Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Original Male Character(s), Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Injury, Miscommunication, POV Alternating, POV Ilya Rozanov, POV Shane Hollander, POV Original Character, Internalized Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Under-negotiated Kink, ADHD Ilya Rozanov, Autistic Shane Hollander, Porn with Plot, A Mix of Book and TV canon, Post-Episode: s01e06 The Cottage (Heated Rivalry), The Boston Year, Billets, Complicated Relationships, References to IRL KHL & NHL People/Issues, Who up recognizing thyself in the other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Passive Suicidality, Implied/Referenced Hazing

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Alligator Bites Never Heal

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-05 Updated: 2026-10-01 Words: 32,339 Chapters: 4/13

Bite The Hand

Summary

Outside, bugs swarm around the porch light. A half-moon hangs over the dark swath of lake, spider-spun white daubed across the oil-spill surface. That perfect day on the water was less than a week ago. The scabs on Ilya’s ankle haven’t even healed. He knew the rest of their lives would be an uphill battle; he just hoped they could lie in the grass for a little longer.

There’s a hitch in Shane’s breath, a catch that brings Ilya’s attention back to him. He’s seen the ice tilt, analyzed the offense, and realization freezes across his face.

The whistle blows. Ilya’s been caught.

“You don’t want to figure this out,” Shane says finally. “You want him to billet with you.”

Last season, Ilya broke his jaw. Next season, he'll break from Boston for Ottawa and a shot at making an impossible relationship work. This season, he breaks every promise he’s ever made.

(aka the sequel to Alligator Bites Never Heal)

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

it's not super necessary to read ABNH first, but you probably should.

universe notes

In ABNH, I couldn't decide which teams/leagues to use. In this fic, it's the Raiders and Metros, but they play in the NHL/for the Stanley Cup.

title notes

The title of this fic comes from boygenius' Bite The Hand AND Nine Inch Nails' The Hand That Feeds. I feel these songs have a kinship on a fundamental, spiritual level and critically, fuckin' slap.

The kid is fast.

Tall, but undersized. Agile. Weaker in the corners. He’ll need to adjust to North American ice size and physicality, but it shouldn’t be too difficult with that speed. Good hands, pretty hockey, but that’s to be expected with his training.

He winces instinctively when the kid turns over the puck and Lokomotiv scores. Almost a decade since he played in white and blue, but he’s always been loyal to a fault, and especially to the system he grew up in. He’d always planned on going back and playing for Dynamo when he retired, bleed the Cops’ coffers dry with a fat one-year contract, and then drop off the face of the earth. But that was a long time ago. Before he thought he and Shane could ever have a future together.

As to whether he and Shane still have a future together, well—that’s if they make it through the next season. Or the next three hours.

“Mr. Rozanov?”

Ilya hits pause, pulling his headphones down and pushing the annoyance off his face for the flight attendant kneeling in front of him. Her hand lingers on his armrest, the dark material of her skirt riding up her long, tan legs. She’s hot, and she knows it, and has been making eyes at him the entire flight. “I’m sorry, sir, I really do need you to put your laptop away now.”

“Of course,” Ilya says. In another life, he would maybe take her number on a napkin, or fuck her in the lavatory, though that’s never as fun as anyone imagines. But he’s domesticated now. Happily and incomprehensibly, but domesticated nonetheless.

Still, he’s Ilya Rozanov. With his name comes a preceding reputation and certain expectations, at least for the time being. So he winks, and sees a mirage of blushing freckles in her featureless face, and then settles back to watch the descent into Ottawa.

In a year, this will be routine. His base airport. Where he’ll fly to and from for the beginning and end of whatever conglomeration of city-hopping adds up to 41 games, but he can’t get ahead of himself. He has to focus on the road ahead; the road leading back to the cottage, and the road that, if all goes to plan, will stretch across seven months, 82 games, plus another sixteen wins, and the expanse of a continent.

He deplanes and disguises, bypassing the baggage carousels and travelers who either don’t recognize him under a plain black cap and Ray-Bans or are content to leave him be.

His phone vibrates. Shane must’ve been tracking his flight because he texts his departure from the cell phone lot despite Ilya not telling him he’s arrived. Impulsively, Ilya purchases a bouquet of overpriced flowers from a stand inside the arrivals area. It’s sappy and sentimental, but this is his first time being picked up at the airport by his boyfriend. If he wants to be sappy and sentimental, then that’s his business.

They barely have four days together until Shane leaves for his own wedding circuit and pre-season sponsor shoots, and Ilya has to go back to Boston to get ready. It doesn’t make sense to do this, to steal these scant days, but nothing about them makes sense. Ilya’s only been gone for five days, and the entire time he’s been—off. Underwater, maybe.

He spots that nondescript, sensible Land Rover idling across the arrivals lane. What is this man doing to him that his pulse races at the sight of an SUV?

Ilya would be embarrassed, but—

Maybe the leaving, the drowning, all of it will be worth it to see the way Shane lights up when Ilya opens the door.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Ilya says, so helpless with all of it. “For you.”

Shane accepts the bouquet as Ilya hurries to stow his roll-aboard in the backseat and buckle before they get yelled at or he misses his chance to see Shane bury his smile in the petals.

He fumbles with his bag and his belt, so much less suave and confident than he was last month, even though he was sick to his stomach with nerves back then. Still, his hurrying and fumbling is rewarded when he catches Shane’s eyes crinkling as he mumbles, “You didn’t have to get me flowers,” into the bouquet.

“Yes, I did,” Ilya says, each word laced with sweet, witless honesty. Shane props the flowers in the cup holder. He wants to take Shane’s face in both hands and kiss him senseless, but they’re in public, and airport security is looming to keep cars moving.

Ilya tangles their fingers together, kissing the back of Shane’s hand three times. He doesn’t let go as Shane flushes and pulls onto the highway.

It’s hard to believe that they were driving this same drive a month ago, and how much has changed in that time. Except—Ilya isn’t sure if he has changed. He was overwhelmingly consumed by how much he loved Shane when he got into the car in July, and now it’s August, and Ilya could drown in the love, except it feels like he’s resurfaced and can breathe for the first time in five days.

“How was the flight?” Shane asks after a few minutes.

“Good. Some turbulence, not too bad.” Ilya looks from the window to Shane. They talked this morning and every day and texted nonstop, but—fuck it. “I missed you.”

Shane hesitates and then offers him a smile. “C’mon, it wasn’t too bad, was it? I mean, we talked every day, and we’ve gone longer without seeing each other.”

For a split second, he—

No. Shane’s right. Ilya is being silly. If he can’t handle four days, how is he going to handle an entire season of only playing each other four times with a handful of stolen moments between?

“Right,” Ilya says after a moment, squeezing Shane’s hand to ignore the squeeze of his heart. “No, you’re right.”

“Mom and Dad want us to come for dinner tomorrow,” Shane says, refocusing on the road. “I said I’d ask you. ’Cause, like, my dad’s making pulled pork? And his pulled pork is really good. But also…”

“But also?”

“Well, maybe you had other plans.”

Ilya raises an eyebrow. “Other plans? Like what, golf?”

“You hate golfing,” Shane says, which is patently untrue. Ilya loves situations where it’s socially acceptable to drink and drive as fast as he can without risking arrest. It reminds him of home.

“But no, um,” Shane continues, “like, sex plans.”

“Ah.” Ilya nods, pressing his nail into the soft skin of Shane’s hand, and then thumbing over the crescent it leaves. “Sex plans. Yes, so many. For Mr. Real Estate, I made sex blueprints.”

“No, you didn’t.” Shane eyes Ilya. “...Did you?”

“Hollander, where would I even get blue paper?” Do they even sell that to non-Real Estate fetishists? Architects?

“I don’t know! This is your joke.”

It is, and it’s a half-hearted one at best. Ilya decides to abandon it. If he keeps it up, he could very well end up making awkward small talk with David Hollander by the grill rather than doing what he actually wants to do for the next few days.

“Yes, I have sex plans,” Ilya says. “I promised I would bring your lonely dildo.”

“And did you, uh, keep your promise?”

“I did,” Ilya says. “It was taking up so much space. I know you are a size queen, Hollander, but—” he whistles, low, and presses his nail into Shane’s hand again, but longer, patient as Shane licks his lip. This time, Ilya doesn’t soothe over the indentation he leaves.

“Fuck off,” Hollander says, his ears flushing as his cheeks fight a smile. “So I should tell my parents no?”

Ilya wants to say that he doesn’t particularly care to have a meal with Shane’s parents if it takes even a second away from the few days they have together, but Shane will get all sad-eyed and not even in the fun way.

“Maybe we can have lunch before I leave,” Ilya says. It’s like pulling teeth to say—he would know—but he does a decent job at sounding enthusiastic, he thinks. He has to try for Shane. He wants to try for Shane. And he’s rewarded for his efforts when Shane turns that pleased shade of pink and rests his big hand on Ilya’s thigh.

“You are being very patient,” Ilya says after another handful of quiet minutes. “Well-behaved, not asking about my meetings.”

“I wasn’t sure if you could talk about them.” Shane rubs his thumb against the fabric of Ilya’s joggers. “You said you might not be able to still.”

He can’t, but the news will break soon enough. Besides—it’s Shane. He has to tell Shane.

He thumbs his ear. Hesitates, then goes for it. “Dmitry Zubarev is leaving Dynamo.”

“Fucking finally,” Shane says immediately, not taking his eyes off the road. “How many years ago did you guys draft him? Like, three?”

“Two.” Ilya eyes Shane. Fucking finally is not the response he was expecting. “But you can’t tell anyone. News will be announced soon, but not yet.”

Shane huffs a laugh. “I mean, it’s not really news, is it?”

Ilya doesn’t mean for his eyebrows to raise. He forces them down before Shane can notice. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, anyone could’ve seen it coming. Dynamo goes, like, totally fucking bankrupt, every player is a free agent—have you not been following that?”

Well, Ilya certainly has. “You are KHL superfan now?”

Shane rolls his eyes. “You know, if one of Russia’s oldest, winningest hockey teams, specifically one that my boyfriend played for, goes into a massive debt crisis and releases their entire 42-man roster, it tends to make its way across my desk.”

Okay. Well. He’s sure his face is doing something incredibly stupid. He fails to suppress his smile as he turns to look out the window to look at the passing greenery and mutters, “You’ll make your way across my desk.”

“Is that a promise?”

“No, a threat,” Ilya says. Shane slides his hand up Ilya’s thigh and tangles their hands together again. He’s expecting Shane to press further, and he steels himself for the questions, the resulting fallout, but it never comes. Instead, Shane launches into a story about a guy on their training staff whose brother is playing D for Avangard Omsk, and their antics when he went to visit.

But even though Shane doesn’t press, that battle-ready dread lingers under his skin. Ilya tries to ignore it, tries to let Shane’s voice wash over him, a sweet hum that he wants to lose himself in, to get some reprieve from the gnawing guilt; to muffle the nasty, niggling jingle of, you’re such a coward; you can’t run from this, that has looped through his head since he boarded the plane for Boston.

It doesn’t really work, but it doesn’t matter—Ilya sleeps the rest of the way. He didn’t even realize he was tired until he was blinking awake as Shane punches in the cottage’s gate code. There’s a low-grade headache throbbing at Ilya’s temples, and he might be dying of thirst.

“Hey sleepyhead,” Shane says as the gate lurches open, his hand cupping Ilya’s jaw and his thumb rubbing at the corner of his mouth.

“Sorr—” Ilya breaks off into a yawn, rolling his neck from left to right and getting a satisfying crack on each side. “Sorry, I did not mean to sleep.”

“It looked like you needed it,” Shane says, navigating the last pebbled turn before he parks. “I prepped salmon to throw on the grill, so dinner shouldn’t be too long.”

“Good.” Ilya’s starving, his stomach grumbling as he unbuckles and grabs his roll-aboard and backpack. “I’m gonna shower off the plane, okay?”

Shane rounds the trunk and takes Ilya’s face in his hands. He kisses him, thorough and resounding, each part and press of their lips grinding any thoughts to a halt.

Shane finally breaks away, resting his forehead against Ilya’s. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Ilya says, simple and stupid and helpless against the rush of, of childishness consuming his heart and his face. He wraps his arms around Shane’s waist and hugs him tight, burying his face in his shirt. His house in Boston is too quiet. Moscow is never quiet, and neither is the cottage amongst the cacophonous forest and the shifting of gravel beneath their feet.

His stomach rumbles again, and Shane pulls away, pecking Ilya on the cheek. “Go shower. I’ll get the grill going.”

He and Shane still get distracted kissing in the foyer, until he finally smacks Shane’s ass and makes his way to the en-suite to piss. He leaves his clothes in a puddle by the tub and stares at himself in the mirror while the shower warms. He looks exhausted, and not even in the post-wedding weekend hangover kind of way. It’s deeper, layered like bruises during the season. It wasn’t there when he last looked in this mirror all of five days ago.

He’s out of practice with the quick flight turnaround. He doesn’t usually do that in the summer. His body hasn’t had time to readjust to that rhythm of take off, land, exertion, exhaustion, take off, land, that’s second nature for most of the year. All he needs is to shower, eat, and fuck Shane senseless, and he’ll be fine.

The shower helps. So does dinner. But it’s not until Shane is riding his face and Ilya is smothered between the meat of his ass, Shane’s massive fucking thighs and calves caging him in, that he actually comes back to himself.

He makes Shane come like that, shooting off in the valley between Ilya’s pecs. Ilya keeps him there, trembling as he works him up to four fingers, dripping with lube and so open and ready.

“C’mon,” Shane begs for what must be the thousandth time. “C’mon, I’m ready, just fuck me.”

Ilya laughs, breathless, and watches Shane’s hole wink at the puff of air. “You want me to fuck your ass?”

“Yeah, fuck—”

“Ah, too bad,” he says. It gets the intended response—Shane looking over his shoulder, down at Ilya, the lower half of his confused, pissy face obscured.

“What are you talking about?”

Ilya raises his eyebrows and then slaps both hands down on Shane’s ass cheeks, watching them jiggle as he pushes him off. He maneuvers Shane to face the end of the bed on his hands and knees, leaking dick swinging between his legs, and reaches underneath the pillow where he stashed Shane’s dildo. He’s spent a long time trying to imagine its backstory, how it came to be in Shane’s possession. He vacillates between Shane buying it and some older teammate sensing something in him and gifting it. Both make Ilya equally insane. It’s hyper-realistic and veiny, complete with balls and a suction cup. Not as big as Ilya, but still big.

It’s beyond satisfying to shove it into Shane’s hole in one brutal thrust.

Shane chokes out what could be a sob. He has a good memory. Ilya hopes he remembers fucking on Shane’s couch almost a month ago, when he promised to put a dildo in Shane’s ass and then fuck his mouth.

He fucks it in and out a few times, and then pulls it away to suction it to Shane’s resin-and-wood headboard. He tests the adherence with a very satisfying smack, watching it bob like a door stop, before he slides off the bed. Ilya watches the line of Shane’s body, the arch of his back as he walks around to the end of the bed. He stares down at Shane, his big brown eyes watery and needy as he cranes his neck to look up at Ilya. His lips part, panting softly, already starving and salivating for Ilya’s cock.

Ilya pushes Shane’s shoulders to crawl backward, but Shane doesn’t go.

“What, you want me to force you?” Ilya says, his voice low. Shane is trembling—no, he’s laughing.

“Oh my god,” Shane says, sitting up on his knees, his entire face alight.

Ilya shifts, trying to temper his annoyance. “What? I want you to fuck yourself.”

“Ilya, I can’t,” he says, breathless. “Watch what happens when I try.” Shane knee-walks backward until his feet press against the headboard.

Ilya rounds the bed and feels like an idiot. And betrayed.

“What is the point of a suction cup if your legs get in the way?” he says, feeling foolish and hot all over.

“Well, we can do this, it just can’t be on the bed,” Shane says. He sounds like he’s making fun of Ilya. Which is rude.

Shane unsticks the dildo and re-attaches it to the floor. Ilya watches the way Shane’s eyes flutter shut as he lowers himself, wetting his lip when Shane moans, fully seated against the base.

Ilya inhales and gives his cock two sharp tugs. Fine, good, whatever. TV timeout over. They’re back in it.

He steps forward and presses on Shane’s lower lip with his fore and middle fingers. As Shane begins to rock up and down, Ilya fucks his fingers in, curling and deep as Shane gags, his eyes rolling as Ilya adds his ring finger, spreading them laterally in an American three and stretching Shane’s mouth wide as he drools around them.

“So you do this before?” Ilya asks. “Fucked yourself on a dildo because your hole was so hungry? You were missing me?”

Shane makes a needy noise. It’s obscene watching his throat work, the quivering cavern behind his uvula. He doesn’t have his tonsils. Ilya wonders when they were removed.

He replaces his fingers with his cock and sets a punishing pace, using Shane’s throat like his favorite pocket pussy back in Boston. He comes regretfully quick, crushing Shane’s face to his pelvis as he hunches over him.

Ilya is a little mean for Shane’s second orgasm, maybe still peeved from Shane laughing at him. He presses his shin into Shane’s leaking cock, goading Shane to hump against Ilya’s leg, the dildo keeping him open as Shane cries and trembles and begs until he’s raspy and wordless, oversensitive and every inch of skin feverish to the touch.

He takes his time working Shane down. Ilya runs a bath and changes the sheets while Shane soaks, and then climbs in the bath with him, the two of them making a mess and sloshing water over the tub’s rim as they get settled.

He’s content to drift for a while, tracing an old scar below Shane’s knee while Shane combs through Ilya’s hair. They stay there for a long time, long past Ilya’s fingers pruning. Lying against Shane, his brain goes blissfully quiet. But it all comes rushing back in when Shane finally gets them out of the now-cold water.

The nagging is back with a vengeance, worse than it was on the drive up, impossible to ignore as they get ready for bed. It’s so loud against the quiet noises Shane makes while reading, the chirping and humming of the forest around them. You’re such a coward; you can’t run from this. You’re such a coward; you can’t run from this. You’re such a—

Fuck. Fine. “Shane?”

“Hm?” Shane lowers his book, then his glasses. “What?”

Ilya clicks his phone off, exhaling as he places it face down on his bare chest. “It’s not. It’s…”

He trails off, staring ahead at the windows, at their reflections, a soft glow against the ink-black night. He’s barely started, and already he’s chickening out. Fucking typical.

Shane’s brow furrows, concerned. He slips further under the covers, his hand resting on Ilya’s chest, right above his heart. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Will Ilya ever stop dropping shoes on Shane? It can’t be fair to him. It’s happened too many times for Ilya to count. Each one weighs on him like an anvil.

“It’s not just Zubarev coming to Boston,” he says finally. “That’s not what the meetings were about.”

He watches Shane process that, nodding once before he asks, “Okay, so what were the meetings about?”

“You have to understand,” Ilya starts, and then stops again, changing course. “I agreed even before he was drafted. I can’t go back on it now, and—”

“Hey, hey,” Shane says, quiet but firm as he interrupts. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m billeting him,” Ilya says. What else is there to say. “This season. Zubarev. I’m billeting him.”

Shane’s hand retracts.

“Oh,” Shane says. “Oh, well. Fuck.”

Shane rolls away from Ilya, staring straight ahead. Ilya watches. Waits. And then it comes—Shane stands, the bedsheets falling away as he walks toward the bathroom, and then aborts, pacing in a short circle.

Eventually—inevitably—Shane leaves the bedroom altogether, and Ilya doesn't know what he was expecting. Of course Shane would run away rather than talk. It’s what he did that rainy day when he ran to the grocery store instead of facing Ilya.

Ilya rubs his face and tries to ignore the wounded twist in his gut. How could he—

“I need, just, like, ten minutes,” Shane says, reappearing in the doorway. “And then we can talk about this, okay?”

Ilya’s hand falls from his face. He doesn’t want to look surprised.

“Okay,” he says, once he’s sure the hoarse hope welling in his chest won’t betray him. “Come get me. I can wait.”

—

A mug of peppermint tea slides across the island. Bleary, Ilya wraps his hands around it and blinks up at Shane.

It’s late. It wasn’t ten minutes. It had to be closer to an hour before Shane yelled from the kitchen that he was making tea, and Ilya figured that was Shane’s way of saying he was ready to talk.

Ilya wishes they were asleep. He wishes he could go back two years and shoot his younger self in the head.

“So…you can't get out of it?” Shane asks, his opening salvo.

“What am I going to say?” Ilya sounds so resigned, each word exhaust and fumes from an already-depleted tank. “No, I can’t billet Russian rookie like we agreed two years ago in my big empty mansion because it would reveal my secret gay relationship with my beautiful boyfriend Shane Hollander?”

“Obviously not that,” Shane says. “But you could make something up, like—well, I don’t know. But you could make something up.”

“I gave the team my word,” Ilya says. He can’t look at Shane, so he stares at the floating tea bag.

“A team that you’re leaving, so what does it matter?”

Is Shane ever this sharp with anyone else? And if he isn’t, is that a comfort?

“Shane,” he says, trying to keep his voice even. “Maybe we should talk about this in the morning.”

“I don’t want to talk about this in the morning,” Shane says. “I want to figure this out.”

Shane has the same mugs at the cottage that he does in Montreal, porcelain and soulless. At least they don’t have the stupid little circle handles like David and Yuna’s, and Ilya can wrap his hands around it, caging his right hand in so it can’t clench. There’s a tink as Shane sets his own mug down. Ilya looks up in time to watch his arms cross.

“I mean, come on, there has to be a way out of this,” Shane says. “Don’t they usually want to set guys up with families? So, like, the wives can do their laundry and cook and shit?”

Ilya raises his eyebrows. “You want me to get your mother so she can hear you say that?”

Shane’s eyes narrow in return. “It’s how it works. She knows that.”

Ilya shakes his head. Outside, bugs swarm around the porch light. A half-moon hangs over the dark swath of lake, spider-spun white daubed across the oil-spill surface. That perfect day on the water was less than a week ago. The scabs on Ilya’s ankle haven’t even healed. He knew the rest of their lives would be an uphill battle; he just hoped they could lie in the grass for a little longer.

There’s a hitch in Shane’s breath, a catch that brings Ilya’s attention back to him. He’s seen the ice tilt, analyzed the offense, and realization freezes across his face.

The whistle blows. Ilya’s been caught.

“You don’t want to figure this out,” Shane says finally. “You want him to billet with you.”

His mother used to say it always felt better when the truth came out. He doesn’t care to think ill of the dead, but she might be a fucking liar.

Ilya pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to ignore the headache creeping back in. It doesn’t work.

“Do you know how hard it was my first year?” he says, eventually. Shane opens his mouth to answer, because he probably had a hockey tournament the day they covered rhetorical questions in fucking kindergarten. “There weren’t any Russians on the team. My agent was useless.”

“I thought your English was pretty good?” Shane offers, as if there’s still a negotiation at hand, and if he sweetens the pot, Ilya will buy in.

It hooks in his heart then, a visceral stab of loneliness. Shane is the person Ilya knows best in the entire world, and Shane is the person who knows Ilya best, and they still know absolutely fucking nothing about each other.

“English is not enough to, to set up bank account, or get driver’s license, or pay taxes in that stupid country. Or buy insurance, you have to have so many kinds of insurance. And I pay people to do it, but how I know they not fucking me over? Stealing from me because I don’t know fine fine fine print? I was a child who could not read or write, and I had to figure out how to survive,” Ilya says, all of it tumbling out of him, a rush, blue-flame embarrassment licking against the pit in his stomach.

“Okay, so help him get a bank account and teach him how to drive,” Shane says. His eyes are starting to get all big and wet like they always do when something doesn’t go his way. “That doesn’t mean he has to live with you.”

“Svetlana did not come until March,” Ilya continues, louder. “You know how hard it was? I knew no one. All the pressure, all the expectations, fucking—you! All of it, I had no one, and I was so—”

He cuts himself off, shaking his head again. On the boat, Shane said he thought Ilya was lonely that cold winter day in Regina. It figures that Shane thought—what, that went away when Ilya moved to Boston? Is Ilya that good a liar?

To his tea, he mutters, “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

It hangs there, between them. All the talking, all the fucking, all the tears, and they’re right back where they were: Shane’s kitchen, speaking two completely different languages.

And then—footsteps. He watches the shift of color in the marble countertop until Shane’s hand rests on the back of Ilya’s neck.

“I’m trying,” Shane says, after another moment. “I want to understand, I do, I just. This year is going to be hard enough. And now we’re only going to see each other twice—”

Ilya can’t even be surprised that Shane has come to this conclusion, no matter how upsetting it is. He closes his eyes, breathing through the caustic curl in his stomach. He turns toward Shane, meeting his eyes. “Why do you think this? What about media weekend, all star weekend—”

“Well yeah, we’ve got those, but we only play each other four times, and if Zubarev is going to be at your place…” Shane shrugs. Like this is just a matter of fact.

“I’m billeting him, not breastfeeding, and—” Ilya stops himself, a sharp brake on the ice. He needs to keep his temper under control. Of course Shane would treat this year like the last seven. Any possible change in his routine is unthinkable. He inhales and exhales again through his nose, wishing it were smoke.

It’s a lesson he needs to stop forgetting. That Shane will never miss him as much as Ilya misses Shane.

“I want to spend as much time together as possible,” Ilya says slowly, a careful eye on any shift in Shane’s features; the imperceptible widening of his eyes. “If you want this also, I will make it happen.”

There it is—the flare of Shane’s nostrils. The bob of his Adam’s apple. The hand on his neck clammy and tightening. The ripple of hurt from the stone Ilya’s thrown across Shane’s lake.

Ilya’s an asshole.

“Of course I want that,” Shane says, his voice thick. “Ilya, come on, you know I want that.”

He stops himself before he says, do I?

It’s late. He’s never nice this late. Usually, if it’s this late and he’s this mean to Shane, it’s because Ilya’s dick is actively inside of him.

“I have to do this,” Ilya says eventually, staring at the divot between Shane’s collarbones. “I just have to. I won’t live with myself if I don’t.”

Shane exhales, dropping his forehead into the crook of Ilya’s neck. “I’m not gonna say I get it, ’cause I don’t,” he says, each word tickling across Ilya’s bare shoulder. “But I want to make it work.”

“Then we make it work,” Ilya says, because what else is there to say?

He tucks his hands under the soft fabric of Shane’s sleep shirt, trailing his fingers up and down his torso. Shane makes a soft noise and pulls away just barely. “I love you. I don’t think I’ve said it today.”

This man. Ilya won’t survive. “You did this morning,” Ilya says, because he did. On the phone. “But is nice to hear. Wish I felt the same.”

Shane pinches his arm. “Asshole.”

Ilya kisses Shane, an apology, a promise. “I love you, too. And we have three days still, yeah? Let’s, ah, make the most of them.” Ilya rubs against Shane’s crotch, his dick plumping up already. He exhales a laugh. “Again?”

Shane drops his head back into Ilya’s shoulder. “You said we should make the most of it.”

Ilya watches red crawl up the base of Shane’s neck. He wants to bite. “When did I say this?”

Shane pulls away, his hand wrapping around Ilya’s wrist. “Ilya.”

“Okay, okay.” He kisses Shane again, and when Shane turns, Ilya smacks his ass. «Let’s go.»

—

Svetlana arrives the day after he returns to Boston in a one-two punch of a gorgeous Jaguar F-Type R and a heavenly cloud of spices and grease. The car is new, but the smell isn’t, wafting from a stack of containers that he immediately knows is her mother’s cooking.

«Have I ever shaken your father’s hand for knocking up a woman from a culture that uses seasoning?» Ilya asks, closing the door behind her and reveling in the aroma of car leather and lemon pepper.

She throws a look over her shoulder as she spreads a feast across his coffee table. «Ilyukha, don’t fetishize me.»

«I’m not fetishizing you,» Ilya says. «If anything, I’m fetishizing your mother, who deserves to be worshipped by a real man, as I have always said and offered.»

«And who is this real man? Is he hiding somewhere? Would you introduce us?»

«You know,» Ilya continues, ignoring her as he strolls down the familiar path of his favorite teasing. «I understand that your life has always been difficult, the daughter of scandal and divorce, living between two continents, all the racism and ignorance and never quite fitting in, but I do think it’s been a tremendous blessing for my life and stomach.»

Sveta begins repacking the containers. «And here I was going to let you drive the Jag.»

He snags her by the waist and wrestles her onto the couch as she shrieks and squirms against him. «No, you weren’t.»

«No, I wasn’t.» She kicks at him the same way she has since they were children. «Get off me, you brute.»

He releases her, and she stalks off to the kitchen, retrieving the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc he keeps chilled for her regardless of where she is in the world, two mugs, and a pair of forks. They only drink out of mugs when it’s the two of them, a habit they never grew out of from when they were fourteen and sneaking whatever they could find out of their fathers’ liquor cabinets.

Ilya snags a fork and a container of lemon-pepper fried cod. Like a hot knife through butter, he scoops out a perfectly flaking forkful. He’s spent the day loafing around and ignoring his ever-growing to-do list, and only bothered to shower when Sveta texted she was on her way with no prior warning. The kid’s tape is still playing from his pre-shower rewatch, an unnecessary endeavor that he told himself counted toward his pre-rookie camp research.

Ilya juts his chin toward the screen. «What’s your read?»

Sveta hands Ilya his mug of wine and turns her eyes to the TV. «Who, Zubar?»

Ilya nods as he chews. There’s no one else on the team worth watching; that much is evident.

«He tried to fuck me this summer.»

He grins around a mouthful of fish. Two-thirds of the KHL try to fuck her every summer. «Of course he did.»

«Tried is operative.» She sits, tucking her freezing cold feet under his legs. «He’s an infant.»

«And you’re a cradle robber.»

«Please, you're only two months younger than me,» Sveta says haughtily as she takes a sip of wine.

«What did you tell him?»

«What he wanted to hear.»

Ilya eyes her to go on, and her mouth twitches into that mischievous smile of hers. «That I only fuck NHL players. He nearly came in his pants.»

Ilya barks out a laugh. «I’m sure he did.»

Sveta looks pleased as she clinks her mug against Ilya’s before she snags the container of macaroni and cheese and digs in, turning her attention back to the tape. Zubarev is dancing up the ice with his winger, weaving in and out of Spartak’s defense with smooth, clean passes, until Zubarev circles the crease and is forced into a scrum in the corners, where he gets called for slashing that is so laughably blatant it’s embarrassing when he argues his way to the box.

Sveta tsks, unimpressed and disgusted like she usually is with stupid players, as if they’ve personally insulted her by forcing her to witness subpar hockey.

«So?» Ilya prompts. She didn’t answer his original question. «What’s your read?»

Sveta tilts her head, studying the screen as it cuts to another game, Dynamo against SKA. «Have you ever looked at someone and known that their first wet dream was of Ilya Rozanov?»

«Ha. Sure.»

«You can’t tell me you don’t see it, too,» Sveta says. «He wants nothing more than to be you. He’s desperate with it. You can see it in every mistake.»

Ilya’s brow wrinkles. He turns back to the TV. Zubarev loses another scrum in the corners. «His mistakes?»

«You made the same ones with Dynamo,» Sveta says. «Like the scouts were still watching and you couldn’t wait to play boring, ugly hockey in a north-south system and get in fights.»

Ilya doesn’t respond. She’s right; she always is. «He’s coming over.»

«Of course he is,» Sveta says. «Anyone who can read a paper and put two thoughts together knows that.»

He expected that response from her, but Shane said the same, and Ilya has no idea why he was so blindsided by it; why he was so surprised when Gennadiy called him that rainy morning and told him there was movement with Zubarev and to expect a call from the front office.

«Though,» Sveta continues, «I don’t see him adapting as well as you did.»

Ilya scratches his brow with the back of his knuckle. Zubarev nets a filthy wrister from the dot and slams into his linemates to celebrate. He doesn’t know if Sveta is talking about the speed at which Ilya adapted to the North American game, or—everything else. Either way, he agrees. «I don’t either.»

«Will you still billet him?»

Ilya nods. He reaches for a slice of hot honey cornbread, which Mrs. Vetrova knows is his favorite. Sveta is waiting for him to elaborate, her eyebrows raised and her eyes tracking him, but he doesn’t. Eventually, she humphs, an irritated acquiescence that he knows will come back to bite him.

He ignores her and reaches for the remote, turning off the TV. He gives her a look that says, let it go, and mercifully, she does.

«Alright, alright, enough about your ward-to-be,» Sveta says, reaching for her wine. «I have to tell you about Paris and Sasha getting excommunicated by his polycule.»

Ilya takes a huge bite of cornbread, washes it down with a gulp of wine, and settles in to listen.

They lose the rest of the evening like that, gossiping and drinking and smoking until they’re both mostly shitfaced and half-asleep in his bed, swiping through Sveta’s Tinder as Ilya opines on her taste in women until she gets annoyed and threatens to kick him in the balls and then goes to get ready to sleep.

Flopping back against his sheets, Ilya picks his phone up from his chest. There’s a photo from Jane: Shane under string lights, his tie loosened and his suit jacket missing, flushed in all of his masculine, jock-bro glory. His shirt is damp with sweat under his arms, both thrown around two guys. There are six of them in total, each far drunker than Shane and each with a cigar in their mouths. Shane’s is the only one unlit.

He huffs a laugh and saves it to his Boring folder before deleting it from the thread.

Lily:
wow no lit cigar??? party animal

Jane:
I had one whole beer

Jane:
My mom told me I had to be a good sport

Jane:
I don’t think that extends to actually smoking

Lily:
so u just want something fat & round in mouth?

An incoming FaceTime from Jane. Ilya glances at the bathroom. Sveta’s wrapping her hair in one of the dozen silk bonnets she keeps under his sink.

He slips into his slides and out the door that connects his bedroom to the patio.

“Hi,” he says when the call connects.

“Hey,” Shane says, his eyes crinkling behind his glasses. He looks mostly asleep himself. “What time is it there?”

“Late,” Ilya says. “What time did the reception end?”

“I think it’s still going on.” Shane looks away, squinting toward something—the window, maybe, like he can see the party from his hotel room. “I dunno. I escaped as soon as I could.”

“So why do you go?” Ilya understands attending the weddings of current teammates or a guy he won the cup with. He limits it to that and sends a fat check and a nice espresso machine to everyone else. But Shane’s been going to the weddings of guys from juniors for years.

“My mom makes me,” he says. “She says it’s good PR. Makes people think I’m a nice guy.”

“People already think you are nice guy,” Ilya says. He slumps into one of his patio couches. “So what is real reason?”

Shane chews on the drawstring of his hoodie. Eventually, he says, “These guys have been bragging to their friends about being buddies with Shane Hollander for who knows how long. So when I show up and talk about how great of a teammate they were to, like, their boss or father-in-law, it’s like—I don’t know. It’s good for their egos. And then I don’t ever have to talk to them again ’cause I went to their wedding.”

“Ah,” Ilya says. “So they are Make-A-Wish kids?”

Ilya watches Shane snort and fail to school his face into something admonishing. “That’s not funny.”

“You laughed.”

“It’s not. That’s a great organization.”

“And it was great joke.”

Shane opens his mouth to say something and breaks off into a yawn. Ilya wants nothing more than to reach through his phone and comb his fingers through Shane’s pillow-mussed hair.

“Go to sleep,” Ilya says, quiet, delicate, careful. “We talk tomorrow?”

“’Kay,” Shane says, his eyes already slipping shut. “Night. I love you.”

“I love you,” Ilya says, his heart beating so loud he’s worried it will somehow wake Shane up all the way in the middle-of-nowhere Canada. Shane hangs up, and he sits there, staring at his love-sick face in the blank phone screen.

Eventually, he heaves himself up and goes inside. Sveta’s rubbing lotion on her hands, tucked under the covers on what’s been her side of the bed since they were kids.

He flops down next to her. The wine’s catching up to him now that he’s horizontal, all the drunkenness spreading throughout his body.

Sveta drops a hand in his hair, massaging his scalp. «You seem different.»

He scratches his nose. «How so?»

Her hand stills, and he cranes his neck to look at her.

«Well-fucked,» she says finally. «Happy. Settled. Who are you and what have you done with my Ilyukha?»

He hates lying to Sveta. It’s mostly futile regardless. She can always see right through him.

«You remember Jane?»

«The mystery man you’ve been texting for how many years? Yes, I remember Jane.» She eyes him. «Was that who was on the phone?»

He nods. «We, ah, made a go of it this summer.»

A huge grin stretches across Sveta’s face, and a rash of pleased mortification itches up his neck. «It’s not a big deal.»

«Yes, it is.» She knocks her knee into him. «So? Tell me about him.»

«Svetka, I can’t,» Ilya says, shifting to prop his head up on his pillow. «He’s so—skittish. Like a colt. If he knew I was even telling you this, he’d have an aneurysm.»

«So tell me one thing,» she says. «I don’t have to memorize his birth certificate and blood type.»

He exhales, rubbing his legs together under the blanket, the silk swishing against his leg hair. He lolls his head to the side and grins at her. «He can come just from sucking cock.»

She throws her head back, her peals of laughter bouncing off the otherwise soulless walls of his bedroom.

«You lucky fucking bastard,» she says, punching his arm. «So, what, he’s your soulmate?»

Everything with Shane is so fucking complicated; the year ahead will be a headache at the best of times. But he thinks of the sleepy smile rounding the flushed apples of Shane’s cheeks as he said, night, I love you, and something candescent cascades through all the barriers he’s trying to ignore, coursing down his brainstem into his spine and enveloping his ribcage, the warmth of the cottage shining through each slot, a patch of light through the blinds.

Ilya tucks his head against Sveta’s shoulder. There are no complications, no qualifications weighing on him as he says, «Yeah, I think he is.»

Chapter End Notes

Hi everyone! Your local angst/hurt/comfort peddler has returned to make these boys learn how to grow/heal/love. If you're hesitant about reading a work with an original character POV, or if any of the tags give you pause, I ask that you trust me and walk with me. I think you're really going to like this one.

This work was once again beta'd by the incomparable Marivan, who polishes and perfects everything I write like a brilliant Sham-Wow. If you haven't read her fic Not a Strip of Paper Merely, you're missing out big time.

Every kudo, comment, bookmark, anything is cherished and adored, even if it's just an emoji. I respond to any and every comment I get (even if it takes me a while, like with the tremendous response to ABNH). Y'all are so, so kind.

Additionally, I have a new request that I've never added before, which I think speaks to how wild and unique this fandom is: If you have come across this fic or abnh on a platform besides AO3 or my tumblr, I would love to hear how you found it. I'm so curious, and it makes me so, so, so happy to know people are sharing or talking about my work. I'd love to know (or see a link lol). Obviously, no pressure, but knowing that there's a positive response out there truly does make the writing go faster and makes me so happy.

Come hang out with me on tumblr at @flawlessassholes, reblog the fic art, and I'll see you for chapter 2 soon <3

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

The last time Shane researched a player this intensely, he was sixteen and determined to learn everything possible about Ilya Rozanov.

His intent is the same as ten years ago: he wants to study his competition. But at twenty-six, he can admit to himself that this is maybe getting out of hand, just as it had when he opened his national team binder and saw the very first profile in the scouting report section.

Maybe it was for the best that Google Translate and Wikipedia and his burner accounts on Reddit and Twitter weren’t in his pocket back then. Now, there’s nothing to temper the fervor with which he researches Dmitry Zubarev.

Chapter Notes

The last time Shane researched a player this intensely, he was sixteen and determined to learn everything possible about Ilya Rozanov.

His intent is the same as ten years ago: he wants to study his competition. But at twenty-six, he can admit to himself that this is maybe getting out of hand, just as it had when he opened his national team binder and saw the very first profile in the scouting report section.

Maybe it was for the best that Google Translate and Wikipedia and his burner accounts on Reddit and Twitter weren’t in his pocket back then. Now, there’s nothing to temper the fervor with which he researches Dmitry Zubarev.

The thing is, Shane has actually met Zubarev.

He attended the 2015 draft as the cup-winning captain, and he remembers standing with the Molsons and making small talk when Johnson brought Zubarev to make introductions, or parade him around, who knows. Shane shook Zubarev’s hand, the sleeve of his ill-fitting Raiders sweater draping over his hand as Johnson said, hopefully he’ll be giving you Metros hell soon enough. And Johnson and Molson laughed in the way rich white guys laugh together, like they were buddy-buddy instead of the owners of the teams on either side of the oldest rivalry in all of sports.

Zubarev stared at Shane, pale in his wide-eyed incomprehension when Shane said he hoped to face off against him soon, and the only lasting impression he left on Shane was that Zubarev was fucking tall and fucking terrified, and that Boston apparently had a thing for drafting Russian centers from Dynamo with their first round pick.

Zubarev fell off Shane’s radar pretty immediately, like most things do when Shane is in season. Who knew if he’d even make it to the league. The KHL was always so reluctant to release players from their contracts. When the Dynamo stuff started kicking up, Shane figured Boston would try to make good on their investment. He just hadn’t expected that investment to live with Shane’s new, secret boyfriend.

So. Shane researches.

He has to know. It follows him from the Soo to North Dakota and then to Toronto for his pre-season shoots, each flight spent hunched over his iPad. He never intended to learn so much that he could write Zubarev’s biography, but he tells himself that it’s good practice for his Russian. So he can, like, get familiar with the characters, even if he’s running it through Google translate. Then he can impress Ilya with all he’s learned. Language-wise. Not about Zubarev.

At first, it’s just game highlights on YouTube and Elite Hockey Prospects. Shane diligently takes notes like he does with all his opp research. Zubarev is tall—6’3”, but Shane thinks he’s maybe taller, but way too skinny at 210. He shoots right, which is odd for a center, and he’s fucking fast.

He can’t weigh 210. Maybe that’s taking his gear into account.

That’s how Shane ends up scrolling through Zubarev’s Instagram as they drive through the suburbs of Toronto. It’s a lot of blurry photos from clubs and a lot of skinny blonde women with huge boobs. There are a few photos of him during the offseason on some beach, shirtless with barely any muscles, even for a twenty-year-old. He’s gotta weigh closer to 190, and that’s generous.

Shane’s surprised Zubarev has made it so far in his career; he should’ve been snapped like a twig the second he skated beyond youth levels.

There’s a photo that Shane lingers on, maybe a year back on Zubarev’s feed. Well, not a photo. A mugshot. Except Zubarev is grinning. There’s crusted blood under his hawkish, already-crooked nose, and stitches on his forehead, right near the dark brown hair cropped so short it’s almost a buzz. The grin doesn’t match the hard glint in his grayish-blue eyes, steely and narrowed in a way that kind of creeps Shane out. He can’t even figure out what’s up—there’s no caption, and the comments are all laughing emojis. The whole thing is weird.

“Who’s that?” Mom asks, leaning over in the back seat of the Uber.

Shane closes Instagram. It’s not his business, and it’s definitely not his mom’s. “A guy coming into the league,” he says, glancing at their driver, though he’s definitely signed an NDA. Still, Mom seems to get it and doesn’t press further.

Their ride is over, anyway, and a rigid determination sets in Shane’s shoulders as they arrive at a studio in Etobicoke that’s familiar in that liminal way all sponsor shoots are, the same rotation of CCM, Reebok, Rolex, whoever, over and over again, the same exhausting slew at the beginning of August.

When Shane was a rookie—the summer everything began with Ilya—they didn’t have as much negotiating power, and the time Shane could’ve spent practicing and apartment hunting was instead consumed with flights from Toronto to New York to Los Angeles to Toronto to Montreal in a nightmare that he begged to be freed from. Alongside their lawyer, Mom negotiated this week that Shane’s only allowed to call Hell Week in the privacy of his hotel room. All the sponsors come to him in Toronto; they knock out as much filming as they can, and then Shane is free from any filming obligations, save for the team and league, until the next Hell Week.

He puts on a smile when they get inside, gladhanding the heads of whoever and whatever, keeping up the façade of a good mood as he’s bustled into hair and makeup. It’s Reebok today, and he’s basically going to be working out and getting sweaty, so he has no idea why he needs to wear makeup. But the less he fights, the faster everything goes.

The woman getting him ready steps out to check something with the brand reps. She realized Shane wasn’t chatty about five seconds in, but it’s still a relief to be alone. He takes a photo of himself in the mirror and sends it to Rose, and adds, I don’t know how you do this, even though it’s like four a.m. in California. Maybe it’ll make her smile when she wakes up.

He sends the photo to Lily, too, plus a photo of the sunrise from his hotel. Who knows when Ilya will wake up and see it.

There’s a knock at the door of the trailer, and Mom pokes her head in. “I got you some tea, honey.”

“Thanks.” Shane swipes over to his email. “They’re catering from that vegan place, right?” It was part of the shoot negotiations this year after last year’s disaster with craft services.

“Yes, honey, I double checked.” She brushes a piece of lint from his shirt. “But if something isn’t right, it’s not the end of the world, yeah? We can adjust for tomorrow. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

He’s not going to be pissy. Not when his mom has bent over backward to make everything as smooth as possible.

“I’m fine,” he says, focusing on his email. “It’ll be fine.”

She squeezes his shoulder and leaves him alone.

He dutifully finishes an email to his nutritionist and reviews a draft of the welcome email Hayden wrote to the rookies before camp. Shane’s already texted most of them, but Hayden won’t be in town for camp, and he wants to welcome the guys.

The email is fine.

He opens YouTube. He’s totally fucked his algorithm, because every other video on his homepage is a Rozanov or Zubarev highlight reel. He clicks on one from a Raiders fan account.

There’s not that much tape on Zubarev. Shane has seen most of this before. He scrolls down to the comments. A lot of them call him a wanna-be Rozanov, but on the spectrum of playmakers to power forwards, Zubarev is a confusing mix. He’s physical, but nowhere near Ilya’s level. Ilya’s a tank on the ice, with big hits and big bursts of energy. But no matter what Metros fans and Admirals fans and Ringers fans say—like the Ringers can talk, those orange goons—he’s not a dirty player. His penalties are clean and carefully chosen, deliberate and always borderline, so he can try and charm his way out of the box.

Zubarev is a dirty player.

He slashes and elbows and cross-checks and even slewfoots to an alarming degree. There’s a compilation of his game ejections, and the number of guys he intentionally draws blood from is—terrifying. It’s clear that he can’t check with his body, so he compensates by going for the nasty, bloody penalties that take guys out of the game. That’s not going to fly in the league.

Shane doesn’t have to wonder why Boston would invest so much in such a wildcard. He watches over and over again as Zubarev skates like he isn’t even touching the ice, cutting and curving around his opponents like his ankles are made of rubber. It seems like every pass is made by reading his linemate’s minds and scores so beautifully that it makes Shane’s mouth go dry. He would remind Shane of Ilya, but even Ilya didn’t have that much—grace. At least, not in the beginning. There’s an effortlessness to his stick-handling and skating that needs refining but has flashes of potential so magical it makes Shane think of Datsyuk and Fedorov. And schedule extra ice time with Donny, their skills coach.

A text appears at the top of his screen. Lily sent a photo, and it’s basically the same as the one Shane sent. Ilya doesn't have nearly as many endorsements and commercials as Shane, but there are a few, and the same ones every year. He calls it Dunks, Dicks, and Ducks, which means Dunkin’ Donuts, the American sporting goods store, and that children’s hospital in Boston with the duck statues.

Today must be Dunks, based on the massive plastic cup of iced coffee Ilya’s holding in front of his face in the dressing room mirror, shirtless and grinning while a woman does something to his curls. But he also gets a massive plastic cup of iced coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts basically every morning.

His chain is kinked, and the cross is flipped. Shane itches to reach through the screen and fix it somehow.

Jane:
Don’t go Hollywood on me

Lily:
i thought u like hollywood??

Then, he sends a picture of his mostly hard dick and his come pooling on his stomach and happy trail. Jesus.

Lily:
my cum so sad & lonely this morning no beautiful freckles to go in :(

Jane:
Jesus Christ

Jane:
*On

Jane:
Later okay?

Ilya sends the eye-roll emoji in response, then the red heart emoji.

Shane looks around the trailer, even though he knows he’s alone. He stares at the photo, gives his dick a consoling squeeze, and then deletes the photo.

The thing is, Shane doesn’t mind the actual shooting and filming. Except for the ones where they want his input and want him to be, like, creative. But they usually pass on those proposals, and today Reebok is just doing photos of him running and jumping and stuff. Which is great because they tell him where to stand and what to do, and the day is long, but Shane doesn’t have to do anything except follow directions.

He plays nice at dinner with the execs and his mom. By the time the lock on his hotel room door whirs open, Shane is beyond exhausted, his patience and tolerance for acting polite and normal worn beyond thin, an exercise band paling before it recoils or rips.

There’s a bouquet of roses on the desk.

It’s—massive. Gaudy. Nonsensical. There’s a note popping out of the petals, and Shane gently pulls it from its plastic holder thing.

Roses are red, Metros are blue, my heart belongs to you. Love, Lily.

Oh.

Shane thumbs the corner of the cardstock, reading the message over and over again. It’s just one silly sentence, not even totally correct, but he can’t. Process it. It’s like Ilya wrote it in Russian, but he didn’t. He wrote Shane a silly poem in English and sent it with a bouquet to Shane’s stupid hotel room in Toronto. The second time in as many weeks that he’s gotten flowers from Ilya.

Shane sits on the edge of the bed and then stands.

He reaches for his phone.

“Hi, handsome,” Rose answers after two rings. “Long time no talk.”

Shane rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry, I’ve—”

“Don’t sweat it,” she interrupts. She always tells him to apologize less. “What’s up?”

There’s bustling in the background, someone yelling about gaffers. Apparently, everyone was on a set of some kind today.

“Shane?” Rose prompts.

He closes his eyes. The back of his neck is irritated from the hair and makeup team’s electric razor. They wanted to clean up the growth at the nape of his neck. It prickles as he asks, “Was I a bad boyfriend?”

Rose laughs, that low and raspy full-throated giggle that he liked best. “Babe.”

He rubs his neck, the stubble there. “What?”

“You were a great boyfriend. I hated it.”

Rose always says these kinds of things, where she starts her point with a corner piece, then follows up with something random from the center, and leaves Shane to put the puzzle together. “That…those sentences don’t go together.”

“Yes, they do,” she says. “It was, like, wow, he’s so thoughtful and attentive and loves to listen to me talk about my day and puts up with all the fame bullshit, and he’s hot. If you were, like, even one little bit into vaginas, I would’ve locked that shit down.”

“Rose.”

“Plus, you’re so coachable! I feel like we really could’ve gotten somewhere with the pussy eating if you weren’t miserable—”

“I wasn’t miserable!”

“—So yes, you were a good boyfriend, and had it not required you to live a lie, I would’ve babytrapped you in a heartbeat.”

“You wouldn’t have had to babytrap me, I would’ve, like, proposed and stuff, probably.” He thought that’s what would happen eventually, anyway. He mostly made peace with it. “Okay, that’s, uh, good to know.”

“Oh, babe. It’s okay! You’re an even better best friend.”

He doesn’t answer that, either. He doesn’t want to be a good friend to Ilya. Friends don’t send each other roses.

“Wait,” Rose says, “why are you asking? Are you finally getting out there? You promised you’d let me set up your Raya profile if you did. You can’t deprive me of that, that’s not fair. You owe me.”

“No, I’m not—” Shane rubs two knuckles over the headache forming behind his eyebrows. He doesn’t want to lie to Rose. She doesn’t deserve that. But he’s not just going to tell her about Ilya. He’s not sure how to be a good boyfriend, but he knows that much at least. “I was just thinking. I don’t know.”

“Hmm,” Rose hums. She’s probably seen right through him.

“Listen, I’ve got to go,” Shane says, trying to preempt anything else. “I’m exhausted from this shoot. I have no idea how you do this every day.”

She laughs. “I’m a masochist, just like you.”

Jesus Christ. He’s glad he didn’t FaceTime her. His ears are warm against the glass of his phone screen. They say goodbye, and Shane flops backward on the bed. The bouquet looms over the tips of his socked toes. At least the comforter is nice and cold.

He needs to shower. Get out of his outside clothes. He lolls his head to the side, looking at his phone in his outstretched arm. He needs to call Ilya. To thank him for the roses, but also just to hear him say goodnight, or to fall asleep to Ilya talking about his day. Shane misses him so much.

Five minutes. He gets a five-minute reset to lie down and wait for the weird, sticky sensation coating his skin and his esophagus to go away, and then he’ll get up and take some Tylenol and shower and call.

—

He sleeps the entire flight from Toronto to Montreal, and bypasses his apartment to drive straight to the cottage. He’s got all of two days to get everything packed up to head back to his apartment and make sure everything is ready for the cleaners and the guy that comes out to winterize everything.

It’s not totally necessary. He’s got a lot of stuff that stays at the cottage throughout the year that he just has double of. Shane remembers the way he and his parents would pile everything on the kitchen table to take back to Ottawa, and running back and forth to the car to pack the piles and piles of the stuff they needed for the summer, the flashlights and sunscreen and puzzles. It used to make him sad that he was saying goodbye to the summer, even if he was excited to get back to hockey. But now he likes the routine of it.

Well, he usually likes the routine of it. It’s—different now.

“I don’t know why,” Shane says. Through the Land Rover’s speakers, he can hear Ilya pant. He’s on a long run looping around some trail outside Boston.

“Is big summer,” Ilya says. “Lots of change, and—oh, hello, who are you?”

This has to be the fifth dog Ilya’s come across since Shane called him. He’s stopped to pet every single one.

A woman’s voice says something, and Ilya laughs. “Yes, hello, Ortiz. You not go with Big Papi? Yeah, he is a little guy. Oh, you have pen? Is okay, I bring one.”

Ilya keeps a Sharpie in his running belt. He always has. He never says no to signing something or taking a selfie, and he always looks happy in the photos when they hit the internet.

“Sure, okay, if you don’t mind sweat.” The woman must lean her head in for a photo because he can hear her laugh and say, I don’t mind it. She’s definitely flirting.

Shane focuses on passing the truck in front of him. They have a Metros bumper sticker. Shane waves as he drives by. That’ll make their day.

“Okay, nice to meet you. Bye, Ortiz.” Ilya’s breathing picks up as he starts running again. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Shane says. “What kind of dog was he?”

“Little curly kind. Very cute. Big brown eyes. You know I like big brown eyes.”

God. “Yeah, I know.”

“What were we—ah. So it’s different. Different does not mean bad,” Ilya says. “Lots of things different this year.”

Yeah. And Shane doesn’t appreciate the reminder. He doesn’t say anything, and Ilya laughs, breathless.

“Don’t pout, Shaneshine. Some things stay the same. I will still beat you on ice. And beat you off.”

“You shouldn’t call me that in public,” Shane says, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. Before Ilya can say anything else, he adds, “How many times do you think you’ve made that joke?”

“I don’t know, how many times have I beaten you?” The sounds of footsteps stop. “Where the fuck did I park.”

“You’re done?” He looks at the time. Oh—they’ve been on the phone for 45 minutes already.

“Yes, just 10k. I know it takes you a long time to run a 10k, but I’m very fast, you know?”

Shane rolls his eyes. “My service is probably going to get spotty pretty soon anyway.”

“How much longer to the cottage?’

Shane checks his GPS, which he doesn’t even need, really. “Uh, like, thirty minutes? But I’m going to swing by my parents’ place and pick up my dad. He’s gonna help with the boat. We’re dry docking it.”

Ilya barks out a laugh. “Yes, because you need me for the other kind of docking.”

“Ilya, what does that even mean.”

He swears he can hear the smile when Ilya says, “Google later, and then FaceTime me. Okay, I go. I have to find my car, and you are too distracting. Love you.”

“Wait—are there going to be more flowers at the cottage?” He still feels guilty that he fell asleep and didn’t call Ilya about the roses until the next morning. And that he had to leave them behind in the hotel room because he couldn’t take them on the plane. “You can’t keep getting me flowers.”

He said that when he called about the roses, and Ilya just laughed.

“No, not this time,” Ilya says, and Shane’s brain sticks on this time this time this time. “I have to keep some surprises. Oh—okay, I find car. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” Shane says. He looks at himself in the rearview mirror after the call disconnects, the stupid expression on his face that’s been there more often than not since their first drive up to the cottage in July. He wonders if it’ll ever become normal, this background radiation that fuzzes and frizzes around him, a sparkler licking his hand as he traces it through summer air.

Dad comments on it when he gets in the car, says Shane looks happy, and asks after Ilya. It still—chafes. The visibility of it all, even just to his parents. For so long, Ilya was private, and every stolen moment caged with guilt. He should want his parents to know about Ilya—has wanted that for so long—but now that they do, it’s just.

Weird. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

Dry docking isn’t difficult, but he still works up a sweat in the dark humidity of the boat house. He doesn’t mind. He likes working on things with his dad, the comfortable silence as they move in tandem. They move onto the Ski-Doos, and by the time they’re docked and covered with tarps, the sun is starting to set. Dad goads Shane into a beer, and Shane needs to finish them off; he doesn’t want to cart them back to the apartment, so he agrees.

They sit on the deck chairs and watch the sun set over the lake. Shane awkwardly made his dad swap seats with him because he blew Ilya on the other chair last time they were here. He tries not to think about it.

He taps his beer bottle against his lip. Sets it down on the arm of his chair. “Can I ask you something?”

Dad looks at him, a little confused, like he always is, but maybe—curious. “Sure, bud. You can ask me anything.”

“When you and Mom first, like, got together, did you, like—want to talk constantly?”

Dad tilts his head. “Well, it was different. We didn’t have cell phones or anything like that. And we met while we were living in the dorms, so it was pretty easy to see each other. It was tough when your mom went to study abroad, but we made it work.”

His mom spent a semester in Paris. They wrote each other emails back and forth. It was the reason his dad got an email address. They tell the story at parties. It’s sweet.

Shane nods, but—that was email. He could probably email back and forth with someone. But maybe he couldn’t—Rose got mad at him, in the beginning, because he would forget to text her back, and then because he didn’t call her enough, even though they saw each other constantly.

Ilya’s really bad at texting. He’s told Shane before that he just forgets to respond, like the messages disappear from his brain when he swipes away. Shane thought they texted constantly, but apparently they weren’t, because they text nonstop now. But Ilya also wants to talk on the phone every day. Multiple times a day. And Shane loves him, loves talking to him, but it’s a lot of talking. It's not draining, but it’s…not not draining.

“Is everything okay with Ilya?”

Shane sits up a little. His dad is watching him.

“Yeah, it’s just. I don’t know,” Shane says. And—he doesn’t. He can’t just say, I found the man I want to marry a decade ago, and I can’t marry him for another decade, and I’m terrified that one day he’s going to wake up and realize that the work and the wait aren’t worth it and he’ll resent me for wasting his time.

It buzzes in his ears like mosquitoes that won’t leave him alone, biting at him before he can swat the thought away.

Shane drains the rest of his beer and stands, his knees popping when he does. “I should get packing. Let me drive you back.”

Dad looks like he wants to say something else, but shrugs and finishes his own beer. “Well, I’m here for you if you ever want to talk more, eh? You know that.”

Everybody’s always there for him to talk to. Has everyone forgotten that Shane kind of really fucking hates talking?

“Yeah,” he says, taking his dad’s bottle from him to rinse and recycle. “Yeah, I know.”

The sun is all the way set by the time Shane gets back from driving his dad back. He collapses on the couch in the living room, rubbing his forehead and then exhaling as he stares at—nothing, really, and thinks about everything he still has to do.

Something colorful glints in the blurred middle distance. He sits up and then kneels on the couch to squint at the commemorative trophy he got when he won the Calder for rookie of the year. In blue marker—God, please don’t be Sharpie—someone has written over the inscription, which now reads:

ROZANOV BEST
Shane Hollander SUCKS!!!
Calder Memorial Trophy - 2010-2011
FUCK THE Montreal Metros
Увидимся в следующем сезоне. Люблю вас.

Shane smiles as he reads it again. He hasn’t seen Ilya write in Cyrillic before—the last time he saw something Ilya wrote by hand was on a hospital whiteboard. The Cyrillic is big and blocky like Ilya’s English letters, like he’s trying to be as careful and legible as possible. He thumbs over the ROZANOV, and immediately regrets it when the marker wipes away. He must’ve used one of the dry-erase markers from the gym.

Shane carefully types the Cyrillic into Google Translate. See you next season. Love you.

He takes a picture of it and sends it to Lily, before returning the trophy to its place on the bookcase, mindful of smudging or removing any more writing.

His phone vibrates in his pocket.

Lily:
?????

Lily:
who would do this

Lily:
u have break in????

Shane huffs. No one’s around to see his fond smile, but he wishes Ilya were.

Jane:
I’ve already reported it to the police. They’re starting a manhunt. Whoever vandalized this should probably go into hiding.

Lily:
ah u try again to cheat bc u cant beat me!!! sad!!!

Then, a video comes through. It’s Ilya and a young girl, both wearing mouse ears from Disney.

“Millie brought me very nice present from familymoon. Millie, say hi to Jane.”

Millie glances at Ilya and delivers a devastating eye roll. “No, ’cause you won’t wear the earrings. Daddy wears the earrings.”

Ilya drops his jaw. “They hurt!”

From offscreen, Marlow booms, “No pain, no gain, Roz!”

“Fuck off, Daddy,” Ilya says, flipping Marlow off, which sets Millie off into a fit of giggles as she clumsily copies him with a very tiny, very inexperienced middle finger.

The video ends, and another photo comes through. It’s Ilya and Marlow at a children’s table, their knees to their ears, which are dangling with plastic earrings.

It might be one of the cutest fucking things Shane’s ever seen.

Jane:
Are you still at Marlows?

Lily:
no was earlier home now

A FaceTime comes through. Shane thinks about letting it ring, texting Ilya that he’s wiped, and then immediately feels guilty for it.

“Did you Google?” Ilya asks as soon as his face fills Shane’s screen.

“Wha—oh. No, hang on.” Shane swipes over to his internet browser and opens a new incognito tab. Just to be safe. He types in docking sex and immediately flushes red.

He closes out the tab. “Do people actually do that?”

Ilya shrugs. “People who have foreskin do.”

“Have you—doesn’t it hurt?”

Ilya grins, the kind of grin that always makes Shane chub up a little in nervous, shivery anticipation. “Some hurt isn’t bad. You like it, no?”

Shane runs a hand over the waistband of his shorts. “Ilya.”

“What, you need something?” Ilya hauls himself upward off his couch, his face changing in the alternating light and dark as he moves through his house. He digs for something and then flops back on his bed. “You should go to bedroom. Get naked. Be good for me.”

His stomach lurches in a good way, eagerness peppering red across his skin as he hurries to the bedroom, pulling off his shirt as he goes. He throws it in the vague direction of the hamper and tosses his phone on the bed to kick off his shorts and boxer briefs before climbing on the bed. Ilya’s got his phone propped up against some pillows and is already fucking his hard dick into a clear pocket pussy.

Jesus. Shane didn’t know he had one of those. Or that people actually, like, bought them. He’s only heard guys be nasty about it in the locker room.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, spit flooding his mouth and sweat prickling under his arms and the back of his legs as he watches the flex of Ilya’s arm as he jacks the toy, the way lube wets the curly nest of hair at the base of his dick, darker than the rest of the hair on Ilya’s body. Shane wants to bury his nose there, wants to lick up the length of Ilya’s cock, and then take him all the way down his throat until he can’t think of or breathe anything that isn’t Ilya.

“I want you to play with your pretty tits,” Ilya says. “Set your phone up and show me your hole and don’t touch your dick.”

Fuck. God. Shane closes his eyes, his throat clicking as he nods. He sets his phone up on a stack of pillows and leans against the headboard, his feet planted on the bed and legs spread, cool air tickling his taint and hole, now bared to Ilya. He reaches up and squeezes his pec like Ilya always does.

“Fuck, Shane,” Ilya says, his eyes dark and half-lidded. “Pinch your tits, c’mon, be good for me.”

Shane nods as he thumbs over his pebbled nipple, hissing as he pinches it between his thumb and forefinger. He reaches for his right pec and does the same.

“I should get you clamps,” Ilya says. “Maybe I make you go to the kitchen. Get the, the bag things. Clips.”

Fuck. Shane is so hard. “Can I touch myself?”

“You are touching yourself, sweetheart,” Ilya coos. “Push your tits together.”

Shane does, his entire body burning.

“I wanna fuck your tits so bad, baby,” Ilya says. “God, you would like it so much, no?”

“I would,” Shane says, his voice hoarse with need. “Ilya, can I please—I’m so hard.”

“No,” Ilya says, and groans as he sits up a little, like he wants to see Shane better. “I want to look at your tits and watch your needy hole and get myself off to my favorite porn.”

Oh, God. God. “Jesus Christ,” Shane says, closing his eyes.

“No, Ilya Rozanov,” Ilya says. “Eyes open. Watch me come.”

Shane wrenches his eyes open, thumbing and pinching his nipple, awkward as he keeps them pushed together. His hips are starting to twitch, like he wants to. Fucking. Hump the air like a fucking slut. He wants to get a hand on his dick so badly. He’s leaking now, and it’s making him shiver, the kiss of the chilled evening air against the warm precome coating his cockhead frisson and pimples over his skin.

Ilya’s chest is flushed red, too, sweat starting to shine in the lamplight. The veins in his forearm become more prominent as he works his cock, and Shane wishes he were there, wishes he could bite and lick and suck the sweat from his skin.

“God, you are so beautiful,” Ilya says, his mouth half-open, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. “Perfect tits, perfect cock, perfect hole. Perfect for me.”

Shane watches as Ilya groans, low and pained as he arches his back, his hips thrusting into the toy, his come flooding the silicon. Ilya pulls the toy away from his dick, shiny with lube and come, and Shane is desperate to take him into his mouth and suck him clean.

“Ilya, please, can I—”

“Fine,” Ilya says, waving his hand with a flick of his wrist. “Get yourself off if you need it so bad.”

He does, he does need it, and he can’t help the sound that escapes him when he finally wraps his hand around his cock, running the thumb over the slit. His eyes blur a little as he begins to jerk himself off, but he can still see Ilya peer into the toy and wrinkle his nose.

“Have to wash this out,” Ilya says, like Shane isn’t jerking off for him. “Sad. If you were here, you would drink it. Wouldn’t go to waste.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Ilya,” Shane groans, his hips jolting as he starts to come at the thought, striping his fist and stomach as he shakes through the aftershocks. He relaxes his legs, flexing his quads and calves as he stretches into the pleasant buzz of post-orgasm. “That was so hot.”

“And you’re so nasty,” Ilya says, grinning. “Would you do it?”

Shane considers it, his stomach turning as he imagines tipping Ilya’s come out of the toy and into his mouth. “Probably. If you wanted me to.”

“Fuck,” Ilya says. “God. Freak. I love you.”

“I’m not a freak,” Shane says, only a little petulant. “You’re the one who thought of it.”

“And I’m a freak, I don’t lie,” Ilya says. He puts the toy on his bedside table and tangles his arms above his head. Shane watches his muscles flex and twist as he stretches. He wishes they were together, that Ilya was lying on top of him, pressing all his weight into Shane. “You finish boat thing?”

“Yeah,” Shane says. “I just have to finish packing. I’ll call you on the drive back tomorrow?”

Ilya frowns. “Sveta wants to go shopping for Zubarev. She says my guest bathroom is sad.”

“Oh.” Shane reaches for a tissue to wipe his hand. “Okay. When does he fly in?”

“Uh, a week? I think just before rookie camp.”

“And—you’re not gonna tell him about us, right?”

“Shane, how many times I say?” Ilya looks annoyed, and Shane immediately regrets bringing it up, but. He can’t help it.

“No, I know, sorry,” Shane says. He scratches his chest. “I miss you.”

“I miss you,” Ilya says. “Maybe—you think about Vermont more?”

They discussed renting a place. Maybe meeting halfway. But. It’s so risky. There’s no reason for Shane to be in Vermont. He thinks of someone at the border recognizing him, taking a photo, posting it to the internet. Ilya will say he’s paranoid, and maybe Shane is, but—he wants to keep this. He’ll do anything he can to keep it. And if that means missing Ilya’s body so the world doesn’t find out, he’ll do it.

He doesn’t think Ilya will understand, though. He always thinks it’ll be fine. He’s really trusting.

“I don’t know,” Shane says eventually. “The guys are coming back into town. J.J. wants to organize a couple of morning skates. I don’t want anyone to be suspicious. It’s not like I take a lot of weekend trips.”

“Maybe you get into skiing this winter,” Ilya says, and huffs a laugh when Shane rolls his eyes. “Okay, keep thinking about it. No big deal. Just, I miss you, yes?”

It’s at least ten more years of this, realistically. And Shane wants to try to push himself to play at 40. Even after Ilya moves to Ottawa, it’s going to be—this. Ilya begging for more, and Shane trying to keep them safe.

His stomach rolls. He shouldn’t have drunk that beer.

“I should go make dinner,” Shane says. “I’ll call you when I get back to Montreal?”

Ilya smiles, a soft, private smile, the kind Shane never sees in selfies or in press photos, and the nausea recedes a little.

They say goodbye. Shane can do this. He can be a good boyfriend.

—

His apartment is stale and oddly foreign after so much time away.

Shane turns on the low lights and sets his keys in the little ceramic bowl by the door. It rained the entire drive back from the cottage, and he might be getting a sinus infection like he always gets toward the end of summer, no matter what he does.

He hangs up his suits in the hall closet, where he hangs everything that needs to be sent for dry cleaning, leaves his suitcase at the base of the staircase, and gets himself a glass of water from the fridge.

Ilya’s home care instructions are still tacked to the fridge.

Shane has been back here since he got injured, but not for any meaningful amount of time. Mostly just to pack for the summer.

But he was pretty concussed then. He’s not, now.

He trails his fingers over the paper. It’s a little wrinkly. He remembers throwing it between them as they fought.

Ilya was all over the cottage, too. Water-logged ashes and cigarette butts littered across a plate on the deck. A pair of goggles bought on Amazon and left behind for next summer. The cans of Coke in the basement fridge. The swim trunks at the bottom of Shane’s hamper. The note Shane didn’t wipe off his trophy.

If he looked around, Shane is sure he’d find a dozen other artifacts of Ilya, of his recovery. Of the three weeks they spent together before everything changed.

He told Ilya he’d call when he got back to Montreal. He said he couldn’t talk on the drive because of the rain.

The guys in the locker room always rag on Shane for not being good with change. But he’s fine with it, really. Ilya’s right. There was a lot of change this summer, and he’s handled it fine so far. But—it’s not unreasonable to have a limit. This season is going to be hard enough. He can suck it up and call Ilya as much as Ilya wants, but meeting each other halfway in Vermont is out of the question.

It’s not just that someone could recognize him. The more Ilya and Shane are together, the more Ilya will realize how much he doesn’t want to be apart, probably. Keeping things the way they are is the best plan of action. That’s what they’re used to.

Shane sits on the couch and turns his phone over in his hands. He sighs and pulls up Ilya’s contact. As the phone rings, he thinks, I can make this work.

After all, you can’t miss what you never had in the first place.

Chapter End Notes

Y'ALL. I am so so so honored by the response to the first chapter!!!

Thank you for being patient with this chapter. I had to finish my Ice Out HR fic, which sidetracked me a bit, but I'm very proud of it!

This chapter was beta'd by the incomparable Marivan. It's such a joy to work together, and I think that joy is evident in what we produce!!! Go read her incredible fic Not a Strip of Paper Merely. I will never stop reccing it!!!

Come hang out with me on tumblr at @flawlessassholes and reblog the fic art. Back with ch. 3 soon!!!

Chapter 3

Chapter Summary

He crosses a checkpoint with a red line and a bored agent; the point of no return. When he rounds a corner, there’s a man in a Raiders shirt standing with a sign that says Zubarev in English and Russian.

Go time.

Chapter Notes

The flight to Boston is short.

The city itself is short. Nothing like New York, but he’d never seen anything like New York. But Boston’s airport is surrounded by water like New York’s. Are all airports in America built on water? That doesn’t seem like a good idea. But what the fuck does he know; it’s only his second time in America, and the first time he flew from New York to some place called Fort Lauderdale for the draft, and that airport was also built on the ocean.

He’s lucky he made the connection at all. He was held up by customs for his inhaler of all things, and he hasn’t yet selected a film from the meager selection of Russian-subtitled movies when the pilot says they’re beginning their initial descent. He doesn’t even have time to try and fuck the flight attendant making eyes at him.

It’s okay. He still has a hickey on his neck from the woman seated next to him on the flight from Moscow to Paris. Yulia. She blew him in a cramped stall in the lavatory next to his gate before she had to leave for her train. God, he should’ve gotten a picture of her on her knees for him. Her tits were massive.

It looks like a nice day, at least. The ocean is all he’s looked at for the past eight hours, but the coast of the city is dotted with white—what he realizes are sailboats and yachts as the tarmac comes into view.

The landing is unremarkable. His seat in the exit row is cramped, and his legs ache with restless energy. He’s spent less than four of the last twenty-four hours below 9,000 meters and slept even less; exhaustion pushes against his brow bone, and his eyes sting like both are blackened.

He departs the plane with a wink thrown in the pretty flight attendant’s direction, and focuses on finding the nearest WC.

He pisses like a fucking racehorse and looks just as neurotic. He splashes his face with cold water to try to wake himself up and slow his racing pulse because his body apparently thinks he took speed and a sleeping pill at the same time. He needs to pull it together.

He wipes his hands on his sweatpants, shoulders his backpack, and follows the little rolling suitcase illustrations to what he prays is baggage claim. They said someone from the team would meet him there and drive him to wherever the fuck Rozanov lives.

He crosses a checkpoint with a red line and a bored agent; the point of no return. When he rounds a corner, there’s a man in a Raiders shirt standing with a sign that says Zubarev in English and Russian.

Go time.

“Hello,” he says to the man, somehow sounding halfway confident and fluent despite whatever the fuck is crawling under his skin. “I am Dmitry Zubarev.”

«Ah, hey man,» the guy responds in Russian. «Nice to meet you. Jake Eliashvili, I’m a trainer with the team. You go by Dmitry or Dima?»

…What the fuck?

The aching pressure trapped in his skull and behind his eyes protests how far Dima’s eyebrows have shot up his forehead. As he shakes the guy's outstretched hand, he slowly and stupidly says, «Dima, yeah. You speak Russian?»

Jake shrugs. «Depends who you’re asking. I say yes, so do my parents and the team. Roz says it’s debatable at best.»

He exhales half of a laugh, half in relief. Jake has an absurd accent, nothing like Dima’s ever heard before, but he’s funny. That’s good enough.

Jake juts his chin toward the carousel. «Anyway, let’s get your bags and get on the road. Traffic’s going to be a nightmare.»

There’s no way the traffic in this city is anything close to a nightmare, considering he just came from Moscow.

He’s wrong.

Nobody in this city can drive. It’s nearly enough to make him homesick.

They’re lurching along when Jake says, «You hungry?» and jabs his thumb at some containers buckled into a child’s car seat. «My sole job for the preseason is to get some meat on your bones.»

Ha. Good luck with that.

Dima is starving, though, because he’s always starving. He twists himself to snag what he realizes is the mouthwatering scent he assumed he was hallucinating out of desperation. He opens the lid and gingerly unwraps the tinfoil. Huh.

«Are these…pirozhki?»

«Ah, no, but similar,» Jake says. «They’re empanadas. My wife is Puerto Rican.»

«Oh, like West Side Story?»

Jake turns his entire upper body to stare at Dima, the seatbelt rucking the collar of his shirt.

«What? I have three sisters.» Dima focuses on the food and ignores the hot embarrassment licking his ears. Then, because his mother raised him right, he adds, «Tell your wife thank you.»

He stops short of moaning when he bites into the empanada, but it’s fucking delicious. «This is incredible. Why am I not living with you?»

«Well, we only have two bedrooms, and I think you’re a little tall for my six-year-old’s bottom bunk,» Jake says. «And I’m not sure you’d be into the Moana bedspread. I also wasn’t with the team when you were drafted, so Roz offered.»

Offered? Dima assumed he was forced on Rozanov, considering he hasn’t reached out once since Boston started moving things along with Dima’s agent.

Whatever. He concentrates on chewing his food instead of inhaling it. By the time he’s finished all eight, the ravenous hunger has subsided in the way he knows is only temporary, and a jet stream of exhaustion engulfs him, arcing around every surface of his body. The intermittent honks from the cars around them keep startling him awake, and Dima concentrates on staying upright instead of Jake’s outline of the next few weeks.

A nightmare scenario pops into his head in the haze between horns: him, half-asleep, bumbling and back-footed when he meets Ilya Rozanov for the first time; a lost child a long, long way from home.

That won't happen. Dima is determined that won’t happen.

They exit the highway into winding streets lined with thick trees and massive, gated homes, with multiple fancy cars in each driveway. The homes grow sparse, and they finally reach a gated drive with a square, modern house set a ways back. Jake has a code, and as the gates give way, so does any lingering tiredness, that strung-out, jittery fight-or-fight reigniting in Dima’s veins.

It’s a long walk to a massive, fuck-off door that seems to stretch to the sky. Jake drops the handle of Dima’s suitcase and knocks while Dima stands with a backpack and a duffel bag and tries not to feel like a child who just got shipped to their evil stepmother’s house for the summer.

Ilya Rozanov is short, too.

Most people are short to Dima, but Rozanov is still shorter than he expected—and staring at Dima.

«Well, come in, then,» Rozanov says after another second. «You’re letting the air-conditioning out. Yasha, you want a beer?»

«I’m good, I have to pick Anna up from gymnastics,» Jake says, as he leaves Dima’s suitcase in the foyer. «I’m just playing cabbie today. I’ll see you both on Wednesday?»

«Yeah, text me your order,» Rozanov says, clapping Jake’s hand and pulling him into a slapping hug. «Say hi to Ria.»

«She wants you both to come for dinner,» Jake says. He pats Dima on the shoulder. «Text me if you need anything. Roz, give him my number?»

Rozanov nods, and closes the door behind Jake, and then—

Nothing. Just Rozanov, eyeing Dima.

Dima has the urge to apologize. For what, he doesn’t know.

«Let me show you to your room,» Rozanov says, taking the handle of Dima’s suitcase, the wheels rolling too-loud across the hardwood floors.

Dima follows. The house is massive and echoing and—impersonal, is his first impression. Rozanov points out the den, the kitchen, the pool, the pond across the vast swath of the garden. His room is down a long hallway from what Rozanov says is the master suite. It’s big, but simple. A dresser, a king-sized bed with an abstract painting above the headboard, a plush armchair, and a massive television mounted to the wall. He has his own bathroom. Dima’s stayed in worse places.

«Get settled,» Rozanov says, his hand on the doorknob. «I’ll order dinner. You like burgers?»

«Who doesn’t like burgers?» Dima tries to smile, an offered joke. Rozanov doesn’t react beyond a one-shouldered shrug and closes the door when he leaves.

Dima will need to get an American SIM card. And the WiFi password to text Mama and Papa and let them know that he made it to Rozanov’s. The twins, too. Alenka is at the age where she’s pretending she won’t miss him, but Dima knows she cried after he and Papa left for the airport.

All at once, he is so fucking irate, his hands balling into fists as he tries to take deep breaths and not think, fuck this, fuck all of this. You’re better than this. You should have gone first. You should be in Sunrise, leading a rebuild to glory, fucking models, winning the cup. You shouldn’t be here, in the guest bedroom of Ilya Fucking Rozanov, like a fucking child.

He forces himself to calm down in the bathroom, his hands flat against the cool marble before he splashes his face with water and rakes the excess through his hair, wiping the stubble at the nape of his neck. He should’ve gotten a haircut before he left. He imagines sitting in a barber’s chair and trying to explain how close he likes to be clipped. The anger devolves back to exhaustion, a constant pendulum ever since his agent fucked up getting him to the combine and he tumbled down the draft order past all the good Canadian and American boys that weren’t toiling away flying eleven miserable hours to play a miserable game in front of some miserable Siberians.

«The only way is forward,» he says to himself in the mirror. «You fucking pussy. Man the fuck up.»

He slaps his face once, twice, like he’s punch-drunk from a nasty hit along the boards and the ammonia isn’t working.

The only way is forward.

Rozanov is leaning against the stove, poking at his phone. He nods at Dima, then tips his head to the island. «The food will be here soon.»

«Thanks,» Dima says, sitting on the stool. «What’s the WiFi password? I should call my parents. I need an American number, I guess, and—»

«In a minute,» Rozanov interrupts. «Do you go by Dima? Zubar?»

«Dima. Zubar for the team, I guess.» Dima shrugs. «Doesn’t really matter. They’ll probably butcher whatever I say and give me something stupid.»

«It’s North American hockey,» Rozanov says. «You take what they give, and you don’t complain. Russians have it hard enough over here. I put up with Rozy, you’ll put up with Zuby or whatever they give you.»

«What do you prefer?» Dima asks. He can’t just call him Ilya, and Rozanov doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that’ll put up with being called Ilyusha.

«Rozy. Roz. Whatever.» Rozanov looks him up and down, folding his arms. «How’s your English?»

«Fine? I understand more than I speak.» He scratches the back of his neck. He doesn’t want to say that he can’t read or write for shit. For whatever reason, a knot below his diaphragm says that’s admitting too much.

Rozanov’s expression doesn’t shift. «I’m going to lay down some ground rules, and then after that, we’ll only speak English. You need to learn.»

«Okay?» Dima has no issue with immersion, but it seems like—

«Here’s the deal,» Rozanov starts. «No drugs and no parties in my house, and no drinking in public unless we’re in Canada.»

Haha. What.

No parties? No drugs? Is he talking to Ilya Rozanov, or was he body-snatched by a boring, North American alien?

Dima’s laugh dies in his throat at the hard glare in Rozanov’s eyes.

«If it gets to the press that you’re drinking underage or if you knock a girl up or embarrass me somehow, I won’t even get them to put you on a bus to Providence, I’ll have you shipped all the way down to fucking Atlanta. Understand?»

What the fuck?

«Sorry, did I betray you in a past life or something?» Dima crosses his own arms. «What fly bit you?»

Rozanov is immovable. «This is an opportunity that every guy back home would kill for. Do you know how many of us get drafted and never even make it to training camp? They call us lazy. Unwilling to adapt. Bad leaders. Locker room cancer. There are more Finns in the league right now than Russians, and there sure as hell isn’t another team with a Russian captain. If you fuck up, it’s not just your fuck up, it’s mine, and every single one of us going back to the fucking Russian five.»

Dima inhales through his nose, and after a noisy exhale says, «I don’t know what the fuck I did to piss you off, or to give you the impression that I’m not serious about this, but I am. I’ve been trying to make this work since I was a fucking kid. You think my parents could afford the lawyers we hired to try to get me out of my contract with Dynamo? I got lucky getting released, and you’d have to break my fucking legs before I do anything to waste this opportunity.»

Rozanov’s eyes don’t leave Dima, watching him so closely it itches. But apparently, Dima passed Rozanov’s fucked up test, because he nods once and finally uncrosses his arms. «Good.»

Good? Good? That’s all he has to say? Is Dima fucking—high? Or still asleep somewhere above the Atlantic? Is Rozanov high? «Okay. Well—glad we could get that settled?»

Rozanov rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to say something else when the doorbell rings. He holds up one finger, and Dima watches him leave the kitchen. He can’t make out whatever Rozanov says to the person at the door, but he returns with an armful of grease-stained paper bags and a cigarette in his mouth.

«Oh, you smoke?» Dima’s stomach rumbles as if to protest asking a question instead of diving face-first into the food. He can smell fries. He’s trying not to drool.

Rozanov sets two bags on the island and dumps the third out, four massive tinfoil-wrapped burgers rolling out. «You’re not bumming one off me, buy your own.»

«No, I—» One of the bags contains nothing but unshelled peanuts. This country is so fucking weird. Dima pulls his hand away and looks up. Rozanov is watching him again. «I just have asthma, so I try to avoid people who smoke?»

Rozanov looks up at the ceiling and lets out an ugh. «You’re annoying me already. This is going to be a fucking nightmare.»

Dima would protest, but it seems like Rozanov is—joking, maybe. And he tucks the cigarette behind his ear, so maybe they’re getting somewhere.

“Okay,” Rozanov says, unwrapping his burger. “English now. Tell me why you are excited to play for Boston. The press will ask.”

Dima stares longingly at the other three burgers. «Can I eat first?» he tries.

Rozanov cups a hand to his ear. “What was that?”

Dima grits his teeth, his temples throbbing. “I eat?”

“Sure, yes. Whatever. I’m not your mother.”

Dima isn’t so sure about that, since he’s red-faced with smarted skin like he was whacked on the back of his hand with a wooden spoon.

He unwraps a burger and eats half of it in one bite. He looks up at Rozanov, who raises an expectant eyebrow.

Dima chews and swallows around the lump in his throat. “Ah. Boston is…good? Team? Good, ah, history. Excite play with best like Rozanov?”

Rozanov rolls his eyes again. “Needs work, but it will do for now.”

But then—maybe he smiles? Dima can’t tell if it’s genuine, and he can’t make sense of—this. Any of this. Needs work? It will do for now? Who died and made Rozanov—

Dima needs to calm down and remember that this is Rozanov’s team, Rozanov’s house, Rozanov’s world. He’s waited and waded through two years of bullshit for this opportunity. If he needs to bide his time, listen, observe, learn the rules of the game, then that’s fine by Dima.

He’s always been a quick study.

—

The Raiders’ practice facility is insane.

Dynamo was fine, but everything was old and nothing like the brand-new, state-of-the-art arena he’s getting a tour of with the rest of the rookies. Some of the guys in the group have apparently already been here for development camp, but Dima isn’t the only one totally new and totally taken aback by how fucking nice the place is.

He hangs toward the back with a goalie who introduces himself by saying, “I’m Anders, but everyone calls me Eggy,” and is the only guy taller than Dima and also from Europe, though it sounds like he speaks perfect English because he’s Swedish or Finnish, and they always do.

They’re led to the locker room, where Raiders practice jerseys are hanging in lockers with their names emblazoned on the back and on nameplates above. Dima’s surprised to see his number on everything. He thought Boston would’ve had a 57 already, and he’d have to switch. At least one thing in his life will stay the same.

He changes into a pair of mesh shorts and a black-and-yellow t-shirt with the Raiders’ spoked R. Other guys are chatting, taking selfies, posing for photos with the media team like they’re dying children on a last-chance tour and not professionals vying for the opportunity of a lifetime.

He focuses on re-tying and double-knotting his trainers when a hush falls over the room, and he hears Rozanov’s voice say, “Okay, listen up!”

By the whiteboard, Rozanov stands with two guys much taller than he is. Between dropping Dima off at the facility and now, he’s acquired a massive plastic cup of coffee from that place he goes to every morning.

“It is nice to meet all of you. I am Ilya Rozanov, I am your captain, but you know this.” Rozanov grins with that charming, shit-eating smile that Dima has only ever seen in videos and photos because it hasn’t been turned his way once in the few days he’s been here. “I am here to welcome you to the Raiders rookie camp. This beautiful man on my left is Brad Hammersmith, and the ugly motherfucker on my right is Cliff Marlow, and they are your As. We are here to help you for as long as you are here, if you make the roster, if you go down to baby Raiders or back to juniors or whatever, while you are in our system, we’ve got you.”

Dima looks down at his brand-new shoes so he won’t roll his eyes.

“Ah, what else. Have fun, play nice, no fighting…” Rozanov trails off. “I think that is it. We will be here for lunch break. I brought Munchkins, so you’re welcome.”

Rozanov makes a shoo motion and turns around to huddle with Marlow and Hammersmith. A kid to his right with tragic acne leans over and asks, “Munchkins are like Timbits, yes?”

Dima doesn’t know if Acne is talking to him or the infant to his left, so he shrugs. The infant says, “Yeah, like little donut balls. I heard from my buddy at BC that Rozanov brings them for the start of every rookie camp. You’re billeting with him, right?”

Oh—he’s talking to Dima. He looks up and nods.

“Holy shit,” Infant says. “Is it true that he has an entire bookshelf of pornos on DVD and Blu-ray?”

“Who, Rozy?” A third kid leans in. “I heard he has a whole separate wing of his house where models just hang out naked.”

“That’s the Playboy mansion, dipshit,” Infant shoots back.

Acne nods. “I heard he has a whole sex dungeon thing in his basement modeled on the Playboy mansion.”

The three of them look at Dima, expectant.

“He not have, is one floor only,” Dima says slowly because that’s the only thing he can think of. The truth is—he’s heard those things, too. But Rozanov is…

Boring.

Dima’s only been living with him for a handful of days, and Rozanov mostly just works out and calls some girl named Jane. Dima found a beautiful collection of vodka in a special freezer, but he hasn’t seen Rozanov drink anything besides water and iced coffee and Red Bull. There are a dozen cans of ginger ale in the back of the fridge that Rozanov got pissy about Dima trying to drink, and all the rumors about wild orgies and endless lines of coke and club-hopping seem to be—just that. Rumors.

It doesn’t matter. Dima isn’t here to make friends; he’s here to make the team. He tries to keep that in mind as they weigh in and run through workouts, as he finally gets on the ice to show what he can do.

It’s exhausting, but this—men in windbreakers barking corrections, shrieking whistles, scraping steel, slapping sticks—is familiar. Fucking finally.

It’s a different level of play. Dima knew it would be, but there’s a difference between knowing and experiencing the burn in his lungs and legs, the way he soaks through his base layers and pads, desperate for water from the bench as he waits for his turn in a 3-on-3 drill. The other guys around him are chatting in low, breathless tones that Dima tunes out as his eyes wander over the banners hanging in the rafters, and land on Rozanov and Reilly, the head coach, talking in the stands.

Rozanov says something to Reilly, who laughs and nods and claps Rozanov on the shoulder.

The whistle blows, and Dima refocuses on the drill. He needs to pay attention.

The coaches on ice don’t seem eager to give out positive reinforcement, or anything other than the occasional correction. They’re silent, watching, taking notes. But that’s familiar, too—he’s rarely ever heard a compliment from a coach’s mouth. He’s Russian. And he’s not a kid—he can assess his own play, knows that he’s outskating the other guys but made a stupid mistake on a scrum drill. He won’t get cocky—or make the mistake again. He can’t.

Dima is plain past exhausted by the time they huddle around the bench. Reilly gives a curt speech about progress and effort that Dima only half-understands before they’re dismissed for the day. He showers, dresses, and doesn’t linger to chat. There’s a text from Rozanov asking to meet him in the car when he’s done. He needs to make the roster first, but getting his license and his own car is a dire priority. Rozanov clearly feels—some sort of way about Dima, and carpooling together isn’t going to help.

Rozanov is talking to Marlow by the sleek, black Porsche he seems to favor for driving around Boston over the ostentatious Maserati and Bugatti in his garage. The sun glints off the shiny exterior, and Dima cups a hand over his eyes when Rozanov spots him and nods him over. He finishes back-slapping Marlow by the time he reaches the passenger door, and says, “Get in,” as if Dima isn’t waiting for Rozanov to unlock the door.

They get stuck in traffic, which seems to be the status quo for this city, and while they idle at an intersection, Rozanov turns down whatever music he’s got blaring through the speakers.

Ah, Dima thinks. Here we go.

“They want you to do media tomorrow,” Rozanov says. “After camp ends. You will have availability, with Egnell and McPherson, I think.”

“Okay,” Dima mutters. He’s exhausted, and he doesn’t want to speak English, but Rozanov has remained firm on the immersion shit.

“Do you want Jake or me there? To translate?”

Dima stares out the window and shrugs. “Think okay.”

“Have it your way,” Rozanov says. He drums his fingers against the steering wheel as they lurch forward. He’s playing something with a heavy baseline and too low for Dima to make out if it’s rap or trap or what.

They make it to the highway when Rozanov adds, “You need to make friends with the guys.”

Dima turns. Rozanov’s face is neutral under his black Raiders cap. “What you mean?”

“You did not talk to anyone today,” Rozanov says. “You kept to yourself.”

God, what does Rozanov want from him?

Dima scoffs and shakes his head. «Yeah, I was focused on not fucking up this opportunity. This isn’t summer camp. I’m trying to make the team.»

“Ah, no,” Rozanov says, lifting a finger from the wheel like he’s a scolding mother. “Say it in English.”

Motherfucker. Dima unclenches his hand, wracking his brain.

“I’m serious,” Dima says eventually. “They not.”

“They are working just as hard as you, maybe even harder,” Rozanov says, “and if you don’t start chatting and chirping, they will say you don’t fit in and can’t be a team player. Making the roster is a game, and you have to play every —.”

“What last word?”

Rozanov rolls his eyes. «Angle.» Then, he says, “There’s a kid I know. Well, he’s your age. He’s studying, ah…”

Dima raises his eyebrows.

«Secondary language acquisition and education in post-pubescent adolescents,» Rozanov finishes in Russian, and Dima would say something miserable and snarky, but it’s not like he would have known how to say that in English either. “At Harvard. He’s offered to tutor if he can write thesis about you.”

Yeah, absolutely not. Dima already has to embarrass himself in front of Rozanov, the team, the media as he stumbles and stutters like a child, and spent most of the summer getting teased by Alenka as she went through her English textbook with him. He won’t subject himself to more of the same in his free time.

“No,” Dima grits out, another throbbing headache looming in his pulsing temple and clenched jaw. “Not need. Have owl, team. Fine.”

Rozanov snorts, a thick, unkind sound, guttural from his throat. “That app is terrible. I would like five hotel keys for my bear and me,” he quotes, “like you will ever use that. The team does the keys.”

Dima could retort back, could say, isn’t your girlfriend using it? Or did I overhear you remind some other woman that she was going to lose her streak?

He could say that. And Rozanov could introduce Dima’s face to the passenger side airbag via a telephone pole and a totaled car.

“Maybe okay tutor when rookie camp end,” Dima says finally. “Focus now.”

Rozanov meets Dima’s eyes in the rearview mirror, the hard hazel unflinching to Dima’s tired, unwilling blue.

Dima looks away. Rozanov looks like a judgmental, faggy cherub.

He’s heard those rumors, too. The stories that pass around Dynamo’s locker rooms, the whispers of the boys on the national team. It could be jealousy of his hockey, or that he’s always with Vetrov’s daughter.

Dima has tried to be charitable. To not judge the affect of Rozanov’s Russian, his limp wrist when he’s on the phone and thinks Dima isn’t looking. Even if he has a girlfriend, he’s definitely whipped.

Clearly, Rozanov’s acolytes in Boston haven’t heard the same rumors.

Dima files that away for later. For when he’s out of Rozanov’s wingspan. And in his own car.

—

He survives rookie camp. He survives training camp. He meets the team. He gets a stupid nickname. He even scores in two of the preseason games and nets assists in the other two. He shakes hands with Reilly and poses with his signed contract.

But it’s not until the second period of their home opener—when Carmichael steals the puck and passes to Wheeler who hits post—and he chips the rebound in, everything turning to slow motion as he watches the puck sail above the goalie’s shoulder and swish in the back of the net that Dima finally exhales the breath he’s been holding since—who knows when. When he was drafted two years ago, probably.

He did it. Four black-red-yellow blurs slam him into the boards, slapping his helmet and his pads, and he did it. He scored a goal in the NHL.

No one can take that away from him.

Carmichael shouts, “Saucy, Zubes!” in his ear and smacks Dima’s ass as he slaps the long line of gloves as he climbs back onto the bench.

“Nice and easy,” Marlow says from his left, rubbing his helmet. “Easy DZ.”

The announcer yells, “Raiders GOAL! With his first of the season and the first of his NHL career, from Ryan Carmichael and Elliott Wheeler, number 57…Dmitry Zubarev!”

18,000 fans roar their approval of him, and he doesn’t even recognize the man grinning on the Jumbotron. He’s never seen himself look so—

Rozanov nudges him. “You know what’s better than one goal?”

Coach calls 81’s line, and Rozanov throws a wink at him as he goes over the boards. It lands with a punch to his gut and lingers in his throat like vomit.

Dima doesn’t score two goals, but Rozanov does—a three-point night for the dear captain.

Dear captain also apparently fist-bumps every guy as they head down the tunnel and tells them he loves them. Dima doesn’t expect the same treatment, but ahead of him St-Simon receives an earnest, easy-as-anything I love you, and then it’s his turn.

He stares at Rozanov’s gloved fist and then looks down at Rozanov, with his neutral expression and expectant eyebrow, raised and disappearing into his matted curls.

Dima bumps his fist, and hears that a man apparently loves him, the first time he’s heard those words from a man save for his father.

Fucking bizarre.

He shakes his head and heads down the tunnel to give his gloves to a person whose entire job seems to be drying and caring for gloves and skates, when a hand grabs the collar of his jersey, yanking him to a halt.

Rozanov tuts, uh-uh, like a fucking mother. “Come on, Zuby,” he says. “Gotta go back out, superstar.”

While the camera crew sets up, their social media girl—Kelly, maybe?—explains what the fuck stars of the game are, and that he’s received the honor of third star.

He’s pushed in front of a camera to be interviewed live on TV and in front of a packed arena. In English.

More like pushed off a cliff. Is this hazing? It has to be.

A man in a nice suit shoves a microphone in his face. “Dmitry, the first goal of your career and seventeen minutes on ice tonight. I’d say that’s a pretty good first official game as a Raider, right?”

“Yes,” he says.

The interviewer nods, his grin frozen as he imperceptibly raises his eyebrows.

Fucking hell.

“Is good,” Dima tries. “Good I’m Raider. Score more next game.”

That seems to satisfy the crowd, who cheer loudly, and—mercifully—satisfies the interviewer. Dima escapes down the tunnel to his locker and starts stripping to his base layers as quickly as possible when Wheeler nudges him.

“Slow your roll,” he says—which, what the fuck does that mean?—“unless you want to put on a show for the cameras.”

Apparently, in the NHL, cameras and phones are constant.

Coach saunters in with a clipboard, says something brief about a good first showing, and then says, “Roz?”

Rozanov, shirtless, holds up a fucking—pirate hat thing. “Good game, boys, Moose, good in net, but we have to give it to the rookie.”

Everyone howls and claps as Rozanov jams the hat on Dima’s head, and then throws his arm around Dima’s shoulders and grins for the cameras and phones. Someone produces the game puck from somewhere for Dima to—keep, apparently. He’s told to hold it up with the stupid fucking hat on his head for what has to be a million photos.

He’s finally allowed to escape to the showers, but there’s never any peace there, and there’s no exception tonight. Rozanov and Marlow keep doing increasingly idiotic comedic bits like jesters for an audience of themselves, but everyone seems more than happy to laugh along as if they all aren’t naked.

Dima ignores them. He stands under the beating water, every cell in his body aching as adrenaline sluices off him and circles the drain. He knew the game would be physical, but he can feel every spot where he’ll wake up tomorrow with bruises and welts painted across his torso and arms and legs. He’s starving. Despite Jake and the nutritionist’s best efforts, he’s still underweight, like he’s been his entire life.

He dries off and dresses. The team is going out to their favorite steakhouse. Rozanov is still talking to the press, so he hitches a ride with Wheeler and Hammersmith. They’re led to a private upstairs, and a couple of pretty waitresses in low-cut shirts take their orders—steak, shots, and fries, enough to feed an army.

Dima downs as many shots as he can before Rozanov shows up. And when Rozanov does show, he’s lost his suit jacket, his collar open and unbuttoned low so his chain is on display, and his sleeves are rolled to his forearms.

The entire team hoots and hollers at his arrival, and Marlow slaps his back as he hands Rozanov a shot. Rozanov—waves it off like a fucking child.

“He not drink?” Dima asks Wheeler, leaning over the table to keep his voice low. Wheeler was apparently traded to Boston halfway through last season. He seems like a good enough guy, if, in Dima’s opinion, a mostly unremarkable defenseman.

Wheeler shrugs. “He did last season. Maybe he’s on Percocet or something. I know he doesn’t fuck around with that shit.”

Rozanov took some hard checks and drew a slashing penalty that Dima saw Rozanov instigate and probably should’ve been matching minors, but whatever, it was in their favor. But nothing that would’ve necessitated painkillers, unless he’s got some sort of recurring injury or pain that Dima hasn’t seen in the three weeks he’s been here.

Before Dina and Dasha left for university, the three of them would sit after dinner and watch Mama’s old Poirot box sets to improve their English. Mama loves a good mystery, and Dima learned to love them, too, even though he always begged to watch his dad’s VHS tapes of the super series instead.

Rozanov is a mystery. And so far, every clue that Dima’s uncovered either makes no sense or burns beneath his feet, his nerves screaming for him to run.

“Zuby, Zubar, Zubarino!” Two massive hands land on his shoulder. Marlow. No one else is that loud. Dima cranes his neck to look up as Marlow starts massaging his shoulders. “Is this like your postgame in Mother Russia?”

Dima bristles and then forces himself out of it. Marlow doesn’t know anything; he’s just being—an idiot. “Ask Rozanov,” he says, lifting his glass of water. “He play KHL too.”

“Roz, he still calls you Rozanov?” Marly booms a laugh. “Guess he’s your landlord—whoa, party foul, are you drinking water?”

Dima wants to fire back, snap and say, ask Roz, but—

“Rookie can’t be drinking water after his first goal. That’s gotta be a fine, right, Roz?”

Rozanov turns his head from his conversation, one arm thrown around Hammersmith’s chair. With his free hand, he lifts a glass of—Coke, maybe, in a rocks glass. He wonders what good liquor Rozanov is ruining with a mixer, or if he’s disguising that it’s Coke and Coke alone.

“No fine if the rookie goes to get next round,” Rozanov says. He doesn’t raise his voice above the din, but Dima still hears him loud and clear. He thought he wasn’t allowed to drink in public according to Rozanov Almighty. Who the fuck knows.

Dima rolls his eyes and pushes away from the table. If bringing another tray of shots lets him drink like a fucking adult, he’ll do it. As he passes Rozanov at the head of the banquet table, his hand hits Dima’s stomach, stopping him.

Rozanov is jauntily holding folded bills between his fore and middle fingers. “My treat. Save your ELC money.”

Dima could kill him. He could break his nose, rebreak his jaw. It wouldn’t be difficult. He’s undersized, but he knows how to use his fists.

Red-hot all over, Dima yanks the money and descends the stairs to the bar. It’s packed for a Thursday evening, and Dima has to push his way to the front of the bar to flag down one of the guys working when a manicured hand waves in front of him.

“I’ve got you, big guy,” the woman says, her nice white teeth grinning under blood red lipstick. He can’t even pretend to be ashamed of the way his eyes trail from her lips to her tits before those tits seem to huff a laugh, and he forces himself to meet her big, brown eyes.

Fuck, her name tag was right there. What was her name? He can’t look again. He—

“Hello,” he says slowly, his ears burning. Sounding it out, he starts, “Mal—”

“Mallory,” she interrupts. “It might look different from Russian.”

He raises both eyebrows, and Mallory laughs, tossing her strawberry hair over her shoulder. “You joining the Raiders is the only thing my dad’s been talking about all summer. Everyone’s wicked excited you’re here.”

The corners of his lips tick upward, and Dima leans his forearms on the bar, flexing them as subtly as he can. “Yes? You excite too, or just Papa?”

“I think I’ll wait and see,” she says. There’s a gap between her two front teeth, her tongue peeking through. She nods toward the televisions lining the bars, showing something about the Patriots. “Though you were impressive tonight.”

Dima grins. “You impress?”

“I think you know how impressive you are,” Mallory says. She slaps the bar. “What can I get you?”

“You,” he says immediately. He doesn’t know why he was worried about flirting in English. Clearly, he’s doing fine.

It’s her turn to size him up and down. She must like what she sees because she points to a door. “That’s the staff restroom. Wait five minutes and meet me there.”

Fuck yes.

He nods, and she slides him a shot with a wink. He watches her disappear into the kitchen and downs his shot, trying to look cool as he drums his fingers against the cool wood underneath him. He checks his phone, watching the seconds tick by on his little clock app. He turns, resting his forearms on the bar as he scans for any sign of the team. He checks his phone again and decides it’s probably been five minutes.

He knocks once on the door, and he’s pulled into a surprisingly nice lavatory. Mallory exhales a hi before she kisses him soundly, pushing him against the door. He groans as she immediately deepens the kiss, her slick tongue sliding against his. She tugs at his shirt, her fingers brushing over his abs, and he gets hers up and off, tweaking a nipple through the thin padding of her bra. She gasps into his mouth, manicured fingers wrapping around his wrist as she pulls his hand to her crotch. He kisses her ear, her neck, as he feels the dampness and heat radiating from her—skirt but also shorts?

Dima fumbles with her belt and tries to push her up against the sink at the same time. She laughs, throaty and hoarse in a way that rasps a frisson of pleasure up the length of his spine. “Why skirt confuse,” he complains into her neck. She smells so good.

“I’ve got you,” she says again, pushing her skirt down and hopping onto the sink in one smooth motion. She draws Dima’s hand back to her damp panties, and his mouth back to hers. He presses two fingers into the seam, rubbing against the nub of her clit.

He gets on his knees, about to get his mouth on her, to see just how wet her pussy is, when the door opens. Mallory almost gives him a concussion with how quickly her legs slam shut.

“Zubar, I’m leaving,” Rozanov says, poking his head in. “Hey, Mal.”

“Ilya, how many times have I told you to knock?” Mallory says. Dima starts to pull away, but she presses her hand on his shoulder, keeping him in place. “You’re not even supposed to know this bathroom exists.”

“Ah, but I do,” Rozanov says with a charming, douchy wink, and Mallory laughs again. “Anyway, I’m leaving, so let’s go.”

Dima is going to fucking kill him. He thought it would be before the end of the season, but it might be before the end of the night. “I get car,” he says through clenched teeth. “Go. Please.”

“Fine,” Rozanov says, holding up a hand. “Just being nice. If you wake me up when you get back, I will make Coach bag skate you next practice.”

«Fuck off, Rozanov, I swear to fucking God,» Dima spits, and it must finally get through Rozanov’s thick fucking skull that Dima’s about five seconds away from starting an actual fistfight because he waves his hand and closes the door behind him.

There is a God, because Mallory hasn’t been completely turned off by the entire experience. He gets her off, and it’s not his best performance, but she seems pleased. In return, she sucks him off like a fucking porn star. He even gets her number and a kiss on his cheek before he goes back upstairs to the team.

“Hey, Easy DZ!” Marlow shouts when Dima reappears. “Your fly is down, you fuckin’ beaut.”

He would be embarrassed, but the guys seem more than happy to cajole him and get him another drink. Dima—he belongs here. He does. These guys like him. He’s going to let himself like them back.

It’s barely 1:30 when the guys call it a night. He fumbles through asking Marlow to get him a cab, but Marlow, Marly, seems happy enough to help.

It’s a good night. It is. But the more he begins to recognize the streets around him—the closer he gets to Rozanov’s—the faster his anger returns, and it consumes him, intoxicating and virulent. He says nothing the entire ride, pushing the cash he didn’t spend on drinks into the driver’s hand as he marches up the front walk.

Rozanov is shirtless on his massive, ugly couch, watching highlights from Montreal’s road win against Toronto, a glass of vodka in-hand.

«What the fuck is your problem?» Dima says, after the door slams shut behind him. «Did I do something to you? Did I not kiss the ground you walk on thoroughly enough?»

“I have no problems,” Rozanov responds in English, not taking his eyes off the screen. “With you or otherwise. Did Mallory let you get your dick wet? She likes scared, skinny Russian boys who can’t speak English."

Dima steps forward, fists clenched. Rozanov may have about ten kilos on him, but Dima thinks it might be fun to beat the shit out of a man in his own home.

He doesn't get the chance. Rozanov’s phone vibrates, and he grins at the screen before answering. “Hi, baby,” he says, lifting the remote to turn the TV off. “Yes, but only two goals. Would have scored you a hat trick, but I was distracted thinking about your tits.”

Rozanov stands, staring at Dima, rooted in place in his anger and disbelief.

“I miss them so much, baby,” Rozanov says, winking at Dima. “Here, let me go to the bedroom, and you can show me how much you miss my cock. We don’t want anyone overhearing.”

He turns and walks down the hall, his slides slapping against the nice wood floors. “No,” Rozanov says with a laugh. “Though I think you like it, people hearing. You’re so loud, sweetheart.”

Dima stands there, watching Rozanov’s bare back disappear, putrid coal burning in his stomach as he stands there, fuming.

He’s sweating again, and he might vomit. He decides to shower. He decides that Rozanov may be—jealous, or a faggot, or whatever, but Dima isn’t going anywhere. This will be his team. He’s the future. Rozanov hasn’t won a cup since—when? He’s a joke. He’s read what the reporters write, run through Google Translate. That Rozanov can’t get it done, can’t win another cup, isn’t worth the cap hit, that the Raiders might not even offer him another contract. Why else would they bring Dima over?

He slams his fist against the tiled shower walls as water scalds down his back. He knows he’s compared to Rozanov. He has been since the day he got into Dynamo’s academy. It will likely continue until the end of his career or the day he dies or whichever comes first. What the people who make those comparisons don’t understand is that Dima is better. Far better than Rozanov has ever been or could ever hope to be.

His pulse is racing, blood hot and swelling under his skin. He’s still on edge from Mallory. He wraps his hand around his cock and jerks himself once, twice.

He wonders what Jane looks like. If Rozanov likes the classics, the Russian women with ice in their veins and hair, big tits and no ass unless they’ve been abroad. Or does he go exotic? He’s always hanging around with Vetrov’s daughter, and God, isn’t she something? Who knows why she gives Rozanov the time of day. She’s a bitch, but that’s what Dima likes best. Does Rozanov like bitchy? The ones who whine and demand and push? Does he overpower them? Submit to them? Hold their wrists and fuck into them? Do they whimper at his cock? Even soft, it looked so—

Dima grunts as he comes, spilling into his fist and thinking of nothing at all.

Chapter End Notes

IF anyone is wondering, and I know you weren't, in this universe, Edmonton got the 2014 first-round pick, and Sunrise got the 2015 first-round pick. a switcharoo of sorts.

THANK YOU for your patience in waiting for this chapter!!! I'm simultaneously working on my hr big bang fic (get excited) and life's been a little hectic. The response so far has been genuinely so incredible, and I'm still working through comments!!! (did you know that ao3 blocks you from commenting too many times in a row. rude.)

As always, Marivan is the best and makes everything I write better. I know she is SO close to updating her incredible fic, Not a Strip of Paper Merely, so go give her lots of love and encouragement.

As always come hang out with me on tumblr at @flawlessassholes and reblog the fic art! Back soon with Ilya and Ch. 4... we're trucking along! ❤️

ETA 8/23/26: yall I PROMMY I am working on chapter 4 it’s at like 4k words and chugging along I had to write It’s Kind of a Funny Story and turn thirty!!! Your patience will be rewarded and your comments do make the writing go faster ok love yall mwah

Chapter 4

Chapter Summary

Ilya sits up, fiddling with his cross. “It’s new,” he says. “I have to remind myself sometimes, too.”

And—it’s true. Not the constant thought of Shane; that’s been the order of things for years. But the knowing is.

Knowing that he’s allowed to—call, to reach out, to reciprocate, just to send a text that says good morning or I love you, and for it not to be an admission of guilt at a sentencing is hard to reconcile. It’s been many years since there’s been a person quietly loving him, no matter the distance. It’s unfair to think there would be no—growing pains.

It was a foolish hope. That they had their fair share of pain between them, growing or otherwise, and the universe would cut them a break. Ilya’s fault, probably. The universe isn’t very fond of him.

Chapter Notes

New minor tags added! toggle for brief, non-spoilery explanations

Added a Passive Suicidality tag just to be safe, but I would call it "Ilya-typical passive suicidality" and nothing not previously seen in this universe. I also added an implied/referenced hazing tag—it's a passing mention and very minor in the very last section, but wanted to be mindful nonetheless.

The day after a bone-bruising, war-of-attrition loss to Tampa that left their goalie with a torn quad and a dislocated shoulder for himself, Ilya is called in for a meeting with Seward, their GM.

It could be about injury. Ilya will probably be forced to sit for a week or so because it’s so early in the season, and Moose is out for six months minimum. There’s going to be movement up and down the roster. It’s a lot of unexpected shuffling that could fuck up everything if it isn’t managed well. Nobody wants to pull a rookie goalie out of Providence just to have him sit, but that’s probably what’s going to happen. The front office has always been shit at managing their goalie pipeline.

It could be about that. It could be about anything.

But Ilya knows what this is about. He’s only surprised that it’s taken until the third week of October for it to happen.

“Roz, come in, come in,” Seward says, waving Ilya in as he hangs up a clunky gray phone, the kind Ilya associates with overimportant, unathletic men. And their calls to trade entire lives across the country without thought or care.

He’s still pissed about Connors getting traded to fucking Vancouver for draft picks and a mediocre RHD.

Ilya sits. His leg starts jiggling. He can’t cross his arms because of his stupid shoulder.

He forces his leg to stop. This is still the house he built, the team he made, the ring he won winking from Seward’s fat, wrinkled finger.

Seward jots a note and doesn’t look at Ilya. “You have a good summer?”

“Yes.” They’ve already exchanged their first day of school pleasantries before rookie camp. Maybe Seward forgot. But Ilya will play nice. “And you?”

“Oh, no complaints besides my wife and daughter bleeding me dry,” Seward says, waving a hand. He puts down his pen and steeples his fingers, finally looking at Ilya. “How’s the billet situation going?”

The billet situation is what Ilya thinks may be a decent imitation of Soviet diplomacy: ice fucking cold with the constant threat of nuclear detonation looming overhead.

“Fine,” Ilya says.

Seward raises an eyebrow. “Just fine?”

“Zubar is—” Ilya pauses. Corrects course. “Adapting. He is, you know. Young.”

“He seemed to be a head above the rest of the forwards at camp,” Seward says, and then huffs. “And not just literally.”

“Yes, he’s good. Talented. But we knew this.” Ilya said as much during that meeting where they first told him they wanted to bring Zubarev over.

“He’s doing well centering Ryan and Victor,” Seward says.

A traffic cone could center Carmy and Vic and still put up decent numbers. “Yes, it’s good so far.”

“You think he’d work with Nils and Marly?”

If he were to take 1C, is what he isn’t saying. Cue the Jaws music; Seward’s closing in.

“I guess we will see,” Ilya says, tilting his head toward his no-longer-dislocated but still-annoyingly-achy shoulder. “He looks good with Handsy in practice.”

Seward sits back, crossing his arms. “Reilly overheard you chewing him out after last night.”

What is this—a detour to the headmaster’s office? “It was a pointless fight that cost us the game.”

“It’s Boston hockey,” Seward counters. “We like grit.”

“He’s too talented to fight like that,” Ilya says. “Let him fight in March, not October.”

Something shifts in Seward’s stare. He’s watching closely. No, observing.

It itches across Ilya’s skin.

“That’s what they said about you when you were a rookie,” Seward says after another prickling moment. “We like the fight.”

Ilya is smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Saying, do you want to fight or do you want to win? will go nowhere, and Ilya already knows Seward’s answer.

Seward doesn’t push it. He uncrosses his arms, resting them behind his head, affecting an air of faux-relaxation. Here they fucking go.

“So,” Seward drawls. “You’re a free agent come July.”

Ilya could win poker against Putin. An award for acting. He’ll stand on a stage and cry and thank his mother and say that he feels God in this Chili’s tonight.

He smiles. Huffs a laugh. Rolls his eyes. “Tom, come on.”

Seward holds his hands up. “Now, Roz, you know I gotta ask.”

Ilya shakes his head, his best, boyish grin pulling at his cheeks. “Why do you have to ask when we know the answer?”

Seward looks so fucking chuffed, like he’s in on the joke. They always think they are. “So what’s the answer?”

Ilya spreads his arms. Looks over both shoulders. “You think I will leave? You think Ilya Rozanov is going to leave Boston?”

“I don’t know, someone could tempt you away,” Seward says. “Maybe you’d like Miami. Or LA; they’re hankering for a superstar.”

“So you think I’m a superstar?” Ilya waves a hand. “Tom, stop, I will blush.”

“Well, here’s my bid,” Seward says. “Just say the number, and I’ll call Misters Morgan and Chase to open up the vault.”

“And stop your wife and daughter’s fun?” Russians have gymnastics in their blood; Ilya just needs to stick the landing. “We all want to be happy, yes? But it’s too early to talk details. We should revisit after the trade deadline. And,” Ilya continues, plastering his most charming grin across his cheeks, “if you get me a good goalie, I get you a cup and a contract.”

Seward’s too-white teeth bare, his lips stretching upward and his hand stretching outward to Ilya. “Sounds like a plan.”

Ilya shakes hands. Makes another meaningless joke. Shooting the shit. How all these meetings end.

He leaves through the winding bowels of the facility, hoping that nobody sees him or his white knuckles or his clenched jaw iron-set. The metal double doors are in sight, he’s so close—

“Oh, Roz, hang on a sec.”

Ilya’s Sambas squeak as he stops. He turns to see Reilly poking his head out of the equipment room. “Yes?”

Reilly steps into the hall. He’s holding a clipboard. He likes doing the menial shit, the tasks beneath the head coach of the fucking Boston Raiders. He knows every person’s name in the building. Shows it off when he says, “Gimme five, Lou,” and closes the door behind him.

Ilya doesn’t know a Lou.

Reilly seems to hesitate. He fidgets with the clipboard and then says, “You speak with Tom?”

Ilya nods. “Yes, briefly.”

Reilly offers a smile, small but affable, familiar, and Ilya is twenty again, hunched over and face hidden by the hood of his sweatshirt, while Reilly bought him a beer at a hotel bar. They sat shoulder-to-shoulder watching as every TV behind the bar replayed their miserable loss to Winnipeg.

You know what, Ilya? Reilly had said, not looking away from the screens. He was the only person in Boston who bothered to learn the correct pronunciation. It was just after the All-Star break, a miserable weekend where Shane wouldn’t even look at him, and Reilly had only started in December after two months of embarrassing games and embarrassing losses that they had yet to break from, and Marly was injured, and Ilya was seriously considering if standing under icicles and waiting for one to split his skull open was all that unpleasant of a way to go.

Ilya’s first instinct was to laugh. He didn’t want to hear Reilly’s little speech, whatever trite, eager-coach-to-star-player horseshit he had cooked up, or worse, something Canadian and paternal where Reilly would call Ilya son and kindly encourage him to be better, as if Ilya didn’t already have a father, and as if any motivational response to kindness hadn’t been beaten out of him.

But Ilya didn’t laugh. He was too tired to laugh. He didn’t say anything at all. And then Reilly said, I’m real fucking tired of losing. Why don’t we build something great together, eh?

Six years and a cup later, Reilly has that same look on his face. Ilya’s stomach seizes like it’s been stabbed with the pick of steel-sharp ice.

“Well,” Reilly says, regripping his clipboard, “I know it’s early, but, y’know. I don’t feel like we’re done here. Do you?”

Fuck.

Ilya shouldn’t have listened that freezing February night. He shouldn’t have nodded and shaken Reilly’s hand and committed. He should’ve done the sensible thing for once in his life, should’ve waited underneath an awning for ice to cleave his skull, or better yet, gone up to the roof for a swan dive into the frigid black below.

He forces a smile. Hopes to God it matches Reilly’s, or at least gets close. It should be easy, as easy as it was with Seward.

When did it stop being easy?

“No, I don’t,” Ilya says, and it sounds—genuine. Ilya is almost impressed with himself; maybe Hollander hasn’t made him too honest of a man yet.

Reilly grins and claps him on his uninjured shoulder, and it twinges the same as if it were the injured one. Tells him he’ll see him for video tomorrow. And Ilya smiles and forces himself to stay smiling as he says hello to Lou and waves goodbye to Reilly.

And he holds it up, holds his breath, holds his nonchalance like a good little puppet until his car door closes behind him, the strings snapping and it all rushes out of him in a desperate, gasping sob, the truth of it all angry and aching in his sternum. He slams his hand against the steering wheel once, twice. Fucks his shoulder. Fuck. God, this can’t—

His phone vibrates in his pocket. If it’s Seward, or his agent, or actually anyone in the world, he’s throwing his phone in the Charles and wrapping his Porsche around a pole.

It’s Shane. He should answer. Hear the voice of the remaining half of his heart, the only balm that can attempt to soothe the rotten, infected wound where the other half used to be before it was buried.

The wound throbs, fevered and angry. I can’t hurt you if you can’t feel, it pulses. Wouldn’t nothingness be so nice? You wouldn’t be able to fuck anything else up. Let anyone else down.

Ilya thunks his head against the sun-warmed steering wheel. Watches the call go to voicemail. His cement thumb types out:

Lily:
Driving

Lily:
will call later

Jane:
Don’t text and drive!

Ilya sends back the eye-roll emoji and turns the key in the ignition. He doesn’t think of much except how Boston is the only city he’s been in with traffic as bad as this, and after almost a decade, it still makes him homesick for the battlefields and bumper cars that wind through Moscow.

Call of Duty is paused on the TV when Ilya gets home, and Zubarev wanders in, chewing a mouthful of a half-eaten sandwich on the plate in his hand. He’s got a black eye and split lip from last night’s idiocy, mottled green and yellow climbing his ribs, and yet another hickey on his neck.

“Get dressed,” Ilya says, gesturing his keys at Zubarev’s bare chest. “We’re going out.”

Zubarev blinks in response and puts on his best impression of a particularly stupid chipmunk. He swallows his mouthful and asks. “Where?”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Does it matter? Meet me in the car.”

When Zubarev still doesn’t move, Ilya smacks the back of his hand against his palm, his keys jingling. «Let’s go!»

Zubarev puts the plate down and his hands up. «Fuck me, fine.»

God. Does Ilya need to fucking spell it out? He grabs his pair of outdoor slides and heads back to the car.

It’s not a short drive. Ilya misses when this was on his way back from the rink in Wilmington. Zubarev peers out the window when Ilya parks. He isn’t sure how literate Zubarev is—not very, he assumes—but there are two fat grandfathers in tracksuits smoking by the door, so that must give him some context.

“Where you find this?” Zubarev asks, his seatbelt straining against his chest, his entire upper body turned to stare out the window.

“Like I would live in a city without a good banya,” Ilya says, and ignores the immediate thought that pops into his head, which is that there’s no way fucking Ottawa will have one. He turns the car off. “Just don’t embarrass me.”

Zubarev seems game enough, and more than at home, laughing with the wrinkled, sagging men who quiz him on his English and glad-handing the staff. It’s the most eager Ilya’s seen the kid outside of a woman’s legs.

That eagerness seems to wane once they’re actually in the baths.

“Don’t worry, nobody is looking at your dick,” Ilya says, his head tipped back as he sinks into the hot water.

Zubarev doesn’t say anything. Ilya peers at him with one half-opened eye. He looks miserable.

Ilya closes his eyes and sinks deeper. Not his problem.

Zubarev sniffs. The water laps as he shifts, nearly hiding his sigh.

«What’s wrong with you, then?» Ilya snaps, glaring at Zubarev. «You’re ruining the ambiance.»

Zubarev presses his lips into a thin, tense line; a match to everything else about him. He’s getting skinnier despite seemingly everyone in Boston’s best efforts.

«I miss my father,» Zubarev says eventually, staring at the water. «We go to the baths every Saturday if I’m not on the road.» He stops, somehow more glum. «Well. Went.»

Ilya opens his mouth to say—something. Who knows. His throat works around it, caught and constricting.

He used to do that with his father, too. Usually when his uncles were visiting, or if Mama wasn’t—

They went when Ilya returned from World Juniors in 2008. Alexei hated him for it, but his father wanted to show the men what a good, disciplined upbringing could achieve.

«We can go, if you want,» Ilya offers. It hangs between them in the curling steam, pathetic and far too gentle.

Zubarev seems to consider it, and then shakes his head, sinking further into the bath until only the crooked bridge of his nose and his eyes remain above water.

Ilya nods and closes his eyes again.

—

He always wondered if revealing all the soft, tender truths in the center of his soul would make him hate losing to Shane any less.

He told himself to wait and see during the first. But the second ends, and the score is still two-nothing, and the answer is still a resounding fuck no.

Fucking Montreal. He hates Bell Centre, and even more so from the press box. He hates watching an ocean of blue and red and white celebrate. Hates hearing their stupid olés, their whining at fair calls from the refs already in Montreal’s pockets, their boos even more. He especially hates being unable to do anything about it. If Ilya were on the ice, he would give them something to really get loud about.

By the time Ilya makes his way to the visitors’ locker room, the guys don’t seem to be too upset about being three deep in the hole with twenty minutes left on the clock. He keeps his face neutral and his hands in his pockets, the chatter quieting in his wake. He sits in his stall. Picks at some lint on his trousers. Folds his hands together. Waits.

Carm is the first to break, always incapable of sitting in silence. It’s why he gets on so well with Marly. He clears his throat. “Roz—”

Ilya looks up from his hangnail. “Hm?”

On his right, Marly sighs and smacks his gum, Marl-ese for here we go.

“What, you want me to say something?” Ilya asks, balloon-animal light with a shiny rubber smile. “Why? It’s October. What does a road loss matter in October?”

His eyes land on Egnell, who looks about twelve in his gear and backward cap. “Eggy, you’re here, what, two games?”

“Um.” Egnell glances at Hooves, their usual 2G. “Three?”

“Ah, so many,” Ilya says. “Do you know what team I like to lose to?”

“Roz, don’t torture the kid with trick questions,” Marly interjects, always terrible at hiding his amusement.

“Fine.” He waves a hand. “What team do I hate losing to most of all?”

“…Montreal?”

Ilya bestows Egnell with his best, most indulgent grin. “Yes, good. So, I’m not sure I need to say anything else. Even Eggy knows this, and he’s only here for three games.”

Somebody coughs into the quiet. Ilya scans the faces of his team, impassive. The only person not looking at him is Zubarev, focused on the untied laces of his skates. Whatever.

Ilya finds Hammy’s eyes and nods, just a slight jut of his chin. Hammy smirks and bends to pull the tape from his socks. The room takes the cue and lurches back to life. Ilya slaps his hands on his thighs and stands. He stops short of the door in front of Zubarev.

«Hey,» he says. Zubarev doesn’t look up, but Ilya knows he’s listening, saw his shoulders stiffen and his jaw clench. «Make yourself useful and score a couple of goals.»

Zubarev’s fist curls around a roll of clear tape, and then he nods, his ears pink-tipped. Fine, good enough. The chatter still doesn’t fully return until Ilya is halfway down the hall.

Some popcorn might be nice.

Years and years ago, Svetlana taught him to stick a straw into his popcorn so the butter would reach the bottom. Now, it’s brought by an attendant to the press box with an uncapped Coke so he can’t hurl it onto the ice. He eats a fistful and doesn’t lick his fingers because the cameras might turn on him, and watches the third period unfold before him, his team playing with the same annoyed determination as digging out a kernel lodged between your molar and gums.

He was a little silly to call last week’s game against Tampa a war of attrition. There were injuries, yes, but it’s nothing compared to the next twenty minutes of nasty, bloodlust blood sport that starts with Marly’s fist in Comeau’s eye, and doesn’t let up.

Handsy draws first blood on a wicked wrister that Miitka never saw coming, Zubarev getting the sole assist on his knockback from the dot. They go up another when Carmy taps in a flukey rebound that goes to Toronto for review before the call on the ice stands, the crowd more furious than they've been all night. Shane is in his finest form, though, and doesn’t let it go unanswered, scoring his second of the night off a sloppy turnover from Wheeler.

For another five, it’s dead even with about a half-dozen icing calls each. Then Zubarev catches a lucky bounce, and it’s a foot race up the ice between him and Shane. Ilya leans forward. Zubarev is fast, but Shane is the fastest skater Ilya’s ever—

Eighteen thousand people groan in unison as Zubarev slams into the glass, throwing his arms around Marly and Handsy. Nobody else would notice the stiffness in Shane as he skates back to the bench, but Ilya can see it, can tell he’s upset. And of course he is; after the TV timeout, Handsy gets sent to the box for a bullshit high-sticking call, and Zubarev turns around and scores short-handed, two goals in as many shifts to tie the game.

Ilya whistles. Sits back in his chair. Catches himself on the Jumbotron looking smug as fuck. He winks in the direction of the camera and blows a kiss and a wave to the boos.

The second PK unit puts in a good shift, but then the first unit’s back out, and Zubarev must say something before the puck drops, because—

Okay, now Ilya is impressed; he got Shane to drop the gloves. Shane! Shane never fights. And it’s very much evident from the way Zubarev gets in two good hits to Shane’s flank and then takes them both to the ice.

God. Is he a bad boyfriend? To be so giddy at the love of his life losing a fight? Maybe. Probably.

…But Shane will be so worked up later.

Fuck, Ilya can’t get hard here.

They’re both sent to the box with matching minors, but it doesn’t matter that Bell Centre is about to light pitchforks fueled by the shit-eating grin on Zubar’s face. They’re fired up now, and then Theriault makes the stupid fucking choice to pull Miitka, and Vic scores empty net. Job done.

Ilya shakes the hand of Joey, their VR guy, gives one more wave for the camera, and lets the cacophony of angry French Canadians, his most very favorite song, carry him all the way to the locker room.

The boys go quiet when he walks in, but the quiet of a dog who just performed a flawless trick and is waiting for pets and praise.

“What, you want me to say something?” Ilya asks, holding his hands up at the barrage of wadded tape and towels.

“Alright, alright,” Ilya says, catching a tape wad and throwing it back at Marly’s balls. “So you all did what I knew you could. You want your reward now or at the club?”

The cheering and chiding are infectious. Ilya accepts ass and back slaps as he makes his way to his stall.

“See, you’re our lucky charm when you’re injured, even on the road,” Carm says, and Marly booms a laugh.

“He didn’t come with us to bring luck,” Marly says, snapping his towel at Ilya’s calf. “He came to come.”

Ilya’s fairly impressed with Marly’s wordplay, and he’s ready to chirp and say so when another barrage arrives, an array of nonsense everyone in earshot—which, since Marly said it, is everyone—chiming in with the usual nonsense about Montreal Jane that Ilya fucking loves.

“Who is Jane?” Egnell asks.

Hooves fucks with Egnell’s frizzy ginger hair. “No, no, you’re too young and precious to know.” Hooves looks back at the room and obviously mouths virgin, which gets a laugh.

“Jane is Rozy’s faaavorite,” Vic sing-songs. “And what’s not to like? A good French girl. An angel, no?”

Ilya sips his Coke, self-satisfaction fizzing down his throat and mingling with the anticipation simmering in his stomach. This must be what an actor feels like the moment before the curtains rise.

“Come on, throw ole Cliffy a bone,” Marly says, hands folded together and pulled to his chest. “I’m a married man now; you gotta tell me what you and the sweet lady will get up to.”

“You all are so needy tonight,” Ilya says, waving away the chorus of pleading that backs Marly. He leans back and crosses his arms, all of it so easy to slouch into. “Just like Jane, you know. She is always so hungry for it. Sucks me off like she is dying.”

Marly whistles, low. “You think she’ll let you go back door this time?”

It’s instinctual, Pavlovian, even, to bare his teeth in a feral, gleaming grin. “She lets me go back door every time. I have never met a girl who loves it like she does.”

“Big dawg,” Marly extends his palm, low five, and Ilya slaps it. “That’s what I’m talking about. I love a girl who's into some freak shit—”

There’s a sharp blur of black base layers in his periphery. Ilya looks up in time to see that it’s Zubarev leaving right before the door to the bangs shut. It’s not unusual. The door bangs open not even a moment later; Wash, one of their assistant coaches, to talk to Hooves, and Reilly after him with the Greater Raider tricorn.

“Good game, boys, that’s the kind of fight we want to see. That’s no-quit Boston hockey.” Reilly holds up the hat. “Mighty Marlow, who’re you giving it to?”

Marly grins as he accepts the hat. “Handsy got us on the board, but it’s gotta go to Mr. Three Points, one of ’em a fucking beaut of a shorty, and least of all, getting the fucking Crying Dutchman to put ’em up, and—” Marly stops. “Wait, where’s Zuby?”

Motherfucker. Ilya pulls his phone out of his pocket, ending the still-recording voice note and hitting send. “I will get him,” he says. “Marly, keep going. We were all very impressed by your full sentences.”

The hall is bustling, arena and team staff packing up around him. He sidesteps EJ from the equipment staff, rounds a corner, and finds Zubarev on the treadmill in the tiny joke of a gym Montreal provides.

Ilya leans against the door frame. “Little fast for a cool down.”

Zubarev’s eyes flick to him, and then back ahead.

It’s been two months, and it still hasn’t gotten through Zubarev’s thick fucking skull that when the captain speaks, he’d better fucking pay attention.

“I need to say this again? I do not like repeating myself. You need to do the team bonding. It’s a bad look to—”

Zubarev slams the emergency stop button and turns, his chest heaving. «What’s team bonding? Talking about women like that? That’s fucking pathetic.»

Whatever he was expecting Zubarev to say, it wasn’t—that. Drops of humid condescension perspire on the back of his neck.

“You want to criticize my team, do it in fucking English,” Ilya says, crossing his arms. “Come on, let’s hear it.”

“Okay,” Zubarev says, stepping off the treadmill and stalking across the room until he’s close. His attempt at looming; how cute. “You talk like this? About girl?”

“I talk about Jane like this,” Ilya says, his face held still like his strapped shoulder, KT tape itching and pulling under his sport coat and designer shirt. It’s funny that Zubarev thinks Ilya can be intimidated by height. That stopped happening the day he fucked Alexei’s girlfriend. “She enjoys it.”

Zubarev opens his mouth to say something. Stops. Pulls his phone out and types. “Pathetic,” he says, sounding out the word. “You want English? Is pathetic. You pathetic.”

Ilya’s eyes narrow. “I don’t know why you’re surprised. It’s like this at Dynamo, and it’s like this here, and it’s like this everywhere. You don’t want to, fine. But don’t come crying to me when you’re—”

Fuck. He hates having to switch back to Russian in front of Zubarev. But he also wants to make sure Zubarev hears him loud and clear. «Ostracized. You’ll be ostracized. Only the best of us get traded. You’re not one of them. You want them to stop talking like that? Enjoy your flight back home, where you know they say the same fucking things.»

Zubarev stares at him with those eerie steel eyes. «Only men who are overcompensating talk like that,» he says eventually, and then pushes his way past Ilya, checking Ilya’s injured shoulder.

Ilya bites his cheek to stop a hiss. He turns. «Either say what you mean or don’t speak at all. Only cowards obfuscate.»

He stops. Ilya watches Zubarev’s fists clench, his shoulders hunch, and then deflate as he doesn’t speak.

“Go back to the locker room,” Ilya says. “Marly’s waiting to give you your stupid fucking hat.”

Zubarev stays still for another moment before he starts walking again. Ilya doesn’t blow out the frustrated breath he’s been holding until Zubarev’s out of sight, and Ilya’s phone buzzes in his pocket.

Jane:
Jesus fucking Christ Ilya

Jane:
you fucking asshole

Jane:
Fuck you and your team

Jane:
You still have your key?

—

The key weighs heavier in his pocket than the others.

That’s nonsensical, but—he doesn’t have many gifts from Shane. So maybe it’s true that it has some extra heft.

Shane presented it to him on their last day together at the cottage. You can’t get single copies made, he explained. Only pairs. So there was one for him, two for his parents, and an extra that’s been on Shane’s keychain for years now.

It’s something he never knew he wanted. And yet, when he asked if Shane wanted the key to his house, Shane said, won’t Zubarev need it?

It’s just how Shane is; so pragmatic and unthinking in his literalism. Ilya knows this. Ilya loves this, even. It’s not malicious, save for the odd times when it’s a knife that guts him like a fish.

Gifts are touchy, for some reason. The flowers were unexpected friction. Ilya has to pace himself. Tells himself that they have to work up to the gold and diamonds and cars and designer clothes and everything else he’s dreamed of showering Shane in for so long now. Everything that will hopefully wash away his virulent mud splatter on Shane’s once-unsoiled, aseptic life.

God, he needs to cheer up. There’s no reason to be so miserable. He spent the necessary time with the guys. Less so than usual because Zubarev fucked off to the hotel; his funeral.

And now Ilya’s in the world’s slowest fucking Uber, crawling through postgame traffic to Shane.

The last time he traveled along this road towards Shane’s apartment, it was an ice-cold spring morning, his jaw aching and mouth tasting of burnt blood, smoke from cauterizing his wounds lingering in the back of his throat alongside a dozen useless excuses and apologies. And Shane was next to him, pale like he had been puking blood all night, not Ilya.

All he wanted to say was, I love you, I’m sorry, please don't be scared by me. And if you are, leave me now while I’m already in pain. And still have the pills. And access to your very nice rooftop.

They pass the little Japanese market where Ilya bought Shane the yogurt drinks he likes, and the recognition stirs heady in his stomach. He directs the driver to pull around the back of Shane’s building, even though he has the code to the front now. Ilya doesn’t want any fights; they have so little time together and so much fucking to do.

Thank God Shane isn’t here to see Ilya fumble with the keys. He gets the door unlocked, ready to see one of his favorite Shanes, in his softest sweatpants, rubbing exhaustion from his eyes as he blends a post-game smoothie, his hair still damp from his post-game shower. For so many years, he saw that Shane turn toward him, felt the way his heart would stall and then stutter into overdrive. Keenly felt the loss every time that Shane would remain on the stairs as Ilya tied his shoes and left, the sad excuse for a goodbye that he told himself was all he could have.

Shane’s not in the kitchen.

Ilya’s brow furrows. He slips out of his shoes and lines them up next to—

There’s a pair of Adidas slides. Brand new, his size, waiting for him. House slides. For a home.

Ilya blinks. Sniffs and rubs his nose. Blinks a little more rapidly.

Ah, fuck. This man.

He slips into them and tosses his coat on the chair. Everything is quiet. Montreal glitters through the big floor-to-ceiling windows. The only light is from underneath the microwave and a table lamp by the couch.

So where is this man?

Ilya climbs the stairs, shrugging off the mindfuck of memories crawling across his skin, and pads down the carpeted hall.

He rounds the corner to the main bedroom, and the first thing he sees is three of Shane’s massive fingers crammed into his hole.

He swallows the spit flooding his mouth. His throat still catches. He doesn’t even try to hide the smirk that stretches across his face as he leans against the door.

“Oh,” Ilya drawls, taking in the bedside table, the pump-top lube, the dildo set to the side, the pillow under his hips, and Shane’s all-too-satisfied smirk framed by his spread knees, calves and thighs flexing as he arches ever so slightly, his toes curling where they’re firmly planted on the bed. “You are in so much trouble.”

“What?” Shane says, eyes slipping open. “Zubarev told me to go fuck myself. I thought that was an instruction from the top.”

“And you thought that instead of waiting for your loving boyfriend for a lovely night, you would piss him off.”

“Well,” Shane says, “it didn’t seem fair that it was just me who was pissed off because of you.”

“Me?” Ilya pauses pulling his shirt off. “What did I do?”

Shane’s half-lidded eyes narrow to glaring daggers. “What do you think?”

Ilya throws his shirt at Shane just to watch the split-second torture of whether to stop fingering himself and catch, or to risk a pearl button to the eye. He chooses the former, wincing and too-quickly pulling his fingers out. He still manages to catch.

Shane balls the shirt up and throws it back, hitting Ilya’s abdomen before falling to the floor. Ilya kicks it away, unbuckling his belt and slipping a hand into his pants.

“I can leave,” Ilya says, palming himself. “Seems like you are all set with your lonely dildo.”

The daggers glint in the low bedroom light. “Will you just—get over here?”

“What? You need something?”

That earns him a thrown pillow. The dildo is probably next. Ilya doesn’t want a sex toy black eye—he’s already had that particular life experience, and there’s no need for a repeat—so he shucks his pants and rounds the bed.

Shane’s eyes slide open, his lips parting as Ilya fucks three of his own fingers into Shane’s hole, and then two into his mouth. Ilya presses down on Shane’s tongue and up into his prostate simultaneously, a surefire way to hear his favorite gagging, guttural groan.

Ilya never understands the appeal of the piano, save for these exact moments.

He fucks his fingers in and out of Shane’s mouth a few more times, and then runs his spit-covered forefinger over the bruise blooming high on Shane’s cheek. He pushes until the red flesh turns white.

“I’ll have to speak to Zubar,” Ilya says, as if it were an afterthought to Shane’s moan. “I’m the only one who can bruise this beautiful face.”

Shane opens his eyes and mouth, no doubt to glare and snark, and Ilya slaps him. It’s mostly shallow and mostly for show, but he watches Shane’s cock leak precome onto his stomach with mouth-watering satisfaction.

“I think we have been apart too long,” Ilya continues, dropping to a colder, lower register, “if this is how you greet me. If this is the way you speak to me.”

He turns Shane over, grasping the handful of thick flesh at his hips and yanking him to the end of the bed, wincing as it pulls at his injured shoulder. Fuck. At least Shane didn’t see that.

“If you just fucked up your shoulder doing that, I’m going to kill you,” Shane says, turning his head and resting his cheek on the bedding.

Ilya smacks Shane’s ass with his good arm. “I think is time for you to stop talking.”

“I wouldn’t be talking if you would actually do—” Shane cuts off with a groan as Ilya fucks his cock into Shane with one brutal thrust. He must’ve only just gotten to three fingers when Ilya arrived, because he’s still so fucking tight and infernal and perfect. He’s going to come way too fast. He’s missed Shane so fucking much.

Shane is already writhing, hitching his hips in an attempt to spur Ilya to fuck him. Ilya hunches over Shane’s back and starts a too-quick pace, rabbity and uncaring of Shane’s pleasure.

“Oh, fuck,” Shane says, his eyes squeezing shut as he fists a hand into the bedding. “Fuck, Ilya.”

“I thought I said stop talking,” Ilya grunts, reaching for the dildo. He pulls Shane upright, pressed so tightly together as he thrusts the dildo into Shane’s mouth, his other forearm wrapping around Shane’s neck. He wishes, and not for the first time, that Shane had a mirror in his bedroom like Ilya has in his, so he could watch Shane’s throat struggle.

He can see tears prick in the corners of Shane’s eyes. “What, what is wrong? I thought you wanted to fuck yourself with the dildo.” He bites Shane’s ear and says, dark and threatening, “Let it fall and I turn your ass purple.”

Shane closes his eyes and nods, his jaw working. Ilya wonders if there’s a cock-shaped gag on the market that goes all the way to the throat. Something to research later.

He pulls his hand away from the base, then unwraps his forearm from Shane’s throat. He leans back to watch the swell of Shane’s ass bounce, to see his hole stretch around his cock, one hand on his hip and the other in his hair. Ilya pulls his hair, and Shane keens, and it’s almost enough to distract him from the fact that it’s his bad shoulder and a bad position. But if he switches arms, there’s not an insignificant chance he loses his balance and falls on his ass, so he’ll bear the pain.

“You want me to come in you?” Ilya pants, his pelvis slapping against the meat of Shane’s ass, ringing in his ears. Shane squeezes his eyes shut and tries to nod without dislodging the dildo.

Ilya grins. “Then maybe you should have thought of this before you got this dildo out.”

He speeds up, but he quickly loses any sense of rhythm and control. His orgasm crashes over him, and Ilya pulls out to slap his cock head against Shane’s hole, painting the twitching gape in his come but not fucking it back inside. When he rolls Shane back over, there’s come all over the comforter and Shane’s belly, but his dick is still half-hard.

“Jesus fuck,” Ilya exhales, staring at Shane’s beautiful, plump cock, already getting harder. “You’re this cock hungry?”

Shane makes a desperate noise around the dildo, and Ilya takes mercy, pulling it out and throwing it on the floor.

“Please, fuck, I need you so much,” Shane starts begging immediately. “Anything, just give me something—”

“Shh,” Ilya says, smoothing a hand over Shane’s sweat-drenched torso, pinching a nipple. “Fine. So desperate. So disgusting. So…needy.”

Shane’s big, wet eyes meet his as he nods fervently. “Let me—let me suck your cock, Ilya, I need it.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Fine. If you must. But head off the side and knees up.”

Shane is eager to rearrange himself, nuzzling at Ilya’s soft cock before Ilya smacks it against his face. “Hurry up, before I change my mind.”

He whines, but lies down, his legs parting and feet planted on the bed. Ilya feeds his soft cock into Shane’s perfect, waiting mouth. Shane begins suckling, his eyes fluttering shut, his throat working rhythmically. Ilya reaches across his perfect body to fuck his come into Shane’s hole. He fucks four fingers in and out of Shane’s red, stretched hole, thumbing the tease of a fifth along the rim when Shane shudders and comes again.

Ilya flops down on the bed and blows his hair out of his face. “Christ, Hollander, one day you’re gonna kill me.”

Shane sits up, already looking suspicious. “Did that hurt your shoulder?”

Goddamn it. “No.”

“Ilya.”

“I must not be fucking you good enough, if this is all you can talk about five seconds after you come.”

Shane pulls a face and pads out of the room, wobbling a little at first. Ilya rolls his eyes and gets up to piss and wet a cloth before Shane returns with a glass of water and a bag of frozen peas in hand.

They stare at each other. A standoff.

“If I am taking care of you, and you are taking care of me, then who is flying the plane?” Ilya jokes.

It falls flat somewhere on the plush white carpet between them, and Shane snaps, “Get on the bed, dumbass. Do you need help retaping?”

His shoulder twinges. “Yes,” he admits.

Shane throws the bag of peas at him and leaves again. Ilya hisses as he presses the icy bag to his fevered skin, but—fuck, his shoulder does fucking hurt.

After a few minutes, Shane comes back with a roll of KT tape and another glass of water. He sets both aside and accepts the cloth from Ilya, giving himself a perfunctory wipe over his stomach and between his asscheeks, and goes into the bathroom, bringing the same—or maybe a new—wet cloth back. He climbs on the bed, the mattress dipping and shifting beneath his knee-walking, until he presses a gentle kiss to Ilya’s left shoulder.

Ilya’s throat goes tight. “What, a kiss will make it better?”

“Maybe,” Shane says softly. “Or maybe I just wanted to kiss you.” He presses the cloth to the tape, dampening the adhesive, and slowly works it from Ilya’s skin. He hisses. “Baby, you’re all red here.”

Baby? Ilya’s eyebrows shoot upward as he cranes his neck to look over his shoulder. “Baby?”

Shane flushes a deep, lovely red. “You call me sweetheart sometimes,” he says after a moment. “I thought I could call you—do you. Um. Not like it?”

Ilya doesn’t know if he can survive a lifetime with Shane. He isn’t sure his heart will even make it to the morning.

“I love it, sweetheart,” Ilya says, thick and full-throated with love. “Anything you want.”

“I want you not to fuck up your shoulder during sex,” Shane grumbles. “And for you to ask your team to buy the tape for sensitive skin; this looks like an adhesive rash.”

“Russians do not have sensitive skin.”

Shane flicks Ilya’s ear. “Tell that to your specialty shaving cream. Now turn around before you fuck up your neck, too. You’re lucky that I’ve got this kind on hand.”

Ilya turns around, his heart thumping wildly. Yes, yes he is.

Shane pulls and tapes his skin, methodical as he secures and massages the muscles and tendons. Ilya wishes he could see Shane’s face, the concentration and single-minded determination he knows is there. Wishes he could bite the wrinkle between his furrowed brows, and the red apples of his cheeks, and kiss every individual freckle.

“How does that feel?” Shane asks, after he attaches the end of another strip. Ilya tilts his head, rolls his shoulder, flexes his bicep. It hurts, but the compressed and necessary kind he’s associated with the game since he was a boy and broke his ankle for the first time.

“Good,” Ilya says. “Can I hold you now?”

“Now who’s needy?” Shane says. Ilya can hear his smile, and he kisses it from Shane’s face once he’s in Ilya’s arms.

It’s quiet for a moment. Something settles in Ilya’s stomach, something he can’t put a name to, but he knows the last time he felt it was in August at the cottage.

If it’s contentment, it’s unmatched on Shane’s worried face.

Ilya hums and presses another kiss to his hair, inhaling the eucalyptus and mint. “Something on your mind?”

“No, just.” Shane hesitates. “I mean. I was just thinking—is it weird I missed having hate sex?”

“I have never had hate sex with you,” Ilya says honestly. Shane’s face softens, and then he punches Ilya’s good shoulder.

“What was that for!”

“You can’t just say shit like that. You’re gonna, like, make me cry.”

Ha. Payback. “Is true. Well.” Ilya tilts his head. “No, All-Star weekend 2015, this was hate sex.”

“Why, because I beat you in shot accuracy?” Shane peers up at Ilya and grins all smug and annoying. “I knew that pissed you off.”

“You cheated!”

“How is that even possible in an accuracy—” Shane’s well-worn path of this complaint is cut off by Ilya’s lips, his tongue sliding into Shane’s mouth and licking his teeth, which Shane has always thought was weird. He squirms, and Ilya relents, softening the kiss in apology. They make out for a bit, just because. They have all night. They’re not in a rush.

“We can have more not-hate sex,” Ilya says, when they come up for air. “I love not-hate fucking you.”

“Boston keeps playing like that, and it won’t even be hard,” Shane says, rolling off the bed and heading to the bathroom. “Zubarev’s a fucking piece of work.”

He wants to laugh out loud. Wants to say, tell me something I don’t know.

Ilya bites it back, resting his good arm behind his head. “Like you were not running your mouth all night. I know how you play, Hollander.”

Shane leans against the doorframe, brushing his teeth. “He’s a dirty fucking player. You saw that hit on Bubbles.”

Ilya snorts. “Who the fuck is Bubbles?”

Shane glares at him and disappears into the bathroom. He hears him spit, rinse, and call out, “Bubel, number nine? The D up from Laval.”

Ah. Yes, Zubarev’s hit on him in the first was…

“It was borderline,” Ilya allows.

A scoff echoes against the tiles, and Shane reappears, fancy tongue scraper in-hand. “Borderline? That was borderline?”

Ilya rolls his eyes and climbs out of bed. He follows Shane into the bathroom and drops a kiss on the back of his neck. “Do you want to talk about how Zubarev plays dirty, or do you want to talk about what we are getting your mother for her birthday?”

Shane rinses his mouth and stares at Ilya in the mirror after he spits. It’s weird how much he looks like David when he’s confused. “My mom’s birthday?”

“December 12, no?” Did Ilya get it wrong? He’s terrible with remembering birthdays, but on the ride over, he triple-checked the shared calendar Shane made for the year, maybe the most romantic thing he’d ever done until the slides.

“No, I mean—yeah, her birthday is the twelfth. But…” Shane turns, his eyes wide in the worst way. “You want to get her a present?”

Ilya hates the surprise on his face, the kind that showed up at the cottage when his father saw them kissing, and Ilya said he would go with Shane to speak to his parents, or when Ilya said he wanted to spend as much time with Shane as possible.

“From the both of us? Yes. Is good manners,” Ilya says. “I want your parents to like me and think I am a nice boy who loves their son. Especially your mother.”

Shane’s hand has drifted to Ilya’s biceps. He thumbs over a mole, then traces the length of a vein. “My parents already love you.”

Okay, sure. Shane can think that, but Ilya knows the truth. He fucked up Shane’s entire perfectly planned life. And he didn’t even bring flowers or wine for that first lunch at the cottage, when he had to sit and insist he loved their perfect only son, even though he fucked his entire life and showed up an empty-handed dinner guest.

“Still, we need to get a nice present,” Ilya says. “How does she feel about expensive, ah. The word for letter paper and notepads and things.”

“Stationary?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, like he hadn’t researched it extensively after remembering that Yuna always scribbles in a small journal nearly every time he’s seen her, starting with the day she watched his Prospect Cup practice with Shane. “Does she like expensive stationery? Nice pens?”

Shane blinks. “That’s, like, her favorite thing. But she doesn’t get it for herself ’cause she says she can just use the stuff my dad brings from conferences and not waste the money.”

So it’s the perfect gift; just as he thought. She might even cry, and see how nice and thoughtful and rich Ilya is. “Okay, good. We will have to think of how to top this for Christmas.”

Shane just stands there, eyes wide.

Ilya kisses him because he can. “Can I get ready for bed?”

Shane nods. Ilya smacks his bare ass as he walks back to the bed. Ilya showers and quickly dries off, his towel slipping into a puddle at his feet as he roots through the bottom drawer for a toothbrush. The eco-friendly wrapping wrinkles in his hand, and he doesn’t have the energy to push away the memory of leaving for the hospital in Boston and telling himself he would never be back here.

His mind wanders back to reality as he blinks and realizes he’s just been staring at himself in the mirror, toothpaste froth long washed down the drain. The toothbrush goes in the holder thingy. He leaves and then doubles back to cap the tube. God, every night with this bullshit.

He’ll need to steal a pair of boxers to sleep in.

He doesn’t mind sleeping naked, but Shane is weird about it. If they're doing this for real—a shiver of a thought that pimples across his skin—then he could maybe leave some things here. Shane maybe is encouraging it, in his own way, with the slides.

Shane is sitting upright, his hands folded on top of a closed book, his glasses sliding down his nose. Ilya doesn’t know what he’s mulling over, but it looks serious. He hums and makes a pitstop at the dresser, selecting a pair of black—

Oh. These are his.

It shouldn’t make his heart bass-beat rattle in his chest, or make his right leg tremble unsteadily when he slides his left leg in. It constricts in his chest, a stitch in his side, but the kind he likes.

Ilya lifts the covers on what’s become his side of the bed and slides between the cool sheets. He presses a kiss to Shane’s cheek, then his shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”

Shane shakes his head, and then stops. Then he tilts his head, and eventually says, “You want to celebrate Christmas together?”

Ilya’s brow furrows. Did Shane not think that…?

The knife threatens to gut him again, tracing the length of his abdomen.

“No, I am going back to Russia for holiday I don’t celebrate,” Ilya says, aiming for light hearted, but it sounds just as miserable as he feels. He rolls away from Shane and pinches his nose so he doesn’t see his words stab back, or what Shane looks like when he realizes that Ilya is a miserable beaten dog of a man who snaps at an outstretched hand when cornered and without care of its intention to punish or pet.

“It was just.” Shane falters. One big hand hovers over Ilya’s abdomen, a hesitant finger above the big red button under the missile silo. “I don’t know. We hadn’t talked about it. It’s not…too much?”

Ilya’s hand falls from his face. The finger pulls away, the launch called off. “Too much?”

“Well. You’re already coming up for American Thanksgiving,” Shane says, his eyes flickering to Ilya’s. Ilya nods. “And we’ve got the Winter Classic on New Year's. It’s a lot of travel to, like, Ottawa.”

“Should I not get used to this?” God. He sounds like the pissy, moping preteen he was frozen into and has spent fourteen years trying to thaw out of.

Shane doesn’t say anything. Ilya scrubs over his face. “Sorry. I mean—yes. Is a lot of travel. But I want to spend the time with you.”

The mattress shifts. Shane rolls into a warm line tucked into his body. “I know you keep saying it,” he says quietly. “I’m trying to. Like. Get it, I guess.”

Shane has this unbelievable ability to oscillate from wounding in the worst way to wounding in the best way. It’s an agility that even Shane’s skate work can’t match. Somehow, in the middle of trying to stop the bleeding, Ilya manages to marvel at it every time.

Ilya sits up, fiddling with his cross. “It’s new,” he says. “I have to remind myself sometimes, too.”

And—it’s true. Not the constant thought of Shane; that’s been the order of things for years. But the knowing is.

Knowing that he’s allowed to—call, to reach out, to reciprocate, just to send a text that says good morning or I love you, and for it not to be an admission of guilt at a sentencing is hard to reconcile. It’s been many years since there’s been a person quietly loving him, no matter the distance. It’s unfair to think there would be no—growing pains.

It was a foolish hope. That they had their fair share of pain between them, growing or otherwise, and the universe would cut them a break. Ilya’s fault, probably. The universe isn’t very fond of him.

“I want to do Christmas,” Shane says. “I wish I could come for New Year's Eve. The photos always look crazy.”

Ilya smiles, wry and hidden, and then flops backward, arranging himself so he’s tucked into the warm, solid length of Shane. “You would hate it. Actually, is a good idea. You come this year, Marly will get you shitfaced on his Jell-O shots, we win Winter Classic.”

Shane rolls his eyes and elbows Ilya. “You’re such an asshole.”

Ilya pouts until Shane smiles and leans down to kiss him before turning off the bedside lamp. Ilya rolls over to punch his pillow when Shane clears his throat. “Can you, um.”

Ilya turns. His eyes are slowly adjusting to the darkness, and he wraps his hand around Shane’s wrist, pressing his thumb into the underside, only to find a racing pulse. Something rolls in his stomach. It’s his own fault; Ilya’s a live wire, surging hurt the moment anyone comes close enough to touch. It’s a small mercy, that at the very least, Shane still wants him to fix it.

“Of course, sweetheart,” Ilya says, throaty as he rolls onto Shane, starfishing atop him, and goes limp, the bulk of him blanketing Shane.

Shane sighs, shaky, but satisfied. His hand drifts to Ilya’s hair, scratching gently. It relaxes something in him, the knotted fascia snarling across his scapulae relaxing into dead weight.

“Thank you for the slides,” Ilya mumbles into Shane’s neck.

“’Course, baby,” Shane says, his chest so warm as it rises and falls beneath Ilya. “Night.”

It’s so sweet, so easy on his tongue to croon, “Goodnight.”

—

They drop the first game Ilya’s back in the lineup, but it’s a close one against Washington. Then they drop another. Then they’re on a loss streak heading into their last game in October.

It’s fucking disgusting. Disgraceful. A beer league of middle-aged women could play better hockey. It’s 0-5 at home. Against Scott fucking Hunter who was supposedly day-to-day with an achilles strain and the Admirals’ joke of a third-string goalie.

And three of the five goals were because of Zubarev. His play was embarrassing—pathetic—the entire night. Sloppy in the corners. Turnovers. A hooking call while Hunter was on a breakaway resulting in a penalty shot. Two shots he whiffed when he should’ve passed in the first place.

They were supposed to have the morning off. Coach changes his mind and sets an eight a.m. start to bag skate them.

Good.

They all need to fucking shape up. Ilya isn’t in the mood to hear the bitching and moaning as the guys straggle into the rink. He leaves their sorry asses in the snow as they sprint between the blue lines, barks at Wheeler to skate or get the fuck off the ice, at Dyson that goalies don’t get off easy, at Zubarev to act like he wants to be here.

He can imagine the beat reporters’ tweets. The Czar is back, they’ll write like they always do when there’s a skate like this, or when he’s especially vocal during practice. Rozanov sends Raiders to the gulag after an embarrassing four-loss streak. Or—what’s the biggest difference between Rozanov and Hollander? the talking heads always posit. Well, Hollander leads by example when things don’t go right, but Rozanov rules with an iron fist. You have to imagine that a room led by fear isn’t exactly a strong one.

Who the fuck cares. He was trained differently. In Russia, if you fuck up, you skate until your legs fall off. You go until you’re puking over the boards. That’s what made him a champion.

Thirty minutes in, Reilly divides them as Wash and Butch dump the pucks and have them run battle drills.

“Pass the fucking puck,” Ilya barks at Zubarev, after another embarrassing undercoverage run against the boards. “If you can’t fucking do it, you pass the fucking puck.”

“Ilya,” Wash cautions, glancing at Reilly across the ice.

“We’re ready,” Ilya cuts back. “Blow the whistle.”

Wash blows the whistle. Hammy checks Zubarev, Vic passes to Zubarev, Wheeler crosses Sebbin, Zubarev—

“Hold off! Hold—motherfucker.” Ilya throws a hand up as Hammy stops next to him on the ice, puck easily picked off on the pass.

Zubarev and Vic are circling lazily, waiting for the next drill to start. Ilya takes the puck from Hammy and slaps it at Zubarev’s shin. «Do you think this is a fucking joke?» Ilya says in Russian, skating up to him. «You think losing is funny? You think your lazy fucking skating will keep you here?»

Zubarev’s face is impassive.

«Well?» Ilya asks. «Any explanation why you suddenly can’t play? You think we keep you around because you’re so much fun in the room? A good laugh? No. If you don’t want to be here, I’ll buy your ticket back myself.»

Zubarev says nothing. Then rolls his eyes.

If Ilya starts a fight, the press will say he’s lost control of the team. Ilya clenches his jaw, white knuckles concealed by his gloves. Counts to three in his head, and then, low and deadly, says, «I’m surprised you went as high as you did. A fourth rounder out of Michigan could do better than you. You’re a fucking embarrassment.»

Zubarev purses his lips. Spits on the ice, just narrowly missing Ilya’s skates, and then pushes past him as he skates toward the bench. Ilya doesn’t react. Can’t react.

“That sounded harsh, Roz,” Hammy says when Ilya skates back towards his group.

“He needs to learn,” Ilya says. He slaps his stick against the ice. “I’ll fucking show you how to do it,” he snaps at Sebbin. “Run it again.”

—

Zubarev must Uber home. Ilya wouldn’t give a shit, except tonight is their stupid fucking Halloween party, and he left before Marly could pass out the rookie costume.

“He won’t fucking learn,” Ilya says, tapping his thumb against the steering wheel, ash falling from the cigarette between his fingers. “Every time I think he’s getting it, maybe he understands the stakes, he goes—fucking two steps back.”

From an elliptical in Pittsburgh, Shane hums. “What does Reilly say?”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “He’s young, he’s rookie, he needs time,” he says, taking a drag and blowing it out. “Is a joke. There’s no, no consistency, and he doesn’t put in the effort at practice, and—”

“He seemed to put in the effort in Montreal,” Shane interrupts. “And you seemed pretty pleased when he punched me in the face.”

Ilya snuffs his cigarette in the watery dregs of his iced coffee. “Yes, you’re hot when you fight.”

“Ilya.”

“Plus, anyone who can piss you off like that—”

“Why do you—I thought you had to do this,” Shane says, the whirring of the elliptical slowing to a stop. “I thought you, like, wanted to take him under your wing and make sure he succeeded.”

Ilya blinks. A car honks behind him, and he looks up to see that the light has turned green. Fuck.

“We were trained the same way,” Ilya says, eventually. It shouldn’t taste like an admission. “He should know better.”

Shane blows out a breath, the air crinkling against the microphone and through Ilya’s speakers. “I can’t believe I’m defending this jackass. He’s twenty. You weren’t exactly perfect at twenty.”

“Yes, I was,” Ilya says. “Who’s side are you on, anyway?”

“Yours,” Shane says, sharper. Ilya can picture the way his eyes are narrowing. “But—I don’t know. He seems to be doing fine. It’s not exactly easy coming into the league.”

No, it’s not. But if Zubarev can’t handle it, then Ilya needs to know sooner rather than later. He’s not going to—

Another car honks. Fucking Boston. Nobody knows how to merge.

“Whatever,” Ilya grumbles. “You are supposed to agree with me.”

“Maybe you’re just extra pissed off because it was a loss to Hunter,” Shane says. “I wonder if he’s got a crush.”

“Who, Zubar?” Yeah fucking right. Ilya would be able to tell. He’s always been able to tell.

“Well, I don’t think you have a crush on Scott.” Then Shane says, “...Do you?”

Ilya snorts. “Yes, Shane, I am going to leave you for NHL’s gay savior with soft old man dick.”

“I’m just saying. Anyways, I gotta go do my yoga.”

“Okay. I will call you later, after party?”

“Sounds good. Love you, baby.”

Ilya can’t help but smile. It’s constant, now, Shane’s new pet name for him. Ilya loves it, loves him. He says as much, and his mood is temporarily lifted for the rest of the drive home.

It sours again when Zubarev isn’t in the living room or the kitchen. Ilya shouldn’t have to go and find him. Not in his own home.

The door to his bedroom is shut. Ilya bangs on the wood twice, echoing through the hallway. When nothing happens, Ilya knocks again, harder. “Open the fuck up. It’s my door, I’ll kick it down.”

There’s movement. Bedsprings creaking. Footsteps against carpet. The door cracks open. Zubarev looks murderous.

“Your Halloween costume,” Ilya says, pushing into the room and thrusting the hanger at him. “All rookies have to wear it. Egnell has the same.”

Zubarev’s brow furrows. He turns the stripped fabric over in his hands, taking in the corset, the skirt. He looks up at Ilya, confused. “A…dress?”

«Pirate wench,» Ilya explains, then switches back to English. “It’s tradition. At least you don’t have to learn the song like I did my rookie year.”

«I can’t wear this,» Zubarev says, shaking his head, pushing it back to Ilya.

Ilya rolls his eyes. «It’s one fucking night. We all did it. Just man up and wear it.»

«Rozanov,» Zubarev says, something—changing in his face. «Please. I can’t wear this. You know I can’t.»

Ilya snorts. «What, are you afraid you’ll like it?»

«No—they’ll. They’ll take photos.» Zubarev steps back, shaking his head. The costume falls between them, a puddle of red and black and white on the floor. «If they get out—I can’t. I just can’t.»

«It’s for the team,» Ilya says. «It’s not a big deal.»

He regrets it the second he says it, when Zubarev’s pleading crumples across his face, shaking his head and attempting to blink back—fuck. Those are—

«I thought you would be different, but you—you talk about your girlfriend the same way they all do. And now you want me to wear this, and you know I can’t, you know what they’ll say about me, and I—I don’t know what you want from me.» Zubarev sits down on the bed heavily, his face bright red, his hands pulling at the short strands of his hair. «I don’t know how to do any of this.»

It sounds—desperate. Miserable. So…young.

Fuck.

«Nothing happened to me,» Ilya says, finally. «The photos got around. Everyone thought it was funny.»

Zubarev shakes his head, his face hidden in his hands.

Ilya exhales and sits on the bed. «Zubar, come on.» When he doesn’t move, Ilya tries again. «Dima, nothing will happen.»

«It was different back then,» Zubarev says. «And your father was the head of police. Of course nothing happened to you.»

Ilya wants to say that the photos would’ve been worse for him. Ilya has to contend with the rumors, with the way he speaks, with his reputation. But Zubarev won’t understand.

«Fine, you don’t have to wear it. I’ll make an excuse,» he says, and—God. He wishes he didn’t have to see the relief on Zubarev’s face. «But you have to learn the song.»

«Yes, fine, anything,» Zubarev says quickly. «Thank you.»

The earnestness—Ilya isn’t expecting it. It turns in his stomach, sickening and sour. «It’s fine. Just—start playing better, okay?»

Zubarev nods, too quick, too eager, looking so—boyish. «I’m trying, I promise.»

Ilya isn’t sure how much of that he believes, but it softens something somewhere. «Alright,» he says eventually. «That’s…good, I guess.»

He stands, unable to stand the shift in the air. «Well,» Ilya says. He pauses in the doorway. «We’re leaving at 9. Better figure out a costume.»

Zubarev nods. Ilya nods. Zubarev picks up his phone, and Ilya gets the fuck out of there.

He’s halfway down the hall, but Ilya still hears Zubarev say, «Lenochka? I need your help. There’s this party—»

Ilya closes the door to his room and slumps against it. Fuck.

He needs a drink.

Chapter End Notes

HOO BOY. is an 11k chapter worth the wait? 😭😭😭

Thank you EVERYONE for your patience with this chapter!!! it was waylaid by writing It’s Kind of a Funny Story (please read, i'm so so proud of it), turning 30, and quite a few bumps and snags life-wise along the way. I'm hoping the next update will come sooner, but by sooner I mean "within 90 days" (hopefully!!!! i've got a very stressful job and a few major life events coming up.) any comments about waiting for an update is more than appreciated and they do make me write faster but i am establishing a rule that you have to say one (1) nice thing about the fic in the comment.

When i kept hitting bumps or working out thorny moments, i would reread y'alls comments/reblogs/everything over and over and just feel so grateful for the response. y'all are the best. I am still working through responding to last chapter's comments, but i thought y'all would enjoy the update before then.

This wouldn't have been possible without my marvelous beta Marivan who is so so helpful and smart and catches all my comma splices. I'll never tire of pushing her incredible fic Not a Strip of Paper Merely.

Reblog the fic art on tumblr and come hang out with me at @flawlessassholes. I'm also vaguely lurking on twitter these days at @flawlessaholes. I love you all, MWAH. back with more (reasonably) soon!