Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Harris Drover & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Harris Drover, Svetlana Vetrova, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau

Additional Tags:

Crack Treated Seriously, Ilya Rozanov Was Never a Professional Hockey Player, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Player Shane Hollander, Ableist Language, Overly Critical Self-Talk, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Canon-Typical Bad Ilya Rozanov Childhood, wherein Ilya is (not) being catfished by Harris with pictures of Shane, AU: Ilya is a dog groomer, the tags are stressing me out just let me know if there's something missing thank u, oh yeah, FUCK AI - no AI used here only unresolved trauma and lots of clown makeup

Language:

English

Collections:

our writing group's place to share! ♥︎

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-25 Updated: 2026-09-09 Words: 20,054 Chapters: 2/3

syllogism (boy, am I bad at math)

Summary

Ilya Rozanov had been talking to Harris Drover on Grindr for six months now—which was probably way longer than Grindr’s social etiquette and common sense dictated, but the guy was just something else, and Ilya hadn’t been able to convince himself to stop even once it was clear that they were never going to meet, and that sexting was all he was ever gonna get.

Harris was—he was fun, in that dry, sarcastic, bitchy, bratty way that Ilya went absolutely feral for. There was just one thing—one tiny, minuscule problem—well, more of a small wrinkle. Inconsequential at best, really.

Harris was catfishing Ilya with pictures of Shane Hollander.

or; the risk Ilya took was calculated... but boy, is he bad at math.

Notes

what's all this then? surely not another WIP when I'm 150k words deep into Slow Dancing in the Dark? surely not 🧐

(I just need a small break after spending over a month on chapter 7, I'm going right back to Shane as soon as I'm done exorcising the catfishing demons)

 
📳 thank you so much to MadeofMud for coming up with the original idea, writing their fic, and giving me permission to hitch my wagon to their brilliance - this plot bunny has had me in a chokehold for weeks now and being able to ✨ release it into the wild ✨ means the world.

💚❤️ thank you to the best betas-slash-hype machines ever: Triserratops (certified plot holes sniffer) and ileftmyheartinnarnia 🩷

🐶 let me hold your hand and kiss your forehead as I say: there's a lot of hand-wavy hockey logic in here. this is your warning: I spent more time researching Ilya's apartment than ensuring the hockey bits are realistic.

🏒 speaking of, I know Torey Krug is not retired, is the same age as Ilya, and would therefore be on the actual Bears roster since the fic is set in 2018 etc - but please consider the following: 🧚🏻‍♀️🪄✨💖 I don't care 💖✨🪄🧚🏻‍♀️

• Inspired by Catfished by Shane Hollander!? by MadeofMud

Chapter 1: triangles are my favorite shape

Chapter Notes

Ilya Rozanov had been talking to Harris Drover on Grindr for six months now—which was probably way longer than Grindr’s social etiquette and common sense dictated, but the guy was just something else, and Ilya hadn’t been able to convince himself to stop even once it was clear that they were never going to meet, and that (questionable) sexting was all he was ever gonna get.

Harris was—he was fun, in that dry, sarcastic, bitchy, bratty way that Ilya went absolutely feral for. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of hockey that even rivaled Svetlana’s, but had certain gaps in his pop culture one that were maybe a bit odd for a Social Media Manager, sure, but they were endearing as fuck because what do you mean that there’s a lone millennial out there who has never seen or even heard of Space Jam?

Of course it had been Ilya’s duty—and absolute privilege beside—to send Harris a Teleparty link and comment on the whole movie together while they watched. And that had only been the first of many movies they’d watched together—one per week, a fixed date Ilya had definitely not taken to rearranging his whole social calendar around.

Harris was sweet, too. When he wanted to be. When Ilya got him out of his head enough to give up pretense, and stop feeling self-conscious, and just embrace his desires for once. Harris wasn’t that great at sexting, but Ilya didn’t give two shits—he was good enough for both of them, and the thought of making Harris go nonverbal with pleasure was way hotter than anything else the other could have typed, so it was fine. Ilya actually preferred it when Harris stopped replying and just responded with “yes,” and “please,” and the occasional “duck Ilya” (which meant Harris was too busy jerking himself off to care about his phone’s spellchecker going rogue, and didn’t that do a fucking number on Ilya’s ego every single time).

It was a heady fucking rush, knowing he was able to drive another person—a person who he’d never even touched before, who’d never even heard his voice—to orgasm with his words.

And Harris was so easy for it, always eager, never turning him down but instead checking in with Ilya almost daily with the most politely awkward requests for sex Ilya had ever had the delight of reading, “Just wondering if you want to talk tonight? :)” like they were high school sweethearts planning to discuss tomorrow’s chem quiz over a phone call instead of two grown men making a plan to fuck. Ilya had a pretty high sex drive, and while he’d never lacked for partners, he was actually hard-pressed to remember one who’d wanted him so much—maybe Sasha, but then again they’d been teenagers at the time, and there was the added layer of danger and secrecy that made each meeting hotter and more passionate.

It wasn’t even just the sex, really—Ilya could literally go outside, go to Trader Joe’s, and pick up more than groceries, so it’s really not a matter of lack of availability. It also helped that he was a handsome bisexual man in his prime who owned his own business, so yeah, Ilya wasn’t struggling to find someone to take home for the night, it was just that—Harris was different.

After the first couple of times where their chats had immediately veered into sex, Harris had messaged him in the morning, telling him that he really enjoyed their time together (their time together!) (like Ilya’d taken him out to dinner at Mooncusser instead of calling him a slut and telling him to finger himself open and fuck himself with a dildo!) but he would be okay with talking about other things too—if Ilya wanted.

Two paragraphs of text that started out coherent and poised, and devolved into absolute maddening ramblings that included the word “sorry” every other word—“sorry if this is weird,” “sorry if I’ve made this awkward,” “sorry if this isn’t sexy haha!” “anyway sorry, I'll leave you be now, enjoy the rest of your day”— that Ilya almost took a screenshot of so he could send it to Sveta before deciding that no amount of gloating over finding an actually nice, polite man on Grindr would be worth violating the sanctity of Harris’s trust.

Ilya knew from (purposeful lack of) experience that opening up to someone, even over text, took fucking balls, and he had discarded his initial thought—asking Harris if he was as Canadian as his username implied, because the only time he’d ever heard someone say “sorry” so much was when he’d spent a week in Banff with Sveta for a vacation—and had instead agreed, and said that sure, they could talk about topics that didn’t include how pretty Harris’s hole was, and how sweet his moans would sound if Ilya was there to hear them.

So, really, it was just a perfect storm of things that had kept Ilya glued to his phone for six months, talking to Harris and wishing him good morning, sending him random pictures of his furry little customers, and telling him things interrogation experts from the CIA wouldn’t be able to fucking waterboard out of him. Harris was just that interesting of a guy, and he was really doing it for Ilya with his snark, his self-conscious-hot sexting, then his unselfconscious-hot texting, and his fucking basic-ass smiley emojis.

There was just one thing—one tiny, minuscule problem—well, more of a small wrinkle. Inconsequential at best, really.

Harris was catfishing Ilya with pictures of Shane Hollander.

It had actually been Sveta who’d figured it out first.

To his credit, Ilya had immediately clocked that he was being catfished because even though no face was visible (all the shots cut off at the neckline or lower, at those slutty little collarbones) he was intimately familiar with Shane Hollander’s Calvin Klein campaign photos—and besides he was pretty sure he could pick out that fucking bellybutton in a lineup—but Svetlana had been the one to connect the dots all the way to Harris Drover, Social Media Manager for the Boston Bears.

It went like this: they’d been sitting on Ilya’s couch, eating their way through a family sized bag of shrimp chips in garlic butter, tossing peanuts at each other’s faces in a vicious game of mouthketball (that Ilya was most definitely not cheating at, no matter what Sveta claimed), mixing increasingly stupider drinks with the supplies from Ilya’s well-stocked bar, when the Grindr notification had startled both of them into silence.

Ilya was supposed to talk to his sweet, bratty hookup that evening, but Sveta’d had a bad day so she had come over unexpectedly… and Ilya had started losing the plot when the Jose Cuervo had emerged from whatever hellscape Ilya had banished it to after the last brutal hangover, then those stupid shrimp chips had gotten involved and Ilya was a terrible, terrible person because he’d totally forgotten to message Harris—at the time still known just as CanadaWet42—and tell him he’d have to take a raincheck because best friend duty called.

And then, as Svetlana’s eyes glimmered with mischief and tequila, Ilya had to deal with the consequences of his carelessness. He and Sveta had looked at each other for a brief moment, time stretching between them like sticky toffee, and then they’d both lunged for the phone, Sveta emerging victorious after gnawing Ilya’s forearm like a chew toy and slobbering all over it.

She’d taken exactly two tries to guess Ilya’s new password, and immediately laughed at the text in a cruel way that had twisted something ugly in Ilya’s stomach and that plausible deniability claimed was tequila instead of irritation, because no one was allowed to laugh at those precious little texts that made Ilya's days so much brighter—no one but Ilya, and even he only did it in CanadaWet42’s face when he was playing mean Ilya, never for real. For Sveta to do it—it just felt wrong.

“‘Good evening Ilya, let me know when you’re ready, smiley face.’ This dude gonna suck your dick or do your taxes?”

“Shut up Svetlana, he’s—gimme that—he’s not gonna suck my dick!”

“Oh, so taxes it is then?”

Ilya had pelted her with lime rinds, “Fuck off, I meant that we don’t meet up. We just sext.”

She’d made no secret of her surprise, eyebrows climbing up her forehead until they’d all but disappeared into her hairline. “That’s new. Why?”

Ilya wasn’t sure he should say something, considering Sveta had already made fun of his little bunny, but Tito Cuervo was a dangerous weapon that had loosened his tongue and decimated his brain cells, and Ilya was only one man. “He’s catfishing me,” he’d finally admitted. “Using pictures of Shane Hollander, of all people.”

“And you still talk to him?”

“He’s cute,” Ilya shrugged. “Funny. Knows so much about hockey… he said he works in sports management.” And then, because Señor Cuervo was also a cruel, powerful master, Ilya had voiced a theory that had been taking up more and more real estate in his brain. “I think he has to know Hollander somehow, because some of the pictures he sends look like behind-the-scene candids from photoshoots, or like actual locker room selfies. I swear I saw the Bears logo in one of them, but he deleted it and then blurred it before re-uploading, and—well.”

He had mercifully found the strength to drop the sentence then, realizing that overexplaining was probably going to shed light onto the fact Ilya had derailed many a solitary jackoff sessions by trying to figure out just who this guy was—and if Sveta thought that Ilya just talking to a guy on Grindr was new, he had no illusions that she would take Ilya dropping his dick to think as one of the clear signs of the impending apocalypse.

Regardless, what he’d said had been enough to trigger Svetlana’s huntress instincts, and she’d grabbed Ilya’s laptop from the coffee table, cracking her knuckles and whispering “I’m going in, Morpheus” before clacking her nails on the keyboard so fast Ilya had gotten motion sickness from it.

Thirty minutes later, a name had emerged: Harris Drover, newly-minted Social Media Manager for the Boston Bears. Twenty-two—maybe a little too young for Ilya’s twenty-seven that sometimes felt more like thirty-seven what with all the shit he’d had to put up with in the last five years or so—dark blonde hair and beard, sturdy-looking but soft too, pudgy around the waist and face in a way that told Ilya all those gym selfies had really been a lie—even the shirt-on ones, where he couldn’t see the other’s navel—and with eyes so, so green, crinkling at the edges every time he smiled.

He was really cute-hot. Handsome in a rugged beary way that, while it wasn’t necessarily Ilya’s type, he could definitely get behind (pun maybe intended). And, although he could take a stab as to why Harris felt the need to use a professional athlete’s pictures to pick up guys on Grindr (the apps could be fucking brutal to navigate if you had low self-esteem) (something Ilya definitely wouldn’t know anything about, stop looking at him like that), he couldn’t really understand why. There were plenty of bears on Grindr—plenty of people in all shapes and sizes, really, and it’s not like Ilya would have swiped past him, if Harris had been using his real photos.

On the contrary—Ilya was really into everything he saw on Instagram, from the Ottawa Pride pictures (ha! So he was Canadian, the overly-polite little shit!), the many dog selfies, all the way to the more staged ones of Harris picking apples in some orchard half naked like he was the softcore gay porn version of Snow fucking White.

He was hot, and Ilya was into him.

For some reason, though, Harris was on Grinder posing as Shane Hollander—or, well, posing as someone who’d picked the “mixed ethnicity, discreet jock looking for chats, dates, and friends” options and whose painfully minimalist bio only said “massive fan of an aggressive forecheck :) maybe you can show me yours?” which had been so stupid and goofy that Ilya simply had to engage and tease the other about it.

Despite the catfishing of it all, Ilya still liked CanadaWet42—or, well, Harris.

He was still funny and sweet and snarky and hot, and against all odds Ilya really enjoyed talking to him, so it’s not like he was gonna stop only because he knew he was being catfished. It was just a little… not sad—he was Russian and Russians definitely did not do fucking sad, okay (they did overly dramatic and heart-wrenchingly devastated only, thank you very much)—but maybe a little disappointing? To know that all those pictures he was getting weren’t of the person he was so drawn to, but probably taken for the Boston Bears’ social media pages, where Shane Hollander featured prominently as the captain of the team.

(And more importantly as the generational talent who had won them three back-to-back Cups, a fact Sveta never forgot to bring up any time Ilya commented on how boring Hollander’s media trained press scrums were, especially compared to Marleau’s full-on Boston ones.)

(But that was beside the point.)

So yeah, maybe Ilya kept wondering how to get Harris to tell him the truth, kept trying to drop hints like “I would like talking to you even if you were a worm”—which was absolutely fucking unhinged, and he would deny ever having said it, CIA interrogation specialist be damned—or “I don’t really care about how people look, I just like all people, you know?” but none of it so far had worked, and Ilya was running out of ideas.

And that’s when Sveta, in all her hockey nepo baby glory, invites him to a Boston Bears exhibition game-slash-alumni-focused event.

As he sits down on the plush couches of the TD Garden Luxury Suite, Ilya feels a little bit like Cinderella, but the version of her that traded glass slippers for a privately catered glass box where she can sit sandwiched between Adam Oates and Ray Bourque, trying very hard not to make a casting couch joke by stuffing her face with cheesy twisted mini-breadsticks and pimento olives.

Even as he makes sure to preface every conversation with “I’m here with Vetrov and his daughter Sveta,” so that no one thinks he’s somehow managed to bypass security and infiltrate the Olympus of all Luxury Suites, Ilya is in his element—flitting from player to player, charming all the faces that built this house brick by brick (and also contributed to Ilya’s bisexual awakening) (thank you Torey Krug and Glen Murray) and made him love hockey.

Made him love hockey so much that he’d tried, he’d tried so fucking hard ever since he was a preschooler, but even after hours spent outside in the cold all he had to show for it were bruises, his father’s cold disappointment, and his brother’s mockery of how Ilya was so helpless he could barely balance on skates, let alone be coordinated enough to grip the stick and shoot the puck anywhere near the crease.

It was fine, though—being a disappointment in the Rozanov household had become his trademark, and he’d lived with this specific failure long enough that by now it was more of a dull ache rather than an open wound, no matter that it wouldn't close and scar over properly.

He’d found other things to fill his life with, and while Ilya wasn’t rich and famous he was still happy. Or like, as happy as he could be, he supposed. Which was an appropriate amount of happy for someone who felt like he was watching his life pass him by as he waited for something to happen, and was champagne making him maudlin now? Maybe he should switch to Coke—Sveta would never forgive him if he made an ass of himself, and he hadn't even met Harris yet.

So, Ilya was happy. Full stop, no caveats, no asterisks, no footnotes. Just happy. As happy as a regular non-NHL-adjacent guy could be.

It was just sometimes, in moments like this, when he was surrounded by some of the most talented hockey players of the century, making them laugh and feeling like he would have fit so fucking well in a hockey locker room, that Ilya wished he was better at sports—any sport really, because maybe he could have gotten some points back with his father if he turned out to be a knockout football player, but nope, he was shit at that too. Athletic, but in a way that was more “I go to the gym four times a week and wash dogs’ butts the rest of the time” rather than “I’m a jock that inhales protein powder with every meal,” and that’s what was making him wish Harris would just come clean instead of–

“Hi, is this seat taken?”

Ilya looks up, and finds himself looking directly at—Shane Hollander. In the flesh. Holy fucking shit.

Hollander seems a bit nervous as he gives Ilya a small smile, gesturing towards the empty armchair next to him, and while Ilya has absolutely no fucking clue why Shane Hollander of all people would ever decide to voluntarily sit next to him when Ilya can spot at least four different chairs and and barstools up for grabs, there’s no way in hell he’s gonna pass up on his one chance in life to speak with—and more importantly look at—the Bears’ star center.

God, if Ilya wasn’t sure he’d be punching way above his weight (and hopefully Harris would forgive him for thinking this), he’d totally shoot his shot with Hollander right now. Ilya’s military-grade gaydar could pinpoint a queer person all the way to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, so he’d been getting vibes from Hollander for a while, but never as strong as right now, when Hollander’s doe-eyed, glossy gaze is flitting all over Ilya’s face through lashes so long and thick he had to wonder if the other was wearing mascara.

He looks so fucking beautiful, Ilya thinks, then shakes himself because yeah, okay, let’s all calm the fuck down and stop looking at the dusting of freckles (!!!) all over those cheekbones, which are now turning a delicious shade of pink as Hollander bites his bottom lip—this isn’t real, and Ilya is here for Harris, remember Harris? Sweet-hot-funny-sexy apple-picking Harris Drover? Sure, Hollander looks out-of-this-world gorgeous, so fucking pretty, like whatever Being took care of creation decided “you know what? I’m going to use a ruler to mold this one’s nose.” But he’s Shane Hollander, and Ilya is Ilya, and the only thing Ilya can hope to get out of any time he spends with Shane Hollander and his freckles (again, !!!) is hockey talk—which is fine, really.

There’s no cameras around—not a single Social Media intern to be found (and where the fuck is Harris, by the way?)—so Ilya hopes he can at least get some non-media-trained hockey answers out of Hollander, who always looks so composed and unruffled, it makes Ilya want to run his hands against the grain of Hollander’s gorgeous, freckled (again, fucking !!!) skin until all his feathers are ruffled, and then spend an inordinate amount of time petting them back in the right direction.

Focus, Ilya, he tells himself as he finally lifts his jacket from the armchair, making room for Hollander to sit down. This is hockey royalty, not a fucking cockatiel. Don’t weird him out, you oaf.

“Yes. No. I mean—is not taken, you can sit,” Ilya warbles with what he hopes is a totally cool voice (because things are totally cool, he can be very chill about this, he’s not going to freak out at all). “I’m Ilya,” he adds, nudging the charcuterie board he’d stolen from the big catering table towards Hollander.

“I know—I mean—yeah, uh, I met Svetlana? She—she told me your name,” he says, biting his lip again and stabbing a gherkin with a toothpick. “So… so how are you… did you enjoy the game?”

Did Ilya enjoy watching the Boston Bears’ version of All-Stars, all from the cushy comfort of a privately catered suite, while sitting next to the very players that had made him obsessed with hockey all those years ago?

He shrugs, “Hm. It was okay, I guess. Good enough Friday evening,” he says before he can stop himself. He knows he shouldn't be—well, himself so much with people he’s never met before, especially people who are notoriously bland and polite like Shane Hollander, who probably had to be explained the very concept of sarcasm after getting drafted to Boston. And yet, all of Hollander’s feathers are just out there, looking so soft, waiting for Ilya’s hand to mess them up, and Ilya is only human after all.

To his credit, Hollander looks taken aback for half a second before his mouth curves into a smirk, “What, like you had something better to do?” and what a fucking delightful surprise. Ilya can’t help the wide grin that splits his face in two, because Hollander has jokes?

“I had many very important things to do,” Ilya lies, “Very busy social calendar. Had to buy new calendar to fit this in, was very expensive and time-consuming.”

Hollander laughs just then—a full blown laugh that opens his face up and makes his eyes crinkle, and Ilya is so awestruck at the sight, at the thought he was able to make Shane Hollander laugh, that he’s pretty sure his heart skips a beat. Has anyone ever made Hollander react like that before? Surely—surely Hollander has smiled and laughed before, right? Ilya wasn’t special at all, right?

“I’m sorry,” Hollander says, mirth in his voice, “You can send me the stationery bill, I’ll make sure to wire you the money back.” He looks down at his lap for a second, then his eyes fly right back up to lock with Ilya’s. And then, Hollander winks.

It has to be just a tic, right? An involuntary muscular spasm of sorts? Hollander just played a game after all, even if it was just an exhibition one, it definitely—it didn’t mean—maybe he’s having a stroke, and Ilya should tell someone, because what if he ends up being responsible for a delay in dealing with Shane Hollander’s sudden aneurysm?

Just then, Hollander’s knee bumps into his and stays there, sending a jolt of electricity straight to his brain via kneecap.

Ilya might be a little bit fucked.

He clears his throat, nodding and trying to regain his footing, because what the fuck. None of this is real—military-grade gaydar or not—and Ilya needs to chill the fuck out and stop thinking with his dick, start using that big, beautiful brain his mama gave him instead. “I love hockey,” he blurts out, “I am so—great goal by the way, uh, dude—but yes, it has been great meeting so many legends all in one place. If I was a… scalper? Is that the word? I would be in autograph heaven right now.”

Hollander frowns, a flicker of something odd washing over his face before he blinks, moving his knee away, thank fucking god.

“I am not,” Ilya hastens to add, just in case. I might be a fucking moron though, he adds to himself.

“I know. You’re a pet stylist,” Hollander replies, voice sounding media trained, flat and empty and wrong now that Ilya knows what a smirking, laughing Hollander sounds like. It’s stupid, but he misses it instantly, and wants to hear it again, except—how would Shane Hollander know what he does for a living?

Ilya opens his mouth to ask if Sveta was the one to tell him that when he’s interrupted by a booming voice; “Shane, brother, stop fuckin’ hiding and come meet my fucking cousin, he flew in all the way from Regina for you.” Cliff Marleau stops in front of them, slapping a massive hand on Hollander’s shoulder and squinting at Ilya. “Do I know you? I feel like I know you from somewhere.”

Before Ilya can respond—because how the hell would Cliff Marleau even know Ilya exists, unless Cliff Marleau had a dog or a cat or some other exotic animal that rich people tended to adopt and then took very poor care of—Hollander makes a hissing noise, grabbing the hand clutching his shoulder and holding it in his like his life depends on it.

“This is Ilya,” Shane says with a certain emphasis, eyes widening at Marleau as if he’s trying to communicate something. Whatever telepathy they’ve got going on seems to work, because Marleau immediately lifts both hands in the air and opens his mouth in a surprised O.

“This is Ilya? Here? Now? How the fuck did you manage that?” He asks.

Ilya has no idea what the fuck that’s supposed to mean, but the undercurrent of panic in Hollander’s voice as he says “Marly, shut the fuck up before someone hears you,” makes the little gremlin in his brain work double time to parse the situation.

Hollander knows him. He even called him a pet stylist instead of a dog groomer, which is something Ilya usually has to correct people over. But he'd known. And clearly Marleau knows him too, at least enough to mime zipping up his lips and walking away once Hollander tells him to do so. And what could make a wing—a man—a wingman walk away like that, if not knowing there’s a romantic and/or sexual (god please let it be an and this time) subtext woven into the scene unfolding in front of his very eyes?

Suddenly, it all clicks into place.

It's Hollander's pictures up on Grindr, and in their message threads. A lot of those are selfies, too, and not just your run of the mill gym selfie either—a lot of them are sexy mirror selfies, no clothes and just a handcloth held over Hollander’s dick, shots of Hollander’s ass, his back half twisted to frame the photo clearly. Those are not pictures a Social Media Manager can just randomly get their hands on through their job, no matter how good they are at it.

There is only one possible explanation.

Hollander was helping Harris by giving him access to his private collection of thirst traps.

The more Ilya thinks about it, the more sense it makes.

Hadn't Harris told him that he had just come out of a bad relationship and was “finally letting himself figure things out in an honest way”?—which, by the way, absolutely did not elicit any sort of emotional response in Ilya, who had felt completely normal about the mention of a “bad relationship” and the usage of the words “letting” and “honest,” because yeah, Ilya'd been there—a long time ago, sure, but still. It had been scary, trying to figure himself out for the first time, coming to terms with yet another moral failure and character flaw, except this one could get him fucking killed if he wasn't careful, so he too had been very cautious in the beginning, before moving to the States.

Now that the dam has broken, his brain can’t stop supplying more and more evidence that his theory is correct, and the onslaught of information is making his head spin.

In one of their first chats, Harris had said that his straight but probably at least a little bi-curious friend had created the profile for him so he could “get out there and explore safely”—at first Ilya had thought it might be a lie, but the more he’d talked to Harris the more he’d understood that was the truth, spelled out in sincere, plain words that had felt so refreshing Ilya had to revisit the topic at a later date, asking Harris for the full story.

He’d then proceeded to laugh his ass off as Harris told him the horror tale of finding out his friend had set up his profile with the bio “just a hole looking for his peg” and already swiped a bunch of guys he thought Harris would be into solely on the basis that they looked like they could throw him around in bed, or pick him up and pin him against a wall.

Ilya definitely remembers feeling a certain type of way about that, despite the fact Harris hadn’t thought twice about using it as a punchline, almost as if he hadn't realized how fucking hot it was, how perfectly matched up they were, if Harris liked being manhandled and roughed up a little.

Clearly, Hollander was the friend Harris had told him about—which, first of all, meant Ilya’s gaydar was still undefeated, and also explained why the actual fuck Shane Hollander had approached him in the first place. Maybe once Hollander and Harris had seen him at the event they’d agreed Hollander would talk to Ilya first, to figure out if he was actually safe—after all Ilya was there only because of pure serendipity, no real planning on his part, just kismet and Svetlana.

Hollander’s gravitational pull—and whatever had definitely not been happening between them before Marleau had clambered in like the fucking Sasquatch—had made him lose sight of his goal for a second, but there was a reason Ilya had been keeping an armchair free. And maybe that reason was looking at him right now, waiting for Hollander’s confirmation that it was okay to move in.

Ilya scans the room like a deranged T-1000.

While he talked to Hollander the suite had filled a little bit more; there's a few more people loitering around the catering table, some current players and what Ilya thinks are athletic trainers, so if the current players and staff are here then the Social Media Manager should probably be here as well, right? Who else is gonna take all those cute pictures of the team, and caption them with trite shit like “just guys being dudes,” and all that?

And then—then Ilya sees him.

Harris.

Standing next to a gaggle of children, wearing jeans and a Bears hoodie, a series of rainbow pins with different flags Ilya never knows the meaning of lining up his sleeve. Harris is letting the kids grab his hand and walk him to the smaller refreshments table the caterers had set up for the younger palates, forcing him to sit on the ground and climbing all over him like a jungle gym, Harris smiling through it all.

Holy shit.

Ilya was going to eat him up. There would be absolutely nothing left of Harris Drover once Ilya was done with him, not even the bones for his family to bury in that godforsaken orchard that was plastered all over his Instagram.

Ilya springs up with every intention to finally close the gap between him and Harris fucking Drover, when he’s stopped by a hand on his arm. He looks down at the owner of the hand, and meets Hollander’s frowning face.

“Wait—wait Ilya, I wanted to… to tell you…” maybe his initial stroke assessment hadn’t been that far off, considering now Hollander looks about three seconds away from a panic attack, and while Ilya is (mostly) an asshole, and is currently very horny and thinking about approximately seven different ways he wants to twist Harris into a pretzel and fuck him into oblivion, he is not that much of an asshole to disappear when Hollander clearly needs help, so he sits back down.

“You okay? You want me to bring Marleau back?”

Hollander shakes his head, the hand that’s not gripping Ilya’s bicep hooking into the buttoned up collar of his game day suit and pulling at his tie with shaky, ineffective fingers. Ilya frowns, taking Hollander’s hand away, loosening his tie for him and opening up a couple of buttons while Hollander makes a strangled noise. “You need air? Can you walk? I take you outside, come.”

Ilya steals one last glance back at Harris, still sitting on the ground, now telling a story to the kids through sock puppets, and leads Hollander out of the suite.

“I’m sorry,” Hollander says for what has to be the fiftieth time, “I really don’t know why the hell—I mean I do, but I wasn’t expecting—anyway, I’m sorry,” he continues as he types out a quick text on his phone, “Please, go back inside, I’m making you miss out on the party. I told Marly where I am, he’ll come deal with me, you don’t have to stay.”

Ilya shrugs, “Party is just party, I will survive. Will you?” He adds, going for sarcastic and ending up somewhere along the “actually really fucking concerned” spectrum. Hollander has gotten color back into his face now, but there was a moment there where he had looked completely ashen, and Ilya, on the verge of panicking himself, had fumbled for his phone trying to call 911 before Hollander’s hand had covered his, head shaking and forcing Ilya’s phone down.

“I’ll be fine, I’m sorry that—that I made you worry. I haven’t had a panic attack in fucking years,” he added, a whispered admission that lodged itself right into the soft parts of Ilya’s heart.

Maybe Shane Hollander, for all his god-like skill and looks, was just as human as Ilya, who’d been raised on denial and avoidance until he’d moved to the States where Svetlana had immediately forced him to look into therapy under threat of booking a session for him with her own therapist, who Ilya knew well because she’d once suggested Sveta cleanse her bad thoughts with sage—and while Ilya wasn’t necessarily opposed to the overall vibe of smudging, he was pretty sure some things couldn’t be resolved by setting dried white sage on fire for the low price of nine dollars and forty-eight cents at Walmart.

“Is okay, what is important is that you did not die or the entire city of Boston would chase me with torches and pitchforks,” Ilya murmurs, hand rubbing Hollander’s back in soothing circles and blinking at the way Hollander’s spine all but liquefies under his hand. Hollander sags into Ilya with a chuckle and drops his head on Ilya’s shoulder.

Ilya’s heart may or may not skip a beat at that, and he may or may not lean his cheek to rest against the top of Hollander’s head, and time may or may not freeze for long seconds as they sit there on a bench outside TD Garden, breathing in the cool stillness of the night air as Ilya’s brain may or may not spin around in confused circles, wondering what the actual fuck he thinks he’s doing, because the plan was not “go to the event with Sveta and cuddle with Shane Hollander,” the plan was “go to the event with Sveta and meet the guy you’ve been texting and crushing on for six months”.

Just like many other times in his life, Ilya was definitely failing at the plan, because there was something there, between him and Hollander, some sort of gravitational pull that made Ilya wish he could freeze-frame and encase this moment in a bubble so they could stay in it forever, and maybe Ilya was even more stupid than he thought, because—because Hollander’s hand was on his leg now, thumb brushing back and forth against the denim of his jeans as he hums contentedly, and Ilya was turning his face into the black silk of Hollander’s hair, pressing a barely there kiss while his heart tries to hummingbird its way out of his ribcage.

Just when Ilya thinks he might be on the verge of doing something stupid, like ask Hollander if he wants to grab a coffee sometime, the side door creaks open, and Harris’s blond head pokes through.

Ilya’s heart definitely skips a beat at the sight.

“Oh, sorry guys, Marleau told me you were here and I need some pictures for the website,” Harris says, and that’s his voice, his voice, Ilya had never heard Harris’s voice before, and it sounds so sweet, just like he’d thought it would, just like–

“It’s alright,” Hollander murmurs as he lifts his head from Ilya’s shoulder, but makes no move to dislodge Ilya’s arm from where it’s wrapped around his shoulders, and when did that happen? Ilya hadn’t even noticed, but he makes sure to let Hollander go so Harris won’t mistake the situation. Hollander is not real—Harris is real.

“Hi, Harris,” he says, swallowing around the knot of anticipation in his throat. Does Harris like his voice as much as Ilya likes Harris’s?

“Hey, uh—sorry, I didn’t catch–”

“I’ll be inside in a minute,” Hollander says. If Ilya hadn’t been there from start to finish, he never would have guessed that Hollander had been struggling to breathe less than twenty minutes ago, because his voice is firm now, his spine straightening as he gets up from the bench and stands in front of Ilya, blocking his view of Harris with the wide expanse of his—frankly ridiculous—back.

Harris must nod, or give a thumbs up, or acknowledge Hollander somehow, something must pass between them because the next thing Ilya knows is that the door is creaking closed, and he’s alone with Hollander again—Hollander who lets himself spill on the bench, pressed right up against Ilya, and rubs his face with his hands in a frustrated gesture.

“I’m doing all of this wrong, fuck. I just wasn’t—I had no idea you—fuck,” he hisses, then looks up at Ilya with eyes so soft, brimming with so much emotion that Ilya feels like he’s missing something, some fundamental piece of a puzzle he didn’t know he was working on, because it's like Hollander knows him for real—and that’s just fucking stupid, because how could he? Ilya doesn’t even know himself most of the time.

“Hollander–”

“No, let me—let me say it, please, I need to tell you–”

Ilya rushes to stop him, “You do not have to, I have already figured out.” For some reason he doesn't want to hear Hollander fess up to letting Harris use his pictures on Grindr.

He kind of wants to stay in this confusing, unrealistic bubble a while longer, and maybe hold Hollander again, even as the rest of his rational brain flashes neon signs at him, saying “hello? What about Harris?” but the bubble is… nice, and it makes him feel wobbly things he hasn’t really felt in a long time—maybe ever—so Ilya is going to worry about Harris later.

Right now there’s only Hollander, and the tentative curve to his lips as he asks, “You did?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, wow.” Hollander rubs his nose, huffing out a relieved laugh, “Thank God. I wasn’t sure how to say it but you… you already figured it out?”

Ilya shrugs, “Do not take this wrong, but I would recognize your bellybutton anywhere.”

Hollander smiles at him, small and sweet, and tells Ilya “I’ll talk to you later,” then stares at his lips while gently dragging his knuckles against the line of Ilya’s jaw, and Ilya’s entire nervous system shuts down.

He’s not sure if he actually makes the noise he thinks he makes—which can only be described as a tiny whimper, much to his chagrin—but by the time his brain comes back online, Hollander is already gone.

Piecing together the last hour of his life is an exercise in futility.

He understands absolutely nothing, every certainty topsy-turvy because had Hollander been… flirting? with him? Is that… is that why he’d been posturing, trying to shield Ilya from Harris instead of making himself scarce and leaving them finally alone? Because—because he was supposed to only feel Ilya out, see if he was safe, but then—but then he’d felt it too? That desire to stay, and hold, and touch, and—and did it mean that Hollander didn’t want to let Harris have Ilya anymore? Did Hollander maybe want Ilya for himself now?

There’s no way he can stay now—not when he feels so stupidly off-kilter he might as well be drunk as he gets up from the bench and all but waddles his way to the front of the arena on unsteady legs. He texts Sveta a quick apology text, thumbing through the Uber app with clunky fingers and ordering himself a ride home.

By the time he gets there, there’s a new message from Harris on Grindr—and if Ilya maybe harbored some leftover doubts before, he sure as hell doesn’t now, because the message leaves absolutely no room for interpretation.

CanadaWet42
Sorry about that… you know how it is… work.
By the way, I hope it’s okay for me to say… but you look even more beautiful in person :)

Ilya has so little bandwidth left that he leaves Harris on read, and flops on his bed, closing his eyes.

What the actual fuck.

“I told you,” Ilya grumbles, “He had to work–”

“Not fuckin’ Harris—Hollander!” she almost yells, waving her hands around and accidentally ejecting a piece of avocado from her toast straight into the neighboring table’s sangria pitcher. Ilya pretends he doesn’t see the dirty looks the couple sitting there shoots them, because fuck them, Ilya’s a paying customer too, accidents happen and avocado pairs perfectly well with sangria, so whatever.

Svetlana rolls her eyes, flagging over another waiter and instructing them to bring another pitcher of sangria and “put it on my tab,” as if Ilya isn’t the one whose turn it is to fork out money for their weekly Saturday brunch—and for the items that are not included in the bottomless deal. Speaking of, “And another plate of oysters—what do you think, Ilyukha, another fifty?” she adds in Russian, glancing at Ilya.

“Svetlana, I groom dogs for a living, I’m not Jeff fucking Bezos—we will take twenty-five more oysters, thank you,” he tells the waiter, and very pointedly ignores the kick Sveta sends him under the table.

As soon as the waiter turns their back, Ilya kicks her back,“Pay for your own goddamned oysters, woman!”

“You need to be punished—who lets Shane fucking Hollander get away like that? After he talks to them!”

Ilya was lucky he’d had enough presence of mind that morning to withhold from Svetlana the fact he thought Hollander was maybe flirting with him, had reached out to touch him more than once, had given him that tender caress and parting “talk to you later” as if he was sure that they would, that for some reason Ilya was going to stick around, or find himself in the same social circles as Hollander—Ilya, who worked ten hours every day and was so tired once he got home that he ordered takeout most nights, to the point where Pierpaolo, the guy manning phones for Forchetta e Coltello knew his voice by heart and had Ilya's usual order memorized.

As if Ilya was even someone worthy of holding Shane Hollander’s attention again.

He’d thought about it more, that morning, and there was no way Hollander had been flirting. Ilya was hot, sure, but not that hot—and definitely not interesting enough for Hollander to consider a date, or sex, or any of the other possibilities Ilya's brain had rolodexed through before settling on the simplest of options: Hollander had been testing him on Harris’s behalf.

It made so much fucking sense that Ilya had actually slapped himself with a slice of cheese as he pregamed Saturday brunch, waiting for his Keurig to finish sputtering chai latte into his meltdown manager momlife coffee mug. It was a honeypot test, and Ilya had Winnie-the-Pooh’d his whole stupid dick into the honey pot without a second thought because the honey pot had freckles (he was never getting over the freckles, was he), and was funny, and had looked at Ilya like Ilya was worth looking at, so he’d yet again failed, and Harris was probably never going to talk to him again.

Sure, he’d sent Ilya a message the night before, but nothing since—and Ilya could have texted him this morning but he felt too self-conscious about his fiasco to do that. At this point, Harris had probably blocked him and had already moved on to someone better. Plenty of fish on Grindr, especially reasonable, sound-of-mind fish that didn’t fail a honeypot test by making up a non-existent romantic scenario in which Shane fucking Hollander was flirting with them. And Ilya had fallen for it, the dumbass fucking moron he was.

He shrugs, using his fork to push the last bite of poached egg around his plate for a couple of seconds before stabbing it and taking it to his mouth. “Whatever, Hollander wasn’t even that interesting,” he lies, doing his best not to catch Sveta’s eyes as she squints at him. “Besides, he isn’t even my type,” Ilya concludes as he helps the server find room on their table for the oysters.

Svetlana snorts, switching to English and raising her voice so the people the next table over can partake in Ilya’s humiliation. “You know why I know it’s true when they say that you are what you eat? Because you,” she points at him with her knife, “Are a pussy.”

Ilya ignores the shocked gasp from their neighbors, and noisily slurps down an oyster.

When Ilya was a kid struggling to make sense of skates and pucks and all that, his mom had told him that God gave his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers, and he’d felt so good about that he’d gone as far as repeating it in Sunday School—only to have his soul absolutely fucking crushed by Father Sergei, who rapped on his knuckles with his wooden ruler and told him that life was broken, and the only path to salvation was through humility and denouncing one’s weaknesses, not by believing oneself to be strong and therefore blessed, and then had made him stay behind an entire hour to recite one Jesus Prayer for each knot of his chotki.

Once he’d finally made it home, physically exhausted and mentally checked out so thoroughly he just kept saying Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner in response to each of his mother’s increasingly frantic questions, she had been so mad that she’d barged into his dad’s private study and told Grigori that Ilya would not be attending Sunday school any longer, because Father Sergei was a monster, and Ilya was her baby, and she wouldn’t allow the Church to take her sweet baby and turn him into a cowering monster.

Ilya’s father had simply gotten up from his desk, walked over to his mom, pushed the door of the study closed behind her, leaving Ilya to look at the carved mahogany of its surface, and then—well.

Ilya didn’t like to think about what happened next, and the following Sunday he’d still been made to go to Sunday school, so he’d vowed to himself to never give his father another reason to close the door with his mom inside the study. Unfortunately it hadn’t really worked—no matter how hard he tried, it seemed Ilya wasn’t capable of keeping his mama safe and out of that room—but despite it all the words had endured long after Irina Rozanova had stopped enduring herself.

God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.

Of course now, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, Ilya has long stopped believing that God exists at all, and mostly uses that sentence to underscore any type of mundane annoyance from Trader Joe's being out of watermelon jerky to forgetting his phone charger at home, which is why he finds it funny that, when Harris randomly messages him again one Wednesday evening, flipping the script by asking Ilya to meet up, Ilya’s first thought is of the Lord’s Prayer, followed by the earth-shattering revelation that maybe God does exist, and he may or may not give his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers, depending on which denomination you asked.

It’s been about a week and a half since the Bears’s exhibition game event, and despite Ilya’s pulling (mostly because he was so sure Harris was going to tell him he was a fucking waste of time and space, so he kept trying to disengage) and Harris’s pushing (where he just kept texting like nothing was wrong, and had gone as far as asking Ilya if he’d done something, because why was Ilya suddenly so quiet and withdrawn?) they were now back on familiar ground, solidly entrenched in their regularly scheduled text + sext routine, and Ilya had been able to convince himself that he was fine with that, that he hadn’t ruined everything, and that nothing had happened at the Bears’ event.

And wasn’t that the truth?

Nothing had really happened, except Ilya failing the honeypot test and Harris pretending not to know who Ilya was, and sure, it hadn’t felt great, especially because clearly Harris had recognized him, but still… maybe he’d been embarrassed. It was, after all, his workplace. Ilya couldn’t really expect him to drop everything to hang out with him, no? What was he expecting, that Harris would abandon his duties as Social Media Manager and just jump in Ilya’s lap, making out with him in front of God (or whatever was up there) (nothing, there was nothing up there except for his mama, and some days he wasn’t even sure about that) and the whole of the Boston fucking Bears?

This was real life, not a Hallmark movie (which he most definitely did not watch when he felt lonely, you literally could not prove a single thing), and in real life Ilya was just a Grindr dude showing up at his hookup’s workplace, and that was creepy enough, Ilya should be fucking grateful that Harris hadn’t immediately had him removed from the premises by Security.

But, anyway, not the point—the point is that despite Ilya’s predictions of doom and gloom they were still talking, same as always—and then Harris had finally popped the question (no, not that one).

CanadaWet42
Okay, I have to ask… why 81?

rararasputin81
malysh we have been talking for 6 months

CanadaWet42
Happy anniversary?
Monthiversary?
Monthaversary?

rararasputin81
🤣🤣🤣
malysh stop
i mean you waited long to ask

CanadaWet42
OH duh sorry
I thought maybe it was a lucky number or something?
And I didn’t want to pry

rararasputin81
is not
is just 8 + 1

CanadaWet42
So, 9?

rararasputin81
yes

CanadaWet42
Why 9?

rararasputin81
you know why
you have seen it
many times
video too

CanadaWet42
???
Oh
Ilya
For real? That’s your username?
Your dick length?

rararasputin81
why what is wrong with it
canada WET
6 inches long

CanadaWet42
It’s Mr Canada Wet to you ;)
And my dick is not 6 inches
You know that
You’ve seen me too

rararasputin81
yes i have
such a big useless dick on u
only gets in the way when i make u bounce on your toys yes

CanadaWet42
Ilya
I need to see you again
Do you want to meet up?

—and although Ilya has literally been waiting for this for months, he can’t say he’s not a bit disappointed when Harris drops a date two days in the future as well as a location pin for a club in Seaport that has a reputation for loud music, expensive drinks, and pretty girls… and for coked up orgies that take place in the backrooms.

Not that he’s been there, considering you need to be on a list to get in, and he’s never on anyone’s goddamned fucking list—until now, apparently, because together with the location pin Harris texts him a QR code to show at the door so he can access the VIP section, and now Ilya’s thoroughly confused.

rararasputin81
malysh
you want to meet here?

CanadaWet42
Is that okay?
I’ll be there with the team for a socmed thing
Marly says it’s a good place to meet up :)

Honestly, at this point Ilya should just come out and say it: Harris, is this a date or are we meeting just to fuck? Because I was kinda picturing more of a dinner-and-a-movie type of situation, but maybe I’m dumb and you just want to fuck.

He’s definitely not going to come out and say it.

He’s just going to accept the invite, and see what happens.

If anything, by the end of the date Ilya’s going to make sure to—at the very least—kiss Harris stupid in the middle of the dance floor, or in some dark corner.

And if “the team” is there, then Ilya might even get to see Shane Hollander again.

But that’s beside the point.

The Kaleidoscope is, indeed, very fucking loud and Ilya—who seems to have left his wild youth behind somewhere in his early twenties—immediately hates it.

That’s his first impression, and he’s sticking to it.

Auditory onslaught aside, the atmosphere of the club is giving off muddled-mojitos-for-twenty-dollars vibes—performative luxury written into everything Ilya can see, from the long bar stretching across the entire length of one wall in a zig-zag pattern, to the sunken dancefloor filled with bodies pressed together and wrapped in a blanket of fog while the led panels delimiting the dancefloor pulse in pink patterns that match the strobe lights overhead.

Ilya is guided to the VIP lounge by a red rope that clearly marks the area as off limits and sneaks around the winding staircase, all the way to the mezzanine. The lounge is made up of a series of small nooks, each with their own table and booth, spaced far enough apart to grant a modicum of privacy to its occupants while remaining exposed. A long oval table filled with buckets of champagne and finger food sits on a big raised platform at the center of the space, people flocking to it regularly before splitting up into smaller groups.

Towards the back of the area, Ilya spots a few members of the waiting staff watching over the Bears and their plus-ones with eagle-eyed intensity, ready to jump in at a moment’s notice; behind them, two refrigerator-sized humans stand rigidly in front of a glossy red door. A few feet behind them, there’s a smaller version of the dancefloor—this one also filled with a throng of writhing bodies, some of which he recognizes as part of the Bears’ current roster. He’s looking around for Harris when he feels a hand on the small of his back, and turns to stare directly into Shane Hollander.

Again.

Fuck.

Even in the low, pulsating lights of the club, he looks so good with his white shirt and jeans that Ilya’s breath catches for a second. If Ilya hadn’t already failed the honeypot test once, and if he wasn’t there for Harris—and if there was a world in which this was even allowed—he would card his hand through Hollander’s hair to mess it up, and then yank on it a little to tilt his head backwards, exposing the column of his neck and that stupid fucking Adam’s apple that deserved nothing but Ilya’s complete attention in the form of teeth, and—he covers up his brainfreeze with a smirk.

“Hollander,” he says, “We must stop meeting like this—people will talk.”

The other snorts, shaking his head and pressing his hand against Ilya’s back to steer him forward to the main table. Hollander fills filling a glass of champagne and hands it to Ilya, “Did you find the place alright?”

Ilya opens his mouth to answer, but the words get stuck halfway through and all that comes out is a half-formed noise, because two bodies part from the dancing crowd, arms winded around each other and smiling faces inches apart before meeting in a kiss that makes Ilya's heart skip a beat, then two, three—until it stops altogether as he watches Harris and some fucking guy that is definitely not him make out.

After what could be seconds or years, the guy breaks up the kiss and makes his way towards one of the doors marked with WC, leaving Harris alone in the middle of the lounge—stupid, fucking stupid, if Harris was Ilya’s he would never stop kissing him, would find a way to work around basic necessities like food and drink, but Harris is not his, is he, because he's letting some random dude eat his face without a single complaint, so what the fuck is Ilya even doing here?

He moves before his brain can catch up, feet carrying him over to Harris as he ignores Hollander's warning to wait, Ilya—and fuck Hollander too, because clearly he knew what Harris was doing, otherwise why would he try to keep Ilya from confronting Harris now that the truth had come out? It wasn’t enough to just be complicit in the catfishing, no, now he was also complicit in the—in the what, Ilya thinks bitterly.

Harris wasn’t really doing anything wrong—there was no cheating, not really, just the crime of chiseling Ilya’s heart out of his chest with funny texts and a rusty scalpel, ripping it out with violence before squishing it with the same fingers that had typed out so many sweet things, and is it really a crime if Ilya was a willing participant for at least half of that? It’s not like he and Harris had ever made promises to each other, no?

They'd just texted.

For months.

Talking about things so private that Ilya kept them locked in a box that he locked in a box that he locked inside an even bigger box, a grotesque matrioska of all his deepest fucking regrets and mista—he grabs Harris’s wrist and pulls until Harris turns around to face him, confused surprise written all over, and isn’t that fucking cute? Ilya thinks. Sorry to mess up your plans.

“What is going on?” he grits out, trying to remain calm and not make a scene when in fact all he really wants to do is to hulk the hell out and possibly raze this stupid fucking club to the ground in the process.

Harris frowns, “Uh, sorry, I don–”

“You invite me here, then you make out with some guy? What game are you playing?”

Ilya’s doing his best, but the way Harris takes a step back and raises his hands in a conciliatory gesture makes him want to scream, because what, now he’s not even good enough to stand next to? Six months of sexting some of the raunchiest shit Ilya’s ever said to anyone and now Harris can’t even bear to stand close to Ilya?

Harris takes a deep breath, and his voice wavers a little as he tries to de-escalate the situation. “Dude, listen—this is a club open to the queer community, there’s like at least five other queer couples kissing right now, I don’t know why you’re obsessing over me but–”

“What do you—what the fuck are you–”

“Listen,” another step back, “I don’t want to make a scene but my boyfriend will come back soon, and–”

Ilya’s head snaps up, gaze sharpening; “Your boyfriend?”

There’s no fucking way I heard that right, he thinks, barely stopping himself from pulling at his hair, because what the fuck do you mean boyfriend?

Harris nods quickly, eyes darting around behind Ilya. “Yes, and like—you know I'm here with a bunch of hockey players, and guest or not they will fuck you up if you try something. I—I will punch you too but you look like you could destroy me with a shove so I'm just letting you know, okay?”

He holds his breath as he asks again, “You have boyfriend?”

“Dude, yes!” Harris sounds exasperated, and Ilya would never, but he kinda wants to shake him a little because why is he exasperated when Ilya’s the one that’s being jerked around and used as a punchline? But Harris’s hands are still up, throat bobbing and eyes searching around for—for someone to come help him, Ilya realizes, and the thought that he’s being unhinged enough to scare Harris just makes him want to puke.

What the fuck is he doing, hashing all this out in a club, three meters away from the entire Boston fucking Bears roster? He’s the one in the wrong, not Harris.

Ilya’s shoulders sag, and he takes a step back himself, shoving his hands in his pockets in a gesture that he hopes is clear enough. “I thought… we… I thought we had a—a connection?”

It’s stupid, and too vulnerable, and it makes him feel like breathing is hard, but at least Harris lowers his hands as he frowns.

“Uh I mean, I don’t—I’m sorry I don’t feel the same?” His gaze snags on something behind Ilya, and he moves closer, “Look, you’re making me a bit nervous, but my boyfriend is coming here and I don’t want you to get punched, so–”

He turns around, locking eyes with dancefloor guy—Harris’s fucking boyfriend—as he makes his way purposefully towards them, jaw set and spine ramrod straight, chest puffed out in a display of dominance. Ilya doesn’t want to end up in a fistfight—no matter how pissed off he is, he promised his mama he wouldn’t do that anymore, regardless of how much he’s hurting.

“Is okay,” he says to Harris, clearing the emotion from his throat. “Sorry. Sorry for making you nervous. I—I go now, yes? Is okay.”

Because of course it’s okay.

Could it be anything other than okay?

No other options but for it to be okay, for Ilya to grit his teeth because of course he was just another fuck, another thing for someone to use, even to Harris, and Ilya—Ilya was a fucking dumbass because he’d really thought Harris was different, that the six months spent talking had meant something, but no.

As usual, Ilya meant nothing.

He was nothing but a—a prop for Harris to cheat on his boyfriend with, or maybe it was a game between them? Maybe that’s what they did, they picked up unsuspecting fucks on Grindr and spent six months talking to them, hours upon hours of movies watched together, of stupid inside jokes, of Ilya flaying himself open like the stupid moronic buffoon he was, of telling Harris things he’d never even told Svetlana, because he felt like Harris understood him, like he wouldn’t judge, like he—like Ilya fucking mattered, and not just for sex, but for more, that elusive more that people kept talking about and chasing and that Ilya had never allowed himself to even consider, because what if he let himself look for more, and then when he finds it “more” laughs in his face and leaves him alone, sitting on a couch somewhere, covered in his own filth and wondering why the fuck he even let himself believe that for once, for once he—

Ilya unlocks his phone, ignoring Harris’s “Ilya? Where did you go?” on Grindr—and why the fuck is he still texting him? Does he really think Ilya’s just gonna crawl back to him after this? Fuck him, and fuck Ilya too, because he’s so fucking dumb he almost wants to crawl back, wants to fall to his knees and beg Harris to take him back, say stupid shit like “please I'm sorry I messed up and looked for you,” like “I know this wasn’t the deal, I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable by being too much,” stupid fucking words that point to the rotten core of him, “I'm sorry I am not good enough for you, I'm sor—”

As he steps outside The Kaleidoscope, Ilya blocks CanadaWet42, and uninstalls Grindr for good measure.

Chapter End Notes

fandom: Ilya’s interior monologue in Russian is so eloquent and romantic and beautiful
me: yes I love this omg I MUST write something from ilya’s POV
me the second I get to write ilya’s interior monologue: It was a honeypot test, and Ilya had Winnie-the-Pooh’d his whole stupid dick into the honey pot without a second thought because the honey pot had freckles

 

Aug 28th Update 📝 I totally forgot to credit the creator of the divider, I'm so sorry! Their name is saradika-graphics and you can find them on Tumblr!

✨ come talk to me on threads! @comeswthaprice

Chapter 2: it's fair to say, you will still haunt me

Chapter Summary

COULD A DEPRESSED PERSON DO THIS?????

in other news, I still think Ilya would love himself a Keurig. fight me.
(please don't, I'm very fragile and sensitive)

Chapter Notes

🌟 thank you so much to Trip (hollanovz / sharknado) for the lesson in dog grooming 🩷

💚❤️ thank you to Triserratops and ileftmyheartinnarnia for wrestling all my tenses into submission, cheering me on, pointing out every plot hole, and generally making this fic so much better than it has any right to be 🩷

🐕 Feel Laika Winner and Would You Laika Bath? are BRILLIANT puns so of course they're not mine. everyone say "thank you Triserratops" 💃🏻

📱a very important disclaimer: please suspend your Grindr disbelief because the logic around blocking/unblocking is completely made up. I initially wrote something consistent with reality, but then decided I really wanted to write my original idea instead, so pls don't yell at me for getting it wrong, this is mommy's ✨ live laugh love ✨ fic okay thank u

For all his vehement insistence to the contrary, Ilya still sleeps in a twin bed—not because he can’t afford a Texas King mattress (what are a meager two-thousand plus dollars in the grand scheme of things?) or because his studio apartment is too tiny (he has a mezzanine, for crying out loud)—but because it makes him feel safe.

Although she never called him out on this specific flavor of bullshit, he was sure Sveta saw right through him, but that was neither here nor there, and if he was going out with the intention of bringing someone back, Ilya would always make sure to set up the pullout couch in advance so he wouldn’t have to take anyone upstairs and try to fit two—or sometimes more—bodies in his itty bitty twin bed. In his illustrious career as a lover, only one person had ever called his bluff; a psychologist from Fresno who was in Boston for a bachelor party (and, really, it was one-hundred-percent Ilya’s fault for continuing to talk to the guy after he’d told him his area of expertise) and had listened to the twin-bed explanation quietly before asking Ilya if he’d ever read Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and if he had any thoughts about the cat.

Ilya—who had watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s twice, and had read the novella almost as many times (he found the ending too maudlin, so he skipped it the second time around)—had almost kicked him out before deciding orgasms were more important than psychobabble. He’d just shrugged instead, pretending his English was so bad he had no idea why people would have breakfast at a jewelry store.

He definitely understood the subtext, though, and absolutely hated the implication that not having an appropriately sized bed for a grown up meant he was somehow emotionally stunted and trying to avoid getting attached to people.

What a load of fucking bullshit.

Ilya was perfectly fine.

He just liked sleeping in a smaller bed.

Back in Moscow, after Alexei had complained loud enough and long enough about how much it sucked, having to share a room with his shitty little brother, Ilya had finally been moved to one of the unfinished guest rooms that Grigori didn’t want to let anyone use because it faced North and, despite his mama’s best decorating efforts, always felt cold and damp—and Grigori Rozanov’s guests only deserved the best, no matter who had to pay the price.

The room was, indeed, dim and generally colder than the rest of the house, but it was also Ilya’s, and he could enjoy a full night’s sleep in peace without fearing Alexei would “prank him” (ie. perform psychological torture with all the glee only a true future Moskovskaya Politsiya officer would be capable of). The only problem with the room—at least, the only one Ilya actually cared about—was the fact that it sat at the opposite end of the hallway from his mama’s, which meant she would no longer hear him if he called for her (unless he actually yelled—and yelling was forbidden in the Rozanov household), or had a bad dream.

“You will be okay, Ilyushenka… you have your bear with you, yes?” She would say when tucking him in in the beginning, when being tucked in was still the rule instead of the exception, “He will protect you.” She would kiss Ilya’s forehead, and hand the bear to Ilya, who would inevitably clutch it tightly in his arms and then spend the rest of the time between wakefulness and sleep telling it all his deepest secrets, and the night would pass without trouble.

At least it did until Alexei decided that Ilya being in a separate bedroom wasn’t enough anymore, as it took away his one source of entertainment.

Since there was no way Alexei would dare ask their father to move Ilya back into the original bedroom, he’d done the next best thing—and that had been the end of little Plyushka the Bear, which had been stolen from the indoor clothesrack and given to the neighborhood stray dogs as a toy. Too scared to tell even his mama, Ilya had resorted to a lie—the first of many—and told her he was too grown-up for toys, despite the fact he still missed that fucking bear something vicious, whenever he allowed his mind to wander so far back.

He’d found something else, though, to make sure he could fall asleep at night—something he’d never told anyone (at least until Harris), too worried Alexei would somehow find a way to take that away from him as well: shapes in the textured wallpaper of his room.

He’d pushed his little twin bed right up to the wall so he could reach out his hand and run his fingers along the abstract forms on the wall. Every night, after his mama kissed him goodnight, Ilya would curl up on his side and face the wall, bravely give his back to the rest of the bedroom because if he couldn’t see the bad things, the bad things wouldn’t attack him, and he’d stare at the wallpaper, trying to find figures in the hills and valley of its grain.

“That one’s a penguin,” he’d decide after thoughtful consideration, and for that night, the penguin would be his protector and confidant.

Twenty years later, Ilya hadn’t been able to find the same exact wallpaper for his Boston apartment, but he’d still settled on a twin bed that he kept pushed against the wall—and at this point he’s spent so many years falling asleep in the same position that all it takes him are five minutes of lying down curled on his right-hand side, and he’s conking out spectacularly.

All of this to say: it was actually really fucking lucky that Ilya could only ever sleep alone, because imagine what would have happened if he’d given in to one of his wildest thoughts and actually switched to a king with the intention of having Harris over—not just for sex, but to sleep, or spend the night talking, or cuddling, or some other trite romantic crap that he’d bought into during the past six months—because of course he was going to buy a new bed, he wouldn't even dream of letting Harris so much as touch the pullout bed.

Imagine how stupid he’d feel right about now, curled in on his side in the dark, staring at the brick wall and feeling absolutely fucking nothing.

No, the twin-size bed is just perfect for Ilya.

It’s worse.

She (because of course he picked up a woman, coward that he is) is confident, giraffe-tall, rail thin, with dark, silken hair that he makes an absolute mess of as runs his hands through it.

This is good, he thinks. She is nothing like Harris. That was the reason why he’d picked her up. Polar opposites. Not a single physical trait in her to remind her of Harris.

Harris who?

Fuck Harris.

Harris was nothing.

Her lipstick does not move a single fucking inch as she wraps her lips around his dick and swallows him down like it’s no great feat at all. Ilya hasn’t felt a mouth on him in six months, and despite his best efforts, he comes spectacularly quickly, surprising both of them (if the way her eyebrows fly up at the sudden flood of cum in her mouth is any indication). He is a gentleman, so he figures he can eat her out and finger her until he’s ready again, but then she pulls back, letting him slide out of her mouth with a soft pop, and laughs at him, and Ilya doesn’t feel very gentlemanly at all, after that.

Ilya slams the door in her laughing face.

Nights two and three are marginally better, but only because he doesn’t hunt with the express goal of pulling people who are the antithesis of all that is Harris, and picks up two guys instead. Both blond, because the heart wants what it wants even though Ilya hates himself for it. They’re both sweet, but the sex is pretty lackluster since Ilya’s not really present, mentally speaking. An obnoxious little voice in the back of his head pipes up when he’s in the shower, suggesting that maybe a hoe phase isn’t necessarily what’s good for him right now, but he squashes the little voice down because he’s been through this before—maybe not exactly this same soul-rendering heartache, but Ilya’s seen some shit in his twenty-seven years of life, so he knows a hoe phase is exactly what he needs.

Night four is fine until she uses his coconut oil to remove her makeup, and he realizes she has freckles. His insides twist up in knots, and he can’t look at her anymore. Ilya changes the sheets on the pullout and tells her she can sleep there if she wants, then goes upstairs. He runs his fingers along the red bricks of his wall, drags a knuckle through the mortar joint, and tries to convince himself he doesn’t know why the sight of freckles on a brunette rattled him to his core.

Nights five, six, seven, and eight are fine.

Ilya is fine.

There’s nothing wrong with him.

Maybe night nine doesn’t go so well, maybe some of his stitching comes undone and his stuffing comes out as he stares blankly into the mirror for a solid ten minutes, thinking he deserves to die alone, calls himself all sorts of names his father taught him and his brother repeated, and keeps asking himself what’s the point? What’s the point? Whatsthepoint? W h a t i s t h e f u c k i n g p o i n t ? until the sight of his mama’s necklace around his neck and the pills on the counter make him throw up all the alcohol he’s been mixing all night.

But then again, on night nine, no one’s around to see that, and Ilya knows that if a tree falls down in a forest and no one’s around to witness it, it’s like the tree didn’t fall at all.

Or something like that.

On night ten, Ilya caves and creates a Facebook profile for Feel Laika Winner, making flashy posts filled with emojis (it’s not like he doesn’t hate himself already anyway) and puns like Would You Laika Bath?, advertising little buzzwordy services like “spooky scary skeleton grooming” and “free pumpkin-spiced pupcups with every appointment”—quickly followed by a public apology for responding “get off my dick karen of course is safe, is just simple pumpkin puree + whipped cream, is not my first day doing this job” to one of the myriad of worried commenters that had taken issue with the Halloween promotion.

In the end, he switches the pupcups for pumpkin-print bandanas, and advertises the treat only inside the store (along with a clear note specifying the ingredients).

He stocks up on white and black dye, color-depositing masks, paint pens, and practices his best Halloween-related grooming ideas every night on a series of party balloons that he covers in furry fabric scraps.

Somewhere around night fifteen, Ilya decides he’s wasting his expensive education for the sake of his delicate sensibilities, and opens up his List of Services to include birds. Svetlana, who knows how terrified he’s been of the little flying fucks ever since her father’s traitorous blue-gold macaw outed him to Mr and Mrs Sergei fucking Vetrov during what should have been a completely innocuous dinner, starts texting him increasingly more frequent “are you okay???” messages that culminate in her showing up to his apartment unannounced and bodily dragging him to Canyon Ranch for an all-inclusive spa weekend.

He does get a scathing Facebook review for cancelling on a client last minute, but his muscles are so loose, and his skin is so soft and moisturized, that instead of making up a random dead relative to cover his ass, he simply apologizes and offers a free grooming instead, earning himself three more customers on top of getting back the disgruntled one, so really it’s a win-win situation if he’s ever seen one.

At the beginning of November, Svetlana’s therapist gives her the name of a trusted pet psychic so her grandma can communicate with her recently deceased sugar glider, and Ilya reaches out to them as well to ask if they want to collaborate—except in order to do that he has to revamp his Instagram business profile that hasn’t seen a single booking in a year and a half, and after that, he starts getting a ton of overbookings because he’s a stupid, useless asshole and didn’t make sure to update his Instagram bio with a link to the new booking platform he’s using on Facebook and on his website, so he spends a very frantic weekend rearranging his work schedule into something slightly more manageable that leaves him with a single free day until mid-December.

Which is fine, really.

It’s not like he has a boyfriend to hang out with or anything, and he doesn’t want to see the inside of a bar or a club until at least New Year’s, when Sveta has already made him pinky-swear that they’re gonna “go ham” somewhere fucking stupid like Vegas or South Beach or Courmayeur, because she wants to ski and the whole of North America is not good enough for that, they need to waste a fortune and pay a visit to the Old Continent to satisfy her greedy little heart.

“I think we should get married,” he tells her one evening while lying semi-comatose in front of her fireplace. “If we’re both single by the time we’re thirty, we should get married.”

Svetlana throws a slice of pizza at him, “Life doesn’t end at thirty,” she says, and Ilya scoff because sure, whatever. Sveta already doesn’t think Keanu Reeves is the hottest man alive—she can be deluded about age as well.

“Fine, then forty. Forty is the end, no?”

“Ilya, life doesn’t end at forty either. Maybe when we’re ninety I will marry you.”

“I will be dead by ninety,” he mutters, and really he might not even make it to thirty at this rate, but he knows he’s Not Supposed To Say That, so he doesn't, and especially doesn’t think about how frequently these days he’s been thinking about his odds of making it to forty, given that his mama didn’t and she deserved to, so what the fuck is Ilya supposed to do at twenty-seven, already undeserving enough as it is, with a lifetime of evidence to back up his claim?

Sveta throws a wad of dirty paper towels at him before whispering, “Ilya… I know things haven’t been great lately but I wanted to… to tell you—I met someone?” and he has to squash down the unadulterated tsunami of nausea and jealousy and rage that’s threatening to take him under because it’s fine, Sveta is his best friend, he’s not going to ruin their friendships by saying things like “fucking great, what happens to me now?” so he sits up and starts shredding the paper towels in his fingers while doing his best to smile, and asks her what their name is, and listens to the tale of how fucking perfect Rose is, whoever the fuck she is, this asshole who stole his best friend.

He sees less and less of Sveta after that—and not for lack of trying on her part, but Ilya just feels like it will be easier in the long run if he starts increasing the distance between them gradually instead of having to go cold turkey, because he and Sveta have been enmeshed in each other’s lives since they were kids, have experienced basically all of life’s firsts together to a degree where Ilya is now kind of scared to try new things by himself, so distance is good. Ignoring her calls is good.

The laconic “fine, fuck you then” text she sends him towards the end of the month is even better.

By the time Dunkin Donuts unveils their Christmas menu and forces Ilya to consider if he really has room in his life for things like cinnamon cream cheese spread (he does), Ilya is so overworked and exhausted that he barely has time to get upstairs before conking out alone in his twin-size bed.

All according to plan.

The plan goes to hell on the second week of December, when a booking comes through on Instagram for a two year old Pomeranian rescue who’s recently been found abandoned on the side of I-93, and if Ilya hated people before, it’s nothing in comparison to what he feels when he opens the attached pictures and sees the state the dog was found in—fur matted and half covered in mud, close-ups of the little paws all torn and bleeding.

The booking comes with an attached message asking if there’s anything Ilya can do to help now that the vet confirmed the little Pomeranian is gonna be okay, and Ilya vows to himself he will do everything in his power to turn this little baby’s life upside down and make them forget everything bad that ever happened.

He pulls up the client’s Instagram profile and briefly scrolls through their pictures—a practice he started implementing after one too many fake bookings, no matter how real the messages he gets look—checking if they respond to comments and what they say, but the entire page is in (presumably) Chinese so the best he can do is look at the dates and pictures, which all seem to be real enough. Ilya taps on the DM icon, and sends a message just to be sure.

Feel Laika Winner
Hi 俊介 I have your booking for rescued Pomeranian
I can help yes. I will have many treats ready
See you Thursday 🐶

The thankful reply is almost immediate so Ilya marks the booking as accepted and goes online to buy a reindeer-themed fleece hooded blanket he can give the little dog as a parting gift.

On Thursday, while he does expect the orange parti Pomeranian, he does not expect for it to be safely ensconced in Shane Hollander’s meaty arms.

“Uh,” Ilya says intelligently as his eyes bounce between the dog and the man. He’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be having some sort of adverse emotional reaction at the deception, but given what happened with Harris, Ilya thought he’d never get to see Hollander again, and being proven wrong is making his stupid little shriveled heart do cartwheels in his chest, so he lets it slide.

Hollander blushes a little and stammers as he murmurs, “Sorry for tricking you—I was afraid you wouldn’t accept the booking if you knew it came from me and… well, Anya deserves the best.”

At hearing her name, the dog’s ears twitch, her little muzzle pointing upwards as her filthy tail waves back and forth. Any reservations Ilya might have had are swept under the rug of his love for this tiny little creature. So what if Hollander is here to likely intercede for Harris (why would Harris care anyway?) (it’s not like he needs Ilya, he has a boyfriend), or because he really thinks Ilya is the best pet stylist in Boston, or maybe (please, please?) (shut the fuck up, it’s not) because he wanted to see Ilya again.

Hollander is here, and he has a dog that needs help.

Fuck it, Ilya thinks. The dog is more important.

“Is okay,” he says before frowning, a thought popping up in his head unbidden. It’s a bit of a stupid one, but he has to ask; “Hollander, tell me you did not fake rescuing dog to come here?”

The other looks absolutely horrified as he rushes to explain, “Oh god—no! No, I swear! This—I’m just—one of my friends fosters dogs, but he’s back in Canada until next year so I volunteered to take care of Anya—I didn’t—it’s not–”

“Okay, okay,” Ilya responds, hands raised in a placating gesture even as he smirks, because Hollander is so easy to rile up it’s a wonder he doesn’t spend his life in the sin bin during games. “Sure, I trust you have special friend who fosters dogs and has mysterious long vacation in Canada—is okay, if you wanted to–” Ilya lets his sentence drop onto the floor unceremoniously as the two leftover braincells rattling around his skull rub together and produce a singular coherent thought.

Harris fosters dogs, Ilya thinks, his synapses lighting up in bright neon colors of recognition before shriveling up into black and white. He doesn’t feel like teasing anymore, but Hollander doesn’t seem to have noticed, still talking a mile a minute through an explanation while Ilya microdoses hell in real time.

“… so he’s just working from home until January, which is—I mean it’s fine, we have other Social Media people of course but Harris is still my favorite even though he’s very focused on trying to bring out the real players underneath the jersey or whatever, and that’s not really my–”

“Hollander.” Ilya’s voice sounds like someone’s just dragged it over gravel for a mile, so he clears his throat hoping the next words will sound more normal. “I am just joking, yes? I—I know Harris.”

Hollander gives him a small, sad smile and a nod, “Yeah. Yeah, you do. And—for what it’s worth—I’m really sorry, I’m not sure what happened that night but–”

“I do not want to talk about that night. Or Harris,” he adds with a lot more bite than intended. Hollander is trying, he’s standing here, Pomeranian clutched to his chest, and it feels like more than anyone’s ever done for Ilya, so the least he can do is act like a professional, take care of little Anya, and let everything else go.

With a Pomeranian, yes, but it—it still counts for something, surely?

Like maybe he’s not gonna die alone if he can still feel any sort of emotional connection with a living being, even when said living being spends the first half of her three-hour-and-forty-five-minute grooming trying to bite his fingers, and stops only when Ilya comes up with a silly little song about how cute she is, and how she is a long-lost Russian princess who deserves to be hand-fed a diet of free-range venison, green beans, and barley stew.

Okay so maybe he gets a little bit too into it when he starts singing about all her food being prepared by a five-Pupchelin-stars canine nutritionist—two more stars than humans because she only deserves the very best—and the song definitely takes a detour as he describes the little porcelain elevated bowls all her food is served in and how they’re Moroccan Blue—Pantone 19-4241 TCX, thank you and fuck you Sveta for making him sit through too many long and excruciating hours of kitchen-backsplash selection—with little gold fleck stylized bones all over, and the contraption that keeps them elevated is made of intricately hand-carved wood, not cheap plastic—but so what? No one’s here to listen except for little Anya, the love of his life.

And Shane Hollander, Captain of the Boston fucking Bears and literal Olympian, who insisted on sitting in on the grooming, claiming Anya gets upset when he leaves her alone with a stranger for too long—a claim Ilya knew to be at least part bullshit because Hollander was still going on roadies, and Ilya hadn’t seen a little Pomeranian on skates gliding around the ice last time he’d found the mental bandwidth to tune in on a Bears game. For some reason though, Ilya hadn’t poked at Hollander’s faulty logic, had even gone as far as suggesting Hollander grab Ilya’s chair from the small office in the back and roll it to the grooming table on squeaky wheels so he wouldn’t have to stand.

So yeah, maybe he should feel a little more self-conscious as he sings “I will keep a face cloth with me at all times to wipe whipped cream off your perfect face after you finish your daily pupcup,” but he’s singing in Russian anyway, and when he remembers Hollander is in the room, and chances a glance at him, Ilya finds Hollander staring at him transfixed, with such open fondness in his gaze that Ilya’s voice dies in his throat and his fingers still where they’re massaging the deshedding conditioner into Anya’s fur.

It’s probably (definitely) stupid, but—there’s this moment, as they look at each other without a word, when Ilya thinks it would be nice, being able to hang out with Hollander sometimes, just being in each other's space, with Hollander looking at him like that because Ilya is singing a little made-up song to him, not Harris's foster dog, and this time when the neon sign with Harris's name lights up in his brain, Ilya's heart doesn't falter all that much—which is definitely (definitely, right? Not—not possibly?) stupid because Hollander would never want to spend time with Ilya, and the gentle, longing way he’d touched Ilya’s face a few months ago was just a ruse, a (brain-melting) byproduct of the Honeypot Test.

Right as Hollander opens his mouth to say something, Anya nips at Ilya’s fingers, making him blink and breaking the spell (there was no spell) (there was maybe a small spell, but it was just in Ilya’s head) (probably) (definitely).

He’s about to apologize to Anya for being such an inconsiderate, unworthy servant, promising he’ll do his best rinsing off the conditioner and then give her another massage via moisturizing leave-in conditioner when Hollander’s voice—soft and wondering—reaches him.

“Would you like to grab a coffee with me, after you’re done?”

Ilya loses control of the water nozzle and sprays himself in the face, because what the fuck. He tries to say as much, but only manages to half-drown himself in the process, so he decides to shut up instead and starts valiantly wrangling the hose into submission before turning to look at Hollander, who currently seems to be fighting a battle against his facial muscles because his mouth is trembling with barely-contained laughter.

“Coffee,” Ilya says, pretending he’s not a clown who’s dripping wet and breathing heavily from the aftermath of own his battle of wills against the water nozzle.

Hollander clears his throat, reining in his expression even though the mirth is still evident in his voice, “Coffee.”

What the fucking shit? he thinks.

“I guess we can do coffee,” he agrees, trying to be nonchalant and totally in control of his nervous system even as Anya grabs his index finger with her teeth like it’s a chew toy and shakes her head frantically, sending splatters of conditioner everywhere. “I’m being bad again, sorry Anechka, I will not do it anymore. There is only you from now on, yes?”

Anya looks at him with a suspicious glint in her eyes until Ilya resumes his song, this time in English for Hollander’s benefit; “I will brush your beautiful princess fur with eight handmade brushes, and the brushes will have your name on, and they will all be gifts from very popular petfluencers, and people will look at you and say: ‘JiffiPom who? there is only Anechka for us’.”

Behind him, Hollander loses the war and starts laughing.

Even then, Ilya caves only because he manages to surreptitiously throw in the Christmas fleece (another point of contention until Hollander lifts his eyes to the sky and starts grumbling in French) a full-sized bottle of cologne, a Chris Christiansen Big G slicker brush, and two bags of Stella & Chewy Surf-n-Turf freeze-dried treats.

Plus, of course, the Mutts&Hounds tweed carrier Ilya insists on tucking Anya in before they leave for coffee, because “her little feet are just so tired, can you not tell?”.

Hollander does not seem particularly moved, but still asks Ilya if he wants to be the one to carry Anya to the Dunkin across the street, so that totally counts as a win in Ilya’s book.

The entire time they’re waiting for their drinks, people come up to Ilya and gush excitedly over Anya, and he preens like a peacock, handing out a bunch of business cards and pointing out the window to his shop, and all the while Hollander looks on, eyes hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses but lips curled up in a fond smirk that—if Ilya’s being honest—is giving him some trouble around the upper chest region for no reason whatsoever, but in the end they do manage to sit down at a corner table.

And that’s where the problems start.

Because what the hell is he supposed to talk about with Shane fucking Hollander? All they’ve got in common is—well, Harris, and Ilya isn’t really keen on unpacking his emotions after he’s put in so much work to ignore them all these months.

So he busies himself with feeding Anya her pupcup and taking sips of his Cinnamon Sticky Bun Latte while studiously ignoring Hollander and the way his fingers are methodically shredding a napkin and then pushing the little confetti around before stacking them up in a little paper cairn.

After ten minutes in complete silence, Ilya has successfully relaxed his shoulders and has managed to convince himself that neither of them are gonna say a word—which, to be fair, wasn’t a precondition of “coffee,” no? The one mandatory activity when two people sit down for coffee is that they drink coffee, and maybe there’s more sugar than coffee in his latte, but Hollander asked for two extra shots of espresso in his own black coffee, so they’re technically following the rules here, and coffee is being consumed.

Of course, that’s when Hollander breaks the coffee rules and opens his mouth, letting out one of the Canadian top 5 favorite idioms in a tentative, “Ilya—I’m really sorry.”

He shrugs, because it’s not like there’s much to be done about it now, it is what it is and that’s just the way the biscuit crumbles, and so it goes, and whatever other platitudes people ply their sad souls with when they’re trying to convince themselves things are fine and they’re not at all still fucking seething over something that happened over two months ago.

“Look, Hollander,” he says, “Is not your fault. I know you were trying to… to be nice, yes? So we can–”

“Nice? What—what do you mean?”

Ilya shrugs again, waving a hand in the air before going back to petting Anya’s little head as she sleeps in his lap. “Yes. I did not understand before, I thought maybe—but I understand now. You are friends with him, and you know I like Harris, and–”

Hollander’s styrofoam cup thunks onto the table and threatens to tip over, but he quickly rights it before clearing his throat, “You… you like Harris?” he asks in a whisper.

“Yes?” Ilya’s a little confused now, because—how was that not clear? Why else would he have made such a fucking fool of himself if he didn’t like Harris? “I mean, not anymore, but. Yes. What did you think…?”

He looks at Hollander, considering.

Hollander’s jaw is clenched so tight it looks like it might hurt, and he’s blinking a few times in rapid succession, slumping against his chair and looking at something behind Ilya. This is not the reaction he was expecting; he thought it would be… liberating? for Hollander to know Ilya understood, and wasn’t mad at him for what he’d done. So why did Hollander look so shocked now?

Suddenly, Hollander shakes his head and sits up straighter, staring right into Ilya’s eyes as he throws a flaming Molotov cocktail straight at the heart of Ilya’s barricades, “I thought… you liked… well—me.”

What the actual fucking shit is he talking about, he thinks.

And then, Wow, I really fucked up that honeypot test.

And then, Stop. Stop looking at me like that.

And then, There’s no fucking way.

“Look,” Ilya tries, reaching out across the table to touch the other’s hand, telling himself the point of contact is for Hollander’s sole benefit, so he won’t feel rejected too bluntly, and definitely not because he knows he’s about to kill and bury both Hollander’s ridiculous claim and whatever infinitesimal part of himself had perked up at the admission, clamoring that yes, yes, yes, we do like him, we do, we do.

Hollander stares at Ilya’s fingers as they lay atop his hand, fingertips inching underneath the sleeve of his sweatshirt, thumb slowly rubbing back and forth across the skin. He looks around then, casting a quick glance at the other patrons before refocusing his gaze on Ilya’s.

Ilya clears his throat, retreating back to his side of the table. “I think you are great hockey player—and very hot, yes? But Harris and I had a… a connection,” he frowns, because that somehow sounds like the wrong thing to say. There had been—something with Hollander as well, no?

A connection, maybe?

Not like with Harris—which had felt slower, steadier, more grounded, built over the course of six months—but lightning quick, like an adrenaline shot injected straight into his system, a cattle prod aimed at the softest parts of him.

But Ilya wasn’t going to think about that, because for all intents and purposes none of it had been real, and it wasn’t Hollander's fault if one or more tendrils of Ilya’s sick, traitorous, dinged up heart had latched on to him too quickly, misunderstanding whatever had passed between them back at the Bears event as something real that could actually happen to someone like Ilya.

Hollander stands up all of a sudden, holding his coffee so tightly the styrofoam dents, and blinking quickly as he motions towards Anya. “That’s—I mean, of—of course, I’m sorry that I—can I please have my dog back, I need to—to leave, I have—I forgot about a team meeting and I—have to go.”

“Oh… okay, here,” he says, handing Anya back and getting up as well. “Is… is because…?” He hadn’t thought about it before, but technically speaking Hollander wasn’t out, so maybe he was worried Ilya would now go to People Magazine or whatever and sell the story for a quick buck. “Hollander, I swear I will not tell anyone.”

“Tell what?” Hollander shakes his head, “Nevermind, I don’t care. I—bye, Ilya,” and storms out of the Dunkin before Ilya even has time to say anything back.

When Ilya looks away from the spot where Hollander had been standing just a second before, the old lady sitting two tables to Ilya’s right catches his attention; she’s shaking her head and tksing at him, and Ilya feels himself shrink into his frame under the weight of her disappointed gaze.

CanadaWet42 stays safely blocked, and this time Ilya makes sure to only swipe on half-assed profiles that aren’t trying to be funny and/or charming, and sends everyone the same message before engaging any further (“take pic of urself making 👍🏻 next to today’s boston globe. FACE MUST BE VISIBLE”)—and sure, a bunch of dudes flat-out block him, some outright make fun of him, asking why he requires proof of life like they’re being held hostages before unmatching, but there’s a handful of guys who actually do what he says, so Ilya starts literally, and figuratively, plowing through those.

Maybe, by the time he’s done fucking his way through ProReceiver69, BottomLine, Open4Business, AAAPitcherWanted, 404TopNotFound, SubUrbanLegend, and Ready2Serve, he won’t feel like he has “EASILY CATFISHED” stamped on his forehead in comic sans, and might actually be able to relax a little.

At some point—more specifically, after he’s kicked out BottomLine and is lying on the freshly remade pullout waiting for Open4Business to show up—Ilya wonders if maybe he should have asked Hollander out, but quickly dismisses the thought because why the fuck would Shane Hollander ever want to go out with him?

Hollander was a closeted NHL generational talent who had featured in every single Celebrities Read Thirst Tweets episode Buzzfeed had found appropriate to produce since Hollander’s rookie season (do not ask Ilya how he knows that), and his face and Rolex-decked wrist were currently plastered on a giant-ass LED display covering the entire façade of the Marriott Marquise hotel at 1535 Broadway in Times fucking Square (a fact which Ilya was privy to only because of serendipitous, mystical reasons, and not because he was following @HollanderUpdateCentral on Twitter) (and Instagram) (and Facebook) (listen, shut the fuck up, okay).

So yeah, they’d had that moment or whatever a few months ago, and then Hollander had shown up at his salon, and they’d gotten coffee—or as much of a coffee as their awkward conversation had allowed—but that didn’t really mean Hollander would ever be interested in hanging out with Ilya, or hooking up with him, or whatever he was doing these days—which was definitely not “being a greedy whore” as Sveta had put it during their last armistice-slash-Saturday-brunch.

If hard-pressed to label it, Ilya would have said he was in his Girl Who Is Going To Be Okay phase, but Svetlana seemed insistent on the “greedy whore” mantle so Ilya had dropped it and gone back to his chicken and waffle sandwich.

Whore or not, once he’s done hosting Ready2Serve, and has sent him packing with a Gatorade bottle and protein bar in his pockets, Ilya’s finally feeling like he can breathe a little easier, so maybe his detour into Greedy Whore territory was actually the key to entering his Girl Who Is Going To Be Okay phase.

Maybe right now he’s just Greedy Whore Who Is Going To Be Okay, but it’s fine because he’s still Going To Be Okay once he gets to the end of the tunnel, and right now he’s maybe starting to see a little light.

And that’s when Cliff Marleau of all fucking people shows up while he’s trying to groom the noisiest husky in all of North America, and starts yelling at him.

A month ago the total number of hockey players who had visited him at his job was zero, and now it’s two. A month ago he thought he was never going to see another Boston Bear in the flesh unless he shelled out for tickets to a game, and now Cliff fucking Marleau has him by the front of his shirt and is shaking him like he’s a newly-ejected polaroid film and Marleau really can’t wait to see how the picture came out.

“Listen here, you fucking asshole,” he all but screams in Ilya’s face, “What the fuck is wrong with you? You should kiss the ground Shane walks on, not—reject him!” Marleau shakes him again a couple of times for good measure, then drops his shirt and rakes a hand through his hair in a frustrated gesture.

Ilya blinks.

There’s probably better ways to react to such a display, but he’s just—running thought the words again, trying to figure out what the fuck he even did to Marleau of all people, except—what was that about Hollander?

“Reject… him? Shane Hollander?”

Marleau groans, “Yeah motherfucker—did you like jerking him around for six whole ass months while you got what you wanted from him? Uh? And then what, you go and fall for fucking Harris? Have you ever even talked to Harris before, what the fuck?”

“No, I'm the one saying what the fuck, because what the fuck?!” Ilya pushes Marleau to put a modicum of distance between them. For all his muscles, Ilya feels like he’s moving a ton of bricks—which is to say, fuck all happens and he has to be the one to create some distance by circumnavigating Marleau. Once he’s back next to Pastrami (who seems to have understood the gravity of the situation and has for the time being stopped screaming), he takes a deep breath and tries to string together a couple of thoughts despite the fact absolutely nothing is currently making sense. “Of course I talk to Harris before, for six months and then–”

Marleau’s head snaps up, “You were talking to both of them?!”

“What are you—I did not talk to Hollander before, I don–”

“Oh my bad, Mister Semantics,” Marleau snorts, “You were texting him, sure—do you even know how fucking scared he was when he sent that first selfie, how long it fucking took me to convince him that no one would recognize him if he cropped the pics?”

“What–” Ilya’s head is spinning, his overworked synapses firing on all cylinders. What selfie, what pics? he thinks.

Marleau stalks closer, “You better not have fucking saved any of them, you piece of shit—if you go to a fucking gossip rag with them I will murder you with my hands, do you understand?” Ilya nods, but the other doesn't seem to care as he presses on, pushing Ilya into the grooming table, into Pastrami’s waiting paws. “I will go to jail for this, I don’t give a shit. You don’t get to fuck with my best friend more than you already have, you fucking lunatic.”

Ilya can’t breathe.

There is the distinct possibility he’s going to pass out.

His brain is trying to tell him something, but he was never a good listener, and besides all he can hear right now is a loud ringing. “Stop,” he tries.

Marleau is apparently also not a good listener because he completely disregards Ilya and just barrels on instead, “I will cut off your fingers one by one with a rusty butter knife, I’ll rip out your tongue and shitty micro-fucking-limp-ass-dick and cook it with fava beans and Chianti and feed it to you and then I will–”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ilya screams, pushing Marleau again, “Fucking stop!”

“Fucking what!” Marleau screams back.

Ilya closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to come to terms with the fact his vision is blurred. There’s some kind of caged beast beating around inside his chest, because surely that can’t be his heart, right? And if it is, it’s probably not a good sign, because his smart watch is going off now, and it’s only supposed to do that when his heartbeat is too elevated.

Fuck. What the fuck.

He takes a deep breath and tries opening one eye, then tries the other when Marleau seems to be relatively still instead of floating around his face in a blur. “I need—you to… explain. You… I know the pictures were Hollander, from first one.”

“Yeah,” Marleau says, taking a step back and rubbing a hand against his face, “He told me about the fucking bellybutton, you nasty ass pervert.”

Ilya decides to ignore that for the time being, and moves on to more pressing matters, “But you… you say I was texting him… and I didn’t…?”

Marleau is looking at him like he just insulted his mother, his grandma, and his sister, and Ilya finds himself trying to take another step back, but he’s basically already in Pastrami’s lap, so if a punch is coming the next best Ilya can do is brace for it.

“What the fuck else would you call that? Shane—he spent six months smiling at his phone for nothing, you are nothing but a piece of shit–”

“I was texting Harris,” he insists, his own voice hollow.

Think, part of him is saying. Think, Ilyushenka.

“When?” Marleau asks, “Fucking when?”

“I… Harris was using Hollander’s pictures to… on Grindr…?”

“What? When?” Marleau throws his hands in the air in annoyance, “Fuck me, am I gonna have to murder Harris too?”

Think again, that same voice in his head urges him. But do it better this time, mishenka.

It kinda sounds like his mama’s voice, maybe. Just a little. Mostly because no one has called him mishenka in over a decade. Ilya shakes his head, digging his phone out the front pocket of his apron and thumbing through the various Grindr menus until he reaches the blocklist.

He pulls up CanadaWet42’s profile, turns his phone towards Marleau, and says: “This—this is Harris.”

Marleau looks at him incredulously, “Have you been huffing dog perfume too long, you smooth-brained baboon? That’s Shane.”

Shane.

That’s Shane.

Shane?

Hollander?

No that’s—“You’re sure?” he croaks.

Marleau scoffs, “Am I… yeah you fucking moron! I made that profile, I chose that nickname for him, I swiped on your sorry ass and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret it.”

He thought he was good at English, getting better every day, but surely—surely he misunderstood, right? Marleau can’t possibly—Ilya needs to sit down.

“I need you to leave,” he says.

Marleau doesn’t move an inch.

“I need you—”he repeats, pushing Marleau with all the strength he has, “To fucking leave, now!”

The other relents a little, backing up a few steps, but otherwise stays put. Ilya reaches for the first thing he can find, and throws the slicker brush at Marleau’s chest. It’s not his proudest moment, but it seems to do the trick because Marleau starts making his way back to the front of the salon.

As the door jingles open, he turns towards Ilya one last time with a menacing glare, “Dude. Stay the fuck away from him, or I will kill you for real,” and then he leaves, slamming the door behind him so forcefully that one of the glass panes actually cracks.

Pastrami looks at Ilya, still dazed and trying to get his brain to stop spinning, and starts howling again.

He moves through the narrow aisles like a zombie (or a completely dissociated human being who’s been steadily refusing to refill his Sertraline prescription because he doesn't need it, he’s not depressed—and what’s the difference, really), and somehow ends up standing in front of a selection of dusty stationery holding a bright pink spiral notebook with a glittery toucan on the front cover. He clutches it to his chest as he pays and walks home in a stupefied trance.

It’s only after he’s mechanically eaten his way through the mini franks jar that he allows himself to crack open the first bottle of wine, and flips the notepad open.

Evidence, he writes at the top of the page, underlining it three times to drive across just how important this is. Then, he starts listing everything he knows about CanadaWet42, careful not to think of the name Harris as he does so.

Hockey knowledge, Ilya writes. Bellybutton. Canadian. Mixed ethnicity discreet jock. Funny. Ottawa. Sweet. Bratty. Kind. Finally letting himself figure things out in an honest way. His pencil hovers over the paper for a second before Ilya adds, wanted to talk to me all the time. Sent me pictures of dogs. Sent me pictures of squirrels he encountered while out on runs. Sent me pictures of his ass. Said he wanted me all the time, he chicken-scratches quickly before using the eraser end of his pencil to get rid of the statement.

He’s so violent with it, the paper tears, so Ilya rips it off and wads it up into a ball.

Hollander Facts, he writes out on the new page, ignoring how shaky the words looks—something’s wrong with the pencil, that’s all. Bad graphite quality. No other reason for the wobbly quality of his handwriting. Dora was a good Explorer, but her pencil-crafting abilities clearly left something to be desired.

He starts out easy, with found me at Bears event. Neither here nor there. Just something he did. Hollander sat down, started talking, and knew Ilya’s name. Was it true at all that he’d talked to Sveta? He hadn’t questioned it at the time, but maybe he should have. Up next; found me at Kaleidoscope. Had it—had it really been Hollander, asking him out? Why would he invite Ilya out to a club of all places?

He unblocks CanadaWet42, quickly scrolling past the string of new messages popping up at the bottom so he doesn’t have to see Harris (Hollander?) telling him to fuck off for blocking him. Ilya focuses on the last few messages they’d exchanged instead.

I’ll be there with the team for a socmed thing, he’d said. Ilya had done his best not to look it up in the days following the mess at The Kaleidoscope, but Sveta had sent him the link anyway, forcing Ilya to fess up about the recent events.

The Bears had selected a handful of queer fans for a special Fan Meetup, and there were pictures of most of them holding Pride flags, smiling at the cameras while holding rainbow-frosted cupcakes, everyone decked in colorful pins where the Bears’ logo mixed up with the rainbow. Marleau had literally taken advantage of the situation to come out as bisexual, and people had talked about it for weeks, because with Marleau it was now a grand total of three out queer players in the NHL.

Ilya scrolls through the chat messages until he reaches “haha no, I didn’t even make this profile. My straight best friend did. I think he’s not so straight though. Probably a little bi-curious. Maybe I should make a profile for him instead 😎,” and feels a wave of nausea overcome him.

Marleau had made the profile. Marleau had swiped on Ilya. For Shane. Hollander.

CanadaWet42
I’m serious!
He said his only criterion was
(and I quote)
“Guys who look like they could throw you around in bed”

rararasputin81
is that what you like?

CanadaWet42
Maybe
Yeah. It is.
Is that a problem?

Fuck.

Ilya scrolls back down, all the way to Hollander’s (Harris’s?) previously undelivered messages that Ilya hadn't been able to read that last night after blocking Harris Hollander the account and getting rid of Grindr.

CanadaWet42
Ilya? Where did you go?

— YOU HAVE NEW MESSAGES 🔥 —

Fuck, sorry I lost you, Carmy’s cousin wanted an autograph :/
If you’re outside for a smoke I hope you let them stamp your hand or they won’t let you back in :) Message me if you get stuck at the door, okay?
Ilya?
Harris asked if I know you, did something happen when you went over? He was pretty shaken up. His boyfriend wasn’t shitty to you, right?
Are you downstairs? It seems like my messages are not going through :(
Oh
Oh okay

Ilya slams the phone face-down on the table.

If he had waited—if he had waited just one more fucking second, he would have started questioning things right then and there, because why the fuck would Carmy’s cousin want an autograph from a Social Media Manager?

If he had waited, he would have read the words “Harris asked if I know you,” and he’s pretty sure none of this fucking mess would have happened, and he wouldn’t be sitting here right now clutching a Dora the Explorer pencil and trying not to panic at the thought of what he’s done, of how fucking stupid he’s been.

Because clearly Marleau was right. There was no more guessing, no more denying it. Ilya had been talking to Hollander the whole fucking time, which—what the fuck?! Fuck!—which means it was Hollander who liked being manhandled a little (a lot, considering some of the shit they’d told each other during some of their raunchiest chats, which—again—F U C K !!!).

It was Hollander who had listened to Ilya whine about finding it hard to adjust to Boston sometimes, despite how much he liked it. He’d told Hollander about the bank manager who’d made fun of his accent and had questioned whether Ilya actually owned his business, and was likely the reason why the cops had shown up to Feel Laika Winner a couple of days later to check whether it was a Bratva money laundering front.

It was Hollander who now knew about his mama, and the grave he was never going to be able to see again, Hollander who’d floated a tentative maybe you could teach me Russian someday in Ilya’s direction.

There was a moment, at the event.

There was.

If Hollander—if Hollander was the one he’d spent six months talking to, then—then it had been real, after all. Or maybe—maybe that was as real as it was ever going to get, because probably Hollander doesn’t want him anymore, not after what he’s done, not after Hollander himself had gone out of his way to bring them into each other’s orbit again, and Ilya’s response was to claim a nonexistent connection with a guy who literally had no idea who Ilya even was.

Would you like to grab a coffee with me, Hollander had asked Ilya.

He’d blocked Ilya from Harris’s sight the night of the Alumni event, had let his head rest against Ilya’s shoulder. Had winked at him.

Had tried to tell him something—had had a fucking panic attack because he was scared of telling Ilya that he was CanadaWet42, not just some random guy.

I liked Harris, Ilya had told him. Harris and I had a connection.

Hollander had run out of Dunkin Donuts as if he was about to have another panic attack.

Ilya looks down at the notebook and notices he’s written Ilya Rozanov-Hollander and Ilya Hollander and Ilya Hollanov in the margins, and fuck. What the fuck.

How the fuck is he going to fix this?

Ilya has no idea. The only thing he knows for certain is—he’s never going to let Sveta live this mistake down.

Chapter End Notes

[clenches fist] I love when cliff marleau

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