t know, and he would never know. 

And, he recalled—in a world where he might have been first, he also remembered that the second pick of the draft this past year had gone to Edmonton. In this imaginary world, Ilya would have beat Hollander in hockey, maybe, but he would have seen him twice a year. The exchange was dissatisfying, even in his imagination. 

But it was well past time to put these silly thoughts aside. Ilya had made a decision—rash, angry, and ill-considered though it had been—when he was 16. He was 20 now. Life had moved on, and he would too. It was time for him to say goodbye to #81. 


_____

SEPTEMBER 2011, NEW YORK CITY

He didn’t think about it when Hollander didn’t text over the summer. Ilya was busy when he came back from Moscow—working as much as he could to make up for the time and money he had lost, with a trip to LA and lots to do in New York. 

It was only as he passed an advertisement for the Admirals’ upcoming season—Hollander’s face prominently at the center of it—that it occurred to Ilya that he might not text again at all. 

It was conceivable that Hollander had decided to end whatever they’d started up in the beginning of the year. His nervousness about it had always been obvious, flashing out from him in bright lights. But still, Ilya had watched him gradually relax each time they were together, allowing himself to enjoy the time they spent. He had very obviously enjoyed it. Maybe that wasn’t enough to outweigh the nerves anymore, though. 

Maybe he was even seeing someone. Ilya had no trouble picturing it: a good little girl from Canada, undoubtedly. She could have looked like anything, but she would be pretty, in a gentle and soft kind of way, probably. He thought that was the kind of girl Hollander would date, whether or not it was the kind he actually wanted. He wondered what kind of girls Hollander actually liked. 

Ilya didn’t know why he texted him—or he didn’t care to examine it too closely. There was nothing much behind it, anyway. Hollander would answer, or he wouldn’t. It was casual. 

Are you back from canada?

SH
Yeah, just got back yesterday. 

Too hot in this ducking city

SH
It’s pretty bad. I went for a run in the morning and it was still gross even that early.

This is why treadmill is better…

SH
There is almost no situation where running on a treadmill is better than running outside. 
Outside engages more muscles and it’s better for overall fitness. 
And it’s more interesting. 

Ok i am convinced 

SH
Do you want to hang out this week?

So, Ilya fucked Shane Hollander all through the fall. 

The first time he arrived in the apartment in early September, though, Ilya had experienced genuine shock at his appearance. 

He’d lost some of the softness, and certainly the leanness, that he’d had the last time Ilya had seen him at the end of his season. Now, Hollander was at least ten pounds heavier, most of the weight in his arms and chest, and, incredibly, his ass. His ass was distracting. 

It was the first time Ilya had been smaller than someone he was fucking. He wasn’t even sure if he was smaller—only that Hollander was bigger than he had been before. Maybe it was just that it made Ilya feel small. He wasn’t even sure he disliked it. It simply made him feel self-conscious, which was a new sensation for him. 

He had been gradually losing the mass he’d had as a hockey player ever since he had stopped playing the sport. Even with all of the time he had spent in the gym over the summer, he hadn’t been intentionally bulking up like Hollander clearly had. Ilya had focused on sculpting himself, looking leaner, sharper. It had been an intentional shift—from power, to aesthetics—but the truth of it was suddenly on display before him in a way he had never anticipated, as he looked at the athlete in front of him and realized that he no longer looked that way. 

Ilya had never thought about fucking another hockey player before he met Hollander. Not really, not while he had played. The closest he had ever come to it was, in fact, not close at all—Sasha, whose only connection to hockey was his father, who he mostly used as an excuse to hang around at the rink. 

Sasha had looked nothing like a hockey player. He had never been bigger than Ilya in any way; at least not until the last time he had seen him, when he had grown a few inches taller. But it had been years since he’d fucked Sasha and he had no plans to start again. 

He couldn’t decide how he felt about all of it, but the essential truth was clear: Hollander was fucking hot, with the new thickness in his ass, and thighs, and arms. Ilya was ready to get his hands on him as soon as he laid eyes on him. 

And if Ilya had been doubting Hollander’s interest in carrying on into the fall, their first meeting immediately corrected his misconceptions. Hollander actually manhandled him, pushing him into walls before he dropped to his knees as if he’d been waiting to do it since April. Everything about him was enthusiastic and bright, like he’d been infused with some fresh spring water from Canada. 

If this was what going up there did to a person, perhaps Ilya would have to take a trip of his own, to taste the water and come back a shinier person. 


_____

«Do you want a taste?» Svetlana held the cup out to him, and Ilya reared away. 

«No,» he answered, filling his voice with as much judgment as possible so she understood exactly how harshly he was judging her for her choices on this October day. 

She sipped again slowly, pursing her lips at what he presumed was the syrupy sweetness of the orange-brown drink in her cup. «I don’t understand the obsession. It doesn’t taste like pumpkin, or like spice. Or very much like a latte.»

Ilya didn’t bother to respond, sipping his black tea, which was also not very good but better than what Svetlana had chosen. 

«Robin and Emile want to go to a club in Brooklyn. I said we would go, but we have dinner with Johan’s friends first so not to wait for us.» She said as they waited to cross Broadway.  

«Mmm.» Ilya shrugged noncommittally, which was his first mistake. The gesture immediately drew Svetlana’s attention, and he could tell she was studying the side of his face. 

«What, you’re not going? To the club, or the dinner?» Her voice was already sharp, probing.  

Ilya shrugged as the light turned and they crossed the street.  

«Do you have something else to do, or are you just choosing not to do this thing?» 

He hadn’t really wanted to get into the details with her, but she was clearly not going to let this go without a full discussion. So he sighed, shaking his head as they turned on Prince Street. «Emile is fucking terrible. You think so too. Why would I want to go to a club with him?» 

«You don’t have to spend time with him. And what about dinner? You like Johan. You like Lexi.» 

Ilya inclined his head only so he didn’t shrug a third time and earn a slap to his chest for the repeated motion. «They’re not bad.»

«I don’t understand this. I know you like them, but you still never text them. And you haven’t texted Agafya or Moe, either, they both told me that they haven’t seen you since the last time I was in town.» 

«I know why Agafya wants me to text,» Ilya scoffed, giving Svetlana a scornful look. «Not stirring that hornet’s nest without a good reason.» 

«You’re talking around my point,» Sveta said firmly. «You don’t have any friends.» 

«I have friends.» 

«No, you don’t, you have me, and I live across the country.» 

«I have always had friends.»

Because this was true—Ilya had never had trouble meeting people or making friends. And Sveta was wrong, now, because he’d had no trouble doing either of those things since moving to New York. There had just been very few people he had met here that he’d felt worth the trouble to see more than once or twice. 

«You always had a team,» Svetlana corrected him. «And your teammates always liked you. That’s different.» 

Ilya was speechless for a moment. That felt like an unexpectedly low blow, one that he hadn’t expected from Svetlana of all people. 

She continued before he could process the statement. «You don’t make friends with people outside of that, you never have. You wait for someone else to introduce you, or you fuck people, and you sometimes get friendly with them.»

He pulled himself together long enough to give her a dark look, hoping she understood what he thought of this entire line of discussion. But she kept going, finishing resolutely. 

«You should make friends, Ilya. Real ones.» 

And he found himself suddenly filled with the urge to do exactly the thing that Hollander had told him not to do, several months ago now. He wanted to tell her that he did have a friend, or something like it, and that it was one she might have been jealous about. He wanted to say that he liked spending time with him, actually, that he was funny and weird. 

He didn’t. 

Instead, he said, «I have been watching hockey.» 

«With friends?» 

«No,» he answered honestly. 

«Then don’t try to change the subject.» She moved her latte to the other hand, looping her arm around him to pull him over to her so that she could press a kiss to the side of his face. «Come to the club. We’ll avoid Emile. Come to dinner with Johan, talk to him and Lexi and Daria, and text Moe after I’m back in LA. You’ll like all of her lesbian friends.»

Ilya extricated himself from her grip, gently pushing her away—she smelled too much like the cloying sweetness of her drink. But he nodded. He might do what she suggested. 


_____

It was, probably, all of this that made Ilya expose himself to Hollander in November. 

Sveta had burrowed into his mind with this idea of friendship, this idea of something separate from a team—which he no longer had, anyway—or someone he was fucking. He thought it was all a false dichotomy, anyway, because Svetlana herself was his closest friend. And there was currently nobody he enjoyed spending time with more than Hollander, and at least 70% of that time was spent fucking. 

But still, she had made him think. Who were his friends? Who were his conversations with? What did his conversations actually consist of? What did his conversations with Hollander consist of? 

He had probably taken a bit of the easy way out, by defaulting to the most natural topic: hockey, of course, because 90% of what Shane Hollander talked about was hockey. 

Ilya had done a decent job of letting go of the comparisons since the summer, when he had resolved to leave his former self back in Russia. And letting go of hockey had allowed him to see Hollander a little more clearly, maybe: the tension with which he held himself, tension he didn’t even seem to realize that he had. How much he pushed himself. 

It fascinated Ilya now that he could see it without the veneer of envy that covered everything before. He particularly liked seeing the contrast between the tightness that imbued all of Hollander’s movements, and the boneless heap he became as soon as he was underneath Ilya. 

Was it some kind of power that Ilya had? Or was it something about Hollander himself that gave him the ability to flip a switch inside himself every time he came through Ilya’s door? Because, of course, Ilya had still never been inside of Hollander’s apartment, despite being inside of him several times. 

If it was some power of Ilya’s, he apparently chose to give it up freely, one day in November when Hollander was bitching about a slashing call in a game against Pittsburgh.

It had come out of him so automatically, he hadn’t even thought about it as he said it. 

“I know what slashing is. Was definitely slashing, by the way.” 

And with those few words, he had inadvertently handed Hollander a key. Certainly the key to what Ilya had been thinking on the night that they met, and a key to his feelings about a sport that he had tried hard to seem impassive about, on the many times it had come up in their conversations before now. 

It was also a key, probably, to much more about Ilya than he had ever wanted to share about himself with anybody, not just the person on the sofa next to him. His insecurities, his doubts about the path he was currently wandering down, a path that seemed much more winding and uncertain than the road that Hollander was walking. 

But if Hollander understood what he was holding now, he didn’t act like it. He was as inscrutable as ever as he stared across the couch at Ilya, only focused on probing for more details. 

Until when. What position. Were you good. 

Ilya felt the specter of ROZANOV 81 rising with the question, because obviously, yes, he had been fucking good. He let a little bit of his old self out, until the conversation started to go too far into the parts that Ilya still needed to keep to himself, until Hollander’s questions finally ran out. 

He had thought there would be more pointed attention on their first meeting, on the efforts Ilya had made to see Hollander once they got to New York. But he never brought it up. 

Hollander knew now, though. And Ilya found that it actually hadn’t been so bad, to let him meet a little bit of #81. It had felt like something closer to the friendship that Svetlana had described, but it had also felt like something a little bit more. 

It had felt like, perhaps, something in between “teammates” and “people he fucked who sometimes became his friends.” Ilya didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, at all. 


_____

DECEMBER 2011, NEW YORK CITY

It was almost midnight when he called, which wasn’t unusual on its own. He called late sometimes. 

Ilya wondered when he would be able to free himself of the sense of obligation that came when he saw the name on the screen, and when he would stop answering, no matter how late the hour.

«Hello, Father.» 

«Oh. Ilya?»

Ilya paused, glancing at the phone again to double-check the name on the screen. He brought it back to his ear, speaking cautiously. «Yes…»

«Oh. Where are you? I thought you would be home by now.»

Ilya was starting to feel cold again, like he had the time with the bread, or when he was home over the summer. It was different this time, though. Because for once his father didn’t sound angry, only confused. 

«I had this soup for lunch, and it was horrible,» he continued through the phone. «I’m not having soup for dinner again. Two soups in one day is too much.» 

It was a strange thing to say, especially since it was barely eight in the morning in Moscow, but strangest of all was that Ilya couldn’t tell if it was a statement coming from today or from some time in the past. 

«Where is Polina?» He asked cautiously. 

«Who?» 

Ilya opened his mouth to answer, but before any words could come out, he heard the phone being tugged away from an old man in Moscow. 

«Your wife, Polina, your wife. She is sleeping in the next room.» Alexei’s angry, frustrated voice came through the line, directed to the man on the other end. Then it came more loudly into the phone, directed to him. «Fuck off, Ilya.» 

«Alexei—»

The call was over. He dropped the phone in his lap. He wondered if he should call back—wondered if it would help anything, if they would even answer. 

The distance between the place he had been born and the place he was now had never felt wider. Not simply that—also the distance between the person he had been before, and the person he was now. He should have been in Moscow, eating breakfast with his father. He was so glad that he was in his apartment in New York. It felt like the night itself was pressing in on him as he sat in the dark room staring at the wall. 

In the morning, he would send money. Later, he would regret it. 

Tonight, though, he found his phone again. He texted Svetlana’s friend, Moe. He dragged himself out of bed, found a clean shirt, found some product to tame his hair. He found the underground club, not that far from his apartment, which would let him in without a problem and be open late into the night. 

Sveta had been right, like she always was. He did like Moe’s friends. He liked the place they had brought him to. 

The drinking helped. The dancing helped. The bump of coke offered to him by Moe’s pink-haired friend helped, too. He could have gone home with the girl who pressed against him at three in the morning, twisting in his arms to nibble at his ear. Or, perhaps, the boy who had bumped into him near the bar, slipping his hand around the top of Ilya’s waistband as he maneuvered around him. 

But he didn’t. He left the club alone at 5am, emerging out onto the street. 

It was the first time he had been outside in the city at this time of night, in this time of year. But from the first tilt of his head, up at the dark sky, at the lights of the buildings still glittering around him, he thought it might become a new favorite moment, a secret time only for himself: New York City at five in the morning in late November. 

The cold seeped into the damp hair at his forehead and the nape of his neck. His breath, still hot from the club and the vodka he’d poured into himself, came out in clouds in front of him. His throat was dry from all of the cigarettes. He was hungry. He felt alive. 

He bought a pastry and a Coke from a bodega as he passed. Both were gone before he had finished walking home. 

The birds were beginning to chirp. Lights were beginning to blink on in the windows above him as he passed. A few blocks over, he heard the sound of a garbage truck rumbling through the Lower East Side. Signs of New York, awakening. 

He was ready for sleep. But he found, as he turned the key in the lock of the apartment, that he was also content. Content to just exist like this, for some time, today. 

_____

They had a rhythm now—him and Hollander. He thought that they had figured each other out. Certainly he thought that he had figured some things out about Hollander, and it seemed that Hollander had figured some things out about him, too—especially since Ilya kept handing him keys. 

It meant that they could really fuck now. The nervous boy who had stared at Ilya with wide eyes before dropping to his knees in a hotel room in Los Angeles was mostly gone, now, though he made occasional reappearances that never failed to prompt Ilya to an earlier orgasm than he would have liked. 

Most of the time, now, though, Ilya’s hands and mouth and cock were occupied by a Hollander who was as dedicated to sex as he was to his beloved sport. If they hadn’t been equals when they started, it felt like they were now. 

“Jesus Christ, come on,” Hollander panted below him now, lifting his hips into the air to get closer to Ilya’s hand, which currently had two fingers stretching him open. 

Ilya ignored whatever instruction this was supposed to be, using his free hand to press Hollander back down onto the bed so he could continue with the task before him. 

“Come on. I want it.” 

“You want what?” Ilya only asked because he wanted to know what Hollander would say. He had become more vocal lately, but he still needed prompting to really say something good. 

“Fuck…” Ilya didn’t hear the rest, which was buried in the pillow Hollander pushed his face into. 

“Sorry?” He didn’t mean to sound like he was taunting him—well, maybe he did, and maybe he also punctuated it with the light bite he gave to the ass cheek in front of him. 

But he was rewarded, as he knew he would be, by a quick glare from a wide brown eye peeking over Hollander’s shoulder. A moment later, Hollander picked his face up from the pillow, speaking clearly behind him, down towards Ilya. 

“Your big dick, Rozanov. Is that what you want to hear? I want you to fuck me with your big dick until I come on it.” 

Ilya’s hand stopped moving on its own accord as he stared, with some level of genuine shock, at the man beneath him. Hollander had stopped the insistent little movements of his hips, too, as he blinked back at Ilya. They stayed still for a moment with the words in the air between them, both of them actually trying to register that they had actually been said.  

Hollander’s face was turning an alarming shade of red, and his eyes shifted away from Ilya. Ilya watched as they looked worriedly around, finally darting back to him. He looked like a scared rabbit. 

Ilya started to laugh, as he slowly pulled his hand away from him. It was so much more than he had actually expected Hollander to say.

Hollander groaned, flipping onto his back and covering his scarlet face with his arm. “Oh my god, shut up.” 

“No, is very clear instruction! I know exactly what to do now!” Ilya didn’t move from where he was, planting both hands onto the bed and leaning down to lightly bite Hollander’s abdomen. 

Hollander frowned at him as Ilya kept laughing. He shifted underneath him, moving his legs around, trying to grab Ilya’s head between his thighs to get him to stop laughing. As if Ilya would have minded dying exactly like that. 

“Then why the hell aren’t you doing it?” Hollander demanded, his thighs finally getting purchase, securing around Ilya’s neck. 

But he was laughing now, too. All Ilya could do was grin in response. 

A dirty fucking mind. 

Chapter End Notes

It’s worth saying that I think the modeling industry is incredibly complicated and difficult in ways I am not going to be able to fully do justice in this story. At the same time, it’s very important to me to acknowledge some of that where I can. The same can be said for a number of other serious topics covered in this story—but I will do my best.

Thank you for reading… if there is something in particular you liked, I’d love it if you let me know!

Next time: Only psychopaths wake up at 5:30am to go running. Also, cocaine.

Chapter 3: guilty pleasure

Chapter Summary

Ilya Rozanov goes clubbing.

Chapter Notes

! CW for the last section of this chapter, which contains homophobic slurs and references to sexual activity with dubious consent because of heavy intoxication (not involving Ilya or Shane). Drug use is also throughout this chapter.

Dialogue using « » as quotation marks indicates that the characters are speaking Russian.

This chapter covers the middle to end of Chapter 4 of Into the Blue.

Shout out to the anonymous friend who gave me all the tips I needed to credibly write about a bunch of people on cocaine--you know who you are and I thank you for sharing the lessons of your Coke Year.

Also, shout out to the separate friend who essentially booed me when I said was considering making this an “M” rating instead of “E.” Count this as your first “you told me so.”

For the rest of you - sorry/you're welcome, I finally got comfy writing smut from Ilya's POV.

Busy tonight? 

SH
No, are you? 

Yes, I am, of course, that is why I texted you to ask.
Have a fun night, Hollander!

SH
Shut up. 
What time are you free?

9. Where do you want to meet? 

SH
I’ll come over to yours at 9. 

Hey, how was Italy? 

Was good! 
How was pittsburg?
Pittsburgh?

SH
Philly actually.
Oh wait actually also Pittsburgh yeah.
It was fine. 
Are you free tonight? 

Yes 8 or 9 is best.
Yours?

SH
Haha
No, I’ll be there around 8.


_____

JANUARY 2012, NEW YORK CITY

The apartment thing had become fucking annoying, made all the worse because of how thoroughly it had burrowed under Ilya’s skin. 

At first he had wondered if it was a misunderstanding—if he’d gotten some detail wrong, like if Hollander had roommates, or there was some other bizarre dynamic in his home life that Ilya hadn’t caught onto. 

But no. By now, he’d gleaned that Hollander lived alone somewhere between NYU and Gramercy Park, or maybe as far west as 7th Avenue, in a one bedroom apartment in a tall building with a doorman. He felt like a fucking inspector as he had worked out these details, picking them up from fragments of conversation and reading in between the lines. 

It was as if his curiosity forced him to try to map out an answer. But he fucking hated having to probe so carefully to get any actual responses. He had never needed to work so hard, to ask so much, to get a simple answer from a person. 

He wasn’t a stranger to chasing people, but it was one thing to do it with the aim of fucking them. He didn’t know what he was chasing Shane Hollander for now—he fucked him all the time. The chasing was starting to make him feel like that fucking coyote from that stupid cartoon, always chasing the bird and falling off a cliff while doing it. What was the fucking point? 

It was hard not to take it as a personal affront, though he had thought of other explanations. For one, Hollander’s obvious paranoia about fucking men as a professional athlete. For another, whether he possibly had a girlfriend he had never mentioned. Or, most likely of all, Ilya had to admit—whether it was some kind of attempt to keep distance in their arrangement. 

If it was the last thing, that was fine. Ilya liked their arrangement as it was, too. 

But that was also what made it offensive, as if Ilya was trying to push against some boundary. Did Hollander have some idiotic sense that things would suddenly stop being casual if he let Ilya see inside his home? He certainly had no problem imposing himself into Ilya’s space. Ilya had considerable experience with casual, certainly more than Hollander himself, he was willing to bet—and he had been in many apartments over many years. He wasn’t going to fall in love with Hollander just from one glimpse of his boring bedroom. 

And though Ilya had come up with these other explanations, the small voice at the back of his mind assured him, insistently, that Ilya himself was the problem, of course. Hollander was careful, controlled, responsible. Ilya was too indulgent, too unrestrained, too lacking. Hollander had looked at him with his wide eyes and seen straight to the center of him, and had perceived the fountain of neediness at his core. No thank you, he would have said. 

It was easier to channel it into anger, because anger was simpler to deal with than inadequacy. 

He started testing if it happened with anyone else—pressing down on the hypothesis that it was him, and not Hollander’s brick wall of paranoia. The result was the same every time. 

It didn’t matter if they met at a club, a party, outside on the street smoking at 3am. When he sought an invitation from someone, it was granted. 

He went to Kasia’s apartment in Williamsburg, and Carmen’s in Murray Hill. He went to Jordan’s in Astoria, and Lacey’s on the Upper East Side. 

It got to the point where, he realized, it meant that the only person he had had sex with in his own apartment for months had been Hollander—even Svetlana hadn’t been back to New York since October. 

That made him feel strange, too, so he’d invited Michelle, the brown-haired student who was nearly as tall as him, back to his place after meeting her at a bar near NYU. 

None of it, of course, was enough to make him stop chasing Hollander. The ease with which the girls had let him into their beds only made Ilya stew harder over the difference. 

It was embarrassing to admit how often he thought of it: picturing Hollander in his plain t-shirt and underwear—because he was not a person who would sleep naked, Ilya knew this—with a blanket tucked carefully over his lower half, rumpled and heavy with sleep in his own bed. There would be soft lighting in the room, and bland decor on the walls. He would have blackout shades to keep the light out in the morning. And house plants. 

The images felt like boxes of dynamite. And Ilya felt like he was loading them up, waiting for the fucking bird to pass by. And still, he pressed the red button. 

_____

Of course Hollander could actually run very fast. 

Ilya could tell right away, even though Hollander had clearly tried to maintain a slow and steady speed when they first started jogging together. Ilya had hoped that had been to pace himself, and not out of some misguided attempt to hold back for Ilya’s sake. 

He didn’t know why he’d been so insistent about the run in the first place. It had been some combination of February restlessness, and, he could admit, the agitation of their confinement to the four walls of his apartment. The same four walls that had surrounded them every time he had ever seen Shane Hollander, save for a gym, an elevator, and two hotel rooms. 

When he’d first asked about Hollander’s runs, he had really only been asking about the route he took, idly wondering if he should start doing the same. But Hollander had thrown him a chirp about his apartment, and his spike of irritation had suddenly been real. So he had pushed back, maybe at first just for the sake of pushing back. 

And Hollander had relented. More quickly than Ilya had thought—because Ilya hadn’t really thought he would, at all. A part of him had assumed this thing between them would always be confined to apartment 4B. 

He wasn’t going to waste the daytime. He had been awake at 5:30am, and poised to start running at 6am, when Hollander approached him at the edge of the park. 

On their second run together, though, he’d tried to make sure that Hollander understood that he didn’t need to hold anything back for Ilya’s sake. 

He’d waited until they hit a park, still mostly empty at this time of the early morning. There was a long stretch of space ahead, with only a person and a small dog along one edge of it. Easy to avoid. 

Ilya didn’t announce his intention—he simply started to open up his stride, quickly pulling away. To Hollander’s credit, he caught on immediately. Ilya scarcely had a second without him before he was running alongside him again, their sneakers smacking against the cold pavement. 

He still won, but only by a few seconds. Hollander stewed over it for the rest of the run, because, as Ilya had learned, he had a pathological need to be the best at everything. It made Ilya love beating him all the more, especially at the small, unimportant things that would make Hollander look like a whiny asshole when he complained about them. 

Instead of splitting away from him around Fourth Avenue, Hollander followed Ilya back to his apartment and bullied his way into the shower with him. While Ilya had enjoyed letting Hollander think he had somehow won what happened in there, it had led to a conundrum that he was shocked neither of them had anticipated while shedding their clothing on their way into the bathroom. 

Hollander stood with a towel around his waist, assessing the sweaty, smelly clothes that he had just run five miles in. Ilya registered the problem as he did, and decided to rub it in by making a great show of humming as he went to pull a clean pair of pants from his dresser. 

“Uh,” Hollander hesitated from the living room, a few steps away from the entrance to Ilya’s bedroom. 

Without any actual words to stop him, there was no reason for Ilya to do anything other than what he was already doing. 

“Hey, uh, so… my clothes are dirty?” 

“Oh,” Ilya answered, like this was a surprise. He pushed his head through a grey henley, pulling it over his chest before he ran his fingers quickly through his wet hair. 

“Yeah. Uh… can I… borrow some?” Hollander looked awkward as he glanced between the mass of sweaty clothing in his hands and back at a now fully-dressed Ilya. 

He had taken too long to get to the point, though, so Ilya decided to extend it all a little longer. “I don’t have any clean clothes.” 

Hollander’s uncomfortable expression dropped into his familiar glare. “Oh, fuck you.” 

“No, I am serious! I have to do laundry!” Ilya wasn’t serious, of course, and his smile certainly let Hollander know that, too. 

“You don’t have a washer and dryer in your unit?” He glanced over his shoulder, towards the kitchen, ostensibly because that was where the washer and dryer in his own apartment were situated. 

Ilya snorted. It was enough that there was even a laundry room in his building. 

“No. You do? Can I come over and do laundry?” He injected the challenge into his voice, raising his eyebrows at Hollander, who rolled his eyes. 

“Come on, quit messing around.” 

“Who is messing? You haven’t even said ‘please,’” Ilya scoffed, turning his body as if he was going to push past. As he thought he might, Hollander caught his arm. 

“Please.” 

“Please what?” Ilya couldn’t help himself—he reached up, catching his chin in his hand, directing the sulky, impudent look on Hollander’s face straight towards him. Hollander’s frown deepened even against the sudden puckering of his lips. 

“Please, can I borrow some clothes, you gigantic asshole.”

Ilya laughed. He dropped his hand, releasing Hollander’s face. “What are you going to give me?” 

“I just gave you plenty.” 

He rolled his tongue over his teeth to hide his smile, unwilling to let Hollander see his satisfaction at this reference to their shower. 

“Nothing I have is going to fit you,” he said instead, sighing as if this was actually true or somehow a concern. They had different bodies, yes, but he was fairly certain that they generally wore the same size. 

“Oh my God,” Hollander finally burst out. “Rozanov.” 

Ilya relented only because the frustration in Hollander’s voice was reaching a new pitch, and he wasn’t actually trying to upset him this early in the morning on a Wednesday. 

He turned back into his room. Hollander followed, both annoyed and relieved. 

“This is fun,” Ilya remarked as he opened a drawer. “Can dress you in whatever I want.” 

“Please just give me, like, pants and a shirt,” grumbled Hollander, standing a few feet away with his arms crossed over his bare chest.

Humming in response, Ilya looked in the drawer he had opened. He paused for a moment before grabbing a pair of underwear. He tossed it at Hollander with only a glance over his shoulder. 

Ilya kept his body turned away as he heard the quiet rustling of the towel coming off and Hollander shifting to put one leg, then the other, into the garment. 

It was just a plain pair of boxer briefs. There was nothing special about them. There was no reason for Ilya to suddenly feel a sharp, warm ache in the bottom of his abdomen, or a little twitch inside his sweatpants. It was true that nobody had ever worn his underwear before, and that there was a searing kind of intimacy to the gesture—to the thought of the cotton fabric molded to his most intimate parts, parts that Ilya was now intimately familiar with. 

It was also true that Ilya was starting to get hard under the pants and underwear that he had just put on. It was also true that he was thinking about turning around and taking the shorts off Hollander with his teeth. 

He kept some semblance of self-control, though he did allow himself to look when turning around to hand Hollander pants and sweatshirt. 

The underwear looked like any other underwear would. Which was to say, they hugged Hollander’s ass and thighs and left him looking as fucking perfect as he always did, whether in Ilya’s bed, his shower, or running through the city like he had lightning in his feet.  

Ilya thanked a God that he sometimes thought he believed in to be quickly distracted from this line of thought, as Hollander’s face slowly slipped back into a disgruntled frown. 

And, yes, yes, it was actually very funny to see Hollander in head-to-toe Adidas, track pants and a sweatshirt. He was scowling at Ilya with flushed cheeks. Whether he was red from the run, the hot shower, the blowjob, or the ordeal over the clothing, Ilya didn’t know; but he liked the pattern his freckles made over the blush. 

“Don’t let Reebok see you right now,” he grinned. 

“I look like I just got out of prison.” Hollander held his arms out, looking down at himself. 

“Very Russophobic, get out of my apartment.”

“Gladly,” Hollander scoffed. 

He wadded up his dirty running clothes in one hand, glancing down at the bundle before looking at Ilya awkwardly. 

Ilya was getting used to these kinds of quirks from Hollander. He finally moved past him, heading towards the living room and kitchen. Hollander was only a few steps behind. 

He got a plastic bag from under the sink, and gave it to Hollander to carry the dirty clothes, as he knew he had been silently requesting. 

“Thanks,” Hollander nodded as he took it, stuffing the sweaty pants and shirt inside. “I’ll give you your clothes back when I see you next.” 

“Okay. Next week, maybe?” The words popped out of Ilya’s mouth before he could help it. Thankfully, they sounded appropriately casual to counteract how quickly he had said them.

Hollander didn’t seem to notice, anyway. The bag with his clothing was swinging from one hand as he went to the entryway. 

“Maybe Sunday? I don’t have a game that day.” He knelt down to tie his shoes. 

“Okay,” Ilya agreed, because Sunday was even closer than next week. “I will see you Sunday.” 

“Cool.” 

A few short moments later, Hollander was covering the Adidas sweatshirt with his jacket. Ilya leaned out the door after he left, calling towards him. 

“See you later, comrade!” 

Hollander flipped him off as he headed for the stairs.

_____

It wasn’t that Sveta had gotten in his head with their conversation last fall, it was only that things had started to come together differently in his life over the past few months. 

Going to Moscow for only a week in the winter had helped. It hadn’t been long enough to get bogged down in the same way he had the summer before, nor long enough that he’d been forced to miss out on any meaningful opportunities. 

And he’d been lucky—if that was the right word—that his father had seemed to be entirely his usual self. Nothing had happened like the day in the summer, or the phone call that Ilya had received in November. His father was only ever angry. 

But the change in Ilya’s life was much more than sloughing off the weight of Moscow. There was a solidity in his day-to-day, now, that he hadn’t felt before. Maybe it was simply getting used to having a place of his own to come back to between traveling. Certainly, the money helped. 

Hugo Boss had done its job. The work had poured in over the recent months, and the periods of idleness were getting shorter and shorter. Vika had gotten over the hiccup of last summer’s Moscow trip, and was working hard to make each shoot or show he booked bigger or better than the last. After Milan in January, she had told him that she was sure she would get him back there again for Fashion Week, and to Paris, too. 

So, he was in a better mood. And that made it easier to want to go out, see people, do things. 

There was a whole city to explore, when he had the time to do it. He had taken Sveta’s advice, spending more of his time with Johan and his girlfriend, Lexi, and with Moe and her friends. He tried to do more than simply go to clubs and parties—he’d tried going to a museum, even—but it wasn’t his fault that clubs and parties were usually better for his schedule. And they were usually far more interesting than the MOMA. 

He’d even tried to rope Hollander into going with him once, but he hadn’t risen to the bait. Ilya supposed it was hard to entice a man whose routine consisted of waking up for a run, going to the gym, going to the rink, coming home, and getting ready to watch or play a hockey game. Ilya had never even seen him drink. But he’d been curious about the answer he’d get when he asked. 

He liked going to clubs with Moe’s friends. They were witty and interesting, but they didn’t waste their time talking. The conversation would last as long as the first drink or two, then they’d split off in different directions—to dance, to flirt, to slip into the bathroom for a moment. They had good drugs, too. 

Arizona was never there with their group, but she gravitated to them anyway. He had barely paid her any attention the first few times they had met. She had been loud, a little manic, and he had been too sober to find it charming. 

It made sense, then, that they had finally bonded over coke. 

It was her contribution to the night, and she’d been visibly proud of it. It had also meant that she’d held them hostage over it, chattering at them about the television show she was currently a series regular on. Priya had thrown Ilya a helpless look before fleeing the conversation, which was how he had found himself alone with Arizona, listening and idly nodding along at her complaints about her storyline for the season. 

She was pretty, of course. Petite and small-boned, with long red hair that she kept swiping out of her face even when it didn’t seem like any was touching her at all. He knew nothing about the show she was talking about, aside from her own description that it was a show about bitchy teenagers. 

“Do I look like a bitchy teenager?” She demanded. 

The answer was yes, truthfully, but he didn’t want to say it, especially later when they were dancing and the thought was an uncomfortable one. All he knew was that she was not. 

She did more coke than he had ever seen a girl do, line after line, night after night when he ran into her at clubs and parties. He wasn’t entirely sure where the overlap in their social circles was, but there was one, because suddenly she was there all the time. Most nights, she looked up at him with blue eyes and pupils as wide as planets, questioning. He would usually shrug and do a line, too. 

She was fun, though. She liked to dance and she sang terribly, loudly, and she laughed when he accidentally lapsed into Russian when they were yammering at each other over cigarettes in the cold spring night. 

“I can’t understand you!” She shouted in his face, once, her hand waving her cigarette wildly, almost making contact with his chin. 

“I can’t understand you either!” But they were both laughing hard as he said it, ducking away to dodge her hand. 

“I have a boyfriend,” she told him once, when she was sitting on his lap. 

“Okay,” he said, because there wasn’t very much else to say about it. 

_____

APRIL 2012, NEW YORK CITY

The look of judgment—disgust—on Hollander’s face when he pulled out the small baggie, so much deeper and more serious than his usual frown, was bad enough. 

What stayed with Ilya later, though, was the idea that Hollander had still wanted to fuck him after. He had been angry, more pissed off than Ilya had ever seen him—and he’d known that Ilya was angry, too—but he had still rolled onto his stomach, pushing his face down into the pillow. 

Ilya couldn’t get it out of his head. 

So that was how Hollander saw him, then. Only good for a fuck. The anger, the emotion didn’t matter, because the point was Ilya’s cock and he wasn’t going to leave without getting what he was there for. 

He was even angrier with himself for being bothered by the thought. He was just fucking Hollander, too. He only invited him over for the same thing. He wasn’t trying to be anything more than that to him. What the fuck did he care what an uptight, boring prick thought of him and what he did in the time they didn’t spend together? 

Yes, sometimes he had thought of them as friends. But if last year was a guide, that afternoon in April would be the last time he’d see or speak to Hollander until fall, anyway, save perhaps a vague text message from a rooftop in Las Vegas over the summer. 

He had other friends. Better friends, who didn’t look at him with rank, open disapproval. Friends who had fun with him. 

Ilya didn’t give a fuck about what Hollander thought he knew about him. And any judgment he might try to place on him could never be as harsh as the things Ilya already thought about himself, the ones that the small voice in the back of his mind told him in the middle of the night. 

Fucking fuck Shane Hollander.  

_____

Arizona let him into her apartment, too. 


_____

MAY 2012, NEW YORK CITY 


He threw his arms around Svetlana when he found her. 

He misjudged the distance, though, and sent her pitching forward, knocking the glasses in her hands together and almost bumping her into the bar. He quickly righted himself, holding her by the shoulders to steady her on feet, made more difficult by the high heels she was wearing. 

The bartender halted in his tracks, staring at Ilya with sharp eyes, clearly assessing whether to call a bouncer over. 

“Sorry, sorry!” Ilya put his hands up quickly, looking at Svetlana for help. 

She looked like she would rather leave him to swim out in the water on his own. But she smiled at the bartender after a moment.

“I know him. He’s being silly.” 

She waited until the bartender nodded, moving on. She turned on Ilya then, grimacing. 

«Now I don’t want to give you this drink.» 

«I’m thirsty.» He seized it from her hand and drank down a third of it in a large gulp. It may have been better for him if it was water, but the vodka felt clear and crisp going down his throat, leaving just the right amount of burn. 

Sveta was watching him. «How much have you had?»

«How much of what? Barely anything. Why? How much have you had? Hey, did you see what I sent to you earlier? Vika told me dates for Milan and Paris both. Are you going to be there at the same time? I didn’t check the dates but I assume there must be some overlap, no? Unless you aren’t—»

«Yes, I saw it, I responded to you earlier.» 

She looked annoyed with him, but he decided to ignore it. Sveta was like this sometimes. For every night they went out, every night that she was actually fun, there was a night that she wanted to be in her bed by 10pm with a mug of hot tea, like a little babushka, or like—

«When do you leave New York again? I want to go to the place in Greenpoint Daria and Johan keep going to, do you know which one I mean? Also, I’m positive Johan and Daria are fucking. Do you know if Lexi knows? Would she want to know, do you think, or is it better not to? He has a fucking great apartment. I wouldn’t want to know, I’d just keep living there. Sveta. Sveta.» 

She was looking somewhere past him, he could tell, and turned to check her line of sight. There was Arizona, standing on her toes, talking into the ear of a tall, slender girl with a curtain of long black hair flowing over her shoulders. 

Svetlana glanced back at Ilya, unimpressed. He ignored that too. He knew Sveta didn’t like her, but what did that matter? He wasn’t trying to get them to dinner together, let alone in bed at the same time. 

Not that they had fucked much. That was the downside to coke—half the time (more than half) his dick didn’t work. The few times he and Arizona had managed to get into bed together hadn’t been satisfying for anyone; another downside, he had discovered. 

But he wanted to fuck all the time. He wanted to drink, to smoke, to fuck, maybe all at once. He wanted to talk. He wanted Sveta to pay attention to him. He wanted.

«Sveta, what the fuck? You aren’t even listening to me. I tell you gossip about Johan and Daria and you are ignoring me. This is bullshit, I should leave. Time for a cigarette, probably.»

«Ugh, Ilya, what do you want?» But the exasperated look she gave him this time didn’t have the small notch between her eyes that appeared when she was actually upset. He took this as exactly the victory it was. 

«Johan and Daria, what do you think, yes or no?»

«I think that I like Lexi and hopefully there’s some kind of arrangement, or that Johan isn’t stupid enough to be that obvious about fucking her friend. That would be fucked.»

Ilya tilted his head to acknowledge that he agreed, sipping from his drink, but tilted his head the other way when another thought occurred to him. «Daria is hot.»

«Being hot isn’t everything, you ass.»

«Hey,» he nudged her, dropping his hand to his phone to check and see if there was any service—still nothing. «Who won the hockey game? The Admirals or New Jersey?»

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Svetlana was surprised—or annoyed—enough to shift into English, shaking her head at Ilya. “You are all over the place.” 

He shook his head back, sipping from his glass again. She was giving him a strange look, but answered anyway. 

«New Jersey. 3-2, in OT. Not as bad as the last two games, but still, total collapse by the Admirals.» 

Svetlana was distracted again then, this time by her friend Robin. Ilya let her slip away to greet her with a hug, pulling his phone out to stare at the screen. The blank bars in the top right corner showed that there was still no service. 

He tapped it against his leg twice, then drained his glass. He reached his arm forward between a crowd of people to place the empty glass on the bar, then turned away again. 

Svetlana wasn’t looking in his direction, but he lifted his cigarettes anyway to indicate to her, in case she caught sight of him, that he was stepping outside for a smoke. 

Arizona was looking, he could tell from the corner of his eye, but he didn’t acknowledge it. He didn’t want her to follow him outside this time. 

He pushed his way through the mass of bodies and towards the stairs, eventually emerging from the door and onto the street. He situated himself against the wall, pulling out his cigarettes again and shaking one loose. His lighter clicked a few times before the flame caught, and he tilted his head back, inhaling slowly once it was lit. 

Ilya took his phone out then, checking that there was service again, and pulled up his text messages. It seemed like a good bet that Hollander would be finished with all of his game shit by this time, or at least back to his phone. Even if he wasn’t, Ilya sent a quick text that he could read any time and understand what it was referring to—Sorry. 

But less than a minute later, his phone buzzed in response. He kept the cigarette between his lips as he texted back and forth with Hollander, a few light words about his playoff performance, jokes about New Jersey. 

It was the first time they had spoken in over a month. The resentment had burned within Ilya for most of that time—he still felt a small ember of it. But he wondered where Hollander was right now, if he was still in New Jersey or had made it home to curl up in his bed alone. 

For a very brief moment he contemplated asking if he wanted to meet up. But he assumed he would want to spend the night licking his wounds before getting ready to go to Canada for the summer. And Ilya wasn’t in the mood for Shane Hollander’s rejection tonight.

He dropped the cigarette onto the ground and scraped his shoe over it, making sure it was out. He pocketed his phone, and went back inside. 

______

SH
Hey, happy birthday. 

Thank you.
I didn’t wish you…

SH
That’s OK. I was in DC for playoffs anyway. 

I am in miami for work and you wished me
I will next year 

SH
Ha, OK. 
Are you doing anything fun today? For your 21st?

Club

SH
That sounds fun. 

Does it? 
So we are going in New York?

SH
I mean no, it doesn’t sound fun. 

I will get you there someday 

SH
Sure Rozanov

_____

4th of July so weird 

SH
Ha I’ve never actually been there for one. I’m in Canada. 

Everyone has been drinking all day
Nothing but hot dogs 
Now we are waiting for fireworks
3 people have vomited 

SH
That sounds… terrible.

It is fun, maybe
Too hot though 
How is Canada?

SH
It’s nice. I’m at my parents’ cottage. It’s been relaxing. 

Cottage, sounds nice 

SH
It’s just a normal house. But it is nice, there’s a lake close by. 
I’ll let you enjoy the fireworks. 

Do you know when you will be back? 

SH
I think middle of August. 

Ok let me know
Enjoy relaxing 

SH
Have fun. 

_____

SH
Hey, I’m back, are you in NYC?

Yes, but going to LA tomorrow. 

SH
Oh OK. 

Can I come over tonight? 

Free now? 

SH
Yeah. Be there in 30. 

_____

SEPTEMBER 2012, LOS ANGELES

“More bang for your buck,” Ilya said, smugly. 

“Ooh,” Svetlana nodded approvingly as she exhaled. «That is a good one. Especially because Americans can be so uptight. That’s about prostitution, don’t you think?»

Ilya shrugged, reaching to take the joint she was offering. «I saw it on a TV show about cars.»

It was a cool night in Los Angeles, like every night in LA was a little too cold. It was probably warmer back in New York tonight, even. But he was here for a few more days, working, getting to spend a little time with Sveta. 

The summer had been long, but a good one. The work opportunities had been excellent, both abroad in Europe and also at home in New York. But they had also been almost constant, to the point that even Vika had asked him if he was managing it. He’d told her that he was managing it fine, because he wasn’t going to say anything else. It was work, he needed to do it, especially if he wanted more of it. 

But it was good to get a couple of days to unwind and see Svetlana, especially when they could pass the time with one of their favorite shared activities: discussing American idioms over a joint as they sat outside in her backyard. 

“Whether the juice is worth the squeeze,” Svetlana said, pulling her legs up so that her feet were on the seat of her chair, arms winding around her knees. 

«What’s that?» Ilya asked. 

«Whether what you get from something is worth the effort for it,» she explained, holding her hand out for the joint. He obliged. 

«So,» she paused to inhale, waiting to speak until she had exhaled again. «Not Arizona Fletcher, because the juice isn’t good, and there’s barely any need to squeeze.»

Ilya raised his eyebrows. 

«Now, Emmy Johnston,» Svetlana lifted her voice into a higher, breathier pitch as she said the name, making it sound as American as possible. «Maybe it applies better.»

He grunted, reaching across the table to pluck the joint directly from her hand. 

«Jealous?»

The look that Svetlana gave him was so contemptuous that he allowed his face to crack into a smile for a moment before he put the joint between his lips. 

«I think you know me better than that,» Sveta said firmly. «Jealous of her Louis Vuitton work, maybe.»

«Then are you jealous of me?» He smirked. 

Svetlana turned towards him with the sharpness of a predator. 

«I know you got lucky only to have broken your nose once while playing hockey, but I could do it again for you and make sure you never book anything for Louis Vuitton, or anyone else, ever again.»

She left it at slapping his arm, though, and snatched the joint out of his hand. «And it was just one fucking show.»

He let her have it, tilting his head back to look up at the sky. Much like in New York, nothing was really visible here, either, whether from the pollution or the lights from the greater Los Angeles area. 

The phrase didn’t make him think of Emmy Johnston, who he had met three times over the summer, including the very first time they had met at a party. 

If he was thinking of effort and reward, there was nobody to think of but Hollander, who had never been an easy thing. Who was so difficult, so hard to understand, and who had looked at Ilya like he was no better than dirt only a few short months ago. 

But there was nothing sweeter than the reward—the juice—of his attention. When his eyes and the wet, bottomless depths of them fixed on Ilya; when his real smile burst through, instead of the small, quick one he usually gave; when he was concentrating hard on something and let out a huff of satisfaction when he ultimately, inevitably, got it right. True, Ilya had only experienced that last thing when seeing Hollander focus on sex and video games, but he imagined that it probably happened during hockey, too. 

«Arizona is back together with her boyfriend, did you know that?»

Ilya dropped his head back down to face forward, blinking at the abrupt change in subject from where his mind had been wandering. 

He took a moment to process, and then shrugged. It wasn’t something he was particularly concerned with. Svetlana gave him a dubious look, which he ignored. 

“There are plenty of fish in the sea,” she said, carefully putting out the joint and resting it in the ashtray between them. «Have you heard that one? That’s bullshit, too, the seas are currently being overfished. It’s such a tragedy. I watched this documentary about it, about tuna. Have you seen it?»

«Sveta, no, I don’t usually watch movies about fish,» he drawled, leaning back in his seat to relax again. 

«Lies, you watched Finding Nemo, you child.»

«That is a movie about a kidnapped son!» He sat up quickly, holding his arm out at her. She had already dissolved into giggles, pulling the cuffs of her sleeves up over her hands, pressing them to her face. Her laughter made him grin, too. 

«You are so dramatic,» she said between giggles, pushing the hair out of her face as she switched to English. “Always making a mountain out of a molehill.” 

«I hate that one. Russian is so much better, to make an elephant out of a fly.»

«The Russian is so much better!» She burst out in agreement. He laughed at how fierce she looked when she said it, reaching over the table to grasp her hand, bringing it to his lips. 

_____

NOVEMBER 2012, NEW YORK CITY

It was already getting into mid-November, and he had barely seen Hollander since his preseason. Their schedules had been shit, almost exactly opposite when they checked in with each other. 

Ilya had been traveling more than ever. It was a good thing, he told himself—it was what he had been working towards for the past five years. And it was different from the early days when he’d traveled everywhere possible, going city to city just to make himself available for whatever opportunities Vika could scrape together for him. 

Now he was traveling because the opportunities were readily available, falling to him from the sky. He felt like he was moving as fast as he could to catch them all, to make the most of it, not to let the perseverance be wasted. 

But the other side, he found, was the fatigue. He had made the mistake of thinking that he could outrun it, at first. He’d thrust himself facefirst into his social life as soon as he’d returned from Madrid, which itself had been two days of sleeplessness. Capped with a week in Los Angeles, clubs every night, he had woken up in New York this morning feeling like his eyes had been hollowed out, like his skull was made of lead. He had never felt like this when waking up before, and there had been many other nights that he’d imbibed as many substances—more—than he’d had over the last few days. 

He had been worried he was getting sick. So he’d waited to text Hollander until he was certain it was nothing. Hollander would kill him, probably, if he got him sick only a month into the season. 

Thankfully, there was no illness, just dehydration and sleep deprivation. He was worn out, sick of going from place-to-place, wishing to be here at home for a little longer. He would only be in New York for a month before Moscow for two weeks in December. And after that, hopefully, Milan and Paris in January. 

He wanted it—of course he did. It would be big for him, going to the menswear events for the Fall/Winter collections after the work he’d done with the Spring/Summer shows back in June. It was in his sights. Vika had said it so many times. 

But he was just tired. And the exhaustion made it easier for the other things to creep in, the worries about money, about going to Moscow, about seeing his father, and the amorphous things that sometimes seem to seep into him like cold air through old windows. The things that created a heaviness in his limbs that was deeper than fatigue, that would sometimes make hours pass as quickly as a blink, leaving him wondering if he’d experienced any of the time at all. 

Now it was well after midnight, and he was awake, waiting on his couch, treating Shane Hollander as a cure for what ailed him. 

Which was a terrible idea, really, after what had happened in the spring. They had moved past it—whatever there was to move past, and if their texts and the few times they’d been able to meet up and fuck since August constituted “moving.” But Ilya still hadn’t forgotten the look on his face, the judgment, the disgust. The feeling in his chest at being on the receiving end of it. 

Still, he was awake, and he waited. 

It was a little strange, actually; watching the game—a 3-0 win, Washington’s performance had been pathetic—and mentally tracking Hollander’s progress back to New York. He didn’t know why they had to turn around and travel back after a night game, but he assumed the team would prefer to sleep in their own beds instead of in a hotel. And anyway, he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Hollander had said that it would be late when he arrived, and indeed, it was very late when the buzzer went. 

Ilya pulled himself up, briefly flicking his fingers through his hair for a quick fix. He hit the button on the callbox, and opened the door of the apartment, keeping it ajar for when Hollander made his way up. 

He was inside a few moments later. It was raining, maybe, or snowing lightly—there were light droplets of water dotting his black coat. He carefully took it off, along with his shoes, and hung the coat on the doorknob, like he’d seen Ilya do with wet jackets after returning from runs. 

He looked as worn as Ilya felt. His face was smooth and pretty, like always, but his expressive eyes were heavy, and his mouth looked tired. He was wearing only a thin t-shirt and what looked like the pants from his gameday suit. 

Hollander seemed to notice Ilya looking at his pants and shifted self-consciously, his thumbs in his pockets. “It was already late, so I didn’t think it made sense to change.” 

“No, I am just surprised you wore a suit on the plane. You don’t change into something more comfortable?” 

“It’s a really quick flight, it’s more annoying to put on something else.” 

Hollander followed Ilya across the living room. It was late—they knew why they were here, so Ilya saw no reason to delay their way into the bedroom. Though, thinking of it now, he supposed he could have at least offered him a glass of water. 

He turned to do this, and caught sight of Hollander grimacing. Not unusual in itself, but it didn’t look like his usual mild frown. Ilya watched as he rolled his shoulder back, the motion clearly causing some discomfort. 

“What, you hurt yourself?” 

“No. Well, yeah, I don’t know.” He stretched his neck to the side, holding his elbow out and rolling his shoulder again at a slightly different angle. 

“Did you show physios?” 

“Yeah.” The obviously was implied in Hollander’s petulant little tone. “It’s just sore. It’s not anything.” 

Ilya hadn’t noticed anything while watching the game, but he knew as well as anyone else that didn’t matter. It could have come from an innocuous hit, or from just reaching the wrong way. And if Hollander said he had shown the physios and they had told him it was fine, Ilya was sure that it was. Even if he was clearly uncomfortable enough that he was holding his entire upper body in tension. 

Ilya reached over, experimentally pressing a spot near Hollander’s shoulder blade with his thumb. He pushed into the muscle from over his t-shirt, moving in a tiny semi-circle. 

“Oh fuck.” Hollander seemed to collapse inward for a moment, reacting immediately to the light pressure. 

Admittedly, Ilya was a little smug to have found the right spot right away, but what could he say? It was a talent. 

“Shirt off. On the bed,” he gestured. 

Hollander blinked at him, slightly bewildered, but tugged his t-shirt over his head after a moment. He had probably realized that they would be heading in that direction anyway, even if this was a different kind of start. 

Ilya waited until he was settled to climb over him. He had never actually done this before, but it had been done to him enough in his life, and he understood the general mechanics. It wasn’t difficult, anyway. And he was thinking of his last year playing hockey, the shoulder soreness that had persisted for nearly a month, and which he’d made worse by refusing to do the stretches the physios had suggested. Stupid shit. 

But when Hollander let out a quiet, stuttering breath just from Ilya’s first press into his bare skin, he realized he might have made a mistake. 

“Hey, Hollander, I am working here. Don’t make noise like porno.” He said it as a joke, but he shifted up, keeping himself far enough from the top of Hollander’s ass so that he wouldn’t be able to tell that Ilya had just gotten a little hard. 

“Fuck off,” came the response, mumbled into a pillow. 

Ilya did what he thought would probably feel good, based on where it seemed the soreness was stored. He rubbed his hands firmly across Hollander’s smooth skin, with light pressure, focusing around his shoulder, but also going up to his neck and further down his back. Ilya knew what it was like to hold tension from an injury, and how the muscles around it would get sore, too. 

Of course Hollander moaned. But the sounds were so full of relief and contentment that it was hard to mock. Especially when Ilya could see that he was embarrassed about it, turning into the pillow each time to muffle the noise.

“Relax.” At the instruction, Ilya felt the muscles underneath his hands lose at least some of their tension. When Ilya rubbed over his lats again, Hollander sighed out quietly. 

“Maybe if modeling doesn’t work out, I will become physio,” Ilya joked. 

“What do you mean, if it doesn’t work? I see you everywhere,” Hollander mumbled into the pillow. 

Ilya glanced at the back of his head, trying to discern what it meant. But Hollander didn’t pick up his face. 

It was true, there had been more pictures around the city—the Hugo boss ad, others for jeans, sunglasses. At first he had been proud of them, at least in the abstract: a measure of his success, tangible proof that he existed in the world. 

But now when he saw them, he tried not to linger. Sometimes he felt an undercurrent of strangeness at the idea of thousands—millions—of eyes passing over him as they went about their days, walking to the subway, in the rain, moving on with their lives while he stayed still on the wall. 

Hollander might have seen them. There were enough of them downtown, if that was indeed where he lived. Not that Ilya knew for certain. 

Ilya thought of the Admirals posters advertising their home games, which were back up in the subway again with the season now upon them. He thought of the flash he’d once seen of Hollander’s face, with teammates clustered around it, staring down at him from a screen in Times Square, the last time he’d had to walk through it. He thought of the Admirals fans, draped in their HOLLANDER 24 jerseys, yelling at the TV through the windows of sports bars. 

Maybe both of them were being haunted, a bit. 

He knew he shouldn’t keep massaging for too long, or he would risk aggravating the tissue. But with Hollander quiet and pliant under his hands, it was hard to pull himself away. 

Finally, though, he caught sight of his head turning—and the soft, lidded eyes looking at him over Hollander’s shoulder, assessing him. 

Ilya moved his hands away slowly, and sat back on his knees. He looked, too. 

Hollander rolled onto his back. He was still wearing his suit pants. When Ilya glanced down at them, he could see that the massage had gotten Hollander hard. He was in no place to judge—as Hollander could see for himself. 

“Thank you.” He wasn’t looking at Ilya’s face when he said it. 

“You’re welcome.” 

Hollander sat up, bringing himself forward so that he could reach for Ilya. He pulled him down onto the bed, switching their positions. Ilya complied, laying flat on his back and letting Hollander situate himself on top, knees going to either side of Ilya’s hips. 

He lost his pants before Hollander did, leaving him completely naked. He closed his eyes when the kisses started down his abdomen, down over the trail of hair below his belly button. He breathed in slowly when the dual sensations began: a strong hand around him and a warm mouth close by; exhaling against him first, making Ilya twitch in his grip, and finally a series of wet licks to start. After a moment, the warmth surrounded him. 

Ilya still remembered the first time Hollander’s mouth had ever been on him. Inexperienced though he may have been, the extent of his eagerness had almost shaken Ilya to his core. The combination of his greedy mouth and the sheer idea of its greed had been enough to make him want to come in under a minute. 

Hollander’s skills had improved immensely since then—he had no problem stretching his mouth wide, taking nearly all of Ilya’s cock into his throat. But the greed hadn’t changed, it had only shifted. 

The first time, Ilya had assumed it was greed for a new experience, something Hollander must have only ever thought about in the back recesses of his mind, since he’d said he’d never done anything with a man before. 

Now, the greed was for something known, and still desired. And Ilya still felt a physical reaction to it deep in his gut every time he was here, in this very position, underneath Shane Hollander. 

“Can I fuck you?” His voice was low, his hand resting lightly on Hollander’s head, moving with his bobbing motions. 

Hollander pulled his mouth away slowly, and Ilya tried not to stare at the thin trail of spit that remained between them. His eyes were wet from the strain of his movements as he looked up at Ilya, across his body. 

“You have to ask now?” 

“Your shoulder, idiot,” Ilya scoffed, tempted to use the grip around his hair to stuff his dick back into Hollander’s mouth. “Don’t want to hurt you.” 

“I’m fine,” he said again. He returned to what he had been doing, directing Ilya’s cock back into his mouth and hollowing his cheeks again. 

Ilya choked off a groan, letting his fingers tighten in his hair, the same way that Hollander always did to him when the positions were reversed. 

“Your mouth is too fucking good, Hollander, I am going to—” He hissed a breath in, sacrificing the end of the sentence to keep himself under control. His muscles were tense and he was panting heavily, but in his lap, Hollander seemed the most relaxed he’d been since entering the apartment. 

But he did, eventually, pull away, and Ilya was finally able to rid him of the suit pants. He folded them himself before Hollander could complain, tossing them somewhat unceremoniously in the direction of the chair near the bed. 

Hollander was already hard and leaking—worked up from both the massage and the blowjob. Ilya had never met anyone who seemed to get so much personal enjoyment from a cock in his mouth, from the act of pleasing another person. For every barrier that seemed to exist between him and Hollander, Ilya didn’t take for granted that he was lucky to be on the receiving end of that kind of dedication to pleasure. 

His reciprocal blowjob was, truthfully, less about pleasure and more about prelude, especially once assisted by the fingers inside of him. When Ilya could sense Hollander was ready, he sat up only enough to roll on the condom. 

But Hollander was moving underneath him again. Ilya watched, confused, as he went to his knees, leaning on his forearms and arching his back. 

It was difficult to tear himself away from the sight of Hollander on all fours in front of him, especially now, stretched open, ready, and wanting, but under the circumstances, Ilya had no choice. 

“How is that going to be good for your shoulder?” 

He assumed Hollander could already feel what he meant from the position he’d put himself in, weight on his forearms and head dipped down between them. 

There was a pause. “...right.” 

His face was red as he turned around again. He lay on his back, but Ilya had other ideas. He came level with Hollander and smacked his hip lightly, twice, indicating for him to roll onto his side. 

Hollander obeyed. The position left his sore shoulder on top so he had the ability to hold it in whatever way was most comfortable. 

Ilya slipped behind him, keeping a firm hand on his hip as he shifted himself into position. Hollander was watching him over his shoulder, the freckles on his face hovering above the few dotting his shoulders. There had been more there in the summer, when he’d come back from Canada. Only a few of them were there, now, but Ilya’s eyes trailed over them anyway as he held his cock, brushing it against Hollander as he positioned himself to push in. 

He waited until he had pressed forward for the first inch or so before letting go of Hollander’s hip. He reached up with the same hand, tilting his face back over his shoulder, close enough for Ilya to lean forward and press their lips together. Hollander responded with as much hunger as Ilya felt. 

He kissed him slowly as he fucked him, also slowly. The position was good for Hollander’s shoulder, but it was also good for Ilya, who had been worn down by the weight of the travel and lingering feelings of melancholy. Laying together on the bed like this was comfortable, with his head resting just behind Hollander’s on the pillow. Ilya shifted forward slightly, nudging his nose against the nape of his neck, mouthing lightly at the skin below. 

He felt Hollander shiver under the hand that was on his hip, exhaling a quiet groan into the air. 

“Feels so good,” Ilya murmured in response to the sound, enjoying the gentle shudder this pulled from Hollander. “Inside you.” 

It did. When he was here like this, surrounded by the tight heat of him and with his strong body underneath Ilya’s hands, panting and rolling against him, it was hard to think of it as anything other than a revelation. He would be irritated by this thought afterwards, giving Hollander so much power as to be compared to something like a religious experience. But in the moment, here, now, and yes, afterwards, when he was alone at night, and even sometimes when he was dreaming, yes, it felt like there was an epiphany in it. 

Hollander groaned again. When Ilya’s hand shifted around his hip, he found that he was already stroking himself. Ilya left him to it, resting his hand lightly against his abdomen instead, and adjusting his own hips to thrust into him more deeply. 

This got the reaction Ilya had been hoping for—a gasped fuck—and so he kept moving his hips in short thrusts at the same angle. 

It didn’t take much longer than that. Hollander came first, spilling into his own hand. 

Without thinking, Ilya let go of his hip and grabbed his wrist. He pulled his hand up, carefully sucking Hollander’s fingers into his mouth. The taste was familiar, slightly sweet, and Ilya had been thinking about it for months. He licked each finger, then his palm, drawing a gasping, choked kind of sound from Hollander. 

It had been an automatic gesture—unconscious more than anything. Ilya quickly let the hand go as soon as he realized what he’d done, before Hollander could find the words to respond. 

But any acerbic thoughts in Hollander’s head had been extinguished. He leaned his head back against Ilya, relaxed, loose-limbed under the hand gripping his side again. Ilya rested his head against him, too, letting the motion of their hips moving together carry him over the edge. He groaned as he came, his nose still in the hair at the base of Hollander’s scalp. 

When he opened his eyes, he saw that there were even freckles just behind his ear. 

He was so tired now that it was all he could do to pull out and dispose of the condom, and to bring Hollander a towel to clean himself up from the come, lube, and saliva that would no doubt be bothering him as they dried on his skin. Hollander managed to do these simple tasks, but judging from his sluggish pace, it was clear that the orgasm had knocked most of the sense out of him. 

Ilya was sure that he’d be asking to take a shower in only a couple of minutes, or at least take himself to the bathroom for a better cleanup job than the towel had been able to provide. So he decided to let Hollander’s habits be an alarm clock, climbing back into bed and collapsing down next to him. 

At least fifteen minutes passed, Ilya dozing with his arm over his eyes, before he realized that Hollander had actually fallen asleep. 

He wasn’t sure what to do about it. It was the middle of the night, and he was clearly exhausted—as was Ilya, and he hadn’t played a hockey game and traveled a few hundred miles in the past few hours. In other circumstances, he might have just suggested that he stay. 

But he was certain that Hollander would say no. And truthfully, Ilya wasn’t sure what he thought about offering an invitation, either. With all of the bullshit about Hollander’s apartment—not being allowed in it, not even being allowed to know where it was—Ilya was wary of being the one to cross the boundary of an overnight stay. 

And, he realized, as he watched Hollander breathe slowly next to him, it was different. It was different seeing him like this, with his long eyelashes resting against his smooth cheeks. It would be different, too, to see Hollander first thing in the morning, instead of someone else, a person he had no expectation of seeing again. He wasn’t sure about crossing the boundary for his own sake. 

He didn’t have to think about it very long. 

Hollander startled awake. He sat up on his elbows, blinking a few times into the air in front of him before turning to look at Ilya. Ilya saw the moment his expression changed, from blank and confused to cautious and embarrassed. 

“Sorry,” he said. 

“Is fine.” 

Ilya stayed where he was, head on his pillow, watching Hollander pull himself up to sit on the bed. His eyes were still bleary and his movements were slow and syrupy. Ilya knew he was groggy and sore. 

For a moment, Ilya considered elbowing past the boundary and treating it the same as he would with anyone else. He never would have told a woman that she needed to leave his apartment at 3am. 

But he held his tongue. Hollander could walk twenty blocks, if it was in fact that long—he was a grown adult, even if it was the middle of the night. 

Still, he couldn’t help himself, once he was dressed in sweatpants again and watching Hollander put his coat on at the door. 

“Go up to Houston and find a cab,” he said, watching Hollander slowly sink to the ground to tie his shoes on. “You are tired enough to lose your way on the walk home.” 

“And I won’t be able to help you,” he added. “Because I don’t know where you fucking live.” 

Hollander exhaled a laugh in a tired breath. “Yeah, okay. I’ll see if I can find one.” 

It was another sign of exhaustion, Ilya thought, that he didn’t fight back against it. Ilya probably would have, if told to pay for a cab for a fifteen minute walk. 

But Hollander simply brought himself to his feet and took a slow step, pushing into Ilya’s space. He rested his warm palm on Ilya’s chest as he leaned forward. 

“Bye,” he said quietly, his breath hot against Ilya’s mouth for a moment before their lips touched. The motion was gentle, and Hollander pulled back almost immediately. But impulse, or perhaps momentum, brought him back again, pressing against Ilya in a second, softer kiss. 

The intimacy of the unexpected double kiss hit him like a blow. He felt like he had been carved out, a spoon taken to the most essential parts of him, removing them in one swift scoop. For a moment he thought about shoving Hollander away, outside, closing the door and never letting him back in again. 

Instead, he touched his back as he left. 

Did you get home

SH
Yeah
Thank you

you’re welcome

SH
It was nice to see you

You too. Get some sleep, Hollander.

The strange feeling in his chest remained for a while before he fell asleep. 

_____

DECEMBER 2012, MOSCOW

The night was ill-fated from the start. He should have seen it coming. 

Alexei had been in a good mood with him since the morning. It had felt sinister even then, but it happened so rarely these days—it was hard not to lean into it a little bit, just to see where it might go. 

«You were at the gym over an hour?» He was in the kitchen when Ilya was there, getting water after returning home from his workout. «If I was ever in there that long, it would be because I fell asleep on the bench. Or maybe died.»

Ilya had just looked at him, trying to gauge if there was some hidden meaning behind this. But Alexei had only gestured to himself, to the small round belly that had developed sometime in the last year or so, and laughed. And he’d simply laughed harder when Ilya did, too. 

«You worked up an appetite, right?» He waited until Ilya nodded. «Then take a shower, you smelly fucker. I’ll treat you to lunch.» 

At first he’d tried to figure out an explanation for it—if it was because of some money he’d sent, or something different he’d said or done. But there was nothing new, nothing he hadn’t done before; which confirmed for Ilya that there was no logic to it. Alexei had simply been in the mood to give. 

And Ilya, who had a lifetime of knowing that anything freely given by Alexei could be snatched away and replaced with broken glass in an instant, had been lulled into it anyway. 

He’d maintained some wariness through lunch. The place they’d gone was a favorite of Ilya’s school friends from his teen years—laced with just enough nostalgia to feel comfortable, without being heavy with the weight of older memories. 

But the conversation was easy, too. Alexei had talked about work—for once not railing about it, but simply talking about the boring shit, the funny colleagues. Some of the stories had been genuinely amusing. It had been a long time since Ilya had heard Alexei laugh without a cold, hard inflection to it. 

They had talked about his niece, Lidiya, too, who he had seen two days earlier. She was so much bigger than the summer, it was hard for him to process how quickly all of the changes were happening. 

«Like, she is walking now? When did that happen?» Ilya gestured with his hand, asking with some seriousness, since Alexei had never actually mentioned that it had started. 

His brother snorted, helping himself to more food. «She was walking in summer, Ilya, don’t wax on about the passage of time when you just fucking forgot.»

«Oh.» He conceded the point. «Fine, when is she getting into skates?»

«She’s two years old.»

«Already too old,» they said at the same time. 

Alexei tilted his head back as he laughed, loud and booming in the restaurant. Ilya grinned, feeling wild and ten years old again, and stole the last pirozhok from his brother’s plate. 

The mistake had been in letting it continue into the evening, in thinking that it would be the same as the daytime. 

«Baby brother,» he had said—another warning sign, if Ilya had not been too full of lunch and sentimentality to pay attention—when he called after dinner. «What are you doing tonight?»

Ilya wasn’t stupid. Yet he’d still allowed Alexei to guide him, which was how they had ended up here, in this seedy club that his brother and his friends frequented, which Ilya had visited only once before. Svetlana had been with him, and had adamantly refused to ever return. 

He understood her point. In some ways, it was a club like any other; a dark mass intercut with pulsing light, warm bodies insulated from the cold air outside. But there was something noxious filtering through it. Perhaps because it was filled with people—men—like Alexei, with Alexei himself. There was an undercurrent here that was different from other places, something that reminded him of a gritty, metallic taste in the back of his mouth. His head pounded with it: the shrill sound of laughter, the sweaty bodies bumping against him, the screaming conversations from close distances. 

Alexei was still treating him the way he had been all day—if not like an equal, than like someone to have fun with. And like he had been doing all day, Ilya went along with it. It wasn’t the first time his brother had been nice to him, but it was the first time in a long time. That, as much as anything, should have scared the shit out of him. 

Alexei had goaded him into drink after drink after drink, and Ilya had complied. He had goaded him into line after line after line, and Ilya had complied. 

It was the first time he’d done coke with his brother. Paired with the rest of the day—the lunch, the laughter, the hours of time spent together—he was starting to feel like he was out of his mind. 

The first alarm came when they had been drinking again. Ilya had lost count of how many, the cold liquid going down his throat like nothing by this point in the night, his eyes bright and his head throbbing. 

A man had jostled Alexei. Nothing really, but enough to send his brother—fucked up—whirling around, catching the man’s shirt before he could pass out of reach. 

«Hey! You trying to touch me, you fucking faggot?» 

The man was small, which was the only reason, Ilya knew, that Alexei had felt confident enough to grab him in the first place. He might have done it with a bigger man, depending on how bold the drugs had made him, but with a small man it was a sure thing. 

He looked startled, already holding his hands up against the strong grip on his arm, Alexei looming over him. Ilya knew what the look in his eyes would have been like. 

«Is that it? You’re trying to fuck me?» Alexei shook him hard, the grip around the fabric of his shirt making it slide over his chest, stretching it taut. 

«No, no, it was an accident, what the fuck, man?» The man tried to pull out of the hold, pushing back when Alexei grabbed him tighter, closer. 

«I’ll show you what happens if you try to fuck with me.» Alexei’s voice had dropped, getting rougher. 

«Lyosha,» Ilya said, the name coming out without thought behind it. 

He didn’t think that was what actually ended the moment—he would never presume to have any kind of hold over Alexei, especially one based in nostalgia. He thought it ended because Alexei had gotten what he wanted out of it: fear, a reaction, a momentary, false sense of power. All the usual bullshit. 

The man left as soon as his arm was freed, not bothering to stick around to keep an argument going or attempt to regain any of the face he might have lost in the exchange. 

«Fucking faggot, right?» Alexei spoke right in Ilya’s face. «Right, Ilyusha?»

«Can we do another line?» Ilya asked. 

And after too many drinks to count, and even more cigarettes, and Alexei shouting in his ear for what felt like hours, he eventually goaded Ilya into bringing the woman home. 

He had pointed her out first while she was dancing, which Ilya had ignored. But Alexei had persisted, pointing her out again when she was standing in a corner of the club drinking with her friend. She was very pretty, of course, but in retrospect Alexei’s real intention had clearly been towards her friend. Ilya had realized this about half a second after inviting them over and buying them drinks, and wished he hadn’t dulled his foresight with everything he’d ingested through the night. 

Alexei had draped himself over her friend like a vampire. Ilya had been content to drink and dance. The girl was loose-limbed, had clearly had too much to drink or had taken something, but she was smiling, and laughing, and having fun. 

He couldn’t say the turn in the night came when Alexei suggested they all leave together. The turn had happened long before, had probably happened the moment they left the restaurant at lunch and Alexei had snatched the cigarette out of Ilya’s mouth to keep for himself. 

Without Ilya realizing it, Alexei had—no, that wasn’t true. Ilya had been looking the whole time. 

Ilya had been looking the whole time while Alexei had slid back into his usual skin. The sheep’s pelt was gone, the wolf was grinning, baring teeth that had always been there.  

He was as ineffective, as fucking useless, as he always was, when it came to protesting against bringing two random women back to his sick father’s house. Ilya wondered if he might be awake when they came in, but the place was dark. And if Polina was here, she didn’t emerge from the room, even with the racket they made. He had found himself actually wanting her to do it—to burst out, screaming at them, reminding Ilya of when he had been fifteen years old and sneaking back from some fucked up night. Tonight, the more they stumbled through the house, the less he wanted to be here at all. 

Usually, when he did this much coke—he had never done this much coke before—he would be consumed by the frantic feeling of wanting to fuck, actual results notwithstanding. But tonight he felt ill, like his feet were made of lead, like his skin was hanging off his skull. And the girl with him was swaying, which made it worse, pitching them both back and forth like they were weaving. 

Alexei didn’t bother finding a bedroom, nor did he bother turning on any lights. He pulled the woman with him onto his lap in the sitting room, taking up one of the sofas. The woman draped over Ilya’s arm pitched forward onto the other one, collapsing down more than actually sitting. 

Ilya stayed where he was, just standing, trying to stop the room from spinning, trying to stop the brick wall that felt like it was descending upon him. 

What are you doing, he thought, aware of his brother without watching him, hearing the sounds from the sofa right in front of him without listening. He had a child at home. A woman who might not have been his wife, but who should have been treated with respect anyway. 

But respect had never been a concern for Alexei, and Ilya had no room to be high and mighty about it, either. He hadn’t respected Alexei’s girlfriend very much either—the one he’d had years ago, at least—after they had fucked when Ilya was sixteen. 

He felt like he was going to be sick. 

He checked on the woman on the sofa, first, to make sure that she was still conscious. She was, at least barely; so he dragged himself out of the room and towards the nearest door. 

It was snowing when he stumbled outside. Light flakes, the kind that felt more like rain, seeped in through his shirt. The bite of the cold air felt sharp under his arms and on his back, at the nape of his neck, all of the places he’d collected sweat from hours inside of the club. The icy air was good, but not enough to counteract the nauseous feeling pounding through him. 

He held his hand against the wall, leaning over to catch his breath. The sudden pitch forward made his head swoop, which was enough to tilt him over the edge. He braced his arm, leaning his weight against the wall as he vomited, leaving a burning feeling in his throat to match the one already in his nose and behind his eyes. 

He needed water. He should have brought some water for the woman on the sofa. 

And with his eyes closed, even with his head spinning, a foot away from a puddle of his own vomit, all he could think about was what Shane Hollander would think if he could see him now. 

He knew, actually. He remembered his face, his perfect features written over with tight, clear disgust. He remembered the defensiveness he had felt about it, the anger he had constructed just to serve as an overlay for the real emotions. 

You can’t look at me that way. Not you, too.

Ilya vomited again. The force of it made him crouch down this time, still bracing against the wall. Once he was sure he wouldn’t be sick again, he turned, resting his back against the cool exterior of the house as he dropped to sit on the ground. 

He exhaled slowly, resting the back of his head against the wall behind him. The weight of the night—the weight of the substances, the weight of Alexei, the weight of his entire fucking life—felt like it had come down on him like an axe to the head. He felt like his mind had been split open. 

And why the fuck was he always thinking about Shane Hollander? 

It was a sickness. It was an addiction. If he was addicted to anything, certainly, it was that. 

But as with any addiction, it was there because of the reward it brought. 

His tired mind had drifted away from that day in the spring, the look of disgust that had stayed with him for eight months. Now Ilya was thinking of his bright, interested eyes. His laugh—the real one, which was loud and bubbled out of him unexpectedly. The way his fingers squeezed tight and then suddenly went lax when he was about to come. 

Ilya brought his head back down, letting it hang between his legs as he draped his arms over his knees. He let gravity do its job, shrinking the swollen feeling inside his skull down until it was just a point, sharp in the center of his head. He let the snow fall on the back of his neck. He let himself feel the cold ground underneath his ass. 

After a few minutes, he pulled himself up slowly, carefully. 

He was going to wash his mouth. He was going to check on the women—both of them. And he was never going to do cocaine again. 

Chapter End Notes

I know. The ending (the whole thing?) is ROUGH, but please trust me, it was necessary to get through Ilya’s Coke Year. If it helps, I don’t intend to spend much time in Moscow for the rest of this story.

And, in general, I know this story is heavy and sad, but I don’t think it would be doing justice to Ilya if I glossed over a lot of it. My goal, though, is to bring new happy moments into the timeline, too—because he is falling in love.

If you would like a librarytiger-prescribed salve, I would suggest: 1) listening to Guilty Pleasure by Chappell Roan, 2) watching Coyote v. Acme, or 3) reading Chapter 5 of Into the Blue.

Next time: Snow in the forecast. A buzzcut. Also, kale?

Chapter 4: a series of small unravelings

Chapter Summary

Ilya Rozanov walks twenty blocks.

Chapter Notes

Dialogue using « » as quotation marks indicates that the characters are speaking Russian.

This chapter covers Chapter Five to the middle of Chapter 6 of Into the Blue.

Do you want to see someone fall in love?

FEBRUARY 2013, NEW YORK CITY

The snow was coming down so fast that he realized he was lucky to have made it back into the city at all. 

It had been a mistake to take a cab from JFK, though. He’d landed with his mind already set on it—exhausted from the travel, willing to forego the extra expense just to save himself the trouble of carrying his suitcase onto the train and sitting through the long ride after an already interminable journey. 

That had been a stupid idea. At the pace the cab was crawling, he probably would have been home by now, even accounting for dragging his bag through the snow. And he would have been at least $70 better off. 

But he was committed now, so there was little else he could do except rest his head against the cold window and wait to arrive home. 

There was a shroud of melancholy around him that felt difficult to push away. 

He was worn down. London had been fine enough, but it suddenly felt like he couldn’t take that for granted these days, since the unsteady start to the year. 

It had been difficult. The work he’d done recently had felt so impersonal, like he could have been any man of a particular height and build—so different from the highs he’d experienced last year. And opportunities had been falling through. He hadn’t anticipated that, after the successes he had steadily been building upon. 

January, especially, had been a let down. He’d had fewer things to do than he’d thought he would in Milan for the Fall/Winter Fashion Week—and he hadn’t made it to Paris at all. It had been embarrassing, especially after he’d built it all up in his mind, after he had worked so much last summer and into the fall. 

Vika had blown him off when he’d expressed his feelings about it. She said that it was the way the industry ebbed and flowed. But that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. 

What if things never flowed again? What if he had reached the highest he could expect to go, the peak of everything he might ever accomplish with all of this?  

Money wasn’t tight, yet. But he was thinking about money again, especially after returning from Moscow and the big amount he had wired back home. Of course he regretted it, but it was useless to beat himself up. He would have felt worse if he hadn’t sent it. 

He still had money in the bank—he had been saving aggressively since he’d started, especially since he’d come to New York—but it wasn’t the kind of thing that would tide him over forever. 

For the first time in over a year, the thought was creeping back: what if this fell through? 

It had been different when he’d started. Using money from his family was a possibility—a shitty one with shitty strings attached, but a possibility—and he had fewer qualms about leaning on Svetlana as they crept forward in this strange industry together. 

It wasn’t the same now. He was a grown man. If it didn’t work, he would need to work. No more reliance on his father and brother, no more over-reliance on Svetlana’s generosity. 

But he didn’t know what working would look like, with his life, with his schedule, with his visa. What would he be? A waiter, a bartender? There was nothing wrong with those jobs. He didn’t look down on them, it was honest work. Was he an honest person? 

It had all felt empowering in the beginning, and again last year, when he’d felt like he was getting somewhere, inching his way towards something real. But the more he waited by the phone for Vika to call him with good news, the more he returned to the past. The more he wondered, again, what he had really done—if he had thrown away his talent for vanity, like his father had accused him of. 

And there was another thread woven through the melancholy, he thought, as the cab went over the bridge, finally on its way into Manhattan. A thread that he could feel digging into his skin as it wound around him. 

He missed his mother. 

It had been nine years without her—which wasn’t ten, but he could feel the second digit approaching, as the months ticked past. He didn’t know if he would be able to stand the weight of it once it was upon him. 

Ilya sat up as the cab slowed down on its approach to Orchard Street. The snow was piling up, he could see; it was harder to drive here, and would be worse if the car tried to turn. 

“I can get out here,” he said. It was still three blocks away, but he had been in the cab long enough. 

He pulled out his wallet, trying not to focus on the bills he removed to pass through the divider, wishing like hell he’d just taken the subway. 

It took him at least ten minutes longer than usual to walk from Delancey up to his apartment, dragging his suitcase through the snow. He finally made it inside only to discover that he’d left the window cracked before his trip—to have a cigarette while leaning out onto the fire escape, of course—and the place was now freezing. 

He shut the window, exhaling a frustrated sigh. 

He was tired, but more importantly, he was hungry. Meals on planes were never satisfying, and the awful chicken dish he’d shoveled into his mouth had been hours ago, now. He knew he needed to make it to the store while he still had some energy available in him. 

So he left his bag where it was, dripping wet snow in the entryway of the apartment, and grabbed his wallet, phone, and keys to go downstairs again. 

The snow was worse. He pulled his hood up, over the hat he was already wearing. It was too much to walk to the better grocery store, the bigger one that he usually went to once a week or so. He went to the bodega instead, just for the basics that could tide him over for the night. 

It meant his options would be limited. There were very few things he could cook—or had the patience for after the flight, the long day, the endless cab ride. But he could make eggs, and he could buy bread and butter. 

But the bodega was a wasteland. 

He had never seen it like this. There were energy drinks and instant noodles as far as the eye could see, but the rest of the food supply was essentially barren. 

“I know, brother,” the man behind the counter said with sympathy, when he saw Ilya staring in shock at the place where he had always been able to purchase staples without issue. “People heard snow was coming, cleared everything out.” 

Ilya took a deep breath, picking up the last package of eggs—a half carton of six, already unfairly priced, if he was honest with himself. He opened the top to check them out of reflex. 

He should not have been surprised to see that all but two were crushed. 

Ilya left the store a few minutes later with two Red Bulls and a loaf of bread—thank God—and fucking margarine to spread on it, since the butter had been gone, too. 

He was so tired of this fucking city and debating whether to take the effort to walk to the better store, if it was even worth it at this point with the snow only falling harder. It was getting darker, too, even though it was still the afternoon. The heavy clouds obscured what might have been visible of the sun, ushering in the oncoming dusk. 

He paused at the intersection, grabbing his phone to check the time as he debated his options. 

Texting Hollander wasn’t even conscious, it was simply reflex; an endpoint to channel his frustration. Of all the people in the city, he thought Hollander might share his consternation at this inability to handle a simple fucking snowfall. He was Canadian, after all. Canadians understood the fucking snow. 

He was gratified when Hollander answered quickly, and started trudging down the street again as they went back and forth. 

SH
When did you get back?
Do you have food? 

No, that’s why I went to the store.
Got back an hour ago.
Took fucking forever for the cab
People are insane
I only wanted eggs
IT IS ONLY SNOW

SH
Come over. I have stuff.

This halted him in his tracks again. 

There was simply no universe in which he had expected this to come, falling onto his head heavier than any snowflake from a cloud high above. 

For it to happen on a day like this—when he had felt so tightly wrapped in the exhaustion and smothering misery—was, he had to admit, even past the point of coincidence. It was nearly enough to make him wonder if there was, in fact, a God, and if he sometimes used Shane Hollander to play tricks on him. 

Or maybe, for once, to give a reprieve. 

Ilya stood in the snow, waiting for Hollander to respond again, to make sure that this was real. When the answer came, followed by a series of numbers and letters—a building, a street, an apartment—Ilya ignored how numb his fingers had become, and typed a careful reply. 

I will bring dinner. 

❄️

He shoved the Red Bull and margarine in the fridge and left the bread on the counter. He needed a shower, but settled for simply rinsing his body and changing out of the clothes he’d worn on the plane. 

He made the phone call when he was out of the bathroom, pulling a clean sweatshirt over his mostly dry hair. 

«Hello,» he said politely when the person on the other end picked up. Their greeting had been laced with an accent thick enough that he thought it was surely one of the native speakers who worked at the restaurant. «Are you accepting take out orders?»

Ilya had debated whether it was the right choice for food. He knew that Hollander had a specific meal plan and particular tastes besides, and that a safer choice might be found in the things they often ate together. 

But even if the occasion wasn’t momentous, it felt as if it called for something. If Hollander was truly inviting Ilya into his home, he was going to come with a token. And now that it was in his mind, there was nothing Ilya wanted more than the taste of borscht in his mouth. 

The restaurant was a few blocks out of his way from the route he would have taken to Hollander’s. But even with the detour, he found himself counting in his head as he approached the address on his phone screen. 

20.

He should not have been surprised that something Hollander had said so offhand, as if he had pulled it out of thin air, had turned out to be exactly the right number. 

It was, as he had always suspected, a nice building with a doorman. A bit impersonal, perhaps; but he could see how that might appeal to someone like Hollander, who had moved into the city without any prior introductions or connections, other than the team that had drafted him. 

Ilya gave his name to the doorman, and was somewhat surprised to be waved through immediately. 

It was a strange thought: Hollander calling down and saying the words aloud, Ilya Rozanov. 

It occurred to him as he traveled up in the elevator—that he usually thought of him as Hollander. It had come to him automatically, probably; the same as how he’d always referred to his peers, his schoolmates, the boys he’d played with on the ice and shouted at across from the locker room. Hollander was part of that world, even if he and Ilya had never technically been part of it together. And Hollander had never called him anything other than Rozanov, either. 

Maybe Ilya would try, this time. 

There was a strange tension in his body as the door opened to the eighth floor. Which was stupid—it was just an apartment. It was just Hollan—Shane. It was just sex and the food in the bag in his hand. 

But he found himself inhaling slowly as he looked down the hallway, searching for apartment 816. If he was going to be let inside—and he was only a few feet away from the door now, so he thought he probably was—he was going to do everything in his power to be the best version of Ilya Rozanov. 

He saw it from the very moment the door opened: Shane was different inside of his home. 

It was like the tight spool of him had been just slightly unwound. It was in the hesitant way he opened the door, his wet hair giving away the shower he must have just taken. It was in the way he hovered in the hall, watching carefully as Ilya removed each piece of outerwear, not to monitor but simply to observe. 

It was also in the way he had opted to forego at least some clothing after his shower, a pleasant shock for Ilya when he stuck his hands in his sweatpants and was gifted with two handfuls of bare ass. 

He had spent so much time—too much time, he knew—imagining what Shane’s home would look like. Now that he was here, he thought he had been perfectly on the mark. 

The apartment was spacious for a one bedroom, with high ceilings and large windows. It was hard to tell with the waning light and the clouds of snow swirling outside, but Ilya thought the view would look down onto the park. 

There were things on the walls and shelves in the main room that he wanted to look at—later, he thought, as Shane led him to his bedroom—and a massive TV that had probably never displayed anything other than a hockey game. 

Ilya caught only a glimpse of the clean kitchen, too, that looked as if no one had ever cooked in it before. What would be inside of Shane Hollander’s refrigerator? 

Shane was different in his bedroom, too; somehow both more and less comfortable than he seemed in Ilya’s. He was smiling softly as he let Ilya turn him around and prod him down onto the bed, but once settled, he chirped the hell out of Ilya as he worked to rid them both of their clothing. 

The shyness returned, though, when they clambered to the top of the bed together, naked. Shane pushed away a couple of pillows—exposing the blue sheets, like Ilya had known there would be—and settled himself down, staring up with his wide brown eyes, as if awaiting judgment. 

What verdict would Ilya possibly have to deliver? 

He hovered over him, staring down at the smattering of freckles over Shane’s face, the expressive look coming back up at him from the bed. 

“Why do you sleep with ten pillows?” 

The corners of Shane’s mouth came up, as he knew they would. “There’s five. Do they count differently in Russia, too?” 

Ilya laughed quietly, sliding his hand under the back of Shane’s head to pull him up closer, leaning down at the same time. “I thought I said no more talking.” 

“You did it first,” Shane mumbled, but Ilya took away half of the words with his lips. 

He was certainly more comfortable once they got into it. They had never knocked a lamp off a bedside table while fucking at Ilya’s before. 

❄️

Afterwards, Ilya had the real shower he had wanted hours earlier. He hadn’t anticipated having it in Shane’s bathroom, with its clean smelling soap and simple hair products. He let himself enjoy it, closing his eyes under the spray of water and letting it run down his back as he washed himself. 

Hollan—Shane was changing the sheets when he came out of the bathroom. For an instant Ilya wondered if something was wrong—if he’d done something wrong—until he recalled the many times he’d noticed it before: Shane avoiding the wet spot on the bed, shifting his body away immediately every time he’d rolled over and their bodies had separated. Ilya had often thought about putting a towel on the bed, but the thought always seemed to fall out of his mind in the moment, when faced with the prospect of Shane naked in his bed, hurtling towards their mutual objective. He hadn’t realized that it bothered him this much. 

He would remember, though, he thought to himself as he changed into the soft sweatshirt and pants that Hollander gave him. 

It was funny that they did this for each other now—handed over a pile of clean clothing, pulled on each other’s attire like it was nothing. It was a plain sweatshirt—grey—and felt lived in. It was the same size as his own sweatshirts, but it fit him differently. So did the pants. He couldn’t explain it. 

Hollander was still in the shower when Ilya decided he was too hungry to wait. The airplane meal was a distant memory now, and the pelmeni was waiting in the kitchen. 

He opted to break in Shane’s kitchen by himself rather than waiting to be shown which pots and pans to use. Indeed, they looked brand new when he pulled them out of the bottom cabinet. The only thing that actually looked to get frequent use in Hollander’s kitchen was the blender drying by the sink. 

Shane came out as Ilya was choosing a pot for the soup. He saw Shane’s eyes dart from the stove to the microwave, but thankfully, he didn’t say anything. Ilya would stick his own hand in the microwave before putting the borscht in there. 

Once everything was ready and laid out, Ilya was relieved to find that the choice of food was a success. Shane showed no hesitation as he pushed the sleeves of his sweatshirt up over his arms, reaching for a spoon to serve himself. 

He asked about the dishes, but Ilya could tell it was out of interest, not concern for his meal plan. He explained the ingredients in return, but held back on describing the specific way that each of the foods made him feel nourished and warm. 

Ilya couldn’t remember the last time he had felt like that. It was improbable, really, that he should have found it on this random day in February, in Shane Hollander’s kitchen. 

Time had taken on an odd quality. Perhaps he was exhausted, or perhaps he had wandered into a hidden place between worlds. 

It felt like that, as they settled on opposite sides of the sofa—a familiar position, but a new sofa, Shane’s sofa—and watched a Batman movie. It continued to feel that way as Ilya poked and prodded at Shane’s annoyance, imitating Bane, wrestling him off when Hollander tried to smother him with a boring blue and cream-colored cushion, spreading his knees wider to make room for Shane between them. 

There was a moment, when they were lazily kissing on the sofa together, when he wondered if he might actually wake up from all of this and find himself in a cramped economy seat on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean, faced with the prospect of choosing between the subway and a cab to make his way home once he landed. 

The evening had been too perfect, had too readily wiped away the sheen of melancholy that had been layered over everything these last few weeks. It would make sense, really, if it wasn’t real. 

But he stayed on the ground. And then they moved to the bed, and he repaid the favor of distraction to Shane, by running his hands over his warm, bare skin, doing what he could to help him see stars. 

Ilya felt some of it coming back into him—the heavy feeling—when he looked outside the window later, at the deep blue nighttime sky and the swirling haze of snow. He thought about putting his jeans back on, his boots, his thick winter coat. He thought about the cold wind on his face during the walk home. He prepared himself for it. 

“Do you want me to go?” 

“No,” Shane’s response was swift, automatic. “It’s cold.” 

The relief flooded over him so quickly that he felt winded from it. He took a moment to simply breathe, letting the air come back into his lungs, letting himself enjoy the warmth and the peace and the clean smell of the soft blue sheets before he rolled onto his side. 

He didn’t know how Shane would take it—if it would be too much, too fast, as he nudged him into the same position. Ilya moved in behind him, shifting close. He wondered if Shane could feel his heart, pressed against his back. It was a vulnerable thought. 

“Too cold to walk twenty blocks,” he agreed. 

❄️

The first morning Ilya woke up beside Shane Hollander was quiet, still, and bright. 

He didn’t know if he was awake so early because his body was on London time, or because of the light coming in from the east-facing window, or simply because his unconscious wanted him to wake up and experience the day before him. 

They had drifted apart from each other during the night, the close contact too hot for two bodies that ran warm. But he rolled over now, pressing himself behind Shane again, enjoying the exhale he felt more than heard. 

Ilya himself was still half asleep, kissing the top of Shane’s spine, the smooth hollow between his neck and shoulder, thinking about what it would feel like to slip inside him in this warm, soft cocoon, when Shane doused him with a pail of metaphorical water—forcing his bare ass out into the cold air and subjecting his mouth to the artificial taste of mint. 

But he did it because Shane wanted him to, and because when Ilya returned to the bed, Shane’s eyes were alight with the same eagerness that felt like it was flowing through him too, and because they were warm again under the blanket in no time at all. 

❄️

As the day passed, it felt like he should have been in a daze. But Ilya felt more present, rooted to the ground, than he had in a long time. 

He almost wished that they could skate—and had nearly suggested it at some point as they waded through the snow banks on the sidewalks in the East Village, knowing that it would light up Shane’s face to hear him ask. In the end, though, he didn’t. 

But he did allow the conversation to drift into things he would have hated to talk about at any other time, on any other day, in any other place. But somehow it didn’t feel so terrible to talk about that bleak part of his life, when he’d been so distraught about the loss of his mother that he’d let himself slide into every bad habit he could think of as an angry young teenager—sex, alcohol, parties, whatever meager drugs he could get his hands on, fighting, just flatly missing commitments. 

He got the sense that Shane understood what he meant, too, even without the worst of the details. He would have known what it meant for the captain, the best player, the center of everything, to show up late, or tired, or hungover, or to miss it all entirely. He would have understood the stakes of what Ilya carelessly gambled away, and he would have understood—though certainly never experienced—the kind of condemnation that Ilya had faced for it, from his teammates, his coaches, and his family. 

Shane was listening to him with full attention as they walked through the empty streets. His cheeks and nose were pink from the cold, even as the rest of him was bundled up in his winter gear. It was hard, even as they talked about these shitty subjects—his family, the shittiest of all—not to reach out and touch him, to feel how cold his skin would be under Ilya’s warm palm. It was hard not to want to kiss him under the light of the clear winter day. 

There was a moment when they were standing on First Avenue, just after they’d come out of Tompkins Square Park, everything now damp from the snowball fight Ilya had manufactured to change the subject from his shitty fucking family, when Shane looked left, to the south of Manhattan. Ilya was sure that he was going to ask if he was going home now, that this portended the divergence of their paths for the day, for the rest of the weekend. 

He didn’t. Shane looked ahead at the crosswalk again, instead, waiting for the light to change. 

“Oh, how was your trip to London?” He asked. 

And the day kept going, wandering like the two of them through the streets downtown, through conversations about lighter subjects, until they were back in the warmth of Shane’s apartment once again. 

Because, it seemed, once the invitation had been extended for the first time, it would be given again freely. 

Time continued to flow in the same strange, uneven way for the rest of the day. It was late afternoon by the time they arrived back with a large bag of Chinese food, which they left on the counter to wait until they were warm and dry again. 

Ilya’s third shower in Shane Hollander’s apartment featured Shane Hollander himself, pressed against the tiles, gasping into his mouth under a stream of hot water. 

This time, the sweatshirt he borrowed was black, with no hood, and a small hole near the cuff. The sweatpants were grey and soft. 

They ate in front of the television, crowded around the coffee table like they usually did at Ilya’s. He had the sense that Hollander never did this, that he usually ate alone at the kitchen island, or at the dining table when he had other company. Did he have other company over at the apartment? Who? 

They watched hockey after they ate, because he was in Shane Hollander’s home. But it was fun, Ilya thought, to watch him watch the game: to see the way he observed the movements and the plays, to hear his unvarnished thoughts about the players—much bitchier than Ilya would have guessed—and to see a sliver of the way that his mind worked as he interpreted the sport that he had made his life. 

Ilya wasn’t sure he had ever thought about hockey in anything close to the same way. He thought he had simply seen, and acted, and occasionally reacted. But perhaps it wasn’t giving himself enough credit. 

The proximity of Shane, the sharpness he’d shown during the game, the soft way he looked with the hood of his Admirals sweatshirt up around his face—it all came together eventually for Ilya, and he coaxed him back into the bedroom. 

They were both tired, this time. So they moved together at a languid pace, Ilya braced with one forearm on the bed, pressing his chest against Shane’s back, his mouth against his shoulder as Shane groaned into his own arms. He forgot to suggest putting down a towel, again. 

The sex seemed to wake them both up, though. They stayed piled together on the bed, moving their bodies in different configurations as they talked. The conversations were different than they had been outside, though equally meandering. 

“Do you like being an only child?” Ilya asked him, at one point. 

Shane’s eyes darted back over to him. Ilya was leaning on his elbow, looking down at him while Shane was on his back, head on his pillow. He could see the suspicion in Shane’s eyes, evaluating how to answer the question. 

“I mean,” he said slowly in reply. “I don’t really know anything different.” 

But Ilya could see that he was considering it, considering why it had been asked; thinking over the conversations they’d had earlier today where Ilya had revealed more than enough about his relationship with his own sibling. 

“My parents wanted to have another kid, I think,” he finally said. “I don’t know the details, but I think they couldn’t. So it was just a lot of attention on me.” 

Ilya nodded. It sounded like a nice thing, he thought—at least from his vantage point, from a family where attention, at least positive attention, had never been much of a feature. It sounded nice, too, with the kind of parents that Shane had described before. 

Shane still looked pensive. His eyes had shifted away from Ilya, looking up towards the ceiling. 

“I guess I kind of got used to being on my own, too,” he said after a while. “I didn’t really have a lot of friends growing up, either.” 

Ilya’s first reaction was that he could understand that—that he was no stranger to being alone, even before his mother was gone; certainly afterwards, certainly now. 

But he thought about it, then, from Shane’s perspective. He thought about a small boy, sitting alone in a room with his toys, or squeezed between two adults in front of a television. He thought of a boy skating by himself—at a small town rink, or maybe outside on a pond. He thought about a boy reading in his room alone, or sitting on his bed and thinking about the other things he could have been doing, or the people he could have been doing them with. 

There were strands of Ilya in the vision, to be sure. But there had been Alexei—for better or for worse. And there had been Svetlana, eventually, and all of his teammates, and his friends from school. There had been moments of aloneness throughout his entire life, but there had been other moments, too, where he had been surrounded by people and better off because of it. 

“Did it change once you had a team?” Ilya asked, studying Shane’s face, the small notch between his brow where it was wrinkled, likely from the serious subject they were discussing. 

“Mmm,” Shane answered noncommittally, his eyes sliding past Ilya’s to fix on the ceiling again. “I don’t know. Maybe at first, but then later…” 

He didn’t have to finish the sentence—Ilya understood. He had been too good, at too young of an age, and too different because of it. Different too, because of how he looked. Ilya was sure that it wouldn’t have warmed his peers to him, even in a kind place like Canada. 

It wasn’t something they’d talked about before. And Ilya wondered if he wanted to now—he would have wanted to hear what Shane had to say about it. But Shane seemed awkward, uncomfortable. His eyes were looking around the room, anywhere except at Ilya. 

They had stumbled, by Ilya’s inartful questioning, into a subject that was too heavy for the day. Ilya would have to get them out of it, since he had gotten them into it. 

“Is probably good you have no siblings,” he mused, leaning his head on his palm. “You would be a terrible brother.”

Shane’s eyes snapped back to him. “What?”

“Yes. You’re very…” Ilya waved his free hand at him. Shane’s eyes followed the motion before coming back to Ilya’s face. “Very much like an only child.”

“Yeah. Because I’m an only child.” He spoke slowly, watching Ilya with narrowed eyes. 

Ilya shook his head against his hand, settling more comfortably, digging his elbow into the pillow underneath, as he painted the picture in his mind. 

“Just imagine, you have a brother, and he is too good at hockey. He is drafted number one in the whole NHL. Can you even skate? Maybe, but no one will ever know.” Ilya sighed at the tragedy of it all. 

“He eats terrible food for his terrible nutrition plan, so you grow up eating nothing but whole grains and lettuce. He’s too pretty, he models for Rolex. The only clothes you get to wear are the ones he gives you from Reebok. Poor Sergei.” 

“Sergei.” Shane was staring at Ilya, his dark eyes somehow blazing. “My parents’ random Russian child, Sergei Hollander.” 

“Yes! Exactly. Poor Sergei Hollander,” Ilya agreed. “All he wants is to watch cartoons on the TV, but Mama and Papa say, not now, Sergei, big brother needs to watch game tape.” 

“You are so fucking stupid.” But he was laughing now, so it was better. 

Ilya dropped down from his elbow, letting his face come level with Shane’s. The movement brought Shane’s eyes back to him, looking surprised to suddenly see him so close. Ilya was already reaching out, bringing him closer still. 

❄️

When the lights were off and darkness had filtered through the room again, despite the exhaustion from the uncanny day and the jet lag, Ilya suddenly found that all suggestion of sleep had been roughly pushed out of his body. 

He had never spent two nights in a row with a person, except for Svetlana, and that wasn’t like this. They weren’t even touching, but Ilya could feel the shape of Shane Hollander mere inches away from him. 

When he put it like that, he realized that sometimes it felt like the shape of Shane Hollander was often only a few inches away from him. It was a gift, maybe, that this time it was in the physical realm. 

He was too awake now, and too consumed by the past 48 hours and the strange way they had flowed through everything together. It felt like there was a thread between them, knotted loosely around each of their bodies, or maybe tied to some place deep inside of them. Ilya couldn’t resist a tug. 

“Why didn’t you let me come here before?” 

It took a moment for the answer to arrive, in a soft, loose voice. 

“I don’t know.” Shane paused, and Ilya could hear him take in a slow, deep breath. “But I’m glad you’re here now.” 

Ordinarily, it might have been a deeply unsatisfying answer. But Ilya understood. 

He thought of the conversation in the park hours ago, of the things he’d let go of by speaking them into the crisp winter sunlight. He thought of how he had stopped, because there were still parts of himself that he hadn’t wanted exposed in the cold air—parts he needed to protect. 

Here were parts of Shane under protection, maybe. And they were tied to this apartment, this place where he could let his walls down and be the loose, open version of himself that Ilya had been enraptured by all day—a place he didn’t have to try so hard to be so closely held together all the time. It was enough, maybe, that Ilya had been let in this time, allowed to see him with all of his walls let down. 

He wanted to be let in again. He wanted to say to Shane, let me see everything. I promise I will be careful if you do.

It was a new kind of thought—he had never particularly wanted to see, with anyone else. He had never cared enough to be careful about someone, had never even thought about whether he had the capacity to do it. 

But he thought he could be careful about Shane Hollander—he thought he had been. And he thought he would keep trying to be, if he had the chance to. 

Shane exhaled quietly, mostly asleep, when Ilya reached out some time later. Their feet were already touching, ankles lightly resting against each other. He slid his hand over this time, lightly touching Shane’s palm with his fingers. 

He felt the corresponding curl around his hand. He wasn’t even sure Shane was awake. 

You should take care of yourself, he had said to Ilya. 

Ilya thought he would remember those words for a long time. He thought he might try to take them to heart. 

 ❄️

He wasn’t surprised when Sunday morning came, and Shane’s back had stiffened and the scared, awkward look had come back into his eyes. Ilya couldn’t judge him for it. The storm had passed, and with it, the spell had lifted. He was fine with it. It was time to go home. 

But he hoped this would not be the last time. He hoped that the memories would linger for Shane—the way he was certain they would for him. He wanted to come back here again, to this wonderful, cedar-smelling oasis, with its bright, sunlit rooms and bland artwork on the walls, that had provided such good shelter from the cold. 

He hoped that he would. 

_____

MARCH 2013, MIAMI

The rooftop was hardly a place to get away from the rest of the party—it was littered with people who had the exact same idea that they did, and so now it seemed like less of a cigarette break and more of a cigarette gathering. 

But that was fine. It gave the whole rooftop a lively atmosphere, small groups clustered in their own clouds of smoke, a constant thrum of happy conversation. The night air was comfortable, and he’d had just enough to drink to feel at ease, and for the cigarette to feel like the perfect jolt to his system. He was enjoying it. 

And apparently so was Svetlana. Despite insisting that she hadn’t wanted a cigarette, she kept plucking his out of his hand, which was starting to drive him a little crazy. 

He had been tempted to refuse the next time, but she was drunk enough that she made a funny little noise each time she said “oops!” and stole it from him. So, he let her have it. 

It wasn’t officially Miami Swim Week, but they were in town for a special event for a swimwear designer nonetheless. He’d done work for the same designer in the previous summer, and it hadn’t exactly been difficult to get Svetlana booked as one of the female models this time around. The work had been easy enough, a casual few hours in various pairs of swim trunks, and the party tonight had been a good one. Neither of them were leaving until the day after tomorrow, either, which gave them an entire day to relax at the beach after this. 

Svetlana had been barely without a glass of champagne all night. It wasn’t her usual drink of choice, which was probably why she was suddenly so fuzzy and giggly. 

She kept glancing at her phone, too. Ilya thought this probably meant that there was somebody she was texting with—but she hadn’t mentioned anyone, and he wasn’t going to pry. 

He took her moment of distraction as an opportunity to smoke in peace, looking out over the lights of Miami, towards the dark expanse that was the water. He had only been here three times, but he liked it. Maybe not to live—he was growing attached to New York—but for a few days at a time, definitely. 

His own phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to check the screen. Whatever, whoever he was expecting, he was certainly sorely disappointed. 

It buzzed again in his hand, twice more in quick succession. Svetlana looked over with interest at the series of sounds. 

Ilya shook his head, exhaling as he tilted the phone screen at her so that she could see. 

«Ugh, that vinegar-soaked pig,» she said in disgust, draping her long arms over the railing. 

«…what?» He smirked at her, glancing briefly at the loose way she held her shoulders. 

«I don’t know, it sounded like a good curse.» She waved her hand vaguely, stopping in front of his face. She made a small pinching motion, also letting out the noise she had before. He handed her the cigarette. 

He took the opportunity of two free hands to open his phone and look at Alexei’s texts. He didn’t bother responding yet—he didn’t want to let Alexei know that he was paying attention. It would only make him send more messages. 

«How are you doing about money?» Svetlana asked. 

He blinked, quickly looking over at her. «I’m fine.»

«Because if you—»

«I’m fine.» He shook his head, cutting in over her. «I’m telling you. Things are fine. I have money saved. And things are good, everything is steady again.»

And this was true. There had been a moment when he’d been worried. But things had evened out again, as Vika had assured him they would. His bank account was more fine, and he would be fine, too, especially if the year kept trending upward. 

His phone buzzed again in his hand, because Alexei didn’t care whether or not he was there to pay attention—he’d keep messaging him until he did. He took in a deep, slow breath, about to open the phone to answer, when Svetlana yanked it out of his hand. 

She made a motion like she was going to throw it over the railing. A joke, probably, but the champagne had made her movements slippery, and all of a sudden the phone was actually slipping out of her hand. 

«Svetlana!» He squawked. It was an unseemly noise, but he’d had enough to drink tonight, too, and in any case, every single thing he needed to run his entire life was in his phone—much more than just his terrible brother. 

Somehow she bobbled the phone in midair and still managed to grab it. She quickly pulled her arms back over the railing, shoving the phone back at his chest. He took it from her, stowing it safely in his pocket. 

She leaned over towards him, touching his shoulder with light fingers, dropping her voice like she was telling him a secret. 

«I believe I may be drunk, Ilya,» she said somberly. 

He was laughing quietly, and reached around to hold her solidly at the waist. «Yes, I think so, you crazy person.»

Ilya felt fine when they woke up, but Svetlana appeared to be in hell. Her voice was scratchy and her eyes were heavy, and she was still groggy even more than an hour after awakening. She was grumpy, too. He tried to make it all a little better by ordering room service for breakfast: coffee, pancakes, and bacon enough for both of them. 

Through the salt, caffeine, and carbohydrates, he watched her slowly become a human woman again. 

«Overindulgence is catching up with you,» he teased, hoping she would take it as a reference to the many veiled comments she’d made about his own indulgences last year. 

Judging from the nasty look she gave him while sipping from her cup of black coffee, she did. 

«Don’t you dare,» she said, cranky. 

They went down to the beach at midday, when the hot sun was at its highest point in the sky and the clear teal water looked its most appealing. They walked straight into the sand, weaving through the crowds of people set up in chairs and towels, down towards the rolling waves. 

«So much better than Los Angeles beaches,» Svetlana remarked, her hair piled high on her head, tied tight with a scarf. Big sunglasses obscured most of her face, and she was wearing a thin cover up on top of her orange bikini. Ilya kept pace with her, enjoying the feeling of the water on his bare feet as they made it to the damp sand. 

«Everywhere is better than Los Angeles.»

“You are such a hater,” she said. 

The phone in her hand buzzed a few times as they walked, and Ilya noticed the small smile playing over her lips each time she looked down at it. 

«Anything you want to share?» He asked, making sure that he sounded just as mocking as she did when she asked him the same thing. 

But she looked at him, smiling shyly, and he realized that yes, there was. 

She told him about Jeremy as they walked, the water occasionally running over their feet. She’d only just started when she paused again, looking at him from behind her big sunglasses. 

«Is this strange to say to you?»

He knew she was referring to sleeping together the night before. He shook his head, because no, it wasn’t, and because he knew they understood the friendship the same way. He gestured for her to go on.

«He’s an actor,» she continued. «He likes cars, and he actually knows things about them, unlike half the people in LA who just buy the thing that is most expensive because they can. He rides a motorcycle, too.»

Ilya smiled, listening to the fervor in her voice. Those were things that he had thought he would do, too, if he’d become a professional hockey player with money to burn and more adrenaline than he knew what to do with. He still didn’t think he would be able to resist the allure of something bright and speedy, if he ever lived in a place where he might conceivably be able to drive it. Maybe one day, if he ended up wealthy with a house in the Hamptons, he’d buy himself a Porsche. 

«He knows LA very well,» Svetlana continued. «He’s a good tour guide, especially to places I would have never known to go on my own. Especially when it comes to food. He dresses really well, like, actually quite well. Such a good closet. You would love it, I think.»

«Oh!» She said, like she had thought of yet another thing that delighted her. «He reads.»

«Oh,» Ilya echoed, finally unable to resist the temptation to pull her metaphorical pigtail. «He reads. What a surprise, a man who knows how to do that.»

«I don’t know why you’re sounding sarcastic, I don’t know any men who read.» 

«I read.»

«I have never seen you read.»

«I fucking read. I’m reading—» 

And he did have an end to the sentence, but he was distracted by the phone buzzing in his pocket. He braced himself for Alexei, pulling it out and glancing at the screen, but this time he was more pleasantly surprised. He pushed his sunglasses up to his forehead, opening the phone to respond to the message that had just come in. 

«Oh. Anything you want to share?» Svetlana asked sarcastically. 

«Nope.» 

«Come on. I just told you all of my terrible, embarrassing bullshit. You have to tell me one thing.» 

Ilya grunted, focused on his response to the text, thinking about his schedule over the next week. 

«I know it’s the same girl you were texting before. Ilya. Say one thing about her.» 

He looked up, squinting under the sun, looking out across the bright water. What one thing could he possibly say? 

«That.» She pointed at his face immediately. «I want to know that. Whatever you just thought right then.»

He took a deep breath, considering this for a moment. It was impersonal enough, he supposed. Better than saying hockey. 

«Freckles.» 

Svetlana smiled, and stayed quiet, letting him finish the text. 

He felt a little strange when he hit send; from her watching him, from what he had just shared. A little exposed. 

«Come on,» he said, pocketing his phone again. «Let’s go in the fucking water, since we’re here.»

He grabbed her hand as they waded in together, both exclaiming at the feeling of the cold water on their warm skin. 

_____

APRIL 2013, NEW YORK CITY

He was actually watching the game when it happened. He’d glanced down at his phone for a second, but looked up just in time to see Hollander collide with the Washington player, sending him head-first into the boards. He bounced back from the momentum of it, straight down to the ice. There was an audible crack, loud enough to be heard—and jarring—through the speaker of the television. 

Ilya paused, letting his phone hang limply from his hand, waiting to see how Shane reacted. Thankfully, it was only a few seconds before he lifted himself up. Almost immediately, though, he dropped to one knee again, leaning on his arms, head sagging down. 

Well, there is your first concussion. He hoped the rest of the Admirals would be able to rally together for the rest of the first round, because by his guess, Hollander would be out for at least a couple of weeks. He opened the phone in his hand again to send him a note with his condolences. 

The import of it didn’t actually occur to him until a few days later, when he was flipping past Game Five of the series—the Admirals at Washington. He quickly turned the channel back, watching Carter Vaughn and some player named Martens that he’d never seen before. He waited another moment, thinking through the logistics and the timeline. 

It was worth testing, at least. 

youre not supposed to be looking at screens

His hypothesis was confirmed in under thirty seconds. 

Shane H
So why’d you text me? 

Are you at home?

Shane H
Yes.

Are you watching the game?

Shane H
Yes

So you are looking at TWO screens

Shane H
Fuck off 
What are you up to?

Ilya didn’t bother answering the last message. He simply waited downstairs in the lobby after politely giving his name at the desk—Ilya, here to see Shane Hollander in apartment 816—until the doorman gave him the okay to go up. 

It was the first time he’d been here without Shane already notifying the front desk that he’d be arriving, or without Shane himself. It was, he suddenly realized, a bit of a gamble, or maybe an overstep—but he had already done it now, so there was nothing to do except step out of the elevator. 

Shane was waiting curiously for him at the door, looking comfortable in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt. There were faded bruises around his eyes from where his visor had banged against his face during the hit.  

“Are you serious?” 

“Should you be out of bed?” Ilya said innocently. He was gratified that Hollander looked only mildly exasperated—and strongly intrigued—as he stepped back to let him inside. 

“So we’re just, like, coming over now?” 

Shane hovered over him while he took off his shoes. This was in fact a fair question, and Ilya glanced at him to see if it had actually been a misstep. 

He realized, suddenly, that this all might have gone horribly wrong. Not simply because of Hollander’s usual resistance any time Ilya pushed against the boundaries of whatever this thing was, but because, well, Ilya had been presumptuous. 

He might not have been feeling well enough for company. He might have had other company. Because, Ilya shouldn’t have needed to remind himself, Hollander was handsome, wealthy, and a professional athlete. As Ilya knew well enough, he didn’t spend all of his free time only thinking about hockey. Of course he would be sleeping with other people. 

But Shane was biting down on a smile, like he was secretly pleased that the answer to his question appeared to be, yes, we are just, like, coming over now. And while Ilya wasn’t sure this was going to happen again—at least without texting to ensure it was okay—that was good enough for the moment. 

“Had to make sure that you are properly following concussion protocol,” Ilya said, brushing past Hollander once his shoes were off. “Which you are not.” 

He gestured pointedly to the huge television screen playing the Admirals game, which was at least muted. 

“I mean, I’m allowed to watch for a little while,” Shane insisted, walking around Ilya to drop down onto the couch. The throw pillows were dented and there was a blanket pooled on the cushion next to him. Ilya settled down on the other side. 

“How are you feeling?” It was true that he’d come here with mischief on his mind. But if Hollander really did feel unwell, he would be content with just spending time with him—he’d make him turn the TV off, though. 

Shane shrugged, glancing between the Admirals power play on the screen and Ilya across the couch. “Honestly, mostly fine. They said it’s not that bad, I just can’t play for a while.”

“And what have you been doing, while you are not allowed to play? Well,” Ilya paused, inclining his head pointedly. “You can play, I suppose. But only with yourself.”  

Hollander was shaking his head, but Ilya could see him smiling as he twisted around for the can of ginger ale on the side table next to him. 

“So did you come over just to make fun of me?” Shane took a sip, then turned to put the can down again. “Because that’s kind of fucked up. I’m recovering from an injury, Rozanov.” 

Ilya lifted his hand to cover his smirk. It was fun, when they found themselves in a moment like this, and Ilya could tell that they were on the very same page. 

“No, I told you, I came over here to check on your health. Whether you were following the rules.” Ilya tilted his head, squinting his eyes slightly as he shrugged one shoulder up. “And also… well.” 

He raised his eyebrows, giving Hollander a pointed look. 

This time Shane was the one who covered his mouth to hide his smile, but Ilya could see, from the way his hips were already shifting around on the sofa, that he was starting to get turned on from all of this little banter. 

“You don’t think that is enough screen time?” Ilya asked, pointedly again.

Shane glanced at the television. It was obvious that he felt the need to keep it on, to keep an eye on the score for his team. But, Ilya noticed, his eyes kept darting back across the sofa. 

“Yeah, fine,” he said, with less reluctance than Ilya might have guessed there would be. “You’re probably right. At least I can turn it off for a little while.”

“I’m sure we can find something else to do,” Ilya replied innocently. 

Shane rolled his eyes, but he found the remote and turned the television off quite quickly. This left the room in mostly darkness, only the lights under the kitchen cabinets and, on the other side of the room, the hallway to illuminate them. 

“Your head is feeling okay?” His voice may have still had a teasing lilt to it, but it was a serious question. 

And since Hollander was a serious person—at least about his own head injury, which was a good thing—Ilya knew he would receive a medically accurate answer. 

“Yeah,” Shane repeated. “Just some headaches, and a little dizziness. Maybe some brain fog. Don’t say that’s normal for me.” 

“So, you don’t need to stop any stressful activity?” Ilya shifted himself across the couch. 

The corners of Hollander’s mouth lifted as he eyed Ilya making his way towards him. “I mean, what kind of stress are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, Hollander, I’m not a doctor, but I think stress may impact the rate at which blood goes to your brain.” Ilya finally stopped, now at the middle cushion. He moved the blanket that Shane had left pooled there, tossing it to the expanse of sofa behind him so that there was nothing between them now except a few inches of cushion. 

“That sounds fake,” Shane said, shifting over to close the gap. 

Ilya leaned in to kiss him. He felt, as well as heard, Shane inhale slowly against him. His lips were soft, and dry, and parted as soon as Ilya’s tongue brushed against them. 

He kissed him slowly, lazily, and thoroughly. He could feel as Shane opened up to it, the heavy way he leaned his head against Ilya’s as they kissed more deeply. Ilya tilted his face, enjoying the quiet sigh he received. 

They settled against each other as the kissing continued; Shane leaning his weight into Ilya, Ilya lifting his leg onto the sofa to throw over Shane’s. His hand was in Ilya’s hair, fingers curling in slightly against his scalp. Ilya had slipped his hand around the back of Shane’s neck, keeping his head steady as their tongues met.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had kissed somebody like this—or for as long as this, without the pressure or purpose of moving it forward into something else. 

Of course, there was the possibility of something else: he was extremely hard right now, and he could feel that Shane was too, under the thigh Ilya had slung over his lap. He shifted the angle he was sitting at, grinding himself against Hollander’s hipbone, enjoying the vibrating moan that passed from Shane’s mouth into his own. 

At some point they had actually been kissing so long that Ilya’s jaw was starting to ache, like a teenager. He laughed to himself as he pulled away, also enjoying the dazed look on Hollander’s face, lips still slightly parted, as they separated. 

“Feeling very concussed?” 

“I mean… yeah.” Shane blinked a few times, like the answer was obvious. His eyes kept darting down towards Ilya’s mouth. 

“Too concussed for me to suck your cock?”

Shane’s mouth opened again, maybe from surprise, maybe from arousal. A soft laugh escaped, and his eyes were still on Ilya’s lips. 

“I mean, the medical staff didn’t really mention that specifically.” 

“Mmm,” Ilya hummed. “Maybe check the score of your game one more time and rest your head on a pillow so that you’re comfortable while I do it.” 

Shane laughed, but this time somewhat uncertainly, like he wasn’t sure that Ilya meant every word of what he had said. 

After a moment, he grabbed the remote. The blue-tinged light from the television filled the dark room once again. The Admirals were currently winning 1-0. 

“You can keep it on if you’d like,” Ilya offered benevolently. 

Shane still looked dubious—and Ilya was amused that he was even hesitating. Ordinarily, Ilya assumed, Shane’s full attention would have been on an Admirals hockey game that he wasn’t allowed to play in. It was something remarkable, Ilya thought, that there was anything at all that could distract him. 

And the television stayed on as Ilya gently nudged him flat on this back. Shane reached behind his head to grab a throw pillow, adjusting it underneath himself to make sure that his neck was supported and his head was propped up. Ilya used his elbows to spread Shane’s knees apart, making enough room for himself in between. 

He didn’t think that Shane looked at the screen a single time while Ilya kissed along the smooth skin on the inside of his thighs and over his balls, eventually taking his cock into his mouth. Like the makeout they had started with, Ilya made it a lazy, sloppy blowjob, keeping his hands around his legs as he took him all the way down into his mouth. 

One of Shane’s hands gripped the back of the sofa, his knee crooking up to rest against the cushion while his other leg stretched out on the floor. Halfway through, Ilya’s hand crept up, pushing Shane’s sweatshirt up towards his neck, running his fingers over his stomach and up to brush over his nipples. 

Shane was quieter than usual, his breathing ragged and his face shifting as he stared down at Ilya with wide brown eyes that squeezed shut every few seconds. He groaned quietly when Ilya took him deeper into his throat. 

He was swallowing only a few minutes later, pulling himself away slowly and pressing a series of kisses to Shane’s hip and the top of his thigh. When Ilya glanced up, Shane’s expression looked unfocused—the textbook picture of a concussion. 

But he was already reaching for Ilya, sitting up from the pillow to ostensibly return the favor. 

“Mm-mm,” Ilya shook his head. He was, frankly, too worked up to sit through any version of what he had just put Shane through, and he was wary of any activity that might actually be strenuous for his head. 

Instead, he rose to his knees over Shane, shifting himself so that he was straddling his hips instead as he pushed down his pants and pulled his cock out. 

“I guess I cannot fuck your face, would probably make it worse.” 

He was joking, but he could see the hot little look, laced with a frown, that Shane shot at him, lit by the hockey game on TV. It was 1-1 now, and Shane wasn’t watching at all. 

Ilya stayed where he was, because he was already close. He looked down at Shane as he started to stroke himself, breathing in slowly as he took in his red face and messy hair. 

Shane, a quick learner in every situation, sat up enough to push Ilya’s hand away. He wrapped his strong hand around Ilya instead, taking over, glancing up at him to see how it felt. 

He got his answer only a few moments later, as Ilya came over the exposed skin of Shane’s abdomen. They both stared down at it, catching their breath. Shane dropped his hand for a moment, settling back on both of his elbows and staring at the glistening drops on his stomach. 

“Definitely not in the concussion protocol that I received.” 

“I left your head alone entirely,” Ilya said, looking around to see if there were tissues within reaching distance. 

“Yeah, but now it feels all fuzzy again.” 

Ilya looked over at him quickly. But he found Shane smiling up at him from the sofa, looking satisfied and relaxed. Ilya shifted off the couch, pulling up his pants as he went to go find a cloth to clean up. 

When he left some time later—the Admirals won the game 2-1 in OT—the second guessing hit him from the moment the apartment door closed. 

It had been a mistake to go over unannounced. He was lucky that it had gone well, that they’d had a nice time without any hesitation or awkwardness.  It might have been very different. 

He didn’t know how he would feel, after all, if Hollander had ever shown up at his apartment without warning. The idea of him dropping by and finding someone else there, Ilya with another person—it was a cold thought. 

And even without that uncomfortable possibility, it had been a hasty, messy decision. This was a casual thing, and more manageable that way for both of them. It was not casual to come over without an invitation. 

So, he wouldn’t do it again. 

He would, however, keep going each and every time he was invited, and he hoped that the next time would be soon. Hollander would be out of the playoffs for at least another week, and Ilya had nothing but time between now and then. 

_____

JULY 2013, ST. TROPEZ

He didn’t often see the stars like this. And still, there was more light pollution than he would have expected this far away from the city, out on the water. There were clouds drifting high above; too dark to make out the shape of them, but enough to filter over the dotted pinpricks of light. 

He hadn’t meant to end up here, but the summer had taken some strange turns since he’d left New York in early June. 

Vika had been right about the stumbles in January—whatever had happened with Milan and Paris had been turned on its head this time. Maybe summer was simply his season. 

He had been busier than ever, working nearly every day for the last six weeks. If not walking in a show or at a shoot, then in meetings, networking, or at parties. It had been constant. But the opportunities had been good, the money had been better, and in the end, he even had fun. 

Technically he had met Sylvie before, but only once or twice, and had never spent any time with her one-on-one until Paris a few weeks ago. She had grown up there, the daughter of a model and a wealthy French business tycoon. Now she split her time between Los Angeles and New York, just like all the rest of them. 

She had her mother’s looks—tall, slim, with white blond hair nearly down to her ass that she coiled in a bun and stuck with a hairpin whenever she wasn’t styled for work. She rarely smiled, which Ilya thought at first was because of a language barrier, or because she was snobby. It turned out she was simply self-conscious of the gap between her front teeth. She was also a snob. 

But she was fun to be with in Paris. She knew the city, the best places to go after hours, and had brought him a croissant one morning that made him understand why people in France were such assholes about their pastries. 

They had technically both been in attendance at the afterparty a week ago, in an old cavernous Parisian house. The place was technically a gallery, but had been done up in the style of a home from the 18th century. It was too much gold for his taste. 

He had been sitting alone in a room styled as a library, studying his phone, while Sylvie was in some other room, talking to some other people. 

The presence suddenly at his shoulder was strangely familiar, and he picked his head up even before he heard the voice behind him.

«Ilya?» 

He stared ahead briefly for a moment, breathing in through his nose, before looking over his shoulder to confirm that his recognition was correct. 

«Hello, Sasha.»

«I heard that you were here, I had to come see it with my own eyes. Ilya Rozanov, finally in Paris for summer Fashion Week.» 

The bait was too meager for Ilya to rise to it. He smiled politely, craning his neck up to take in the sight of him. Sasha was tall, especially from this vantage point, looming over him from still slightly behind the chair. He was head to toe in what looked like Dior. His face was different, which might have been because of age, or from the sharp, stylish haircut that he was wearing these days. 

«How is New York?» 

«New York is good. You’re here in Paris, still?» 

«Yes.» Sasha stepped forward slightly so that Ilya didn’t have to twist around. 

Ilya nodded, the tension in the interaction already exhausting him. He wished he hadn’t finished his drink before sitting down. «And how are you liking it?»

«Oh, it’s great, thanks.» Sasha swept his eyes around like he was looking for another chair. The closest one was on the other side of the room, occupied by two women squeezed together, laughing as they passed a glass of champagne back and forth. 

«I fucking love it here,» he continued, still standing. «The clubs are insane. The girls are hot. And the boys. You’ve seen French boys, right, Ilya?»

«Though,» Sasha mused, leaning his hand onto the back of Ilya’s chair as he shifted his weight. «Maybe you don’t care so much about that yourself anymore?»

Ilya had kept his expression even so that Sasha would have no way of telling if this had phased him. It wasn’t as if anyone around them would have understood it, anyway; he’d said it in Russian. There were a couple of Russian women on the other end of the room, he thought, but what did it matter if they’d heard anything? What was he going to get in trouble for here? 

«Too busy being Sylvie Bacque’s yacht boy, I suppose?» Sasha continued.

This, though, made him pause. He hadn’t mentioned Sylvie’s invitation to St. Tropez to anyone, though there was no reason to hide it. But Sasha wielded the information like a weapon, like he always did, and as always, it came to little effect. As if Ilya was supposed to be embarrassed about spending a few days on a yacht with a beautiful woman and whatever other friends she chose to bring along with her. 

«I hear St. Tropez is nice. Have you ever been?» Ilya asked politely. 

«It’s played out.» Sasha spoke dismissively, and looked over his shoulder. «How long will you be in Paris?»

Ilya shrugged. «A few more days.»

«And will you be trailing around Sylvie Bacque that whole time?»

Ilya looked at the phone in his hand for a long moment before considering Sasha again. He wasn’t looking back—he was studying the wall.

Things with Sasha had ended strangely, he knew. It had always been simple enough at the beginning, when he was playing hockey, and they were sneaking around—after practice, on off days, whenever they could escape Sasha’s father’s notice and Ilya’s father’s aggression. 

But it had gotten complicated after Ilya had stopped playing, and when he and Svetlana had started modeling. Sasha had wanted to, too—and he had, a bit. But not as much as Svetlana and Ilya, not the same opportunities, not with the same frequency. Svetlana had been blessed with a supportive family and Ilya with an absent one; Sasha’s father had paid enough attention to keep him grounded, to hold him back. There was enough resentment from that alone to have blown everything between him and Sasha apart, given that it had never been anything more than youthful experimentation with someone likeminded. 

At least, that was what it had been for Ilya. He only understood later that it had been more for Sasha, and that Ilya had hurt him with how quickly and easily he’d moved past it. It hadn’t helped, he thought, coming back to Moscow from his first trip abroad and telling Sasha about a guy he had fucked in Berlin. 

He had more tact now, though. 

«I think I will be occupied while I am here in Paris,» he had replied. 

Sasha looked at him again. Ilya could see the tension in his jaw. A moment passed, and Ilya wished he would just let it go, that he wouldn’t continue pushing. «Do you want to go to the bathroom?» 

Ilya hadn’t known what he was offering—coke, or something else. Regardless of the options before him, he was going to make the same choice. 

«No, thank you.» He looked back at his phone, opening the screen and pulling up the text messages he had been reading. 

«You must be the only person who goes to New York and becomes more boring,» Sasha said, his voice clipped. 

«It’s more common than you think.» 

Sasha sniffed. «I will see you another time, then. Enjoy your yachting.»

«Nice to see you,» Ilya said. 

He already knew he would hear about this from Svetlana later—chided, perhaps, for being rude. He would deal with that when it came, he thought, still examining the last set of messages on the phone in his hand. 

He didn’t have anything new to say, though, and it was late in Canada. So he had put the phone back in his pocket, and stood to find Sylvie. 

There was no service out on the water in St. Tropez. There were ways to get into contact if they needed it, but the Wifi was poor, too. 

It had given the days a strange flavor in time. Ilya had taken to filing thoughts away, saving them to say later, when his phone was back, when he was finally back on land. 

He hadn’t spent much time on yachts like this before, but in his mind, he’d thought it would be relaxing. It hadn’t been, not really. The days had been busy with parties, activities in the water, everybody drinking and carrying on. The nights had been the same thing, but louder, with darker liquor and different kinds of outfits. It was a fun group of people—Sylvie had good taste—but the days were starting to fold in on themselves. 

Ilya had stepped outside to enjoy a bit of peace for a moment, to enjoy the gentle sound of the water lapping against the side of the vessel, to see what the stars were like through the film of the clouds above. From inside, he could hear the steady thrum of voices speaking, punctuated occasionally by loud laughter. 

He supposed he had been a yacht boy of a kind—he’d helped entertain, both the guests and Sylvie herself, though not in the same way. And it had been fun. But there were things to look forward to, once he broke himself out of the strange loop of time here in St. Tropez, found cell service once again. 

He tilted his head up from the cushion he was stretched out on when he heard the door behind him open. 

“Ilya?” Sylvie’s voice called out. When she saw him move, she nodded her head in the direction she had come from. “Allez.” 

“Okay,” he said, nodding. He waited until she had stepped inside before standing up slowly, slipping his phone into his pocket. He looked up at the stars one more time, and went back in. 

_____

SEPTEMBER 2013, NEW YORK CITY

He didn’t look like a hockey player anymore, not really. 

When he looked at his body now, he simply looked fit. Like a man who went to the gym, who might have played a sport at one time in his life. He couldn’t mourn the difference, when the performance it had been tied to felt so far away from him now. 

So he leaned into it. He focused on bulking up his arms and chest, and let his waist get leaner. He did more squats than he used to need to, and worked with heavier weights on his legs than when he’d relied on ice time for his quads and glutes. 

The more difficult part was his diet. 

He still ate whatever the fuck he wanted, but with more time and attention focused on his body he couldn’t deny that he could tell the difference—in both how he looked and how he felt—when he ate all of those things that they said were good for a person: protein, whole grains, vegetables. He would never admit it, but sometimes he found himself looking in Hollander’s fridge to get ideas, because all of the options seemed so fucking boring. Nothing he ever found in that fridge ever felt inspiring, though. 

One day in September, he was curious about something he had never tried before, at least not in the form it was currently in on Hollander’s plate. 

They were eating side-by-side in Shane’s new apartment, four floors higher and in a corner unit with a second bedroom and a bigger kitchen. It was comical that, with all of New York City available to him with his new multi-million dollar contract with the Admirals, he’d selected a place in the same fucking building. But Ilya thought that the decision was Shane Hollander all the way to its center: he needed time to understand things, and he liked them to be familiar to him. Ilya was learning this about him in many different ways. 

He reached his fork out to spear some kale out of the salad in front of Hollander, making sure that he got a good amount on the tines before he brought it to his mouth. He chewed experimentally, considering the taste of the hearty green leaf. 

Shane was staring at him, open-mouthed, letting the hand holding his fork drop to the table. 

“You couldn’t have asked?” 

“Oh, what bothers you, me using my fork?” Ilya scoffed, pausing to swallow the kale before he finished. “You just ate my cum.” 

Shane exhaled loudly, an aggravated sound. But he didn’t respond. 

Ilya sat back, resting his elbow on the dining room chair as he contemplated the taste, watching Shane take another bite from his plate. “I’ve never had kale before.” 

“Oh.” Shane covered his mouth, waiting until he’d finished chewing and swallowing. “Do you like it?” 

“Mmm.” 

Shane considered him for a moment, then pulled Ilya’s plate towards him. Ilya stared, only mildly outraged, as he shifted half the kale and grain salad with chicken onto it. Then, of all things, he helped himself to half of Ilya’s ham sandwich. 

Fucking presumptuous, Ilya thought. But fine. He picked up his fork and ate the fucking kale. 

_____

«Oh, what have they done to you, you beautiful boy?» 

Vika held her hands in front of her face and practically keened as she stared at him through the video screen. Ilya was laughing, but he couldn’t tell if she was actually serious. 

«That bad? Really?» He grinned as he rubbed his hand over his head. For now, at least, he was enjoying the feeling of the short strands underneath his palm. 

His head felt cold, naked, it was true; but there was something funny about seeing himself in the mirror like this. It was shocking, actually, how different he looked. There were so many times he had thought about being a different person—he’d had no idea that it would be as easy as shaving his head. 

«No, it looks good. You have the features for it.» She shook her head. «I’m just mourning your gorgeous curls.»

«I didn’t think it would be such a big deal,» he shrugged, dropping his hand and reaching for a pen. He flicked it between his fingers, taking the cap on and off. 

«And she just asked you to do it, right on set?»

«No, she mentioned it before.» 

Ilya wondered if it was bothering Vika that the designer wasn’t a big name, but someone up and coming. Ilya had liked her clothes, though, and had liked the vision she’d had for the shoot the day before. It didn’t bother him when she’d asked him to shave his head—he could see why she’d suggested it, with the look she was going for. And she was making him the face of her campaign. It felt like very little to do in return.  

«I fear it may have been an inspired choice,» Vika sighed. «But tell me your hair grows quickly.»

«Yes,» he shrugged. It would probably be back to normal in a matter of months, if he had to guess—he’d never actually had hair this short before, but he had a sense of how quickly it would grow from how often he usually needed haircuts. 

«I didn’t mind, anyway. It feels good to be a chameleon.»

It came out of his mouth without thinking, as he spun the pen between his fingers. Vika tilted her head at him on the other side of the Skype call, clearly considering his words. 

«Have you ever wanted to act?» She asked after a moment. 

Ilya blinked, slightly taken aback by the question. He thought about it for a long moment, then shrugged. «I’ve never done it.»

Vika snorted, already shaking her head. «No, not true. I have been where you are, you are doing it every day.»

And he had to stop and think about that, too. 

He didn’t know what part she was referring to specifically: the face he put on when he was modeling, or the one he put on when networking, or the one he put on when he was speaking English around strangers all day, or the one that simply seemed to cover all of the shit that he tried to keep wrapped up most of the time, in most situations. But not for the first time, Ilya found himself grateful that Vika seemed to understand more about him than he would have ever asked her to. 

«No toothpaste commercials,» he said, finally. 

«Please. A face that would be wasted on Crest,» she scoffed. «Give me some credit. I know the Ilya Rozanov brand.»

She held her hand up before he could ask her to describe what, exactly, the Ilya Rozanov brand meant to her. 

«Now no more messing around. Get a pen and paper, I have things to go over with you. And make sure they get into your calendar, Ilya.»

He held the pen up for the camera, and grabbed a piece of paper. He leaned onto his elbow, smiling as he reached his hand up to rub over his head one more time, settling in to listen. 

_____

DECEMBER 2013, NEW YORK CITY

“This is actually insane,” Shane said, halting in the doorway and looking up at the ceiling. 

This, of course, meant that his solid hockey body, even bulkier inside a big winter coat, was blocking the entrance. Ilya nudged him forward with a fist in the center of his back, and Shane slowly took a step. 

Once Ilya was actually inside the bar, he could see what he meant. 

The ceiling of the usually dark and gloomy room was covered in Christmas lights, garlands, and baubles. The entire place was lit in red, green, and warm yellow light, with multiple red-cheeked Santa Clauses leering down at them from the walls. Ilya wasn’t sure he’d ever heard music on in this bar before, but here it was today: the jingling sound of holiday pop filtering in through speakers hidden somewhere near the ceiling. 

And there, on the opposite wall, the deer’s head had been, of course, fitted with a red bulb as a glowing nose. 

Shane looked horrified. Ilya shrugged, and pushed past him towards a corner of the room where he could see an empty table. 

He pulled the hat off his head, swiping his cold hand over his short hair. Once he reached the table, he shrugged out of his coat and draped it over the back of one chair. Shane was behind him, doing all of the same things but more slowly. 

“Why do you look so confused by Christmas decor? You have lived here for years now, you know what it looks like. Is Canada so different?” 

“I’m not confused by the Christmas decor,” Shane rolled his eyes, finally pulling his gaze away from the walls to glare at Ilya like normal. “I just didn’t expect… so much of it.” 

It was true, this was a far cry from the dive bar they’d been to before. But it was December in New York, and after three years Ilya had come to expect Americans to surprise him with their fervor for a fat man in a red suit and stringing lights on shitty plastic trees.  

He pushed the sleeves of his sweater up over his forearms, turning to head to the bar. 

“The vodka here is going to be bad, you know that, right? It’s an Irish bar, Rozanov.” 

Ilya turned back again slowly to look at Shane, surprised to suddenly hear such strong opinions from a man who was only going to drink ginger ale. 

“Okay, so I will get whiskey,” he replied, frowning. 

“You can drink that?” Shane looked skeptical as he finally unzipped his coat, draping it over the back of his chair. 

“Yes, I’m not going to fucking melt.” Ilya shook his head incredulously, finally turning away. 

“Was that a Wizard of Oz reference?” 

Ilya ignored the question as he made his way through the room, leaving Hollander to settle at the small table against the wall. It wasn’t very busy—it was a Tuesday night in the middle of December—but there were a few pockets of friends and couples enjoying themselves. Busy enough not to make Hollander twitchy, but not so crowded that they would be packed into the corner. Optimal, really. 

It had become a strange new habit for them. The whole thing had started earlier in the fall because he had often wondered what it would be like to go out somewhere with Shane Hollander. 

Not go out—not in that sense. But to observe him out in the world in some kind of meaningful way. 

He’d thought of it in September, when the memory of Ilya’s summer—partying in Milan, in Paris and St. Tropez, in Miami, in LA, and here, back at home in New York—had been fresh in his mind. He’d seen Shane again a few times and had wondered what his summer had been like in Canada. He wondered what the hell he had actually done. What did a Friday night in suburban Ottawa look like? Or a Saturday? 

What Ilya had seen of Hollander’s activities in his free time seemed painfully boring. But he thought of it with fondness, mostly, not only criticism. People unwound in different ways. But he’d wondered what Shane was like when he unwound—and not only when he did it in Ilya’s bed. 

He had also wondered, often, what he was like outside. They ran outside together, yes, all the time now—but even then, the physical exertion only tightened him. Was he ever loose when he was out in the world? 

He had not actually expected Shane to say yes when he asked in September. He had mentioned it enough in the past—usually as a joke, a suggestion to go to a club. But this time, he had asked seriously. And inexplicably, Shane had agreed. 

It had been improbable enough on that warm, late summer night. It was even more improbable that had continued through the fall, and now, into the winter. 

It still didn’t happen very often, especially now that Shane was traveling for his season most weeks. But they’d arrange it occasionally, usually before or after they went to one of their apartments. On this particular night, they’d met on Third Avenue at a place they’d been to before and enjoyed. 

Ilya leaned on the bar between two couples, waiting until he had the bartender’s attention. 

“A glass of whatever you think the best whiskey is, please,” he asked politely. The request got him a small chuckle and a nod, and he nodded in response when the bartender if he wanted it neat. “And then also a ginger ale, in a glass. Thank you.” 

He turned his head as he waited for the drinks, looking at a couple giggling together at the bend of the bar. When the bartender placed the two drinks in front of him, he pointed towards them.

“Can I also have one of those, please?” 

Ilya awkwardly juggled the drinks in his hands on his way back to the table—all three glasses were different sizes. Hollander’s head immediately came up from his phone when he spotted him. 

“What is that?” 

“A hot toddy.” The words sounded terrible coming out of his mouth in his accent. It was a mystifying name. 

“A—for who?” Shane gawped as Ilya pushed the drink towards him. “Me??” 

Ilya shrugged as he took his seat at the table across from him. “You complained about how cold it was outside.”

He actually hadn’t, really, but sometimes Ilya just liked riling him up for no reason. Hollander always made it so easy to do, too—like right now, by glaring at Ilya with some sense of exasperation, like his Canadian sensibilities wouldn’t let him say no to a drink that he didn’t want and knew he probably wouldn’t like. 

When Ilya thought of it like that, perhaps it had been a stupid joke. He knew that Shane didn’t like drinking during the season, and he wasn’t in the habit of pushing alcohol onto people when they didn’t want it. 

“I’m kidding,” Ilya said. He pulled the drink back towards himself—he had always assumed he’d end up drinking them both, anyway. 

But Shane immediately slid it back. He picked up the mug, staring down at it with some trepidation, then brought it up for a sip. 

“Oh—fuck,” he coughed immediately, letting the mug drop down on the table hard, his free hand coming up to cover his mouth. “Holy shit. That’s fucking strong. Oh, gross.” 

Ilya laughed at this reaction, immediately grabbing the mug to try it for himself. He sipped the liquid—hot whiskey, lemon, something else—and could immediately see why Hollander had hated it. He let the taste settle on his tongue, trying to determine if he did, too. 

“Too much cinnamon,” he concluded, grimacing. 

“Holy shit,” Shane repeated, reaching for his ginger ale like it was an antidote. But to Ilya’s great surprise, as soon as he’d had a sip of the soda, he reached for the hot toddy again. 

“You really don’t need to have that.” 

“There is no fucking way I’m having all of this, but I will have a little more of it,” Shane replied immediately. It took him a long time to actually raise the mug to his lips for another sip, though. 

Ilya kept one eye on the drink as they settled into the evening. Now that he had gotten used to the decor and the music, it was actually lending something new to the atmosphere. It was kind of amusing, really.

Shane had also seemed to get over it to some degree, though his eyes flickered back up at the red-nosed deer on the wall every so often. He kept his big hand wrapped around the mug, using it more as a hand warmer than anything, though he did occasionally take a sip. 

The place had gotten more crowded around them, too, with a large group coming in, wearing festive sweaters and already a few drinks in, judging from their volume. It helped the two of them settle a bit; allowed them to blend as the space grew louder and more crowded. 

They weren’t talking about anything, really. Hockey. The Knicks, who they’d both idly started to follow a bit in the past month. Shane’s holiday plans, Ilya’s trip to Los Angeles. 

“What do you like to do for fun?” Ilya asked, because he’d been curious about the answer to this for a while. 

Shane quickly looked at him from across the table. Ilya could see the suspicion in his eyes, evaluating whether the question was a trick. 

“No clubs, obviously,” Ilya said, explaining the kind of answer he was seeking. “Do you read books? What do you do with your friends?” 

Shane’s brows had knit together—still wondering, perhaps, if he was being made fun of. 

“I mean,” he said cautiously. “I don’t know. Normal stuff, I guess. What do you do with your friends?” 

“Go to clubs.” 

Shane rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, no. I don’t do that.” 

He seemed to consider the question for a while, though, and Ilya took the time to study the line of his brow, his thick eyebrows, the smooth slope of his nose in the dim lighting of the multicolored fairy lights strung above his head. 

“I don’t know. We go out to bars sometimes on the road. In the city, we’ll go to dinner sometimes. Or just hang out at each other’s places and watch something, or play video games.” Shane stopped then, and shrugged. “Normal stuff, I guess.” 

Perhaps it was, Ilya thought. But maybe Svetlana had had a point all of those months ago now, when she’d accused Ilya of not having any friends. Because the only person he did most of those things with—the bars, the dinners, hanging out, watching something, playing video games—was Shane. 

“So, I am hearing,” Ilya said, because he could not resist. “That you don’t read books.” 

Shane rolled his eyes—an expression that had become one of Ilya’s favorites over the years. “I read books.” 

“Okay, Mr. New York Public Library. What book are you reading now?” Ilya couldn’t resist, just to see the eyes roll a little more. 

“Right now? The Game, by Ken Dryden.” 

Ilya stared at him, watching him lift the mug to his cheeks to hide his face, which looked flushed even in the dim lighting. “Is that about hockey?” 

“All you asked is if I read,” Shane said, defensiveness etched into every syllable as the hot toddy came back down to the table. “Do you read?” 

“Yes, I read,” Ilya sniffed, reaching across the table to take the mug from him. Shane let him, their fingers brushing slightly in the exchange.  

“What are you reading?” 

“The Idiot,” Ilya said, sipping the now lukewarm beverage, which was sweeter towards the bottom of the cup. Honey. “By Dostoysevsky.” 

“So, like…” Shane was studying him again, but Ilya could see a glint of something else in the expression this time. Like he had spotted something he wanted to prod. “The Russian writer.” 

Ilya made a face at him. “Yes, Dostoyevsky, the fucking Russian writer, Hollander.” 

“I’m just saying,” Shane said, a smirk slowly spreading over his face. “If I’m a stereotype, what the fuck are you?” 

The smirk was too smug, and he looked too soft and content in his sweater under the Christmas lights. Ilya wanted to reach across the table, over the glasses and the mug, for his face or the collar of his sweater or his short hair, sticking up on the side because of the winter hat he’d been wearing. 

He settled for sending his leg forward a few inches, kicking his foot into Shane’s. So quickly that it was nearly the same moment, Shane kicked back. 

They left twenty minutes later, leaving three empty glasses on the table. Ilya’s cheeks were warm as he tilted his face up towards the sky. Shane pushed against his back to make him move from in front of the doorway. Ilya leaned into the contact for a moment, before stepping forward. 

It was snowing, and Shane’s apartment was six blocks away. 

Chapter End Notes

This chapter had absolutely no business being nearly 16k. But after two heavy chapters, my body rebelled and produced this in nearly half the time it took me for the others. I think the universe thought it was necessary. What about you - what did you think?

And, I swear, bad things happened to Ilya in 2013. They include: his refrigerator breaking over a holiday weekend, getting caught in a torrential downpour without an umbrella, missing the train and having to wait 20 minutes for the next one, and his favorite hockey team getting knocked out of the playoffs by the Boston Bears. Bummer for Ilya – better luck in 2014, I guess.

Speaking of 2014, next time: Sochi. A real hockey fan meets a player she likes very much. Also, ten blocks.

Chapter 5: flow sweetly, hang heavy

Chapter Summary

Ilya Rozanov loses something precious.

Chapter Notes

Dialogue using « » as quotation marks indicates that the characters are speaking Russian.

This chapter covers from the middle of Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, and Chapter Eight of Into the Blue.

--

The song is Timber, with all my love to Svetlana. I remember 2014, I know what songs were ubiquitous.

…But if you were to start this chapter out by listening to My Moon My Man, well—that might be the right mindset to open with.

JANUARY 2014, NEW YORK CITY

There was no reason for him to be fumbling with the lock. No one was chasing him, he wasn’t drunk, there was no emergency on the other side of the door. There was no reason for his hand to be struggling with the key like it was the first time he had ever let himself into an apartment. 

The body behind him wasn’t even doing anything, simply standing several inches away. But Ilya could feel him even through that distance, warm and solid, coiled in tension. 

Shane Hollander, who was rarely ever still, now simmering in stillness; and who had suddenly made it impossible for him to put the key in the fucking lock. 

Ilya shouldered the door open when he felt the click under his hand, ignoring the quiet laugh from behind him. 

“Great job.” 

He heard the two words delivered with a teasing lilt at the same time he felt the hand on his back. Ilya spun around as soon as they were inside, closing the door firmly with his own palm and gripping Hollander by the front of the jacket with the other. 

He barely caught sight of the wide grin before he was pressing their lips together, flipping Shane around to shove him against the wall of the entryway. Ilya misjudged the momentum of it—or Hollander just had a lot of mass to move—and he hit the wall harder than expected. 

Shane’s head fell back against the brick of the entryway, his arms up against his sides. 

Ilya quickly drew away—he’d meant to be playful, not to actually hurt him. 

But Hollander, the fucking pervert, just groaned. When Ilya looked at his face again, he saw the dazed look in his eyes and the smile curling up around the corners of his mouth, clear signs that he had enjoyed the little check. 

A laugh lodged itself in Ilya’s throat, coming out as a stifled growl, and he pushed himself forward again. Hollander’s hands were already coming down from the air, one fisting into the wool of Ilya’s coat while the other shoved the black winter cap off his head. Ilya’s hair was still short, and he could tell that Hollander was grasping for its usual length as his hand ran over his scalp, finally settling on the back of his head as Ilya dragged his lips down his jaw and towards his neck. 

He wedged himself between Shane’s legs, intent on trapping him against the wall as they ground together. But Shane pushed back, angling his hips away from the bricks behind him, towards Ilya, his fingers digging into his arm through the thick material of his coat.

The display of enthusiasm, mirroring so closely to the feeling thrumming in Ilya’s own veins, made him feel like he was spinning out. He kissed him greedily, enjoying the feeling of his tongue, pleased at the little noises he was receiving in response.

There wasn’t even a clear explanation for all of it. Hollander hadn’t even had a drink at the bar, and one glass of vodka couldn’t make Ilya feel drunk. It hadn’t been a long time since their schedules had matched; they’d seen each other twice this week. 

Hollander tilting up towards him, pressing his dick against him even through two pairs of pants and a coat, stretching his neck out to give Ilya’s mouth more space to roam—it was just pure greed. 

“Very eager today,” Ilya mused, bringing his lips over Shane’s Adam’s apple, nipping lightly as he moved down towards the hollow of his throat. “You are always so eager, but especially today, you can’t wait for me to fuck you.” 

Pressed together so closely, he could actually feel Shane’s cock jump at the words. Ilya laughed, this time outright, his eyes darting up to meet his gaze. Hollander was glaring at him, eyebrows drawn together, lips parted, even as he shoved Ilya’s coat over his shoulders, into a puddle on the ground. 

But he didn’t argue, Ilya noticed. 

His own hands scrambled to rid Shane of his jacket, too, and then his sweatshirt for good measure. The motion of the garment going over his head knocked Shane’s hat off, leaving both articles on the floor next to his coat. Mr. Folded Clothes didn’t seem to care this time, already yanking Ilya back against him, letting his head drop back against the brick wall as their mouths met again. 

Ilya’s hand was in his pants now, past the waistband of his underwear, gripping the full length of him. He smiled when Shane groaned, taking the opportunity to tug his plush lower lip between his teeth for a moment. 

Shane was panting now, his cheeks flushed darker red. The color went down his neck, disappearing into the collar of his plain white undershirt. He gripped Ilya’s biceps, one hand roving in to squeeze his pecs, then back up to dig into his short hair, tugging it away from his scalp. 

The motions were frantic, and when Ilya looked up again, Shane’s eyes looked just as wild as he felt. The expression cut straight into his chest, and he yanked his hand out of Shane’s pants, grabbing him by the wrists instead. 

Ilya threaded their fingers together, squeezing as he brought their hands up above Shane’s head. He pressed both himself and their hands—clutched together—forward, trapping Shane between his body and the brick wall. The gesture was automatic, a pure reflex kicking out in response to the heated look flooding Shane’s face, and it took him a moment to register how strange it was. 

He dropped Hollander’s hands the instant it hit him. He was reluctant to see the expression waiting for him on Hollander’s face—but when Ilya finally looked, the big, dark eyes were half-lidded, his breaths still coming out in slow pants. Ilya decided not to take any more chances with the eyes or the hands, and moved down to grip Hollander’s hips instead. 

“Keep your hands up like that,” he instructed, quickly turning him to face the wall. 

Hollander’s hands stayed exactly where they were, only turning with the motion so that his palms were flat against the bricks, arms outstretched above his head. 

Ilya shoved Shane’s pants down to the ground, his underwear along with them. His shirt was still on—as were his shoes, preventing him from kicking his jeans off all the way. Ilya didn’t give him any room to adjust, immediately leaning in from behind to start stroking him with one hand. 

“Not even five steps into my apartment and already bending over for me,” he murmured as he tugged Shane’s hips out towards him again. 

The movement made Shane’s palms drag down a few inches, scraping against the rough texture of the brick. Ilya leaned against his back with his other arm, pressing Shane’s chest forward until his forehead was against the wall too. He watched for a moment, checking to see how Shane reacted to the position, to the feeling under his face and hands, to his words. 

They had been doing this for a long time now—they had fluency with each other’s bodies and minds, at least when it came to the moments when their mouths and tongues and skin met. They had climbed up to new places together, places that made Ilya’s blood feel hot and Shane tremble and moan, and he thought he had a good sense for when they had found another one. But he always wanted to make sure. 

“You can move your hands if you want.” Ilya offered. 

Shane kept his head against the wall as he turned it, just barely looking over his shoulder. All Ilya could see was a glimpse of one eye and a sliver of a flushed face. 

“It feels good,” he said, his voice low and shaky on the exhale. The sound of it shot through Ilya, and he had to use his free hand to palm over his own dick, still trapped inside his jeans. 

He moved in closer, bending over Shane’s back to bite down hard over his earlobe, enjoying the noise that came out when he squeezed and stroked him at the same time. But without lube, they could only get so far—and whatever was happening here, only a few feet into the entryway, Ilya needed to fuck him. 

“I’m going for one minute,” he said, moving only far enough to nip the skin behind Shane’s ear. “Don’t move from here. Okay?” 

Shane, with his head bowed, wearing only a t-shirt and his pants around his ankles, nodded. 

It took Ilya much less than a minute to get the lube and condom from his bedroom. But as he crossed the threshold back to the living room he almost wondered if he should have delayed—waited to see what Shane would do, if he would move. 

But he hadn’t, of course he hadn’t. 

“Look how good you are,” Ilya didn’t bother hiding the pleasure from his voice, pushing himself up against Shane’s back again, squeezing his ass tightly with his free hand. “Stayed exactly where you were to show me how ready you are, what a good boy.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane breathed out. But Ilya could see the shiver that rolled over his shoulders. He could feel him leaning harder against him. 

“Oh, you want me to stop?” Ilya asked even as he shifted, hard and straining under his jeans, pressing forward so that Hollander could feel it, too.

“Not even a little bit.” 

Ilya laughed against the shell of his ear, darting his tongue out to lick a bead of sweat from his neck. 

“Hold this for me,” he said, lifting the condom in his hand. 

Shane paused for a moment, then slowly brought his left hand down from the wall to take it from his fingers. Ilya watched as the hand went back to the bricks, the foil of the condom tucked under his palm as he rested against the wall again, dropping his head as he pushed his lower body back out towards him. 

Sometimes Hollander felt fucking unreal. Or maybe it was this whole thing that they had built up between them—maybe that was what felt like a fantasy. Ilya might have believed that it was just a fantasy, if he hadn’t been here building it with Shane through every fuck over the last three years. 

He put himself to work, letting the bottle drop to the floor once he had enough lube on his fingers, coming in behind Shane to open him up. Ilya tried to stay careful even while moving quickly. He kept his other hand grasped around Shane’s cock, stilling his movement whenever it seemed the combination of fingers and strokes were going to bring him over the edge too soon. 

Shane really did seem to like the feeling of the brick underneath him—Ilya’s eyes followed the motion when he scraped his palms up further, then back down again, keeping his face pressed against it. 

Ilya didn’t bother with words when he was ready. He drew both hands away, fumbling with the button of his jeans and shoving them down to the ground with his underwear. He didn’t bother stepping out of them—he was too eager to finally free himself, his cock aching from the build up. 

Shane was already turning his palm, offering the condom. Ilya grabbed it from him, ripping the foil and letting it drop to the ground as he reached down for the lube again. Rolling the condom on was the first time he’d touched himself—it was enough to have him hissing like a school boy while he slicked himself up. He gripped Shane’s hip quickly, positioning himself to steadily press inside. Once fully seated, he gave them both a few seconds to get used to the sensation before he pulled back again, thrusting deep and setting a quick pace. 

Hollander leaned his weight into his arms, head dropping between them. He was—they were both—groaning loudly, making enough noise that Ilya knew anyone in the hallway would be able to hear them. But the thought only made him want to move faster, to pull sounds of Shane in the same rhythm that Ilya slammed his hips forward. 

The thought must have occurred to Shane, too, because he clamped his lips shut over his next moan, clearly trying to stifle the sound. But Ilya only went deeper, so that the next time it wouldn’t be so easy to stay quiet. 

It had the intended effect and more, as Shane quickly moved one of his hands down from the wall to touch himself. 

“Did I say you could move?” Ilya said into his ear, biting over his own groan when the hand immediately went back up to the wall. 

He swallowed down his sudden feeling of wonder at this display of obedience, bringing his mouth up to the back of Shane’s head instead. Ilya tried to keep control over himself as he spoke, low, against him. 

“I will do that. I will decide when you get to come.” 

“Then fucking do it already,” Shane said through gritted teeth, glaring at Ilya over his shoulder. 

This had always been part of it—Shane had always liked it when he talked, Ilya had always liked to talk. But it was shifting lately, as they kept building together: he’d let himself be more forceful, telling Shane what to do—or what not to do—being a little rougher, a little more explicit. And he could tell that Shane liked it, from the whining and trembling and the soft, quiet gasps, the hot blush coming over his freckled face. 

And fuck, Ilya liked that, too. He didn’t have the ability to analyze it—certainly not right now—but knew it probably had to do with seeing someone as controlled as Hollander let himself go completely. 

But Ilya also thought that it was something more visceral than that, something that came out between them—just them. He saw it more clearly when Hollander scowled at him and snapped back even when Ilya snarled at him in challenge. 

Those were the times when Ilya knew that if Hollander were to say to him in a low voice, put your hands on the fucking wall and don’t move, he’d have brick under his palms in a fucking instant.

The words, the red face, the feeling of Shane hot and tight and clenching around him—he was barely keeping it together. Maybe they were both barely keeping it together. 

“Good?” Ilya asked, because he had to make sure. 

“Fucking yes, Jesus Christ,” Shane turned his head back to face the wall, digging his forehead against the brick as Ilya kept fucking him. 

That was enough for him. He moved his hand in from Shane’s hip, squeezing his cock firmly, and fucking gave it to him. 

Their orgasms came quickly, one after another, Shane collapsing first against the wall and Ilya holding him solidly as he pressed deep inside. 

His knees were shaking from the intensity of it. And he was going to have to figure out how to clean cum off a brick wall. 

They came back to themselves slowly, with quiet, awkward laughs as they both tried to catch their breath. Shane straightened, pushing back from the wall and bringing his hands down to inspect his palms and forearms. Ilya looked over his shoulder, too—Shane’s skin was red, but there were no visible scrapes or anything more. 

They were mostly still dressed, aside from the puddles of outerwear surrounding them. Ilya pulled away, looking around for something to clean up with. He settled for his own shirt, finally drawing it over his head. He quickly wiped his face, before swiping it down his upper body. 

Shane frowned when he handed it to him, but Ilya ignored the look—it was just a makeshift solution, anyway, until they got out of the hallway and into the bathroom for a wet towel or a shower or whatever. And he was obviously going to wash the fucking shirt. 

He kicked off his shoes and finally freed his ankles from his pants, before walking naked into the apartment to dispose of the condom and make sure there were two towels in the bathroom. 

“I am hungry,” he called over his shoulder, recalling the conversation that had made them leave the bar in the first place. He heard Hollander laugh, still breathless, from the entryway. 

“I want Chinese food,” Shane called back after a moment. “Turn on the shower while I order.” 

Ilya smiled at himself in the mirror as he pulled out two clean towels, and obeyed. 

______



Sochi sneaked up on him. 

There had been a time in his life where it would have been inconceivable to actually forget about the Olympic Games being played in Russia. 

He remembered when they had been announced: when he was sixteen years old, just after he had quit hockey but before it had actually felt real. The announcement had incensed his father and made his coaches frantic—repeated calls suddenly coming to get him back to practice, his father’s anger honing itself in more sharply, becoming more focused. All of it had pushed him further and further away from the rink, with the expectations now coming from his country on top of everyone else. 

He sometimes wondered if the Games themselves had reinforced the steel of his stubborn, reckless resolve—and if they had never been announced at all, if the Olympics had been held in Pyeongchang or Salzburg instead, if Ilya would have still been out on the ice today. 

But now, suddenly, Sochi was everywhere: in the television commercials, in the increasingly sour conversations with his family, or even in the ones with strangers when they heard he was from Russia. It was in Shane, too, who was suddenly wearing more of that fucking maple leaf than Ilya had ever seen before. 

And yet, he had never actually expected for Shane to bring it all up on the day before he boarded a plane to Russia. 

It wasn’t the kind of thing they usually talked about—aside from that day, a year ago now, when the snow and ice had created a dome around them that relaxed Shane’s shoulders and let all kinds of strange truths slip past the Ilya’s usual barriers and out of his mouth. But something had gotten into Hollander—the Russian visa in his passport, probably, or some New York Times article about life in Eastern Europe, maybe—and had set him free with more questions than usual. 

Ilya knew how he sounded, talking about both his relationship with his family and his home country: defensive, angry, dismissive. And in some ways he regretted brushing past everything so quickly—even though he thought it had been okay in the end, that Shane had understood everything a little more clearly when he told him that his father was sick, something that he hadn’t even talked about with Svetlana properly—because when he thought about it, Shane might have actually understood some of it. 

Not all of it, of course not all of it. Hollander’s own relationship with both his family and his country were too solid, too precious, too maple-flavored to understand the depth of the rot in Ilya’s background. 

But Shane hadn’t asked about Russia because of all of that. He’d asked for other reasons—reasons that underpinned the things Ilya knew Shane could understand, if Ilya had only been equipped to explain them. 

He didn’t know how to explain the ways in which he did and didn’t miss it, how it did and didn’t feel like his home. He didn’t know how to explain that in some ways, he felt like he’d been able to slip past having to contend with the laws Hollander had asked about, because he didn’t ever really have to be there aside from a week or two in the summer and winter. For those two weeks, he could put aside the parts of himself that might have been dangerous at home. At the same time, he understood how precarious it still was every single time he used his visa to come back and forth to the U.S. 

Like so many things in his life, Vika had helped him understand that. 

The conversation was years ago now, even before he met Shane. They’d had a long meeting, and he was gearing up to travel on his own, a longer trip, for one of the first times. 

Vika had regarded him as he pulled his jacket back on, one long arm folded over her midsection, the other hand tapping the ash from her cigarette into the tray on her desk as she leaned against it. 

«Ilya, are there things that you think I should know about you?» 

He hadn’t understood what she meant—how the fuck would he? He was a teenager, full of things he didn’t know or understand about himself, far away from being able to report them to others with any kind of lucidity or eloquence. 

She had inhaled a few times, waiting, before tapping the ash again. «Do you do drugs? Gamble?» 

He was still frowning, and shook his head—it was truthful, or at least mostly; he didn’t think she was asking about a little bit of weed, or experiences with cocaine that he could still count on one hand at the time. 

«Do you like men?» 

The way his hand faltered on his jacket gave him away, he knew. But he hadn’t been expecting it. And once the question was out, once he understood, all he could think about was whether he could trust her with the response. 

His silence was an answer, of course. And Vika had taken it as that, leaning over to put the cigarette out entirely. She folded both arms over her stomach, leaning back in her yellow pantsuit and regarding him seriously. 

«This is good for me to understand. This way I can help you figure out whatever options you might need, if you ever need to know them.» 

She hadn’t explained anything further—she hadn’t really needed to, even though Ilya had only a vague sense of what she might be referring to, even at that time. But he nodded after a long moment. He knew they’d both understood that the nod was more than acknowledgement of her words. It was a response. 

She nodded in return, and when she’d spoken again, it was with more warmth and affection than he’d ever remembered hearing in her voice, before or since then. 

«Thank you for telling me, Ilya.»

They had never talked about it again. But he’d always understood the need for discretion, even as he made his way into an industry where there was nothing unusual, or shameful, or discreet about any of it. He was surrounded by men who liked to fuck men, and surrounded by plenty of men who wanted to fuck him.

Still, it didn’t happen often. There had been a handful of men he’d met in clubs, and the one guy he’d hooked up with a couple of times in Milan over the years. There had been the photographer, too, that he’d met at the NYFW event. But that had been it, aside from Shane. 

And Shane was different, in just about every way. 

He took care about the men. With women, he was less concerned about whatever cameras might be around. With men, he was conscious of Vika’s voice in his head—and, truthfully, maybe also of Shane’s, not that they both needed to be so fucking paranoid of being seen in public together. But he understood that the stakes were higher, when it came to a suggestive situation with a man. 

And maybe he hadn’t been thinking clearly enough about exactly how high the stakes really were. He supposed he had Hollander to thank for it, he could admit that; though he didn’t plan on actually saying it to him any time soon. 

But he thought he would talk to Vika about it again, and see if she could help him find a lawyer who would help him get the paperwork for a green card in order. Maybe it would help make it all less precarious. 

It was strange to see Shane in Russia, even if it was only through the television screen. They interviewed him once from the Olympic Village, the clip included in the pre-game package before Team Canada demolished Austria. Ilya watched him more than listened to the words he was saying—he looked wide-eyed and nervous, the expression at odds with the soft fleece keeping him warm from the wind coming off the Black Sea.

Ilya couldn’t help it—he kept wondering what he thought about the place. Not that Sochi had any special meaning for him. But he wondered what Shane would have thought of Moscow. 

He wondered if Shane would have been surprised by the size and pace of the city; if he would have admired the contrast of old and new. He wondered if he would have liked seeing the rink where Ilya had learned to skate—it was still there, even though the building looked different now—or the path he had taken from school every day with his mother, past the park where they might see swans. 

Then he wondered why the fuck he had been thinking about any of that at all. 

Hollander had never asked him about Moscow—and he had never expected him to. He had never even considered the idea of Hollander showing him around Canada. What would he even see in Ottawa? He had looked it up once; there was apparently a giant metal spider. Fucking bizarre. 

He had been truthful when he told Hollander that he didn’t always want to go back to Russia. But he had also been truthful when he’d said it was home. 

When it all came down to it, though, Ilya was so fucking glad he was not in Sochi, and he was so fucking glad he was no longer #81. 

The Russian team was fucked from the start. He knew from Svetlana that Vadilevich, the goalie, was injured. More than that, he could see with his own eyes that the team was in dire need of good leadership, good coaching; things they were never going to get in time to make it through these games. It was a relief, he thought, watching the team go down, not to bow under the pressure of it with them. 

He tried to remind himself of this again when he woke up in the middle of the night to the phone call—his father screaming at him about Latvia from the other side. 

It wasn’t real, he reminded himself. It was just the ravings of an angry, sick, old man. He was lucky, he reminded himself, that he didn’t have to look him in the eye and face his disappointment directly. He could hang up the phone. He could wake up and get dressed to run until his lungs burned—even though it wasn’t even 5am, even though there wasn’t anyone to run with, because Shane was in fucking Russia of all fucking places. 

Nothing would have been worse than being there, he thought as he ran, his face stinging from the cold. Nothing would have been worse than being within reach of his ailing father, buckling under the pressure of the groaning mass of expectation from his country. 

Ashamed. Lazy. No discipline. Sloppy. Ashamed. Squandered his promise. Wasted potential. Ashamed.

«Are you watching this game?»

Svetochka
«Yes… are you cheering for the Americans?»

«No, I’m not cheering for anyone.» 

Svetochka
«I’m cheering for Shane Hollander. He’s been insane in these games.» 

«Best in the world, I think.»

Svetochka
«I think that is about to become fact.»

«I think so too.»

There was, it turned out, a little bit of magic in it.

Shane, wearing the red and white of his own country, winning Russian gold. 

The version of Ilya who would have been in Sochi with Hollander, who would have bent himself in half to endure the scorn of his family and an entire country—he would have hated it, of course. He would have hated anyone else on the podium above him, most especially the perfect Golden Boy who carefully took the medal out of its commemorative case today. 

But the version of Ilya who existed here, in Shane’s kitchen, who had already fractured under the weight of the pressure and broken free from it anyway—he could only think that there was nobody else in the world who should have this, nobody aside from the talented, ambitious, persistent man in front of him. Nobody else deserved it more than Shane. 

He told him so, too, without meaning to—the word came out before Ilya could help it. 

«Champion.»



_____

Other things were happening. Everything was getting bigger: the brands, the campaigns, the checks. 

«Calvin Klein,» he asked, because he still couldn’t believe it, even though it had been agreed to for some time now, even though it was there, in black and white, on his calendar. «It’s really happening?» 

«If you show up and make it happen,» Vika said, smugness in her voice. 

«I will.» 

«Didn’t I say this to you last year?» She had, but Ilya was getting tired of her reminding him every time he booked a new and better job. «There are ups and downs in everything. Last January was a down. When you work like you do, as hard as you always do, there will always be an up. You are man made for big achievements, Ilya.» 

His annoyance with her relented a bit, at that. She didn’t say things like that to him often—give him those kinds of reassurances. 

He liked it. It reminded him of the talks he used to try to give, when he was a tiny captain in a room full of boys trying to be tiny men in skates. He wondered what Hollander sounded like, when he spoke to his teams as their leader. 

It wasn’t just Calvin Klein. It was Valentino, Club Monaco, Warby Parker, being the face of a new, smaller swimwear brand. It was the certainty that there was more coming his way—more opportunities, more doors opening, more money. 

He hadn’t stopped sending money to Alexei, and he knew he probably wouldn’t ever really be able to stop. But the fact was looking him in the eye now when he saw his bank account: what he’d been working towards for several years, what had seemed so unlikely and out of reach—it may have in fact become reality. 

He didn’t want to make any strange or sudden moves yet. He wanted to speak with the financial advisor—the one who Svetlana used and trusted, who Ilya had spoken with twice before as a younger, greener, clumsier version of himself. 

A financial advisor, an immigration lawyer. Who the fuck was he becoming?

_____

APRIL 2014, NEW YORK CITY

He didn’t know that the last time he slept with Svetlana had already happened until after it already did. 

It had been months. That was largely down to Jeremy Kobayashi, who Svetlana had dated for much of the past year. 

It happened from time to time since they’d started sleeping together as teenagers—periods when they would take the sexual component out of their relationship and relax into the friendship they always had. Sometimes there wasn’t any reason for it—just preference—but sometimes it was because the shadow of another person had become too big to ignore. 

«It’s like there’s another person in the room with you,» Svetlana had explained once, while patting his shoulder in apology and turning the television on. «And you’re the only person who knows that they’re there. It just feels strange to me.» 

They had been very young then, barely 17, and Ilya had had no idea what the fuck she had been talking about. He hadn’t thought that Luc Duguay, the someone in question at the time, had deserved that kind of presence—especially over the very real, physical presence of Ilya—but he’d pretended he understood, and forced his erection down as they watched some bullshit movie about vampires. 

Jeremy Kobayashi was better than Luc Duguay, at least. Ilya had met him in Los Angeles several times, and had found him interesting, albeit a bit annoying. But Svetlana seemed to find those same irritating traits endearing, so Ilya was content to let her enjoy herself.

They had broken up at the beginning of spring, though. Svetlana hadn’t said much about it since arriving back in New York, but the story had come out over the course of the night. 

“He was honestly so pretentious,” she said to the whole group at dinner, squeezed in between Moe and Lexi and reaching forward for another piece of sashimi. “And God help me, I have a soft spot for pretentious men, but there just comes a point.” 

«He wouldn’t shut the fuck up about reading Infinite Jest, but he refused to read the footnotes,» she said later, speaking closely and passionately into Ilya’s ear at the club. «You cannot read Infinite Jest without reading the fucking footnotes. It’s like skipping every third sentence of the book!» 

«Who would even want to read that book? The only thing I know about it is that it’s too fucking long,» Ilya said dismissively. 

«Long novels are our fucking heritage, Ilya!» She put her hand up in the air, exasperated. 

«Oh, you’re telling me that Infinite Jest is on the same plane as War and Peace?» He scoffed. He had no basis of comparison—he’d actually read neither—but he liked that it gave her something to tell him about as they drank and danced their way through the night. 

They were both too drunk by the time they got home from the club, and Svetlana could not stop humming the same terrible song. 

«Sveta, stop it, that song is fucking awful.» 

«It’s not! It’s good!» 

She was swaying to the sound of the music in her head, as she took a second slice of the pizza they’d brought back with them. Ilya had already had two pieces and felt slightly queasy from the night’s combination of cheese, grease, vodka, and sushi. And 6am was fast approaching—he opened his texts to double-check the time for tomorrow, almost groaning when he confirmed it. He was way too drunk to think about going for a fucking run in only four hours. 

«I’m going to shower.» 

He thought that might at least do something for him before he passed out in bed. Svetlana made a noise of assent through a mouthful of cheese pizza, still dancing in bare feet in the kitchen. 

Thankfully, actual music was on by the time he was out of the shower, and it was a slightly better selection than what she’d been humming. He went back to the kitchen for the glass of water, pausing behind her to drop an affectionate kiss on her cheek.

He was scrolling on his phone in bed by the time she made it to the shower herself. He left the light on for her when he set the phone aside, dropping down onto his pillow and letting his eyes fall shut. His hair was long enough again to look like shit if he went to sleep with it wet—but he’d be up again soon enough anyway. He’d just wear a hat. 

Sveta was humming the same fucking song again after she was out. He tried to ignore it as she pulled on one of his shirts, jumping into bed on the other side from him with her phone in hand. 

«Another OT loss for Boston, fuck me,» she groaned, dropping her head—dry, because she was smart enough to keep her hair tied back when showering this late at night—down onto the pillow next to him. 

«Did the Admirals win?» he mumbled, reaching out to blindly turn off the lamp. 

«Yes. Ugh, they are so good this year. They are,» she paused to yawn, the sound of it making Ilya smile softly with his eyes still shut. «Totally going to win the Cup.»

«Shane Hollander is very good,» he agreed, his voice a quiet mumble. 

She made a noise of agreement, and he heard her phone clattering down to the bedside table on the other side. After a moment she rolled over, wrapping her arm around his torso and pressing against him, naked underneath the oversized t-shirt. 

He shifted his hips away slightly, though he stayed under her arm. He was just tired. 

Svetlana was always a heavy sleeper, and so didn’t even notice when his alarm went off only hours later. Ilya sat up miserably, taking five extra minutes just to stare at the foot of the bed and let his head spin, wondering if this qualified as a form of self-harm. 

Hollander actually laughed when he saw him waiting at one of their usual meeting spots near the cube at Astor Place. 

“Whoa. You look like shit.” 

Ilya rolled his eyes. Hollander looked fresh-faced and bright—disturbing for just after six in the morning. He was sure that he’d had as close to a full night of sleep as possible, even though he had literally played a hockey game the night before. Hollander’s body ran itself like a fucking machine. 

“Will still kick your ass,” Ilya insisted. But the croaking rasp of his voice didn’t earn him much confidence, and only made Hollander laugh again as he started running west. 

It was not the first time Ilya had stumbled out for a run only hours after coming back from a club, and he had to admit, as they neared Washington Square Park, that there was a possibility he was still drunk. But the physical activity did, in fact, wake him up, and by the time they made it to the river he even felt something close to good. 

He was slower than usual, though, and let Hollander go faster than him for the distance target that he needed to meet. Shane had apparently opted to go there-and-back today, instead of his usual loop, so Ilya turned around when he saw him running back in his direction. 

Hollander slowed his pace down on the way back, staying level with Ilya as they headed east again. Their usual silent question came up at Astor Place, and Ilya answered by turning left to follow Shane when he started heading north. 

“You’re coming up?” Shane asked, glancing over his shoulder as they jogged past the KMart and towards the church across the street. 

“For a little bit,” Ilya said. His voice sounded less terrible than it had at the start of the run. “I need more than your smoothie to eat, though.” 

By the time he made it back to his own apartment, Svetlana was awake on the sofa. The television was on in the background and she was scrolling her phone as she cradled a mug in her other hand. 

«I just made tea,» she said as he stopped in the entryway, kicking off his shoes. «Do you want some? The water will still be hot.» 

«I’m okay,» he said, hanging his coat. «I just had coffee.»

She looked up as he entered the living room, and he noticed her eyes jump from his running clothes to his wet hair, obviously fresh from the shower. 

He let it go unacknowledged. Her eyes stayed on him as he passed through, heading to the bedroom to change. 

But it was Svetlana, so he knew the unspoken would eventually be spoken. 

It happened a few days later, when they were on the sofa relaxing together, The Real Housewives of New York City on in the background. He wasn’t really watching—scrolling on his phone, mostly, and glancing up when the conversations got especially fervent or when good real estate was being shown. 

One of the downtown apartments particularly piqued his interest. He watched the women tour the space, speaking only when the show cut to commercial again. 

«I’ve been thinking that I should get a place.» 

«Get a place?» Svetlana looked at him quickly, her voice curious. 

«Buy a place,» he clarified. 

She looked at him questioningly, and he knew that she was asking if it was something that he could afford. He’d been wondering the same thing, so he told her how much he had saved, and waited to see her reaction. 

«Yes, Ilya, holy shit,» she said, her eyes suddenly brighter as she sat up on the sofa next to him. She shifted over, so that she was leaning against him and could squeeze him around the shoulders. «That is so much fucking money! I am so proud of you! Yes, you should get a place. It would be such a good investment for you, too.» 

He let himself smile, taking in the compliment, because for once he felt the same rush of pride for the hard work he had done. «Is there someone who you think would be good to help with finding something?» 

«Of course—I’ll ask Papa, but Lexi, too, she’ll want to help. Priya’s girlfriend also just bought a place, she might have good ideas. Fuck, Ilya, this is so exciting!» 

She shook him again, and he slipped his arm around her waist, squeezing her playfully and holding her close against him. The show came back from commercial, but he sensed that she was still preoccupied. 

«This is good timing,» she said eventually. «I was thinking about making New York home base for a while, actually.» 

He quickly looked at her. «Why didn’t you say so? You could have.» 

She was already shaking her head. «You’ve lived here much longer than I ever did, Ilya. I wasn’t going to make it complicated. And in any case, I don’t mean leaving LA entirely. I’m just thinking about coming here more frequently, maybe.» 

«Well, that sounds like a good thing to me,» he said fondly. 

She kissed him then, with affection—but slowly, her long arms slipping up from his shoulders and around his neck. He enjoyed it for a few moments, but at the point that it would usually turn, he found himself pulling away. 

He wasn’t surprised to open his eyes and find her studying him. She pulled away, too, moving back so that there was a foot of space between them and more room for her to regard him. 

There was a question on her face, but there was also understanding. That made him feel more exposed and uncomfortable than if she’d just outright asked him what it was about. 

Not that he would have known how to respond—he wasn’t sure what he would even be able to articulate. He didn’t know what he was ready to admit out loud and into the room, against the backdrop of the shrill arguments of the New York housewives. But he thought he’d better figure it out quickly—it was only a matter of time before she asked him the question. 

The only thing he knew, really, was that he had never slept with Svetlana with his mind preoccupied by someone else, and it didn’t feel right to start now. 

«Is there another person in the room?» Svetlana asked, as perfectly timed as she always was. 

It took him a long time to answer. 

«I think, maybe. For now. I don’t know.» 

He was suddenly self-conscious—embarrassed even, and suddenly seized with the urge to pull her back onto his lap, to help her shimmy out of her shirt, to fuck just to make himself forget he had even had the urge to say the words in the first place.  

But she only nodded, satisfied, and stayed on her side of the sofa. At the next commercial break, she wiggled her feet under his leg, and started talking about apartments again. He rested his hand on her ankle as he listened, and tried not to think about the man in the room with them. 

_____

He met Sola Brown at a photoshoot in the city, as the two of them spent a few hours clad in a collection of bright and eclectic clothing, getting photographed against the skyline. 

It was the first time they’d ever spoken, though he knew who she was through Svetlana and other friends in the industry. He thought of her as an actress who also modeled, but as she talked to him between shots, he learned that she had actually started modeling first. 

He could believe it—she was very beautiful. Tall, with dark skin and deep brown eyes, an easy smile and a pleasingly round face. A transition to acting was inevitable, probably, as the daughter of a soap opera actress and a sitcom star, but her looks would probably always bring her back to campaigns like these. 

She danced on set, which wasn’t unusual; but she was better at it than most. She cajoled him into joining, which he did without hesitation. He could tell the photographer was pleased by it, the easy way they interacted with each other and the looseness in their body language as a result. 

It was a fun shoot, most of it outside in the sunshine of the early summer in New York. He left in a good mood, hoping to run into Sola again some time in the future. He was already thinking about the game, though, by the time he stopped at the Mexican place to pick up food for dinner. 

Puck drop was late—the game was in LA—and he had already eaten by the time it was finally on. 

Truthfully, the writing had been on the wall before it started. It was Game 5, the Admirals were down 3-1 in the series, and LA was at home. But still, Hollander led his team as far as they could possibly take it. 

Ilya stayed up for the whole thing, watching as they came back to tie the game not once, but twice, taking the game into 2OT. When LA scored the last time, Ilya tilted his head back to the ceiling. 

«Fuck,» he said out loud into the dark room. 

He learned, then, what Shane looked like in defeat. It could not have been more different from the gold medal game with Canada, when he had ripped the helmet off his head—not grinning and beaming like his teammates, but with his jaw set like he had willed their win into existence through sheer determination. 

His helmet stayed on tonight. As the Los Angeles players swarmed the ice and their fans screamed around them, Ilya could see the single moment Shane allowed himself to process that it was all over—the four seconds, maximum, in which he slumped his head down towards the ground, shoulders rounded, body bent under the pressure, seeming every inch the 23-year-old boy he was. 

But he didn’t let it settle. Ilya watched as he straightened after mere seconds, rolling his shoulders back and keeping his head up. He collected Bennett—shell-shocked—first, and then a crestfallen Vaughn, before leading them off the ice.  

Ilya turned off the post-game coverage, but he didn’t stop thinking about it. 

He was thinking about what loss would have looked like for Shane—how he would be handling it. It wasn’t his first loss in the playoffs (he’d had four before now to get used to the feeling), but it was by far the closest he had ever come to the Stanley Cup—and it was in the same year that he’d reached another monumental accomplishment. It was also the best season Hollander had ever had. 

Ilya thought he knew him well enough by now to know that this kind of pressure—this kind of crash after this kind of pressure—was probably eating him from the inside.  

The phone call Ilya had received from Moscow in the middle of the night after Russia’s loss in Sochi—that wasn’t Shane’s life. Ilya knew what kind of parents Hollander had. They had probably been in the crowd tonight, even though the Admirals had entered with the numbers against them. They’d be ready to greet him with love and sympathy, filled with nothing but praise for the performance he had put on through the season. And they would have been right. Ilya had seen it—he knew how good Hollander had been. 

The thought didn’t keep him awake, nor did it wake him up. Ilya was awake anyway, watching TV, scrolling on his phone, texting with Sveta and doing other things. 

But the idea came to him gradually, lodging in his mind and slowly taking root: the image of Shane, depleted, pouring himself into this fucking sport, his fucking team, which took everything from him every single year. 

It was projection, perhaps, of the way that Ilya had felt about it—the resentment and anger that had characterized so much of the end of his time playing hockey, and had crested into sharp, heated anger after every loss during that time. 

He had no way of knowing if that was how Shane felt about it. Ilya actually had no idea what Shane was like after a loss, especially after one in the playoffs. He had never seen Shane at the end of a season—they parted in April, before the playoffs, Shane went to Canada after he was finished, and they reunited in August. 

But perhaps that was why the image stayed with him: Shane, alone, his mind crowded with thoughts. Shane, full of self-doubt and castigation where there shouldn’t have been a fucking drop of it. 

Ilya was certain that whatever platitudes his alternates, his coaches, or his parents had given him would simply not be enough to get through Shane Hollander’s thick fucking skull to tell him that he was enough. 

So he picked up the phone to do it himself. 

_____

Summer was a haze. He’d never had one like it before. 

For once, there simply wasn’t time for melancholy. He was too busy finding and finalizing the purchase of the new apartment, before speeding himself off to Europe. There was so much fucking work to do, but it felt good—it was the kind of busy that felt like an up, which he could use to help carry him through the next down. 

Calvin Klein was undeniably an up—especially once it was literally up. The ad hung high above the street, too far from the sidewalk for anyone to walk past, his mostly-naked body suspended in the air in massive proportions. He still felt strange when he saw himself like this, out in the world, outside of himself. But even he had to admit that Calvin Klein was a tangible marker of success, and he accepted that for the accomplishment that it was. 

He ran into Sola again at an after party during NYFW. She saw him first, calling his name across the crowded expanse of rooftop. When he’d turned at the sound, she’d laughed and started dancing, the same way she had at the shoot the month before. He laughed with her, making his way through the people between them so that he could dance, too. 

Moving into the apartment was more difficult—and more expensive—than he’d realized it would be. He’d never bought furniture before, and was staggered by the cost of a couch and a bedframe, not to mention everything else he needed to turn the empty space into the place he wanted to live. 

But he put up the cost anyway. He’d gotten used to a comfortable space in his old apartment all of these years, and more than that, he took to heart the encouragement Svetlana kept giving him: it was an investment. 

More than that, it was the first time he’d been able to do anything like this. 

No matter how much she insisted that he had lived there for longer than she ever had, Svetlana’s place had been Svetlana’s. It had been borrowed—not charity, because he had spent nearly four years keeping it up, paying for utilities and improvements. But he’d kept it impersonal, never seeing much point in spending the effort or money on what was always intended to be a temporary space. 

So he didn’t let it feel temporary this time. He got exactly the sofa he wanted. He bought the king-sized bed with the sturdy bedframe. He chose rugs, and paintings, and patio furniture, and purchased custom-made pillows for the deep-set windowsills that were one of the things that had appealed to him most about the unit. 

He spent much more money than he had intended to, but Svetlana shook her head every time he hesitated. 

“Thank Calvin,” she said, nudging him until he put the credit card down. 

And she had been right, of course. The result was more than he could have hoped for, and it meant that he was comfortable in his new home within the first week of being there. The brown leather sofa, the new television set mounted on the wall, the shady space outside where he could smoke a cigarette and enjoy a slice of the night sky for a few minutes—Svetlana’s apartment had been his first place in New York City, but he was certain that this was his first real home. 

He was surprisingly nervous for Shane to see it. He wasn’t sure why—Shane had never said anything one way or another about his old place. Perhaps it was just because of the whole ordeal with Shane’s apartment; how evident it was that Hollander cared about his space and his own home. Perhaps Ilya was just curious to see what he would think about the one he had made. 

The reaction was anything but disappointing. It turned out that Shane was a fucking real estate nerd, which Ilya discovered immediately upon his first entrance into the apartment. He had gone on and on about the building amenities and market value and the kitchen finishings, which Ilya might have made fun of him for if Shane’s expression had been even slightly less excited as he looked around. 

It was gratifying, he could admit it. He liked Hollander asking him about his appliances, on which Ilya had no opinions. He liked Hollander frowning at the artwork on the wall, because he seemed so confused by it. He liked fucking Hollander on the custom-made pillow in the big windowsill, exactly where he had told him he was going to. 

He liked his home, and he liked having Shane in it. 

_____

But he knew his feelings for Shane were getting too deep. 

He’d known it for longer than he liked to think about, but the reality of it had solidified in the five months since Svetlana had asked him about another person in the room. 

Still, it wasn’t as if he had been celibate in that time—just because it was strange with Svetlana didn’t mean that he was blind to good looking people, or stupid enough to save himself for something that didn’t really exist. He wasn’t in that deep about Hollander. 

And it was a useless exercise to think about, anyway. The thing between them was casual. Ilya wasn’t trying to change that, even if he’d had any idea what the other options could be. He’d never dated anyone, really—he’d never had the urge to—and had no idea what that would look like in this case, if it had even been in question. 

Which it wasn’t. Most of the time Hollander was so stiff and awkward with him in public that Ilya sometimes wondered if he forgot that men could be friends. He’d turn so red from just being within three feet of each other, Ilya would be tempted to point out that this very awkwardness was more likely to make people suspicious that they were fucking than simply being in a room together. 

But he didn’t point it out, because he didn’t want to give Shane an excuse to stop going out for runs or for drinks or for food, to shut themselves away in the apartment again like they had in the first years that this had all started. 

Ilya thought that he was better off not examining it too closely. Because if he did, he would need to contend with the question of what Hollander was really doing—and what he did in the time that they weren’t together. 

He had never heard about him with girls. He assumed that they were there, though; Hollander was too good-looking, and too dutifully played by the rules. And for a professional athlete, Ilya knew, women were part of the rules. Whether he actually liked them was an open question, one which Ilya had his own thoughts on, but little actual evidence to go by. 

Regardless of whether or not Hollander liked girls, though, Ilya had the sense that one day he would probably get married to one. 

That was the thought that came to him each time Hollander’s shoulders went up to his ears when someone happened to look in their direction when they were out in the world together. Maybe that was the wrong explanation for why Hollander could never be comfortable with Ilya, but it seemed at least part of the natural reasoning for his strict secrecy over everything—it was done out of protectiveness for the future that he wanted. 

Ilya didn’t know how he felt about this. One part of him understood: he had always thought he would get married one day, too; he had always wanted children and assumed they would come to him by way of the most beautiful woman he had ever met. 

But the other part of him butted up against the expectation, the same way he had knocked against so many expectations through the last decade of his life. Why did it have to look like that? Why did that path need to be prescribed? 

Hollander was surrounded by a team of veterans, most of them married or already through a first or second divorce. And the others—the young ones—would inevitably follow, quickly; Hollander had already been to two weddings during this off season, Ilya knew, for teammates in their early twenties. 

But Ilya met people every single day who lived their lives in ways that looked nothing like that, who did what they wanted and who they wanted without blinking twice at the expectations of a judgmental and homogeneous society.

Hollander would meet those people, too, if he ever looked outside of his insulated little hockey world. 

That was the part of Ilya who refused to examine the feelings, but who also refused to do anything that would knock any of this askew. That was the part of him who enjoyed sitting on the same side of a table as Hollander too much to lose the chance to keep doing it, and who let his eyes rove over Shane’s face openly, every time he looked in the other direction. 

Perhaps that part of him was also biding its time, a little bit—until he figured out what else they could be, besides this; or until Shane opened his eyes and looked back. Whichever came first. 

_____



SEPTEMBER 2014, NEW YORK CITY

The very last thing he had expected was for Shane to suggest that Svetlana come to the bar. But when the opening was given, Ilya didn’t jump on it so much as scramble to tear the wall down. 

Immediately, he regretted it. Shane had clearly meant it as a joke, a fact that was reinforced by the pale, tense expression on his face as soon as Ilya had sent the text to make it happen. 

For all that Ilya pushed back on Shane’s paranoia about people seeing them in public and jumping to the conclusion that they were sleeping together, this was different. Svetlana knew him too well, and she had eyes that could see too clearly. Ilya had no doubt that she would be able to discern the truth as soon as she saw them. 

He had promised Shane three and a half years ago that he wouldn’t tell anyone about this, or about him. He had never intended on breaking that promise. And now, he worried, he might have done exactly that. 

He had just wanted to have his two closest friends together—an idea so dear that he had never even dared to imagine that it might occur. But he hadn’t meant for it to cause any trouble, or any heartache, for Shane. 

It was tense between them the whole time they were waiting for her to arrive. At least a dozen times, Ilya considered picking up the phone again—telling her, forget it, never mind, don’t come. He’d have to answer her questions later, but that would be fine. He could figure it out. 

But Ilya was weak about this, maybe—like he was always so weak about so many different things—and Shane didn’t ask him to take it back. 

And then, of course, she was there. 

The bar was dark, and she was still halfway across the room, but he thought he saw the instant that she figured it all out. 

If only, he thought as Svetlana set her shoulders and walked towards them, there was a way to explain to Shane that it wasn’t anything he had done at all—it was Ilya, only Ilya, who was so obvious, whose feelings were so close to the surface that his friend had seen them in one look from twenty feet away. 

«Ilya,» she burst out as soon as she reached the table. «I thought that you were spending too much time in sports bars. I didn’t know you were watching so much hockey because you know Shane Hollander.» 

«Are you fucking kidding me??» She continued, gesturing broadly. «I came here expecting some fucking Eurotrash idiot you met in Berlin. You couldn’t have prepared me better for this?!» 

«I told you I wanted you to meet my friend,» he answered, gruffly. She looked like she wanted to kill him, but that she would prefer not to do it in front of the reigning NHL MVP. 

It turned out that he didn’t have the fortitude to stay and watch them get to know each other. Cowardly, yes—but he also hoped it would help Shane relax, if Svetlana wasn’t watching Ilya like a hawk, making him conscious of every time his hand or elbow drifted too close to Hollander’s warm, solid body. 

So he took himself out to smoke a cigarette first, and then to the bar. By the time he returned, Shane’s body language had come back to normal, his eyes bright and interested, while Svetlana leaned over the table, talking intently. He’d had to take a moment a few feet away from the table, balancing the three glasses between his hands, as he took in the sight. 

He didn’t care that the whole night’s conversation was about hockey. They both enjoyed it, it made Shane comfortable, and Svetlana never got to talk about the NHL like this with anyone. He knew as soon as she left—ostensibly to meet other friends, though he wasn’t sure if she was just using that as an excuse—that he would be hearing from her again soon, but he let himself put off thinking about that conversation until it actually arrived. 

And he was glad for the time with Shane—to finish their drinks together, and to normalize from the sudden schism in the evening, in everything. 

When they left the bar, he thought that Shane would be preoccupied by the idea of someone suddenly knowing about them—the conclusions that she might draw (and in this case, undoubtedly had drawn) from the fact of their friendship. It was what he had always seemed so worried about, after all. 

But when the garbled question rushed out of his mouth, on a quiet street in the East Village still several blocks away from home, it was the last thing Ilya expected him to say. 

“Is she your girlfriend?”

Is that what we’re doing? Ilya almost wanted to ask. You think that I would have a girlfriend, and do all of this with you, and you would have never known before now?

Could you have a girlfriend, and do all of this with me, take my cock down your throat or up your ass as often as we can meet?

He didn’t ask. Of course he didn’t, because he didn’t want to know the answer, or speak the possibility into existence. 

Instead, he said the truth: that he had liked having them together in the same room. He was truthful about it because he thought that they had liked being around each other, too, and he wanted it to happen again, if it could. 

And then he had taken Shane home, to bed, and kept him pinned down under the sheets for as long as he could. 

Svetochka
«Coffee?»

«Sure»

She buzzed from downstairs no less than five seconds after he sent the text. He groaned. 

But he let her up, because this had been inevitable, and she had at least waited until 10am the next morning to start seeking answers. 

She was holding two cups when he let her in, both bearing the logo of the too-fancy coffee shop around the corner from his apartment. 

«I hate the coffee from this place,» he told her, because he was always committed to starting difficult conversations as badly as possible. 

«And I remember a time when you didn’t drink coffee at all, only tea,» she mused, handing him the cup and leading him into the living room. «And now you’re like every model, black coffee, three Splendas, no calories.» 

He rolled his eyes, but he sipped from the cup. It was as described. 

«That was a lot of information yesterday,» Svetlana said, dropping herself onto the couch. She put her coffee cup down long enough to shrug out of her coat, resting it on the cushion next to her, and crossing her long legs as she reached for the drink again. 

«I’d been so curious when you kept asking me about scores or for opinions on the NHL for so many years. Here I was, thinking you were trying to find a hobby, but now I find out that you weren’t just watching hockey to relive the days of your youth. It turns out, actually, you’re in love with Shane Hollander.»

He choked. 

The hot coffee was as terrible spilled on his chest, but at least it meant he didn’t have to drink it. He stared down at the brown stain spreading over his white t-shirt, refusing to meet Svetlana’s eyes to see whatever expression she was fixing on him as she spewed this bullshit. 

«What the fuck are you talking about?» 

«You invite me to meet him, you don’t expect me to experience reality?» She sipped from her cup with maddening care, and he went to the kitchen to clean himself up. 

«I didn’t invite you, he wanted you to come,» Ilya said as he grabbed a towel and lightly patted his chest with it. 

«Oh, I’m sure that was why it happened.» 

Ilya glared over his shoulder at the back of Svetlana’s head. He took his time going back into the living room, finally dropping into the chair perpendicular to the sofa. 

«Yes,» he said after another sip of coffee. «He kept saying he wants to talk to you about hockey. And that’s what you did all fucking night long, no?» 

«He looked like he wanted to unzip his skin and run away from me as fast as he could.» 

«He always looks like that.» 

«I’m sure you’d know.» 

Ilya just made a sound—the kind of annoyed grunt that no one ever believed. But he pretended to be irritated anyway, and pretended that the sheets in his bedroom didn’t have Shane all over them, that Shane’s water glass wasn’t resting in the kitchen sink. 

«He’s nice,» Svetlana said after a long moment just spent watching him. 

«I know, it’s boring.» 

«He’s hot,» she added, shrugging one shoulder up and tilting her head in consideration of the idea, of the memory of his face. «Such distinctive freckles.»

Ilya drank his coffee. 

«I like him,» Svetlana declared, peeling the top off her cup of coffee and leaning forward to rest it on the table. She sipped from the cup, now unobstructed. «I want to see him again.» 

«Thank God, you can talk about hockey with each other and I can finally smoke and drink in peace.» 

Ilya didn’t let it show, though—how relieved and pleased he was by that. 

They drank in silence. Svetlana had clearly said what she wanted to upon immediately entering—dropping in her little joke for shock value. But he was under no illusions that the conversation was actually over. 

And as it turned out, he had something he wanted to say about it, too. 

He fidgeted with the sleeve around his cup, staring down at the red logo as he fought to find the right words, without giving too much away. «I think he is probably very anxious about this. You knowing…» 

He stopped, and swallowed. 

But Svetlana picked up where he stopped, her voice smooth and full. «Knowing? I don’t know anything about him. I could never say that I know anything about him. I just met him.»

He knew that she wasn’t saying that to be cute or coy. She meant that she based her knowledge of a person on her experiences with them—the conversations that she had with them—and not on assumptions or hearsay from others. It was one of the things he had always loved best about Svetlana, her steadfast belief that people should be able to define themselves on their own terms. 

He took a sip of his coffee to hide how this suddenly made him feel. 

«But I meant what I said.» She sat back on the sofa, crossing her legs so that the other one was on top. «I want to see him again. We have to talk about the Western Conference, and I want to know what he’s like as a person.» 

«I think he would like that, too.» Ilya said quietly. 

He didn’t have the words to argue with her about what she had said before—about being in love, about how that wasn’t the right word. And that she shouldn’t say it again. 

He was too overwhelmed by the sudden way that his world had opened up. The sudden feeling of something good. 

_____

He was fucking useless. He was stupid, and careless, and couldn’t be trusted with anything precious because it was always going to go to shit. Always.

He kept his hand pressed to his collar, trying to breathe slowly as he scanned the room for anywhere he hadn’t already looked—anywhere it might have dropped. 

But he’d already torn the room apart looking. And he’d only been home for thirty minutes. There were very few places it could be, especially because he was certain he hadn’t been wearing it when he came in. 

He had told himself that he would never take off the necklace when he’d put it on when he was twelve. Life hadn’t worked that way—he had needed to remove it almost every fucking day, every time he put on someone else’s clothes and an invisible mask over his face and stepped in front of a camera. 

It had always been fine. He had always been careful, stowing it in the pocket of his own pants—always on the right, the same side as the hand that reflexively reached for her in the first moment he opened his eyes after a dream. He had always put it back on immediately after leaving a set, before even putting his pants back on. How had he forgotten to do it today? 

He had kept it safe for eleven years, ever since the day Alexei stood in front of him with two objects held out in his palms: the necklace and her ring. Ilya could think of nothing he wanted less than the symbol that had tied her to his father, so he took the necklace without hesitation. 

He had always taken care of it, even as a child, when the chain looped down low on his chest. Even then, he always took care to tuck it inside his shirt, keeping it as close as possible to his heart. 

There had only been one time he’d been careless and stupid, when he was a reckless teenager doing reckless and stupid things every day. And still, it had been purely an accident when the chain had snapped, catching on a fence as he’d climbed over it—needlessly. He could have just walked around. 

He’d stared at the chain in pieces in his hands. Thank God Svetlana had been with him—she’d walked over to him (around the fucking fence) and took one look at the broken gold before sweeping it away, telling him firmly that she would fix it. 

When she brought it back three days later, he’d assumed it was a new chain. 

«No,» she’d said, as he carefully clasped it around his neck. She explained that a jeweler could use his tiny tools to open the links of a chain, fitting them together again; the only thing different was the single link that had snapped when the chain had broken. 

Ilya could live without one broken link. He had been doing it for years already, even then. 

But that story was in the past. Because now it was gone, because of an idiotic oversight—one single moment of forgetfulness. He should have been more careful. He should have insisted on wearing it under the clothes. 

The door buzzed then, and he exhaled. He had texted Hollander before realizing what had happened—before he’d spent thirty minutes racing around the room, retracing his steps, checking every pocket of everything he had worn in the last three days. 

It was, perhaps, the first time he wished that Hollander had been on a road trip somewhere else, or had just been a little less fucking punctual. It was the first time he had wished he wasn’t here right now. 

He looked for a few more minutes, in the time it took Hollander to come in from outside of the building and up to the fifth floor. 

At the sound of the doorbell, he stopped. He rolled his shoulders back, trying to wipe all of this from his face before he answered. 

When he opened the door, Shane was standing with his hand out. Ilya’s eyes dropped immediately to the puddle of gold in the center of his palm. 

“Hey. Is this yours?” 

Ilya was so overcome at the sight of it that he barely heard anything else. He couldn’t move—he couldn’t even reach out to touch it. All he could do was stare down at it in the center of Shane’s big hand. 

“I found it in the hallway by the elevator. I wondered if it fell off or something. It seems fine, though.” 

Shane picked up the chain with his other hand, running his fingers over the clasp, showing him that he had checked to see if it was broken, showing him that it was fine, showing him that Shane Hollander was kind and careful and that Ilya was so lucky that he had found this—that he had found him. 

“Yes,” Ilya’s voice sounded shaky despite the effort he was taking to hold himself together, not to crumble with relief and the sudden rush of emotion. “It is mine.” 

He took it from Shane then, touching the pendant and chain. Shane probably thought he was checking to see for himself that it wasn’t broken, but he wasn’t; he was simply tethering himself to the metal again and promising, promising, to take better care next time. 

Shane stepped inside, closing the door behind him as he pulled his hat off and shrugged out of his coat. 

“I’ve always meant to ask,” he said, stepping out of his shoes and carefully nudging them against the wall with his foot. “Are you religious?” 

Ilya was still staring at the necklace. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he was near the elevators. When he was getting his keys out, maybe. Careless. Stupid. 

He tried to control his breathing again, inhaling slowly and holding for a moment before blinking at Shane. He had finally just registered the question—that a question had been asked at all. 

“Ah, no,” Ilya answered, once the words had traveled through him. “It was my mother’s.” 

“Oh.” 

Ilya dropped his eyes to the object in his palm again so he wouldn’t have to see whatever Shane’s face looked like at that. He picked it up, searching for the clasp so that he could finally put it on. There was a tangle in the loop of gold, and he tried to gently undo it. His fingers felt big, clumsy. His hands were shaking. 

“That’s a really nice way to have a piece of her with you,” Shane said quietly. 

He was still standing in front of Ilya, watching him try to sort through the tangle in the chain. And clearly he noticed that he was having trouble with it, because he gently took it out of his hands. 

Ilya was too out of sorts for any kind of conflict over it, for any kind of pride. He brought his hands down to his sides, clenching them in tight fists as he watched Shane untangle the last part of the knot. 

He exhaled as Shane unclasped the chain, bringing the lengths apart so that the pendant sat in the middle. They were only standing a foot away from each other, hardly any distance at all for Shane to lean forward, reaching around Ilya’s neck to put it on him. 

Ilya stayed exactly where he was, close enough to breathe in Shane’s closeness, the scent of his shampoo and the sandalwood soap he used when he showered at home. He stayed exactly where he was while Shane secured the necklace, gently pressing his hand against Ilya’s collar when the task was done. 

His mouth was on Shane’s immediately. Ilya’s hands slid around him to draw him in close again, fingers pressing into the dip of his back as he held him securely. 

There were no jokes this time. No windowsill. There was only gratitude in Ilya’s bed, and he tried to show him how deeply it was felt. 

They stayed pressed together afterwards. He wasn’t sure if Hollander really understood it—how unsettled Ilya had been when he’d answered the door, how unsteady he had felt in the time since then. But even if he didn’t understand all the way, he seemed to understand well enough to let his body relax against Ilya’s, their heads leaning together as they caught their breath. 

“Are you religious?” He asked Shane. Ilya had wondered this before, too—wondered what Shane Hollander believed, what his traditions were. 

“Me?” Shane asked, as if there was anyone else in the room besides him. 

Ilya nodded, bringing his hand up to run through Shane’s short black hair, sweaty near the scalp. 

“Uh, no,” he said, leaning into Ilya’s hand. “None of my family really is. We never went to church or anything when I was growing up, at least.” 

His head shifted slightly, which Ilya thought meant that he was pulling back to look at him. He didn’t turn his head to look back this time, keeping up his motions in Shane’s hair instead. 

“What about you? Did you go to church?” 

Ilya nodded. “Yes. But I don’t go anymore.” 

“But you believe in God?” 

He stayed quiet at that. There had been a time when he would have said yes—but he wasn’t sure if it had been true even then. So instead he just shook his head and replied, “I think so.” 

Shane was silent, too. The mood was strange—Ilya’s fault, of course; he had been off-kilter since Shane had arrived with the necklace in hand, and he had carried the strangeness into bed with them. He braced himself, inhaling slowly, as he tried to find the words—the mask—he would need to smooth out the ripples. 

But Shane beat him to it. 

He shifted again, resting his head more comfortably against Ilya’s. “I guess I believe in something. Not—I mean, not God, I guess. But something. Because otherwise there wouldn’t be any reason to do all of the hockey superstitions.” 

Whatever Ilya had expected him to say, it wasn’t that. And he let out a quick bark of a laugh before he could help it, because trust Hollander to break the tension in the air with hockey superstitions. 

“Oh yes, God is definitely there making sure you do all of your little superstitions, Hollander. You must have gotten something wrong so far, so what are you changing this year?” 

“Not funny,” Hollander huffed. But Ilya could feel him smiling. 

“I’m serious,” Ilya insisted. “What are your superstitions? Tell me.” 

“I’m not telling you. You’re just going to give me shit.” 

“Well, obviously,” Ilya said reasonably. “But tell me some of them.” 

Shane rolled his eyes, but Ilya could feel him thinking through it. “I put my left skate on first. Right first means a terrible game.” 

“Oh, of course,” Ilya agreed. “I have always said this too.” 

“Really?” 

“Of course not. What else?” 

Shane scoffed. “Fuck off, I’m not telling you anything else.” 

“No sex during playoffs,” Ilya suggested, rolling his eyes to show him what he thought about that particular rule. 

“We had sex during playoffs before,” Shane pointed out. “I was just injured. But I still played in the playoffs that year, after we had sex.” 

Ilya conceded the point with a nod. He dropped his hand from Hollander’s hair, finally, bringing the arm down to rest on his abdomen instead. Shane shifted slightly, adjusting in the grip. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s not really about believing in something that actually makes everything happen from the superstitions. Maybe it’s just habit. Or patterns.” 

“Shane Hollander, great saint in the Church of Habits,” Ilya snorted. 

“Shut up.” Shane jutted an elbow into Ilya’s abs. 

Ilya accepted the contact, lifting his hand to gently rub against the spot where he’d dug in. He didn’t know what made his next question come out—probably some version of whatever strangeness had been in the room, that still filtering through him. 

“Do you believe in fate?” 

“Fate?” Shane repeated, surprised at the question. His head bumped against Ilya’s as he thought about it, and Ilya fought the urge to turn and kiss the side of his face at the contact. 

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I guess I’ve never thought about it. Why, do you? Believe in fate?” 

“I never have before. Or coincidences.” 

“Wait. You don’t believe in coincidences?” Shane shifted in his arms, sounding incredulous.

“No.” Ilya tilted his head, looking back at Shane when he turned to stare at him with furrowed brows. 

“But coincidences are just when things… just happen.”

“I know,” Ilya said. “And I don’t believe in that.”

He didn’t know how to explain it, because he accepted that the explanation didn’t necessarily make very much sense. He didn’t know how to say that coincidences always seemed to be a way of downplaying the significance of a very good chance—of making something seem passive, just randomly connected, instead of something that had occurred because of a specific action—something somebody had made happen. He didn’t know how to explain that it had always been important to him to make things happen wherever he could, and to believe that he could make things happen without leaving them up to random patterns or habits. 

“If you don’t believe in coincidences… if you don’t believe that sometimes things just happen,” Shane said after a long pause, his dark eyes scanning over Ilya’s face. “Then that actually sounds a lot like believing in fate.” 

Ilya smiled. And he didn’t argue, this time. He still didn’t think he believed in fate, or in coincidences, either—he didn’t think he ever would. 

But he did believe in whatever had brought them each to Los Angeles, and Toronto, and New York: three places where they came together, when they’d had no reason to find each other again at all. He believed in the chances they had taken. 

_____



DECEMBER 2014, NEW YORK CITY

He should have seen that it was becoming too much—that it was becoming untenable. 

He’d been so focused on how good it felt to spend time together, he had stopped thinking about the fact of the time, the cost of spending it. He should have understood that it was all making Shane feel like he was being backed against a wall. Ilya had pushed too hard. 

They had been out together so much. And as much as Ilya had been defensive over the normalcy of being out in the world together, some of the situations had been so stupid—of course they had made Hollander feel defensive. Like when they’d seen those women who had fucking filmed them outside of the restaurant while calling him Sola Brown’s ex. Even though he’d only met her four times. 

Svetlana was part of it, too. They had seen her together a few times since September, and every time it had been good. Shane had seemed to enjoy himself. But Ilya couldn’t tell if he noticed Svetlana’s brief but appraising stares, the way she glanced between them as they sat on the same side of the table or booth, how she noticed when Ilya sipped from Shane’s glass of water without thinking. Stupid. 

He had only been thinking about how good it was. 

Because being out in the world with Shane felt so fucking good. He liked making him laugh, seeing him relax, having fun and simply existing before they went back to the apartment and did whatever they wanted in the privacy of one of their homes. 

He had thought Shane thought it was good, too. Even when they’d gone out with Svetlana, Shane had always started out the evening very quiet and polite. But by the end of the night—even without a single drink in him, other than his ginger ale—he had been animated, flushed, and happy. 

Shane was probably never going to be a social creature. But underneath his awkward exterior, there was a funny, kind person waiting patiently to flourish in the company of others. Ilya wondered if he let this side of himself out around his team, or if it languished, always hiding, always waiting to be coaxed out of the serious hockey prince. Always waiting for Ilya to be the one to coax. 

And he had thought that this night was good, too. They had been joking together as they always did alone, and increasingly as they did in front of Svetlana. Shane had accused him of being stereotypical, they had kicked each other under the table, and Ilya had made the idiotic mistake of leaving for a cigarette and more vodka. 

Something essential had left with him. He didn’t know what it was, only that when he returned, Shane looked distracted and preoccupied. They had been getting along so well, but something had clearly happened to tip the night over into a well. 

He didn’t blame Svetlana. He had heard enough of their conversations while he was at the table—he doubted she had strayed far beyond hockey in any conversation that occurred while he was gone. At most, maybe she had told an embarrassing story about him, though he thought she probably would have waited until he was back at the table so that he could react and protest. 

And he knew Shane, too. 

He knew that Shane’s mind could get caught on something small, a detail that Ilya missed, and stay stuck there until something pulled him out of it. What had Ilya missed?

He thought they would go home together. Ilya didn’t even think it was presumptuous—they always went home together after nights like these—and especially now, when Ilya was going to Los Angeles, and then Moscow until after the New Year, and then Milan and Paris. And Shane was in the thick of his season, the ramp up before the holidays and then through the New Year until his All-Star break. This time of year was difficult for their schedules every year—so what had happened, that Shane was turning away from it tonight? 

He didn’t know. He even went so far as to follow him downstairs, out of the bar, to stand in the cold and look in his eyes for an answer. But Shane wouldn’t look back, so Ilya didn’t know. 

When he went back inside, he dropped down into the chair across from Svetlana more heavily than he intended. He pulled the glass of vodka back over to him, but he found that he didn’t really want it anymore. 

«What did you say to him?» He didn’t mean for the words to sound accusatory, but they probably hadn’t been delivered that way. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded sad. 

«Nothing that should make either of you look like this.» Svetlana’s response was blunt, but quiet. 

He sipped the vodka, staring down at the carvings and markings on the table between them. The silence stretched out, loud even underneath the sounds of the noisy, cramped bar. 

«Do you still want to insist that you’re not in love?» Svetlana said after a long time. 

Something clenched inside him at that, and he wished she hadn’t fucking said it. He lifted the glass to his mouth, swallowing half of it in one mouthful. 

«Seems like it would be a terrible idea to be in love with Shane Hollander,» he said, after the vodka was traveling down his chest. 

«That’s why I think you are doing it,» Svetlana answered, her voice full of quiet affection. «I’ve never met someone with worse ideas than you.»

Maybe that was true. He didn’t know. 

Or maybe his ideas were fine, but the problem was him—something essential inside of him, missing. Lacking. He didn’t know. 

Shane was gone anyway. 

Chapter End Notes

I didn’t write for almost two weeks between a vacation and getting extremely ill… and for a moment, I worried I might not be able to pick it up again. I can’t believe I decided to "ease myself back into it" by starting this chapter with two idiots fucking against a brick wall. But I guess I picked it up again!

In all seriousness, this chapter contains the first scene I ever wrote from Ilya’s POV, all the way back in June. It feels very surreal to finally send it out into the world. I am absolutely dying to know what you thought about all of it.

Next time: Distance, fracture, jealousy. But also, coming back together—and the other haircut.

Chapter 6: down to earth

Chapter Summary

Ilya Rozanov spends too much time in Los Angeles.

Chapter Notes

Notes: Dialogue using « » as quotation marks indicates that the characters are speaking Russian.

This chapter covers Chapter Nine and the first half of Chapter Ten of Into the Blue.

--

Okay, listen. The first half of this chapter is angsty. It lets up halfway through—stick with me, and stick with your boy Rozanov.

And heads up for anyone who needs the advance warning: this chapter relies more heavily on that Ilya/Others tag.

But if it helps, here’s an alternate chapter title: “the baddest bitches ain’t in LA”

Ilya had learned one impossible lesson over many nights and many years: time moved on.

It had been almost twelve years without his mother, which meant that, soon, he would have lived longer without her than with her. 

There had been a time in his life when he tried to collect and remember all of the best stories about the things she had missed that year. He would sit down in November—with her, first, in the cold cemetery in Moscow, and then later, when he was far away, in a quiet room alone—to tell them all to her. But the time stretched, there were too many new stories, too many gaps in the responses he imagined coming back. The sound of her laugh had changed in his memory, too. 

He wondered how many new milestones or anniversaries there would be for this—an infinite number, probably; all of the different permutations that time could take. 

It had been almost five years since he moved to New York, a place that he was starting to call home even if it still didn’t quite feel like it. And despite that, he had spent practically no time there this year at all. 

He’d been in Los Angeles to end the previous year, and Moscow to ring in the new one. Two weeks, then Rome for a few days before Milan and Paris back-to-back. After that, back to LA. 

It had been a long time since he’d thought of this lifestyle as glamorous—he’d poured too much money and energy into dead ends, and spent too many nights on airport floors for that. He’d seen too many people treated like shit. 

It didn’t matter that the flights were usually business class now, that he could always afford a hotel if someone else wasn’t already paying for one, or that he now had many friends willing to lend him space in a spare room in a luxury flat. It didn’t make the movement any easier, or change the moments when he woke up in the middle of the night, his body confused about where it should be. 

Work in Los Angeles was coming in a steady stream, but in a cadence that made him feel restless and irritated. There were commitments every few days: regular enough to keep him around, never with enough time in between to go back to New York, always just far enough apart to make him agitated. 

It was hard to keep hold of any sense of gratitude for the opportunities. Even replaying Vika’s words in his head—when you work as hard as you do, there will always be an up; you are a man made for big achievements—couldn’t get him through the long stretches of tedium. They couldn’t quiet his mind. 

Thank God Svetlana was there most of the time—it made it more bearable. He liked staying in her house. The bed in her second room was comfortable, and the backyard was spacious and private. It was too cold to use the pool, but he liked that the possibility was there, and sometimes he would smoke in the afternoon with his feet in the water. 

He liked that she would drive him around when their schedules allowed, too. They mostly went out for burgers together, sometimes donuts. She insisted on showing him her favorite places, which he always enjoyed because she liked them, but not because his feelings about LA had changed. 

There were other things to keep him occupied, too. There were parties, so many fucking parties—at bars, at strangers’ houses, at clubs, at hotels, on rooftops, or in the backyards of expansive mansions in places he’d never be able to pinpoint on a map or find again even if his life depended on it. He was surrounded by rich people, beautiful people, people who had never wanted for anything in their whole lives, and people who were willing to kill themselves to get what they were convinced they needed. 

It was too many hours spent underneath a mask, so much energy spent keeping himself propped up—being charming, funny, warm, gregarious, the Ilya Rozanov that everybody always said they heard about from their friends or makeup artist or photographer or a model or actor they had met one time. He was wrung out from it. 

Most nights he slept hard, even without alcohol or weed or anything else in his system, like his brain was telling him that it was time to shut off. When he woke up, he would have to take a moment to stare at the light fixture on the ceiling of Svetlana’s guest room, trying to pin his body down on the globe—before getting up to move through another day of it. 

The sunsets in California were beautiful. But he missed looking east and seeing the sunrise through the buildings as he walked towards Lafayette Street in the early morning. 

It had been almost five years since he had met Shane, and there had been nearly two months between the last two times he saw him. 

January was always bad for their schedules, but it was worse this year. Shane’s All-Star break started just as Ilya returned from Paris Fashion Week, sending him to fucking Ohio for the few days that Ilya was in New York. By the time Shane returned, he was in Los Angeles again. 

Ilya could admit that he felt the lack of him. It was harder to admit—but undeniable now—that Shane had come to mean more to him than the simple, easy comfort of a casual friendship. There had been too many times when the haze of melancholy had swept over him, and Shane had been there—solid, strong, ready to distract him with a boring conversation about hockey. There were the runs that cleared his head, the sex that brought him back into his body, the quiet nights at bars that eased his dark thoughts. 

Sometimes, when the moments were really low, Ilya would let himself examine the memories that he had tucked away deep inside: a weekend in the snow, the warmth of the food at Shane’s kitchen island. The comfort of borrowed clothes as their ankles locked together on the sofa, Shane’s hard muscles and soft skin with Ilya’s arm draped over his back as they dozed on clean sheets. Pictures and fragments, loose around the edges from time and the wear of Ilya’s mind going over them when he needed their comfort. 

They had texted over January. But between the time differences and the distances, it hadn’t amounted to very much. Even Shane’s West Coast road trip worked against them, sending him to Anaheim instead of Los Angeles. Still, that was a distance Ilya could cross. 

He’d thought there was no way that Shane would agree to his plan, made on the fly, to meet at the team hotel. But Ilya had time to travel to Orange County, and time to walk him through how to leave the spare key at the desk in a book, because he knew that Shane needed the reassurance of a methodical explanation.

He may have needed it even more than usual, Ilya realized when he finally set eyes on him. 

Shane seemed shaky and brittle in the Anaheim hotel. Ilya had seen him in many moods—anxious, tired, cranky; but he wasn’t sure that he had ever witnessed this particular shade of unsteady and nervous. He might have worried about it, but Shane relaxed over the course of the night, finally seeming something close to normal by the time they were sweaty and spent. 

So Ilya told himself that Shane was tired from the hockey game he’d just played, and hungry because they’d waited until after they’d fucked to order room service. If not that, then it was probably from the fact that he was in the middle of a long road trip, jet lagged and tired, and scared of getting caught with Ilya in his hotel room while surrounded by all of his teammates and coaches. 

He knew he was too derisive about these things, always looking down on Shane’s paranoia when it came to perfectly normal interactions between them. But, Ilya thought—as Shane covered his mouth with his arm to stifle his moans so that his teammate didn’t hear him through the wall—sometimes he didn’t give the fears enough credit. Sometimes he wasn’t kind enough about how hard it was on Shane. 

After two months, it felt like a relief to have his hard body underneath him, chest to back against the shower tiles, then pressed together on top of the hotel bedspread. Ilya thought it would settle some of the restlessness that had formed whenever he thought about Shane the last few months. 

It didn’t. Certainly not when the night ended with Shane, so tired he could barely hold himself steady, walking Ilya the ten steps to the door.  

“You seem… taller,” Shane mumbled, pausing to peer up at him. “And… bigger.” 

Ilya smiled, allowing himself this opportunity to take in the sight of Shane’s deep brown eyes and the light smattering of freckles over his smooth face. “I think you’re imagining things, Hollander. Maybe you have shed too much weight already, need to get back in shape for the rest of your season.” 

“And,” he added as Shane rolled his eyes. “It’s just my hair that’s bigger.” 

He lifted his hand to pat his hair, which was fully dry from the shower they’d taken some time ago now. It was longer than usual, frizzy and fluffy and sitting higher on his head because of it. Shane’s eyes followed the movement, scanning over the hair and all of Ilya’s face before settling back at his mouth. Ilya had just started to lean forward to kiss him when Shane turned away and reached for the door. 

Ilya didn’t think it was a rejection—Shane’s movements were too slow and unfocused; it seemed more likely that he had missed the overture altogether. But now Ilya was leaving, and the door was opening while Shane leaned out to check if the hallway was empty. The opportunity for a kiss was gone, but Ilya couldn’t resist one last moment of contact. 

He slipped his hand under Shane’s sweatshirt, letting it rest against his warm, bare skin. Ilya moved his hand up slowly, feeling the muscles in Shane’s back and the shallow indent of his spine underneath his palm, then back down again. 

He made himself pull away then. He didn’t say anything as he left, and the door closed behind him. 

Of course he had feelings for Shane. How could he not admit that to himself, when he was so happy to be with him, and missed him so much when he was gone? The feelings were a problem, but they weren’t the biggest problem. The biggest problem was that it would be very silly to entertain them. 


_____

MARCH 2015, LOS ANGELES 

He was still in fucking LA. He had gone back to New York for a handful of days at the beginning of the month, only to turn around and fly back across the country, again, back to Svetlana’s guest bedroom, again.

At least it was for something different this time. The offhand conversation he’d had with Vika more than a year ago, about whether he had ever thought about acting, had inexplicably turned into something. Two somethings: a one-episode appearance in a popular HBO show and a small role in an independent film. 

The latter didn’t have filming dates yet, but the director had reached out to Vika to specifically ask for him. Ilya wasn’t sure what he thought about the role yet. It had sounded a little empty—a man who the film’s main couple picked up and took home from the bar one evening to fuck. 

Ilya wondered what had prompted the director to reach out. More accurately, he wondered if the man had walked through SoHo a few too many times, spent too much time looking up at an ad on the side of a building there. If that was the answer, Ilya didn’t know how he felt about it. But maybe it was to be expected after the Calvin Klein campaign. 

Amateur Sex could have been the same, of course—they had reached out to Vika about him, too. And again, he was playing a man who picked up the main character, appearing in several scenes (all shirtless, it noted in the script) until their ultimate breakup at the end of the episode. It should have irritated him, maybe, but the part was actually interesting. There were some good lines. It was just a bitch to learn them, especially in the little time between being cast for the role and when he’d been asked to come to Los Angeles to shoot. 

«You aren’t even smiling,» Vika said, frowning at him through the video screen. «You’re not happy about this?» 

«I am happy,» he replied, though he understood how his tone of voice put it in doubt. «I’m just tired.» 

«There’s time to be tired when you’re old. Right now you’re young, you have energy and opportunities in front of you. Don’t waste them.» 

«Find someone interesting in Los Angeles,» she instructed. «Preferably not someone on drugs.» 

He scowled, trying to assess if this was a barbed reference to anything specific, or just general advice. She only waved her hand at him, dismissing him through the screen. 

It had been nearly nine years of following Vika’s guidance, even when it was irritating. She had been right enough times in his life, and even when she wasn’t, he still begrudgingly respected his elders. 

So Ilya found interesting people in Los Angeles. 

He slept with Sola for the first time after a day on a boat with her friends. Svetlana was in New York, but he went to Sola’s anyway, not surprised to find that her parents’ money had helped finance a quiet bungalow in a nice neighborhood with a lemon tree in the yard. 

He met Julian, a luxury real estate agent, at a club in West Hollywood. It wasn’t that far to go back to his house, somewhere in the hills, with two levels of views looking down across the glittering spread of the city. Ilya didn’t keep his number, though.   

Cami was a bottle service girl—a cliche, okay, but she was funny, he’d thought, as she’d come by their table all night. She was an actress, just working at the club until her breakout role. He had brought her back to the house, and there had been a very small awkward moment with Svetlana when they’d run into each other in the morning. Svetlana rolled her eyes at Ilya over the top of Cami’s head as she’d quickly slipped back into the second bedroom to find the rest of her clothes. 

Jackson—Jack—was from Toronto, and had been in LA for two years working as a universally reviled character on a teen drama. Ilya had never watched it, but Jack gleefully told him all about the online fandom’s distaste for him. 

“I always wanted to do stage acting,” he said as he blew smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “And here I am, with fourteen year old girls sending me death threats for how I treated some girl named Madison on a television show.” 

“Okay, but what did you do to Madison?” Ilya asked over his own cigarette. 

Jack laughed, coughing as the smoke went in rather than out. When Ilya reached out to pat his back, he looked over his shoulder at him, and then at his mouth. 

When filming for the show finally started, he found it a little overwhelming. He stayed up too late the night before trying to make sure that he had the lines right, spending extra time enunciating them properly so that they would be understood on film. The character had an accent, of course; Ilya could learn as much English as he wanted, but his accent was on its own trajectory. 

The people on set were nice, though, and more patient with direction than he’d anticipated. The filming only took a week, but by the end he decided it was one of the better jobs he’d ever done. He told Vika this, and she promised to see if they could build some momentum from it. 

Svetlana insisted on giving him driving lessons so that he could get around more easily if he needed to. Ilya had thought they were going fine—he had driven back in Moscow—but one day she’d screamed at him so much that he’d had to pull over on the side of a freeway so that they could switch places. 

«You’re being dramatic,» he muttered, settling into the passenger seat. «I thought you liked fancy cars that go fast.» 

“I like them better when they’re not driven by people who are going to kill me,” she said, her voice still loud and high-pitched around the English. 

He went to parties in West Hollywood, and the Hollywood Hills, and Beverly Hills, and other places that sounded like permutations of themselves, all blending together into one amalgamation of roads and palm trees. He took Molly sometimes, which didn’t make him feel like cocaine did, like he was walking on a wire. It made him feel warm and unfocused. But it was too good a feeling, so he forced himself to keep it in moderation—not to go too far, or to let himself slip into trying anything else that might give him the same release. 

Through all of it, there were still texts on his phone. There were still score alerts from ESPN, there was still the memory of tired brown eyes blinking at him sleepily from a pillow on a bed in Anaheim, on the twelfth floor of a Manhattan apartment building, from his living room floor. There was still New York, an entire country away. 

Reaching for Shane was like reaching through a fog. There was something going on with him, Ilya was sure of it. At first he thought it was simply the distance, but as time went on and it persisted, the more it felt like something real. 

When he looked back on their night in Anaheim, the shakiness and tension that had reverberated through Shane’s body seemed more pronounced in his memory. Ilya wished he had pushed the issue then, tried to understand the cause of it. 

Still, he tried to bridge the gaps in the distance. He texted him to figure out what was going on in his mind, and he started calling him as a reason to hear his voice. 

They’d done it once before, last summer when Shane had been in Las Vegas to be crowned MVP and Ilya had gambled that he might want to end the night looking at his cock through the phone screen. He gambled again now, only slightly surprised when Shane readily agreed to do it again a handful of times. Ilya always initiated the contact, sending an exploratory text even when he was hours ahead of him, sitting in a hotel room in Paris or London. 

Getting off with each other was good, yes, but Ilya also liked the moments at the beginning and end of the calls, when Shane would talk about his games and his team, when they would trade stories about travel and bad hotel food. It was a poor substitute, though, for the usual time they spent together—only a few minutes at most. It was nothing like their long runs, or the wandering conversations as they walked to a bar and nursed a drink or two in the corner.  

And the phone calls proved that there was still something in the air between them. Shane’s voice was different through the screen. He sounded tired and stressed, but there was never any acknowledgement of it in his words. 

The longer it lasted—the stranger Hollander’s texts sounded, the more he averted his eyes from the phone camera, never quite looking Ilya in the eye after their dicks had softened—the more convinced Ilya became that there was something else going on. 

It was penance, maybe, for every time Shane had looked at him with openness and want in his dark eyes, and Ilya had carelessly discarded the invitation. He did it all the time in the beginning—waving Shane out of his bed like it was nothing. Ilya had been too caught up in his own bullshit, too full of insecurity and resentment at a skewed version of him: a rich, ambitious superstar who never put a toe out of line. Those things were true, perhaps, but Ilya knew now that they were not the entire truth about Shane Hollander, and they came nowhere close to making up the whole of him. 

But Ilya had been too focused on the slights—the judgment over the cocaine, the long-awaited apartment invitation—that he had ignored the need, the deep sense of desire, that he had felt in Shane from the very first time he met him. 

It was gone now, and something had happened, and he had no explanation for it. But what the fuck could he do, when Shane refused to talk to him? Refused to look at him? 

The explanation struck him one day when he was on his way back to Svetlana’s house from seeing Jack. The knowledge came to him very suddenly and settled in him with certainty. 

Shane is sleeping with someone else. 

It was a man, Ilya thought. Not a woman—he thought he might have sensed another layer to the distance if it had been a woman. More guilt, less avoidance. 

And it was someone meaningful. Someone not like Ilya. 

What kind of right did he have to be jealous? He would be a fucking hypocrite. He was in a car on his way back from fucking someone right now; he’d seen Sola twice last week in Miami. 

But none of it—nothing he had ever done with another person over the last five years—had ever  stopped him from opening Shane’s messages in the middle of the night. Nothing stopped him from reading through everything again, wondering why it seemed different now, wondering where he had gone and why Ilya could no longer find him. 

It would make sense if Shane wasn’t trying to be found—if someone was already there with him, wherever he was. 

_____

APRIL 2015, NEW YORK CITY

Ilya carried the thought with him all the way back to New York. 

It surprised him, then, that Hollander wanted to see him only days before the playoffs began. They’d seen each other during playoffs before, but this was different. There was no injury keeping Hollander off the ice or away from his usual routines. If anything, he’d actually seemed keen to see Ilya despite the timing. 

So Ilya was prepared to make the most of it—to remind Hollander that he was charming and funny, and always knew how to make him feel good. He could thank Rolex, at least, for giving him a conversation piece.

But he’d felt his stomach drop the moment he’d entered Shane’s bedroom for the first time in months—and saw the glasses on the table next to the bed. 

“What are these?” He blurted out before he could stop himself. 

He didn’t know why he grabbed them, but now that they were in his hand, he was seized with the sudden urge to crack them in half, to render the person who wore them blind. 

“Oh.” Shane immediately took them back, and Ilya felt a sudden wave of envy at the quick, protective action on behalf of this stranger. 

“You were right. I did need my vision checked. I’m kind of farsighted, it turns out.” 

Ilya blinked, grabbing the glasses again from where Shane had replaced them on the nightstand. “They are yours?” 

“Uh, yeah? Who else’s would they be?” 

And that changed everything, of course. Ilya had to see what they looked like on his face immediately.

“Put them on,” he demanded. 

Who else’s would they be, he had said. The obvious confusion at the question had made Ilya’s dick half-hard on its own, and the glasses helped with the rest. 

And the real thing was even better than his imagination. Shane was laughing, too, by the time they finished. He made Ilya clean the cum off his glasses, though. 

Ilya thought everything was normal after that, when the glasses were restored to their place next to the bed, when he had reclaimed his place in it next to Shane. 

But he’d felt the subtle change then, when Shane drifted away despite their close embrace. Ilya felt him stiffen in his arms, which he’d never done before—and Ilya didn’t understand the reason for it now. He had only tried to acknowledge the obvious weight in the air, the clear fact that something was wrong with Shane. He hadn’t even said anything specific, he had only said that he seemed strange. And Hollander had shut down like Ilya had told him to check himself into an asylum. 

They were able to patch over it in whatever way they could, and even fucked again before he left. But Ilya’s mind returned to it in the elevator—the stiffness of Shane’s torso under his hands. The lack of explanation for it. 

The fizzle of worry inside of him was starting to turn into something different: frustration. He didn’t know what had changed. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong. 

_____

«Ugh, Ilya, why?» Svetlana said when he picked up the phone. 

«What?» He responded, startled. 

From her voice, he wondered if something had happened in the house. But how would she know, especially before he did? He was currently the one staying at her place in LA—only until Saturday, thankfully—while she had been in New York all week. 

«I saw the photos of you and Arizona leaving some party together. You couldn’t have left her in your coke year where she belonged?» 

«Don’t call it that,» Ilya scowled.

«Why not? It’s true!» 

«It was nothing. She didn’t seem right, I think she took too much of whatever it was. I just saw her home and then came back to yours.» 

«I wondered if it might be something like that.» Svetlana’s tone softened, taking on a light edge of coyness instead. «I’m sorry those posts always call you an underwear model, too. You do one underwear campaign, I suppose it becomes your whole brand.» 

«They should be calling you a swimwear model, probably,» she added. 

«Fuck off, Sveta,» he said without any heat. «What are you doing over there?» 

They made small talk, catching each other up over the time since they’d last spoken. It was normal, the same kind of conversation they’d had thousands of times, which was why he was so startled when the unexpected subject came up. 

«Have you talked to Shane?» 

For all the opinions she’d had in the fall, they hadn’t talked about this—Hollander—since December. Ilya frowned, taken aback by the question. 

«No,» he answered truthfully, if a bit curtly. But he hadn’t—not since he’d been at his apartment a week ago. 

«I’m sorry,» Svetlana said, her voice surprisingly gentle. «That it didn’t…» 

She didn’t finish the sentence, but he also had no idea what she was trying to say. «What do you mean?» 

When she continued to hesitate over the words, he filled them in for her.

«I saw him when I was in New York last week.» He could hear how defensive he sounded, like he was trying to convince them both of something. It only made him feel worse. 

«Oh.» The syllable dropped awkwardly between them, and there was a heavy moment of silence as they both tried to process the unspoken questions, the oversensitive answers, and everything that lay in the middle. 

«Well, I was just thinking about him because I’m going to the game tomorrow night,» she said after a long pause. 

«Against Pittsburgh?» Ilya asked, surprised. «You are going to the Admirals game?» 

«Yes. Have you? Ever?» Svetlana put the question out cautiously, like she knew he might take it as something more than a polite conversation piece. 

«No.» 

And, of course, he had thought of it before, many times. Years ago, he would have said that he didn’t want to, that he had no interest in a hockey game anymore. But of course that changed as he watched more games, as he paid attention to the results, as he grew to know the man at the center of the team. 

He’d never expected Shane to do anything like offer him tickets. It would have run counter to whatever this was—the casual nature of it, never doing anything meaningful in public, always pretending that none of it meant anything so they could maintain their distance. 

But what difference would it have made, if Ilya was in the crowd at a game? Madison Square Garden held thousands of people. Ilya would have simply been one face among them. 

He could have just gone on his own—but what would be the point, if it would only set off Shane’s panic? It never seemed worth it. And Shane never asked him if he wanted to go. 

Shane didn’t owe him anything. Ilya simply thought that by this time, he would have at least asked. Ilya thought that the phone call they’d had last year, after Shane lost in the Stanley Cup Final, might have shown how seriously Ilya took his career—that he understood hockey, that he understood its specific meaning for Shane. But maybe it hadn’t meant the same thing to Shane that it had to him. 

Svetlana could obviously tell that they had gone off course and that he was in a foul mood now because of it. 

«I’m only going because Melody’s father is a big fan of the team. They have a suite, she invited me to come.» 

«Are you going to get a Hollander jersey?» Ilya asked, still sour, because he could not help himself. 

She let him get away with it, only scoffing softly into his ear. «I’m a Boston fan, Ilya. I don’t want my father to disinherit me.» 

She paused again, and he knew he was going to hate whatever she said next. 

«Maybe we could go to the next one in the series, when you’re back…?» 

«No,» he said, too quickly. He let the question settle in him for longer, took more time to think it through, before shaking his head behind the phone. «No.»

They talked for a little while longer, and Ilya made sure to tell her that he hoped she had fun at the game. She sounded skeptical in her response, and he didn’t blame her. 

He kept the phone in his hand after hanging up, pulling open his texts to see what Sola was doing. Ilya didn’t want to think about hockey anymore. 

_____

JUNE 2015, PARIS

It wasn’t Svetlana’s fault for putting the thought in his mind, because the seed of it had already been planted a long time ago. 

It grew because of the silence that stretched on in the text messages, even though Hollander had never texted him during playoffs. It grew because Ilya was in New York through the entire first and second rounds, the Eastern Conference Final, and half of the Stanley Cup series, even though he had made no moves to attend any game. It grew because he could see the fucking calendar—and that Game Six, which they were certainly going to make it to—was scheduled for his birthday. Which bothered the fuck out of him, even though he had never celebrated it with Hollander before. 

But the seed also grew because there was nothing stopping Hollander from texting him in between practices or video review sessions. He had hours of down time while in transit between New York and Pittsburgh, Washington DC, Tampa, and then Chicago—and still, there was nothing. 

It grew because Ilya could get to Madison Square Garden in two subway stops if he took an express train, but the invitation never came. 

It grew because Ilya knew that if the biggest moment of his career had been scheduled for May 10th, he would have invited Shane. 

He was in Paris on June 15th, a few days before he would need to be in Milan for Fashion Week. The change of city, an entire ocean between them, should have been enough to distract him from the frustration that had built up about the whole thing, but Ilya had never been good at ignoring the worst of the voices inside his mind. 

So he found more interesting people, instead. 

He was in Paris. It was his fucking birthday. What was he going to do, spend it watching an illegal stream of some fucking hockey game? 

Obviously not. He was 24 years old, he was in one of the best cities in the world, and he was going to have a good fucking night. 

He called Sylvie Bacque, because she knew good people and always threw excellent parties. He was pleased at her immediate enthusiasm, though she’d insisted on making him book a bigger suite at an even more expensive hotel. 

Still, it was worth it. She helped him fill it with people, only half of whom he actually knew, all of them interesting and beautiful and ready to have fun. And they partied all night. 

He realized later, though, that he should have just given in and done some coke. It would have distracted him, probably—kept him from checking his phone every few minutes, refreshing for an update on the score. 

He was sitting in between a shipping heiress and a Russian model he’d just met when the final update came. He couldn’t help it—he sat up straight, leaning forward on the sofa to stare at his phone. 2-0, both goals assisted by Shane Hollander. A win by the New York Admirals. 

He couldn’t help what flew out of his fingers next, either. 

What did I say.

Because he had—he said it almost exactly a year ago: that he would win, probably more than one, probably more than anyone ever, because he was the best player in the world. He was Shane Hollander. 

Ilya was angry with him, for reasons that made sense and many that didn’t. But even in his anger he couldn’t stifle the fissure of pride that ran through him as he stared at the final result. 

The feeling warped, though, as the party continued, hurtling towards dawn. His mind was wandering, even amidst the cacophony in the suite and the ample distractions available to him. He wondered what Shane was doing, how he was celebrating. 

He knew how men, athletes especially, celebrated after wins like these. He wasn’t an idiot, he had been an athlete once himself, even if he had just been a teenager. And he’d met athletes, too, over the years—he’d been to many parties with them. 

So Ilya wondered who Hollander was with. He should have been fucking somebody tonight—this was his crowning achievement, after all. 

Not a puck bunny. Hollander was pickier than that, Ilya thought. It would be a girl with a genuine interest in sports, maybe; someone with a hard edge. Maybe she would even be a little mean—Hollander would have liked that. 

Or maybe the night, the win, had made him so euphoric that he gave into the other part of himself. Maybe someone else was fucking him hard against the mattress right now, with a hand pressed between the flexing muscles in his back, giving him more ways to be sore in the morning. 

Ilya was so focused on the image that it was a surprise when his phone started buzzing. He stared at it for a long moment, almost wondering if he had somehow conjured it into existence through his delirium, the combination of alcohol and staying up all night. 

For a split second, he thought about not answering. 

But Ilya was drunk, and tired, and angry; full to the brim with words that had been waiting within him for half a year. 

What about me? Do you think about me? Like I think about you? 

He stood up, crossing the room towards the balcony, answering the phone just before he stepped outside. 

It was immediately evident that Shane was alone, that he had come straight from whatever team celebration—probably leaving early—and was now tucked up inside his bed. And he had called Ilya. The sudden image of it made his chest tighten, but it still wasn’t enough to erase all of the feelings that had calcified within him over the last few months. 

You wouldn’t be alone if you had asked me to be there.

So he let Shane see some of that anger, and he registered the hurt that he received in response. When Ilya told him that he’d still been awake, despite the early morning hour—who says I was sleeping, a clear allusion to the company he might have been keeping—he pressed the phone closer to hear the quiet, jealous response. Somehow, it only made him angrier. 

But the anger was useless, and by the time the phone call ended—badly—it was already morphing, turning into something closer to guilt, or shame. He tried to push all three emotions out of himself. What was the use? 

Had he really thought that Shane would invite him? Shane, who quaked every time they were in public together? 

What he still didn’t understand, though, was why Shane hadn’t realized how much he had wanted to be there. Yes—he was in Paris now. But he would have changed the trip. If Shane had asked. 

He put the cigarette out on the wrought iron railing. He took another moment to stare at the sky—the morning sun was getting higher. He should have been asleep. He didn’t want to go back inside. But he did. 

He shouldn’t have still been angry—not when he remembered the stunned way Shane’s voice had changed, going up two octaves as he’d asked, what? Did you want a ticket? But he was. 

And he shouldn’t have slept with Sylvie, not after all of that. 

But he did. Anything to put a little more distance between them. 

_____

JULY 2015, LOS ANGELES

He hadn’t thought about this thing with Hollander ending—not so suddenly, not without any real warning, not now—but it seemed like it had. And it hurt more than he was ready for. 

So he let the distance keep stretching on. In Milan, in Paris again, in Moscow, and back to New York. There were many things to occupy himself with—his life was very full now, as it hadn’t been even a few years ago. He had done it all himself, too. He had made something of himself after all. 

He saw Tommaso in Milan. He met Sophia in Los Angeles, and Emily, and Max, too. He saw Jack—a lot. His show had been put on some kind of hiatus by the network, but it had all worked out well enough. He was moving to New York temporarily, finally able to get back to the stage acting he’d always wanted to do. That would be convenient. 

There had been one idiotic moment with Svetlana, which should have been Ilya’s clue that he’d been hurtling too close to the sun. It was just a kiss by the pool, after a stupidly hot day, as the sun had been drifting down over the west side of her yard. She’d jerked back like she’d been burned. 

“No,” she’d said, firmly. Not no, I don’t feel like; it was, no, you fucking idiot, don’t you dare. 

He hadn’t wanted to look at her, but he had anyway, because Ilya would always press on a bruise if given the chance. 

The expression on her face was accusatory, but worse than that, it was pitying. And he didn’t need to fucking see that, so he grabbed his phone to distract himself, stopping his thumb before he scrolled down far enough to get to any messages from June 15. 

None of it really made a difference, though. He was always thinking about Shane Hollander. 

So Svetlana had been right to say no, probably. Because Ilya was cursed to surround himself with sharp, observant friends and companions, a fact that reaffirmed itself one night in Sola Brown, too. 

She was hosting at her parents’ house in Bel Air. They were out of town, and Sola had filled the place with her friends. Music filtered through the yard and open doors leading into the house, and the smell from the grill permeated the air even hours after they’d eaten. 

Ilya found the small area where she’d told people they could smoke, and settled into a loveseat between two large rose bushes near the pool house. He faced away from the main house, listening to the distant sounds of laughter and bass, as he lit a second cigarette. 

He almost didn’t hear Sola approaching, but recognized her light tread just as she came up behind him. 

“Can I sit?” She smiled. 

He nodded, of course, gesturing to the space next to him. She sat down, her knee pressed into his thigh, watching the side of his face. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, noting the pensive expression. He held up his pack of cigarettes in offer, but she shook her head. 

“Can I ask you something?” 

The question set off a flare of apprehension inside of him, but he kept his face clear as he nodded. 

Her gaze was steady as she studied him, and he got the sense that she was mapping his face. Suddenly, he was worried about the conversation in front of him—he had a sense of what it was, from this look. He hadn’t noticed her looking at him like this before now, or else he would have tried to cut it at the root. 

“Why don’t you want something with me?” She asked. 

He stayed silent. The cigarette in his hand was an excuse—they both knew it—but he used it shamelessly anyway, putting it to his lips and inhaling slowly, buying himself a moment to figure out a good response. 

“I know the sex is good.” She spoke bluntly, but not crudely. His eyes slid over to her, somewhat surprised to see her keen, interested expression. This wasn’t a confrontation; she was here, it seemed, to truly understand what was happening between them. “I think we like being around each other. I actually really feel like we get each other. So why haven’t you tried to make this into something?” 

“I mean, I know I could, too,” she added. “But I kind of thought I’d put it out there a little bit, the last few times we’ve seen each other.” 

Had she? He tried to think back on the time they’d spent together recently, but found that his head was too muddled to come up with an answer. He didn’t know what she was referring to. But still, it was uncomfortable—everything she had said so far was true, or it could have been true from her perspective. And he wasn’t entirely sure what to tell her. 

“Is it the idea of monogamy?” She looked at him patiently. 

He had been silent for too long now, had exhaled his smoke. There was no more stalling on an answer. And yet, he still didn’t have one. 

“Ah…” 

She let the silence stretch for a few moments. And still, he noticed, her expression didn’t change. She was looking at him with curiosity, and affection. It was the last thing he would have expected for a conversation like this, but Sola, he had come to learn, was a different kind of person. 

“Is it someone else?” She asked, because apparently, as he had also come to learn, he wasn’t nearly as good at hiding himself as he thought he was. 

He took a deep breath, because this question came closest to the answer. But what was he going to say to her? Yes, I have many feelings for this beautiful hockey player, maybe you have heard of Shane Hollander?

Fuck.

She must have seen the thoughts cross his face, because she turned towards the pool, looking across the stretch of clear teal water separating them from the bright lights of her parents’ house. What a terrible place to have this conversation with her—not that he’d had much of a conversation; he hadn’t said a single word so far. He watched her, and her beautiful face, the light reflecting off the plane of her smooth, dark skin, and the hair tied up and away to stay dry over the course of the day. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, finally. 

But when Sola turned to look at him, she was smiling. It was the last thing he’d expected to see, but the expression lit up her face like it always did. She reached over, squeezing his arm. 

“You don’t have to apologize for loving someone else. I think that’s beautiful.” 

The words were kind, and delivered with even more kindness and solemnity. But all he could focus on was their substance: she had said love. He hadn’t said love. 

“But I don’t think I want to sleep with someone who has feelings like that for another person,” she said, as she slid her hand down to lace their fingers together. She brought his hand to her mouth, gently kissing the top of it. “Okay?” 

“Okay.” He squeezed her hand in return, accepting the easy affection, and accepting this resolution.

The conversation with Sola was the beginning, maybe, of the clarity. It came to him gradually at first, but faster once he was back in New York. Once he was surrounded by familiar places—once he was home—it was hard not to let the understanding sink into him. 

He realized now, how much he had gotten wrong; how much he had misunderstood. 

Ilya had always seen how tightly Shane held himself in control. When they’d first met, Ilya resented it and admired it in equal measure—he’d thought the control was the central essence of Shane, that he was just strong, focused, and able in all of the ways that Ilya had never been. 

But he knew better, now—he had seen enough of the real things underneath the protective shell of control. 

Shane was strong, he was so focused and capable. But all of it was a layer, as thin as ice, over the real person underneath, who felt deeply and held his convictions strongly. The real person who, Ilya had learned, sometimes walked around the things that were too difficult to face, and who struggled to put words to the thoughts that moved too quickly inside of his head. 

Ilya had always seen this clearly when it came to hockey, of course. He had seen it over the years, but most especially last year—an occasional burst of frustrated anger about the things Shane perceived as mistakes, about the pressure piled on him. Ilya had seen how fatigue and exhaustion softened his face into a near-constant frown, and clouded his mind, too. 

And Ilya had seen it this year, especially. It was what he had sensed behind the shakiness in Anaheim, lurking in the gaps between their text messages. Winning the Stanley Cup wasn’t going to change these essential parts of Shane. It had actually taken nearly everything from him to do it. 

He had missed all of it. It had been too hard to identify from across the country, without being able to see him. And Shane had such tight control over everything all the time—why shouldn’t he also have the same tight control over how he felt about Ilya? 

Ilya couldn’t presume a sameness to their feelings. There was no reason for him to think that Shane felt precisely the same way that he did. 

But the time that passed, the silence between them—it was too wounded to be one-sided. He’d heard Shane’s voice on the other side of the phone in Paris. He had heard the confusion, and the hurt. 

Maybe it was enough to understand that there were, simply, feelings. Maybe then there was hope that these fractures happened because they had been missing each other—missing each other from a distance, missing chances when they had been close enough to take them. 

It was possible that he was wrong. 

Or, it was possible that he was right, but that it didn’t matter anyway—because whatever the reason, perhaps everything with Shane was still over for good.  

_____

But then, August. 

He was outside on his patio. The sun had set an hour ago, but it was still humid outside, the kind of sticky air that stayed hanging around for hours after dark. He never minded it, nor the light sheen of sweat that settled onto his bare arms as he sat outside with the light off, only a cigarette glowing in the dark in front of him. He always liked it better than the cold. 

When his phone buzzed, he saw the preview of the photo first, before the name. Both things registered at once, and he quickly tilted the mobile towards him, thumbing it open to look at the picture that he had received. 

He had no idea where it had been taken. Canada, maybe. It was a picture of the golden sun setting over a field of wildflowers and tall grass, green and yellow, with dots of pinks and purples set against the glowing sky. It could not have looked more different from New York. It was a beautiful place. 

It was a picture of a beautiful place that Shane had sent him, because Shane was there, and Shane was thinking of him. 

Ilya was not in a beautiful place. But he was thinking of Shane, because he thought of Shane in every place that he went. 

He tilted his phone up, taking a picture of the nothingness in front of him—the edge of his patio, the expanse of night sky, no stars visible above him. When he checked to see if there was anything discernable at all, he saw that he had also captured his feet and the ash tray next to them. 

It wasn’t a field of wildflowers under the setting sun, but it was what he could offer him in return today. Not a beautiful place, but maybe a familiar one, where Ilya was waiting for him. 

He sent it to Shane. 

Then he kept his phone open, scrolling to the text messages with Jack, who was in New York for his play. 

Sorry, Ilya wrote. I can’t meet up.

_____

Shane H
Are you still free today? 

Yes, you are back in the city? 

Shane H
Yeah, I got back last night. 
Is there a time that’s good for you?

I’m at the gym, want to meet in an hour?

Shane H
OK. I’ll come over in an hour?

Yes. See you then. 

It was like night and day from Anaheim when Shane arrived at his apartment: the difference between winter and summer. His skin was golden and his face was soft, fresh from weeks of relaxation, the perfect cap to his victorious season. Seeing him now, it was hard to remember why Ilya had spent so many weeks so angry with him. 

Without speaking a word about it, they seemed to come to some kind of truce. It was still different from last summer—there was a half-step of hesitation before one of them stepped forward to kiss the other. 

But really, that was all it took. He would need to examine it later, probably, how quickly the uncertainty dropped away from one kiss, from the feel of Shane’s body—bigger, now that he was bulking—against him, and from the sight of the tan lines on his hips from the swim shorts he’d apparently been wearing all summer. 

It had only been four months; the same as every year, really—when they separated between April and August. 

In the end, all of the bad feelings that had spread out over those four months amounted to very little. He still remembered everything he had ever learned about Shane’s body, and from the way Shane dug his fingers into his back and rolled beneath him, it felt like he remembered everything about Ilya’s, too. 

“Where did you send the picture from?” He asked him, when they were clean again and resting on top of the bed together anyway. 

“Huh?” Shane twisted to blink at him for a moment before realization clicked in. “Oh. Uh, I went to North Dakota. For Vaughn.” 

“North Dakota? Where is that?” 

Shane smiled, always amused by Ilya’s refusal to learn anything about American geography between New York and Los Angeles. “In the middle. North, actually pretty close to Canada. Saskatchewan, though.” 

“Mm,” Ilya grunted, letting Shane see what he thought of each of these facts about North Dakota. 

“Yeah, uh…” Shane hesitated in a way that made Ilya look over at him with interest. There was an odd expression on his face, something caught between shyness and unease. 

“Carter’s moms actually had a wedding. Since, uh, same sex marriage is legal here in the States now.” 

It was probably the last thing Ilya had expected him to say. So all he could offer in return was, “Oh.” 

It wasn’t that he found it difficult to imagine Shane at a wedding between two women—his paranoia about himself had never impacted the way he treated other people. Ilya had never seen him be anything other than kind and polite—to other people, at least, he was always an asshole to Ilya. And he knew enough about Shane to say that he was open and tolerant as a personal philosophy about the world. 

The difficult part, though, was imagining how Shane had actually felt about all of it when he’d been there—and how he felt about the idea of it now. 

“What did you think of it?” Ilya asked abruptly, before he could stop himself. 

Shane blinked twice at the question. His eyes darted across the room, and Ilya could see a small motion in his cheek where he was clearly biting down on the flesh inside. But Ilya stayed silent, allowing him the time and space to think about his answer. 

“It was good,” he finally answered. “They’ve been together for a really long time, for like 30 years, and they have two kids. It’s crazy that they couldn’t get married before.” 

Ilya kept waiting, because Shane was still chewing on his cheek.

“It was really nice,” he said after another long moment. “I had a really nice time.” 

There was too much in this, actually. Suddenly Ilya could feel the weight of an unspoken emotion in the air—with both of them now thinking of the picture of the beautiful place that Shane had sent him, where he’d watched two women who had loved each other for 30 years declare their love. Where he had thought of Ilya. 

Ilya knew that saying anything else about it would send Shane rushing out of the room immediately. It was too much, so soon after they had just seen each other again. After the spring, after the phone call in Paris, it was too much. 

So he seized upon something else, instead. “Saskatchewan.” 

Shane blinked up at him quickly. “How do you know how to say that?” 

Ilya laughed, stretching his legs out on the bed. “World Juniors 2008, Hollander. All of my friends went, were saying the word everywhere for months before and after. Saskatchewan.” 

“I would have gone, too,” he added. “We would have beat Canada if I had, definitely.” 

“No fucking way,” said Shane automatically. But when Ilya looked at him, he didn’t seem angry. He was staring back up at Ilya, and Ilya knew they were both thinking about the same thing—playing against each other in Saskatchewan, meeting on the ice at 17, instead of in a random gym in Los Angeles. 

Over the years, Ilya had broken himself from the habit of imagining alternate paths his life could have taken. From Shane’s face, though, he was thinking about this one with great interest. And so for a moment, Ilya allowed himself to think about it too: a cold, foreign place with a name he could barely pronounce, and a first glimpse of the face now in front of him. 

Shane looked away first, and Ilya was sure that this would bring the end to their afternoon. But Shane was full of surprises today.

“Hey, do you have anything to eat?” He asked. “I’m really fucking hungry.” 

“Yes, come on.” Ilya rolled out of bed, reaching down for his underwear. “We will find something you won’t whine about.” 

“Fuck you, dude, I don’t whine.” Shane followed suit, rolling the other way to take off the towel he’d brought out from the shower and to swipe his clothes from the ground.

"What would you say you are doing right now?"

Ilya ducked, as the clothes came flying towards his face. It was fine. It let him hide his smile.  


_____

Are you running tomorrow?

Shane H
Yeah, probably around 7.

7???????????
I have fallen to my knees
7 a.m.
Not 5:30, not 6
He has come back from Canada a changed man 
Does this mean you go to sleep past 10 p.m. now???

Shane H
I’m actually going to sleep right now so I can turn my phone off and not have to listen to this shit. 

See you at 7

Shane H
I’m not actually going to sleep right now. It’s not even dark out.
See you at 7

I know you have a little sleep mask 
And maybe a little cap 

Shane H
Fuck you 

Like boring little sleepy mouse

Shane H
Actually, I’m going to run at 6.

See you at 7, big interesting not sleepy mouse!

Shane H
See you at 7, extremely annoying idiot. 

Shane H
This is the thing I use to roll my calves when I need it. The brand isn’t really important, I’ve seen other ones that work well… but this is the one I have.

So helpful about all of life’s little aches and pains 

Shane H
Whatever. Maybe it’ll help you run more than 3 miles next time. 

Hey! I’m not in preseason for anything, my only job is keeping myself sexy

Shane H
Good job 

Woke up sweaty remembering you dont listen to music

Shane H
Wow, you couldn’t think of anything more interesting to dream of? 

Give me some other ideas then

Shane H
If you’re free in an hour I could tell you in person.

Yes
Ok!

[LINK: Instagram - pizza rat]
Hollander pls look at this rat 

Shane H
?
Wait, is that a slice of pizza??? 

Yes, I love him. 
Do you think he went back to get it after he dropped it? 

Shane H
That is actually incredibly disgusting. What station is this? 

Ugh you are so boring
He is taking it to his teenage adoptive children. 

Shane H
Is that a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reference? 

Obviously.
He is auditioning for Master Splinter role
Live action version

Shane H
Probably shouldn’t have dropped the pizza, then.
Definitely not getting the part.  

Wow don’t be rude to him, he is so small! 

Shane H
Maybe you should put him in touch with your HBO buddies to see if they can do anything for him 

Someone is jealous about my television debut, I am hearing

Shane H
They could always give him his own show if TMNT falls through. 
What do you think his famous line would be? “Big tail, great slice” maybe?

Oh you think you’re so fucking funny 

Shane H
Actually, yeah, I do think that was pretty funny

Keep laughing, Hollander

Shane H
I literally will

_____

OCTOBER 2015, NEW YORK CITY

The sudden windfall of opportunities to see each other felt like a resurgence of everything they’d had before. Ilya still didn’t know what it was, but he was holding on tightly to it this time. 

He was still traveling too much, but there were no more silences. They texted all the time, sometimes about interesting things but usually about bullshit. They talked on the phone now, too, when Shane was in the car driving back from the training facility, when Ilya was sitting around waiting to be called onto a set. 

And he was back in New York, too. The distance never stretched on too long, the conversations always picking up where they left off, whether by phone or in person. It was like the first half of the year had never happened. 

Svetlana didn’t comment on it, but he could tell from her assessing eyes that she had noticed it—the phone always in his hands, when his eyes cut to the scores scrolling along the bottom of the screen when ESPN was on. And, of course, when he’d suggested that they all get together again in the city. 

It took a few weeks to arrange it, but they finally found the time to meet again—the first time since last December, when Shane had abruptly left. 

Ilya and Svetlana arrived at the bar first, since Shane was coming from a game. Svetlana had selected the place, insisting that it was because she had better taste than Ilya. But judging from the sleek private booths in the dimly lit back room where they’d been seated, Ilya thought it might have been more than that. He thought she might have spent some effort trying to pick a bar where Shane might be comfortable, that might ensure he didn’t run away again. Ilya didn’t know how he felt about that, exactly, so he didn’t say anything at all. 

«Oh my God,» she said suddenly, from across the table where she’d been scrolling on her phone. Ilya looked up at the exclamation, trying to see what she was looking at without any luck—the angle was all wrong. 

«What?» 

«Have you seen this? Fuck me, he looks hot.» Despite the question, Svetlana didn’t loosen her grip on the phone. She stared down the screen, fixated, until Ilya’s hand reaching across the table became too insistent for her to ignore. 

She turned the mobile around so that he could see it, skimming her finger backwards across the screen to restart the video clip she’d been watching. 

Whatever Ilya had expected, it wasn’t a clip of post-game press from MSG. And it certainly wasn’t Shane looking like that. 

«Fuck,» Svetlana swore under her breath again, even staring at the clip from upside down. «I knew he was good looking, but not like that. Who told him to get that haircut?»

«I did, obviously,» Ilya said before he could help it, because he had. But even he hadn’t expected the results to come out like that. 

He didn’t know what had possessed him to send Shane the link to the hair salon—well, no, he did; but he would never admit it to anyone, especially not Svetlana. But, okay, it had been Luc Duguay, Svetlana’s old boyfriend, who had shown up on Ilya’s Instagram feed recently with a new hairstyle. 

Immediately, his mind had jumped to Shane. Not because they looked anything alike, but because of one time, a couple of years ago, when Shane’s hair had grown just long enough to fall over his forehead similar to Duguay’s in the picture that Ilya had spent too long staring at. 

But that had just given him the initial inspiration. The real reason Ilya directed Shane to Salon Mott was because of that fucking barber in Ottawa—assuming it even was a single barber. For all Ilya knew, Shane flew all the way to Canada to visit one of those places he could walk in and get a quick haircut for $20 from whoever was available. It would certainly explain why his hair had never changed in the five years Ilya had known him. 

There was nothing wrong with it, necessarily. Shane’s good looks would shine through no matter what his hair looked like. But looking at the phone screen still cradled in Svetlana’s palm—like she was so entranced by the sight of him that she refused to give it up—Ilya felt a burst of vindication at how right he had been. 

He felt something else, too, underneath the table and inside of his jeans, and it was taking everything in his power to make sure it wasn’t obvious. 

Shane’s physical presence in the bar erased any hope of that, though. Ilya didn’t know what alerted him to his appearance; his head was turned the other way, and Shane was still across the room. It must have been some strange sixth sense about the sudden entrance of an extremely attractive person. 

Ilya’s head swiveled around, catching sight of him near the expansive bar. Even in the dim room, Shane drew all of the light to him. 

He was wearing his usual kind of outfit, jeans and a simple t-shirt underneath the brown jacket that he favored when the weather was cooler. His skin was slightly flushed, a result of the walk to get here, or maybe just his usual nerves at entering a crowded space. From across the room, Ilya let himself look at all of the parts of Shane that he liked to look at—his eyes, the smooth planes of his face, his soft lips. And the hair, the fucking hair. 

He looked like a fucking heartthrob, and he had probably done little more than swipe his hands through his hair after showering, possibly only in the locker room at Madison Square Garden. 

The world was lucky that Shane Hollander had no idea about the power that he held. None of them would survive it, if he ever figured it out, let alone if he ever tried to wield it with intention. 

«Are you going to be able to keep your shit together?» Svetlana asked in a low voice. 

«Me?» His head swung around in her direction again, and he glared across the table. «Who between the two of us has been babbling about him for thirty minutes?» 

«Christ, he looks so fucking good,» Svetlana muttered under her breath as Shane approached. 

Ilya responded with exactly the withering scoff she deserved. She ignored him, hopping up from the table to greet Shane with a hug and a happy exclamation. 

He couldn’t do the same thing, of course, even if he’d wanted to. Instead, he stayed in the booth with his arm draped across the back of the plush seat, and regarded them as they embraced. 

Shane looked back at him from over Svetlana’s shoulder. Ilya could see the tension in his jaw, at odds with the small smile twitching at the corner of his lips. There was a small crease between his eyes, which seemed darker than usual. 

So. He knew he looked good, too. 

Ilya didn’t bother with a real greeting. He moved to the inside of the booth when Svetlana finally let Shane out of her arms. Hollander shrugged out of his coat, hanging it on the hook attached to the booth, and slid in next to Ilya. 

He barely heard the conversation before Svetlana got up to get them drinks, even though he apparently participated in it. He was too focused on the bulk of Shane’s body, a constant heat source, especially in this proximity. Ilya made some kind of joke about Shane being an asshole, but his mind—and dick—were firmly attuned to Shane’s thigh pressing firmly against his own. 

He watched Shane’s eyes follow Svetlana, and then rove around the ornately decorated room before finally coming back to him. Ilya held his gaze for a moment, then let himself look at Shane again—much closer this time. The faint flush crept back into Shane’s cheeks under the examination, and Ilya watched his throat bob with an uncertain swallow. It took whatever was left of his self-control not to lean forward and put his mouth on it. 

“So,” he said. “You went to the salon.” 

“Yeah.” And in a rare move, Shane actually surprised him. 

He blinked as Shane reached over, curling his hand around Ilya’s water glass. He brought it to his mouth, keeping it at his lips for just a second before taking a long drink. A few drops escaped from the corner of his mouth, dribbling down to his chin. Ilya stared as he reached up to dab them away. It was like a fucking porno. 

“People seem to think it looks okay,” Shane said. Ilya didn’t even remember what they were talking about. 

Instead, he watched as Shane gently placed the glass on the table again. His long fingers remained wrapped around the short glass for another moment, before shifting over to rest palm-down on the flat surface of the table. 

Ilya didn’t know what the fuck was happening right now. It was hard to think, with all of his blood flowing into his dick. After a moment he inhaled slowly, rolling his shoulders back. 

He didn’t know what possessed him to do it, other than the fact that he was now so hard under the table that he was in danger of needing to excuse himself—and he might have, if it wouldn’t have been immediately obvious as soon as he’d stood up. 

But he didn’t do that. Instead, inexplicably, he reached up to the back of Shane’s head, wrapping his hand around a fistful of hair, tugging it tightly away from his scalp. The new style made it easy to get a good grip, though he was certain that hadn’t been the stylist’s primary motivation when giving him the cut. 

Shane’s eyes widened at the sudden pull. Ilya watched the expression carefully, taking in the flared nostrils and the parted lips. 

He wanted to keep his hand here all night, just to see Shane looking like this for the next hour. But he let go quickly, knowing he only had a second, maybe two, before Hollander’s panic overrode the obvious arousal that had just rushed into him. 

Ilya dropped his hand, reaching for his water glass. He took a careful sip, watching Shane. 

His mouth was still open as he leaned forward, curling himself over the table and leaning onto his elbows. Ilya didn’t need to be an expert in Shane’s body—though he was at least a very advanced student—to know that he was struggling to hide how hard he was. 

At least now they were both dealing with the same problem. But Ilya didn’t shift away, instead pressing his leg more closely against Shane’s. They both stayed silent until Svetlana returned a few moments later with their drinks. 

She fixed a disapproving look on Ilya as soon as she was close enough to see them clearly. He could tell exactly what her eyes were telling him, without ever opening her mouth: Really? You fucking idiot. 

A fucking idiot, maybe. But one who was going to be fucking Shane Hollander very soon, if he had any say in it. And until then, it was going to be the only thing in his mind. 


_____

DECEMBER 2015, NEW YORK CITY

“Holy shit,” Shane breathed. “Oh my God. Okay, wa—okay, fuck, fuck, stop. Too sensitive.” 

He finally pushed Ilya’s head away from him. Ilya, pleased to have made him come twice, allowed himself to be pushed. 

He rolled onto his back, dropping down with his head still level with Shane’s hips. When he looked to the side, he was treated to the pretty picture of Shane’s cock, softened and spent, his legs and abdomen shining with a combination of cum, spit, and lube. Ilya could feel his self-satisfaction evolving into something closer to smugness at the sight. 

“I can’t move,” Shane mumbled from above him. 

Ilya tilted his head up to look towards his face, just in time to see his eyes falling shut. He sat up slowly, leaning forward to stretch his back and shoulders for a moment, then shifted to rest on the pillow next to Shane. 

“You haven’t died, have you?” He asked, voice hushed and secretive. He smiled when he saw Shane’s mouth quirk up at the edges. 

“Not yet,” he responded, eyes still closed. 

“Okay, good,” Ilya said, sighing out as he dug his head back into the pillow. “Because that was good, I think we should do it again.” 

This time Shane opened his eyes, trying and failing to keep himself from smiling. “What, have sex?” 

“Yes, exactly,” Ilya replied, making his voice earnest, enjoying Shane’s indulgent eyeroll. “I think we should have sex again, maybe, some time.” 

“I’ll think about it,” Shane quipped, letting his eyes fall shut again. 

Ilya gave him a moment to relax and slip into a peaceful rest, not quite a doze—and then shifted closer so that his lips were touching Shane’s ear. 

“That’s not what you were saying a few minutes ago,” he murmured. “Then, it was only, fuck me harder, I want more, keep giving it to me, I love your c—” 

Hollander clamped his big hand over Ilya’s big mouth, stifling the best of the phrases. Ilya pulled his head away, leaning in to playfully clamp his teeth down around one of Shane’s fingers. 

“Ow, fuck,” Shane snatched his hand back, frowning. 

Ilya moved his head onto his own pillow, his body relaxing into the mattress as he enjoyed the feeling of looseness in his limbs. 

“How was your trip?” He asked, letting his own eyes fall shut this time. “Montreal, right?” 

“Yeah. Uh, it was good.” 

“Is a good city,” Ilya considered. “Have only been there once, but I liked it. Good bakeries. Good clubs.” 

“Is that how you measure good cities? Bakeries and clubs?” Shane asked. Even with his eyes closed, Ilya knew what his face would look like—judgmental and intrigued in equal amounts. 

“Yes. Better measure than hockey teams and if hotel mini fridge has ginger ale.” 

“Fuck you,” Shane responded automatically. 

He fell silent for a moment, but Ilya could hear him thinking through the pause. He kept his eyes closed, waiting for the inevitable question that was still being formulated. 

“Do you have favorite bakeries here?” 

The question was an unexpected one, and he almost wanted to ask why Shane wanted to know—to make a joke about whether he was going to buy Ilya a cake to thank him for the good fuck. But he held himself back, choosing sincerity instead. 

“Mmm. The best places are in Brooklyn, I think. Russian bakeries, I mean,” he clarified. “But I like to get a croissant at the place across from your apartment.” 

“Really?” 

From the surprise in Shane’s voice, Ilya would have bet money that he had never been to the bakery, let alone had one of their croissants. He might have considered bringing him one, if he ever thought that Shane would eat it. 

He could still hear Shane thinking. When he spoke again, it was softer than before. 

“There was a place near where I grew up in Ottawa where we would get Japanese things. It wasn’t a bakery, it was a market, but it had baked stuff, too. I always liked that one.” 

Ilya was surprised by the turn in conversation, by the piece of history that Shane had suddenly offered. He barely held himself back from echoing Shane, asking, really? 

Instead, he asked, “What did you like from there?” 

Shane’s memories filled the silence this time, and Ilya wished he could hear them described out loud—he wondered what the world had looked like through the eyes of a younger version of the man laying beside him. 

“Mochi,” Shane said finally. “I really liked getting mochi.” 

Ilya’s eyes were still closed, which was good, probably, to obscure how quickly and suddenly he was consumed with the urge to find the place in this city with the best mochi and to bring it into this apartment right now. 

“Is there a place here that you like to go?” He asked, impressed with himself for keeping his voice normal and steady. 

“No. I mean, I haven’t looked for one. I guess I could find one. I’m sure there are good places. I should look.” 

“Yes,” Ilya agreed. “You should.” 

He meant that Shane should find a bakery, or a market, where he could get something that he liked to eat. He also meant that Shane should do something simply because he liked it, because he wanted to, because he didn’t always have to deny himself from every little thing that could have brought him joy. But Ilya left it there. 

Shane left it there, too. After a moment, though, Ilya felt a warm weight on his chest. When he blinked his eyes open and looked down, Shane’s hand was resting above his heart, fingers curled slightly, brushing against the chain looped around his neck.

His mind felt blank as he reached up with his own hand, gently taking Shane’s wrist to lift it from his chest. He moved his grip, lightly tracing his fingers across Shane’s, brushing the pads of their fingers together, running his thumb over his palm. 

He still wasn’t thinking as he pulled the hand up closer, all the way to his mouth. Ilya gently kissed the tips of Shane’s fingers, one by one. He made it all the way to the last before his consciousness came back into his body, and he realized what he’d just done. 

Ilya suddenly felt hot all over—overexposed. He didn’t know what the fuck he’d been thinking. 

But when he finally turned his head, he saw that Shane was looking back at him. 

It was hard to describe the expression swimming in the depths of his brown eyes; Ilya wasn’t sure that he’d seen it before. So he let himself soak it in, trying to preserve the look in his mind so that he might return to it later. 

Everything sank in only a moment later, though. 

Ilya had been waiting, for some time now, for some kind of understanding about what Shane thought about him. He had been waiting for Shane to look openly at him, instead of always turning away. He had been waiting for Shane to look back.

And here it was: two beautiful eyes assessing him, fixed onto his own gaze instead of traveling around the room like they often did. Shane was looking back. 

It was only fitting, then, for Ilya Rozanov’s cowardice, dormant for a little while now but never fully gone, to roar to life. 

“It’s late,” he blurted out. 

It was devastating, actually, to watch Shane blink, to see the flash of disappointment pass over his face and through his eyes. Ilya immediately burned with regret. 

Never mind, he wanted to say. Stay here. Don’t get up. Don’t go. 

“Shit, yeah,” Shane said, rolling over to look at the time on his phone. “I should go.” 

“Do you want food?” It was the best that Ilya could do, but it was a meager attempt to fix the moment he had just fucked up. 

“No, I really should go, I have practice early.” Shane sat up slowly, and Ilya wanted to yank him down again, hard enough to pull them both back in time to three minutes ago, before he had opened his big fucking mouth. 

“Okay,” he said, hating himself with every fiber of his being for at least this brief moment. 

“I’m just going to clean up first.” Shane looked down at himself, taking in his sticky torso and legs. Ilya was surprised that it had taken him this long to notice. 

“Yes, you should shower,” he agreed. “You are covered in… well. Many things.” 

This, at least, was a piece of normalcy, and it made Shane snort in quiet laughter. 

“Gross,” he said, grimacing down at Ilya. But whatever he saw in Ilya’s face made the expression soften, and—improbably—made Shane lean down to kiss him. 

If Shane had intended for it to be brief, he would be disappointed. Ilya reached up immediately, holding him firmly behind the neck to keep him in place, opening his mouth and seeking entrance into Shane’s. He kissed him slowly for a long moment, letting his tongue caress the inside of his mouth, trying to take them back in time through at least this one small action. 

Shane looked dazed when they finally broke apart. Satisfied by the expression, Ilya released him, allowing him to roll away after a moment and get up to go to the bathroom. 

Ilya remained in bed while he listened to the sound of the shower turning on. His mind was reeling. 

It had just been a look. Though Ilya knew some things about Shane, he could never presume to be able to read his mind. There were thousands—millions—of possible meanings. 

And for everything Ilya knew about sex, he was a stranger to intimacy. Even if there had been a discernable meaning in the look—if it was anything close to what he thought it might have been—he still had no clue what to actually do about it. 

No, he thought, as he listened to the water running in the bathroom. That wasn’t true. 

He didn’t know exactly what to do, and he didn’t know exactly what he wanted. But he knew enough to understand that if Shane was looking back at him, maybe there was a possibility between them that he didn’t think had existed before.  

A possibility of what, exactly—he would figure that out later. And how to get there—he would figure that out later, too. 

But, he decided, as he sat up and looked at the mess they’d made of his bed, the first step would be to try. He could do that. He was really fucking good at doing that. 

If there was a possibility with Shane Hollander, he was going to try and make something of it. 

Chapter End Notes

The whole point of this fic was to give a little more context to what was actually going on with Ilya in Into the Blue. Even though that story was only from Shane’s POV, I knew what Ilya was doing (and thinking) throughout the whole narrative. I was looking forward to fleshing it out some more here.

But I’m not going to lie—it’s hard! I have worked very hard not to retcon anything that I already had in mind when I wrote Shane's POV. But as much as I knew how Ilya felt at different moments in that story, writing him getting from point A to point B can be difficult!

I just needed to get that off my chest, because Ilya's POV sometimes feels messier than Shane's. But after sitting with it for awhile, I think that is the nature of the character. He's messy sometimes. (And I think that is okay.)

(Also, for anyone with more intimate knowledge of Japanese markets in and around Ottawa in the 90s, forgive me if Shane’s memories were not realistic to the place and time. My other choice for Shane's dessert memory was a vanilla cake with "not too much" chocolate frosting, but I really wanted to use mochi.)

 

Next time: A hat trick at Madison Square Garden. …Oh yeah! And London.