Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Jackie Pike, Rose Landry, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-10 Completed: 2026-02-27 Words: 61,525 Chapters: 6/6

i know where to draw the line

Summary

“Hollander’s Metros have had a challenging few years, with back-to-back knee injuries and a concussion keeping the two-time Stanley Cup winner and Olympic gold medalist off the ice for three consecutive postseason runs. Hollander is apparently back to fighting trim, but everyone’s wondering if that will still be true come April. The Metros have promised that they’re behind their franchise star one hundred percent, but there are signs they might be hedging their bets. The Metros announced last week that they have penned a deal with San Francisco’s dynamic young Russian star, center Ilya Rozanov. The move has sent shockwaves through MLH, as San Francisco was widely expected to sign a contract extension with Rozanov, who became a restricted free agent in June.”

Notes

Or, the 2016-2017 MLH season in a world where Shane was born three years earlier and Ilya was born three years later.

Content warning for Shane Hollander’s myriad wrong opinions about both food and his diet. As always, read safely!

Chapter 1

Shane plays Ilya Rozanov five times—technically six, if you count the game in which Shane plays forty-seven seconds before being concussed, which Shane does not—before becoming his teammate. Shane remembers him as being very, very fast and mean in a way that had been kind of funny, probably because Shane was not the one being informed by a rookie in loud, accented English that next game he should remember to take off his skate guards and maybe then he wouldn’t be so fucking slow. Hayden had not thought this was funny.

Obviously Shane has seen Rozanov play way more than five times. Shane watches as much of the season as he can while it’s happening, usually on his iPad in various airport lounges, sometimes on the enormous TV that his interior designer had picked out for his condo in Montreal. Rozanov is unbelievably fast, playfully dextrous, and exceptionally good at drawing penalties from everyone but especially New York and Detroit for some reason. He likes to hog the puck. He can casually talk shit for basically an entire game, but he pops out his mouthguard (always left side first) when he wants to make sure whatever insult his weird little brain has cooked up will be fully intelligible to his victim. He is cocky and charming when interviewed in English and deadly serious in Russian, as far as Shane can tell from YouTube closed captions.

Shane always reviews tape on the new guys in the week leading up to training camp, trying to get a sense of how he thinks the coaches will integrate them. The current Metro style of play is not really suited for someone like Rozanov–their recent rookies and trades have been uniformly even-tempered and consistent: two reserved Swedish defensemen, three no-nonsense Québécois forwards, and one kind of ditzy but still solid Ivy League goaltender whose butterfly would have impressed a Soviet gymnast–and Shane has no idea what they’re going to do with him. What would Shane do? Build a totally new second line around him, probably; get some guys up from the farm team, see if somebody young and speedy can keep up on his right wing and use a solid, experienced guy to anchor his left. Davis, maybe? Or Johnson? Shane makes a couple of notes to this effect on the legal pad tucked up under his elbow. Keeping notes while he’s watching tape helps him digest what he’s watching. There’s a whole stack of scribbled-over legal pads in his home office, as physical a memorial of Shane’s years as a Metro as the trophy room at the cottage in Ontario.

Shane always reviews tape on the new guys. But he goes back after he’s done with the whole roster and watches some more of Rozanov: deep cuts on YouTube; alarmingly crisp rips of games from when he was playing with Dynamo as a teenager because that was only four years ago (fuck is Shane getting old); the last three All-Star weekends, which Shane had missed due to, in consecutive order, a fucked-up ACL, a fucked-up MCL, and the fucking flu. Shane finds himself pausing and replaying the same couple of clips over and over again, when Rozanov’s coach sends him over the boards and he settles not into the center to trash-talk during the face-off, but left. Bored-looking, popping his mouthguard in and out, using his stick to stretch his shoulders, and then, at the whistle, in a sudden, explosive burst: a fucking predator. 

~

The first day of training camp is always a little bit too much like high school orientation for Shane to feel totally comfortable. This is embarrassing, because Shane is twenty-eight years old and should have grown out of being socially awkward by now, probably. But he hasn’t, and at this point it seems likely that he’ll go to his grave this way. He gets through his breakfast rounds the same way he always does, which is by repeatedly reminding himself that being friendly and welcoming is literally part of his job.

First stop is the rookies. “Hey, nice to see you,” he says to the table of kids that have bussed down from Laval. Unless they’ve undergone some dramatic growth in the last three months Shane suspects that all of them are going to be back on the bus at the end of camp. He had not exactly been overwhelmed by the tape on any of them, with the possible exception of Tsuzuki. But he shakes all of their hands and tries to commit their names to memory.

After the kids, it’s two tables of familiar European veterans, split apart into Swedish-speaking and French-speaking, probably because everybody’s English is a little bit rusty coming back from summer break. Shane does a round of hellos and how-are-the-kids and agrees that Johanssen’s new canoe does indeed look very impressive for something he’d carved by hand in his backyard (what the fuck, Shane mouths across the table to Ahlqvist, who volubly rolls his eyes) and does not protest when Meier informs him that his French is getting medieval, because it makes everybody laugh, as jokes about Shane’s supposedly Québécois accent always do.

Shane has mostly finished up and is lingering to chat with Hayden and JJ when he feels a little prickle across the back of his neck. He turns his head and sees that Theriault is making a beeline for him, weaving into the spaces between tables and clapping guys on the shoulder as he goes. He’s being trailed by somebody half a head taller than him; a big shadow with a cap of dark blond curls.

“Hollander,” Theriault says, “have you met Rozanov yet?” He doesn’t stop walking or wait for Shane to answer, just says, “Excuse me, I have to catch Marc,” and keeps going. Typical Theriault. 

Shane huffs to himself, then pastes on a smile and offers his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Rozanov is just barely taller than Shane, and young enough that he’s still coming out of summer conditioning lean and triangular, wearing a short-sleeved shirt unbuttoned over a white vest top that accentuates the difference in breadth between his shoulders and his hips. There’s a cocky little smirk tipping up the corner of his mouth. “Nice, yes,” he agrees as he shakes Shane’s hand. His grip is firm and dry. He’s wearing a Garmin, Shane notices immediately, because the screen wakes up at the twist of his wrist. “Are you a runner?” Shane asks; a stupid fucking thing to say to a professional athlete, he realizes only after it’s already out of his mouth.

But somehow Rozanov seems to understand his meaning. The smirk breaks into a slightly less predatory grin. “You are stalking me, yes?”

Shane taps his own, bare, wrist. “MARQ, right? I got my mom one for Christmas last year.”

“She is in better shape than you, am guessing,” Rozanov says.

Shane laughs. After watching all that tape, he can’t help feeling like maybe this is Rozanov taking it easy on him. It’s nice to know that the guy can modulate his own dickish impulses; it means he’ll have an easier time fitting in. “My knee’s not running a sub-three marathon these days,” he admits. “But my mom is, so you’re not wrong.”

Rozanov gives him what can only be described as a once-over assessment. His gaze lingers on Shane’s lower body, maybe looking at where the supposedly flesh-colored tape frames the knobby jut of Shane’s left knee peeking out from under the hem of his shorts. The tape is bone-white against Shane’s tan. He’d done a lot of yoga outdoors this summer, most of it barely clothed because he’d been fucking roasting (thanks for nothing climate change). He’s keenly aware that his freckles have accordingly spread like a rash to cover his shoulders and thighs.

There’s a funny little wriggle in Shane’s stomach. Probably he’s hungry. He’s been too busy doing rounds to eat anything. “Have you had breakfast yet?” he asks Rozanov.

“I do not do this,” Rozanov says.

Shane stares at him blankly. “Sorry, what?”

“I do not do this,” Rozanov repeats. He makes a little scissor gesture with his forefinger and index finger. “Just–you know. Smoke. Can of coke.”

“Are you fucking joking?” Shane says.

Rozanov barks out a laugh. “No!” he says. “But I am very funny, so it is worth checking.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s not happening,” Shane says. He jerks his head towards the buffet line. “C’mon.”

Rozanov trails after him. He has an expression on his face not dissimilar to the one Jackie wears when Ruby tries to convince her of something objectively incorrect, like, Mom, did you know that actually dinosaurs aren’t real, people just put a bunch of bones together and made them all up. Which had at least shown that she’d been paying attention when Shane had taken her and Jade to see the traveling dinosaur exhibit at the Science Centre, even if she hadn’t actually understood the part about the history of the elasmosaurus.

Shane picks up a hot plate from the steam tray at the end of the table and dumps two scoops of scrambled eggs and one scoop of the weird spicy tofu scramble into two separate piles in the middle of it. He hands this plate to Rozanov, who takes it and then stares down at it like he’s an alien who has never seen human food before. “What is this,” he says.

“Breakfast,” Shane says, handing him a napkin roll of utensils. “Try the scramble, it’s actually really good.”

“Scrambled, yes, but this?” Rozanov says, pointing at the tofu.

“Also scramble,” Shane says. “You’ve been in San Francisco for a while, right? Do you like Mexican food?”

“This is not Mexican food,” Rozanov replies with a lot of confidence for a born and bred Russian who hadn’t even been living in Southern California. San Francisco is basically in Oregon, and that’s just South Vancouver. 

“It’s sort of like Mexican food,” Shane says. “They put this spice blend on it–like, cumin and stuff.” He picks up his own plate and fills it with two heaping scoops of scramble, which he prefers to the eggs because the texture isn’t as rubbery and it always has lots of vegetables mixed in–peppers and onions always, spinach sometimes, including today. “Sprouted grain or rye?” he asks, shuffling down the buffet table.

Rozanov is still skeptically eyeing the scramble; he’s lifted the plate to eye level and is scrutinizing it, turning the plate like that will somehow reveal some new piece of information that will help him make sense of its contents. “You mean toast?” he asks, blinking away to look at Shane.

“Yes,” Shane says.

“What is this one?” Rozanov asks, pointing at the basket full of soft white bread.

“Basically poison,” Shane says. He puts the back of his hand against Rozanov’s wrist and pushes it so it’s pointing towards the middle basket. “This is like–whole wheat, basically.” He nudges Rozanov’s wrist again, to point at the last basket. “And this is rye. I think it’s actually limpa.”

Rozanov says something in Russian, sounding pleased. Shane infers that he approves of this bread; he uses a pair of tongs to drop four pieces onto Rozanov’s plate. “What was that again?” he asks as he puts a couple of slices of multi-grain toast onto his own plate.

“Borodino,” Rozanov says more slowly, enunciating carefully.

“Borodino?” Shane repeats.

“Da,” Rozanov says. “Looks good. Not like shit California bread.”

There’s trays of smoothies at the end of the buffet table, lined up in colorful rows of tall, narrow, sweating glasses. “Green apple,” Shane says, “chocolate, and the last one is strawberry-banana.”

“Like, dessert?” Rozanov says, sounding dubious.

“No, like protein and vitamins,” Shane says. “I can’t tell if this is, like, you making fun of me or not.”

“No, no, you are very good host,” Rozanov assures him. “You will also wipe ass for me, yes?”

Shane doesn’t even think before kicking him in the ankle. Rozanov barks out a loud laugh and jumps out of the way, holding his plate protectively close to his chest. “I see how it is,” he says, still laughing. “Abusive environment here in Montreal. Hollander rules with iron fist.”

“Get a smoothie, asshole,” Shane tells him, pretending not to be laughing, too. “Green apple is the best, by the way.”

Predictably, Rozanov picks a chocolate one. Those always taste like chalk, but Shane warned him so it’s his funeral.

~

Once upon a time, when he’d still been on his first contract and the idea of playing hockey professionally had felt like a massive practical joke that the universe was going to reveal as such at any moment (Psych! Gotcha! Better go find a real job, asshole!), Shane had really liked training camp. It’s a high-pressure environment with a very clear and obtainable goal: to be the best at every exercise, most of which Shane had conveniently already spent the last decade perfecting. He always came out of summer conditioning with an insane elation, like he was the Road Runner from Looney Tunes–zippy, focused, impossible to catch–and putting on skates and playing hockey again focused and concentrated that sensation until it was a buoyant bubble under Shane’s ribs, carrying him like a fishing float deep into the season.

Shane still likes training camp just fine these days, but he’s not twenty anymore. It’s been a few years since he’s felt anything close to being in the best shape of his life and he’s had to adapt his play to reflect the fact that his left knee is never going to be one hundred percent trustworthy ever again. He’s still better than everyone else in MLH; this was true when he was twenty and it is still true now, although Shane is aware that he’s a generational talent and, by definition, another generation will soon have stars who will outshine him. That might even be happening already, because it’s obvious a week into camp that Rozanov is a really fucking good hockey player. The tape hadn’t successfully captured him, Shane discovers. It’s different to experience him out on the ice; his ferociousness is not something Shane sees with his eyes so much as feels on the back of his neck. It’s like Rozanov can make the electrons around him vibrate faster via sheer proximity and willpower.

Practice wraps up a little late on Tuesday, after a round robin of 3-on-3 picket fences; all the guys are in a hurry to get to the showers, so there’s good-natured shoving and complaining as they tromp off of the ice. Rozanov’s in the middle of the pack, having been forcibly adopted by a group of other guys in their mid-twenties who seem excited to show him Montreal’s electro-house scene, or so Shane has intuited based on their (exuberantly loud) planning for the weekend. Shane goes in the opposite direction, skating across the chewed-up ice to where Theriault and his little knot of trainers and coaching staff are all whispering furiously amongst themselves.

Shane is still a little winded from his round, which had been the very last one. “Holy shit,” he says breathlessly as he stops in a shower of ice. The coaches all turn to look at him. “Did you see that? At the end?”

“Of course I saw it,” Theriault says tightly. His moustache is full-on vibrating. Shane has to blink a few times to be sure that’s actually happening and not just the result of his eyes unfocusing themselves from exhaustion. “Crisse!”

There’s a rush of noise after this, as all the assistant coaches begin to speak at once.

“He must have been practicing it. It was too perfect. Technically. The flip–”

“--is stupid, in a scrum he’s going to hit somebody in the face–”

“Well, he didn’t do it in a scrum, did he?”

“The regular season isn’t the fucking All-Star Game, stupid flashy shit like this is exactly why he drove everyone in San Francisco fucking nuts–”

“Put him on my left wing,” Shane says. When no one answers, he repeats himself, loudly: “Put him on my left wing.”

The two nearest assistant coaches whirl around to stare at him. There are five of them clumped up around Theriault; three of them are named Marc. One of the Marcs says, “Are you fucking kidding me.”

“Just for a few practices,” Shane says. “Just–to try it.”

“Is this, like, sabotage–?” a different Marc whispers.

Shane gives him a flat look and Marc flushes. “He’s a kid,” Shane says. “Seriously?” But anyway Marc’s opinion is irrelevant; it’s Theriault who has final say. Shane asks him, a little urgently, “Did you watch the 2014 World Juniors semi-final in Pardubice? Russia-Finland? End of the third, Finland is up one, Russia puts Rozanov on Krasnykh’s wing. Defensive zone draw. Rozanov scores in 3.8 seconds.”

“What?” Théo, the skating coach, says. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Shane says. “I watched it fourteen times.”

The tallest Marc says, “Tabarnak. Hollander, please, never change, you fucken psycho.”

“The once?” Theriault asks after a long, considering moment of moustache-wiggling.

“Six times, that I saw,” Shane says. He pulls off a glove and stuffs it into his armpit to count off on his fingers. “Three times in World Juniors–one of those was in Malmö–and then twice when he was with Dynamo, the second time for the whole game. And the Hanmerheads did it once, Winter Classic in Pittsburgh when he was a rookie. I think they were pretending it was a bit, but they killed two penalties doing it so I don’t know that Pittsburgh was laughing.”

“We’re rebuilding the second line,” Theriault says. It’s not no, fuck off and hit the showers, Hollander.

“You can still do that,” Shane points out. “This is what camp is for, right? Trying weird stuff? If it doesn’t work, you can still put him with Tootsy and Jones.”

“Who said we were–” one of the Marcs protests, only to be hushed by the other two.

“He can be hotheaded and stupid, so you want to anchor him with someone experienced,” Shane says. “That’s me. Let me anchor him.” For some reason he feels a little lightheaded as he says this; probably he’s dehydrated or something. And he really needs a fucking shower. He’s starting to itch from the sweat drying against the back of his neck.

The moustache stops dancing. Theriault is watching Shane with a narrow-eyed look, like that suspicious Muppet with the eyebrows. “All right,” he finally says. “We’ll try it.”

~

Shane is sitting in front of his locker, carefully taping his stick, when he feels the air next to him change from a body displacing it. He looks up just as a full ninety kilos of half-dressed Russian drops onto the bench next to Shane. “Scrimmage today,” Rozanov says; it’s not a question and he looks serious–or maybe just blank–as he says it.

“Yes,” Shane answers anyway, just in case.

“Coach says I am on Hollzy’s line,” Rozanov says. “This is you?”

“Are you pretending to be stupid for some specific reason?” Shane asks.

The blank cast of Rozanov’s expression cracks, his mouth twitching into a smirk. “Yes,” he says. “I must be stupid, because Theriault says I am on your line. Why put two centers on same line? This is some secret strategy known only to Metros?”

“You’re my left wing today,” Shane says, turning his attention back to his stick. Shane prefers not to be disturbed while doing this, or indeed while doing any equipment maintenance. He can’t always keep track of a conversation when he’s focused on something else. But there are only a few minutes left before they have to be out on the ice and Rozanov might be a dick but also seems to be a good kid, mostly, so the likelihood that he’s going to respond with a full bore tantrum is probably low.

“You run out of left wings?” Rozanov asks. “No more in fridge so you have to go to store?”

Shane uses a thumb to nudge a new band of tape into the correct position (3mm overlap). “Just trying something new,” he says distractedly.

“Why not Hollander on wing?” Rozanov demands. “I am taller, heavier. This is better for center.”

“I am, for the record, exactly one centimeter shorter than you,” Shane says. He smooths over the next band, and then the next. “I’ve played six years more than you, I’ve got more experience reading the play, and I’m your captain. All of which means, when I tell you we’re going to try something in practice, you should trust me to know what the fuck I’m talking about.” He bites off the end of tape and finishes with a twist of his wrist, an elongated smoothing sweep of his thumb to make sure the grip feels right.

Rozanov says, “This idea is yours.”

Shane puts down the roll of tape and looks at him. Rozanov’s bare torso is pale and dotted with haphazard speckles, like a fancy farmer’s market egg. Shane has been doing this for long enough that he would have been able to intuit Rozanov’s age from just his musculature and the way he moves. He’s never had a major injury. He plays fearless, aggressive, beautiful hockey, and he’s always just a hair too fast for his line. He won’t wait for them, which leaves gaps that other teams in the Pacific have been learning to exploit. He’s let himself get used to playing on his own. It’s a habit that Shane thinks San Francisco gave him; an expectation that his teammates would not be entirely reliable. Like everyone else on the planet, Shane had thought that San Francisco was fucking stupid for not signing Rozanov as an RFA; he just hadn’t realized why they’d done it. That it was because they had a ballistic missile and without the manual they didn’t know how to fucking aim it.

“Yeah,” Shane says. “I asked them to put you on my line.”

Shane generally finds eye contact to be overrated, but Rozanov is holding himself tensely and Shane has zero idea why. He flicks a look at Rozanov’s face, out of the corner of his eye, and he sees that Rozanov is staring at the side of Shane’s head with the unblinking intensity of a starving coyote. 

“Asked?” Rozanov says.

His voice is strained. What a weirdly perceptive question. 

“Told,” Shane admits. “I don’t make a habit of doing that, so if you’re worried–don’t be.”

Rozanov snorts and launches himself off of the bench. “Am worried zero percent,” he says. “Canadians always ask nicely, yes?” And then he says something in Russian that makes Popov whip his head around from across the room and bark something back at him. Rozanov shrugs, unabashed at the reprimand–if that had even been what it was–and he goes to pull on the rest of his gear.

~

Things don’t exactly click straightaway. For two days of drills and scrimmages—as Theriault deploys an uncharacteristic amount of patience—Shane sends Rozanov out and then tries to reel him back in, with mixed results. They play around with a few different guys, swapping in Couillard and then Meier and then Tsuzuki, just to see what might work, and it’s Tsuzuki who does the best, so he stays as the lines solidify on the second day. Hayden grabs Shane by the back of the neck as they’re leaving that night and forcibly drags him to his house for dinner to “talk it over,” which is the first moment it occurs to Shane that maybe Hayden, a lifelong Montreal Metro, is not excited to be bumped off of Shane’s wing by a mouthy twenty-two-year-old who thinks he’s hot shit and it’s possible if not probable that Shane should have given him a heads up first—fuck—so that drive shaves about four years off of Shane’s life. In the end though that’s not even the “it” Hayden had meant.

“Nobody owes me a spot on a specific line,” Hayden says, bouncing Amber on his knee as he attempts, unsuccessfully, to eat a forkful of steamed wild rice without spilling it all over the baby. “Least of all you. Do I wish Rozanov would mysteriously trip and fall into a giant dumpster full of flammable material? Sure. But that’s just because he’s a bag of fucking dicks. Fuck, Amber, no, Daddy is eating.”

“Two dollars!” Jackie hollers from the kitchen, where she’s insisted on going to fetch Shane another can of ginger ale. Shane suspects she is also taking this opportunity to pour herself a glass of wine, and it turns out he’s right; when she appears in the doorway, holding out a bright green can so Shane can grab it, her other hand is clutching a comically enormous glass that’s filled nearly to the brim with red wine.

“Wow,” Shane says. “I didn’t realize they made wine glasses that big.”

“I’ve pumped so much lately that we have like three full weeks of milk in the freezer,” Jackie says, and then she takes a swig out of her glass as she settles back into her chair. “I earned this glass. Hayden still hasn’t asked you, I bet.”

“Asked me what?” Shane says.

“I told him we’d talk it over after dinner!” Hayden protests. Amber squeals with excitement and makes a grab at his fork; grains of wild rice go flying. 

Jackie pointedly sips a mouthful of wine. “Everybody else finished dinner an hour ago,” she says.

Hayden huffs in frustration, puts down his fork, and then stands up and literally drops Amber down into Shane’s lap. Shane’s hands come up reflexively to catch the squirming baby, who is laughing delightedly. “You dick!” Shane hisses, wide-eyed.

“Want to be her godfather?” Hayden asks casually as he sits back down and finally begins to make real progress in his third attempt to finish his dinner.

“What?” Shane says, but then he’s distracted trying to settle Amber into a position where her pointy little heels aren’t digging into his spleen. For a fat little baby she sure does have some sharp edges. Shane untucks her feet and asks her, “Weren’t you supposed to go to sleep the same time as everybody else?” He puts a hand on her firmly rounded tummy and rubs it a little bit, which makes her burble and then sigh.

“Shane!” Hayden says. “C’mon man, pay attention!”

“Sorry, what?” Shane says, looking up. He feels Amber make a grab for the neck of his t-shirt and he catches her hand before she has the chance to yank on it and stretch it out. “None of that,” Shane tells her seriously, and then he blows a raspberry into the cup of her palm.

“Dude,” Hayden complains.

“I feel like probably this means he’s on board,” Jackie says.

“I’m not–I mean, I’m not, but are you guys? Religious?” Shane asks.

“Yes, kind of,” Hayden says, the same time Jackie says, “No,” and then they frown across the table at each other.

“My parents are,” Hayden corrects, “and they’re the ones who’ll take the kids if Jack and I die in a fiery car crash, so they’d like the kids to be baptized.”

“So that if their grandbabies also die in a fiery car crash they won’t go to hell,” Jackie explains. “Unlike their daughter-in-law.”

She takes a very long sip of her wine. It’s actually more like a gulp by the time she puts down the glass.

“You just have to promise during the service to watch over her and care for her,” Hayden explains. “And hold her while the priest gives her a dunk. Basically exactly like what you're doing now.”

Shane looks down at Amber. She’s blinking sleepily, her mouth pursed into a fussy little frown that Shane recognizes as being an exact miniaturized replica of the one Hayden makes when Shane leaves all of his skincare products lying around, cluttering up the bathroom counter when they’re on a road trip. Shane really loves all of Hayden’s kids; it’s been unbelievably wonderful to watch them all grow up. He might even like Ruby better than Hayden at this point. She’s extremely funny. It would be very easy to promise to watch over and take care of any one of Hayden and Jackie’s kids; Shane sort of feels like he’s already done that, silently, the first time he held each one of them just after they were born.

“Yes,” Shane says. “Thanks for asking me. I’m honored.”

“Oh, Shane,” Jackie says, and she blinks a few times, very quickly.

“Thanks, man!” Hayden says. And then, around an enormous mouthful of rice and what must now be stone-cold salmon, he adds, “Also, you’ll have to lie to the priest and tell him you’re Catholic.”

~

Shane does not sleep very well, partly because he can’t figure out how he feels about the concept of lying to a priest (probably he just shouldn’t care? but it still somehow seems wrong) and mostly because he can’t stop thinking about his line, like he’s worrying a loose tooth with the tip of his tongue.

He gives up on sleep around 5:45AM and gets up to make himself a cup of coffee and a smoothie; drinks the smoothie while triaging the 4,129 unread emails that have appeared in his inbox since yesterday; goes on his private Instagram to like his mom’s daily photo carousel from his parents’ ongoing trip to Kyoto (“looks like you guys are having beautiful weather”); goes on his public Instagram to make sure he doesn’t hate the spon-con series for Rolex that Deb, his PR lady, has been posting this week (it’s fine); goes on Snapchat to send Ruby and Jade a selfie of himself with a rainbow unicorn filter; and the whole time he is thinking about Tsuzuki and Rozanov, little X-shaped figures and arrows moving around a two-dimensional diagram of a hockey rink.

Shane makes a beeline for Theriault’s office basically as soon as he’s parked. “I have an idea,” he says, at almost the exact same moment he raps his knuckles on the open door to announce his presence.

“Crisse!” Theriault whisper-shouts, flinching. “Ah. Hollander.”

“Sorry,” Shane says, only now realizing how rude that had been. “Do you have a minute?”

“Not really,” Theriault says, taking off his reading glasses and gesturing for Shane to step into his office. “Is this about the press conference?”

“No, this is about my line. Sorry–what press conference?”

Theriault rubs the edge of his nose and then sweeps his thumb along the upper edge of his moustache. “The usual pre-season bullshit,” he says. “You and Rozanov are being fed to the wolves at eleven tomorrow. Shoshannah will grab you both for a media briefing this afternoon. Did you want to talk about Tsuzuki?”

“No,” Shane says. “Well, sort of. I want to try something this morning. Kind of weird, I guess. Is that okay? It shouldn’t take more than an hour. I was thinking–because there’s a resistance training block before lunch, I’d keep a few guys back? I’ll stay with everybody after, to make up the time in the weight room.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Theriault says, which sounds like it’s probably a good thing, except there’s a weird little inflection to how he says it. “How’s the knee holding up?”

“Really good,” Shane says. He’s maybe exaggerating because Theriault sounds so weird. “Solid,” he adds, which is not an exaggeration and therefore less of a lie. Sure, Shane would fall over if he took a slapshot to the thing, but that had probably always been true.

“And the head?” Theriault asks. 

“I’m seriously fine,” Shane says. He’s starting to feel a little twitchy. “Are you concerned about my performance in some way? I realize it looks like I might be–delaying, or fucking around, but I’m serious about Rozanov on my wing and if you’d prefer that we work on it after hours, we can do that instead–”

“I don’t want any of my players doing anything stupid,” Theriault says.

“I wouldn’t,” Shane replies, annoyed. “You know that.”

Theriault says, “Yes, but we got Rozanov so fucking cheap from San Francisco because he would. Crisse, Hollander, this was cute when you were a kid but lately…” 

“An hour,” Shane says, after Theriault has trailed off and shown no interest in finishing his own sentence. Shane knows all of the possible endings by heart, anyway. Lately, you haven’t been playing the same. Lately, you’ve been pushing back too much. Lately, you’ve become a pain in my ass. You used to be so fucking easy. 

“You can have two,” Theriault says. He puts his reading glasses back on and returns his attention to his computer. “Keep an eye out for Shoshannah.”

~

“Okay,” Shane says, when it’s just him, one of the Marcs, and a couple of guys left on the ice. “We’re trying a mental exercise today.” 

He drops his gloves onto the ice between his feet and wedges his stick under his armpit before slipping off his t-shirt, which he slings at Rozanov. Rozanov barks something in Russian that’s half-started, half-pleased as he catches it, then says,  “Have no dollar bills. You take e-transfer?”

Shane rolls his eyes. “We’re swapping,” he says. “Give me yours.”

Rozanov takes a long time to wiggle out of his t-shirt. He’s wearing a base layer underneath–they spend too much time standing around during camp to keep warm without assistance–and the white polyester is slightly translucent from the sweat it has wicked, stuck to his pecs and abs like some studio assistant with a headset has just run over and misted him with a spray bottle. Shane notices, of course–he’s far-sighted, not blind–and he’s sure everybody else does, too. Rozanov is vain. The striptease is probably on purpose. A joke.

Rozanov lazily skates over to hand Shane his t-shirt. Everybody gets them for camp, to help the coaches keep track of them all and make the tape easier to watch. Their names and numbers are splayed across the back and then just their numbers are printed on the chest pocket and each sleeve. It makes tracking the play a little annoying, like Shane’s a cheetah on Planet Earth trying to hunt a specific blue-and-white zebra, but there are plenty of other, worse things about which Shane can be annoyed. Like the predatory noise that comes out of Rozanov when Shane pulls his t-shirt on, for example, which has no basis in fact: despite Rozanov’s repeated insistence that he is taller and heavier than Shane, they both wear an XL.

“Very cute,” Rozanov coos to Shane, a slightly manic gleam in his eye. What a weird chirp from a weird fucking guy.

“It fits just fine,” Shane replies mildly. “All right!” he calls more loudly. “For the next hour, I’m Ilya Rozanov. You can call me Roz. Gondo, I’d prefer if you use the formal vous.”

“Allez vous faire foutre,” Gondouin replies instantly.

“Good, we’re all getting into character,” Shane says. He claps a hand on Rozanov’s shoulder. “This is your captain, Shane Hollander.”

Rozanov is still holding Shane’s t-shirt in his left hand. “Ah, what?” he says. His shoulder goes stiff under Shane’s hand for a second.

“Put your shirt on, Hollzy,” Shane says, squeezing once before he lets go. “You’re facing off against Gondo.”

It seems to take a few seconds for Rozanov to get himself sorted. Shane regrets this for a second–was it too much, springing this on the guy? should he have told him ahead of time?--but then all sympathetic feelings evaporate as Rozanov tugs Shane’s shirt over his head and the stupid fucking thing catches at his shoulders, the 24 on the left sleeve stretched taut over the swell of Rozanov’s deltoid. Rozanov detects something in Shane’s expression and makes in response some horrible expression like a grin that wants to be a smirk. “Yes,” he says, pretending to fuss with the shirt as it strains over his shoulders. “We are exact same size.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Shane says.

“Now you are in character,” Rozanov says. “Say it again, this way,” and he says a short phrase in Russian that Shane recognizes as having been shouted at him hundreds of times in the last decade, mostly at Sochi.

“Poshol na khuy?” Shane echoes.

“Da,” Rozanov says. “Good job, Ilyusha.” He grins at Shane and goes to face off against Gondouin. Shane stays on his left. He makes a little bit of a production out of stretching his shoulders with his stick and looking bored. He tells Hayden that his skates are untied and then laughs, obnoxiously, when Hayden reflexively checks them (they are not).

But when Marc drops the puck between Gondouin and Rozanov, Shane lets himself get serious and takes off like a fucking bullet, blowing through the gap between Gondouin and Ahlqvist as Rozanov wins the face-off and knocks the puck to Tsuzuki. Shane lures Johanssen and JJ out and then darts between them so he’s in the right position for Tsuzuki, who gives up on making it past Hayden and slaps a pass to Shane more out of muscle memory than Shane thinks actual conscious intention, judging by the confused look on his face. It’s a hard pass, meant to travel a long distance because Shane is basically parked at the net; when the puck comes rocketing up to him, Shane pops it gently up and over Drapeau’s glove, letting the angle of his stick do most of the work.

“Fuck you,” Drapeau says. “...Roz!”

Shane swoops behind the net and pumps his fist a few times, lifting his left leg into the air. “Rozanov scores,” he calls, raising his voice to make sure he’s audible at a distance. “The home crowd’s pumped up tonight, folks.” He pretends to make crowd roaring noises.

Marc laughs once and then calls, “All right, reel it back in! Gondo, you caught that, right? The feint from–ah, Hollander?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gondouin is muttering as Shane loops back around. Rozanov is watching Shane and paying zero attention to Marc, who is an exceptionally good and insightful assistant coach and probably two years out from being poached by somebody who will promote him to the head of their coaching staff–Colorado, probably. Or Toronto.

“Good pass, Hollzy,” Shane says, grinning as obnoxiously as he can.

“All passes are good to Ilyusha,” Rozanov replies, but it’s sort of absent-minded, like he’s not fully paying attention to what he’s saying. 

They keep going, for the full hour that Shane had asked for and then a few minutes beyond that. Rozanov gets more and more reserved as they keep going, as Shane empties the bag of Ilya Rozanov signature tricks that he hadn’t realized all of that tape review had stashed away in the back of his brain. It’s actually kind of fun–to be selfish, to be flashy, to hog the puck, to actually say the dickish little comments that occur to Shane when he’s irritated with his teammates. He finally gets to tell Gondouin that his cologne fucking stinks, which feels amazing.

As much fun as Shane is having, he has no idea if what he’s doing is actually working. Rozanov has locked down his face; even for someone who’s better at it than Shane, he thinks it would be impossible to read what’s going on behind that flat mouth, those hard eyes. Sweat has stuck half-curled locks of hair down against Rozanov’s temples and neck. As they line up for the last face-off, Shane says, “Not getting too tired, are you, Hollander?”

Rozanov gives him a long look over his shoulder. “No,” he says. And that’s it. Which, to be fair, is not necessarily a bad impression of Shane.

Shane shrugs, elaborately, and pretends to adjust the wrist straps of his gloves. 

The last play is a bit of a shitshow. Shane lets himself get too far out. Tsuzuki gets tangled up with JJ. Rozanov tries to steal the puck from Hayden in a move that would be a hooking penalty in an actual game–and would have, in fact, gotten Shane two minutes in the sin bin in Boston last year, except that a brawl had broken out and distracted the refs before he’d been caught–and then there’s nowhere for him to send it. Hayden recovers the puck and slaps it low into the back of the net milliseconds before Pak’s butterfly closes. 

“Bon!” Marc bellows.

“Pikeyyyyyyy,” Gondouin cheers, crowding Hayden up against the boards in an exuberant hug that wouldn’t be out of place in the last game of the fucking division finals. There is no amount of money in the world that would convince Shane to swap places with Hayden as he is lovingly enveloped in a cloud of Dior Homme.

Rozanov bends over and puts his hands on his knees, visibly catching his breath. He mumbles something and shakes his head sharply, then he straightens up and unerringly turns and skates over to Shane. He doesn’t even look first to make sure he’s going in the right direction. His on-ice awareness is insane.

“You were too far out,” he says as he neatly slides to a stop in front of Shane.

“You were too slow,” Shane counters.

“Don’t be cute, Ilyusha,” Rozanov says. The corner of his mouth twitches. “I think I understand Canadian mind game now. You show me bad choices, then help me make good ones?”

“You don’t make bad choices,” Shane says. “You’re just treating us like we’re San Francisco, which we’re not, and to be honest I find it kind of offensive because San Francisco fucking sucks. They have the worst goalies in the league, their coaching staff is full of dicks, and their GM once told the commissioner that my mom should mind her own business and go back to China.”

“Mama is–Japanese?” Rozanov says.

“My mom is Canadian,” Shane says. “So fuck those guys.”

“You really hate them,” Rozanov marvels. “I did not realize nice Canadians could do this.”

“San Francisco wasted you,” Shane bites out, and he’s so angry he has to swallow a few times to get himself under control. “We’re not going to. So stop–trying to make a point. You’re fast. I’m fast. Tsuzuki will be fast if he actually buckles down and listens to the skating coach. We’ll get there, and we’ll do it together because this is a fucking team sport.”

Rozanov is not smiling. Whatever the fuck is happening inside his brain, though, is making his whole face shine like a floodlight. Maybe this idea hadn’t been quite so stupid after all. Shane hastily looks away and pretends to notice that everyone else is already off the ice. “Lunch time,” he says. “Good job out there, by the way. But you already know that you’re an incredible center.”

“Yes,” Rozanov replies immediately. “Best in league.”

“No,” Shane says, “you’re not. But you’re going to be the best left wing.”

~

“Do I want to even know what that means?” Shane asks later as they make their way to lunch. “Ilyusha?”

“Is nothing,” Rozanov says, very quickly. “Hollander is captain, and older, so in Russian he use a little name–for Ilya this is Ilyusha.” He says again, “Is nothing. All Russians do this.”

“Ilyusha,” Shane says. Youj, he mouths, trying to get the shape right. “Do you like that better than Roz? Should I call you that?”

“No,” Rozanov says immediately. “Is just a joke. I am trying to get into Hollander mind and is very hard. Need these tricks, da? Otherwise, it is too boring in there and I fall asleep.”

“Poshol na khuy,” Shane says.

“Accent is improving,” Rozanov replies warmly. 

~

Shane suspects that, as team captain, he should probably be the one that hosts the Metros’ annual start-of-season barbecue. It seems like one of those things that captains of other teams do, for the most part effortlessly. But just like being married to a woman, having more than six people in his condo at any one time is a captainly attribute Shane has zero interest in displaying. 

When Shane was new to the team the barbecue had always been hosted by one of the older veterans, but JJ and his girlfriend have shouldered the burden for the last three years and they’re genuinely great hosts so no one is exactly fighting them for the privilege. They have a townhouse with a roof deck and a fenced-in backyard, so it’s easy to find a quiet corner if you are, for example, an antisocial person who needs a few minutes of silence every hour to recover from constant stimulation. The food is always amazing. Phoebe is an aspiring actress and accordingly has been a waiter for nearly every caterer in Montreal and she always finds somebody very cool (which the foodie guys all appreciate, and there are many) but also very chill (which means there’s a handful of dishes Shane won’t find too disgusting to eat). 

Late in the afternoon, coming out of a long conversation with one of the Marcs and his wife about how they’d spent the summer break–cycling tour of Nova Scotia–Shane lifts a dozing Amber out of Jackie’s arms and says, “I can take her for a little bit if you want a rest.”

“If I want a rest?” Jackie says. “Yeah. Okay. Sure.”

Amber fusses a little at the transfer but then settles back down, pressing her enormous head into the crook of Shane’s neck and bubbling to herself, like an angry pot of boiling pasta. Shane immediately takes the opportunity to find a dark corner to hide in, and when a different Marc spots him and lifts a hand, clearly gesturing for Shane to join his conversation, Shane points at the baby and is waved off. 

“Thank you,” Shane whispers into Amber’s soft cap of thin red hair. “You are a life-saver, and have maybe replaced Ruby as my favorite person on the planet.”

When they’d redone their townhouse, JJ and Phoebe had made over the back half of the first floor into an in-law suite, with its own small kitchen and tiny kitchen table. Shane uses his elbow to dim the recessed overhead lights that some insane person had turned up all the way and sits down in one of the pair of wooden chairs flanking the table. There’s a carved acacia bowl in the middle of the table filled with pale green pears that are so beautiful Shane wonders if they’re actually fake. Now that Amber’s weight is mostly resting on his thigh he has a free hand to reach out and touch one of the pears. The surface of the fruit is soft, with a tender give to its flesh like a swollen bruise.

Would it be weird to eat one of JJ’s in-law suite pears? But they look so good, and JJ’s parents, as far as Shane is aware, aren’t planning on coming up for the home opener.

At a scuffing sound in the doorway, Shane looks up and sees Rozanov, frozen on his way down the corridor, looking not unlike a raccoon hypnotized in the headlights of Shane’s Land Rover. Last Shane had seen him, he had been in the basement pretending to be angry as a pack of seven-year-olds destroyed him at Splatoon. “I wasn’t going to eat it,” Shane says hastily, yanking his hand out of the bowl.

“Should eat,” Rozanov says, voice strained. “Fruit is bruised now now, will go bad.”

Fuck. Shane feels like an idiot. But–well, he’s already done it. He reaches out, fingers closing around the pear he’d bruised, and Amber fusses a little at the movement. Shane’s handled enough Pike children in general and Amber specifically to know that this isn’t the kind of noise he needs to be worried about. Bouncing her a little bit, he shifts his weight and plucks the pear out of the bowl. The first bite is unbelievable. It’s so fucking sweet. His tongue curls involuntarily, like Ruby scrunching up her little hands the first time she’d tasted a mango.

“Holy shit,” Shane whispers to himself. “This is amazing.”

Rozanov has not moved from the doorway. “You have–girlfriend?” he asks.

“What?” Shane says, startled. “No.” He licks a drop of juice off of the back of his hand and then squints suspiciously at Rozanov. “Why do you ask?”

“Stork did not bring this baby,” Rozanov says.

“No?” Shane agrees. “Jackie spent ten hours in labor. Which she will tell anyone who asks, so maybe–don’t ask, unless you want all the gruesome details.” Being a nurse has given Jackie an inflated sense of the average person’s squeamishness, or maybe she’s just a terrible person who enjoys the rush of power she seems to get from making Shane uncomfortable. There’s a reason she married a hockey player.

“Jackie,” Rozanov repeats flatly.

“Did you not meet her outside? I realize you and Hayden are pretending to hate each other,” Shane says, “but he won’t, like, kill you for saying hello to his wife.” 

He punctuates this bit of captainly wisdom with another bite of pear. A little pleased noise escapes him at this second taste; he can’t help it.

“Try, maybe,” Rozanov scoffs, and then he says, “This is baby Pike?” in a weird tone that is somehow a different strain of weird than the one he’d been using before. 

“Amber,” Shane says. “I saw you were playing video games with a bunch of the kids earlier–the twins are Hayden’s, too, and Arthur. He’s the one with yellow glasses.”

Rozanov says, “Are they building army? Or do they have weird kink,” and something about this little dig must settle him, because he finally sounds normal. He swaggers the rest of the way into the little kitchen, which is definitely too small for two hockey players. Shane has no idea how both Dagenais parents both fit, since Shane knows from meeting them that JJ had come by his height naturally.

“I prefer to never think about it, thanks,” Shane says. He has, of course, against his will–he’s walked into a hotel room and accidentally seen Jackie’s bare breasts on FaceTime probably half a dozen times in the last decade, and each time he’s wanted to immediately apply a bristle brush to his own eyeballs–and has taken in response the high road, which is to say he’s come up with various ways to pay Hayden back for the fucking psychic damage. For example, Shane had designed and implemented a very elaborate skincare ritual last season, which had necessitated spending nearly an hour in the bathroom each night.

“But you stole baby,” Rozanov says.

“It’s not Amber’s fault her parents are freaks,” Shane says defensively.

Rozanov drops down into the second kitchen chair, leaning forward in a casual sprawl and settling his elbows onto the table. He hooks a forefinger into the bowl of fruit and drags it towards himself. “What means Amber?” he asks, inspecting each pear carefully.

“It’s a mineral. You know, like what the scientists find the mosquito in, in Jurassic Park?” Shane says. “I think Hayden and Jackie chose it because her hair is blonder than Ruby’s.”

Rozanov nods to himself. “I see,” he says. “Next baby they will name Brown.”

“The girls are all named after gemstones,” Shane says. He cups a hand over Amber’s exposed ear and adds, “Asshole.”

“Whoops, my mistake,” Rozanov says, unrepentant.

“Also, Hayden got a vasectomy last year, so there won’t be any more babies,” Shane says. He looks down at Amber to make sure she’s still asleep. He carefully brushes down a thin lock of reddish blonde hair that is sticking out from above her little ear. Her face scrunches up at the stroke of his thumb and she turns her head so she’s buried a little more firmly into Shane’s armpit. “Last one,” he says.

Hayden had been Shane’s first, and for a long time only, friend. Shane doesn’t have any siblings; his mom’s sister lives in Victoria and doesn’t have any kids. It seems very unlikely that Shane is ever going to watch another set of babies grow up from as close a distance as he’s been able to see Jade and Ruby and Arthur and Amber. Shane is certainly not going to be producing any of his own. That had been made abundantly clear when he’d tried dating Rose Landry two years ago. I have plenty of friends who don’t like sex! she’d assured him cheerfully as she’d broken up with him over a plate of grilled octopus at a trendy bistro in Mile-Ex. I know people can be weird about it, though–but seriously, I promise I won’t be, so we should stay friends!

Rose might have kids one day, Shane supposes, but Shane’s never going to see them, just like he basically never sees Rose. She had spent the first half of last year filming a TV show in Vancouver and the second half filming a different TV show in the US and is currently filming an Claire Denis movie in Argentina that she had very excitedly and semi-incoherently informed Shane was an adaptation of Wuthering Heights set in 1950s Brazil. Heathcliff might be a Nazi hunter? Shane had not asked for further details.

He has also never gotten around to correcting Rose’s misconception about his libido. What’s the point? He’s certainly not in a position to be having sex with another person, so even if the principle is wrong the practical outcome is correct.

“Like, on the planet?” Rozanov asks drily.

Shane is startled into a laugh. Rozanov’s mouth twitches. He plucks a pear out of the bowl, having apparently made his selection. “Do you–?” Shane asks.

Rozanov pauses in the act of lifting the pear to his mouth. “What?” he says. “Have army of my own? No.”

“Want kids,” Shane says, exasperated.

Rozanov grins and bites the pear with his big white teeth, which are unfairly brilliant despite the fact that Shane has not successfully bullied him into quitting smoking. He is missing one of his premolars, though, on the upper right side of his mouth. He starts to say something and then stops. “Bozhe moy, what the fuck is this,” he says. 

“I know,” Shane says.

“Where the fuck did Dagenais find these?” Rozanov wonders.

“I know,” Shane says. “Also, don’t say fuck so much, Amber is learning words.”

“Baby dinosaur is asleep,” Rozanov says. “Not–ear dropping?”

“Eavesdropping,” Shane says.

“Eavesdropping,” Rozanov repeats, smacking his lips. He hums to himself and then proceeds to devour the rest of his pear in about three enormous bites. He even eats the core, which Shane can never bring himself to do; the texture is too strange, and he hates the slippery little seeds. Rozanov drops the inch-long piece of stem onto the table and immediately picks up a second pear.

“You want kids?” he asks casually. He’s focused on the fruit in his hand, rotating it carefully, maybe looking for any mold or dark spots.

Shane makes a noise that he hopes is ambiguous, neither agreeable nor disagreeable. “Hayden and Jackie asked me to be Amber’s godfather. Are you religious?” he asks instead of really answering. He gestures to his own clavicle, in the general area where he can see the shadow of Rozanov’s cross under his thin white t-shirt.

“No,” Rozanov says. He takes a bite of his new pear and then tucks the lump of flesh into his cheek and asks, “What is this? Mob boss for baby?”

“Did everybody in San Francisco really fall for this shit?” Shane marvels. “I can tell when you’re faking it.”

Rozanov barks out a laugh and says, “No, you can not,” and chews the piece of pear in his mouth a few times before saying, “but maybe this time I am a little bit.” He lifts the hand that’s been resting on the table to hold his thumb and forefinger a few centimeters apart, to display how much of a quantifiable asshole he is. “I have godparents, yes,” he continues. “Necklace belonged to mama before she died. It was very important to her to have good children who believe in God.” He puts his palms together in a praying gesture, then rolls his eyes. “But she got bad sons instead. Maybe because I have godfather who is,” and then something in Russian that is unfamiliar to Shane, which suggests it’s either extremely banal, or a very specific and creative insult. Shane suspects the latter. Rozanov takes another bite out of the pear and says, “You?”

“No, no, like–not at all,” Shane says. “Which is going to make it hard to pretend that I’m Catholic.”

“You need to do this?" Rozanov asks.

“Apparently, yes,” Shane says miserably. “Hayden told me I’ll have to lie to the priest. It just seems wrong.”

Rozanov widens his eyes and makes some kind of exaggerated shape with his mouth. “Who gives a shit?” he asks. “Priest put you in time out? Give you two minutes in penalty box for lying?”

Shane has been saving the last of his pear, but it’s beginning to soften in his hand. Maybe the warmth of his body is making it break down faster. He bends his head down to suck a chunk of sweet pulp off of his thumb and says, “I guess it just seems like–cheating, or something.”

He flicks a glance at Rozanov through his lashes. Rozanov is watching him with a kind of still, deep intensity. Before this year, Shane had squared off against Rozanov in exactly fifty-two face-offs, and for the vast majority of them Rozanov had been wearing this exact expression for the scant milliseconds directly preceding the puck drop, and then at literally no other point in time. 

Rozanov blinks. His eyes are softer when they open again–something about the corners, maybe? But Shane looks away before he can really puzzle out the source of the difference. He feels unexpectedly shy.

“You are a lying piece of shit who will not care for baby?” Rozanov prods.

“Of course not,” Shane says.

“You will be good godfather, then. So lying does not matter, and is not penalty if ref does not see.” Rozanov shrugs. He had said exactly the same thing to Tsuzuki yesterday, when he’d been trying to teach the kid how to get away with hooking. Shane had been a little offended that Tsuzuki hadn’t asked him, but it had been kind of charming to watch–Rozanov’s goofy, exaggerated movements, the way he’d told Tsuzuki he skated like a baby goose and startled a honking and frankly very goose-like laugh out of the kid.

Shane carefully bites the last few tender scraps of flesh from around the core of his pear. “I’m sorry to hear about your mom,” he says.

Rozanov nods jerkily. “She liked fat little babies,” he says eventually. “Her favorite icon of baby Jesus, he is very, very fat. Just like this one. I feel close to her sitting here.” He pretends to cross himself.

“I can’t believe you’re bullying a baby,” Shane marvels.

“I am telling the truth,” Rozanov says, and unbelievably enough, it comes out sounding completely genuine. “Don’t waste that, I will eat it,” he says, and he leans across the table to pick up the discarded core of Shane’s pear, which he proceeds to bite it in half. “Babies should be fat,” he adds as he crunches through the core. “More healthy that way.”

“Obviously Amber is perfect,” Shane says. Which is, of course, when the loud crunching wakes her up and she begins to complain fretfully about the fact that her face is squished into Shane’s armpit. “Hey, hey, hey,” he says to her, wrestling her into a more comfortable position leaning into the crook of his arm. “We’re good, see?” He rubs her tummy until she relaxes enough to open her eyes and see his face. She smacks her gums together and squeals, kicking her feet. “We’re good,” Shane says again, softly. He tells Rozanov a little regretfully, “I should get her back to Jackie.”

Rozanov looks at Amber. “Could keep her,” he suggests. “Pikes have entire army; they would not miss one, probably.”

Shane laughs, because he has no idea what the fuck else he should do. Then, he leaves.

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Thanks to everybody who took the time to leave such lovely comments!!! Please enjoy this chapter, which features a substantial amount of sexual terrorism.

Ten minutes before they’re due on the ice in Buffalo for the first game of the season, Theriault finally succeeds in establishing eye contact with Shane. Both eyebrows go up; the moustache bristles. Make a fucking speech, Shane hears without Theriault even needing to open his mouth and say the words.

Shane reluctantly climbs to his feet. The raucous noise slowly dies back as guys stop hitting each other with pads and yelling to their buddies and JJ pauses his annoying fucking music that is always so loud Shane can hear it pouring out of his headphones from like four meters away. “We’re ready,” Shane says, pitching his voice up to make sure everyone can hear him. “You know it. I know it. The only ones who don’t know are Buffalo, and they’re about to find out.”

“That’s fucking right!” JJ shouts, to a scattered chorus of whoops.

“We’re going to get Montreal another Cup,” Shane says. “That starts today.”

“You’re fucking right it does!” Hayden bellows. This triggers a wave of hoarse hooting, back-slapping, raucous French insults of dubious grammatical correctness, and kissing of crucifixes and medals in a few corners. JJ puts his headphones back on and the bass starts up again: whomp whomp whomp. 

Rozanov doesn’t touch his cross, Shane notices. In general he seems to be surprisingly free from superstitious habits, which makes him basically the only guy in the locker room who doesn’t have some kind of game day ritual activity. In lieu of hooting, or kissing his necklace, or eating a specific sandwich in a specific fashion, Rozanov leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees, and says, “Very ah–encouraging?”

“Shut up,” Shane suggests.

“No, no, am excited,” Rozanov says, with a perfectly earnest expression on his horrible fucking face. “Really. Am ready to crush Buffalo like,” and he closes his fist. 

“I hate you,” Shane says. And then, because he’s a fucking masochist, he asks, “What would Gardiner have said?”

Rozanov frowns. “Probably, fuck those guys and their cocksucking moms,” he says, pitching his voice into a falsetto. It is possibly the worst Gardiner impression Shane has ever heard, and he’s been forced to experience more than a few. At the 2013 All-Star Game, Scott Hunter had invited Shane to an after-party in somebody’s suite that had turned out to be expressly for guys who had played with Gardiner (one of that year’s team captains) and wanted to get drunk and complain about him in private. Shane had scored an invite because they’d both been on Team Canada at Worlds in 2008. Gardiner had been a dick, sure, but there had been about five or six other guys who were equally dickish that Shane had also been forced to play with and Gardiner hadn’t stood out from the crowd. This observation had pleased an inebriated Hunter, who’d cackled, ”Not even a dick of distinction!” But ultimately Shane’s experience had proven to be in the minority and he’d come out of that after-party with the impression that playing for San Francisco was a fate only slightly preferable to being sent to a fucking penal colony on Mars or something.

“Wow,” Shane says. “Inspiring.”

Rozanov grins. He’s sucking on some kind of hard candy; Shane watches his mouth move as he pushes it from one cheek to the other. It reminds Shane of watching all of that tape of teenager Ilya Rozanov popping his mouthguard out to lazily trade insults. His dramatic features had looked weird on a gangly seventeen-year-old with an unflattering curly mullet, but he’s aged into them. Now he looks like the paintings at that Leyendecker retrospective at the MBAM, which Shane had seen because he’d been Rose’s date to the opening gala. Rozanov should probably get a sponsor who’d let him model dress shirts or something.

“I like Hollander’s version better,” Rozanov says as he leans down to pull on his left sock. “Very cute. Like little mouse in children’s movie.”

“I am one fucking centimeter shorter than you,” Shane says.

“We squeak for victory,” Rozanov says innocently as he pulls on his right sock. “That is English saying, yes? For close win?”

Shane laughs despite himself. “You’re such a fucking dick,” he says as he turns away, into his locker, to grab his helmet and gloves. 

“Well, my dick is so big,” Rozanov says. “Makes it hard to ignore.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shane says distractedly. He’s looking at his phone for a quick second, even though he knows that it’s a distraction he should ignore. A bunch of notifications from apps he doesn’t care about; a blurry Snapchat of a finished jigsaw puzzle from Ruby and Jade; Mom: Good luck, sweetie!! Buffalo’s new goalie seemed slow to react on the left in their pre-season games, hope you have some good opportunities there; Rose: omg SHANE i met PENGUINS with two picture thumbnails Shane can’t see clearly on his lock screen; and then he actively processes what Rozanov has just said and can feel his stupid fucking ears start to burn, which is profoundly annoying. It’s not like this is the first, or even the fifty-first, time that Shane’s heard a teammate brag about the size of his dick.

Shane clears his throat and puts his phone back on the shelf. “Well, if you can manage to fit it in your fucking pants, time to pack it up and get on the ice,” he says, and then, before he has a chance to really stew in awkwardness, he jams on his helmet and buckles the chin strap. “On y va!” he says loudly. “Let’s fucking go!”

~

They crush Buffalo–Rozanov gets two past their new goalie, one of them a spectacular wraparound on the left that wouldn’t look out of place in Gretzky’s highlight reel–and then they fly to Ottawa and crush Ottawa, and then they fly back to Montreal for their home opener, where they crush Pittsburgh in a 4-0 shutout. October passes in a blur that should feel unbelievably good, probably; they rack up nine wins in a little over two weeks, including one in Boston at the Garden, which is Shane’s second-favorite place to win. (The first is the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa, which Shane plans to go to his grave having admitted to no one, since beating a team as tragically bad as the Centaurs on their home ice should make Shane feel like one of the bullies in The NeverEnding Story.)

Winning feels good, obviously. When one of the Boston beat reporters puts his iPhone under Shane’s chin and asks how it feels to have beaten the Raiders for nine consecutive regular season games, Shane wants to say, fucking great, thanks! and settles for, “It’s good to see the guys clicking this early in the season. Everybody really gave it 110% at camp and you can see all the hard work paying off.” Behind the knot of reporters, Rozanov pauses as he’s removing his pads to make an elaborate jerking off gesture. Shane ignores him.

It feels good, but Shane can’t help also feeling a little uneasy. The guys are working hard, but that’s true every year. Rozanov is performing amazingly well on Shane’s wing, but they’re just one line. The real secret to the Metros’ success this year is that, for whatever reason, the wheels are falling off of every other team in the division and the Metros are the beneficiaries of this chaos; but that’s not going to be true for the rest of the season. He says as much to Hayden when they’re back in their hotel room after a 3-2 win over New Jersey that had gotten a little chippy in the third period. “We only won because of that stupid slashing penalty,” Shane says, scrubbing his face with oil cleanser.

“Right,” Hayden says, only coherent to Shane through his mouthful of toothpaste because they’ve been road roommates for a decade. “Which is why Theriault sent Rozanov to draw it in the first place?”

“We should have been up in the second,” Shane says, vigorously rubbing with his fingertips until the cleanser starts to turn white. “Did Gondo seem solid to you? Because his wrist shot looked a little shaky from the bench.”

Hayden spits out a torrent of blue-flecked foam. “Solid enough,” he says. “Uh, is it supposed to be doing that?”

“I’m emulsifying,” Shane says, annoyed, and Hayden puts down his toothbrush and leaves the bathroom so quickly that if he’d been a cartoon there would have been a little puff of smoke behind him.

But Shane is right to be worried; they lose every away game in November. The second week of December, Ahlqvist sprains his groin lunging to block a shot on goal in Minnesota and he’s not out, technically, but he’d been averaging nearly thirty minutes a game and that stops immediately. Shane is a little worried ahead of playing San Francisco the week before Christmas, because it’s pretty clear that however much Shane hates Rozanov’s former team, Rozanov hates them even more. In the end, though, the game is clean for all that Rozanov spends the entire thing silent and looming. In the absence of Rozanov running his mouth, Shane is forced to use fucking echolocation on his skating to make their passes connect; and although he finds that he is very good (maybe even alarmingly good) at separating the long, harsh, choppy strokes of Rozanov’s skating edge from everyone else’s, it’s a shitty slog to that 2-1 win over San Francisco. Shane feels every one of the twenty-one minutes and thirty-two seconds he and Rozanov are out on the ice.

Shane cools down slumped over a stationary bike after the media is done with him. Did Rozanov feel any resentment towards his former teammates? Did Shane think Gardiner should have gotten a game misconduct for that check on Tsuzuki? How did Shane think the Metros were looking heading into their Christmas break? Did Shane have plans for those five days off? Was he planning on flying down to see Rose Landry, who had recently told her 1.4 million Instagram followers that she would spend Christmas backpacking in Peru with a few ‘close friends’? 

“I’m getting too old for this,” Shane mumbles to himself.

“What is this?” Rozanov asks from the next bike over, still a little breathless.

“The fucking media,” Shane says. “I just want to tell them all to get off my lawn.” He groans and lifts his head. The red LED timer in the middle of the display informs him he has 13 minutes remaining.

“Who is Rose?” Rozanov asks. “I am thinking maybe me, new nickname from media–but I have more than one million followers on Instagram.”

“You do not,” Shane says immediately.

“Yes, I do,” Rozanov replies, so easily that Shane believes him. “Thirst traps. Very reliable. Corporate sponsors like.”

“I’m also getting too old for Instagram,” Shane says to himself.

“Probably good idea,” Rozanov says. “Only true freaks are thirsty for old man.”

Shane briefly contemplates kicking him, but it’s taking most of his willpower to stay upright on the bike. “Rose is my ex-girlfriend,” he says instead. “She’s an actress. She just finished filming a movie in Argentina.” 

“Waaaow,” Rozanov says. “So fancy.”

“Do you ever shut the fuck up?” Shane wonders. “Yes, obviously, she was extremely out of my league, but we’re still friends. And she did in fact ask me to go backpacking in Peru with her.” Thanks, I’d rather die, Shane had replied. I figured! Rose had said. “Seemed like a stupid thing to do in the middle of the season. What if I fell off a mountain and fucked up my other knee? Theriault would put out a professional hit on me or something.”

“Unless a jaguar ate you first,” Rozanov says.

“Right,” Shane says. “Exactly. So, since my choices were being eaten by a jaguar, having my boss murder me, or staying home and spending Christmas with my parents, you know, it was an easy decision to make.” The display blinks twice as the time ticks down to 10 minutes remaining. Shane slowly backs off the speed a bit. His left knee is doing that annoying thing it does sometimes lately, where Shane can feel the joint popping a little bit with each rotation. It’s like there’s a little bubble inside that is being slowly inflated and then rapidly deflated, over and over and over and over. It doesn’t actually hurt, but it’s one of a thousand little undignified hints Shane has received from his knee in the last two years that suggest that the stupid thing has an expiration date that’s going to arrive much sooner than he’d like.

“Are you going back to Russia?” Shane asks. “Or is it too long for only five days?”

“No,” Rozanov says. “Will go to Boston and stay with friend, Sveta, she is in last year of school. We will eat Chinese food with rest of Boston that does not celebrate Christmas.”

“Like, not at all?” Shane says, a little surprised.

“Orthodox Christmas is in New Year, when we are playing Toronto,” Rozanov says. “But this does not matter because I am not Orthodox.” He shrugs elaborately. “Good comrades celebrate Novy God instead. Fat guy and blue lady come to bring gifts to good little children. But I am always very bad boy.” He leers at Shane.

“But somehow your English is always mysteriously really good when you’re insulting someone,” Shane says. He tells himself he ignores the leer successfully and it does not make him blush, because that is a stupid fucking thing for a twenty-eight-year-old captain to do and Shane strives not to be stupid. It’s a work in progress. He maybe blushes, a little, hopefully enough to be blamed on exertion.

“For some things, it is important to be clear,” Rozanov says. His voice is a little quiet, Shane notices, and then a few seconds after that Shane realizes that he can speak so quietly because they’re the only two guys left in the cardio room; everyone else has cleared out. The LED timer on Rozanov’s bike is a few minutes behind Shane’s, ticking down from 11:56 to 11:55 to 11:54 when Shane flicks a glance at it.

“What things, being a huge dick?” Shane asks. He very deliberately does not lower his voice.

“Sure,” Rozanov says. There is an unmistakably flirtatious edge to his voice as he murmurs, “If you ask nicely, I will show you.”

Shane feels like his guts are laughing hysterically: ha ha ha froths incredulously in the pit of his stomach, each individual syllable packaged into its own bubble. HA what the fuck is happening, HA what the fuck am I doing, HA what the fuck is he doing, HA HA HA FUCK–

“Ha,” Shane says, out loud. It comes out very flat. “Very, uh, funny.” Shane leans over and presses the big red STOP on the bottom right corner of the display. “I’m going to go,” he says. “I still have to pack for the flight to Washington tomorrow. My suit’s at the dry cleaner.” The suit he’s going to wear to Washington is not at the dry cleaner, what the fuck kind of stupid lie is that? Shane can feel himself flush for real, now, and it makes him feel like a child, like a baby, like all those gangly Russian teenagers he had seen scrapping over the puck in those videos he’d found of Rozanov on YouTube–acne scabs, voices cracking at awkward moments, hands too big for arms too big for torsos that still hadn’t finished growing–and laying over all of that is a thick slab of greasy fear. 

“Oh, too bad,” Rozanov says. Out of the corner of his eye Shane can see him lean forward and rest his elbows on the front handlebars of the stationary bike. His legs are pumping like perfect, steady metronomes, because he’s twenty-two fucking years old and he still has his original factory knees. Why the fuck is a twenty-two-year-old Russian making a joke out of hitting on Shane? “Not want to have drink with me to celebrate?”

“We’re playing Washington tomorrow night,” Shane says as he walks off. 

It’s a bad exit line and it’s ruined anyway because he finds himself physically incapable of just leaving; he has to wipe down the bike first. He fishes a sanitizing wipe from the can by the door and when he comes back, Rozanov raises his weight up onto his legs, lifting his butt from the seat, so he can lean over and say, his breath hot and damp against Shane’s ear, the side of his neck: “Just one will not hurt.”

The heat feels like it passes through Shane’s ear canal directly into his peripheral nervous system, bypassing his brain entirely. He knows he’s going to get hard before it actually happens, which at least gives him time to turn around and leave. “No alcohol,” he throws over his shoulder as he goes. “Get some fucking sleep.”

“Without company will be too cold,” Rozanov calls after him.

~

Shane gives himself a little pep talk while putting on his tie the next morning, at 4:37AM, because fuck the dickhole in the scheduling office who came up with this game calendar. Rozanov had displayed enormous self-restraint playing San Francisco yesterday and had presumably needed to let off steam afterwards, like Shane’s grandmother’s pressure cooker when she tries to cook too many beans. Shane had been conveniently nearby. Rozanov had not been serious. Shane had kept his responses well within the bounds of plausible deniability, maybe even to the extent of being genuinely believable. 

“Rozanov is just a kid who likes to push buttons,” Shane reminds himself as he shrugs on his suit jacket and checks in the closet mirror to make sure it’s sitting properly over the vest, the way his stylist had told him to do. Everything looks fine. Shane wiggles the knot of his tie into place.

“Just stop having easy fucking buttons to push,” he orders himself before turning away from the mirror to pick up his overnight bag. He tries to tell himself it’s like a magic spell and if he just chants it hard enough, it will eventually come true: the magic of hard work and self-discipline.

Despite this pep talk, Shane’s stomach is a hard, tight knot in his abdomen until he lays eyes on Rozanov while they’re boarding. Rozanov is wearing a light grey double-breasted suit with a red tie and matching pocket square. He really does look uncannily like one of those Leyendecker paintings, with his hair grown long enough to be hanging over his forehead and ears in thick waves and half-curls. Rozanov saunters by with an offhand, “Looking very sharp, Hollander,” and JJ, who is in the aisle right behind him, wolf-whistles.

Rozanov winks as he goes and it doesn’t feel dangerous at all. A wink that says, we are just bros. Shane says, “Thanks, guys,” because JJ is his friend and this wink suggests Rozanov is, too. Rozanov doesn’t stop and continues on towards the back of the plane, where he will probably sit with a bunch of the younger guys who will play cards or video games instead of sleeping because they’re energetic fucking babies. Meanwhile, JJ drops down in the seat next to Shane and says, “I’m fucking beat,” which means both of them can put on their noise-canceling headphones with no further attempt at conversation. Shane does so immediately, booting up his iPad to watch tape of Colorado at Nashville last week, and instead of doing that he falls asleep so fast that he doesn’t even notice the plane taking off, anesthetized by the sweet relief that unknots his stomach.

~

The Montreal Metros ring in the New Year somewhere over Lake Ontario, on the way home from an overtime loss to Pittsburgh. It smarts, of course, because you don’t become a professional hockey player because you’re the kind of person who can let go of things, but it would hurt more to lose to someone else. Shane generally likes playing Pittsburgh, whose genteely aging team, like a napping old lion on Planet Earth, still has bursts of predatory intensity but is mature enough not to be annoying about it. And anyway, that goal from Malinin had been too good to hate. The guy is a fucking legend.

The coaching staff open a couple of bottles of champagne and pass around glasses for a toast when the clock ticks over. Cheers of “Happy New Year!” mingle with “Bonne année!” and “This is our year!” in a cacophonous din. Shane sips from his champagne once, to be polite, and then when he tastes that it’s already gone flat in the pressurized cabin he feels little compunction about tipping the rest of it into Hayden’s glass when nobody is looking.

Even champagne and New Year’s well-wishing only gets them so far coming directly off of an overtime loss, and by half past midnight everybody is settling back into their seats. Shane finally rescues himself from a tense conversation with the Marc from Saguenay about Ahlqvist’s play time (still hovering at eighteen minutes a game, to basically everybody’s mingled horror and frustration) and goes back to his seat. Someone has left a can of ginger ale in the cup holder; when Shane touches it with the edge of his forefinger, it’s icy to the touch. 

“Thanks, man,” he says to Hayden, who has squished his scarf between his head and the window.

“Mmph,” Hayden says blearily. “Wha?”

Shane pops the tab on the can and washes the lingering taste of dry, flat champagne out of his mouth. “Thanks,” he says again.

“For what?” Hayden mumbles.

“The ginger ale,” Shane says.

“Not me, man,” Hayden says. He still hasn’t opened his eyes. A few seconds later he mumbles, “Let’s play the quiet game. No noise wins.” Then he lets out a loud, honking snore as his whole body slowly slumps over into the window.

“What the fuck,” says the guy sitting behind Hayden, muffled. Shane sits up in his seat and twists around to see that it’s Meier, staring at the back of Hayden’s headrest with a look of profound irritation. Rozanov is next to him, behind Shane, so close to sleep that his eyes have narrowed to thin little slits.

“Amber’s teething,” Shane says apologetically. “He’s been like this for two weeks.”

“My god! And he’s making this everyone’s problem for what reason?” Meier grumbles in French. He kicks Hayden’s seat a couple of times, which causes Hayden to twitch and twist. Eventually he settles into a position that doesn’t crick his neck and the honks start to peter out. “There,” Meier says, satisfied with himself. “Hollander, you have the patience of a fucking saint. Do the rest of us a favor and be a bit more of an asshole sometimes, okay?”

“Why bother?” Shane asks in French. “With the rest of you, there’s plenty of assholish behavior to go around.”

Meier laughs and chucks a crumpled paper napkin at Shane’s face. It bounces off and lands in Rozanov’s lap. Shane considers for one and a half deranged seconds reaching back and picking it up, and then he realizes what a supremely stupid idea that is. He can see the faint glint of Rozanov’s eyes, glittering between the thick curtains of his eyelashes; if the napkin bothers him, he can move it. Shane hurriedly turns and sits back down. A few seconds later, as he takes another sip from his ginger ale, he feels a heavy, steady pressure against his lower back–Rozanov’s knees pressing against the back of Shane’s seat. They stay there for the rest of the flight.

~

Mid-January brings the Admirals to Montreal. The night before the game, Shane goes out with a couple of other veterans to have a drink with Hunter and a few of his guys–the ones who’d been at Sochi, or the All-Star after-party where they’d all apparently bonded over their hatred of Paul Gardiner. They go to a quiet bar that Rose had recommended to Shane as being “surprisingly low-key!” by which she meant the bartender had never called the paps on her while she was in the bathroom. They claim a big booth in the back and split a pitcher of beer and chat for a little while, friendly and easy, in a way that Shane would never have been able to manage when he was a high-strung rookie certain that everyone in the league hated his guts. It’s entirely possible they had; Shane doesn’t exactly enjoy being regularly asked after games whether he feels like a washed up dinosaur now that the next generation (i.e. Rozanov) is starting to really flex their wings and get airborne. But any lingering resentment on the part of the older guys, if it even still exists, is well-masked as they all catch up. 

“How’s Rozanov?” Hunter asks as guys start to peel off in ones and twos, claiming the need to get home to put their kids to bed or hit the hotel gym to get a few miles in before curfew.

“He’s good,” Shane says.

“Yeah, and he’s a dick,” Hunter says.

Shane says, “Sure, but he’s our dick, now, so Gardiner can go fuck himself.”

Hunter laughs. He’s got another inch or so of beer in the bottom of his glass, clearly not in a hurry to get back to a treadmill, and he’s relaxed as he leans back, one arm draped over the back of the booth while the other rests on the table. “I saw the San Francisco game,” he says. “Brutal. But your guy held it together pretty well.” He’s watching Shane with a posture that’s relaxed but a face that is attentive. Hunter is a real boom-or-bust player, capable of going through long scoring droughts before suddenly erupting like a fucking volcano and dominating the back half of a season. It’s just rotten luck that he’s never had one of those eruptions at the right time to carry the Admirals through the postseason. He has hair trigger reflexes and they haven’t dulled with age.

“Yeah,” Shane says. He sips from his glass. “I’ve never had so many no-look passes actually connect before. I thought our rookie liney was going to pass out by the third period, he was so stressed.”

Something about this makes Hunter smile. “Tsuzuki, right? Good kid. Maybe a little wobbly.”

Hunter isn’t wrong, but Shane shrugs rather than admit it out loud. Théo will make a superb skater out of Tsuzuki by hook or by crook, or by scaring the wobbles out of the kid via blunt application of the terrifying aura that all former figure skaters are capable of emitting when they’re dressed in a black turtleneck like something out of a James Bond movie and barking straighten your fucking ankles! at you as you run drills past them.

“He’s a good kid, yeah,” Shane agrees. “Rozanov’s teaching him how to be a little terror, though, so watch out.”

“Oh good,” Hunter says flatly. He takes a drink and then while he’s pretending to concentrate on putting his glass back on its coaster he says, “You’re not–uh. Having trouble, off the ice?”

Shane frowns. “With Tsuzuki? No. I meant it, he’s genuinely a good kid. And he’s got the worst crush in the world on Hayden’s nanny, so when he’s not being terrorized by our skating coach he’s spending most of his time helping her chase Jade and Ruby Pike around the aquarium.” 

Hunter clears his throat. “I didn’t mean Tsuzuki,” he says. “We got some guys from San Francisco last year at the trade deadline, and they–well. It’s gossip, I’m not gonna lie to you.”

Shane can feel some kind of flat expression calcify onto his face. “I don’t want to hear it,” he says.

“No, no, I get it–”

“No, seriously, I don’t want to hear it,” Shane says. “Whatever happened in San Francisco is their business. It has nothing to do with us and I don’t give a shit. Rozanov showed the fuck up from day one of camp. The coaches let me basically order him to switch positions and he didn’t even give us that much shit for it. I’m not going to pay him back for his trust and hard work by listening to secondhand gossip from some guys I don’t even know. Okay?”

“Okay,” Hunter says immediately, but he is no longer relaxed. “Damn. Okay.” He barks out a not very amused laugh and shakes his head in a single jerk. “I mean, if it comes back to bite you in the ass, that sucks. But I respect the hell out of you for saying that.”

Shane does not really care what Scott Hunter thinks of him in this moment. He’s so fucking annoyed that Rozanov’s reached escape velocity and there are still idiots from San Francisco trying to drag him back into their stupid noxious orbit. He flexes his hands a few times, trying to shake out the fury that’s making his skin feel tight. “We’ll see if you still feel the same tomorrow night,” he says.

Hunter laughs again, this time with actual amusement. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Fair enough. I’m going to close out and head back to the hotel.”

“Sure thing,” Shane says, tightly, because he’s still mad. He makes a conscious effort to put some kind of normal, friendly expression on his face–eyebrows relaxed, mouth not quite so flat, jaw looser. “Thanks for coming out, it was good to catch up.”

“Yeah,” Hunter says. They get out of the booth and shake hands. “Always good to see you, man.” 

~

It’s unclear if Hunter still feels that way twenty-five hours later when Shane squeaks in a tiebreaking goal with eleven seconds left on the clock, off an assist from Rozanov that he’d managed by stealing the puck from Vaughan; he’d slammed the guy into the boards so hard that Shane was surprised little birds weren’t circling his helmet afterwards. “Put your dog back on his fucking leash,” Vaughan had mumbled to Shane as he’d limped his way off the ice, but it’d been said on an incredulous half-laugh; Vaughan was too good-natured to be turned nasty by a clean hit. And he’s hardly the first to make that comparison. A few reporters have recently started asking Shane if he has an opinion about the way Boston fans on Twitter have christened Rozanov #therozweiler (“No comment, guys, come on”).

Shane claws himself free from the ravening crowd of beat reporters and makes it back to the locker room after most of the guys have already cleared out. They have nearly twenty-four hours before they have to be on the tarmac to board the flight to Detroit and everyone seems to have decided to make the most of the rare free time. Rozanov is still there, though, holding his chain in his mouth as he taps at his phone with both thumbs, his damp base layer clinging lovingly to every muscle in his arms and torso. Shane looks, for probably too long, and then reminds himself to get a fucking grip.

“Hey,” Shane says wearily as he tugs off the last of his pads. He can’t face the idea of driving home without at least a perfunctory shower. “Good game.”

“Shit game,” Rozanov says shortly, not looking up from his phone.

“It was not,” Shane says. He sits down and begins the arduous process of removing his socks. “Your hit on Vaughan was clean.”

“Hunter scored,” Rozanov says, like this is some insane irregularity that reflects poorly on the Metros instead of a reality of playing one of the best players in the league. “Hunter never scores on road.”

“Yes, he does,” Shane says. “He’s just inconsistent. But when he’s on, he’s fucking on, which is why the US has a bronze from Sochi and I’m pretty sure he’s going to be the captain in Pyeongchang, if MLH decides to let us go.” It’s looking more and more like they won’t, because Crowell is a corrupt bureaucrat with delusions of autocracy, but hockey players are too suspicious a breed for anyone to be willing to actually say it out loud where fucking pixies might hear it or whatever.

Rozanov makes a face. “Who gives a shit about Olympics,” he says. “Half the time nobody good goes, regulations always change, too much time wasted passing, passing, always passing, and when guys talk shit you just have to take it because you cannot fight them.”

“Hey,” Shane protests, probably more weakly than an Olympic gold medalist should. “It’s a matter of national pride, okay?”

“Fuck honor,” Rozanov says decisively.

Shane would have to be blind not to have noticed that the two, presumably gossipy, assholes that the Admirals had gotten from San Francisco last year were both Russian. In general, Shane likes playing with fellow Canadians–it’s easy to share languages and a cultural shorthand with your linemates; for example, he finds that the average American is a worse team player and much more likely to belong to a religious cult–but maybe that’s not the case for the Russian national team. They certainly seem to be nasty gossips, which must be annoying. And Rozanov’s not really wrong about national pride, either; if Shane has any, it’s in the kind of work that his dad does. Canadians do civil service better than the citizens of any other country, in Shane’s opinion, and just because he’s probably biased doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

“Does that mean you’ll say no?” Shane asks. “If you get the call for Pyeongchang?”

“Russia will be suspended,” Rozanov says. “Everyone knows this.” But he sounds pleased, so Shane suspects that the actual answer to his original question is I would go, but I wouldn’t be happy about it. “Boo hoo, very sad.”

“You are such a dick,” Shane marvels. “Every time I think I understand how much of an asshole you are, you find new depths. It’s kind of impressive.”

“Yes, because you care very much about being involved in geopolitical struggle?” Rozanov says sarcastically.

“Geopolitical,” Shane echoes, exaggerated and slow. “Wow!”

“Am listening to New Yorker Radio Hour,” Rozanov says. “You tell reporter this is your favorite podcast, yes? I listen to help me fall asleep.”

It is true that Shane tells reporters he listens to a lot of podcasts—the alternative is them wanting to know what kind of music he likes and the answer to that is that he doesn’t—and it’s entirely possible that at some point in time he’d mentioned that specific one, although he doesn’t remember doing so. And anyway, Shane prefers to tender zero on-the-record opinions about any geopolitical struggle. He has them, but he feels no desire to share them publicly. Speaking of which—“It’s a cognate,” he guesses.

“What means this?” Rozanov asks.

“A word that means and sounds the same in two languages,” Shane says. He puts on his best Ivan Drago impression to say, “Geo-politisky.”

Rozanov stares at him, genuinely startled. “Motherfucker,” he says. He grins at Shane then, the expression boyish and charming and delighted. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, is cognate. What does Tsuzuki say—why do you not let me live, bro?”

“I’m your captain,” Shane says. “It’s the job, you know. To be a humorless authority figure.”

Rozanov shakes his head. “That is Gardiner,” he says. “Not you. Boring, maybe. But funny. Like those cats in Internet videos, very serious until they fall down behind sofa.”

Shane balls up one of his socks and throws it at him. When Rozanov ducks, Shane nails him in the face with the second one. Shane still feels like laughing an hour later, when he finally drags himself home and pours himself into bed.

~

The Metros are still at the top of the conference going into the All-Star Break, which makes Shane so anxious that the teeth in the back of his skull hurt, probably because he’s grinding them in his sleep. Shane, Theriault, and all three Marcs had had an agonizing meeting where they had debated whether or not the team ought to send Shane–were they risking an injury? would it put blood in the water, not to send him? how did Shane’s knee really feel?--and in the end Shane and the tallest Marc had won. The Metros will send Shane and Drapeau, whose season has been so good that Shane overhears more than one person joke after back-to-back shutouts (Washington and Vancouver, not exactly lightweights) that they should start engraving his name on the Vezina

And then, of course, two days after Vancouver Drapeau sprains two fingers blocking a shot from Malinin.

“Drapeau’s not going to the All-Star Game,” Theriault says to Shane after practice the next day, like that’s some kind of fucking surprise. “Blessed mother of God forbid another one of our goalies gets a stupid injury, so it will be Rozanov. Keep an eye on him, because the only thing I want less than a second injured goalie is our very expensive new left wing in prison.”

“Is that fair?” Shane says, bewildered. “He kept it totally professional against San Francisco.”

“If by totally professional you mean obviously four seconds away from killing Gardiner with his bare hands, sure,” Theriault says. “There’s a reason I never let him on the ice without you. So it’s to be eyes on, the entire weekend.”

Shane makes a noise that could probably be interpreted as agreement and says, “Sorry, can I–?” and points at where Tsuzuki is being cornered by Théo, who has a stack of orange cones wedged under his arm and an expression like the fucking Terminator affixed to his face. Theriault follows the line of Shane’s arm and his moustache flattens as he waves Shane off.

Despite having avoided actually verbally agreeing to be Rozanov’s babysitter, Shane is not very surprised to land in Florida and discover that he and Rozanov have been put together as roommates. Because All-Star weekend is ostensibly a break, and an honor, and whatever the fuck else people say, there’s not an enforced curfew, so Shane makes a point as he slings his bag and garment bag onto the bed closest to the window to say, very casually, “Let’s just agree not to bring anyone back to the room, okay?”

Rozanov looks up from his phone. He’d immediately flung himself onto his own bed, his luggage piled at the foot of it, and begun typing furiously. Shane has gotten the impression over the past few months that he and his friend Sveta have to be in near-constant contact, like either one will starve if their flow of bitchy comments is ever interrupted. One of the older guys had made a kind of crude comment about it back in December and before Rozanov had even been able to put his phone down Popov had said, “Do not disrespect Svetlana Petrova, her father will kill you.”

“Yes, or I will kill you and I am much closer,” Rozanov had said, in a way that made it impossible to tell if he was joking. Everybody had laughed, some of them uneasily, and the jokes had mostly stopped after that.

In deference to the beautiful Florida weather, which is about twenty degrees warmer than what’s waiting for them back home in Montreal, Rozanov is wearing a pair of loose cargo shorts and a tight black vest top with a Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned over it. He hadn’t needed to be reminded to take off his shoes, which already makes him a vastly superior roommate to the other guys Shane has shared with over the All-Star weekend. He has surprisingly slender calves for someone of his size and overall musculature; they’re covered in a thick layer of golden-blond hair, much lighter than what grows out of his head. His bare toes flex and twitch. 

“What?” he says.

Shane repeats, “Let’s just agree not to bring anyone back to the room.”

Rozanov drops his phone onto the bedspread. “Do you do this?” he asks, sounding fascinated. “Pick up rabbits?”

“I know you know they’re called bunnies,” Shane replies through his teeth, “and no, that’s so fucking gross.” He can’t help twitching a little in reflexive disgust. “Wait, do you hook up with puck bunnies?”

“Of course not,” Rozanov says. “I go to bar and meet someone hot who wants me to fuck them becuase they know I will make them come, not like most idiots in bars whose dick works for thirty seconds.”

“Right,” Shane says. “Okay.” He feels that he’s gone stiff and he tries to relax, with probably mixed results. “So, don’t do that—here.”

“Not anybody else?” Rozanov says.

“Yes, exactly,” Shane says, groping around blindly for his phone so he can manufacture a reason to get out of this fucking room. It’s after 8PM and he hasn’t had dinner, so he maybe can pretend to find a restaurant on Google Maps and just leave. He wants to dunk his entire brain in bleach to get rid of this mental picture he now has, of Rozanov’s naked ass—which Shane has seen nearly every day for the last five months, becuase fuck the San Francisco Hammerheads—flexing as he fucks himself into—and into what barely even matters when Shane can perfectly picture that little mole just at the seam where his left thigh meets his left buttock, always half-hidden unless—

Shane’s hand lands on his phone, half-buried under his suitcase, and pulls it out as Rozanov says, contemplatively, “When I ask, everyone always says, oh Hollander is so private, never talk about girlfriend. You know what I think, when I hear this word private?”

“‘Thank god at least one guy I work with knows how to keep it professional’?” Shane suggests, tapping blindly. His phone vibrates: WRONG PASSCODE.

“I think, this guy likes to suck cock,” Rozanov says.

Shane freezes for a betraying millisecond in the act of re-entering his passcode. His phone buzzes angrily; if he doesn’t get it together, he’s going to get locked out. “Uh,” he wheezes, and then he makes what is probably his fifteenth or sixteenth mistake since Rozanov showed up on the first day of training camp (but who’s counting): he lifts his head so he can look at Rozanov, dead in the face, fully aware that he probably has the same expression as an opossum about to be flattened by a speeding 18-wheeler.

Rozanov, who’d been reclining propped up on one elbow like a Roman plutocrat in the background of a scene in Gladiator, sits up slowly. Unlike Shane, he clearly finds eye contact to be a worthwhile thing to practice because he’s really good at it. His eyes are very blue. This is why it’s a bad idea to turn on overhead lights; you find out that your linemate has eyes the same color as your favorite flavor of Gatorade. Probably Shane could have gone his whole life without knowing that and been a better, more mentally stable person.

Three years ago, in the Olympic Village in Sochi, after he had won a gold medal and been peer pressured by both his teammates and his own worst instincts, Shane had downed somewhere between five and seven shots of vodka on a stomach whose most recent exposure to nourishment had been a tuna sandwich, six hours earlier, after which he’d played nearly twenty minutes of hockey on international ice. He’d been wearing his medal and tracksuit; there had been a party in somebody’s room; there had been raucous encouragement that Shane let the intimidatingly beautiful Norwegian who’d medalled in the women’s sprint biathlon take him back to her room in order to have her wicked way with him. Shane had been drunk enough not to know how else to escape the party, but still just sober enough to know that escape was absolutely necessary, and the sooner the better; so he’d left with the biathlete, who had truly been astonishingly pretty to a degree that felt hysterically funny to Shane. 

As they’d waited for the elevator, he’d said to her, you could do–like, so much better. In every way. She had told him that she was well aware, but Shane’s freckles were very pretty and would look much prettier after she had sat on his face. Then, the doors to the elevator had opened and revealed about seventeen other extremely beautiful Norwegians who had all started speaking excitedly and yelling and, Shane had guessed, congratulating the biathlete on her win. They had all come out of the elevator to hug her; Shane had gotten on. When the elevator doors had closed, the only passengers had been Shane and a very tall man who’d been hidden in the back behind all the Norwegians. He’d been wearing a Team Russia jacket. Shane had recognized him, of course, since he was the most famous figure skater in the world and Shane would have had to have been born in a barn in Saskatchewan not to have known him.

You skate very fucking nice, Shane had said, stupidly, in the patchwork Russian he had somehow been able to cobble together. He’d been drunk enough that this had seemed like a good idea. It was probably weird to just stand in silence in the elevator together, right?

Thank you, the figure skater had replied, in a deep voice that had felt so pleasant to Shane’s drunk ears he’d sort–shivered, a little bit. His eyes had dipped partially closed, and when he’d opened them again the figure skater had been watching him with a shrewd, slightly predatory expression. You skate? he had asked.

Yes, Shane had said, flicking a finger against the gold medal that was still looped around his neck. In English he had said, It doesn’t sound as nice when I do it. Meaning, of course, his edges. The new Metros skating coach, Théo, had just kindly informed Shane at the beginning of that season that his skating was not as egregious as some other hockey players he’d worked with, so, really, they weren’t going to have to do that much work. Théo’s edges had been so beautiful, when Shane had listened to them during his demonstration; like wind through rushes. And this figure skater’s edges were somehow even more lovely to the ear.

The figure skater had gotten off on the fifteenth floor. Shane had forgotten to press the button for his own room (on the 8th floor) and when he’d realized that and gone to remedy it, the figure skater had said, Come to my room, and, really, Shane had understood him immediately, with a kind of full-body electric shock that had been enhanced, not dampened, by the approximately quarter liter of vodka that had entered his bloodstream over the preceding three hours. He had followed the figure skater back to his room. They’d kissed, desultorily and damply, and then they’d exchanged handjobs and muffled groans into each other’s necks and afterwards the figure skater had patted Shane’s naked ass twice and said, You–understand? By which he’d presumably meant to ask if Shane understood that being gay in Russia was functionally illegal and also they would both lose their careers immediately if either of them ever told another soul. Same for me, so, yes, Shane had replied as he’d pulled his track pants back up. The figure skater had kissed him on each cheek, very firmly, in a way that had almost verged on paternal. Good, he’d said brusquely in Russian, and then he’d shoved Shane out into the hallway.

As Shane had ridden the elevator back down to the 8th floor, he had been sober enough that the stupidity of what he’d just done had crushed him in a sudden, merciless rush like a fucking avalanche: freezing cold, horrifying, inescapable. It had happened, and it couldn’t be undone, but it could never happen again.

All of which is to say that when Rozanov climbs off of the bed closer to the door in their hotel room in Florida and climbs over onto Shane’s bed, the mattress depressing under his weight enough to gently roll Shane down towards him, into arm’s reach, Shane should really fucking know better. When Rozanov fits one of his big, long-fingered hands against Shane’s chin and presses, gently at first and then with slightly more aggressive pressure, until Shane’s mouth cracks open enough for a rush of air-conditioned air to touch his exposed tongue, Shane should use the opportunity to say, “no,” or maybe even, “this is a bad idea and you might not have considered the full repercussions of it because you’re only twenty-two years old.” When Rozanov leans down, very slowly, his eyes still locked on Shane’s, sinking down until he’s close enough that Shane can smell the artificial musk of his shampoo, Shane, rather than extricating himself from his situation, thinks, his eyes are so blue that they’re making me stupid.

It’s Shane who kisses Rozanov first. He rears up, against the pressure of Rozanov’s hand, and spears his fingers through Rozanov’s hair, pulling him down. Their mouths flatten together so quickly that their teeth click together, once and then again when Rozanov twists and tries to find a new angle. He tastes like stale coffee and cheddar and sour cream Ruffles. It’s so fucking gross. Shane licks the roof of his mouth and the back of his teeth, desperate to map every new texture. One of Rozanov’s hands is on Shane’s pecs, squeezing and pinching. The other still has his jaw pressed open, like if he lets go Shane’s mouth will slam closed. The implication that Rozanov wants this–that Rozanov wants to kiss Shane badly enough to physically prise his mouth open like a fucking oyster–makes Shane feel fuzzy and hot, like a peach being baked into a pie. Rozanov lazily rolls his hips, rubbing the hard line of his cock against and then along Shane’s, adjusting there, too, so the angle is right. He’s always trying to find the right angle on the play; future fucking playmaker in action. 

Shane is leaking enough that just the rutting is starting to feel really fucking good. He tries to make some kind of noise, but Rozanov lifts off just enough to say, “No, first time like this,” and his voice is deep, jagged enough to make Shane wiggle like he’s just been tickled, and then Rozanov’s back to kissing him before Shane has recovered enough air to make a counteroffer, like, maybe let’s lose the fucking shorts?

Kissing Rozanov totally wipes Shane’s higher-level thinking, like a magnet over a hard drive. He comes at some point, but Rozanov keeps going, maybe even past when he comes, because eventually, when Shane’s jaw is throbbing angrily and the joint under his ear has started to pinch, Rozanov drops his forehead into the crook of Shane’s neck and Shane can see over his head that the LED clock next to the TV says that it’s 11:52PM.

“That can’t be right,” Shane says, dazed. His jaw clicks as he speaks for what is apparently the first time in nearly four fucking hours. 

Rozanov says something in Russian that sounds very rude, and also tired.

“No,” Shane says. “It’s midnight. Fuck, when does room service stop?” and Rozanov stills for a second before rearing up spitting curses, nearly crushing Shane’s balls in the process. They scramble for the nearby menu, which informs them that orders can be placed until midnight, so Shane hurriedly dials the extension printed on the menu and places an order totally at random, rattling off things as Rozanov points to them. His voice sounds strained to his own ears. His jaw keeps clicking, annoyingly, making the same weird noise that his left knee makes sometimes on the stationary bike.

When Shane puts the phone back in its cradle, Rozanov grabs his head with both hands and lands a smacking kiss right in the middle of Shane’s forehead. “Genius,” he says happily. “This is why you are captain. I am showering now,” and he climbs off of the bed, apparently totally unbothered by the wet spot framing the zipper fly of his cargo shorts, and saunters into the bathroom.

Needless to say, Shane does not feel like a fucking genius.

~

The most bizarre part is how totally not bizarre it is. Shane and Rozanov eat their room service—Shane picking through the various plates to cobble together something edible, Rozanov eating basically everything else, although they do fight over the fruit cup that had come as a side with the patty melt—and fall asleep in their separate beds. Shane gets up early and goes for a run in the hotel gym and makes it back to their room just in time to catch Rozanov on his way out the door to go for a run along the beach, which he has apparently missed doing now that he lives in Montreal. They’ve got a couple of media things in the morning, some of it together and some not, but they always end up back in each other’s orbits within a few hours. And it’s not fucking awkward, not even once; Rozanov grabs Shane by the elbow on his way into the lunch and says, “Come meet guys I play with in Moscow,” and Shane has lunch with a couple young Russians and Kazakhs and fucking Malinin, who had played for Dynamo for like three months during the 2006 lockout. “Were you even alive then?” Shane asks Rozanov.

The draft is in the afternoon. Shane had missed the hubbub of last year’s All-Star Game, which had been universally decried as a lazy and dumbass set-up that didn’t let anybody have any fun–this had come up repeatedly at lunch, as Rozanov and Malinin had both objected to the fact that the division format had forced them to play with their actual teammates, Rozanov because he hated them and Malinin because they didn’t let him goof off--and apparently Crowell had learned from his mistakes and put the single elimination format out to pasture. Rozanov is drafted first; zero surprise there, he’s got the most goals in the league and is on track to hit 50 by late March. Shane goes second, which should probably not be that surprising, since he’s the current points leader by a margin that no one is likely to surpass and he’s got a respectable 28 goals of his own. But he is maybe a little shocked, since the first thing everyone has asked him all day has been, How’s the knee? Maybe they’d all taken his, Great, delivered through clenched teeth, at face value.

After a very short strategy meeting with his new team that basically consists of have fun and tear it up out there, Shane goes out to dinner with a couple of guys he’d played with in Sochi; they go to this hole-in-the-wall Peruvian place recommended by someone who’d played for Tampa Bay and eat their weight in ceviche. There is a lot of trash-talking about the skills competition, and the upcoming game, and then as the pitchers of pisco sours hit the conversation drifts away from hockey. Kids; wives; girlfriends; body parts that are giving up the ghost; what mutual friends, now retired, are doing to fill their days. 

Shane is only a couple of draft classes behind everybody else at the table but the gulf of isolation feels as if it’s made of more than just years. Shane feels a raw, grating sense of being stuck, trapped ankle-deep in a muddy landscape that everyone else can walk over with zero issue. It’s not dissimilar to the way Shane had felt the first time he’d had to rehab his knee. Why was this thing so easy for everyone else and so fucking hard for him? It had been profoundly alarming to realize that gritting his teeth and working really fucking hard was not going to be enough to overcome the inertia exerted on him by the universe. Shane doesn’t want a wife or a girlfriend and he’s mostly made his peace with the reality of his fucked up Frankenstein knee and the fact that he probably won’t have kids, ever, but that doesn’t make sitting there listening to the drunken griping and boasting and bemoaning any easier. Marleau has his chin on his fist and is saying, in French, “It’s too bad my wife couldn’t get the time off, she loves alligators,” in a slightly soppy way that makes Shane for some reason totally fucking enraged.

He puts a pillow over his rage’s face and tries to suffocate it, and for about an hour has himself convinced that it’s worked–Rose is a huge fan of visualization, she’s going to be thrilled–and then he unlocks the door of his hotel room and kicks off his shoes and at the exact same instant Rozanov comes out of the bathroom, flicking off the light as he goes. His mouth is pink, scrubbed-looking and soft, like he’s just finished brushing his teeth. The hotel room is big enough that a little bit of shuffling could have gotten them out of each other’s space in less than a second. But Shane grabs him, or Rozanov grabs him, or they both do it, like a pair of cymbals crashing together, and they slam against the wall hard enough that Shane’s shoulderblades are probably going to be bruised tomorrow. Rozanov tastes like toothpaste; the rage is still there in Shane’s throat, adding an unfamiliar bitterness.

Shane doesn’t think before he drops to his knees. Rozanov sucks in a very harsh breath that sounds like words, but Shane doesn’t really hear them. His pulse is so fast that the oceanic sound of his blood is pounding in his ears. He pulls down Rozanov’s sweatpants and the asshole isn’t wearing underwear, which is both fucking disgusting and somehow so unbelievably arousing that the thudding noise abruptly disappears as all of the blood drains out of Shane’s head. He presses his nose into the crease between Rozanov’s groin and leg, the curly hair there prickling his face, and inhales raggedly. The rage drains away. He feels dizzy in its absence.

Some time later, he feels Rozanov’s fingers, running through his hair and then over the top curve of his left ear. He’s wracked, suddenly, by a full-body shudder.

“You going to suck my dick sometime soon?” Rozanov rasps.

“Go to hell,” Shane says woozily.

“Am there already, thanks,” Rozanov says. He does not sound totally steady. So at least whatever the fuck is happening here is destabilizing to them both. That’s somehow enough to rescue Shane from the grip of whatever daze or anxiety attack or ceviche-induced paralysis had briefly trapped him. He pulls back just enough to open his mouth and lick the tip of Rozanov’s cock into his mouth. Rozanov is hard but not enough for his foreskin to have completely pulled back from the head; Shane gently wiggles his tongue inside the soft, folded skin. Rozanov’s fingers spasm and tighten in his hair. “Ah!” Shane hears, faintly. 

Shane has watched porn and done this to the dildo he’d bought, just to see if he found the experience even half as pleasurable as the skinny little hairless bottoms in porn seemed to, and he’d diagnosed himself as ambivalently into giving head: if a partner wanted to; to be polite. It had mostly been an intellectual exercise and Shane had been fine with his conclusions. But sucking on a dildo a few times and feeling a little embarrassed by it–and, frankly, fucking hating the texture–had not really prepared Shane for sucking Rozanov’s cock. He’s so fucking hard that his head feels like it’s swimming on his shoulders and he’s genuinely grateful to have the tether of Rozanov’s hands in his hair, steadying him. Rozanov’s body is broadcasting the same tiny cues that Shane has learned to read from Rozanov skating on his line–the sudden, sharp inhales, the twitching of his thighs, the grip of his hands–and by the time Shane has most of Rozanov’s cock (that is yes, okay, kind of large if you wanted to be technical about it) in his mouth, Shane is breathing so hard that his eyes are smarting. Or maybe it’s the pressure underneath his nose. Or maybe it’s the way he’s having a hard time catching his breath, exhaling in wet gulps. 

Rozanov’s saying something in Russian, a low and pattering murmur. Shane squeezes his eyes shut, but he can feel a few tears escape. He’d hope that Rozanov won’t notice, but there’s hardly room for any thought in his head that’s not the suckling, inhaling, exhaling, the sensation of Rozanov’s hips moving as he gently coaxes his cock in and out of Shane’s mouth, which he has to do himself because Shane is too overwhelmed to bob his head. Shane wants to lay down and cry. He wants to come. He wants Rozanov to come. Eventually, they do.

~

The next morning they’re the only two occupants of the elevator they take down to the neighboring second floor conference rooms where breakfast is being served for each team. “You hold record for accuracy shooting, yes?” Rozanov asks as they watch the floors tick down.

“Yes,” Shane says, instantly suspicious.

“I will set new record,” Rozanov says, “and you will let me fuck you.”

Shane feels two conflicting sensations dagger through his body, in near perfect unison: arousal and outrage. “What, no you won’t,” he says. He wonders for a terrible second if this is how Hunter had felt, watching Shane beat his record at the 2010 All-Star Game–not aroused, of course, but astonished that some brazen kid would feel like he could even make the attempt. Shane and Hunter are the only two players at this year’s game who have ever gone 4/4, and Rozanov thinks he’s going to do it?

“I will,” Rozanov says, “and you will let me fuck you after.”

“You will not!” Shane says again. Outrage is winning out over arousal. “The best you’ve ever hit is 4/5!”

“That is why this is bet,” Rozanov says with exaggerated patience. “You do not seem to understand how this works. I say I will do this, you say no, I say okay what will you give me if I do, you say you can fuck me, and then you say what you get if I do not do this.”

“You can suck my dick,” Shane says, unthinkingly. “And you’re not fucking me the night before the All-Star Game, even if you did somehow magically hit 4/4 in less than 7.3 seconds–which you’re not, because your top right accuracy is weaker than mine.”

“Fine,” Rozanov says hurriedly; the elevator display clicks down from 3 to 2. “Tomorrow night, after game.”

“Fine,” Shane says as the doors slide open. “If you win accuracy shooting and set a new record. Which you will not.”

~

In the end, Rozanov’s new record in accuracy shooting stands for exactly ninety seconds. When Shane lazily skates by his team’s bench having set a new record–4/4 in 7.1 seconds–Rozanov leads forward and calls, “I will win breakaway challenge,” with a crazed look in his eyes.

“Yeah,” Shane agrees, “probably. Because you love showboating.”

“I do not know or care what this means,” Rozanov says. Shane can hear one of Rozanov’s temporary teammates lean forward to explain as he returns to his own bench. Hunter and Vaughan are squished up together at the end. They shuffle over to make room for Shane and cheerfully clap him on the shoulder. 

Hunter says, “Thanks for the point, man,” but he’s drowned out by Vaughan’s much louder, “What did Rozanov say?”

“Oh, you know,” Shane says vaguely.

“Woof,” Vaughan says, nodding sagely. “Yeah, I get you.”

~

Shane turns down the dinner invitations he gets from various cliques of teammates and goes back to his hotel room with the vague idea that he’ll order room service and eat it with the balcony doors open to enjoy the beautiful south-facing view of the Hillsborough Bay. He’s in the shower, mostly done with washing up and just enjoying being lovingly crushed by the hotel’s magnificent water pressure–something after so many years on the road that Shane knows better than to take for granted–when the door to the bathroom bangs opens. Shane squawks, “Holy shit!” and then realizes the blurry figure must be Rozanov. Shane wipes the condensation off of the glass shower door with the blade of his hand. Rozanov is flinging his shirt off somewhere backwards into the room behind him with one hand as the other goes to unbutton the fly of his shorts, which he proceeds to shove down and kick off. He crosses the bathroom in a few strides and pulls open the shower door.

Shane backs away, under the spray, bracing himself for the gush of cold air-conditioned air that rushes in along with Rozanov’s naked body. “You couldn’t have waited like twenty seconds?” Shane wonders. “I was nearly done.”

“Liar,” Rozanov says.

Shane flushes, because Rozanov is not–incorrect. Maybe. “Surprisingly accurate shooting from you today. Sorry you only had the record for a literal minute.”

The shower stall is big enough that Rozanov can actually prowl towards Shane. He covers the distance in about two steps (they’re small steps) but he makes the most of the runway they give him. He’s hardening under Shane’s gaze, his flesh pinking and flushing. “Liar,” Rozanov says, again.

“Yeah,” Shane allows in the bare second he has before Rozanov kisses him.

Rozanov sucks Shane off, very nicely, and then uses a frankly unhinged amount of Shane’s hair oil to fuck a single index finger up into Shane’s ass, after which he sucks Shane off again because prostate stimulation is something Shane has already used his dildo to diagnose himself as feeling distinctly unambiguous about. Rozanov jerks himself off, afterwards, their wet torsos rubbing against each other, their mouths slipping together and then apart and then back together. The water pressure remains amazing and hot the entire time, which is lovely for the hour or so that they spend in the shower but distinctly less lovely when Shane gets out and realizes he’s massively dehydrated. 

While Shane layers on his nightly routine of toner and essence and moisturizer, Rozanov orders room service and then disappears without a word into the hallway. He comes back less than a minute later and casually deposits a green can of Schweppes on the bathroom counter without looking up, his attention mostly on his phone as he wanders back into the room. Shane pauses in the act of rubbing moisturizer into his neck, which is still tingling from being bristled by Rozanov’s patchy end-of-day scruff. What the fuck, Shane thinks as he picks up the can, but he’s too thirsty to linger on this thought. The ginger ale is blissfully cold; the bubbles are crisp on the back of his tongue. After drinking about half of it, Shane leans out of the bathroom door and calls, “Thanks for the ginger ale. By the way, you owe me $50 for the hair oil.”

~

On their way down to breakfast the next day, they share the elevator with a very excited family of six who ask Shane and Rozanov to autograph their collection of 2017 NHL ALL-STAR GAME hats. When the elevator stops on the third floor, each dad picks up two kids and carts them off to the hotel restaurant, which induces raucous shrieks and excited babbling from each and every child. Shane caps the mini black Sharpie he keeps on his key ring and puts his keys back in his pocket. The air of the elevator feels electric and stifling, like being inside a thundercloud seconds before the storm breaks.

Just before the doors open on the second floor, Shane gets out, “If your team wins, tonight. I’ll let you.”

The doors open. Shane bolts for breakfast.

~

I’ll let you. As if Shane might have to be coaxed and coerced into it. As if Rozanov might find it worthwhile to do the coaxing and coercing. What a stupid fucking thing to have said.

~

Having been doing this for a decade, Shane knows what the All-Star Game is supposed to be–a marketing opportunity, a chance to cut loose and goof off, a party on skates–and what it is not supposed to be–a game played seriously enough to risk anybody getting injured in the middle of the season–and the first two periods basically meet his expectations. About half of the guys on both sides are hungover from the night before and none of them seem that bothered by it, which makes sense because it’s 8-8 by the end of the second period and every time Shane goes over the boards the guys coming back are laughing.

The top of the third finds Shane back behind the goalie, scrapping for the puck with a pair of guys from the Pacific who look like they were cloned from the same kernel of corn somewhere in Chatham. This is when Rozanov decides to skate directly into Shane’s back, his stick darting between Shane’s feet as his breath, hot and damp, chills the sweat coating the back of Shane’s neck. Shane knows it’s him two seconds before he makes contact and reflexively twists and kicks a little, protecting the puck with the side of his left skate. Rozanov laughs, raucously, and keeps digging until the puck comes free for him, as sweetly as a loose milk tooth, and off he zooms to the other end of the ice. Shane shakes off the clones but not quite fast enough; Rozanov scores when Shane is still barreling across the blue line, 8-9. 

Shane’s off the ice twenty seconds later when Rozanov’s team scores again–Malinin, hammering one into the top shelf like he’s playing fucking golf, the puck skidding over the goalie’s shoulder–and both of them are on the bench when Hunter brings it up to 9-10. His form is sleek, almost polished, like an orca cutting through the waves in pursuit of an unlucky seal. Without quite meaning to, Shane cranes his neck, trying to see Rozanov on the other bench, and Rozanov is doing the same, he realizes–their eyes catch, Rozanov makes his favorite elaborate little jerking off gesture, pretending to throw it over his shoulder as he rolls his eyes. Shane laughs. 

Vaughn says, “What?”

Shane pastes on a smile and says, loudly, “Nice goal!”

“Yeah I know, FUCKEN SICK,” Vaughn bellows. “No offense, man, but we’re going all the way this year.”

“You are not,” Shane replies reflexively.

“Did you see that?” Vaughn demands, gesturing towards where Hunter is shaking off the good-natured helmet-slaps of his linemates. “He’s fucking locked in. We’re going all the way.”

Shane says, “Okay, sure, but it’s February?” and Vaughn looks so aggrieved that Shane has to pretend to fuss with the strap of his glove to hide his smile, using his teeth to adjust the tension.

The lines change and Shane goes over the boards, just in time to neatly intercept Rozanov in the middle of one of his hell-for-leather sprints and slap the puck off of the front of his stick. In an ideal universe, where Shane was playing with the Metros, somebody else would have known to be on the lookout for that–Rozanov, certainly; Tsuzuki, maybe; Ahlqvist, often–but it’s the All-Star Game and Shane’s playing with a bunch of hungover hockey players who are more interested in making sick goals for their highlight reel than making sure any passes actually connect. The puck skitters off towards no one; Shane and Rozanov immediately sprint after it, shoulder-to-shoulder, their breaths huffing out in synchronized bursts. Shane’s there approximately two milliseconds before Rozanov, sweeping the puck around and behind the protection of his body, already curling towards where Vaughn is bellowing HOLLZY, and Rozanov knows somehow to come around the inside, stick snaking out, shoulder driving into the edge of Shane’s chest, and they’re scrapping again like a couple of alley cats. Shane wins this one and knocks the puck to Vaughn. “Too fucking slow!” he throws over his shoulder to Rozanov, who shouts back, “I thought that was how you liked it, old man!”

Vaughn doesn’t make much of the scoring opportunity, doesn’t even get a shot on goal, and then Malinin’s back on the ice and sets up a beautiful assist that puts his team up 9-11. There’s about ninety seconds left in the third period. Rozanov’s line is heading out when the coach–head of Colorado; total fucking clown–says, “Hollander, stay back; Hunter, you’re on,” and therefore Shane is sitting on the fucking bench seventeen seconds later when Rozanov dekes between a pair of distinctly hungover-looking d-men from Dallas and whips the puck over to Marleau to buy some time as he propels himself into a better position. Marleau holds onto the puck for a few precious milliseconds and then passes it back to Rozanov, who knocks it into the net just under the goalie’s left elbow. Rozanov goes up on one leg as he loops around behind the goal and pumps his arm a few times, and then as he zooms by Shane’s bench he says, loudly enough for Shane to hear it very clearly, “All passes are good to Ilyusha.” As his temporary teammates loudly boo, Shane tries to scowl and suspects he’s just smiling.

The final score is 9-12. Losing sucks and will probably always suck. For some reason, though, Shane is having trouble inhaling enough oxygen to really let the feeling settle. He keeps wanting to laugh.

~

When Shane successfully extricates himself from the loser’s consolation after-party and makes his way back to his hotel room, Rozanov is already there with a CVS bag with one of those ridiculously long crumpled receipts spilling out of it. “Seriously?” Shane asks as Rozanov pushes him back onto the bed. “What if somebody had seen you?”

“Buying condoms?” Rozanov says. “Yes. Very unusual. What is he doing, they will ask.”

“And lube?” Shane says pointedly.

“Again,” Rozanov says, crawling on top of Shane, “very unusual. Not normal behavior at all. I got strawberry flavor by the way, it was on sale.”

“That’s disgusting,” Shane says, and that ends up being the last coherent thing Shane says for the rest of the night.

Chapter 3

Shane and Rozanov are on the same flight back to Montreal the next morning. They both spend it asleep because they have to drive directly from the airport to practice ahead of tomorrow’s game; the Metros are hosting Buffalo, who have not yet figured out how to put the wheels back onto their clown car and are on a steady trajectory down to the pit of the rankings, where they’re probably hoping to score a good spot in the draft lottery. 

Shane keeps waiting for it to feel weird–for the regret to come that he’d let himself do something so profoundly stupid, and let his twenty-two-year-old linemate do something that was arguably even stupider, since Shane at least isn’t at risk of facing massive fines or legal consequences if they’re ever found out–but it just doesn’t. 

During the All-Star weekend he’d been willing to let that go, but he finds that he can’t once they’re home. He keeps worrying about it, pushing and prodding and digging, plagued by the sick anticipation of waiting for an unseen shoe to drop. Each time during practice that he catches Rozanov’s eye—once Rozanov even winks at him—the unsettled feeling disappears and stupid bubbly elation replaces it for the exact duration of time that they’re looking at each other, and then one or both of them skates off and Shane is back on his lonely island, catastrophizing.

By the end of practice he’s sort of managed to talk himself around to it feeling weird, through sheer willpower. He thinks he’s hiding it well, but Hayden comes up to him as they’re getting off the ice and says, “You’re coming over for dinner,” in a way that is very audibly not a question.

Jade meets them at the door to the attached garage. “Uncle Shane, it’s really you!” she shouts, “Ruby said you DIED.” 

Ruby appears in the door behind her, shaking her head pointedly. “I said MAYBE you died,” she protests.

“Maybe I’m a ghost,” Shane suggests. Ruby makes a face. There are not a lot of M. Night Shyamalan fans in the Pike household, Shane knows this already. The girls wait until he’s untied his boots and put them on the shoe rack to sprint over and tackle him, one on each side. 

“Are you coming to jiujitsu?” Ruby wants to know.

“No,” Hayden says, which provokes booing and yelps of protest. “Uncle Shane will be here when you get back, okay?”

“But I’m so good at jiujitsu,” Jade whines. “Uncle Shane don’t you want to see how good I am at jiujitsu?”

“Last time, Jade threw a boy. And he was so big,” Ruby says. 

“Like sooo big,” Jade says. Both of their skinny little arms are locked tight around Shane’s stomach. He feels Jade squish her chin into the tender flesh protecting his kidney and has to suppress a yelp. “Coach Jessica said I was super strong, like an ant. Did you know ants are super strong? And they’re like ALL girls.”

“I did not know ants are all girls,” Shane admits. 

“WE ARE LEAVING IN TWO MINUTES,” comes from somewhere deeper in the house. “I NEED BELTS AND WATER BOTTLES TO BE IN YOUR HANDS.”

Jade yelps and releases Shane, skidding in her socked feet as she races for the doorway, yelling something about how she doesn’t know where her water bottle is. Ruby stays snuggled up against Shane for a few more seconds. “Most of the ants are girls because they work hard,” she tells Shane. “The boy ants don’t work hard. And the queen doesn’t even need them to make babies. She can make, like, extra copies of herself.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Shane says.

“It’s so gross,” Ruby agrees happily. “Are you sure you don’t want to come to jiujitsu?”

“You can show me what you learned when you get back,” Shane suggests. He puts a hand on the back of her head and lets it rest there for a second, her hair still baby-fine, soft and thin under his fingers, and then he tugs on the end of the furthest lopsided pigtail.

While Jackie takes the girls to jiujitsu, Hayden and Shane cook dinner. This mostly involves pouring a 10lb bag of various chicken cuts onto a sheet pan Jackie had already piled with chopped root vegetables and then dumping like a cup of herbes de provence on top of everything (Arthur helps with that step). After they eat, the twins force Arthur to help them demonstrate what they’d learned that day in jiujitsu. Shane is both impressed and alarmed by how easily they’re able to sling their little brother around, but Jackie doesn’t seem concerned and Hayden is actively applauding so probably it’s fine. Shane holds Amber in his lap and tries to teach her to applaud, but all she really wants to do is gnaw on the side of his thumb, so he lets her do that.

Hayden’s on bath duty; as he herds all the kids who can walk upstairs, Jackie says, “You two can come keep me company while I wash up. How was Florida? Do you want another ginger ale?”

“No, I’m good,” Shane says, scooping up his half-full can in one hand and Amber in the other. “It was fine. My team lost.”

Jackie says, “Yeah, we watched the game. Was it weird playing against Rozanov again? Hayden said you guys have some kind of weird psychic connection on the ice.”

Shane laughs, strangled. “No, it was fine,” he says, very quickly. “And we’re not psychic, Hayden is just hallucinating from breathing too much of Gondo’s gross cologne. Thanks for watching the game, though. Does that mean you ended up getting time off for the break?”

Jackie launches into a very complicated story about scheduling at the dermatologist’s office where she works. Shane and Amber sit at the island and listen, dutifully making interested noises when they’re cued. When Amber’s noises start going down in pitch, Shane gets up and digs around in the freezer for one of the hundred plastic teething rings that are shoved under various plastic bags and Tupperware containers labeled with Jackie’s illegible handwriting.

As Jackie loads all of the plates and cutlery into the dishwasher, she abruptly changes the topic. “How’s Rose?” she asks.

“Back in Argentina for reshoots,” Shane says. “I think the set might be infested with penguins? She sends me a picture of them like every day.”

“I know that when I read Wuthering Heights for the first time I thought, what this really needs are penguins,” Jackie says. “Another metaphor for Heathcliff’s isolation, probably.” 

Shane says, “I’ve never read Wuthering Heights. I don’t know at what point it became impossible to tell Rose that but we passed it, like, two months ago. She keeps making jokes I don’t understand.”

Jackie laughs at this as she dries off the sheet pan she’s just finished scrubbing. “You know, I really liked Rose,” she says. “Like, when you guys were dating, I was really happy. Do you know why?”

Considering that she’d been laughing only a few seconds before, her voice is surprisingly serious. Shane says, “Uh,” and then nothing else, because yes, it had been very obvious that Jackie, like everyone else on the face of the planet, had approved when Shane and Rose were dating and no, Shane had not really examined the root reasoning behind that approbation. Shane had figured at the time he was just doing a very, very good job at seeming normal and doing the normal professional athlete thing of dating a woman obviously out of his league in every respect.

“It was because like me and unlike basically everyone Hayden and I work with, Rose went to a liberal arts college and could talk to me about poetry,” Jackie says. She puts the sheet pan away into a tall, narrow cabinet and begins to dry the smaller pan Hayden had used to broil asparagus. “I hadn’t been able to do that in years and it felt amazing.” Her mouth twists. She uses her thumb and the dish towel to roughly dry one recessed corner of the small pan. “It was pretty selfish. Because I didn’t like her because I thought she made you happy—I liked her a lot in spite of the fact that it was obvious you were miserable. And I realize that makes me a shitty friend, and I’m sorry for that.”

Shane gapes at Jackie. “I was obviously miserable?!” he squawks.

“Deeply,” Jackie says. She puts this smaller pan away in a different, slightly narrower cabinet. “Sorry if you thought you were hiding it.”

“I—I wasn’t—I didn’t—“ Shane splutters.

“I’ve known you for, what, eight years?” Jackie says. “I’m not saying it was obvious to everybody. Anyway, that’s not the point. I just wanted to apologize. I’ve owed you one for years and I’ve kept putting it off.”

Amber makes a contented growling noise and tries to suffocate herself with the teething ring. Shane bounces her a little to resettle her, mostly unconsciously. “Why, ah, now?” he says, slightly alarmed, although—how would Jackie know? She has that weird semi-psychic intuition thing going on that most moms have, but as far as Shane is aware it only works on her children, and that’s because they’re all bad liars who are easy to read because they’re under seven.

“Finally kicked my own ass about it,” Jackie says, so easily that Shane does not believe her.

“Really?” he says. “Is this like—a New Year’s resolution thing? Like journaling?”

Jackie scowls. “You know we don’t talk about journaling in this house,” she says, still smarting from her consecutive back-to-back resolution failures of 2014 and 2015. 

“I’m just saying,” Shane says, “if I need to be ready for, like, more emotional and vulnerable conversations this year—“

“Please, I’d have better luck getting an emotionally-aware I feel statement out of Amber,” Jackie says, rolling her eyes. She drapes the kitchen towel over the faucet and gestures with one grabby hand. “Speaking of which, it’s time for that one to go down.”

Shane reluctantly hands over Amber. “You sure?” he asks. “She’s fine.”

“She’s gonna be a cranky monster for Nanny Eleanor tomorrow,” Jackie says. “But that’s why we pay her the big bucks, isn’t it?” she asks Amber in a conspiratorial whisper. “Yes! To deal with your cranky, stinky little butt!”

Jackie slings Amber over one shoulder and deftly pulls the thawed teething ring away. “Shane, one more quick thing,” she says as she opens the freezer drawer to toss the teething ring back inside. “I went to a small liberal arts college where I played intramural field hockey and helped edit the literary magazine. So, you know, there is a reason that Hayden’s religious parents hate me beyond the fact that I’m not Catholic.” She kicks the freezer drawer shut and turns to look Shane straight in the face. “And you should know that Hayden was not weird or gross at all and in fact very sweet when I told him even though I was braced for the worst from my 21-year-old hockey-player boyfriend. Okay?”

Shane stared at her blankly. “Okay?” he parrots, with zero idea what he’s supposed to know about people who edit literary magazines. Is this Jackie’s way of telling him she’s, like, a Wiccan or something? She always dresses as that goth vampire version of Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to hand out Halloween candy.

“Okay,” Jackie says. “Get yourself another can of ginger ale. After this one goes down I’m gonna kick your ass at Rocket League.”

~

The next night, Shane scores twice against Buffalo in the first period, which even for a team as tragically chaotic as the Direwolves is excessive. Rozanov roars and crushes him into the boards in celebration after the second one goes in past the very inexperienced goalie Buffalo had needed to call in from their farm team after half their roster had been felled by norovirus. “What’s with all the passes?” Shane asks him breathlessly. “You’re normally such a hog.”

Rozanov smacks a kiss against the side of Shane’s helmet. “It is lonely at the top,” he says innocently.

“FUCK YEAH,” Tsuzuki bellows, skidding across the ice and slamming into them in a way that’s going to send Théo into an inarticulate rage spiral.

Rozanov grabs Tsuzuki by the shoulder. “Let’s get Hollzy three tonight,” he says. “English word for, uh, prize? That makes up for being such a loser at the All-Star Game.”

“No fucking idea,” Tsuzuki says, which is unsurprising because Shane is pretty sure all of the English he knows he learned from Twitch streams.

“Consolation,” Shane says. “Dick.”

Rozanov smirks at him while he shakes Tsuzuki a couple of times. “I am a very generous person,” he says. “Hollzy knows this.” 

When they’re in the locker room during the second intermission, catching their breath and checking their sticks and Shane is hurriedly re-taping his knee—not because it feels bad, but because some of the tape has come loose and the itch is driving him fucking nuts—Rozanov takes advantage of this distraction to announce that if the team gets Shane a hat trick, the first round at Touche Montréalais afterwards will be on him, since he is after all still flush from his share of the All-Star pot. He winks at Shane, who has looked up from pulling his skates back on long enough to glare.

A round of free drinks at a trendy EDM club shouldn’t be motivating to anyone except the likes of Tsuzuki, still on his rookie contract and probably making less than his girlfriend, Nanny Eleanor, but somehow it puts a bit of extra lift under everybody’s wings. They win 6-1 and Shane does indeed get his hat trick. Tsuzuki comes up to him while he’s talking to the media afterwards and hands him the game puck. Shane, in the middle of answering a question so boring that he’s not actually capable of maintaining his own line of thought in the face of even this minor interruption, stops speaking and stares at him.

“Thirtieth hat trick,” Tsuzuki says, grinning at him.

“That can’t be right,” Shane says blankly, but he sees Shoshannah somewhere in the back of the scrum, giving him a double thumbs up and beaming. “Wait, really?” A bunch of the reporters laugh.

In the end, he’s finally convinced by the fact that his mom had texted him, sometime mid-game, Sweetie I’m so proud of you!!! What an accomplishment! Your dad and I are going to get a hotel and stay in town so we can take you out to lunch tomorrow to celebrate.

Shane texts her back, Just stay with me. Sheets should be clean in your usual guest room. I won’t be back until late, sorry, and puts his phone back so he can go shower. Thirty MLH career hat tricks. Fuck. Fuck!

When he comes back a few minutes later, wiping the inside of his ear with the corner of his towel, she’s already responded with a thumbs down. Have fun!! We can splurge on a hotel room occasionally. Your dad says he wants to have a bath. Then, an eye roll emoji, because the lack of bathtubs in Shane’s condo has been a source of contention for like five years. Probably this is his dad’s way of stealthily treating Shane’s mom to a stay at a nice hotel, which is something she really enjoys but is normally too ruthlessly practical to do. 

Okay, let me know where you want to meet tomorrow, Shane replies.

Kissing face emoji. Big heart with smaller floating heart emoji. Congrats again sweetie, we love you and are so proud of you! Shane is twenty-eight years old, but it hasn’t stopped feeling sweet: the lovely sensation of knowing that he’s done something good in what is indisputably the right way.

It’s a Wednesday night, January tottering into February, and four inches of icy slush have just been dumped on the city by a temperamental winter storm, but none of that appears to have dissuaded any of the approximately seven hundred Montrealers packed inside Touche Montréalais from going out. Shane accepts increasingly drunken congratulations, holding a mostly-full glass of witbier to his chest, and politely refuses invitations to dance from the first two girls who ask, both of whom are very beautiful but genuinely look like they’ve only just turned eighteen.

“Seriously?” Gondouin leans down to shout, after Shane turns down the second one and immediately attempts to squeeze himself into a booth where he might escape further attention. Shane prefers when they go to places with VIP rooms, even though that undoubtedly makes him an asshole, because it at least cuts down on the crowd. But the club scene guys swear by this place as having the best DJ in Montreal and they’re willing to forgo VIP for it—probably because they’ve never been asked to sign a drunken fan’s ass in the line for the bathroom, Shane thinks uncharitably.

“She was a baby,” Shane says.

“A hot baby!” Gondouin replies, a little too incredulously for a guy who’s been married for like eleven years.

“Not my type,” Shane says. “Come on, man, what if she’s underage and in here with a fake ID? No way.”

Gondouin makes a disbelieving noise but then appears to consider Shane’s point, undergoing a protracted face journey of contemplation, understanding, and resignation that is probably so lengthy due to the back-to-back shots he’d done almost immediately (one for each of his points tonight) and not the chronic brain damage he’s dealt himself via cologne-based chemical warfare. Although Shane is not taking that risk, so he tries to scoot a little further away, deeper into the booth.

Shane takes a sip of his beer and in the millisecond that he’s distracted, Gondouin wanders off and is replaced by Rozanov, who drops down onto the approximately five centimeters of bench space that is available next to Shane’s left thigh. He smells like cigarette smoke and that weird, fresh tartness that clothes get after being frozen. He has a squat glass filled with a clear liquid that Shane strongly suspects is not water. “Typical,” Rozanov says, his face turned so that he can speak into Shane’s ear–-not a shout, but something raspier. “You go to nice club and hide from girls in dark corner.”

Shane fights down a shiver and turns to glare at him. Rozanov doesn’t back off; they’re nearly nose-to-nose. The flashing blue and silver and pink lights break his face down into a series of unrecognizable shapes, like Shane’s sitting there with Amber on his lap watching Sesame Street on his iPad and learning all about geometry for the first time. “I don’t feel like meeting girls tonight,” he says, through his teeth.

“No?” Rozanov says, feigning shock. “Help me pick one, then.”

“You are such a fucking asshole,” Shane says. Instead of replying, Rozanov turns his head and nonchalantly slings an arm around Shane’s shoulders, pulling Shane in so their thighs and hips and torsos are pressed together. Rozanov is wearing one of his ugly dance club shirts, slippery because it’s some mostly-synthetic fabric that required burning down half the Amazon to make. It’s unbuttoned nearly to his nipples; the changing lights catch the glint of his cross and chain against the smooth plane of his chest.

“That one, by bar,” Rozanov turns back to Shane to say. The bar is a few meters away. Something like two hundred or so equally beautiful girls wearing tiny little dresses are trying to get drinks and chatting and flirting. All of them are in heels. How the fuck did they walk through the slush? Witchcraft. “Short one.”

They’re all short, probably; most girls are, in Shane’s experience. But that does at least eliminate the very tall girl at the nearest end of the bar whose hair has been pulled back into a cascading waterfall of hundreds of tiny braids. Shane notices that she is wearing leather pants. He can’t help finding her practical and therefore admirable; the windchill is -20C.

“Dark hair,” Rozanov continues. There’s still probably fifty girls who fit that description. Shane has never realized before quite how many blondes there are in Montreal. Rose had told him once that she needed to color her hair regularly–most redheads and blondes do, it darkens as you get older–and she’d also told him how expensive it was to maintain and how she’d had to tell herself it was an investment when she had first started acting, to justify the cost. Are all these girls making tons of money? How can you hold down a job that makes tons of money yet still be out at a club on a Wednesday night? They can’t all be professional hockey players.

Rozanov leans closer to Shane, says, “Freckles,” and he must blink because Shane feels a tickle along his cheekbone, close to his ear.

“How the fuck can you see freckles from here?” Shane marvels, although what’s really amazing is that he’s capable of speaking at all through the slow-tightening grip of the chilling horror that’s begun to paralyze him. Rozanov is serious, Shane realizes. He’s going to force Shane to sit here and watch him pick up some girl. And to what end? To confirm that what had happened in Florida was an aberration never to be repeated? Shane had already known that. No one had needed to say anything for him to know that.

Rozanov doesn’t answer. It’s possible he hadn’t heard, because Shane had spoken at a normal volume and hadn’t even been able to hear himself over the pounding bass of the music. Shane has just enough spare brain cells to notice that the club scene guys are all going out of their minds in the middle of the dance floor, thrashing around and having what looks like a great time celebrating Shane’s thirtieth career hat trick. Good for them! Shane wishes he was dead.

Rozanov pulls back enough for Shane to see his full face. His eyes look purple in the light. His arm is a bulky, heavy weight slung over Shane’s shoulder, but the pressure that ought to be comforting just makes the panic worse, because Shane knows that soon it will be gone. 

What the fuck had Shane been thinking? That because Rozanov was young and kind of a dick and Shane had only let Rozanov fuck him the one time that Shane was magically going to be able to talk himself into being normal about this? Shane has never been normal about anything a day in his fucking life. Amongst Shane’s many flaws, this has always felt like the fatal one: knowing that he is fundamentally different from the people around him, incapable of responding to many situations in a way that other people might consider normal, totally unable to feel things in a way that society has decided people ought to feel. 

Shane tosses back as much of his now-tepid beer as he can, trying to buy time to figure out what to say when Rozanov inevitably gets up and prowls over to the short dark-haired girl with freckles he’s picked out as his partner for the evening. Good game? Good luck? I’m beat, but have fun? Hope she likes strawberry?

Shane is not quite done swallowing when Rozanov leans back in and says, in a hoarse rasp, “I’m hoping she’s very fucking boring, because for some reason I think this is very hot,” and Shane chokes on the last mouthful of foam. He drops his glass back onto the table and hacks for a second. Rozanov’s arm tightens around his shoulders.

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Shane hisses.

“I am thinking I will leave in twenty minutes,” Rozanov says, loud and contemplative, and then he squeezes Shane one last time, pulls his arm back from around Shane’s shoulders, picks up his glass of vodka, and wanders over to the bar, where he sidles up to the very tall girl in her weather-appropriate leather pants and says something to her that makes her grin. Off the two of them go to the dance floor. 

Shane spends the next fifteen minutes in a daze, winded from having aspirated witbier and reeling from–what, the invitation to a threesome? But no, the girl that Rozanov is dancing with is not short and her long braids are some kind of bright color that’s impossible to make out in the flashing lights–pink, maybe–and anyway Rozanov only ever seems to call Shane boring in that particular tone of voice. 

Somebody buys Shane another beer and he holds it cupped between his hands and doesn't drink it, pretending that he’s really enjoying listening to the DJ remix some horrible song that has a lot of flute solos. A couple of guys, Tsuzuki included, decide to hit La Banquise and Shane waves them off–their fucking funeral, honestly–and he hears himself say, still hoarse, “No, thanks, I’m gonna head out in a bit. Maybe split a cab with Roz,” and they all nod and slap his back and congratulate him again as they go.

A few minutes later, Rozanov turns and looks at Shane and tilts his head to the left. Towards the exit, maybe. Shane gets up, leaving his undrunk beer behind, and follows him out the door.

~

In Florida, after the All-Star Game, Rozanov had kissed Shane into what felt like a profound hypnotic state, pulling off Shane’s clothes and groping every new part of Shane’s body he uncovered, his fingers pinching and greedy and hard enough that it had made some animal instinct burrowed into Shane’s spinal cord finally fucking relax after nearly three decades of being permanently tense. 

Rozanov had opened Shane up with sloppy imprecision, like he knew what he was doing but was too impatient to do it carefully, and that had just made Shane burn and melt in turn, until he was slippery with sweat and the horrible strawberry-flavored lube that smelled like the sticky floor of a movie theater. But when the time had come, Rozanov had fucked himself into Shane with careful, obvious experience and the slow, deep pinch inside of himself had made Shane convulse and clutch at Rozanov’s shoulders with his fingers. 

He had said, Ilya, without realizing it. And Ilya had gasped, Ilyusha, and Shane had said, Ilyusha, not even trying to pronounce it correctly because it had felt like Ilya’s fat cock was punching through his stomach, displacing the air inside him, making him taste fucking strawberry somewhere deep in his throat. There hadn’t been any oxygen left for speaking.

~

Milliseconds after the door to Ilya’s condo closes behind them, Shane says, “Ilyusha, kiss me,” and Ilya slams him back against the door and claws at him, groping between Shane’s thighs until Shane realizes that he wants him to lift them–to hook them around Ilya’s waist–because that motherfucker likes short girls, Shane realizes, with sudden and intense irritation. But they’re kissing and Shane feels too good to stop just to bitch Ilya out, which he can anyway do literally any other time. 

So Shane, who has never done this before and doesn’t actually know if it will work, like, from a basic physics perspective, hooks one leg and then the other around Ilya’s waist. He feels hands clamp around his upper thighs, so tightly that Shane probably couldn’t move even if he’d wanted to. Shane feels light-headed, possibly from oxygen deprivation. Some part of the door is digging into his skull, maybe the peephole. Shane tries to shift his head and Ilya must read some intention from that because he pulls back just enough to rasp, breathing hard against Shane’s mouth, “Hold on.” Shane wraps his arms around Ilya’s shoulders and off they stagger, into the depths of Ilya’s condo.

It’s very hot that Ilya can do this. Shane probably can, too, but somehow that thought isn’t as distractingly sexy in this current moment. When they topple over onto a bed, Shane is on top and he proceeds to immediately rip off Ilya’s horrible plasticky shirt before wrestling with the placket of his pants. Ilya’s dick is hard underneath the zipper fly, pressing up against Shane’s hand, and Shane drops off of the edge of the bed to shakily take Ilya into his mouth. It finally feels like he can fucking breathe.

~

Shane does not so much fall asleep as knock himself unconscious by crashing head-first into a brick wall of dopamine and oxytocin. He snaps awake a few hours later to the insistent buzzing of his phone, which wants him to know that he has three texts from his mom and also, incidentally, 10% battery remaining. The sun is blazing through Ilya’s ugly modernist monstrosity of a condo. Somebody should have set this architect’s license on fire before he could design a building. Nearly every vertical surface is made of windows and every horizontal surface of glass or chrome or glass set into chrome in improbable shapes. Ilya’s bed is covered in black silk sheets and he only has two pillows, because he is a fucking psychopath. He is also nowhere to be seen.

Shane sits bolt upright and yelps, “Hey!” involuntarily.

Ilya appears from between two walls of glass that Shane would have been prepared to swear mere moments earlier were two external windows. “Da?” he says.

“Do you have an iPhone?” Shane asks.

Ilya makes a face. “No,” he says.

“My phone’s about to die,” Shane says. “I need a charger.”

“Very sorry to hear that,” Ilya says insincerely. “You want coffee? I went for run and got some from place on corner. With soy milk, since you have delicate stomach.” He disappears back into the fucking pocket dimension that apparently exists in the middle of his funhouse mirror condo.

Shane checks the messages from his mom; one’s a photo of the sunrise from the top of Mont-Royal that she’d probably taken on a run this morning, the second is a link to a restaurant, the third: Does noon sound okay? Your dad heard about this place from someone he knows at work, she said that their trout is sustainably sourced and very good. I know you love trout.

Shane does love trout. It’s 9.32AM. Fuck! Shane had slept like the fucking dead. 

Sounds good, he replies, and then he puts his phone on the glass and wrought iron bedside table on the right side of the bed and goes to hunt down his briefs from the pile of clothes scattered on the floor around the bed. The grey-tinted wooden floorboards are smooth and cold under his feet.

He finds Ilya in a big open room that has one wall lined with glossy black cabinets and three walls lined with floor-to-ceiling windows that offer a panoramic view of Montreal. There’s a low-slung couch clumped with a couple of chair-like things that look more like architect’s models than places human beings might sit. Shane hates Bauhaus shit like this; it’s rickety, rarely nice to look at, and never comfortable.

Ilya is leaning against a stainless steel island, peeling oranges that are spilling out of a mesh bag across the counter. Two cardboard cups are steaming gently in front of him, one enormous and the other tiny. He does not look annoyed by the fact that his hookup had unilaterally decided to sleep over; the pinched feeling at the back of Shane’s neck, the one he gets when he knows there’s a high chance he’s fucked up, slowly begins to unknot itself.

“Hey why does your apartment look like fucking Patrick Bateman lives here?” Shane asks.

Ilya doesn’t look up from the orange. “Who is this?” he asks. “Important artist?”

“He’s a serial killer,” Shane says. 

“I do not know him,” Ilya says. “But if he lives in place like this, he has good taste.” Ilya finishes peeling long strips of pith off of the naked orange in his hands and carefully uses his thumb to separate the segments. “Here,” he says, holding out half to Shane.

Shane comes close enough to accept the fruit. The flesh is reddish-orange, plump under his fingers. “Thanks,” Shane says, peeling off a segment and popping it in his mouth. He makes a delighted noise; they’re cara cara, not navel, and the sweet, intense flavor is cool on his tongue. When Shane devours the last segment, Ilya hands him the other half and begins peeling a new orange. The tips of his fingers are slightly yellowed, dotted with tiny specks of oil and wax. 

Shane watches him for a little while; the bent crook of his head, the tangle of sweaty curls drying in a lump over his forehead. He’s wearing leggings under his running shorts and a long-sleeved top that he’s pushed up nearly to his elbows. A small mountain of fleece and various knitted materials is piled at the end of the counter, things he must have worn on his run and then discarded in the warmth of home once he’d returned. Shane kind of can’t believe he slept through all of the commotion of Ilya getting ready. The pinched, awkward feeling of overstepping tries to return. Shane sternly reminds himself that Ilya had bought him coffee. Surely if he’d really been annoyed, he wouldn’t have bought Shane coffee and gone through the trouble of hunting down dairy-free milk.

“You didn’t want to go in?” Shane finally asks, pulling the larger of the two cardboard cups over and taking off the lid to double-check the color of the coffee inside.

“No,” Ilya says. He eats his orange in a few bites, not bothering to remove the big hunks of white pith or breaking it down into segments. “No alarm at 4:45,” he adds, looking meaningfully at Shane—who, yes, had gotten up early every day of the All-Star weekend to make sure he got in a good workout before breakfast and, no, had not planned on going to today’s optional skate. 

Shane’s coffee is the right color. He takes a test sip. Medium roast, soy milk. Not too bitter; not too chalky; not too hot. The perfect union of taste, texture, and digestibility for someone who doesn’t have a Lactaid pill on him. “Thanks for the coffee,” he says. “You still owe me for the hair oil.”

“Hair oil is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard,” Ilya says. “Need oil for hair? Okay, then don’t wash for three days.”

“Don’t try it,” Shane says. “Hayden’s sister has curly hair, I know you have—like, a routine, or something, there’s no way it just looks that good.”

Ilya peers at Shane from across the top of his tiny little cup. Eventually, he shrugs. “Yes, I use gel. Good conditioner, this is key. But special oil just for hair is scam. You are being scammed.” He grins lazily at Shane. “Never mind though. Tell me more about how good I look.”

“You’re disgusting,” Shane says. “I can smell you from over here.” He can—Ilya smells like oranges and coffee and sweat and laundry detergent, the way a good workout always brings out the smell of the soap from freshly laundered clothes. Shane wants to suck on his throat and lick his fingers. He wants Ilya to bend him over the pristinely glossy counter of his weird kitchen that looks like a set from a movie about a hot axe murderer and fuck him so hard that they both sweat, until they’ve left fingerprints and smears on every surface. 

Ilya puts down his tiny cup. “Coffee is good?” he says. He moves closer. He’s wearing leggings under his running shorts but Shane can still see through all the layers that he’s begun to chub up. He cages Shane in against the counter and drops his head, rubbing his nose into the crease between Shane’s neck and shoulder. 

“Yes,” Shane says, quietly.

“Good,” Ilya says. “You drink. Don’t let it get cold,” and he slowly drops to his knees.

~

Shane makes it to lunch, but he has to mug Rozanov for clothes to make it happen. Rozanov hadn’t exactly put up a fuss; he’d been on the phone when Shane had come out of the bathroom after quickly splashing himself clean, long torrents of Russian broken up by various combinations of da, da, Papa. When Shane had realized that the hem of his t-shirt was stiff with clumps of dried jizz and had pointed to a grey sweater draped over a nearby armchair (which looked like it had previously been used by Dr. No to torture James Bond), Rozanov had just shrugged and waved a hand. When Shane had initially tugged the sweater on over his head his predominant emotion had been gratitude; but once he’s out the door and in the back of the cab, watching his phone battery drop from 6 to 5 to 4%, it starts to feel weird. He tells himself, stop fussing, no one can tell, as he runs a crooked index finger around the collar pressing against the back of his neck.

No else one can tell it’s not his sweater, probably, but Shane can tell. Rozanov must use a different laundry service than Shane, who sends his clothes out to some guy that his stylist had recommended, because the sweater smells like unfamiliar detergent. Shane has broken into a very, very light panic-induced flop sweat and the increasing temperature of his body pulls the scent out of the fabric like one of those wax warmers that Hayden had been secretly obsessed with but stopped using after the twins started walking and Jackie told him it was a fire hazard. Shane uses the flat of his palm to smooth the sweater over his chest, making sure it’s not sitting weirdly, and the cashmere is not quite as whisper-soft against his skin as one of Shane’s own sweaters would be. The laundry service his stylist had recommended washes all of his cashmere by hand. Maybe Rozanov’s guy dry-cleans his sweaters. Shane’s stylist had told him that that was bad for wool.

Shane squeezes the power button on the side of his phone, telling himself that he’s checking the battery percentage and not looking to see if he’s gotten a text from Rozanov. They’ve literally never texted each other, ever, about anything. Shane has Rozanov’s phone number in the sense that it’s buried in a spreadsheet attachment somewhere in the depths of his email inbox, probably, but it’s certainly not saved in his contacts. To find it and add it would be weird, now; the time for it to not be weird has passed. But Rozanov doesn’t seem to mind that Shane is really fucking weird, so Shane burns another precious percent of battery power digging through his inbox to find the number–not in an attachment, after all, but an email from one of the front office people a few weeks ago in the flurry of planning for the All-Star weekend.

Ilyusha, Shane types, and then deletes. Roz, he types, and then he deletes that, too. In the end: Ilya Rozanov. Legal. Precise. Accurate.

His phone dies. 

Shane gets out of the cab at the restaurant and rolls his shoulders and tells himself to get a grip. He should be happy–he now has thirty (!) career hat tricks, when most forwards don’t have any–and also, ideally, look it. He’s worried that his expression might be too sullen to really sell happiness; his brain feels too conflicted to manage anything simple. But to Shane’s astonishment, he can see himself reflected in the pristine glass rotating door as he pushes his way inside the restaurant and he does look happy. He looks deranged. He looks like Rozanov had looked, that morning that Shane had told him that San Francisco was a bunch of dicks and Shane wasn’t going to let anybody at the Metros organization repeat their mistakes. Not smiling, but lit from within in a way that makes smiling irrelevant.

Forty seconds later he sits down across from his parents in a tucked-away nook at the back of the restaurant, mumbling, “Sorry I’m late,” even though he is not. The restaurant is totally deserted; maybe the trout actually sucks? “Can I get a ginger ale?” he asks the waiter, who promptly vanishes. 

“Is that a new sweater?” his mom asks. She smiles at him as she closes her menu. “I like it. What a beautiful color!”

Shane opens his mouth to lie about the sweater and what comes out is: “I’m gay.”

~

“We’ll have to go back and try the trout another time,” Shane’s dad is saying when Shane comes back into the living room with a tall glass of water.

“Takeout’s on the way,” Shane says, handing the water to his mom.

“That’s fine, sweetie, thank you for ordering,” she says. She gulps down some of the water and then very carefully cups her glass in her lap, cradling it between her palms. “Did you—did you have anything else you wanted to tell us? Are you seeing somebody?”

Shane had been moving to sink down into the armchair across from the couch where his parents are sitting, stiff-backed and awkward, but the question makes him so uncomfortable he straightens back up, unable to stomach the idea of being fixed in one physical location. “No,” he says, restlessly shifting his weight, feeling like his body is being pulled in a dozen different directions at once. He abruptly sits down in the armchair. “I mean–no.”

His mom says, “Oh, Shane,” in a voice that very clearly conveys she does not believe him.

“I wanted to tell you,” Shane says. “For a long time. But I couldn’t figure out how to do it. And I thought maybe it—didn’t matter, since I wasn’t—you know. Going to come out.”

His mom makes a strangled noise.

“I’m not going to come out,” Shane says quickly. “But you should know. I want you to know. I didn’t want to have never told you.”

“Baby, you are twenty-eight years old,” his mom bursts out. “Never is a long time away. Your life is going to be so long. You aren’t even halfway through it yet.”

“Right,” Shane says, aware that she is objectively correct and also that thinking about life after his professional hockey career is over feels sort of like, he imagines, based on Rose's description, doing magic mushrooms and then watching The Last Unicorn. He has zero interest in ever experiencing that abyss gazing back at him.

“We’re proud of you,” his dad says. “Nothing you ever tell us will change that. Especially not this. I mean, if you’re voting Christian Heritage next election we might have a problem but we’d still love you. Probably.”

“David,” Shane’s mom hisses.

Shane puts both hands over his face. He’s a little worried that his skin is going to vibrate off of his skull. Has he seriously never said the words out loud before? But of course he hasn’t. He’s never even thought them, not even during that awkward dinner with Rose where she’d blithely assumed that their relationship was doomed because Shane was asexual.

“Your dad is not implying being gay is the same thing as being right-wing,” his mom continues, sounding frazzled. “We know that it’s not a choice.” She barely pauses before asking, a little desperately, “Are you sure there’s nothing else you want to tell us?”

“Let the kid have his secrets,” Shane’s dad says. “It’s not like there’s much chance he’s knocked anybody up.”

“Don’t be narrow-minded, David, there are gay men who can get pregnant.”

“Mom, what the hell,” Shane moans.

“There’s never a good reason not to use protection,” his mom says. “Stop making that noise, both of you. You’re such prudes! Baby, it’s fine if there are parts of your life you don’t feel comfortable sharing with us right now. This is a big step. We love you and we are very proud of you for choosing to tell us.” 

A few seconds later Shane’s dad bites back a yelp and says, “Yes, we love you.”

Shane’s phone, hot and freshly charged to 21%, vibrates. He stands up immediately, scrubbing roughly at his face. “Food’s here. I’m gonna get it.” He manages to completely avoid looking at his parents as he walks briskly towards the front door of his condo. 

As he takes the elevator down to the lobby, he tries to retrace what insane series of impulses had led him to this moment—why the fuck had he said those words, in the middle of a fucking restaurant, to his parents??—and instead of doing a proper deep dive into his emotional state he keeps thinking about the way that orange had tasted this morning, so sweet and tart and wet, not bitter at all because Rozanov had carefully extricated the flesh from the pith. When he’d been growing up, Shane’s grandfather had always fussed over his mom when they’d visited him in Victoria, complaining that she never visited enough and was too skinny and looked tired and then always more things under his breath in Japanese that had made Shane’s mom look slightly harassed. Inevitably, at the end of this impromptu lecture, he’d disappear into the kitchen and come back with a tray with a big bowl of cut-up fruit on it; usually mangoes, because those were Shane’s mother’s favorite. They’d all sit around and eat chunks of mango and the sweet fruit would slowly ease the sourness out of Shane’s grandfather until he could become cheerful again and ask Shane to sit next to him and tell him stories about school, or hockey camp, or whatever movie Shane’s dad had taken him to see recently. The first time they’d gone to clean his grave after the funeral, Shane’s mom had spent an hour in the kitchen the night before cutting up mangoes. The whole ones last longer, Shane’s aunt had said in the car on the drive over, faintly disapproving in the way she often was, and Shane’s mom had replied, Yeah, but they’re not the same.

Shane collects the two bags of takeout from his doorman, thanks him for brokering the exchange, and gets back on the elevator.

Once he’s back upstairs, Shane unpacks the various containers: pea tips with preserved egg, baby bok choy with garlic, barbecue pork, spare ribs with black beans, egg custard tarts, like ten different kinds of steamed dumplings. His coffee table is cluttered with dishes. He hands his parents plates and chopsticks and spoons and sits cross-legged on the floor next to the coffee table. He concentrates for a while on fishing out the nicest-looking pieces of spare rib to put on his mom’s plate. “I’m not coming out,” he says, mostly to the spread of dim sum. “But I might not, you know, get a choice about it.”

His mom picks up a piece of spare rib and thoughtfully hums as she pops it into her mouth. “If you want me to, I can make up a plan as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency thing. But I know off the top of my head we’d be fine for the big sponsors. Do you want me to reach out to anyone first, sound them out?” She discretely pulls a cleaned sliver of bone out from between her teeth and puts it on the edge of her plate.

“No,” Shane says very quickly.

“Do we get to meet the reason you might not have a choice?” his mom asks lightly. She piles like half the container of pea tips onto Shane’s plate, and then four giant pieces of barbecue pork, and then a steamed dumpling whose translucent skin is stretched tight over pink and green innards studded with little flecks of chopped peanuts. She taps his plate twice next to the dumpling.

Shane eats the dumpling, which has the double benefit of both being what she’d wanted him to do and a delay tactic. Eventually, after drawing out mastication for as long as possible, he swallows and says, “Not now,” meaning please drop it.

“Well, we’ll always be happy to meet anyone in your life,” his mom says. “Friends and—not-friends. Boyfriends. Or otherwise. How’s the dumpling?”

“It’s good,” Shane says. “Sorry we couldn’t try the trout.”

“We’ll go when you hit forty career hat tricks,” his dad says, spearing a baby bok choy with a single chopstick and pulling it over to his plate like he’s just caught a fish that might escape if he’s not careful. Mysteriously, every single piece of shumai has vanished while Shane and his mom have been distracted. “At this rate it’ll be before the playoffs. Might even still be ramp season, so your mom can try that cheese ball appetizer she was eying.”

“David, you know that it’s called a fucking burrata,” Shane’s mom hisses, the same time Shane says, “Dad, please don’t jinx me,” and then they all laugh in a way that’s genuine but shading on hysterical. Hollanders don’t believe in jinxes. Ha ha! Hilarious!

Shane has to bite back the urge to apologize. For what? Failing at being straight, something he hadn’t ever had a hope of accomplishing? It’s stupid that he even wants to; it’s worse that the words are so hard to fight back. Shane stuffs his mouth with pea tips, slippery with egg, and successfully chokes them down.

~

Shane does not necessarily expect a giant blinking neon sign saying GAY to appear over his head with a downward-pointing arrow now that he’s actually said the word out loud to the universe, but as he boards the flight to Philadelphia later that night he feels braced for something. He’s nearly the last one on the plane, held back for a few minutes because Theriault finally has the bandwidth to ask him how the All-Star weekend had gone, moustache trembling with impatience.

“Fine?” Shane says. “Would have been better if my team hadn’t lost.”

“No issues?” Theriault prods.

Maybe the giant blinking sign has in fact appeared over Shane’s head. Maybe letting another human being fuck their cock up your ass so hard you come hands-free is so transformative of an experience that you afterwards have an indefinable yet palpable air of slutty bottom about you, so noticeable that even your boss feels compelled to comment on it. Maybe Shane is losing his fucking mind.

“Nope,” Shane says calmly. “How’s Drapeau holding up?”

“Whining like a whipped dog,” Theriault says. “He thinks we should put a brace on him and send him out there. Left to my own devices I probably would. But I’d have half the medical staff trying to kill me afterwards, and anyway if he makes it worse we’ll be dead in the water come postseason.”

One of the flight attendants comes over to politely usher them both up onto the plane, which means Shane gets stuck sitting with Theriault and two Marcs and they spend the entire flight talking about defensive plays–what to do in Philadelphia and Colorado with Pak, what to do in Arizona with the guy they’ve called up from Laval, whether or not Ahlqvist will muscle his way back to twenty-eight minutes a game before the end of the season (consensus: no)–which means Shane doesn’t see Rozanov at all until they’re in the locker room the next day getting ready for a quick warm-up.

“First Philly home game of the season,” Shane says, trying to sound casual and normal as he ties on his skates. “You ready for that thing?”

Rozanov says, “What, big orange thing? Why would this be a problem?” and honestly, fuck the fucking bastard because all the stress and tension begin to ooze out of Shane at the sound of his voice.

Shane has to fight down the goofy smile that wants to crawl up into his cheeks. He says, not looking up, “Theriault hates it, because it shot him with a t-shirt cannon last year.”

“Okay, so, what, we solve this problem like Americans? Bring gun and shoot it back?” Rozanov asks, making some kind of hand gesture straight out of a Schwarzenegger movie that Shane catches out of the corner of his eye.

“We’re Canadians,” Shane says. “We don’t shoot things. Except, like, drunk moose. And even then, usually we just call in the police and they babysit it until it sobers up.”

“Yes, drunk moose are big problem in Russia also,” Rozanov says. When Shane sends him an annoyed look, he blinks innocently at him. “I am serious,” he says. “You ever see video of drunk moose in Kamchatka? Very dangerous.”

“What the fuck do either one of you know about moose?” Hayden demands from Shane’s other side. He leans over and jabs a finger at Shane. “You’re from fucking suburban Ottawa, if you’ve ever seen a moose in real life I’d eat my glove. And aren’t you from Moscow? I bet the biggest wildlife you encountered growing up were pigeons.”

“Russian pigeons are very bloodthirsty and vicious,” Rozanov says without batting an eye. “But you are wrong, I have seen moose because Papa enjoys shooting things. We go out on snowmobiles to find them.” His words come out level and cold. It’s not that Shane thinks he’s lying so much as he’s tucked something away, out of sight. Certainly there had been zero clues suggesting that some kind of fanatic big game hunter lived in Rozanov’s ugly glass Rubik’s cube of a condo.

“I didn’t know you hunted,” Hayden says, sounding taken aback.

“Now I only hunt penalties,” Rozanov says, flashing his teeth at him in an expression that does not really look like a smile. “You do this, go out and shoot animals?”

“No,” Hayden says. “I mean, growing up, yes. But not now. Jackie doesn’t want guns in the house, even in a safe, and anyway none of the kids will eat venison.”

“Smart woman,” Rozanov says. “Too smart for you, but I knew this already. You baby-trapped her, yes?”

Hayden squawks, “Hey!”

“That’s what they do in the boonies,” Shane agrees.

Hayden whirls on him, mouth open in an outraged circle as he prepares to defend the honor of Lake Louise and all like forty of her year-round residents, most of whom are his cousins. Mercifully, he’s cut off by Theriault’s piercing whistle and bellowed, “Get your asses on the ice!” 

As everybody scrambles to obey, no one eager to test how much Theriault’s temper may have been shortened by proximity to Gritty, Hayden tries to trip Shane with his stick. “Alberta is calling me,” he sing-shouts as he whacks at Shane’s ankles, “home sweet home, it's where I'm proud to–ack!”

~

It’s not long before someone–Meier, maybe–starts calling it Gritty’s curse and soon everybody’s saying it, even the beat reporters. After losing to Philly, they lose back-to-back at home to Washington and Edmonton; they lose on the road to Colorado and Arizona; they squeak out a 4-3 win in Edmonton and Shane clinches a shootout victory on home ice against St. Louis, but two days later they lose in Boston. At the airport the next morning, the Hudson News in the private terminal has like fifty copies of The Boston Globe on display, all of them folded so that ROZWEILER FINALLY LEASHED is fully legible. 

“Maybe we should shoot it,” Meier suggests. He sounds entirely serious, but that’s probably just his Swiss deadpan humor. “And skin it, or something.”

They’re six days out from their next game, against Winnipeg, which means Shane has something like 150 hours to screw his head on fucking straight. Shane doesn’t believe in curses because he was raised in part by an atheist with an economics degree, but in some ways that’s almost worse. Unlike everybody else, Shane can’t bring himself to blame Philadelphia’s enormous orange pest of a mascot for the way the Metros’ season has lost momentum and begun to splutter. Some of it is sheer bad luck, which no amount of ritual or prayer can counteract; but some of it has to be Shane’s fault, in either his capacity as a forward or a captain, and he needs to figure out what it is and how to fix it. In the past, it’s been obvious–a lingering injury, a guy too deep in his own head, Shane letting himself get distracted by higher-level game play and ignoring that his primary responsibility on the ice is to be the best possible forward he can, which means trusting the other guys to do their jobs without Shane obsessively riding them.

He spends the flight from Boston to Montreal with his headphones on and his eyes closed, letting the active noise-canceling isolate him from the chaotic noise of his squabbling, overtired teammates. He drafts a to-do list for the next six days: tape review, he’s not happy with how unreliable his backhand has been these last few games, maybe he should sit Ahlqvist down to have a talk about how he’s feeling (Shane hates doing this, but it’s easier when there’s a bit of a language barrier to keep things more formal), is it worth driving out to the cottage in Ontario for a day and trade the bird in the hand of an optional skate for the two in the bush of peace and fucking relaxation, and while Shane is thinking about it, maybe what Pak needs is a private yoga instructor to help him work through whatever the fuck has recently happened to his butterfly. Chantelle, who’s been Shane’s instructor for the last four years, has always told him that people store fear in their hips.

By the time they’re disembarking in Montreal, Shane feels a little less like he’s being actively crushed under a gigantic boulder. The guilt at failing is still there, but like his knee it’s a load that Shane has grown accustomed to bearing; Shane’s carried the Metros on his shoulders for a decade and there’s never really been anyone he could share that specific burden with. He’s for the most part resigned himself to the weight. He’s just–distracted, lately. It’s embarrassing, like he’s a teenager with a crush who can’t concentrate on his geometry homework.

As he’s getting off the plane, Shane makes accidental eye contact with Rozanov. Two rows back, Rozanov is reaching up into the overhead bin for his bag, overcoat swinging open around his body, and Shane, halfway through standing up in preparation to file out of his row, catches the movement out of the corner of his eye and jerks around, slightly startled. They’re suddenly looking at each other. Rozanov’s bright eyes have dark smudges under them. His mouth is set into its default line, something that would be flat and expressionless if it weren’t for the pronounced dip in his upper lip. It gives him a slightly sulky edge. Rozanov’s been playing beautifully, if slightly recklessly in some recent games. There’s no reason for him to sulk.

Shane realizes he’s been staring like a fucking idiot at Rozanov’s mouth when JJ says, “Hey, Hollzy, you heading out any time soon?” and Shane has to scramble out of his row into the aisle. His left knee twinges in protest, the way it often does now when forced to spend hours tucked up under an airplane seat.

“Sorry, thinking about Pak,” he mumbles to JJ as he grabs his bag and tries to surreptitiously shake the ache out of the joint.

“You and half the coaching staff,” JJ says. “Take it easy for a few days, yeah?” he adds in French. “We don’t need two guys crashing out with mental breakdowns.”

“I’m fine,” Shane says, smiling tightly at JJ. “Are you and Phoebe doing anything for Valentine’s Day?”

By the time Shane has been given an exhaustive rundown of the omakase place where JJ and Phoebe have booked some kind of six-hour experimental sake experience, Rozanov is long gone. Shane tells himself that’s fine, maybe even good, because it means that they’re on the same page. That page being, of course, the one where they aren’t going to let Shane’s apparently insatiable desire to be fucked within an inch of his life somehow sabotage their professional careers and aspirations. Shane will be casual and normal about this if it’s the last fucking thing he does.

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

RIP team canada :(

Rozanov’s at every practice, optional and not, for the next six days. When Hayden and Drapeau team up to pester him about it, he reluctantly pulls up some photos on his phone of moose antlers mounted over a fireplace (ugh) and deer corpses (gross) and one of him up on a snowmobile with a little girl in a bright blue snowsuit, flanked on either side by two dour-faced older men who look alarmingly like him in completely different ways, sort of like one donated the top half of his face and the other the bottom. 

“One with beard is Alexei, my brother,” Rozanov explains. “Lenochka is his daughter.” He uses his thumb and forefinger to expand, ruthlessly pushing the other two men out of the frame until the beaming little girl is centered, her round, pink-cheeked face surrounded by a ring of fluffy white faux fur. He zooms out again and then swipes over to the next photo, of the same little girl in her puffy blue snowsuit, this time balanced on tiny child-sized cross-country skis.

“She’s so cute,” Hayden says, and to his credit it’s not even very grudging. “Training her to be a biathlete or something?”

Drapeau says, “Better keep her away from Hollzy, then,” and cackles to himself. 

Rozanov’s eyes slowly slip off of his phone and over to Shane, trailing up Shane’s torso and neck and face like his eyeballs are tracking a small, scuttling bug. His expression is flat, impossible to read. There are dark smudges like thumbprints framing his bridge of his nose, deepening the set of his eyes. “Oh?” he says.

Drapeau begins to describe the Norwegian biathlete that Shane had let everyone in Sochi assume he’d fucked. Hayden, who hadn’t been selected for Team Canada in 2014, makes increasingly gleeful noises as JJ elaborates on the biathlete’s long legs (not an exaggeration) and even longer mane of perfect blonde hair (slight exaggeration). Despite having already heard this story like three times, Hayden still thinks it’s hilarious for some reason.

At the end of the story, Drapeau concludes, “and I didn’t see him for three fucking days,” in a triumphant guffaw. He neglects to provide any additional details, like that the reason that he hadn’t seen Shane for three days had been because they’d proceeded directly from the game to the closing ceremony and then the raucous Team Canada party and the next morning they’d flown home on different flights. That morning had been chaotic; a bunch of annoyed Russians with clipboards and bottles of ibuprofen had gone around to all the rooms at like ten in the morning, mercilessly evicting hungover athletes by the droves.

Hayden chortles. “Is that what gave you the nerve, bud?” he asks. “To ask out Rose Landry?”

In point of fact, Rose had asked out Shane. But Shane has even less interest in correcting Hayden than he’d had in correcting Drapeau and, anyway, Rozanov looks like he does not give a shit and is in fact actively bored, so presumably he wants to be done with this anecdote just as much as Shane. “Sure,” Shane says, and then he adds, “I have to sharpen my skates,” and gets up and leaves. 

~

Later that afternoon as they’re running backchecking drills, Shane takes advantage of a brief break to try and teach Tsuzuki how to control his breathing on the sprint. As Shane deploys a rolling hand gesture that Tsuzuki very clearly does not understand, Rozanov skids by and says, “Kid, we go out tonight,” and Tsuzuki immediately calls, “Fuck yeah!” in a hoarse cheer that very clearly demonstrates his lack of breathing control. 

“You will come, Hollzy?” Tsuzuki asks cheerfully.

“No,” Shane says, trying not to leak disapproval out of every pore of his body and probably failing.

Tsuzuki shoots Rozanov a look. “Oh,” he says. “Is it a bad idea?”

Rozanov shrugs. He’s wearing his t-shirt from training camp, the once crisply-printed 81 on his chest pocket crinkled and cracked from repeated washes and wear. It’s late enough in the season now that Shane is fighting with everything he has to keep on as much weight as possible–grilled chicken breasts for like four meals a day, protein shakes before breakfast and after dinner–but Rozanov is making keeping his conditioning look effortless. Had it been like that for Shane, when he’d been twenty-two? Nothing has ever felt effortless to Shane. But maybe it had looked easy from the outside.

“Not for me to say,” Shane says.

“He is not your girlfriend,” Rozanov says. There is something sharp in his voice.

Tsuzuki looks briefly alarmed. “Does Ellie think it is a bad idea?” he asks Shane. 

Shane has had maybe four conversations with Nanny Eleanor and most of those have been about the Pike kids, usually along the lines of, Did you see what Amber just put in her mouth? “I have no idea,” he says. “Have you talked to her about it?”

“No!” Tsuzuki says, looking increasingly agitated. “Should I do this?” he asks Rozanov.

Rozanov shrugs elaborately. “What your girlfriend thinks, who knows,” he says. “What Captain Hollander thinks is we are monks on holy mission and should not do sinful things. He is learning how to be a good Catholic.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Shane says.

“This is also against Catholic rules,” Rozanov replies, so promptly that Shane thinks he’s telling the truth, although Shane genuinely has no idea. Maybe Rozanov went and looked up the Catholic rules (whatever those are). Shane keeps meaning to, so he’ll be able to know exactly how much lying he’ll have to do when he’s sworn in as Amber’s godfather, but Amber’s not getting baptized until the summer so he’s been putting the research off in favor of tape review, panic spirals, and reading One Night Only, which his mom had given him for Christmas. 

Tsuzuki’s expression has slid out of alarm back into confusion. “I am going to text Ellie,” he tells Rozanov and trundles off. Watching him go, Shane reflects (not for the first time) that he’s wasting a lot of energy in the way he pushes off, from the back instead of the side. 

“No return,” Rozanov tsks.

“His extension’s improving, at least,” Shane points out.

“Too bad it is illegal to beat rookies here,” Rozanov says. “Dynamo skating coach would fix this very quickly.” He lifts his hand and pretends to smack an invisible person across the back of the head. It’s an ugly joke but Shane laughs anyway, helplessly, because of Rozanov’s expression. Rozanov shoots him a little smirk.

“You’re such a dick,” Shane says.

Instead of answering, Rozanov says, a little wheedling, “Come out tonight. One drink. Even ginger ale is fine.”

Shane shakes his head. “Something’s off,” he says, in a paltry half-explanation. He lifts a hand and gestures to his own head. “I still need to figure it out. I can’t–do anything else, until I do.”

Rozanov says, “What?”

“I’m not playing well,” Shane says, embarrassed and therefore a little annoyed at having to spell it out. “I mean, none of us are playing well, but some of that is on me, specifically. I want to sort it out before we play Winnipeg.”

Rozanov looks mystified. “What is there to figure out? Drapeau has sprained fingers and other goalies are shit,” he says, exaggerating each word like Shane is a very stupid small dog. “We score a lot but it does not matter because our net is basically empty.”

Hurtling from somewhat to genuinely annoyed in half a breath, Shane says, “Why do you think we’re running so many backchecking drills? We can’t just–abdicate responsibility because we’re forwards.”

“What means this,” Rozanov says.

“We have defensive responsibilities,” Shane rephrases.

“This means you cannot go out?” Rozanov says. He widens his eyes and gestures around the rink. “You will stay here all night running drills until you feel better? Much more likely you fuck up your knee, old man.”

The nasty edge to his voice sparks a flare of white-hot anger in Shane’s chest. Shane opens his mouth, an extremely genuine go fuck yourself forming on the tip of his tongue that he suspects from Rozanov’s scowl would be returned with interest, but they’re interrupted by a piercing noise from the other side of the rink: the shortest of the Marcs spitting out his whistle to bellow, “Rozanov! Hollander! Tsuzuki! You’re up!”

Shane swallows the hot bubble of anger and frustration, the unreasonable sense of betrayal–that Rozanov, who has demonstrated a seemingly boundless ability to read Shane’s mind on ice, is not able to do so in this particular moment–and skates off without saying anything. His tongue feels bitter and swollen inside of his mouth.

~

Winnipeg is a scrappy, physical team. Their play is for the most part clean, but even their goalie has been in more fights this year than Shane has in his entire career. The first period is electrifying in a way that Shane does not particularly enjoy, because the energy isn’t being naturally generated by beautiful, fast-paced hockey but instead of a kind of poisonous infection: a shared premonition of impending chaos. No one scores in the first period, although Gondouin nearly slaps one in that ultimately goes wide when he’s tripped. He isn’t able to make anything out of the penalty shot and very soon after that it’s the buzzer for the end of the period.

As they head back out after the intermission, Theriault pulls Shane back to say, “If this keeps up I’m going to have Johanssen fix it,” meaning he’ll send the big guy out to break the tension or come back on his shield having tried. It’s not the choice Shane would make but he knows that Theriault, who came up playing in a different era, views this as a necessary and integral part of the game. During training camp two years ago he’d made them all watch The Hurt Locker and have a conversation about when you had to decide to actively diffuse a bomb versus let it be, which had not exactly been the main lesson Shane had taken away from that film but he’d kept his mouth shut, sure that such an observation was unlikely to move the discussion in a helpful direction.

This disclosure is a concession, Shane knows. If he can make something out of the first few minutes of the period, Theriault won’t tell Johanssen to make trouble. Shane can make a hard hit when he needs to–and he’s readily dropped his gloves the few times that he’s really felt like it was necessary–but he distrusts the inherent gamble of planned violence. A bad fight can easily wreck some guy’s season in half a second and it never accomplishes anything worth that risk. Worse than that, too, is the concession of it–the tacit acknowledgement that your play isn’t good enough, so you’ve had to resort to dirty psychological tactics. Deliberately fighting tastes like failure.

As he goes over the boards, Shane feels the anticipatory breath of that failure against the back of his neck, the phantom grip of Theriault’s bony fingers on his shoulders. He skates over to face off against Whistler at center ice. 

“How’s the knee? Gritty curse that, too?” Whistler asks casually as they both settle down into a crouch.

“Knee’s working fine,” Shane says. “How’s the elbow?”

“Only creaks when it rains,” Whistler says cheerfully. “Or when some motherfucker runs his mouth for too long.” He grins at Shane. “You know anybody stupid enough to do that?”

Thankfully, the ref chooses this moment to drop the puck, so Shane is able to ignore Whistler’s comment in favor of scooping the puck over to Rozanov. Shane immediately takes off towards Winnipeg’s goal, swerving to duck between a defenseman and Tsuzuki, and he sees as he darts out of the neutral zone in his wake that Rozanov, a few feet ahead, is shifting his weight back. Shane recognizes that twitch and speeds up, his brain skittering ahead of his feet–he’ll cut over, complicate Winnipeg’s goalie’s line of sight on the puck–it’ll support the dramatic reenactment of a fake hand-off to Tsuzuki that Shane knows Rozanov is planning–

The hit comes from what would be Shane’s blind spot in his Land Rover. Shane drops like a moose that’s just been shot, toppling over into the boards with like ninety kilos of Winnipeg winger bearing down on top of him. The guy’s elbow catches Shane on the chin, but it’s a glancing blow. There’s just enough time for Shane to twist so that it’s his shoulder pad that catches the forward momentum of their combined weight instead of his fucking skull. He feels the force of that collision travel through his body, a destabilizing shockwave like an earthquake, and even as he goes to brace his knee he knows that it’s not going to work because he’s got four extra limbs and an additional ninety fucking kilos of dead weight and sure enough he buckles–left knee hitting the ice first, scant milliseconds before his right knee follows. 

“Motherfucker,” wheezes Whistler as he swerves to avoid careening into them, trips over Shane’s leg, and goes skidding down himself.

The dead weight untangles itself and clambers, ungainly, to its feet. Shane’s too stunned to get up right away.

“What the fuck was that,” Shane hears Theriault bellow, distantly.

Shane’s shoulder throbs. His knee is numb. His chin isn’t too bad, but maybe that’s just because there’s too many other stimuli for his nervous system to process right now. Shane gives himself one more second and then braces himself with his arms and pushes himself upright, trying not to look like he’s making sure his fucking knee is still attached to the rest of his body. Now that he’s moving it, his shoulder is probably fine, but his knee–fuck. The ache of it is so deep that Shane almost doesn’t feel it; as he tries to get his legs under him it feels like he’s piloting some distant robot, like Mako in Pacific Rim, which his mom had liked so much she’d made Shane and his dad go see it with her three times in theaters.

“Hey, cocksucker, maybe if you paid a little more attention to what the fuck is happening on the ice you would’ve made it to a playoffs game some time this century,” the ninety kilos of dead weight says as he staggers around Shane–Mitchell, maybe? the baby with the stupid little soul patch–and he’s followed half a second later by a ref blowing furiously on his whistle and pointing at the penalty box. “Yeah, yeah,” maybe-Mitchell says loudly, “I’m going, man, I’m going! Shit, you’re gonna blow out my fucking ear!”

Shane inhales, slowly, imagining that he’s filling himself up from a steady tap the way a very patient Chantelle had told him to, and then he exhales equally slowly and levers himself up onto his feet. Fuck! The pain becomes an immediate close physical companion, tight and unrelenting and hot as it clamps around his knee. 

It doesn’t feel like another tear. Even though the joint is throbbing like a thumb somebody just whacked with a hammer a few times, it doesn’t feel broken, either. It just–really fucking hurts.

Shane knows when Rozanov is there. He doesn’t have to look. “I’m fine,” he says, reflexive, through gritted teeth. His chin has started to feel hot.

“Da, da,” Rozanov says, just as tight, hovering, “so you are going to get off the ice at some point, or–?”

“No, I’m not getting off the ice,” Shane says. “We have a fucking man advantage, so we’re going to score a fucking goal.” Which is all well and good until he makes the mistake of looking towards Theriault, who furiously jabs his finger first at Shane and then down at the bench. Shane reluctantly limps over, shaking himself a couple of times like a wet dog in the hope that that will make his nervous system function normally, and when he gets off the ice he’s immediately grabbed by a doctor and two of the physios and forcibly squashed down onto the bench for an exam. Gondouin’s line goes off to make the most of the two minutes even as Theriault is furiously complaining that, Crisse, anybody with fucking eyes could see that was worth five!

Hayden scores. Shane says, “Don’t–” when one of the Marcs moves to grab Johanssen and for some reason he listens and doesn’t, even though Shane isn’t the coach and it’s Theriault’s word that’s law. Oleg says, “Hollzy, buddy, I’d like to get a closer look so we’re going back down the tunnel, okay?” and Shane very reluctantly follows, using his stick to brace some of his weight. 

As they head back into the warren of corridors, he can hear Theirault yelling, just barely audible over the roar of the crowd: “Rozanov! You're up!”

~

It takes Oleg the rest of the period and most of the subsequent intermission to determine that Shane’s knee needs time and babying but it probably isn’t going to fall off in the near future. He diagnoses Shane’s shoulder as mostly superficial bruising, then puts two stitches into the cut on Shane’s chin. By then the third period’s over and the Metros have officially lost, 2-1, so Shane’s got company in the locker room as he slowly peels himself out of his uniform and pads. Oleg had told him to try ten minutes on the stationary bike, low speed and no resistance, and report back if the pain became sharp. There are only three guys in the cardio room when Shane staggers in and drags himself up onto his usual bike, but they all clear out pretty quickly; JJ claps a hand down on Shane’s shoulder as he goes, taking his horrible loud music with him.

At some point, Shane blearily lifts his head and sees that Rozanov is on the bike next to him. His mouth is fully flat, white in the corner that Shane can see with him turned in profile. Sweat has darkened his hairline and sideburns. There is a drop hanging under the tip of his nose.

Shane has no idea what to say. He wants to howl. He wants somebody to yell at him so he can yell back, the mindless way where you just make noise at each other until you’ve bled off the tension. He feels a hundred years old, like the plastic skeleton held together with pins through the joints that his mom hangs on the front porch every October to scare the neighborhood kids. Every push of the pedals makes Shane’s quad and knee light up with a fresh wave of dull, agonizing pain. Meanwhile, Rozanov’s legs are moving like pistons, like the fucking Terminator, like he could do this for hundreds of hours. Old man, he’d called Shane. 

“Are you stupid,” Rozanov says flatly.

Shane is startled by this sudden noise, breaking open the flat calm of the mostly-silent room. “What?” Shane says.

“Who does not look,” Rozanov continues. “It takes less than one second. This is basic on-ice awareness, every child learns to do this.”

“He came at me from behind,” Shane says. “Every child has eyes on the back of their fucking skull?”

Rozanov makes an annoyed, hissing noise. “You do,” he says. “Always, you look first.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Shane says tightly. 

“And then we lose,” Rozanov says. “Because you are stupid.”

“Hey,” Shane objects.

“You do not like to fight,” Rozanov says. “Fine. That is because you are–” and he says some things in Russian, in that deadly serious tone he uses when he’s being interviewed by Russian-language reporters. Shane has combed enough YouTube closed captions to know that Rozanov is probably sharing a very insightful comment that due to the language barrier and the peculiarities of his personality Shane is never going to get the opportunity to understand. “But this does not mean you keep team from fighting, you fucking idiot,” Rozanov switches back to English to say. “Winnipeg got away with it once so now every team will try because they think they can destroy you.”

“Winnipeg didn’t destroy me,” Shane says.

“Johnny would have ripped Mitchell’s balls out through his nose,” Rozanov says. “He wanted to do this, why do you pout like a little baby and not let him do what he wants?”

Shane splutters for a few seconds. “Because it’s–!” he tries. “And anyway it’s because it’s–!” Stupid. Reckless. Desperate. Embarrassing.

“Because it is you?” Rozanov asks. “Because your hockey is hot shit and no one can touch you while you are playing, because you are so good and so fast? Because you make plays that make other teams look like fucking clowns but then after you are nice and say sorry?”

“No,” Shane says, shaking his head sharply, and abruptly he notices that his legs are pushing too hard on the pedals, like if he just goes fast enough his bike will jump off of the stand and let him escape this conversation. He makes the conscious decision to sit up and slow down, running his left palm along his thigh, feeling the tendons and muscles as they struggle to maintain a slow, steady pace. He can feel himself adjusting to the pain, getting used to the shape of it and pushing it into the background. The shift lets him focus on actually forming a complete sentence. “Fighting–it’s just not the right play here. It’s not sustainable. We’re not built for it and we’ll lose momentum going into the postseason.”

“You moron,” Rozanov says, swiveling around and gesturing wildly at Shane. “You are so fucking stupid. I hate you.”

“I hate you!” Shane replies, stung.

“No, you don’t,” Rozanov says immediately, swatting at the air. “I am right. You know I am right, and also Theriault knows I am right. So we will go to New York on Wednesday, that piece of shit Belevich will try to break your leg, Johnny will kill him, and then you will buy Johnny a drink and say thank you like good Canadian boy.”

Shane marvels, “How the fuck do you come up with this shit?”

Rozanov scowls at him. “Are you done? Good. I will drive you home.”

~

Rozanov is on the phone when Shane gets out of the showers and although he hangs up almost immediately upon seeing Shane, his mouth stays pinched in the corners as they slowly walk down to the parking garage. Shane says, “Everything okay?”

“No,” Rozanov says, in a way that makes it extremely clear he will not be taking follow-up questions.

“Okay,” Shane says. “Should I—uh, get a cab?”

“Get in the fucking car,” Rozanov says.

That proves to be easier said than done for somebody with a fucked-up knee, as Rozanov drives the Gritty of sports cars, some kind of bulbous, bright orange monstrosity that’s so low-slung Shane is genuinely worried that the bottom will be corroded off by the end of the winter. “Aren’t you worried about salt damage?” he asks Rozanov, who shrugs in reply and then, unsurprisingly, does not ask for directions to Shane’s condo. They go to Rozanov’s glass box instead, which is rendered cold and alien by the darkness. The familiar landscape, Montreal’s dotted skyline of light pollution, is broken up into strange fragments by all the panes of glass. 

There’s just enough light for them to stumble their way to the bedroom without the help of overhead lights. Ilya digs his fingers into the muscle of Shane’s hips, hard enough that Shane flinches, gasping, and then Ilya gently sucks Shane’s tongue into his mouth, maybe in deference to the stitches in Shane’s chin, while simultaneously bearing him down onto the mattress. Shane makes a gurgling, pained noise and Ilya rears back almost immediately, spitting out a curt Russian curse. 

“It’s okay,” Shane gasps, “it’s okay, just–my knee–” 

Ilya helps him out of his pants and briefs, unrolling his socks and licking his ankles. He helps Shane fold everything and then he comes back from putting the pile of clothes on the ugly torture chair to inspect the lumpy, taped mass of Shane’s knee with careful fingers. It must feel swollen under his fingers, like an overripe pear. 

Unbelievably, Ilya is still hard after all of this, the long shape of his cock visibly pushing up against the front of his sweatpants. He absently adjusts himself as he orders, “On side, not back.” He helps Shane manage this without too much additional discomfort, holding some of Shane’s weight as he rolls, fitting a hand between Shane’s legs to help him lift the injured one up, wedging a pillow between Shane’s thighs so his knee has something to rest on. The care feels dizzying. “Shoulder okay?” Ilya asks brusquely.

“I’m going to come on your pillow,” Shane says, dazed, “which is going to be a problem because you only have two, you fucking psycho.”

Ilya bends down and sinks his teeth into Shane’s left asscheck. He pulls back to say, roughly, “You like it when I make you come,” which is objectively true. Shane concedes the point. 

Ilya sheds the rest of his clothes and then crawls up the bed behind Shane. His big body is feverish-feeling, firm and unyielding. He presses kisses to Shane’s bruised shoulder, the line of his triceps, the side of his ribs. Ilya keeps doing that as he finds the lube and pumps some into his hand. He fingers Shane open so sloppily that Shane is dizzy with how wet he becomes, how easy the slide is, how little resistance his body offers as Ilya fits the fat head of his cock against Shane’s hole and begins to push inside. Ilya must be trying to move slowly but even the minute twitches of his hips are enough to jostle Shane’s body. Shane makes a choked noise as the competing waves of dull pain and wet, soft pleasure wash over him. It feels like it takes a glacial age before Ilya bottoms out and finally decides to fucks Shane for real.

Shane’s leaking cock pushes back and forth along the cool, damp cushion of the pillow; it’s a maddeningly light brush that is almost lost in the cacophony of Shane’s various aches. It should be frustrating, probably, but in truth Shane wants to stay like this forever, in this hot, slippery, dark, brilliant cocoon, splattered all over with fragmented lights. He wants to feel Ilya pumping into him every minute of every day until he dies. 

Ilya has curled over enough to gasp wetly around Shane’s nipple, the air puffing out of his mouth and across the damp skin of Shane’s chest and armpit. “Shane,” he says, dazed.

“Ilyusha,” Shane murmurs, too fucked out to worry about pronouncing it properly. One day he will have to ask, but he can’t be bothered to worry about it right now.

Ilya’s fingers spasm on Shane’s hip.

“No,” Shane says. He doesn’t want a reach-around. “Just like this.” Ilya says something in Russian, a susurration that Shane thinks is agreement. Shane closes his eyes. He knots his fingers in Ilya’s damp, sweaty curls and squeezes. “Just like this,” he says again, raggedly, over and over until he comes.

~

Oleg clears Shane to skate, although he spends about twenty minutes first delivering a lecture that could probably be boiled down to take it easy if you want to make it to the playoffs, you fucking moron. Shane agrees that he will definitely do that and it’s not even a lie. When he’d finally gotten home the night before he’d drunk a protein shake and iced his knee and made a little elevated cushion for it out of five pillows and he’d woken up feeling like shit in a familiar way that he’d found reassuring. Shane has felt like this before and been able to play basically like normal within a few days. The relief—that his knee had not betrayed him, that his body would make it through this and keep going—had made him so lightheaded that he’d had to grind the heels of his palms into his eye sockets to ground himself.

Shane makes a point of chasing down Johanssen on the plane to New York a few days later. He’s sharing a row with Ahlqvist and Ahlqvist’s heated seat cushion, which has to be a fire hazard but Shane really doesn’t have the bandwidth to deal with that. “Hey,” Shane says, pausing in the aisle. He shifts most of his weight onto his right leg and braces his right elbow on the seat back in front of Johanssen, “I think Theriault talked to you already.”

“Yes,” Johanssen says. “He seems very confident that Belevich will try to kneecap you. Who does this guy think he is, making these pronouncements? Tony Soprano? It’s embarrassing.”

Ahlqvist makes a soft noise of agreement.

“You don’t feel pressured, do you?” Shane asks.

Johanssen snorts. “Do I feel pressured to rearrange this asshole’s face for him, should he feel like making a nuisance of himself? I do not. Do you?” he turns to ask Ahlqvist.

“I do not,” Ahlqvist says.

“Visto, do not fight Belevich,” Shane says, very quickly. “Please just focus on keeping Drapeau from springing a leak. You know how it is, coming back from an injury like that.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Ahlqvist says.

“How are you feeling?” Shane asks.

“I would be better if this plane was not built for tomtes,” Ahlqvist says, stretching out his legs and then grimacing when he’s not able to get very far. “You know what these are?” he asks Shane. He sketches a triangle in the air above his head. “Little men with big hats, who guard your home in the winter.”

“Sure,” Shane says blankly. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Knee’s doing okay, is it?” Ahlqvist asks.

“Fine,” Shane says. “I mean, it’s twenty-five different shades of purple, but it’s moving pretty okay. Johnny, Roz said something to me about Mitchell that made me realize–well, I’m sorry if you felt like you were throttled there, it wasn’t my intention.”

“And it was not actually your call, so it’s fine,” Johanssen says mildly. “Mitchell is already missing four teeth because he’s a squeaking little pisshole. I doubt this will change any time soon, so I will get another opportunity to send him to the dentist.”

“Right,” Shane says. “Okay. Well, glad to hear–that we’re good?”

“We are good, Hollzy,” Johanssen says. With the vaguely paternal air that Shane should probably expect from a man who has more children than Hayden, he adds, “You should take this chance to rest your knee, you know.”

~

There are seventeen texts waiting for Shane when he staggers back to the Madison Square Garden visitor’s locker room the next night, freshly released from what had felt like the longest shootout in MLH history. The most recent text (along with twelve others) is from his mom: Wow baby absolutely stunning!!!!! A video from Jackie whose blurry preview seems to feature seventeen or eighteen skinny little flailing limbs; Jade and Ruby, maybe, doing one of their weird dances? But the text itself says, You’re nearly as cool as a girl ant, Uncle Shane! And one from Rose: the red-faced emoji sticking out its tongue followed by DAMN Hollander. They’re even showing clips of that in LA bars, that’s how I’d know it was sweet even if I didn’t know anything about hockey. And then, Also, we’re on the same continent again hi hi hi!! 

Shane locks his phone and puts it back on the shelf in his locker, shaking his head and grinning to himself. 

“Hollzy!” JJ bellows, swooping in and grabbing his shoulders with rough hands. He vigorously shakes Shane a few times, like he’s Marilla doing laundry on an old episode of Anne of Green Gables. “I’d fucken kiss you, man!”

“Please do not,” Shane says. “You smell nearly as bad as Gondo.”

“That last shot was a fucking beaut,” Hayden says, ripping off his helmet and grinning at Shane as he tosses it onto the bench. “That rancid furball can get fucked, you know what I mean?”

Shane shakes his head and points across the room at Drapeau. “First star of the game by a mile,” he calls, pitching his voice up so it’s loud enough to be heard over the din, and that works like a charm; the tidal wave of attention ricochets back towards Drapeau, who is almost instantly smothered in cheers and back-slaps. Shane’s not even lying just to get the attention off of himself; Drapeau had come back from IR roaring, letting in only one of the 28 shots on goal he’d faced. Shane is confident that when he opens up his Messages app like six or seven of the texts from his mom will be about Drapeau’s performance. 

Somebody starts hollering lyrics to a song that Shane does not recognize. There are yelps and giggles from the far corner where the rookies are all huddled up over a phone–looking for recommendations for a place with a VIP room that doesn’t card, probably–and, opposite to them, Johanssen is chatting quietly with Ahlqvist, peeling off his socks with the self-satisfied air of a man who can use his bare hands both to build a canoe in his backyard and squish a former San Francisco Hammerhead with delusions of enforcer glory. 

Shane’s knee is throbbing. The adrenaline from the shootout is still riding him, so hard that it feels like his veins are filled with something more solid than liquid–a hot, slushy mix that’s making his head spin. Hayden grabs his shoulder and shakes him a few more times, laughing and saying something about somebody getting back on their fucking groove. There is almost nothing Shane wants more than to just sit the fuck down and ice his fucking knee in silence.

His eyes dart around the locker room until they land on Rozanov, who is already watching Shane. His blue eyes have gone a little hooded. His light grey base layer is plastered to the heaving front of his chest. It’s possible that the only thing Shane wants to do more than ice his knee is to have Rozanov lay him out on a bed and gently fuck his throat until he cries. Maybe both of those things can happen simultaneously.

“You going out?” Shane asks Hayden.

“You fucking bet I am!” Hayden bellows. “Popo, my man, first round is on me!”

~

Hooking up on the road is, obviously, a profoundly stupid thing to do. What if Hayden comes back early and catches them? But Shane tells himself that they’ll only do it the once, and he’s only doing it because it’s so fucking hot—stupidly hot, the kind of hot that makes a person catastrophically dumb—and after they’ve done it the one time they’ll have gotten it out of their systems. Everything is fine and under control.

~

After New York days begin to hurtle by, the way they usually do this time of year. Shane never feels like he has enough time to catch his breath at this point in the season. This year is especially disorienting because Shane has no real explanation for why he’s playing as well as he is. He’s racking up ludicrous numbers of points in defiance of common sense and his multicolored, still-healing knee and the kilos he’s shedding by the day that an additional 2PM chicken breast (with avocado on multigrain toast) is doing jack shit to stymie and the fact that he’s constantly losing sleep because he’s going over to Rozanov’s condo like three times a week to get fucked even more stupid. They don’t fuck on the road after that one time and Shane never sleeps over again, careful not to overstep, which means he’s not back home in bed until after midnight on those nights. In a just universe, he would be playing like shit. But he’s not. None of them are. After they get back from New York nobody mentions Gritty or a curse he may or may not have attempted to lay on the Montreal Metros; the beat reporters start asking about #therozweiler again (“Seriously, guys, no fucking comment.”). Drapeau shuts out fucking Vancouver, again.

On March 25th, Rozanov gets a hat trick and 50 goals in one fell swoop, in the process mathematically eliminating Ottawa from the playoffs for the thirteenth consecutive year. Shane’s dad briefly enters his annual depression spiral about this, so Shane talks to Theriault and gets the okay to skip the bus back to Montreal after the game so he can spend a day with his parents.

“Your dad is taking tomorrow off work,” his mom says as she drives them all back to the house. It feels alarmingly nostalgic: Shane in the backseat with all his gear piled around him, his parents in the front seat gently squabbling over temperature control. Shane’s mom slaps his dad’s hand away from the dial and says, “I’ve got a call in the morning, but it shouldn’t take longer than fifteen minutes. Do you remember Kimi, from Calvin Klein? She’s just been hired by Comme Des Garçon to launch their collaboration with Nike and, sweetie, they are very interested. They’d just send over a few things and your stylist would help you figure out when to wear them.”

“What kind of stuff?” Shane asks.

“T-shirts and sneakers. Maybe a jacket. Lev will coordinate everything and he knows what you like,” his mom says. 

“I’d like to see it first,” Shane says, since he’s never even heard of this brand before, “but, I mean, sounds okay. Are they Québécois?”

“They’re Japanese,” his mom says. “We can take a look at the slide deck after you eat something. I roasted a chicken yesterday, and we have a bunch of stuff for salad so you can decide what you feel like eating. Your dad bought a huge bag of roasted chickpeas from Costco, please help us by eating some of them.”

“Hey,” Shane’s dad grumbles.

“And we have pasta salad leftover from dinner with the Singhs on Tuesday,” Shane’s mom continues, “and grilled peppers and sweet potatoes that your dad made to go with the chicken. So there’s plenty of food in the house, okay? Eat whatever you want.”

“You got the grill set up?” Shane asks. “Already?”

“I needed something to distract me after the Centaurs lost in Chicago last week,” his dad says. “And we got up to nearly nine degrees over the weekend, you know.”

“Wow,” Shane says.

“Climate change,” his dad agrees gloomily. “Two things I’ll never see again–the Centaurs bringing the Cup home to Ottawa, and snow in March.”

“David, it snowed last Tuesday,” Shane’s mom says. Shane’s dad just sighs and looks out the passenger window. 

When they get back to the house, Shane pours the half-congealed contents of a Tupperware full of grilled vegetables and chicken pieces onto a plate and puts it into the microwave while his mom pulls stuff out of the fridge for his inspection: lentils, spinach, arugula, pomegranate seeds, cubed cucumber, pickled beets, a bright blue tub of feta whose contents are also, alarmingly, blue. After he rejects the last one his mom says tartly, “A little mold won’t kill you, sweetie,” as she puts the lid back on and Shane and his dad exchange long-suffering looks behind her back. Yuna Hollander is a great cook but she has a very live-and-let-live approach to coexistence with fungi that Shane and his dad do not share.

Shane rescues his plate from the microwave, assembles his salad in a big mixing bowl, and then brings the plate over to the kitchen island to eat. His mom pours him a little wine into a juice glass and sets it down next to his plate, saying, “All right, David, what’s the post-mortem looking like,” as she dumps the rest of the bottle into a glass that Shane’s parents are probably going to share.

Shane’s dad, sitting catty-corner to Shane at the island, has his fingers steepled in front of his mouth. He sighs and lowers them. “Some of it was stupidity,” he says. “And some of it was sheer bad luck. They decided to put all their chips on that kid and then lost him to a slapshot to the jaw six weeks into the season–that’s bad luck compounding stupidity.”

“He’ll bounce back,” Shane says around a mouthful of lentils. 

“And then they tried to trade for maturity and experience at the deadline and got senior citizens instead,” his dad continues. He shakes his head. “What were they thinking? Blackman? He was drafted the same year as Gordie Howe.”

They sit around dissecting the Centaurs’ game strategy for another hour to basically no one’s satisfaction—so many of the choices that had been made were truly mystifying—and then exhaustion finally comes for Shane and they all stagger upstairs to bed. 

The next morning, with no discussion necessary, they meet at the front door a little after five and go for a loping run around the neighborhood. Shane’s mom does the pacing. If it had snowed last Tuesday, the nine-degree day in between had certainly done a good job wiping any evidence of that off the face of the planet. The familiar yards of Shane’s childhood are packed with cheerful clumps of purple crocuses and white snowdrops. If it weren’t for the twinging ache of Shane’s left knee, it would be easy for the last ten years to melt away as he and his parents settle into a steady 4.30km/min pace; his mom’s version of babying his knee. After a series of twists and loops, his dad–whose victory at rock-paper-scissors had won him the right to pick the route–hooks a left at the turn-off into Shane’s old middle school.

“Seriously?” Shane yelps. “Dad, my knee—!”

“Probably a good idea to keep it in top shape,” his dad calls over his shoulder. “Watch out for goose shit!” And then he laughs as he throws himself up the grassy hill that curves up behind the middle school.

“Ugh,” Shane says to himself under his breath. He follows, not quite managing 4.30min/km on the slope, telling himself, It’s fine, it’s healing, like if he says it enough times his knee will grow a pair of ears and fucking listen. Oleg and the rest of the medical staff keep feeding Shane the same lines about hot and cold and rest and elevation that he can now recite in his sleep. For the most part, time has proven them right not to have been worried: the swelling has gone down; the bruising has yellowed; Shane had rented private rink space for a few hours so Théo could watch him skate and Théo’s conclusion had been that Shane wasn’t at risk of developing any new bad habits to compensate for the lingering ache that has become his near-constant companion. Does it really hurt? Théo had said. I genuinely can’t tell. You would have made a terrific figure skater.

Just about the only thing that takes Shane out of his body these days is being fucked by Rozanov, which is why he keeps doing it even though it is deeply, mind-bogglingly, astonishingly stupid. What the fuck Rozanov is getting out of it, Shane has no idea. But Shane isn’t the only one staggering out of bed afterwards, hair clumped in weird patches and eyes gone glazed, and half the time it’s Rozanov who makes eye contact first, who lifts an eyebrow, who bites the edge of his lip, who lingers in the locker room with half-baked excuses long after the showers have emptied.

As Shane hurtles up the crest of the hill and hits the asphalt of the flat parking lot, he can’t help imagining what Rozanov–what Ilya–would make of the traditions of Shane’s family. He’d probably like the run, if not how early in the morning it starts; he’d probably like getting to raid the fridge for leftovers; he’d certainly get a kick out of the way Shane’s mom always pours a little bit of wine for him into a juice glass, a habit she’d developed when he was a teenager and Health Canada’s report of the first Canadian Student Alcohol and Drugs Survey had come out and recommended introducing teenagers to alcohol in a controlled and shame-free environment. 

Would he find it weird how many photos there are of Shane all over the house? A lot of them are surely ubiquitous to the childhood homes of every guy who now plays professionally: Shane playing shinny, Shane teaching the local mites how to dangle, Shane receiving his first trophy (for sportsmanlike conduct). Shane’s mom has saved every Halloween costume he’s ever worn, even the Geordi La Forge one from when he’d only been a few months old, and when Shane was growing up he’d always given his mom a mug for Christmas, printed at a kiosk at the mall, with a photo of them in that year’s costumes–Linda Hamilton and the Terminator; Laura Dern and the T. rex; Buzz Lightyear and Sheriff Woody–and now that he’s nearly thirty and no longer available for group costumes, she’s retaliated by building a display shelf for all of them in the kitchen. It has recessed lighting.

Ilya would probably like Shane’s parents. He would probably like their house. He’d definitely have managed to maintain 4.30min/km up that fucking hill. And none of that fucking matters, because Rozanov is Shane’s twenty-two-year-old coworker, not his fucking boyfriend.

Shane catches up to his parents at the corner on the far side of the parking lot. “How’s the knee, sweetie?” his mom asks.

“It’s fine,” Shane says. “How’s the heartbreak?” he asks his dad.

“Eternal,” his dad replies grimly. “Last one to Rockin Johnny’s pays for breakfast, by the way.”

“What,” is all Shane gets out before his parents zoom off. “The hell!” Shane yells as he sprints after them.

Shane’s dad ends up paying for breakfast. They all go home and shower and then while his mom is on the phone with Kimi, Shane flips through the Comme Des Garçon slide deck. He gives his reluctant go-ahead for the sponsorship agreement provided he doesn’t have to wear the sneakers that look like alien feet. Meanwhile, Shane’s dad cheers himself up by looking at the draft prospects predicted to go in the top fifteen and fantasizing aloud about the way each one could feasibly help the Centaurs crawl out of their deep, dark pit of mediocrity. 

After that’s done, they all sit down on the big sectional in the den to watch Arrival while Shane ices his knee and eats his 10AM chicken breast (shredded into a bowl with cold chunks of grilled sweet potato). Shane hasn’t seen it yet, but both his parents have. It’s a strange movie. They talk about it a little bit over lunch and then Shane’s parents get into an argument about whether the film had been insightful or just pretentious; Shane avoids picking a side by going outside and loading all his stuff very slowly into the back of the RAV4. They’ve resolved their differences by the time Shane kisses his mom good-bye.

~

Shane and his dad enjoy a companionable silence for a while, and then as his dad is turning onto the 417 he says, “Oh, I got the seat heaters fixed, by the way.” Shane immediately verifies this by leaning over to test the controls. As the warmth begins to press against the back of his legs, he unconsciously releases a pleased little noise, and that’s the last thing he remembers until he’s jerking awake as they cross the bridge into Montreal.

“Shit!” Shane mumbles, his mouth dry, struggling to sit upright.

“You were out,” his dad says.

“I’m sorry,” Shane says. “You should’ve woken me, it must’ve been boring.”

“It wasn’t,” his dad says. He hums thoughtfully to himself. “To be honest, I was thinking about what you were saying at lunch, about how nobody really speaks the same language as anyone else.”

Still a little disoriented, it takes Shane a few seconds to follow that line of thought. “I think I said something a lot stupider than that,” Shane mumbles eventually.

His dad frowns. “No, that was the gist of it.” He continues, speaking in that slow and thoughtful way he has, “You know, you exist in a very different world than your mom and I. Most people we know and work with are native speakers of the same language, but that’s really not true for you. So we can get away with thinking we all perfectly understand each other, but you can’t.”

“I mean, I guess,” Shane says, shifting in his seat, carefully stretching out his leg and then relaxing it to make sure the joint hasn’t stiffened. 

Frankly, Shane doesn’t really know what he’d meant, when he’d said that stuff at lunch. He’d been thinking about something Jackie had said on a double date when Shane had still been trying to make it work with Rose; something one of her college professors had said about how every form of human communication was a translation. Rose had made excited noises in the back of her throat and put down her beer. That’s such a brilliant way of looking at it! she had said, leaning across the table to Jackie. It really reminds me of– and then they’d spent the rest of dinner talking about some Greek play that was being made into a movie by one of Rose’s friends; Jackie had read it in school, apparently, and had strong feelings about some specific plot point. Shane hadn’t read the play, or even heard of it, so instead of pretending he’d have anything useful to add he’d sat there thinking about the idea itself—to assume nothing, and take nothing for granted, when talking to another person. Shane rarely does so anyway; he’s so fucking awkward.

“It doesn’t really matter, though,” he says now, to his dad. “I don’t have to speak to a teammate to play hockey together.”

His dad hums. “The kid from Japan. How’s his English?”

“Better than my Japanese,” Shane says. He laughs a short, embarrassed huff. “Like, way better. And Rozanov’s basically fluent.”

“If we accept your premise, what’s fluency?” his dad wonders. 

Shane repeats, “My premise?” with deep skepticism and his dad laughs, but in the distracted way he does when he’s thinking.

They sit in silence for a little while. Shane can feel that his dad is trying to put words to whatever thoughts have been marinating in his brain during the last few hours while Shane has been passed out in his passenger’s seat. “I think there’s something very personal about the decision that Amy Adams’ character makes at the end of that movie, to have her daughter even though she knows she’ll die,” his dad finally says. “You can share a language with another person, but you can’t share the brain that makes a choice like that.”

“Would you make it?” Shane asks.

“I would,” his dad says. “Sometimes, like when you took that hit in San Francisco, it can feel like we already did.”

Shane winces. “Dad, I’m–”

“It’s fine,” his dad says. “I’m not trying to guilt-trip you, I’m not your Nana. I’m just saying, I’d go back and do it again. But as for your mom, who can say. She really is not one for time travel movies where it turns out the time travel has already happened.” While they’d been eating lunch she’d said, David, that movie is wall-to-wall pretentious bullshit and I can’t believe you made me watch it twice.

“Yeah, well,” Shane says, “that’s because she’s a control freak.”

His dad says, “A wonderful control freak whom we both love dearly and are lucky enough to be loved by in return.” They both laugh.

Shane’s dad doesn’t say anything else for a while, distracted by other drivers and the ebb and flow of traffic. He scowls back into his blind spot as he tries to change lanes. “Your mom is one of the best things that ever happened to me,” he says eventually. “But what I was thinking about, while you were asleep just now, was how being with her, the language of marriage, changed me. How happy I am that it changed me. And how much I want you to be able to have that experience.”

Abruptly, the comfort pours out of Shane’s warm, relaxed body like a plug’s been yanked out of a drain in his feet. He stiffens. “Dad.”

“That’s all I wanted to say,” his dad says. He holds up a hand, like he’s being sworn in to testify in front of a judge. “I’m done. I promise.”

“It’s like a bomb,” Shane says. “It would be like choosing to detonate a bomb in the middle of my life. Everything would change. It’s not a bomb for other people and it’s not–”

“Yeah,” his dad says, when Shane finds himself unable to finish the thought. “It’s not fair.”

Shane clamps his lips together to strangle what wants to come out instead of words; childish howls, probably. He puts a hand over his mouth and stares blindly out the windshield at the other cars, the people on the sidewalks in suits and overcoats and practical boots who probably just got out of work, the tourists in their comically enormous puffer coats. They pass a bus shelter with Shane’s self-consciously serious face emblazoned on it, along with a black and white photograph of the Bell Centre: IF YOU WERE PLAYING HERE TOMORROW, YOU’D BE WEARING A ROLEX. 

Shane has so much. Surely it’s selfish to be dissatisfied, to want more.

~

Ahead of the game in Detroit, practice the next day is light: resistance training, a little bit of tape review, a card-game team-building exercise that Shane is pretty sure is the professional athletic organization equivalent of his seventh grade Canadian History teacher putting on a VHS of Planet Earth (this late in the season, even Theriault’s moustache is drooping with exhaustion). The guys react basically the same way that Shane’s seventh grade Canadian History class had, with raunchy jokes and heckling and attempts to give each other dead arms when none of the coaching staff is looking. Everybody seems relieved to have pulled through this recent rough patch without having lost too much momentum and while Shane understands, he is also frustrated by what seems to him complete disinterest in interrogating why they’d lost that momentum. When he’d cornered Theriault about it, he’d just said, Tabernak, Hollander, really? I don’t have time for this. Get the fuck out of my office.

Shane glances over at some point while they’re reviewing some recent tape of Detroit and Rozanov is already shifting to look back–head tilting up, gold chain glinting under the knitted collar of his t-shirt–and their eyes snag each other’s for just a second. Shane feels it like a jolt, like a big truck hitch has just hooked itself onto his ribcage and yanked. Nothing in Rozanov’s expression changes, but Shane hears, yes, as if he’s said it out loud.

Shane, who’d gotten a ride that morning from Hayden, chases him down to tell him that he’s got plans and doesn’t need a ride home. Hayden waves him off. “What, you don’t want to chaperone Suzy and my fucking nanny at the zoo?” he asks. “Yeah, big shock. See you on the flight tomorrow, man.”

It takes Shane a while after that to find Rozanov. He’s not sharpening his skates, or in the locker room, or the cardio room, or the weight room, or with the physios. Shane for the most part manages to avoid actually asking anyone where Rozanov is until he gets to the physio office. “Hey, Hollzy. Is it your knee?” Oleg asks. 

“No,” Shane says. “I was just–uh, Roz is supposed to give me a lift.”

“I saw him go by a few minutes ago,” Oleg says, pointing in the opposite direction from which Shane had just arrived. “I hope you’re remembering to elevate!” he shouts after Shane.

“Yep!” Shane calls back. “You bet!”

Shane makes two left more turns and then abruptly jerks to a halt. Rozanov is a couple of meters away, down in a crouch with his head bent, one arm wrapped protectively over his head. The other one is holding his phone to his ear. “Mm, mm,” he is saying roughly. He lowers his arm and drops his head back, which must be when he realizes that Shane is there; his head whips around. His eyes are red-rimmed but he’s not actively crying.

“Are you okay?” Shane asks in a loud whisper. The words bounce off of the whitewashed cinderblocks.

“Mm,” Rozanov says again. He closes his eyes. Then he says, “Go fuck yourself, Alexei,” in Russian. Shane recognizes all of the words; Rozanov’s voice is a rough scrape over the consonants. He sounds like he’s never meant anything as genuinely as he means this. He puts a hand over his face, but not fast enough to hide the way his expression crumples.

Shane swiftly crosses the space between them. Rozanov drops his phone onto the ground; it clatters, alarmingly, the way smartphones do when they’re trying to decide whether or not they’re going to shatter. “Are you okay?” Shane asks again.

Rozanov says something in Russian. And then, damply, he says, “Papa is dead,” and he squeezes his face with clenched fingers, as if in preparation to rip off his skin. “Skatert'yu doroga, motherfucker.”

“Fuck,” Shane says, sinking down next to him. “I’m so–I’m so sorry–”

“I am not,” Rozanov says, not particularly convincingly considering that he’s half-crying and squishing his face between his hands. He barks out a very harsh laugh and says, “Impossible to say this in English. This language is the worst.”

“Don’t say it in English, then,” Shane says. “You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to. I’ll drive you home. I can talk to Theriault and the front office. Do you need help booking a flight?”

Rozanov groans, deep in his throat, and his knuckles go white. He says something in Russian. “If that’s you saying you can’t go anywhere because we’re in the middle of the season, don’t be a dumbass,” Shane says. “We’ve already clinched a playoff berth. As long as you’re back for the first round, Theriault isn’t going to care.” This might be untrue; it’s becoming increasingly clear that Shane cannot reliably predict what Theriault will choose to care or not care about. But Shane isn’t going to let anybody on the Metros or in the front office prevent Rozanov from going to his fucking father’s funeral and he strongly suspects none of them will try.

The hallway air is cool; the floor is even cooler. Shane’s knee protests the crouch but it’s not acutely painful, not yet, so he ignores the discomfort in favor of curling an arm over Rozanov’s shoulder. Shane doesn’t make a habit of touching people in public spaces for a whole laundry list of reasons, but he thinks from the way that Rozanov acts with him in private–the prowling, the encroaching, the licking, the way they always end up so close to one another that sweat and semen glue their bodies together and it’s an act of willpower to peel themselves apart afterwards–that in this moment, Rozanov would like physical comfort. It’s kind of a gamble.

For a moment, Rozanov’s body is stiff under his arm, tension pulling every muscle tight and vibrating, and then slowly Shane feels him loosen: his head tilts down, his shoulders go slack, his body twists a few, nearly undetectable degrees towards Shane. His hair is damp and slightly frizzy, long enough that Shane can see the individual corkscrews spiraling from the crown of his head. His breathing is muffled and wet. Shane gives in to the urge to kiss the top of his head, just once, just for a quick second. 

“Come on,” Shane says quietly. “Let’s go.”

They make it to the parking garage without running into anyone. Rozanov is hard-faced and red-eyed, his mouth pressed so flat that the corners of his lips have turned white. He just hands over his keys when Shane says, “I’m driving.” He doesn’t say anything in the elevator up to his condo, or when Shane tells him to sit down while he makes some calls, or after Shane fills a cut crystal glass nearly to the brim with vodka–there’s three different bottles in the fridge; Shane picks the one that looks least expensive–and brings it to him on the couch. 

The first call is to Theriault, who swears in French for about forty-five seconds and then says, “All right,” grimly and hangs up. The second call is to Shoshannah; Shane leaves her a voicemail.

Five minutes of intensive Internet activity later, Shane has discovered that there are no direct flights from Montreal to Moscow. He’s overwhelmed by the dizzying array of layover options available and, suffering a brief moment of cowardice, calls Pattie in the front office and asks for her help. “Oh, honey,” she says, “I’m so sorry to hear that. Of course I can book his travel. I’m assuming he wants to leave ASAP–I’ll email him the details, okay?” 

Shane says, “Thank you,” and hangs up, which is when he realizes it’s 6.20PM and he should absolutely not have called Pattie in the front office, he’s such an inconsiderate asshole–but like twelve seconds later Ilya’s phone buzzes where he’s left it on the kitchen counter and Shane sees on his lockscreen the preview of an email from pcheung@metros.ca, FWD: Your Journey with Air France. 

Shane leaves the glossy, dimly-lit kitchen and moves around the counter to the unlit living area with its ugly couch and uncomfortable accent chairs. Ilya is slumped over, staring out at the Montreal skyline through the nearest wall of windows. The cut crystal glass balanced precariously on his stomach looks nearly empty.

Shane sits down next to him and hands him his phone. “Pattie booked you a flight,” he says.

Ilya takes his phone and doesn’t unlock it. “Okay,” he says thickly.

“It’ll probably leave tomorrow,” Shane says. “If it’s in the morning, I can drive you to the airport. If it’s in the afternoon, I’ll call the car service and have them send somebody. Do you need to pack?”

Ilya lifts the glass and pours the last centimeter of vodka down the back of his throat. He swallows so slowly that Shane watches it happen by millimeters, his Adam’s apple moving down and then bobbing up abruptly. Ilya croaks, “I need a cigarette,” and gets up and makes a beeline for the patio doors, his long legs eating up the distance so quickly that he’s out the door before Shane can think to do anything except make a half-stifled noise of protest. It’s just light enough still for Shane to make out the rough outline of Ilya’s body as he rustles around in some container on his patio table, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. 

In no universe would Shane be able to just sit on the couch and watch Ilya chainsmoke. He gets up instead and goes into the bedroom. Without consciously thinking about it, he opens the closet and gets out the leather duffle bag from the top shelf. He puts socks, briefs, undershirts, two sweaters (one black, one dark grey), a pair of sweatpants, a pair of dark-wash jeans, and two black silk ties inside it, then unzips the shoe compartment at the bottom and packs the pair of black leather dress shoes on the shoe rack that look like they’ve been shined most recently. He goes through the hangers of Ilya’s dress shirts and suits, finds a pair of the same white dress shirt made of heavy broadcloth, then pauses to Google the weather in Moscow–five degrees, 50% chance of wintry mix–and goes back to add a turtleneck sweater to the bag. He zips the two dress shirts and a single-breasted black suit into the garment bag hanging on the back of the closet door. He goes into the bathroom and finds Ilya’s dopp kit–already packed for Detroit–and puts that in the duffle bag. He combs through the rest of the apartment to find Ilya’s passport and phone charger and a pair of leather gloves, all of which he puts in the outside pocket of the duffle. 

It’s not until he’s done, carrying the duffle and the garment bag out to set them by the front door, that it occurs to him how absolutely fucking insane a thing this is to have done. It’s made even worse by the realization that it hadn’t even been particularly difficult; Shane knows Ilya’s apartment, has seen him come back from a road trip and put his passport in the bedside drawer or toss his gloves onto a table by the front door. In their hotel room in Florida, an hour before they’d had to leave for the airport, Ilya had fit a hand around Shane’s right thigh and pushed his leg up until his knee was nearly at his ear and then as he’d fucked his thumb into Shane’s asshole he had said said, You’ll take me one more time like this? and Shane had flexed his neck in protest or acquiescence or both and what he’d seen as he’d moved his head had been this duffle and this garment bag piled on the other bed, the shape of them blurred by tears.

The patio door skids open with a rough squeal while Shane is standing there in the middle of the living room, stupidly, garment bag in one hand and duffle bag in the other. “Air France flight leaves in two hours, I–fuck–I have to–” Ilya says loudly, and then he sees Shane and stops dead.

“I packed for you,” Shane says.

Ilya stares at him. The living room is cold; it smells like fresh cigarette smoke, which is just as bad as stale but somehow discernably different. “Clothes, toiletries, your passport,” Shane says. “Do you need anything else?”

“Phone charger,” Ilya says.

“I packed that, too,” Shane says. He can feel himself begin to flush. Ilya does not say anything, but he does come closer to take the bags from Shane, both of them in one hand. He uses the other to grab the back of Shane’s head and reel him in for a kiss so hard and sudden that their teeth clack together, horribly. He smells like burnt nicotine and his mouth is cold and acrid and bitter. He says something in Russian against Shane’s mouth and then kisses him again and again and—

A phone buzzes twice, audible in the cool, quiet darkness.

“That is the car,” Ilya says.

“Let’s go, then,” Shane says. 

The elevator ride down to the first floor feels like it takes about forty years. Shane swallows around the hard knot of anxiety in his throat, thinking of things to say and then discarding them as useless, until they’re nearly at the bottom and he manages, “If you need anything, just–call me. Any,” and here his throat clicks, betrayingly, “ah, any time. Okay?”

Rozanov doesn’t say anything. But when Shane is in the back of the car he’d called to take him home, he gets a text: Okay. The first message he’s ever received from Ilya Rozanov.

Chapter 5

Chapter Notes

If you can believe it, we've made it to the end! A little epilogue will be going up shortly, so keep an eye out for that. Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to comment--I've been overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response and you're all wonderful <3 thanks for joining me on this ride!!

Nobody on the team makes an announcement, but by the flight to Detroit the next afternoon everybody seems to know already. Shane’s confused by that until his mom texts him, Please give Rozanov our best, and in response to the single question mark he sends back, she shares a link from CBC News. The coverage is like one of the queen’s fucking corgis have died or something. “It’s disgusting,” Shane fumes to Hayden. “He deserves privacy.”

“It’s not like they’re publishing pictures of his dad’s corpse,” Hayden says, and then he gets a good look at Shane’s face and adds hastily, “--but of course it’s really fucking gross, yeah.”

Hayden comes back up to Shane’s wing and they beat Detroit in overtime, a perfectly adequate 3-2 win that nevertheless feels disappointing after the last few electrifying games. Maybe it’s because it’s their last game on the road for a while and everybody’s itching to get home. Maybe it’s because Shane’s knee is stiffening up more and more frequently as it heals. Maybe it’s that playing hockey with Ilya Rozanov has completely fucking terraformed Shane’s brain and he’s sulking like a fucking child at not having him, at having to make do with the rest of the Metros, an objectively great team with whom he’s already won two Stanley Cups. Or maybe it’s because Gondo had had five fucking shots on goal and converted zero of them into points.

Shane is simmering with low-grade annoyance and frustration when his phone buzzes on the shelf of his locker. He grabs for it so fast that it’s purely reflexive, zero higher brain function, and he doesn’t realize why until the disappointment hits; it’s a text from Rose, not–

The text says, We still on for tonight? Totally fine if the answer is no, I know you say you’re always really wiped this late in the season.

Fuck.

Yeah for sure, Shane types back, like a person who hadn’t completely forgotten plans to meet his ex-girlfriend and now sort-of best friend to catch up after playing a game near her hometown. Where should I meet you?

Based on a recommendation from one of Rose’s old middle school friends who now lives in Detroit, they go to a tiny bar full of dimly-lit booths and green glass lamps that look like they were stolen from a library. The menu is nothing but martinis and like fifteen different types of fried fish. Shane asks for a ginger ale, which they don’t have, but the bartender counter-offers a bottle of organic small-batch tonic water. Rose orders a dirty martini with a twist and a basket of fried smelt.

“So how are things?” Rose asks once they’ve settled in their own dimly-lit booth, in the back. It’s a Tuesday, so most of the booths are empty and there’s maybe ten people at the bar. Music is playing but not very loudly, some kind of upbeat and slightly electronic pop music, and there’s just enough conversations happening for it to be pleasantly noisy, but not loud. 

“Fine,” Shane says automatically.

Rose makes a face. “Come on,” she says.

Shane makes a face back. “You go first,” he says. “I’ll–think of something.”

Rose sips from her martini. “Well,” she says. “I met someone.” She pauses and gives Shane time to respond.

“Wow!” he says. “Uh–congrats?”

“Thank you,” she says. “I’m done now, your turn. How are things? Seriously, don’t think about it, just say something.”

“My knee hurts,” Shane says. He sips from his tiny bottle of organic tonic water and bravely swallows despite wanting to spit it out. He puts the bottle down and pushes it away. “Ugh,” he says.

“Was it that hit?” Rose asks. “The one when you were playing Winnipeg?”

“Yeah,” Shane says. “Partly, I guess. It’s never going to be 100% ever again, so it’s just–like, uncertainty. If it’s not reliable, am I going to get another ten years out of it, you know? Some guys do–I mean, look at Malinin.”

“Oh, I’ve looked,” Rose says, pretending to leer. “Very respectfully.” She straightens up and beams at the waitress who comes by to drop off the basket of fried smelt. “Thanks so much! Hey, could we also possibly get a glass of seltzer, please? With lime?”

“Sure thing,” the waitress says.

“Thanks,” Shane says after she’s out of earshot.

“No problem,” Rose says. 

Shane’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he does that same reflexive scramble to check it (Hayden, complaining about the shitty room service cream of mushroom soup) only this time there’s a witness to his disappointed frown. She looks pointedly at his phone. “What’s up with you?” she says, enunciating every word. Shane does not answer but something must change in his expression because Rose squeals and clasps both hands over her mouth. She’s still sitting there like that, eyes huge, when the waitress comes back with the seltzer.

“Thanks,” Shane says to her. And then, to Rose, he says, “Shut up.”

“Seriously?” Rose says through her hands.

“It’s not a big deal,” Shane says.

Rose says, “Of course it’s a big deal! Oh my God, Shane, tell me everything, who is she,” and then she abruptly stops and, with a look on her face not dissimilar to Eddie Valiant finally realizing who in fact framed Roger Rabbit, mouths, he?

Shane says, “Why are you like this?”

“Is it serious?” Rose asks.

“No,” Shane says. He can feel a muscle in his cheek twitch. 

Rose must read something into this because she nods sagely. “Okay, so still early,” she says. “No labels to keep the pressure off? Of course, of course. Are you—like, ace but not aro?”

“What?” Shane says.

“Everything’s cool, nobody’s pressuring you or being weird or anything?” Rose says.

“Not pressuring me—what to—“ Shane lowers his voice, “come out? No. Of course not. No one is pressuring me to do anything.” 

Rose’s jaw actually drops open. “Oh my god,” she whisper-squawks. “You’re thinking about coming out? You’ve been gay for, what, six months and you’re going to come out? Of fucking MLH’s closet?” She mouths the words come, out, gay, and closet, in such an embarrassingly exaggerated way that Shane genuinely can’t believe she has a Golden Globe.

“I’ve been like this for like twenty-five years,” Shane leans forward to hiss-whisper back, “you just assumed I was asexual because we had bad sex, once.”

“Twice,” Rose says.

“You had two orgasms!” Shane says. “Was it even that bad for you?”

“The fact that you are even asking that is why I thought you were asexual until two fucking seconds ago,” Rose says, “by the way.” She sits up straight and picks up the wide V of her martini glass with her thumb and middle finger, like she’s Lauren Bacall or something.

“And I’m not planning to say anything publicly,” Shane says quietly. “Why do people keep asking me about this? I have zero plans to do that.”

Rose lifts an eyebrow and takes a sip of her martini. “By people you mean–?” 

“My parents,” Shane says. “They’re the only ones who know, besides you.”

“I mean,” Rose says. “There has to be at least one other person. Because you are now extremely confident that you are not asexual and I feel like maybe you were wobbling, last time?”

“Zero wobbling,” Shane says. “By the way, I’m not telling you any—like, details.”

“You don’t have to,” Rose says. She puts down her drink. “Being completely serious, now, you absolutely do not have to and in fact probably should not tell me. Except to confirm in the general sense that you are happy and to be honest your face is telling me that already. I’ve never seen you let yourself actually smile in public.”

“It’s because it makes me look like a serial killer,” Shane says flatly. “The reps for CCM told me.”

“Wow, okay, fuck CCM,” Rose says. “Seriously? Fuck!”

“It’s fine,” Shane says.

“Have a smelt,” Rose says, pushing the basket towards him. “They’re actually a really good source of protein. And you clearly deserve one.”

Shane peers down into the basket of little fried fish and feels his whole face wrinkle in dismay. “I can’t eat things that still have their skin on,” he says. “The texture just—ugh.”

“Would you eat a parsnip fry?” Rose asks.

“Stop trying to feed me, you sound like my mom,” Shane says. “I’m seriously fine. My knee hurts but it always kind of hurts. I’m just—“ and he can’t say it to Rose, but he can admit it to himself: he misses Rozanov, a phantom ache like somebody’s cut off his left hand. It hasn’t even been a full day. “I’m just tired,” he says, since that’s basically true. “Tell me about this person you’re seeing. Somebody you met making this weird movie in Argentina?”

“You’re saying that like the movie is the weird part, but Wuthering Heights is a weird book, okay?” she says. “Adding the ratline storyline if anything simplified the moral framework—and normally I wouldn’t be a fan of that, but Claire is a genius.”

“Sure,” Shane says.

“You still haven’t watched Beau Trevail, I don’t even need to ask,” Rose says, laughing. “I can’t believe David let me down! He’s otherwise trained you up so well.”

“We watched Arrival last weekend,” Shane says.

Rose puts her hand over her face. “An audition I bombed by the way—they told me I didn’t play as intellectual enough.”

“What does that even mean?” Shane asks.

“My agent told me I was too young,” Rose says. “I mean, Amy’s, what, like fifteen years older than us? But there’s no reason to think that character couldn’t be in her twenties. And if you put me in an ugly enough ponytail I can pass for like thirty-four.”

Shane says, “Sure,” because that seems like the right thing to say. “My mom hated it,” he adds, in case that seems supportive.

Rose brightens. “So did Gage!” she says. “That’s the guy, by the way. He’s a professional rock climber. We met because he was taking his sister on the same route in Peru over Christmas—a twenty-first birthday present for her. Isn’t that so sweet?”

“People can climb rocks professionally?” Shane says.

“Some people are even paid to hit them with sticks,” Rose says. She grins and pops a fried smelt into her mouth. “I would ask what your guy does professionally but I think I already know. You’re really keeping him on a short leash; I know tons of people in Montreal who were expecting to have the chance to shoot their shot and are super disappointed to not have had the opportunity.”

“Did you make a deal with the devil or something?” Shane asks. “That’s how witches get psychic powers, right?”

“You tell me,” Rose says. “Every guy in my immediate family and also apparently FOX Sports thinks you and Rozanov can read each other’s minds.”

Shane can feel himself flush. “That’s not how it works,” he says, picking the lime wedge off of the edge of his glass and fiddling with it. “We just—make each other better,” he says. It’s an awkward simplification. Shane doesn’t know how to make it sound better but he tries anyway. “When he’s on my wing, he plays a smarter, tighter game. And when I’m his center, he—pushes me, to be better. Faster, a little more unpredictable, a little more aggressive. If I feel myself getting anxious, I can focus on whatever insane stunt he’s about to pull and it kind of takes me out of my head. Sure, my scoring’s down a bit but—“

“Not that much, Mr. Thirty Hat Tricks,” Rose says. “Congrats, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Shane says. He squeezes the lime wedge into his half-drunk seltzer, focusing on the activity like it’s worth the attention. “I’m playing some of the best hockey of my life with him,” he admits to his glass. “It scares the shit out of me.”

“Because you have to give up control?” Rose asks sympathetically.

The easiest way to escape this conversation without making any other accidental, horrifying confessions is to lie, so Shane does so immediately. “Yeah,” he says. But in reality, ceding control to Rozanov is so fucking easy. Shane’s left knee only has like 85% of its original range of motion but he can still drop down onto it to suck Rozanov’s cock without having to think twice. The problem is that Shane is beginning to realize that he wants more than what he’s already been lucky enough to get. He’s such a hungry fucking idiot.

~

When they touch down at the airport in Montreal the next day and Shane switches his phone off airplane mode, he sees that he has a missed call from Rozanov. 

Just landed, give me like 45min to get home, Shane texts. He gets a little thumbs up, so quickly that he Googles the time difference between Montreal and Moscow. It’s a little before 6PM there; if Shane waits 45 minutes, would his call interrupt a meal? Shane mostly remembers the weekend of Grandpa Hollander’s funeral as a series of meals–people rotating around clusters of folding tables that had been assembled in various rooms of his nana’s house, cousins grabbing his dad by the elbow and saying, Come sit with us, I want to hear how you guys are getting on. He doesn’t want to create any problems for Rozanov, who must be overwhelmed. Shane sends, Wait, never mind, let me find somewhere here. He slows down and tucks himself behind a concrete pillar as the rest of the guys filter through the automatic doors to the private terminal.

“Allo,” Rozanov answers.

“Hey,” Shane says. “How’s—“ he clears his throat. “How’s it going?”

“It fucking sucks, thank you for asking,” Rozanov replies crisply.

“Was he sick?” Shane asks.

“Yes,” Rozanov says. “Sick in the fucking brain. The world is better now that he is dead.” His voice roughens a little as he says, “He hated me and he hated that he needed me. But my money paid for all his nurses so—“ and then he breaks off, muffled Russian that sounds brisk and annoyed. Abruptly he says, “I have to go. You, too. Fix whatever the fuck is wrong with Gondo’s wrist shot.”

“Hey, don’t—“ Shane tries, but he can hear that the call has disconnected. He shakes his head and laughs unhappily.

~

They don’t get the chance to talk again for days. In the meantime, the Metros beat Ottawa and Dallas. They’re the kind of wins that come from luck, rather than skill. Shane’s skating like there are weights tied to the backs of his skates. Gondo misses four shots on goal against Dallas. Tsuzuki is scared of Hayden (maybe because he sees him as an authority figure not dissimilar to Nanny Eleanor’s dad) so he’s on his best behavior while they’re playing, that penalty-chasing little bastard that Rozanov’s trained up so diligently deciding not to take any chances, even when they’re begging for exploitation, and also still sometimes falling back on the shitty skating habits that Théo has worked so hard to beat out of him. Theriault says, “Good game,” as Shane’s coming off the ice in Dallas and Shane spits out his mouthguard to reply, “Uh, really?” 

Theriault’s moustache bristles but his voice is flat as he says, “Don’t overthink it, Hollander.” 

To cap off the horrible week, Shane gets a call from somebody at Team Canada: a heads up that MLH isn’t going to release players for Pyeongchang. 

“I’m so sorry, Shane,” he says, “We won’t be announcing it until next week but I wanted you to know. We really wanted to defend the gold with you there as our captain.”

“I appreciate that,” Shane says. “I know you guys will do great.” 

Shane finds that he doesn’t even care, really, at least not about the Olympics as a matter of national pride. He’s just frustrated by being kept from playing his best in new, heretofore undiscovered ways. It’s no longer his own injuries checking his forward momentum but other things over which he has zero control: obviously fixable issues with his teammates, squabbles between international interests over broadcasting rights, Rozanov being in a different fucking country—

“Who’s there with you?” Shane asks the next time Rozanov calls, nauseated by something he can’t quite sink his teeth into. It’s early but Shane’s awake, sitting at the kitchen counter with the remains of his breakfast and the accusing red bubble of his email inbox: 1,501 unread messages. Shane closes his laptop to avoid looking at it.

“Stepmother, brother, brother’s wife,” Rozanov lists. “Little Lenochka, she is always getting scolded and then hiding behind my chair so I will protect her.” He scoffs, but Shane can hear the insincerity in it. “Papa’s friends, their ugly wives and stupid children.” He breaks off in an annoyed hiss.

“What is it?” Shane asks.

“Maybe some children are less stupid,” Rozanov says. “Sveta is here—you said you know her papa.”

“Yeah, I mean—I played against him exactly once and it fucking sucked,” Shane says. “He’s like a steel trap. I think he told me I wasn’t committing to my backhand and until I did it would always betray me, like an abused dog. Is she right there?”

“Hellooo,” a woman calls tinnily. 

“I can let you go if you’re busy,” Shane says. He can hear the sulkiness in his own voice.

“Sveta is leaving,” Rozanov says quickly. “She is here to get Lenochka, they are going shopping. Goodbye, Lenochka,” he says in Russian; Shane easily recognizes this phrase. A high-pitched little voice replies in a torrent of noise. She sounds younger than Jade and Ruby–four or five, maybe–and extremely opinionated, with a bossy little quality to her voice that makes it clear she’s telling Rozanov what’s what. Eventually, though, she must finish doing that and go off with Sveta because Rozanov says softly, “Everybody here spoils her.”

“Right,” Shane says. “Meanwhile I’m sure you’re very strict.”

“Who cares?” Rozanov says. “She will not remember me. She never does. Every time I come back it is like she has never seen me before.”

“How old is she?” Shane asks. “She sounds like she must be five? She’ll start remembering you now, even with big gaps between visits.”

“She will not,” Rozanov says flatly. “I will never see her again.”

“Ilya–” Shane says, before he can stop himself.

“No, no, I don’t–” Rozanov makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “Fuck. I hate this. I hate being here, it makes me–what is the word, sit in it? I feel sorry for myself, like that wet man in the rain, who is this?”

“I mean, there’s a lot of those,” Shane says blankly.

“The one whose picture Tsuzuki always sends in texts,” Rozanov says.

“Tsuzuki has never texted me, like, ever,” Shane says. “Is it raining there? I saw in the forecast it was supposed to snow.”

“Metaphorical rain,” Rozanov says.

“Metaphorical,” Shane echoes.

“I can know English words that are not cognates,” Rozanov says irritably. “This one is, but I know others that are not.”

“Moscow can’t be all bad. Your best friend lives there, or will once she finishes school.” Shane says this coaxingly without even realizing he’s doing it, like he’s trying to sweet-talk Rozanov into a better mood. He wants to add, You lived with your mom there, but he doesn’t know how Rozanov might take that. Maybe that is part of what he hates about Moscow; maybe it still hurts too much to have lost her. “What was your favorite thing to do when you were growing up?”

Rozanov says nothing for a little while. Eventually, he releases a long whisper of a breath and says, “After church, Mama would take me to friend’s house for chainik. Everybody eats and drinks tea and gossips. If I was good I would get to eat two slices of medovik. Once I lied to get extra and ate four and then I threw up in the car on the way home.” He barks out a single laugh. “I am always like this–wanting more. Still like this, even now.”

“What’s medovik?” Shane asks. “Wait–say it again–”

“Medovik,” Rozanov says.

“Medovik,” Shane says again, slowly, trying to actively feel what shape his tongue is making in his mouth. It’s much harder than it sounds.

“It is a sweet cake,” Rozanov says. “You would hate it.”

“I don’t hate sweet things,” Shane says defensively.

“Filled with cream,” Rozanov adds.

Shane says, “Ugh,” reflexively.

Rozanov laughs. “You would shit yourself and die,” he says.

“Fuck off,” Shane says, although Rozanov is not, of course, wrong.

“You did not go to Moscow, did you?” Rozanov asks. “When you were in Russia for Olympics. Too busy fucking biathletes, I am guessing.”

“I fucked zero biathletes in Sochi,” Shane says. It’s been a minute or two now, enough time to have thought over that easy offhand remark that Rozanov had freely offered: I always want more. Shane wonders at the shape of it, if it’s the same feeling he has sometimes: that exhausting, gnawing hunger that is never satisfied, because you have no idea what the fuck to feed it. “Tell me more about your mom. What was her name?”

“Irina,” Rozanov says.

“That’s pretty,” Shane says. “What did she look like? Blonde, like you?”

“Yes,” Rozanov says. His voice thickens slightly. “She was very beautiful. She was supposed to go to Albertville but my father knocked her up and the republics' team sent someone else instead. He always said it was her fault.” Rozanov huffs something in Russian. “Full of shit. Grown man knocks up teenager, but this is her fault?”

“Skating?” Shane guesses.

“Ice dance,” Rozanov says.

“So what the fuck happened to you?” Shane asks. 

As he’d hoped, Rozanov laughs. “‘Ilyushka, not so fast, slow down and listen to your skating,’” he says in a soft voice. “She always said this, that Bonaly never medalled at the Olympics because of her rough edges. Did I want to be like Bonaly, best in the world and never recognized because I was too stubborn to do things properly?”

“She sounds amazing,” Shane says. 

Rozanov makes a wet snort. “She was very sad,” Rozanov says. “She was never not sad. Papa liked her that way. He said that it made her more beautiful, that it was—ah, trashy to be happy all the time.”

“What an asshole,” Shane says. He closes his eyes.

“The worst person in the fucking world,” Rozanov says. His voice is thick. “I am happy he is dead.” He sounds like he’s desperately hoping that when he says it this time, it will be true.

“I’m sorry they’re gone,” Shane says. 

There is ragged breathing on the other end of the line; the wet sound of a mouth moving.

“Shane,” Ilya says raggedly. “I want to come home. I want to not be here anymore.”

“I can call Pattie and have her book you a return flight,” Shane offers.

Rozanov says nothing for a few seconds, and then he roughly exhales. “No,” he says. “Fuck! Never mind. It is fine. I have to go. Davay, lyubi—“ and then he hangs up, in the middle of his own sentence.

~

The announcement about the Olympics rolls in the next morning, the 5AM ET press release covering North America in a smothering cloud. The mood in the locker room plummets into outright depression. Nobody’s surprised, but they’re not happy about it. Shane makes the rounds and tries to say encouraging things, but he can tell that for most of the guys his bland offerings are going in one ear and then out the other. When he makes it to Hayden and JJ, Hayden shrugs and says, “It’s not like they were going to call me, so what do I care?” but his mouth is flat as he says it.

Helplessly aware of his responsibility as Hayden’s best friend, Shane offers, “Do you want to go get dinner?”

“At what, fucking Sweetgreen?” Hayden says. “No fucking thank you. I’m going to go home and whine at Jack until she makes me her mom’s mac and cheese.” He relents at the look on Shane’s face and says, “You can bring your Tupperware of chicken breasts, if you want. But we’re having pasta for dinner–and none of that whole wheat, chickpea bullshit. It’s nearly the playoffs, I’m carb-loading.”

“More like bloating,” Shane says.

Hayden doesn’t even laugh at this admittedly terrible joke, which means he really is upset about the Olympics. 

Jackie is texted and agrees to stop on her way home to buy the stuff to make her mom’s mac and cheese–a mystifying process that involves a liter of milk and more than a kilo of cheese–and when she arrives later that night she’s also got the materials to make steamed quinoa with spinach and bell peppers, which she claims is for meal prep for lunch for the rest of the week but comes out of the instant pot and mysteriously appears in Shane’s bowl of chicken. Hayden eats half of the casserole dish of mac and cheese. Jade and Ruby eat the other half. Arthur has recently become convinced that he is “allergic to milk, like Uncle Shane,” and eats quinoa. Jackie, cradling Amber in one arm as she guzzles down a bottle, watches Arthur use the tip of his spoon to pick out each sliver of bell pepper–Shane eats them for him–with a bemused look on her face. 

“What a fucking weirdo,” she says.

“Oneh dohlar,” Hayden manages through two stuffed cheeks of macaroni.

Jackie’s on bedtime duty tonight, so she’s the one to usher the sleepy crew upstairs after they’ve finished eating. Shane loads the dishwasher as Hayden tackles a few pots, and then while Shane is drying them Hayden goes to the cabinet above the fridge and gets down a bottle of scotch. He splashes a few fingers into a glass and says, “I’m guessing—?”

“I’m good,” Shane says quickly.

Hayden drops down into one of the bar stools at the counter and says, “To the U19s, eh?” and tosses back a hefty swallow. Then, he sighs. “Even knowing there was basically no chance,” he says, “for there to actually be no chance—you know?”

“Yeah,” Shane says.

“We’re gonna be 33 next time around,” Hayden continues.

“Wickenheiser won gold at 36,” Shane says. 

Hayden barks a laugh. “Yeah, well, nobody’s arguing that I’m Hayley fucking Wickenheiser,” he says.

It’s strange to see Hayden so morose. He’s not introspective and he never seems to be caught for long by any particular emotion. If he’s angry, his rage will be incandescent and last about twelve seconds. When he’s depressed–he’s still a diehard Calgary fan even after a decade as a Metro and he gets sad when they’re playing badly, which is to say a solid 40% of the season each year–he’s somehow able to pull himself out of it relatively quickly. He’s got a pretty even keel. He doesn’t even care that Jackie is Wiccan.

Shane, unused to being a source of emotional assurance, is not quite sure what to say. He tries, “You’ve got two Cups, and two World Championships, and four really fucking great kids, and an amazing wife who is absolutely out of your league.”

Hayden groans; his head droops down and his whole upper body flops forward until his forehead is pressed against the counter. “You have most of those things, too,” he says, muffled, “and also a fucking Olympic gold medal.”

Flatly, Shane says, “No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, you have three World Championships,” Hayden says, then he blows out a sigh as a kind of raspberry against the granite. “Fuck, you know it’s not a zero-sum game, man.” He lifts his head and blinks blearily at Shane. “I wouldn’t trade my kids to play left wing at fucking Pyeongchang, but nobody’s asking me to do that outside of some dumbass Zac Efron movie. I just—wanted the chance, you know? Coming off of a season like we’re having, maybe I would have had a shot at the roster.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, startled by the realization that the news about the Olympics is really upsetting Hayden. His eyes are pink, slightly puffy-looking, like Amber’s after she gets an eyelash stuck under the lid and tries to furiously scrub it out with her fat little closed fists. Uncharitably, Shane finds himself thinking, Hayden was never going to get the call anyway, as if that means that his best friend isn’t allowed to be sad about this. There’s an overwhelming taste, pure bitterness, laying like chalk on Shane’s tongue. He’d rather gargle sand than drink scotch but he does waste a second to wish that he still had one last mouthful of ginger ale to clear the taste away. He feels like a kid, overwhelmed by sullen resentment for no good reason. 

“Hayden,” he manages, “you’re having a great season. Seriously fucking good stuff.”

“Thanks, man,” Hayden mumbles, flopping back down onto the countertop. He sighs; his shoulders slump. “You, too. But you don’t need me to tell you that.”

It’s because I’m finally getting regularly laid, Shane thinks flippantly, which isn’t even true and he genuinely feels sick just for having thought it. The beautiful hockey Shane has played this season has had nothing to do with getting dicked down three times a week and a lot more to do with the way the ice feels when Rozanov is out there on his wing: a wide-open expanse of possibilities. It feels like Shane finally has arms long enough to touch the things that have always exceeded his grasp. But that’s only true on the ice. Everything else–the wife, the kids, the safe harbor at the end of a season, the knowledge that there would be something after hockey other than a black fucking abyss of nothingness–are still out of reach.

Shane swipes the glass and throws back the last of Hayden’s scotch. It tastes awful and feels worse; like licking a lit coal. Is this how coal miners feel? Is this what black lung is like?

Eyes smarting, Shane croaks, “If we win a third Cup, you better not decide to give up and retire back to fucking Alberta.”

“I’d die first,” Jackie says as she sweeps into the kitchen. “And you better believe that I’d take the rest of you with me. Shane, give me a slug of that.”

~

Rozanov doesn’t call Shane again. Shane doesn’t call Rozanov, either, but he at least has the excuse of being on the last road trip of the season: Carolina, Miami, Tampa Bay. It’s like thirty-five degrees every day and a hundred percent humidity. Some of the guys from out west huddle around Tsuzuki’s phone and Google when is hurricane season; Pak, who’s from North Carolina, says, “Guys, it’s in, like, June,” and is summarily ignored. 

The last of the swelling has finally drained out of Shane’s knee; the purple-green bruising is almost entirely yellowed. Some giant that Tampa Bay sniped from the Liiga to complement their battalion of enormous Swedes barrels into Shane during a Metro penalty kill and Shane’s briefly airborne from the force of it–enough time to think, crystal-clear, are you fucking kidding me–and then he lands on first his right skate and then his left, staggering one, two, three strides before he fumbles his way back into a steady skating cadence, and in the end he even has enough wherewithal to block a shot on goal. His knee makes little protest beyond the omnipresent ache that Shane has been ignoring for so long that he basically doesn’t feel it. When Shane drops down onto the bench at the end of the shift and reaches for his water bottle, he feels Theriault’s fingers clamp down on his shoulder. Theriault hisses, “Bon,” and then straightens up to bellow, “Gondo! Tie it up!” (Gondouin does not tie it up.)

Objectively, Theriault is correct: Shane is playing well. He is facing down the first postseason in three years where he’s not already on IR and unlikely to end up there. He can push staring into the abyss down to the bottom of his to-do list, under the string of summer sponsorship meetings and photoshoots that are beginning to appear in his Google calendar as orange blocks labeled things like CDG x NIKE LAUNCH (PARIS) and SPEEDO SHOOT (LA). Shane should be satisfied, if not extremely fucking happy. But it’s impossible to really feel that way when every time he goes out on shift everything feels and sounds slightly wrong. It’s almost dull, like Shane’s just some guy on his couch playing MLH 16 on his PlayStation, and while it’s not enough to actually throw Shane off his game he’s not exactly enjoying himself.

~

After Tampa Bay, they play Detroit one last time at home and because Theriault decides to let the guys who’ve been racking up big chunks of ice time (Shane included) time to recover before the series against Boston starts, it turns into one of those stupid fucking clown shows of a game: pucks bouncing off of guy’s skates, goalies dropping down on top of pucks that are already rocketing off to the other side of the net, rookies throwing elbows like they’re auditioning for fucking MMA, d-men colliding in the middle of empty ice. Shane is glad to take the overtime win, to which he contributes extremely little, and goes home, takes a long, hot shower, does his full skincare routine, and puts on the Admirals at Ottawa while he microwaves himself his last chicken breast of the day. It doesn’t even look like Hunter’s trying that hard, and frankly who can blame him, since the Admirals have clinched the wild card spot already and Ottawa’s a fucking dumpster fire. Shane’s phone buzzes and he grabs for it very quickly, only to see that it’s his mom: Don’t tell your dad I said this, but New York looks…

Mom, do NOT do this, Shane types back.

You don’t believe in jinxes! she replies immediately. We raised you better than that!

Shane types, I can’t believe you think your own flesh and blood might lose to the fucking Admirals, and just as he hits send his phone vibrates. The preview screen says, Ilya Rozanov: im back. Shane freezes. His phone dims; the screen goes black. Then it buzzes furiously and the screen brightens again. Ilya Rozanov: come over.

Shane texts, What? No. Do you even have, like, food at your place? You come here.

where is here??

My condo, Shane replies.

?????? this is where?

Abruptly, Shane realizes that Rozanov has never been to his condo. They’ve always gone to Rozanov’s ugly skyscraper, where the cavernous black marble corridors are always empty and the parking garage in the basement is keycard access only, which means there’s a very low chance of anybody taking a picture of them and sending it to fucking Deadspin. Meanwhile, Shane lives in a three-story building with four neighbors he knows by name, because his mom had baked cookies and taken them around when he’d first moved in and come back with reports like, Brenda lives next door and is very nice, and I met this guy Richard downstairs who has a beagle. 

When Shane and Hayden had been roommates, they’d rented an apartment in the same building as a bunch of the other guys who didn’t have families and what turned out to be like half of CF Montreal’s roster. It was the kind of building where there were girls coming in and out constantly: hook-ups, casual girlfriends, serious long-term girlfriends who were still living back home, fiancées whose religious parents objected to cohabitation before marriage. Shane would run into them on the elevator, getting his mail, parking his car, picking up take-out that had been delivered to the doorman. Once, the elevator had been shut down for monthly maintenance and Shane had taken the stairs from the parking garage up to the fifth floor with a brunette whose perky, slightly greasy ponytail had bounced with each step. “This sucks,” she’d said to Shane after they’d climbed two floors in silence. “A guy invites you over for dinner and then you have to hike fucking Mont-Royal to get there? I should have canceled. Can you tell that three people threw up on me today?”

“No,” Shane had told her, although she had looked tired in a way that had suggested she’d been put through the ringer. “I mean, you smell like hand sanitizer.” It had been one of those faux floral scents, pungent and grassy, but it certainly hadn’t smelled like vomit.

“I know, it’s gross, right? But better than the alternative,” she had said. They’d reached the fifth floor then and they’d both gone out into the corridor, which had been when Shane had finally had enough cell service for his phone to buzz with a text from Hayden, informing him that a girl Hayden REALLY liked, like REALLY liked in a KIND OF SERIOUS way was coming over and could Shane like fuck off for two hours? Btw her name was Jackie.

Shane had looked down at his phone and sighed. “Are you Jackie?” he’d asked.

She’d paused. “Uh, that’s bordering on a serial killer kind of question, my dude.”

“I’m Shane,” Shane had said. “Hayden’s my roommate.”

“Oh!” she had said. “Yes, I am! Nice to meet you. Do you want to shake my hand? Maybe you don’t, after I mentioned getting vomited on three times today.”

“Not really, no,” Shane had said. He’d patted his pockets to make sure he still had his keys and his wallet, then hooked a thumb over his shoulder back towards the stairway. “I’m gonna go get something to eat. It was nice to meet you.”

Shane had told that story at their wedding. Jackie’s mom had laughed; Hayden’s mom had cried. When Shane and Jackie had danced an awkward waltz later in the night, Jackie’s big belly gently nudging Shane’s with every stilted, swaying step, Jackie had said, “If you hadn’t been on those stairs, I would have probably given up and gone home, and none of us would be here.”

Shane had looked down at her belly, lifting his eyebrows. “They maybe wouldn’t be,” he said, and Jackie had cackled. “But I don’t believe you.”

Jackie had still been laughing as she’d beamed up at him; she never seemed to mind that Shane found it easier to talk to her ear. She’d sniffled once and said, “Yeah, maybe. Who knows? Nobody. Doctors don’t even know.” 

This had been a kind of inside joke for her, a few years into her tenure as an emergency department nurse: well, if even the fucking doctors don’t know–the joke being, of course, that doctors in her experience knew jack shit.

They’d kept dancing. Shane had been doing okay mostly because he and Hayden had been forced to take lessons for the eight weeks leading up to the wedding to ensure they were up to the task. “How are you feeling?” Shane had asked. “Not nauseous or–anything–?”

“No,” Jackie had said. She’d sighed and plopped her head down onto his shoulder, the same way Ruby would seven months later, and Amber would five years after that. It had hurt, because Jackie drank so much milk that her bones had the density of fucking lead. “Melanie told me in the bathroom just now that I shouldn’t have picked a strapless dress because you can see my back fat. Apparently long sleeves are really chic, she felt bad that nobody told me that.”

“What the fuck,” Shane had said. 

“Hayden’s family is full of psychos,” Jackie had said. “How the fuck did they make somebody so normal? It’s a medical mystery. Shane, let me give you some free advice–when you get married, don’t let anybody talk you into a big wedding if you know in your heart that’s not what you want, okay? You’re a people-pleaser, like me, so you’ll think that it will make you happy to give everybody what they want. But it won’t make them happy, it’ll just make you miserable. So, just, like–elope.”

Shane had laughed awkwardly and said, “Wow. I mean. Okay. Thanks, I guess?” and had not said I’m never getting married. He’d known by then that while he could get married, legally, doing so might very well compromise his ability to play hockey professionally and he’d rather saw off his own fucking thumbs with a butter knife than run that risk.

Without lifting her head, Jackie had punched him in the shoulder and said, “Don’t laugh at me when I’m giving you good fucking life advice, Hollander. Nobody else is going to make you happy–you have to do it for yourself.”

~

Shane texts Rozanov his address.

~

Rozanov shows up wearing a black toque, black parka, and dark-wash jeans. There are massive purple semi-circles under both of his eyes, puffy grooves flanking his nose, and his eyes are red-rimmed. He looks like he’s five or six days out from his last shave, the fine brownish-blond stubble softening his jawline into something a little less stubborn. He smells like fake pine, like he’s an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror of a taxi. Somehow it’s even worse than the alternative.

“I can tell you were smoking,” Shane says and Rozanov doesn’t even look around the corridor–it’s empty, which Shane knows because he had looked, as soon as he’d opened the front door–before he grabs Shane’s head between his palms and pulls him in for a kiss. He’s already muscling them back through the doorway into Shane’s apartment, kicking the door shut, hands tangling into Shane’s hair and knotting so tightly that Shane’s scalp prickles and his eyes smart in the corners.

A few seconds or minutes later, Shane tastes salt on the edge of his tongue and pulls back, thinking the force of the kiss has split one or both of their lips, and he sees that Ilya is crying. He clearly doesn’t want to be looked at; as soon as Shane pulls away, he buries his face into the side of Shane’s neck with enough force to send Shane swaying. “Hey,” Shane says, the way he would to a big-eyed cat with a fluffed-out tail, “hey, hey,” soft and steady, working his thumb up behind Ilya’s ear, under the folded-over cuff of his toque. He widens his stance a little, bracing himself to take more of Ilya’s weight. “It’s okay,” Shane says. He has no idea if that’s true, but it seems like it probably will be. “It’s okay,” Shane says again. He tucks his face down, against the side of Ilya’s face, and kisses his temple. “You’re okay,” Shane says.

Ilya is too tired to fuck, or eat, or even shower. Shane says, “Just–sleep here, okay?” and helps Ilya peel himself out of his clothes. He’s dead to the world within about ten seconds of laying down, starfished across the middle of the bed. Shane goes back out into the living room to turn off the TV (Admirals are up 7-2; what a fucking bloodbath), brushes his teeth, and then joins Ilya in bed. He’s worried about how hard it’s going to be to deliberately fall asleep with another person there, something he hasn’t had to do since he was still trying to make it work with Rose, but it turns out he doesn’t need the anesthetizing effect of an orgasm after all; he’s out cold in minutes and sleeps like he’s been dosed with horse tranquilizers.

He wakes up the next morning about twelve minutes before they have to leave for practice because he’d fallen asleep so fast the night before that he’d never plugged in his phone and the battery has since died. Shane has to frantically shake Ilya awake and then they zoom around the apartment like characters in a Looney Tunes bit, pulling on briefs and combing their hair. “Just–wear whatever–” Shane says as he rushes to the bathroom to brush his teeth, and Ilya takes him at his word, yanking on a bunch of stuff from the merino wool drawer–socks, base layer–all black, and he looks so fucking good, fuck–

Shane drives them both to Ilya’s condo to pick up his gear bag and then guns it for the rink. He worries for about forty-five seconds that somehow WE FUCKED LAST NIGHT is written on his and Rozanov’s foreheads–never mind the absence of actual fucking–but nobody says anything and they’re called in opposite directions basically the second they step foot indoors. Shane goes off to talk with one of the Marcs about penalty kill strategies; Rozanov gets corralled by a different Marc to work on backchecking with the guy they’d had to call up from Laval after Watson had sprained his shoulder flipping Tampa’s giant Finn over his left shoulder (retribution for trying to break Shane’s knee; Shane had made a point not to protest that call). Shane doesn’t see Rozanov again for the rest of the day, but he feels his presence. The rink sounds right, again.

~

Five or six times over the next few days, Shane almost asks: What is this? Is this something? Are we doing something? It feels very much to Shane’s feverishly overtaxed brain like there is something there now, in the space between their bodies, where before there had not. But they’re days out from starting the first round and Ilya is twenty-two years old and has just lost his dad and the only thing either of them should be thinking about right now is how to muscle their way through Boston’s defensive zone. It would be stupid and selfish to force a conversation about—what, being boyfriends? If Shane is even correctly reading those signals; if Ilya is even offering them. So Shane bites back the words. 

~

What is clear and uncomplicated is how good it is to play with Rozanov again. It’s like gas floods Shane’s system, feeding a pilot light that had been spluttering in Rozanov’s absence. Even the losses feel survivable, in a way they sometimes haven’t in previous years. During Game 6 in Boston, when they’re tied 3-3, Cliff Marleau makes a point to skate by and tell Shane, “I should have fed you to a fucking alligator when I had the chance.” 

Shane laughs in his face as good-naturedly as he can. That fucking fishing float is tucked tight up inside his ribcage; if he’d needed to, he could’ve probably flown up to the roof of the Garden and ripped fistfuls of dusty pennants down. He calls back, “Why didn’t you?”

“You’re too fucking nice, man,” Marleau says, and then he adds pleasantly, “Go to hell.”

“Right after you,” Shane says, saluting him, and then he goes to face off against Hammersmith. 

It’s the easiest thing in the world to score, then; he watches the avenues open up in front of him, ribbons of ice unfurling at his feet. Rozanov sets him up, right in front of the net, faking a shot and then knocking the puck shallowly across the front of the goal so that it’s waiting for Shane in exactly the right place for him to knock it in behind Sedin, who is still half-turned towards Rozanov in expectation of blocking a shot from the left. 

Shane points at Rozanov. “That was so fucking sweet,” he says as Rozanov skates over and grabs the back of his helmet in one hand. “Fuck, Roz.”

“I can be sweet,” Rozanov says. “Don’t say I never give you anything.”

“Fuck yes!” Tsuzuki screams as he skates over to them. The announcer is naming both him and Rozanov on the assist. “Ninety seconds left! Are we–?”

JJ, hot on his heels, yelps, “Are you fucking stupid? Don’t finish that sentence!”

Hollanders don’t believe in jinxes, which sit at the top of a steep slope that ends in guys eating a fluffernutter sandwich cut into triangles at exactly 3.23PM on game days or deciding they have a lucky jockstrap, but he lets JJ bully Tsuzuki as they all skate back to the Montreal bench anyway. This is an important life lesson that Tsuzuki will need to learn if he plans to stay in MLH. In the back of his mind, though, Shane is thinking along the same lines as the kid. The series stands at 3-2, with both of Boston’s wins now nearly four games in the past, and the Raiders are skating through molasses every shift. 

“They’re going to pull their goalie and try to tie it up,” Shane predicts as his line drops themselves down onto the bench. 

“Stupid not to try,” Rozanov says, making an exaggerated down-turned expression of disdain. “Will not work.”

“Shut the fuck up,” JJ says, nearly vibrating. “COME ON!” he roars, leaning forward and banging against the boards. “LET’S FUCKING GO!”

Almost immediately upon the whistle to resume play, Boston’s goalie skids off and Hammersmith hops over the boards to take his place. Gondouin has the puck and misses a shot on goal that gets scooped up by one of the Boston d-men and passed like a pinball down the ice. It gets ricocheted around the boards twice, looping around behind Drapeau in the net while various Raiders try to get the right angle for a shot on goal, then there’s a mad rush as one of them seems to find it—the clock’s ticking down from ten, nine, eight seconds as there’s a slapshot and a noisy scuffle and the hollow clang of a puck bouncing off of the goal post and then a second round of scuffling—the announcer yelling something about Drapeau’s glove—and then the buzzer, with no goal. “Montreal wins! Montreal wins!” the announcer is saying. The crowd is hissing and booing, a vibration so resonant that Shane feels it in his chest.

“It’s done,” Rozanov says. Shane laughs. He sees another one of those scoring lanes open up in front of him, like a secret passage. This one leads to Drapeau, crouched over in front of the net. It’s only open for a second, and then the lane winks shut and everybody is pouring over the boards, screaming. They’ve made it through the first round of the playoffs.

~

They go directly from the Garden to the airport. At first everybody’s too amped up and the atmosphere is chaotic and loud and Shane, conscious of the responsibility of being captain, does not put on his headphones and escape the noise even though he very much wants to do little else. He makes a point of going up the aisle, talking a little bit with each guy, until he gets to the back where Drapeau and Theriault are sharing a row and having a low conversation and Pak, sitting right in front of them, meets Shane’s eyes and very sharply jerks his head so Shane turns around and goes back the other way. 

When they land in Montreal, it’s nearly 1AM. The loudest Marc cups his hands around his mouth and bellows some announcement about practice tomorrow being an optional skate and how nobody better take that as permission to get wasted: ”Alcohol is the fucking enemy.” Shane is digging through his bag for his car keys when Rozanov casually strolls by and says, “You eat yet, Hollzy?”

Shane’s head jerks up. He says, “Uh, what? Like, breakfast?”

“Sure,” Rozanov says, preternaturally still. He’s wearing a black suit with a black shirt underneath that Shane recognizes from his recent survey of Rozanov’s wardrobe; silk, or something silky, a natural fiber that hadn’t felt gross under Shane’s fingers when he’d carefully rubbed the corner of the collar between his thumb and forefinger. It hangs open around his neck, revealing the occasional flash of gold as he moves. He looks unbelievably good, the scruff of his beard thickened to a respectable lawn of scratchy dark-gold hair. They’re only a week or so into the postseason, so Shane’s got a moustache and a patchy chin situation that makes him itchy when he thinks about it for too long, so usually he just–tries not to. 

Luckily, it’s distracting to look at Rozanov and think about how good it would feel to have that bristled chin rubbing between Shane’s thighs and along the seam of his ass. Shane’s whole body starts to wake up at the thought of it. The friction. The warmth, The smell, of Rozanov’s musky shampoo, of his sweat.

“Okay,” Shane says, a little dazed. “Uh–that place, near me?”

~

Ilya eats Shane out for maybe an hour—or at least until Shane can’t feel his ankles—and then crawls up the bed and fucks his cock into Shane, slippery and hot, both of them moving slowly because they’re bruised and sore. It feels too good to stop. Maybe it feels so good because they’re both so battered, tenderized like a pair of steaks. As he comes, hot and throbbing inside of Shane, Ilya exhales in a low, strained moan, his sweaty curls plastered down against his forehead. What feels like every muscle in his body is vibrating from overexertion. He lays trembling in Shane’s arms until they both fall asleep.

~

When Shane wakes up horrendously dehydrated a scant few hours later, he’s briefly disoriented by the fact that the blinds are cracked and the room is lit by a dim orange stripe cutting across the floor. But then he feels the hot mass of the big body that is occupying most of the bed and he remembers Ilya, who had fucked him so well that Shane had never gotten up to close the blinds. He gets up now, but just to find something to drink.

When Shane comes back from guzzling a glass of cold water over the kitchen sink he find that Ilya is also awake, his face lit blue by the screen of his phone. He puts it face-down on the bedside table as soon as he sees Shane.

“Sorry, did I wake you up? Is everything okay?” Shane asks, crawling back into the bed.

“No,” Ilya says, voice deep and raspy. He flops back and puts an arm over his face. “It is nothing.”

“What’s nothing?” Shane asks, his omnipresent awkwardness buffered by the darkness and a brain too tired to be worried that he’s being pushy and weird. 

“My stepmother,” Ilya says. “‘Ilyushka, I am so poor now, my Hermés lady will not take my calls,’” he mumbles in a falsetto that sounds basically exactly like his impression of Gardiner. “The bank is closed,” Ilya says in his normal voice.

Shane rubs his thumb along the back of Ilya’s hand. “Fuck, that sucks,” he says. And then, emboldened by the darkness and Ilya’s soft, lax body, he asks, “Have you been taking care of them? Your family?” 

Ilya shrugs. “I paid until he died and then I put some money in a trust for Lenochka and told them never to talk to me ever again.” He makes a pft noise into his elbow. “But they are so fucking hungry.”

Shane focuses on the repetitive motion of his thumb, trying to channel as much comfort as he possibly can into the gesture. “That must have been really hard,” he says. “It’s impressive, that you did all of that.”

Ilya drops his arm and blinks over at Shane. He barks a single, humorless laugh and says, “Last year, when Papa became very bad, I was lazy. Not impressive.”

It had been a miracle, considering the state of their goaltending, that San Francisco had made it to the conference finals last year. They’d done it entirely on the back of Ilya’s performance, which had been an astonishing, career-making run that he’d somehow managed despite being concussed in February.

“That’s objectively not true,” Shane says. 

“Lazy,” Ilya says again, quietly. “Only 49 goals. Embarrassing.”

“Don’t pretend to be modest, you know exactly how good you are,” Shane says. “Besides, you were out for like fifteen games.”

“Yes,” Ilya says. “I was out, and bored. Doctor did not let me skate, said my brain would fall out of my nose if I looked at ice for too long. And I was–ah! I was stupid.” His mouth moves around, like he’s sucking on a hard candy or a knot of words, and then he says, slightly rushed, “I fucked this guy, a few times, and then I found out that he is Bianchi’s son. I fucked him a few more times anyway, and Bianchi found out.” 

Shane stares at Ilya. Stupidly, the first thing he feels is a reflexive hurt, like his peripheral nervous system has realized he’s touched a hot stove a few milliseconds before his brain has. Back in Florida, after the All-Star Game, he’d asked Ilya if he’d fucked guys before, and Ilya had said yes, and Shane had been grateful because it meant they were less likely to land themselves in the emergency department with the kind of injury Jackie loved to describe in horrible detail at the end of training camp barbecue even though she’d left emergency medicine behind three years ago for a glamorous life in dermatology. Her stories now mostly involve moles.

But that had just been guys, nebulous and meaningless. Bianchi’s son, a few times, is concrete and meaningful. Ilya had liked this guy enough to fuck him multiple times, even after he’d found out that he was his coach’s kid.

“Bianchi found out?” Shane says, trying to focus on what Ilya is actually saying and hide the hurt.

Ilya’s wide, mobile mouth turns down in the corners. “Bianchi said not to do it again. I didn’t. But he starts complaining that I do not work hard, I make too much trouble, and then after conference finals, Montreal made me offer and San Francisco told me to fuck off, they would not match. So here I am, on contract that is,” he half-shrugs, like, what can you do, “fine, they are not paying me what I am worth but is okay because the money is not all going up Alexei’s nose.” He stops for a long few seconds, and then a little gleam, lit orange by the streetlight, sparks in his eyes. He says, “I have to take pay cut if I want to play with Old Man Jesus.”

It takes Shane a second to realize that he’s Jesus, because he’s distracted by all the other things that had happened in the previous two sentences. “What,” he says blankly. Then he sits up and turns on the bedside lamp; this is officially not a conversation that can be had in the dark.

Ilya groans and slaps a hand over his eyes like he’s a vampire at risk of being incinerated by a 5-watt LED bulb. “I want to win the fucking Cup,” he says, exaggerating the words as if Shane is an exceptionally slow little kid who does not understand a very simple concept, like not touching a hot stove. “San Francisco cannot do this, they are fucking monkeys. That circus, it is a nightmare. I want new circus with better grade of monkey.”

Shane pushes Ilya’s hand away from his face. For once, Shane wants to look directly into somebody’s fucking eyes while they’re speaking. “Yes, but–you must have gotten offers from everybody,” he says. Token ones, yeah, because who lets their fucking star go as a RFA, but–“I mean, Boston must have tried. Colorado? Colorado must have sent something, and they could’ve matched, their cap isn’t–” mostly taken up by Shane’s borderline insane $54 million six-year contract extension. 

Ilya’s eyes are so blue like this, the pupils shrunken to tiny pinpricks by the bedside lamp. What the fuck is going on inside that head.

Ilya blinks up at him. His eyelashes are so long. “Yes,” he agrees. His upper lip curls; his voice returns to its normal cadence. “I did not want to stay in the US. Sveta said that in Canada, there are–guards? That protect you if you are gay and your job tries to get rid of you.”

He pauses. Shane, who has no fucking idea but thinks he means protections, says, helplessly, “I mean, probably?”

“There are,” Ilya says, with more confidence now. “Better than in US. And Old Man Jesus is here. I can win the Cup by myself, but it will be faster with divine help.” 

“You are such a dick,” Shane marvels. “Ilya, does the front office know about Bianchi’s son? Is that why Theriault keeps asking me to keep an eye on you? I don’t and I won’t,” he adds, very quickly, “but it hasn’t kept him from asking. Which is ridiculous, because you’re not–like, you’ve never–”

“Haven’t I?” Ilya purrs.

Shane swats at the hand Ilya tries to walk up his chest. “You know what I mean,” he says.

“I do not know what front office knows,” Ilya says. “They will not tell, so it does not matter. Next year, I will be permanent resident for seven hundred days, then I can apply for passport. I will never go back to Russia again, so it does not matter that I am sometimes gay. Canadians do not care about this.”

Shane is struck by this logistical knowledge and the calm confidence with which Ilya, who’d been crying in Shane’s arms a little over a week ago, is able to describe this plan to cleave himself from his family and nation of birth. Could Shane have done that, at twenty-two? If he’d had to, maybe. His chest constricts as he realizes that Ilya does, in fact, have to. And Ilya isn’t wrong: the Canadian government does not, technically, care that some of its citizens are gay (or “sometimes gay,” whatever that means). 

But. 

“The league does,” Shane says.

“Problems like this are like fools,” Ilya says roughly. “No one makes them, they just appear on their own.” 

Unable to disagree with him, Shane makes an unhappy noise. How much of Ilya’s reputation of being difficult is because of his, okay, yes, occasionally very irritating personality versus this mess with Bianchi’s son? It just seems profoundly unfair.

Ilya lifts a hand to stroke the edge of Shane’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. He says something to Shane in Russian, in that deadly serious voice he uses when the Russian-language reporters are interviewing him. What Shane wouldn’t give in this moment for some fucking YouTube closed captions. 

Shane sighs, long and worn. When he lets himself blink, the insides of his eyelids feel like sandpaper against his eyeballs and it takes a real force of will to open them again. He looks down at Ilya’s face, the long-lashed eyes blinking up at him slowly. The shadows under his eyes look even more pronounced this way, with Shane sitting up over him. 

“We should get some sleep,” Shane says quietly. On his next exhale, Ilya’s mouth parts in the very center. The rich swell of his lower lip is damp.

“Or,” Ilya murmurs, “I can fuck you.”

“You’re gonna fall asleep first, Casanova,” Shane says.

Ilya makes a protesting noise, a kind of sleepy, offended hiccup. Shane clicks off the bedside lamp and then carefully grasps Ilya’s wrist and pulls his arm around Shane’s chest, rolling over so that they’re spooning, with Shane on the inside. After a few seconds, Ilya slumps over, asleep, a heavy weight against Shane’s back and over his side, and Shane feels his nose come to rest tucked into the back of Shane’s neck.

~

Shane is not surprised to be the first one awake the next morning. For a few seconds, or maybe longer than that, he’s unable to move, transfixed by the sight of Ilya’s face squashed into the pillow next to his. It feels almost beyond belief that this beautiful, extremely talented kid moved to another country so they could play together, because he was so certain that they could win the Cup together. It’s a thought too sweet to touch for long, like it will rot out Shane’s teeth if he lingers on it. As he watches Ilya breathe, heavy and nasal, deeply unconscious, Shane begins to feel the creeping edge of a paralytic chill colonizing that sweetness. As much as Ilya had faith that he would be safe anywhere, he thought it would be here–on Shane’s team, in Shane’s city–and Shane has no idea if he will be able to actually deliver on that trust.

Eventually, Shane forces himself to roll out from under Ilya’s arm. He goes into the kitchen to start his morning routine: coffee, smoothie, email inbox (6,009 unread), Snapchat (Ruby and Jade are very into tigers right now). He sits at the counter with his laptop and assorted beverages, squinting for an embarrassingly long time at an email from his mom’s new best friend Kimi that’s like size 4 font before realizing he’s forgotten his reading glasses in the living room. When he comes back, he finds Ilya, half-dressed, looking down at Shane’s espresso machine with the same expression Han Solo had worn after finding Darth Vader in a Cloud City conference room. “What is this,” Ilya says.

“Want a double espresso?” Shane offers.

“I thought all North Americans have Keurig machines,” Ilya says.

“Gross. Haven’t you ever heard of microplastics?” Shane says. “Shove over, let me in.”

Ilya begrudgingly shuffles two steps to the left, leaving Shane just enough room to access the machine. He clicks the portafilter into the group head, turns on the machine, and then adds water to the reservoir and beans to the grinder. He moves the portafilter over to collect the grinds, then shaves off the top of the little heap and tamps down the grounds. He clicks the portafilter back into the group head and pulls a double shot into a short glass. “Here,” Shane says, turning to hand it to Ilya, and he discovers that Ilya is looking at him, all signs of betrayal now absent. “What?”

Ilya says, “You have glasses?” in a delighted voice.

“You’re such a freak,” Shane says repressively. “They’re for reading.”

“This is best day of my life,” Ilya says, and then he leans over and shoves his tongue into Shane’s mouth. Shane has to hurriedly drop the espresso cup back onto the counter before either of them end up with third-degree burns. 

Ilya’s licking him sloppily, mouth wet and teeth sharp, and Shane feels his body begin to stir and warm, like a Pavlovian response to the taste of Ilya’s saliva. The immediacy of Shane’s response is slightly humiliating, which only makes the physical sensation worse; a compounding, forward feedback loop. Ilya shoves his hands underneath the waistband of Shane’s briefs and gropes for his half-hard cock. He jerks Shane off while they’re standing there, kissing, the bone of Shane’s pelvis grinding into the edge of the granite countertop. After Shane comes, Ilya pulls back enough to say, “You have stuff here?” and Shane gasps, “What, in the kitchen? No, no, it’s, in the–in the bedroom–” and Ilya goes back to kissing him, alternately pulling Shane closer and shoving him away as they stumble back down the hallway to Shane’s bedroom.

After Ilya fucks him so hard and well and long that Shane recovers from his first orgasm and barrels into a second one, Shane is too hungry to pretend to enjoy the afterglow and he forces Ilya to put his briefs back on so they can eat something. Shane has a dozen breakfast burritos wrapped in whole-wheat tortillas stacked in his freezer, courtesy of the meal service he uses to keep on track of his macros at home; they thaw two in the microwave, eat one each standing up at the counter in front of the espresso machine while it heats up, again, and then Ilya thaws another two while Shane makes him a fresh double espresso. 

“I want to watch the New York-Tampa game from last night before optional skate this afternoon,” Shane says as he passes Ilya the cup and wipes down the machine with a dry cloth. “Do–you–?”

Ilya shrugs and bites off like four inches of breakfast burrito. “Yes,” he says, through a mouthful of half-chewed tofu and beans. It’s so fucking gross. 

Shane pretends that this disgusts him, performatively shuddering and saying, “Chew with your fucking mouth closed, what are you, five?” as he opens the crisper drawer in his fridge and pulls out two apples. In reality he doesn’t really care, and maybe even likes it: Ilya’s obvious hunger, its satiation at Shane’s hands, the way he hasn’t yet bothered to fix his hair so it’s spiraling off the side of his head in an ugly, lopsided cyclone. 

They sit hip-to-hip on the sectional in Shane’s living room, finishing their second burritos as they watch the game. It’s a slaughter from basically minute one; the Admirals are really firing on all cylinders. Once he’s done with the burrito, Shane uses a small knife to peel one of the apples and then cuts it into chunks against his thumb, periodically offering pieces to Ilya.

“For fuck’s sake,” Shane mumbles as one of the interchangeable Tampa Bay Swedes trips on either a bug or thin air and fumbles a pass that is instantly sniped by Carter Vaughn. “Is he–”

He is, in fact, good for it. The Admirals are now up 3-0. It’s still the first period. As Ilya chews on the spiral of discarded peel, Shane starts in on the second apple.

What feels like a hundred hours later, Ilya asks, “Why are we watching this,” as Shane fast-forwards through the intermission between the second and third periods.

“Tape review,” Shane says, restarting the game when he sees a bunch of players in little Admirals jerseys pour over the boards and start circling the ice.

Ilya says, “Feels more like watching Saw,” and then yelps something in Russian as Hunter takes off in a spectacular breakaway, fakes out the Tampa goalie, and buries a puck in the back of the net so fast that even the announcer doesn’t quite get his mouth around the words before Hunter’s wheeling around, pumping both fists in the air.

Shane feels frustration and awe in equal measure. “That was fucking beautiful,” he says. “Fuck! My mom thinks they’ll go all the way.”

“What, and we are going to do nothing about this?” Ilya says. “Scott Hunter is four million years old, he will fall getting out of shower tomorrow morning and break his hip and then the Admirals will win jack shit because their defensemen are trash.”

“Neddy always got it together in the playoffs when he was here,” Shane says. “Inconsistent during the regular season, sure,” and a fucking dickbag off the ice, “but he’s one of those guys who can lock in.”

“Neddy is Bernard, yes?” Ilya says. “His plus-minus is, what, +1? This is the man who will carry New York all the way?”

“I’m serious,” Shane says. “Some guys are like that. Look at Floraison.”

“Floraison?” Ilya says, offended. “You want to fuck Malinin so bad it is making everybody in Pittsburgh look good to you, I guess.” 

“He shut out Washington twice in a row!” Shane argues.

Ilya throws open his arms in an elaborate gesture of confusion and says, “Yes, a hundred years ago during the October Revolution!” 

Those two games had, in fact, been during the first round of the 2009 playoffs, which Shane is in a position to know because he’d been one of the Metros who’d won the Cup that year by, amongst other things, beating Pittsburgh after they’d made it to the second round. 

Very abruptly, Shane is overcome by the urge to laugh. “Oh my god, you’re a baby,” he realizes. “Oh my god, I’m fucking–a baby, fuck–” and then he does start laughing, very hard, at the extremely offended look on Ilya’s face. On the television behind him, Tampa scores, but it’s too little too late: they’ve already bled five. The Metros are going to face the Admirals in the second round.

~

Rozanov goes back to his place after they finish watching the game. They talk about some plays that might work against the Admirals, standing in front of the door while Rozanov puts on his jacket and shoes and then it seems to occur to Rozanov to check the time on his watch and he frowns and kisses Shane on the side of the mouth, absently, but less in a neglectful way and more like it’s a reflexive gesture. His beard’s grown out enough that, depending on the grain, it can be either rough or startlingly soft against Shane’s skin. 

“See you later,” Rozanov says as he leaves. There are still deep shadows carved under his eyes, but he looks a little less ground-down–maybe it’s that his complexion has pinked up, either from sex or the hot shower or the food Shane’s been force-feeding him all morning–and he’s carrying himself a little bit steadier. That must be from the food. It can’t possibly be that he’d gotten enough sleep last night. Shane is exhausted, even if the series hadn’t ended up going to seven games. But, he reminds himself, he’s got a massage booked after optional skate this afternoon and he hasn’t thought about his knee at all in like two or three days beyond the usual soreness and taping and the occasional, irritating pop so while, yes, Shane’s not in the best shape of his life, who is once the playoffs start?

As Shane drives to the rink he lets himself really start to think about the second round. What types of strategies might work against Hunter’s newfound tendency towards explosive plays; what’s the optimal deployment of Ahlqvist’s precious twenty-four minutes of ice time? Tsusuki’s skating has really started to clean up, like the seventy-third time Théo had yelled at him about lengthening his extension had finally been the charm. The kid has done a tremendous job keeping his conditioning up. Shane is pretty sure all three of them, him and Tsuzuki and Rozanov collectively, still have enough mass that they can get a little more physical in this upcoming series. Especially with Vaughn, who can get frustrated easily–the weak link in that line, probably–

Distracted by the brainstorming, Shane slings his gear bag over his shoulder and slams the trunk of his car closed. When he turns around, hitting the lock button on his key, there’s a Marc standing right behind him like the fucking Bababdook. Shane full-body flinches, biting back either a shriek or a curse.

“Hey, Hollander, got a second?” Marc says, very quickly.

Shane’s about to answer in the affirmative when another Marc swoops in from behind a nearby pillar and says, “How’s it going!” with palpably fake exuberance that is made worse by the way it echoes off of the concrete walls.

“Oh shit,” Shane says. The dread that hits him in that moment is bone-chilling and immediate, like he’s done a cannonball off the pier into the lake in Ontario in the middle of April.

They don’t tell him anything until they’ve hustled him away behind a locked door, which doesn’t calm Shane down. As soon as they’re in some windowless office that Shane has literally never seen before–there are offices on the parking garage level?--the first Marc twists the lock on the doorknob and says, “It’s Drapeau.”

“Fuck,” Shane says. 

“Broken finger,” the other Marc says grimly. “And he re-injured the sprains.”

Shane thinks back to that line of sight he’d had last night after the buzzer had sounded: Drapeau, still in the chaos, hunched over with his glove against the ice. “It was the last slapshot, wasn’t it,” Shane says, not really asking. Of course it would be Boston; one last parting shot from the fucking Raiders.

“Pak’ll start moving forward. We’ve got Astala on his way down from Laval,” the second Marc continues. “We don’t want him commuting every day, it’s a waste of time. The problem is, we put him in a hotel in February and the isolation nearly did his head in.” The corollary to this is immediately obvious, since the Metros traded their only other Finnish-speaking player to Dallas back in February. “We were thinking maybe Johasssen—I mean, Kerstin’s already feeding eight—nine, even, if you count Ahlqvist, so what’s one more?”

It’s much easier to focus on this small, immediately solvable problem than the overwhelming gut punch of the much larger one. “Or JJ?” Shane says. “They’ve got the in-law suite, if he’s the kind of guy who likes his privacy, and Phoebe’s—you know, normal.”

“And what, Honorine Gondouin is not?” the first Marc says, and then he laughs very tersely at the expression on Shane’s face and says, “I’m kidding, I wouldn’t send a stray dog into that house, let alone a human person.”

The second Marc says, “What about Tsuzuki?”

“He’s basically living in Hayden’s basement,” Shane says. “And he’s a teenager. Would you want to move into a teenager’s guest room?” Astala’s an actual adult, he’d probably get tetanus or something.

Both Marcs swear softly, an overlapping chorus of profanities. “Okay, we’ll talk to JJ. Solid call on the in-law suite, Hollander.” There’s a brief pause. “You know that this is–?”

Shane says. “I won’t say anything. But you’re telling the guys soon, right?”

“Once a plan’s in place,” a Marc assures him.

One of them unlocks the door and lets Shane escape. He stands there in the hallway for what is probably a long time after they shut the door behind him, trying to wrap his head around the destabilizing whiplash of today–the panic and sense of responsibility and simple pleasure all mingling together with a sour, sickening dread—and what he wants in that moment, more than anything, is Rozanov. Something good to look at; something solid to touch.

~

Théo is running optional skate and he keeps it short and sweet, shooing everybody off after two hours. Word hasn’t gotten out yet about Drapeau. Shane feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his fucking skin, like that guy whose face melts off at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and in the end it’s Rozanov who corners him. They’re the last two out on the ice. Rozanov uses his bulk to box Shane in a little bit, skating forward with a controlled, inexorable momentum that forces Shane to inch backwards until he’s just barely caught up against the boards. With the solid wall of Plexiglas at his back and the solid wall of Russian at his front, the tension begins to ooze out of Shane’s neck and shoulders.

“Okay?” Rozanov asks, in a low voice.

“Not really,” Shane admits. “Uh, you?”

“I am fine,” Rozanov says. “Surprising, considering you fed me a terrible breakfast. Do you not have–what is English word, for the things on the tongue that taste?”

Shane stares at him blankly. “Uh–taste buds?”

“This. You have no taste buds,” Rozanov says. “Are you allergic to salt, just like milk?”

Shane knows that his expression moves then. He can feel the muscles in his cheeks trembling. The gently mocking expression melts off of Rozanov’s face and, not wanting him to be a witness to whatever is happening, Shane splays a hand over as much of his face as he can. 

“Are you crying?” Rozanov demands.

“No,” Shane snaps, only like 70% sure that he’s telling the truth. As soon as Rozanov asks, though, it’s like a door is shoved open in Shane’s mind and a deeply unwelcome realization peers through the crack. With Drapeau out, the playoffs are–

For a brief second, Shane’s control slips and he feels a terrible anticipation: that black abyss he always looks away from, its mouth yawning wide, ready to gobble up Shane like it had Thelma and Louise. Shane lowers the hand he’s put over his face and asks, desperate and pathetic and audibly yearning to his own ears, “What are we? Are we dating?” And then, as he realizes what a colossal fucking mistake he’s just made, he scrambles to say, “Wait, wait, don’t answer that. Just–say you’ll come and train with me over the summer. Whatever the fuck this is, it doesn’t matter. Come and train with me if you’re not going back to Russia.”

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

“What?” Rozanov says.

“I have this cabin,” Shane says, to Rozanov’s left earlobe. “I go for a few weeks to recover at the beginning of the summer, and then after that I’m mostly in Ottawa. I work with three people. One of them’s a yoga instructor–it’s actually really great, both for stress management and injury prevention–anyway, they’re all really good. If you–I mean, if you’d want to, they would take you, too.”

“What?” Rozanov says again.

“You were pretty well-prepared for training camp in the fall,” Shane says, accelerating now to put some distance between this conversation and the word dating. “I’m not trying to imply anything about your preparedness. I know you’re not lazy. But there are some things it might be a good idea for you to work on—when I was your age, after that last growth spurt, I had some trouble bulking up and working with them got me to my target weight.” He can’t bring himself to look at Rozanov’s face or meet his eyes. “I’d like it if you came,” he finishes.

“To train,” Rozanov says.

“Yeah, to train,” Shane says. “I mean the cabin offer is also open–but–just—uh, just think about it, okay?” And then he pretends to see the masseuse over Rozanov’s shoulder and calls, “Yeah, I’m coming!” loudly and skates off.

~

After his massage, Shane goes back to his condo. His phone feels like a pipe bomb that might detonate at literally any second and level an entire city block, so he carefully puts it face-down on the kitchen counter and leaves the room. He brings a cup of water and a big bag of raw almonds with him into the living room and then sits down in front of the television and unfurls a fresh legal pad. 

Shane starts from the beginning: game one in Montreal. He pauses, fast-forwards, and rewinds frequently, not so much following the puck itself as the shape of the players orbiting around it. At first he’s still jittery, coming off of that embarrassing fucking trainwreck of a conversation, but eventually he’s able to focus. Boston had won game one early in the third, pulling ahead after scoring from an ugly pile-up in the crease. Two minutes after that, the tiny Shane Hollander on the screen careens through the neutral zone, one eye on the puck he’s dangling and the other on Tsuzuki–Shane remembers the crystalline iciness of the frustration he’d felt at that moment that Tsuzuki wasn’t committing to a decision, his dithering about where to go forcing Shane to put the breaks on his own play–and therefore he, the tiny Shane Hollander of the past, has zero eyes to see the Raider wing barreling towards him. Rozanov is there, very suddenly, his long-legged strides gobbling up the ice, and the Raider wing is slammed bodily into the boards just as Tsuzuki finally wiggles his stick into an open lane and Shane passes the puck off to him. Shane scribbles, monitor peripherals.

Game two in Montreal had started slow. Shane fast-forwards to the moment in the middle of the second period when he’d had a premonition that Rozanov, boxed in by three Raiders behind Boston’s goal, was about to give up on cleanly excavating the puck and throw an elbow and hope the refs wouldn’t notice. On the screen, a number 24 sweater comes zooming up from behind and cleanly checks the guy on the right, destabilizing him enough that Rozanov is able to carve the puck out from the nest of sticks and slip it to Tsuzuki. The immediate shot into the five-hole is blocked, but the subsequent bounce gives the Metros offense a chance. Rozanov scores. When the horn sounds, it’s Tsuzuki officially with the assist but, on the television screen, it’s Shane that Rozanov points to. Most of the time Rozanov looks so fucking serious on the ice, even when he’s running his mouth. But as Shane watches now from the plush comfort of his living room, the camera zooms in so close that Shane can see Ilya’s grin in high resolution, wide enough to expose his molars, his tongue, the words that Shane remembers hearing in that moment but hadn’t been captured by the broadcast microphones: Russian, first, then, fucking beautiful. He had meant the check, not the goal. His eyes had blazed. Shane had understood him immediately. Shane looks down at his notepad and writes, manage tempers.

Game three in Boston had been a doozy. The Garden had been a raucous, rotten pit that night and the jeers had rattled the Plexiglas until it felt like Shane’s skeleton was jittering. We’re going to take it from them in their own house, Shane had said in the locker room before they’d gone out, and the guys had played like they believed him. For nearly a third of the game (fourteen minutes total), one or both sides had been shorthanded. It’d been Shane who had won it, high and tight to the post during a penalty kill with ten minutes left in the third. He fast-forwards to the start of the third and watches the clock tick down. With 11:34 remaining, the cameras pan over to Rozanov, languidly skating into the penalty box. “A rare high stick for Rozanov–the guy’s usually too slick to get caught making a move like that,” an announcer observes as the slow-motion replay of the penalty plays. 

“Ouch,” the other announcer says as Rozanov’s stick slowly swings up and whacks a Raider in the face. The broadcast then cuts to Theriault, prowling behind the Metro bench, moustache dancing as he furiously gestures at Shane and Tsuzuki. 

“Oh, Theriault does not like that,” the first announcer narrates needlessly. “The last thing Montreal wants when they’re down 2-0 in the series is Rozanov stuck in the box. But Boston fans sure are happy,” as the camera lovingly pans over a section of the crowd whose faces are painted black and yellow, all of them shouting down at the Metro penalty box. One of them has a sign, LEASH THE ROZWEILER with a muzzle photoshopped over Rozanov’s face, and she waves it over her head, inaudibly hollering.

The tiny little Shane and Tsuzuki on the screen sweep past the penalty box. When this had originally happened, Shane had made a point to say, “You comfortable in there? Do you need a snack or something?” because he’d been kind of annoyed about the penalty. The Shane on the screen skates off to kill the penalty; the Shane watching on his couch sees Rozanov frown and then bite the edge of his mouth, an expression that the distance makes it impossible to interpret. Shane underlines manage tempers three times.

The little Shane on screen scores; the camera cuts back to Rozanov. “Oh, he likes that,” the announcer is saying as Rozanov’s arms go up. He triumphantly punches his stick into the air. “That was a one-in-a-thousand shot–you can’t imagine anybody except Hollander spying an opportunity like that, and probably nobody else playing right now would be able to capitalize on it.” 

Shane fast-forwards past the goal being replayed like forty different times, at a dozen different angles, one of the commentators outlining the little rectangle that had winked so appealingly at Shane in the gap between the parallel lines of the goalie’s chin and shoulder and the perpendicular lines of his neck and the post. Then the footage cuts back to the box and Shane starts playing it again at normal speed. Rozanov still has forty-five seconds left on his penalty. He’s leaning forward, expression serious and tight, eyes tracking the play as he absently chews on his mouthguard. While he certainly can let his temper get away from him, Shane can’t believe that anyone with fucking eyes would ever accuse him of being lazy. The footage cuts back to gameplay and Shane frowns as he watches JJ, who has demonstrated a truly unsettling ability to serve as Drapeau’s peripheral vision when required to do so, totally fail to block the far side of the goal from a Raider attempt at a wraparound. Only dumb fucking luck sees it bounce off of Ahlqvist’s skate and go skittering back towards the boards. Shane jots down a note about tightening up defense in the crease.

Shane mutes the TV as game three ends and the commentators begin their long-winded analysis, taking the chance to make a few more notes. What the fuck is up with the passes between the guys on the third line? Other than the scratching of his ballpoint against the paper the entire apartment is silent. Shane hears it then, faintly: the buzzing of his phone. He freezes, fingers spasming around his pen, and accidentally draws a jagged little wiggle across the bottom of his notepad.

It takes nearly a full minute, but eventually he forces himself to get up. He’s anyway due for a chicken breast and he’s drunk all of his water. He fusses over those small tasks, microwaving some chicken and butternut squash, making himself an Americano, before finally he runs out of excuses and tips his phone over with a cautious index finger. There are fourteen texts waiting for him and they’re all from Hayden. The first, Popo just texted a bunch of us, is followed by twelve variations of fuck FUCK fucK FUCK!! and then, number thirteen, Amber’s christening will be May 12th btw.

You could have a little faith in Pak, Shane sends back.

If we somehow make it through this series, we’d have the 12th off anyway, Hayden returns immediately. But we’re not. Pak’s got the fucking yips.

Shane responds with the thumbs down emoji. Then, almost like his fingers belong to somebody else, he watches them swipe backwards and tap the thread labeled Ilya Rozanov. The last exchange is hours old, Ilya: can’t find left ear pod, did i leave it there and Shane’s no, did you check your car footwell? 

A stupid, meaningless exchange. Reading it makes Shane’s chest twinge like he’s taken a clean hit to the boards and, with dizzying immediacy, Shane knows: If somebody in San Francisco does run their mouth–Bianchi Jr., Bianchi himself, maybe someone in the front office to whom Bianchi had disclosed what happened, because there was no way the GM of a team that turned over their head coach every four years would simply take Bianchi’s word for it that their star center was worth jettisoning–then Shane will come out. There is no future where Shane would leave Ilya to face that shitstorm avalanche alone.

Shane is twenty-eight years old, which is surely too old to be having destabilizing realizations about the foundations of his own character. How the fuck did he end up here, hung up on his twenty-two-year-old teammate, hypothetically ready to sacrifice the only good thing he has, the number one thing he’s cared about and wanted for himself for the last twenty-five years of his life (which is to say all of his life), if it meant that that guy might be spared–what, the loneliness of humiliation? And it truly is hypothetical. The worst may never happen; a guy like Bianchi’ll probably go to his grave before admitting one of his kids is gay. So maybe this isn’t just about Ilya. Maybe this obsession that’s fisted a hand in Shane’s shirt and shaken him until his teeth rattle is about something intrinsic in Shane. 

Gretzky got twenty-one seasons; Shane can have no real expectation of more than that. He wants to play every single one he’s got left with Ilya. He wants to do everything that comes after that with Ilya, too.

Shane hits the call button without really thinking about it. It rings twice before, “Allo?” is offered, slightly warily.

Shane has always been too scared to think about the future. He hardly needs the bad parts of himself to be enumerated; he knows them all too well. What would it even look like, for him to share all the awkward, uncomfortable insides he’s worked so hard to keep tucked away? For a long time, he hadn’t known. But maybe he does now: peeled oranges and lukewarm breakfast burritos, kissing someone that tastes like stale tobacco and the worst fucking flavor of Ruffles, a closet filled with dozens of double-breasted suits, bets and taunts and the threat of flavored lube, those blue eyes, blinking sleepily in the dim light, soft in the corners. Maybe that’s all it is. The easiest thing in the fucking world, and all he has to do is reach out and touch it.

“I want to date you,” Shane says. “I want–to be dating you. That’s what I want. What do you want?”

He tries to inhale and nearly chokes on the tight fist around his throat.

Ilya swears softly in Russian. “Are you serious?” he says.

“Yeah,” Shane manages. He squeezes his eyes shut. “If you need to think about it, don’t answer right away–”

“Shut up,” Ilya says. “Stop telling me to do that.”

Shane says, “I don’t want you to feel like I’m–”

“Shut up!” Ilya says again, sounding deranged. “Why are you always like this, all this please, sorry bullshit to hide what you mean. Yes! Yes, I want to date you. Why do you want to date me? Any fucking day, one reporter, and it is all over.”

“Yeah, I know,” Shane says. “It’s fine.”

“This is fine?” Ilya says.

“Yeah,” Shane says again. The fingers loosen from around his throat, one by one, until he tastes sweet air on the back of his tongue. He’s being completely and totally honest as he says, “It’s fine, really. Does this mean you’ll come train with me in Ottawa this summer?”

Ilya swears in Russian for a long time and then hangs up on Shane. As Shane, bewildered, lowers his phone from his ear, it vibrates in his hand. Ilya Rozanov: yes. And then, i’ll come. And then, i hate you.

Shane stares at that last one for a long few seconds, thinking about the wild way Ilya had told Shane that he hated him, back after Shane had injured his knee. His tight-mouthed expression; his violently gesturing hands; the careful way he’d later run his fingers over Shane’s bruised, swollen knee. Shane translates the words in his mind, like he’s Rachel Weisz at the end of The Mummy transposing a dead language into a magic spell. 

Shane sends back, me too.

Chapter 6

Chapter Notes

Shout out to Yahoo! Sports. Who's doing it like them.

SHANE HOLLANDER ANTICIPATES ‘INCREDIBLE THINGS’ FROM ILYA ROZANOV AFTER SUMMER TRAINING TOGETHER

Ilya Rozanov grew up watching Shane Hollander, the youngest captain in Montreal Metropolitans history, win Stanley Cups, World Championships, and even Olympic gold at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi. The 23-year-old Moscow native, who was drafted first overall by the San Francisco Hammerheads, never masked his admiration of Hollander even when they were playing on separate teams. 

But when it comes to hill sprints, Rozanov doesn’t have any plans to defer to his elder.

“Usually I win. It’s because he is short,” Rozanov says. “I have natural advantage.”

“I’m one centimeter shorter than him,” Hollander is quick to add. “The natural advantage he’s talking about is the fact that he cheats.”

The world of Major League Hockey was rocked last summer by the announcement that Montreal had signed Rozanov, whose rookie contract was widely expected to be renewed by the Hammerheads. But there was one more shock in store: When the season began, it was revealed that Rozanov, who played the center position for three years in San Francisco and four in Russia, would be left wing on Hollander’s line.

“There are a lot of great guys playing right now, but he really stands out,” Hollander says of his young teammate. “I knew as soon as he joined the team that we would do something really special together. He works really hard.”

Hollander would know. He and Rozanov spent the summer in Ontario, training with siblings Kyle and Brittney MacTavish.

So how does it feel, to beat a living legend?

“Good,” Rozanov says. “Maybe I feel a little bad, like this is elder abuse, but Tavy says that this is not illegal in Canada.”

Brittney MacTavish, or Tavy as she was known to her teammates during the four years she played ice hockey for the University of Minnesota, says that Hollander and Rozanov are pretty much neck-and-neck these days when it comes to conditioning. “Shane is more experienced, he has that high IQ when it comes to game play, but Ilya’s an exceptional skater with tons of energy that he knows how to use strategically.” Laughter. “Let me put it this way: I’d take either one of them on their own, but if you put me on the ice facing them on the same line, I’d be seriously worried.”

Some might not share MacTavish’s opinion, considering that the Metropolitans were knocked out of the playoffs this year in the second round. They lost the seven game series to Scott Hunter’s New York Admirals, who would go on to win the Stanley Cup. “That’s not on Shane and Ilya,” MacTavish says. “I don’t think an entire team of Wayne Gretzky clones could have muscled them through to the conference finals.”

The postseason woes of the Montreal Metropolitans came as a nasty shock after they dominated the regular season. For the sixth time since he was drafted in 2006, Hollander won the Art Ross, bestowed upon the MLH player with the highest number of points. He earned many of those as assists on Rozanov’s 58 goals, which were the most in the league for the 2016-2017 season. But despite the high production of their forwards, Montreal was unable to win the series against New York. 

MacTavish is quick to point out that they did take it all the way to game seven. Ultimately MacTavish, along with many others, attributes the Metropolitans’ poor performance to goalie injuries. “When you don’t have somebody with postseason experience in the net, you’re going to struggle.”

“They’re both great guys,” Hollander says of Montreal goalies Patrice Drapeau and Clarence Pak. “You can’t predict how the season is going to go, you just have to put your best out there and, you know, play your heart out.” How did it feel to see Pak felled by a labral hip tear just two games after Drapeau injured his dominant hand? “It wasn’t great. It didn’t feel good. But I know, you know, from personal experience, these things happen. As a player, all you can do is train hard, train well, and be ready to go from day one. That’s what we’re taking with us into the upcoming season.”

Rozanov, for his part, has zero doubts about what the new year has in store. “Shane and I will win the Cup in Montreal. We will do it in 2018.”

This type of confidence is typical for Rozanov, whose brash personality has won the hearts of Montreal’s fans. This is probably because he always delivers. If he promises he’ll get 50 goals in a season, he does. “His shot is so deadly,” MacTavish says. “He’s so fast that he can make these small adjustments that have a disproportionate impact. When he was a Hammerhead they had the best breakaway conversion rate in the league, over 60%, which is, like, almost a silly number that doesn’t sound real. But when he left, San Francisco dropped back down to the league average, which is half that.”

In addition to his admirers, Rozanov has also earned some enemies. “The guy’s a menace,” says Boston Raiders forward Cliff Marleau, who played with Rozanov in the 2017 NHL All-Star Game. “But, you know, he talks trash and then he backs it up. You can’t say that about every one of these young kids. He knows how to play hockey.”

Nobody doubts that. In fact, Hollander and Rozanov have earned themselves a reputation for being almost supernaturally good at playing on the same team. According to Marleau, “They’re psychic.” 

MacTavish attributes their productivity on the ice to something a little more grounded. “Shane has unreal visual acuity. He’s able to track information way better than most people, even most other professional hockey players, and I think Ilya is one of the rare people who can really keep up with him when he’s seeing the game on that level.”

When asked about their special bond, Hollander declines to answer. Rozanov laughs. “Shane has psychic bond with one person,” he says. “Amber Pike.”

Montreal Metropolitans forward Hayden Pike, father of one-year-old Amber, agrees. “Shane is great with all of the kids, but he’s Amber’s godfather, so, you know, there’s a special bond there.” Shane Hollander, baby whisperer? “Probably that’s why he always knows what Rozanov is thinking,” Pike says.

In Ontario, Hollander and Rozanov have spent the summer working with the MacTavishes in the gym and on the track. “Ilya trained as a distance runner and you really see that in how he approaches his training,” Hollander says. “I’ve been working on that–on the bike, on the treadmill.” And hill sprints? “Yeah, I hate the hills. Everybody loves to make fun of me for that. But I get my own back.”

“He is good at everything except hills,” Rozanov says. “He always skates so low even though his knee barely works. I do not understand this.”

Hollander’s low skating position is one of the many ways he has distinguished himself on the ice. It gives him a low center of gravity, improves his edge control, and lets him accelerate in explosive bursts that can be deadly for the opposing team. However, there has been some speculation that recent injuries have compromised Hollander’s skating style. 

Hollander does not agree. “I mean, my knee does work,” Hollander says. “A lot of that because of the work I do with Chantelle.”

Chantelle Jones is a former NCAA athlete from the University of Los Angeles, where she helped the Bruins win gymnastics titles three of the four years she was on the team. Since graduating from UCLA, Jones has trained as a yoga instructor and physical therapist who works with athletes recovering from lower body injuries. She married Brittney MacTavish in 2014. 

“Shane’s got a big heart,” Jones is quick to say. “Everybody focuses on how talented he is, and do not get me wrong, he is unbelievably talented. But when you get down to it, he loves his job and his team and his family. All of the hard work he does comes from that big heart of his. When I met Ilya this year, I really felt, you know, how amazing and wonderful it was to see somebody come along and match that devotion and be ready to not just keep up with him but also, you know, push him.”

Does she think Montreal will go all the way?

“Don’t tell my wife this, but I still don’t really understand hockey,” Jones says. “So I can’t say. But if they gave it to the people who worked the hardest, it would go to them, no question.”

MacTavish, who knows a thing or two about ice hockey after taking the Gophers to back-to-back championships in 2011 and 2012, is more confident. “They’re going to do it. They have to do it. As a gay woman, I was happy to see Scott Hunter win this year. By coming out, he burst through a ceiling in men’s hockey that’s existed unquestioned for a long time. But as a lifelong Montrealer, I honestly wished him dead from the bottom of my heart the second that he touched the Cup.”

“Hunter’s a good guy,” Hollander is quick to say. “He had an amazing season and the Hart [Trophy for most valuable player] was fully earned.” Does that mean Hollander’s Metropolitans are worried about facing the Admirals in the upcoming season? “Absolutely not.”

As for Rozanov, some of his brash confidence slips when he describes starting his second season as a Montreal Metropolitan, playing on the same line as the captain whose games he’d watched growing up. “The hockey we play together is so good,” Rozanov says, looking uncharacteristically dazzled.

Is it as good as he’d imagined? 

“No. It is better.”