Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov/Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son, Ilya Rozanov/Svetlana Vetrova, Ilya Rozanov/Original Female Character(s)

Additional Tags:

Kept Rookies, Dubious Consent, Power Dynamics, Age Difference, Breaking Up & Making Up, Not Canon Compliant, Not Beta Read, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Coming of Age, Pining

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-01 Completed: 2026-09-03 Words: 52,729 Chapters: 9/9

keep, keeps, kept

Summary

Ilya spent three successful years playing for the Raiders and avoiding his past. But going into his fourth season, Ilya hears that Hollander is keeping another rookie and all of the memories of his own rookie season come flooding back.

Notes

kept-rookie-verse is not my own invention, the first i heard of it was in "come and show me how its done" by addandsubtract on AO3. kept-rookie-verse is a CNC AU featuring sexual favors and power imbalances comparable to winner's room AU. the players willingly participate because that is the status quo, the thing they have to do to get to play. but would they participate if they didn't have to? probably not.

that being said, the dubious consent tag is for the premise as a whole and not for anything happening between hollanov. the age difference tag, however, is very much applicable. you have been warned!

*please do not repost elsewhere, this is locked for a reason*

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

—September 2023—

“Looks like Hollander’s stuck with another rookie.”

The sentence cut through the general din of the locker room like a blow dart through foliage. Ilya snapped his head towards Marleau’s voice.

“Hey,” Marleau continued, still looking at his phone. “Didn’t he keep you, Roz? How was he?”

“Boring,” Ilya said immediately.

The guys laughed and the news of the Metros’ new rookie was left behind in favor of other important topics like what to have for lunch and the upcoming game, the first of the preseason.

Ilya dropped his towel, got dressed in street clothes. He tried to ignore his gut, which was twisting, uncomfortable. Worse was the ache beneath his sternum.

Optics?

Ilya stared down at the text message. It was the first text he’d sent Hollander since the trade. The last text in their thread was from three years ago. Hollander, congratulating him on the Cup win. Ilya put his phone into the cupholder and reversed out of the parking spot.

He drove too fast. The back of his neck was prickling. He felt vaguely sweaty, despite the very recent shower. Why had he sent that?

Two minutes later, his phone buzzed.

What the hell?

It was a pretty fast reply for Hollander. Ilya couldn’t make sense of his reaction to it. His heart was pounding. He typed his response with his thumb at a red light.

Well?

Well what.

That one came immediately, but it seemed like Hollander had more to say. Ilya stared, watching the typing bubbles pop up and disappear until the car behind him honked. He jerked. Green light. Ilya abruptly decided to go to his apartment instead of his original destination, the house. The apartment was in Boston proper, unlike the house, which was in the suburbs.

Once home, he thumbed open his phone. Hollander had not sent another message. Ilya flicked to Google and searched the rookie’s name, scrolled through his pictures. Otto Wagner. He was a strawberry blond kid from Germany. Just as young as Ilya had been his rookie year, but Ilya found himself hoping he hadn’t looked like such a baby. The bright innocence in the kid’s smile made Ilya feel as old as the hills.

Ilya wondered what it was like in Germany, how they talked about the rookie stuff. What would Otto Wagner expect from being kept in Hollander’s home? Ilya remembered what he had expected and how wrong-footed he’d been when presented with the reality. Would Wagner go down on his knees right away? This time, would Hollander say yes?

—September 2019—

Ilya had been drafted prior to Shane Hollander’s tenth season. The Metros’ history was long and storied, but they hadn’t won a Cup in years. And Hollander couldn’t carry the team on his back like he had in his early twenties. They needed fresh blood. The Metros had a lot banking on Ilya, and Ilya had a lot banking on himself. He wanted to make money. He wanted to play Major League Hockey. He wanted spend as much time as he could away from Russia.

Ilya knew what to expect, being a young rookie. He’d be kept by one of the older guys on the team for his first year. The vet was expected to take care of the rookie, house them, feed them, show them the ropes, help them integrate into the team and the league, help them navigate their first season. It was a lot, to keep a rookie. A little gratitude was warranted. You couldn’t talk about it outright, but within their inner circles, hockey players were insatiable gossips. It was an open secret that many vets were fucking their rookies. This was not a deterrent to Ilya; he was already determined to make the most of it. He liked men. He liked sex. And he’d do just about anything to get out of Russia.

There were exceptions of course, but it was something most MLH players dealt with their first year in the show and promptly put behind them as they moved on in their career. It was only a year, after all.

“You’ll be good,” said Mikhail Andropov, the first day of training camp. “With Hollander.”

Misha was a couple seasons into his time on the Metros. Ilya slanted him an appraising look.

“He kept you your rookie year?” he asked.

It was a small mercy to have another Russian on the team. They could talk like this in the middle of everyone and no one would have a clue. And it was wonderful to actually communicate, to not feel cut off at the knees by a foreign language. Ilya had already had enough of English to last a lifetime, and the season hadn’t even started.

“No,” Misha said. “The last time he kept someone was a few seasons ago. The guy, he was traded midway through my first year here. Henrikson.”

Ilya hummed. He’s always watched as many MLH games as he could, and so he knew the player. A big d-man who had at least half a head over Hollander in height. Ilya wondered why Hollander had kept him, and why he hadn’t done so since. Until now.

Shane Hollander lived in a two-story condo in a high end neighborhood of Montreal. Ilya had flown in several weeks ago for the rookie training camp, and Shane had picked Ilya up from the airport and brought him straight home. Ilya had looked around the place, as interested as he could be through the fog of travel fatigue, while Hollander gave him the tour. It was markedly a bachelor pad, but it was cozy and tasteful. Hollander liked wood and soft fabrics. The sofa was as deep as a twin bed and draped with several blankets, stacked with throw pillows. Hollander flicked light switches on the wall as they went, but these never turned on the lights Ilya could see in the ceiling. Instead they seemed to be connected to various table and floor lamps, which lit the space warmly. Ilya wanted to face-plant on the sofa and sleep for several hours. His head was muzzy with jet lag. Instead, he followed Hollander dutifully into the kitchen where Hollander opened nearly every cabinet and drawer to show him utensils, dishware, glasses, and a sad array of bird food that Shane insisted were snacks.

“But I won’t hold you to my meal plan,” Hollander was saying as Ilya poked doubtfully at a bag of chia seeds. “You’re too scrawny. The coaches want you to put on some weight, some muscle.”

“You feed me steak,” Ilya said, and tried out his most winsome smile. He felt a little slap happy. It didn’t feel real yet, that he was face to face with Shane Hollander. Let alone that Ilya was about to live in his home.

Hollander blinked at him, the corner of his mouth quirking just a little.

“So that’s the first floor,” he said, instead of acknowledging Ilya’s meal request. “Bedrooms are upstairs. C’mon.”

The guest room that was to be Ilya’s was just as nice as the rest of the place. Centered on one wall was a big bed covered with soft-looking bedclothes and an excessive number of pillows. There was an en-suite bathroom with a walk-in shower.

“Thank you,” Ilya said. “Is very nice.”

“Great,” said Hollander. “We’re glad to have you. I think, well, I hope you’ll be a good add. Let’s see what we can do this season, eh?”

Hollander was leaning on the bathroom door frame, watching Ilya inspect the fluffy white towels. Ilya straightened. He could take a hint. He walked over to stand in front of Hollander. He really was very handsome, even better looking in person than he was in pictures. Ilya had been watching him through screens for many, many years. If he’d been allowed to decorate his childhood bedroom, he would have put up a poster of this man on his wall. Now here Ilya was, living in the very same man’s house. It felt like the universe was apologizing for how shitty the past seven years of his life had been. Finally he got to have something nice. Ilya wouldn’t fumble it.

“We can do lots,” he said, and then sank down to his knees.

Admittedly, Ilya had thought about this not infrequently. When he’d learned that Hollander would be the one keeping him, it was impossible not to. He had often imagined what it would be like, what Hollander would sound like. If he’d be rough, making Ilya take it. Or if he’d be as level-headed and polite as he was in media interviews. But Hollander was neither of those things.

“Whoa, whoa,” he said, and eeled out of the bathroom, holding up his hands. “Jeez. Uh, sorry, bud. I guess I forgot to say, you won’t have to do that with me. Not ever. Okay?”

“Huh?” Ilya said stupidly, still on his knees in the bathroom doorway.

Hollander had backed up so far he was basically touching the foot of the bed.

“Rozanov,” Hollander said, and then shook his head. “Ilya. Look. I don’t…do that with rookies, okay? I know that’s like, the thing. Or some guys do, I guess. But I don’t. You don’t have to worry about that.”

They stared at each other.

“Okay,” Ilya said, because it was clear Hollander was expecting a response.

Hollander waited a beat and then nodded, apparently satisfied.

“I’ll let you unpack,” he said. “Get settled. Dinner in an hour. Okay?”

Ilya nodded and then watched Hollander leave the room. His gut was churning. Why didn’t Hollander want him!? Was he not pretty enough? Not good enough? He’d never been turned down before. Women liked how he looked, and men did too. Or, at least, men liked that they could stuff his mouth full and get him to shut up for a bit. If he couldn’t offer Hollander his body like this, as he was supposed to do, then what was stopping Hollander from getting tired of him, from thinking he’d made a mistake and getting the front office to send Ilya back to Russia? Was Shane Hollander, legendary Metros captain, just going to let some random teenager live in his condo for nothing?

Well, for nothing besides hockey?

Ilya got up off his knees and tried not to feel like an idiot. The hurt quickly turned into anger. Maybe Hollander’s dick didn’t work. Limp dick Hollander. Really, it was no skin off Ilya’s back if Hollander didn’t want to keep him properly. He was nineteen and about to play professional hockey. What did it matter if some almost-thirty-year-old bastard didn’t want him? Ilya unpacked in a sulk and tried to avoid thinking about Hollander’s expression when he’d gone down to his knees. The shock writ large across parted lips and wide eyes. So shocked it could almost have been read as fear.

When an hour had passed, Ilya slunk downstairs to face whatever waited for him. He wondered if he’d get a talking to, a lecture, maybe even yelled at. But instead it was just dinner. They ate side by side on the stools at the kitchen island. Hollander had made a serviceable stir fry, though there was no white rice to be seen. Instead he’d used some sort of fibrous grain mixture. It was under-salted, but Ilya was certainly not going to complain, not about this, not about anything. Moving forward, he would be as good and as quiet as a church mouse until he better understood what was expected of him.

Besides, Hollander had put beef in Ilya’s portion.

“Steak,” Ilya said, and smiled at Hollander. Testing the waters a little bit.

“Oh,” Hollander said. “Yeah. I hope it’s okay. I just reheated it to add to your portion.”

“Thank you,” Ilya said.

Hollander ate neatly and drank a lot of water. His posture was very good. Maybe he’s a homophobe, Ilya thought to himself, sneaking glances at the man out of the corner of his eyes. A homophobe with a giant stick up his ass. There were plenty of those in Russia. Ilya had thought in Canada things would be a little different, but he should have known better. It was still hockey.

It was only that…Ilya’d thought it wasn’t supposed to be gay if it was rookie stuff. He was almost certain it definitely wasn’t supposed to count. ‘It wasn’t cheating,’ ‘it didn’t count,’ those were the sorts of things he’d been hearing for the past few years.

He was confused, but his brain had melted into a sludge of jet lag and he didn’t have the energy to think about it then. Later, Ilya would get to the bottom of whatever it was that Hollander really wanted from him.

For now, at least Hollander had a nice place.

The very first night in the condo, Ilya’s room had been dense with silence. What had felt nice and welcoming with the lights on now felt unsettling and unfamiliar. He was so over-tired that sleep felt impossible. Ilya took an extra pillow into his arms and curled onto his side. He stared unseeing into the deep darkness. He thought of Hollander’s genuine shock when Ilya had gone to his knees. He thought of the beef Hollander had added to Ilya’s dinner. He thought of his bedroom in Moscow. He thought of what it would be like to skate out onto MLH ice, the rookie training camp that would start in a couple days’ time.

It took him hours to fall asleep.

Chapter End Notes

currently (re)reading: the shadow of the wind by carlos ruis zafon

Chapter 2

—September 2023—

There was a flurry of commentary on Hollander taking on another rookie, but it was mostly that everyone thought it meant Wagner was the new saving grace for the Metros. With that, of course Ilya’s name was dragged into it. Commentators still loved to talk about the massive flub that was Ilya’s trade, and the subsequent house cleaning of management staff that had happened afterwards. Ilya’d gone on to win the Cup his first year with the Raiders, while the Metros had crashed and burned, not even making it into the playoffs.

Wagner was pretty good, Ilya could concede after watching some of his tape on Youtube. But he was nothing like Ilya had been. The Metros’ channel, Ilya saw when he clicked onto it, had posted a short intro video with the kid and Hollander. It was of the two of them, answering questions from little Metros-branded notecards. Ilya knew at once after clicking that he shouldn’t be watching it, but the siren song of Hollander’s brown eyes and well-styled hair in the thumbnail snagged him. Ilya went through the whole thing twice, transfixed.

He had endeavored not to think about Hollander after the trade. The problem was that it was a part of his job to think about him, at least when they were playing each other, or preparing to play each other. The other problem was that he often fell into thinking about him without realizing it. Like a habit, or a compulsion. Hollander was the worst sort of ear worm, the catchiest, most inescapable song. It was easier to shake him when Ilya was not alone, so for the last three years he had spent very little time by himself.

He had also banned himself from looking up Hollander online, only allowed himself to watch his games. Sometimes, though, things snuck through. There was one particularly memorable photo, a couple years ago, that had popped up on Ilya’s feed. It was from some Pike gathering. Shane had been holding the twins, one in each arm, even though by that point they were too big to be carried. Ruby had her lanky body curled so that her head could rest on his shoulder like it was the safest place in the world. The photo was so sweet that it made him vaguely nauseous. There was undeniable wanting curdling and churning in his stomach. Ilya knew exactly what it felt like to rest his head there, how safe it felt.

And now here he was, adding view counts to the Metros’ Youtube videos. Why he was watching, he couldn’t know. There wouldn’t be any outward evidence of what was really going on between a rookie and his keeper. What Ilya saw in the video between Otto Wagner and Shane Hollander was puppyish hero worship and fond mentorship. Hollander was as stilted and bland as ever on camera, which the people in the comments found both endearing and hilarious.

Ilya knew better, but found himself clicking into the channel’s videos and scrolling down, down, down until he saw the thumbnail of his own welcome video. The still was of him and Hollander. Ilya was smiling at the camera and Hollander was looking down at the cards, but he was smiling too. A real smile, Ilya could tell, and hated that he still knew what that looked like, that he would never not know. This was the pathetic legacy of his rookie year: being able to tell which of Hollander’s smiles were real and which were fake. Ilya hovered his cursor over the thumbnail for several seconds, baiting himself, testing himself, before closing the window.

—September 2019—

After the real training camp began and he had a few practices with the whole Metros line up, Ilya decided that it didn’t matter if Shane Hollander was the world’s biggest stick-up-his ass homophobic asshole. Not if he played like that. It was exhilarating to be so close, to get to watch him. To get to play with him.

But Hollander wasn’t an asshole, was the thing. He was strange, yes. But he was also kind, and after Ilya had gotten over the shame of rejection, he found that Hollander was easy to live with. He was a tidy person, but on top of that, he had a cleaning service that came once a week to do all the major stuff. He had his groceries delivered. He was on a very tight schedule and was often on calls or on his laptop, typing away. He wore glasses during these times, which Ilya found devastatingly attractive. It still felt surreal, that he was living with his childhood idol, that he was playing on the same team as him. Maybe it was for the best that Hollander wasn’t fucking him. He’d probably do something stupid like fall in love, and then where would they be.

Mealtimes were really the only parts of the day when Ilya had Hollander’s full attention, but these were always quiet, due to both the language barrier and Hollander’s penchant for silence. Ilya’s English was rough, and when they did speak back and forth, Hollander usually took the opportunity to try and drill some grammar rules into him.

“Who keeped you,” Ilya had asked during one dinner.

They were having salmon with many vegetables.

“Huh?” Hollander said.

“Rookie year. Who keeped you?”

“Oh,” Hollander said. He took some time to lecture Ilya on the difference between ‘keep,’ ‘keeps,’ and ‘kept’ before answering. “Well, uh. No one. My parents came down and lived with me that year. They took turns. Between here and Ottawa.”

Ilya blinked in surprise.

“No one keeped you?” he said.

Hollander narrowed his eyes.

“Kept you,” Ilya amended.

“No,” Hollander said, after giving Ilya an approving nod. “My uh, my mom had heard a couple things—obviously nothing concrete, you know the league keeps its secrets close to the chest. But yeah, well, there was no way she was going to leave me in the clutches of some washed up old guy. Her words.”

Hollander smiled. There was fondness there in the curl of his mouth. Again, Ilya was struck by how handsome he was. When Hollander was a rookie, Ilya had been a child. He didn’t remember what he thought of Hollander’s appearance at the time, only that he thought he was an incredible player. But now that Ilya was living in his house, he was curious about everything. He’d looked up Shane Hollander a lot during those first few weeks. At nineteen, Hollander’d been sweet looking, his head a little too big for his neck, his body a lot leaner than he was now. His haircut had been very bad. And Ilya knew how guys were. Mama Hollander was right to orchestrate an out for him. He’d already been blasted out by the media, touted as the Metros’ golden boy redeemer. Some guys wouldn’t like all that attention on one teenaged kid. Guys with big egos would be bitter about it. Mean. And then there were some guys who were just fucking scumbags all the way down to their rotten cores.

“Is good,” Ilya decided. “You too pretty.”

Hollander turned to look at him, full on. Maybe he thought Ilya was teasing. But Ilya wasn’t. Hollander cataloged Ilya’s expression and then, amazingly, a flush started climbing up his neck. Ilya watched, fascinated.

“Oh,” said Hollander. “Uh, thanks. I guess.”

—September 2023—

Ilya would never live it down, if the guys found out about his brief spiral into Youtube insanity. Luckily his lapse in judgement was safely kept between himself and his incognito browser. No one would be the wiser except for Ilya (who did not feel very wise at all). He kept thinking about Hollander’s genuine laugh at one point around the two and a half minute mark…

Ilya squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, as if he could manually derail that train of thought. He had spent three full years successfully avoiding thinking about his rookie year, and nursing the grudge he held over the trade. Ilya’d expected the fourth to proceed in much the same way. But the news of Hollander’s new rookie had wriggled past Ilya’s defenses and was amassing weight. It would not be ignored in favor of previously successful distractions, partying, women, retail therapy, working out, video games, etc. Ilya knew very well that he had a full, privileged life. There was nothing missing from it besides his mother. But…

But nothing, he thought firmly. There was nothing else missing.

Ilya had gotten good at turning an internal blind eye towards the things he couldn’t forget. The sound of Hollander’s laughter, what it was like when forced, what it was like when genuine. The timing of his pre-game naps. The way he would chew on the inside of his cheek when typing up emails. The way he would inevitably eat a clementine at some point between the hours after dinner and bed, amassing the peel neatly on a paper towel on the living room coffee table. How the citrus scent would permeate the room. And when they’d started up with each other, Ilya could taste it on him. The juice on his tongue, and, lingering on his fingers, the bitter pith, the rind.

Pathetic, he told himself, when these sorts of things would tug at him in his mind. What use did he have for any of these memories, this knowledge? What did it matter to him that Shane Hollander allowed himself a single piece of fruit for dessert every night, or that he didn’t like to nap for any longer than an hour before games otherwise he’d feel too groggy?

There were plenty of other more important things to think about than those sorts of memories. For instance, practice.

Ilya had not given much thought to rookies after his first season was over. But now, after his shameful stint on the Metros’ Youtube page, he found himself watching the Raiders’ two new kids at practice. The rest of the young guys from rookie camp had been sent back down, but these two were staying up. Kohn and Carmichael usually kept the kids, along with Randolph, but he’d retired last season. Ilya had never thought about what the vets were doing to them behind closed doors besides a few, fleeting thoughts here and there. It wasn’t really any of his business. But Hollander didn’t fuck his rookies; didn’t let the other guys on the team do so either. Not that the usual Metros vets would want that sort of thing anyways. Ilya could not imagine Pike, who was the go-to for keeping rookies, taking some pimple-faced new recruit up to the third floor of his giant house and fucking him while his wife and gaggle of children were downstairs.

But now…Ilya had the A. Would probably get the C next season. It made him uncomfortable to think about the choice he’d have to make when he was captain, whether to change the room like Hollander had, or whether to keep the status quo. He did not think of himself as a morally upright sort of person. But Hollander had acted like it was a forgone conclusion not to partake in the kept rookie thing. Like it was an obvious choice, like there was really no other option he’d ever considered.

Even to this day, years after the fact, Hollander’s expression was stamped into Ilya’s mind. The one that had broken open across his face when Ilya, fresh off a nearly 24-hour day of travel, had gone down on his knees. He had been genuinely appalled.

There was certainly a reality where they’d kept to Hollander’s rules for the whole of Ilya’s rookie season. It was probably the reality that Otto Wagner was living now. But Ilya hadn’t lived it.

Luckily, he was saved from that turn of thought by the whistle.

So. Ilya watched the kids. They were like any other rookies. Determined, scared, tinged with both cockiness and desperation. Their dreams were so close to reality that you could almost smell the wanting on them. After the preseason started and they played a few games, they would cool off. But Ilya remembered; he’d been no different, after all. Wanting to play hockey, wanting to be good, wanting to mesh with the team. The want had been so big and heavy Ilya felt it sloshing in his stomach, in his bloodstream. The sort of want that was big enough that everyone else could see it on him, could see it on these rookies now.

Maybe it would make a nicer man feel fond or tender. For Ilya, it made him want to shake them, harden them. Didn’t they know everything could be yanked out from under them with just one phone call? Didn’t they know better than to wear their young hearts on their sleeves, the desperation as plain as day on their faces?

“They get younger and younger every year,” said Marleau, who had skated up to slouch against the boards next to Ilya.

“Mm, no, they are always the same age. You get older.”

“Oh, right, I forgot I was talking to some twenty-three-year-old asshole.”

Marleau had been drafted the year after Shane, but he had joined the Raiders the same year as Ilya. He was an idiot. For some reason, Ilya liked him very much.

“What have Kohn and Carmichael said?” Ilya asked, ignoring the insult.

Marleau had the other A and was closer with the older guys than Ilya was. Maybe because if his age, or maybe because he actually liked golf, which was Kohn and Carmichael’s hobby of choice. Ilya usually begged off when invited to the course. The only fun part for him was driving the golf cart, but he had several sports cars now that were even more fun to drive. So, he did not go golfing and therefore missed out on the chatter that happened in between holes.

“Oh, you know, it’s always the same this early on. Settling in. Learning the city. Focused on the team.”

Ilya wondered who had kept Marleau his rookie year and what sort of experience he’d had. Marleau was old enough to be on the list for keeping rookies for the Raiders, but he never volunteered. Ilya also wondered about that. But those weren’t questions to ask in the middle of practice. He knew Marleau well enough by now to expect at least some sort of answer, but he’d probably think it was weird. The rookies talked about it amongst themselves, but once you were out of your first season, it was the sort of thing you left behind. Better to leave it all in the past, no use dredging it up again.

It was what Ilya himself had been doing, up until this year.

“Speak of the devil,” Marleau was saying.

Feller had come up to them, panting, beaming, in all of his eighteen-year-old glory.

“Hey,” he said. “Marly, Rozy.”

He still used their nicknames in too purposeful a way, like he was practicing.

“Fellsy,” said Ilya.

“Hey kid. How’s practice,” Marleau asked.

“It’s great!” Feller enthused, then reconsidered. “It’s hard, challenging. But I’m up for it. The challenge, I mean. And, of course, it’s an honor to be here.”

“Okay, calm down buddy,” said Marleau, knocking his glove against Feller’s shoulder.

“Sure,” Feller said. He stacked his gloves on top his stick and turned to watch the drills.

Well, he certainly didn’t seem like he’d been traumatized by anything that was happening to him at Kohn’s house. He was skating well and he had a good attitude. Ilya shifted on his skates and wondered if he was being a creep for thinking about it so much. But it could go bad, was the thing. He’d heard enough rumors from the boys in Russia about it that at least some of what was said must have had some truth. But Kohn was a good guy. And so was Carmichael. They were both married and they both had kids. If they were doing the kept rookie thing, it couldn’t be bad nor all that frequent.

Besides, sucking dick every now and then was a small price to pay in exchange for all of this. At least, Ilya had always thought so.

—September 2019—

Hollander had not wanted his dick sucked. After spending enough time with him to realize that he wasn’t a homophobe or a jerk, Ilya had thought maybe the issue was that he just needed some time to warm up a little. Then he’d change his mind. But he never did. Instead, Ilya was just a roommate. Some guy who was living in Hollander’s condo and eating half of his food and sitting in the passenger seat of his sensible SUV as they drove to and from the practice rink and to and from Bell Centre. It was not what he had expected, and he found himself having to pivot.

If Hollander was not going to keep him as he was supposed to, then Ilya would have to be the most ideal roommate. He would have to be polite, unobtrusive, deferential. None of those things came easy to him, but he could fold himself into such a box for his rookie season, if it meant playing on the Metros. Ilya didn’t want to do anything to irritate Hollander, since he couldn’t offer the usual things a kept rookie might.

He had not considered the possibility of Hollander not wanting to fuck him, but now he was living the reality of it.

Moreover, Ilya had not considered the possibility of homesickness. He wanted out of Russia, bad. So the insidious feeling, as it crept up on him, shocked him. And embarrassed him, really. How could he miss his father, when he was tyrannical, or his brother, who was a corrupt deadbeat, or the gaudy, post-Soviet apartment in Moscow populated with its ugly furniture and the ghost of his mother?

But he did miss it. All of it.

Everything felt more difficult in Montreal, and not just because Hollander wasn’t acting the way Ilya’d expected. For one thing, his body was near constantly sore, ringing with the echoes of practice and the ruthless workouts Hollander and the trainers laid out for him. His gut had taken a while to grow used to the diet plan Hollander’s nutritionist had created for him, and so he’d had to sneak off to the bathroom frequently, his intestines in spiked cramps of pain. And he was lonely for his friends: Sveta who had known him since childhood, and Sasha who had walked with him step by step through their realizations of their sexualities.

On top of all that, he’d convinced himself that he needed to be near-constantly performing. Ilya was not by default polite, unobtrusive, or deferential. But now, he told himself that he had to be.

True, it was only a little more pressure layered on top of the rest of it. But it grated in the most irritating ways. Every time Ilya swallowed down a snarky comment, or kept to his room, or refused drinks at the team hangouts, it felt like the pressure gauge somewhere in his hindbrain ticked up another notch. Even when he genuinely tried to be good and useful, it never seemed like he was doing the right thing. Even the things he tried to do correctly were wrong. He’d been loading his own dirty dishes and silverware into the dishwasher for weeks, but it had only been a few days ago when Ilya’d come back into the kitchen to find Hollander reorganizing.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I just…I like it to go like this. A certain way.”

So then Ilya had been doing it wrong for weeks, and Hollander hadn’t even told him! Now, he had to study and memorize how Hollander liked his dishwasher racks organized, as if it made any difference. It was a box that filled up with water and soap! What did it matter where the cups or the bowls went?!

And then there was the English. So much English it made his brain feel heavy and useless, as dumb and mute as stone. The amount of vocabulary he didn’t know was staggering. But on top of that was the grammar, the idioms, the conjugations that made no sense. Why was the past tense form of ‘keep’ not ‘keeped?’ What was this ‘kept’ that Hollander insisted on? Why did the vowel sound change for one word and not for another one? Ilya hated feeling stupid. It was a favorite accusation of his father’s. But at least in Russian Ilya knew it was untrue. In North America he feared the opposite. He was funny, in Russian. Witty, charming, sharp-tongued. In English he plodded along, fumbling several steps behind the conversation. And he suspected the only reason why some of his jokes landed was because of how atrocious his grammar and pronunciation were.

No, Montreal was not anything like how Ilya imagined before moving there. And neither, of course, was Hollander. But the irritations and difficulties were worth it to play hockey. Ilya could rely on hockey.

Chapter 3

—October 2023—

They played their preseason games, three at the end of September and three in the beginning of October. Ilya did plenty of media. He was good at pretending it wasn’t tedious, good at delivering sound-biteable quotes, good at playing up the cockiness that Boston fans had come to know and love him for.

The first year after the trade, Ilya had taken the opportunity to say plenty of sly things about Hollander in response to the media’s insatiable line of questioning. He was as bitter as a jilted lover. He’d met his hero and found him lacking. Or, rather, Ilya had found him better than he could have imagined and was betrayed by him anyways. He had plenty to say and the reporters had plenty of questions.

The trade had pulled the rug out from under him, had blindsided him completely, but it was the general consensus of the outside observer that he’d been given a very soft place to land on the Raiders. It didn’t make a difference. Not to Ilya. What did it matter how soft the landing was when the initial act had already pierced him through?

The media loved it when he got catty, though of course he couldn’t be outright disparaging. But he could joke and wink and the kernel of truth would be there under the surface waiting to pop. After winning the Cup, the questions about Hollander dissipated. It was the best and boldest proof that the Metros had made a trade that they shouldn’t have, and the Raiders had benefited from that fumble tenfold. It was proof that Ilya was a force to be reckoned with in his own right, and no longer tied to the Hollander-Metros legacy.

In October as the new season officially began, most of the questions Ilya received were about how the team was meshing, how the new guys were coming along, follow ups from preseason games, and other generic start of term inquiries. Ilya predicted he wouldn’t get anything about Hollander until November, when they would play their first game against the Metros. It was still a month away, but Ilya still felt it looming, as if some big, physical presence lurking just outside of his peripherals. He had never looked forward to playing against the Metros, despite how good it felt when he beat them. But after his inadvisable foray into the Metros’ Youtube vault, he was almost dreading it. There was something different in his brain this year. A softening. A weakness.

Still, Ilya determinedly put his lapse in judgment texting Hollander back into the far reaches of his mind. Despite the initial typing bubbles, Hollander had never responded after his two-word message. Ilya was content to leave it at that. He wouldn’t even know what to say in response anyways. Didn’t know what had possessed him to text in the first place. (Well, he did, but it was too embarrassing to acknowledge even inside his own head.) Ilya would do his best to make sure this season would be just like the three before it. He would see Hollander on ice maybe four times, and then All Stars weekend, and awards.

There would be no more random texting and no more Youtube viewing. Ilya would keep his distance and regain his sanity.

They would play their first game against the Metros at Bell Centre, on a short road trip in the beginning of November. First to Montreal, then to Buffalo, and then back home again. The Raiders’ preseason had been an even split of equal wins to losses, while the Metros had won every game but one.

“Excited to play against your former captain this Saturday?”

Of course, the questions about Hollander dissipated until a Raiders-Metros game was in proximity.

Ilya tilted his head left and right. They had just handed New York a solid loss, 5-2, and Ilya had had two assists. His curls were soaked with sweat and his heart rate still hadn’t come back down to baseline. And now he had to talk about Shane.

“Yes, always excited to play against Hollander.”

If it had been his first year with the Raiders, he would’ve had a bit more to say. But it was his fourth year and he was being normal. Normal and regulated and detached. Luckily, the line of questioning moved on. There were some more inquiries about his mindset, how the Raiders felt going in to face a team coming off such a strong preseason, and the like. But nothing directly about the Metros’ captain. Ilya smirked and quipped his way through as best he could before he was set free and able to flee to the showers.

Ilya put his face in the spray and tried not to feel personally victimized. No one could know that he’d started the season breaking several of his own personal rules regarding Hollander, and that every question about him now felt like cannonballs lobbed at his weakened defenses.

He could play it off. He had played it off, he told himself. No one would know that inside Ilya was trying and failing to ignore the ominous crumbling of various walls and fortifications. No one would ever know. In fact, if he worked hard enough, surely he could build them back up again. Ilya was a pro at holding a grudge. The fact that he’d slipped up was not a death sentence. Not yet.

On Saturday, when they stepped onto the ice at Bell Centre, it would be just as it had been during every other game the past three seasons. So what if Ilya’d texted Hollander and basically admitted he was jealous of his new rookie? It wasn’t like they could talk about it on ice. If Hollander had a completely different personality, maybe Ilya would need to be worried. But out of the two of them, Shane wasn’t the pest.

Ilya would do what he always did. Ignore whatever was roiling internally and play beautiful hockey. They’d knock the Metros off of their winning streak and leave the ice to the chorus of incensed Metros fans. Ilya rinsed the soap from his hair and closed his eyes. He could already hear the booing.

—October 2019—

Relying on hockey was safe. Ilya knew hockey, was good at hockey, and understood how to function in hockey spaces. During the preseason, Ilya had clicked quickly with the Metros. He had always found it easy, the locker room joking, the nights out, the team dinners. Despite his English (which he was working on), it wasn’t so different in North America than it was in Russia. Ilya had very little difficulty ingratiating himself into a group.

He practiced, he played games, he worked out, he memorized English vocabulary, he came to know the various personalities of his teammates. All of it was exactly how Ilya had pictured it when, as a child, he’d envisioned his first year playing on an MLH team.

The problem was not hockey, The problem was, he kept second guessing himself on how to act around Hollander outside of hockey. Ilya was good at flirting and mingling and casual conversations with strangers at bars. He was good at putting his body on display and reeling in those who wanted it. But he had already tried that with Shane and had only embarrassed himself. He had no idea what to do in this situation, where he’d spent years hearing of and expecting one thing, and then getting the opposite.

And, as time passed, Ilya was getting to know Shane bit by bit. Getting to see glimpses of his soft underbelly, the personality quirks that were so well-hidden with media training. Shane Hollander was uptight, yes. But he was also a good listener. He was strange, yes. But he also had a surprisingly catty sense of humor that Ilya liked very much. He was fastidious. And he seemed to have none of the regular person’s social anxiety, the compulsion to fill silences with small talk. From their very first meal together, Ilya had noticed how Shane was content to just sit in silence. Sometimes he would ask Ilya inane questions with the upmost seriousness, like when he’d last been to the dentist, as if the answer was imperative. But there were no follow up questions, no personal responses or anecdotes added on in return. Instead he’d just nod to himself and go back to eating.

Eventually it got to the point where Ilya couldn’t deal with another interminable dinner of silence peppered with grammar lessons. He already had an English tutor, one that the Metros had set him up with after training camp ended. He didn’t need further English lessons from Shane Hollander, who wasn’t good at explaining conjugation or grammar anyways. It was true that Ilya had still conscripted himself into unobtrusiveness. He was trying hard to be polite and out of the way. But he’d start pulling out his hair if he didn’t have at least some conversation. It had been almost two months living together and Ilya felt like they’d barely talked to each other.

The best and most promising topic, was of course, hockey. Ilya grabbed hold of this and prepared to badger Shane with it until he said something interesting.

“What you think of Lemaire,” Ilya said determinedly that night when they sat down to dinner at the kitchen island.

They had just played against the Nomads the day before, the third game of the season. Ilya’s dream of playing on MLH ice had come true. Though Ilya’s ice time was still low, it was almost as good to get to watch Shane in his element for those three games. Ilya wanted to know how his brain worked when he was playmaking, when he was flying down the ice, setting up an assist, and the rest of it. He wanted to know what Shane thought about everything related to hockey. Lemaire had gone second in Ilya’s draft class.

Shane had looked at him with an almost calculating gaze. “Are you fishing for compliments?” he asked.

“Fish? No, this chicken,” Ilya said, poking with his fork.

He threw a glance slyly at Shane, who was smiling, just a little.

“This is chicken,” Shane corrected. Then, “It’s an idiom. Like, you’re trying to get me to compliment you.”

Ilya made a guileless face and shrugged.

“I can’t tell how much of your shtick is being willfully obtuse and how much of it is actually fluency related,” Shane said. “Aren’t you making progress with your tutor?”

Ilya did not know what half of those words meant. “Sorry,” he said and shrugged. “My English.”

“Yeah okay,” Shane said. “Lemaire, eh? Well what do you think of him?”

“No,” Ilya said. “You say. I ask first.”



 It had been a gamble, maybe, poking Shane until he said more than a few sentences at a time. But it had paid off. Their dinners were no longer mostly silent. And it was a treat to pick Shane’s brain about hockey. Even if he didn’t have the highest hockey IQ of anyone in the league, he would still have his many years of experience. But he had both. Moreover, behind closed doors, Shane allowed himself to reveal more than the ‘great team, great game, great opponent,’ spiel he always gave to interviewers. Sometimes he could be kind of a bitch, which Ilya found delightful.

But that was the issue. Was hiding all of the interesting, truthful parts of himself what it took to be so successful in the league? A life of one million buttons, all secured so tightly, with no room for spontaneity, for cheat days, for mistakes, for greed or wanting? Ilya imagined even in sleep, Hollander was crisp and perfect. Starched striped pajamas, lying on his back with his arms crossed on his chest like a vampire.

Was this how he’d been as a teenager, at Ilya’s age? Ilya couldn’t imagine it. The boys he had grown up with at the rink in Russia were all randy and selfish, simultaneously ravenous for each others’ approval and desperate to come out on top. The shy boys, the sweet boys, dropped out early.

Perhaps that would have been Ilya’s fate if his mother had not killed herself. But she did, and any sweet disposition Ilya’d been cultivating vanished. Instead he went near feral, ready to do or say anything, always one-upping, diving headfirst into anything that could be a distraction.

If, in an alternate reality they’d been peers, teenaged Ilya would have eaten teenaged Hollander for lunch. 

 The weeks passed. Ilya still spent most of his time in his room when he was in the condo. But now that they were actually talking during meals, the hesitation Ilya felt at taking up real space in Hollander’s home was fading. And they were playing strong hockey, which was a solid way to get into the captain’s good graces. Not that Ilya had ever really felt outside of them, but he was still wrong-footed over what it really meant to be kept by Shane. Without any of the usual rules, Ilya had made them up for himself. Keep to his room, be polite, clean up after making a snack so it was like he was never there in the first place. That sort of thing. But, as the trees changed color, the days grew shorter, the nights chillier and longer, Ilya realized living by those rules might drive him nuts. They were antithetical to who he was as a person, totally the opposite from what felt natural. He supposed it was funny, how successful he’d been at coming up with self-imposed regulations that he’d hate. But it wasn’t funny, just miserable.

Ilya couldn’t abandon it entirely; Hollander was used to the charade. He’d probably think Ilya had gone off the deep end if he started acting completely different. But maybe he could spend some more time out of his room. Just like with the silent dinners, he felt like he might start pulling out his hair if he had to endure another night up there, scrolling mindlessly on his phone. He wasn’t used to spending so many nights in.

At fifteen, Ilya had learned how to sneak into clubs, and subsequently developed a needful and obsessive enjoyment of the Moscow party scene. He had not left that enjoyment behind when moving to Canada. In fact, Ilya had been looking forward to seeing what Montreal had to offer. But it was not as good, or at least, the places the guys liked to frequent were not comparable. The bars the team liked were casual places, largely populated by twenty-somethings all wearing similar versions of the same outfit. The music was solidly top forty and the places all closed at 3am. Moreover, Hollander did not like to go out, and if the older guys weren’t attending, Ilya had to stay home.

“Sorry,” Shane said, on one of those nights.

Ilya, halfway up the stairs, had been on his way to his room to sulk in private. It wasn’t like he could complain.

“I know you’re…young…or whatever. But going out…I kind of hate it.”

Ilya stopped and turned to look over his shoulder.

“I like it,” Ilya said mutinously, glaring down at Hollander from his higher perch.

“Oh,” said Shane.

He looked small from this angle. A little wide-eyed. Ilya had never given him attitude before, not like this. It probably felt like it had come out of left field to Hollander. But for Ilya it had been brewing like a tea kettle on high heat for weeks. He did not want to spend every Friday night of his nineteenth year in his bed, asleep before midnight. He wanted to be out, enjoying the bar scene, making girls laugh, or—even better—finding a good party with a solid DJ and dancing until 6am.

But here he was in Shane’s warmly lit condo. It was before 10pm and he was about to go put on pajamas. Ilya turned and began to climb the stairs again. It wasn’t as if it mattered what Ilya wanted or liked in this house. Hollander was the keeper and Ilya was the one being kept.

“Hello Ilyushka, how much money did you send to Alexei? Sveta said her father said your father said, at the rate he’s going, he’ll be noseless by next year.”

Ilya rubbed a hand down his face. He shouldn’t have called Sasha when he was already in a bad mood. But the idea of going sleep before 10pm on a Friday night was too depressing to bear alone.

“Enough that he isn’t calling me in the middle of the night anymore, badgering me.”

Ilya could imagine exactly the face Sasha was making at that moment, half amused and half pitying. It made him homesick enough for his eyes to prickle.

“There is a word you could tell him, instead of ‘yes.’”

“What.”

“‘No.’”

Ilya rolled his eyes. “I know, Sasha.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you do.”

“If you keep talking about Alexei I’ll hang up.”

“Fine, don’t be a bitch. Let’s talk about your keeper, then. Has he warmed up at all? It’s October; has he choked you on his cock yet?”

Ilya groaned. Sasha had a knack for ferreting out the exact topics that Ilya did not want to discuss. Even if there hadn’t been a time between sixteen- and seventeen-years-old when they’d told each other everything, as the son of a well-respected hockey coach, Sasha spent enough time in and around hockey rinks to have heard a thing or two all on his own.

“What?” Sasha cajoled. “Still nothing?”

“He hasn’t,” Ilya said. “I told you, he said he doesn’t, with rookies. He doesn’t do anything. He’s like a saint.”

Sasha was already snickering while Ilya spoke. After, he broke out in to peals of laughter. Sasha knew very well how obsessed Ilya had been with Shane Hollander prior to getting drafted. The fact that Shane’s moral compass was preventing Ilya from getting what he wanted was objectively amusing. But Ilya wasn’t laughing.

“Ah, God, Ilya Grigorievich, your life! Right in the lap of your childhood crush and he is too noble to fuck you.”

“Laugh it up,” Ilya muttered. “Laugh it up.”

“But what’s his real issue, then?” Sasha asked after he’d finished cackling. “It can’t really be that he thinks it’s wrong. He’s a hockey player. This is how it is.”

“I don’t know,” Ilya said. “I’m trying to figure it out.”

“Well, what do people say about the other guy he kept? Who was it…Halverson, or something.”

“Henrikson,” Ilya said. “And I don’t know.”

“Well. By now we’ve confirmed that you don’t know anything at all. Are you going to change that or just mope around for the rest of the season in your self-pity and ignorance?”

Ilya rankled.

“Sasha, you know people don’t talk about it. You’re not supposed to. It’s like, you leave it behind after your rookie season is over.”

“I’m not saying to go up to the GM and ask him. But someone on the team. Didn’t you say something about the Russian guy last month? That you’d do well with Hollander? Why not feel him out?”

“Misha,” Ilya said. “Yes, he did say that.”

“So, then,” Sasha said. “He must know something. You should ask him if Hollander kept Henrikson like how it usually goes. Or if he’s always been this big of a prude.”

“That might be a disastrous conversation,” Ilya said. “I don’t want to affect team dynamics.”

“He’s Russian!” Sasha said, as if this negated any possible cons. Then, wheedling, “You might get some new information.”

“I don’t know,” Ilya hedged.

Maybe he would ask. Misha was pretty easy going.

“Whatever happens, be sure to call me and tell me about it.”

“Fine,” Ilya said. “Only if you tell me about the parties you’ve been to in Paris. I’m fucking dying over here. I want to dance.”

“Poor bunny,” Sasha said in a mocking voice. “In bed before ten while Montreal parties on without you.”

“I’m hanging up,” Ilya threatened.

But he didn’t hang up for another hour. Since moving to Montreal, Ilya had called Sasha and Svetlana each at least once a week. The calls were as necessary as his conditioning workouts. They made him feel like himself. Less alone. By the time he ended the call, his bad mood had smoothed out just a little.

Chapter 4

—November 2023—

They landed in Montreal on Friday afternoon. They would have optional morning skate on Saturday and then the game that night. But that Friday night they would get dinner and the younger and/or or single guys would go out.

Though Ilya had made plenty of fun of the Metros over the years with the Raiders, the one thing he never disparaged was Montreal’s night life. It was markedly better than what Boston had to offer, and he liked following various DJs and promoters on Instagram and seeing what sorts of parties were going on when the Raiders were in town.

They had a team dinner at a steakhouse and then the group split off for the club. Ilya wasn’t planning on drinking a lot but he did want to dance, preferably with a beautiful woman. Since it was a Friday night, the club was crowded and the energy was high. Ilya did two shots with the guys and then made his way into the thick of the crowd in front of the DJ booth. Eventually he found his arms full of a tall brunette, almost taller than he was in her heels. She spun around to give him a once-over. Ilya grinned, but kept his hands respectably on her waist. She leaned forward and put her mouth to his ear.

“I’m not going home with you.”

She pulled back to gauge his reaction. But Ilya wasn’t looking to hook up the night before a game. At least, not this time. He winked and nodded.

“No,” he said. “Just dancing.”

The woman smiled, an unguarded, pleased smile, one that showed off all of her straight white teeth. She put her arms around his neck. They danced.

Ilya had spent the past several years convincing himself that he actually hadn’t psychosexually imprinted on the captain of the Montreal Metros during his one-season stay with him. His methods had been public, resulting in a reputation that often preceded him. Ilya had convinced the world that he was a playboy, and had convinced himself he could have normal hook-ups, ones that had nothing at all to do with Shane Hollander. It was just how the human brain worked, Ilya told himself, why his thoughts tended to slip.

For instance, in the Uber on the way back to the hotel, instead of thinking of the lithe flex and flow of the brunette’s body against his in the club he’d just left, Ilya kept thinking about the towels in Hollander’s guest room. Were the same ones still there or had the housekeeping service switched them over to new ones? And what about the bedding? The throw pillows. The soft blue duvet cover. How Hollander had looked when Ilya pressed him down into it…

Ilya rested his head against the seat back and watched the lights and shadows of Montreal at night slip along past the window. He wasn’t that drunk. There was no excuse for his thoughts to turn the way they did. But they always did, no matter what. Hollander was always there, just a couple of wrong turns away.



 Then, the game. Ilya stepped onto the Bell Centre ice and was greeted by a cacophony of booing. The whole stadium echoed with the sound. He waved and smiled and did a lap or two around the ice. Normal. It was all normal.

Then, Hollander. Since the trade, Ilya had probably met his eyes for a grand total of less than five minutes combined. At the face-off, Hollander would only sometimes flick those brown eyes up to meet Ilya’s. Usually they were downturned towards their sticks, towards the puck dropping.

He had craved Shane’s attention when he’d been his rookie, always hated for it to be elsewhere. But Ilya was a member of the opposing team now and had been for years at this point. To Hollander he was just something to be handled so that Shane and his team could win. And vice versa.

Ilya moved in circles on the ice.

The problem was, he wanted to talk to him. Ilya always wanted to talk to him, even during the first year when he was still smarting and licking his wounds from the trade. The radio silence was on Ilya, of course. Hollander would have responded if Ilya had texted. That had been proven in September. He probably would have picked up the phone, if Ilya had called. But Ilya couldn’t stand the thought of the polite, buttoned-up responses he would have received as an opposing team member. The media-trained facade, the void-of-personality hockey robot that was the Canadian hero, Shane Hollander, Montreal Metros captain. That Shane Hollander was flawless and featureless. So boring and so consistent that, over the years, people forgot to even consider there might be real humanity beneath it.

But Ilya knew. And he knew that he couldn’t stomach anything less than the real thing.

So, Ilya had started fresh with the Raiders. He’d pushed anything and everything to do with his rookie year to the very back of his mind. It wasn’t at all relevant, so he simply wouldn’t think about it ever again. Hollander didn’t think about him, so why should he think about Hollander? It was easy to do when there were so many miles between them. But on the ice Ilya always felt Hollander’s presence like a fish hook to the gut, tugging.

It was no different now. He wanted to talk to him.

The circles Ilya skated were growing smaller and smaller. Soon, the game would start and they’d be at the face-off, their heads bent together. Hollander usually avoided eye contact, while Ilya glared determinedly at Shane’s helmet.

Smaller and smaller.

Hollander was stretching his hips out on the ice. He glanced up and then, when he saw who was aping Jaws around him, sat back and clambered to his feet.

Ilya hadn’t imagined what his first voluntary words to Hollander might be after years of no contact, because despite his wanting, Ilya never thought he’d talk to him again outside of professional demands. But here he was. He’d texted him two months ago. And now, what came out of his mouth was:

“How is your new baby.”

“My…” Hollander said, blinking through his visor. Then, in disbelief, “You want to know about Wagner?”

The baby in question was currently at the boards, head bent towards one of the Metros’ defensemen. Ilya shrugged and rubbed his nose on the back of his glove.

Hollander leveled a brief look, right into Ilya’s eyes, which made a burst of adrenaline zing up his spine. Then, predictably, his gaze ducked away, fell down to Ilya’s nose.

“Why do you care,” he said.

Ilya had been convincing himself that he didn’t care for the past three years. And he didn’t. Not really. He was just…

“Curious,” Ilya said.

“Well,” Hollander said. “He’s fine.”

They did not speak further. But this time, at the face-off, their eyes met again. Ilya felt no thunderbolts, no sharp, internal jolts at the meeting moment. What he felt was something more secretive and ominous, a further sense of shifting, of awakening. Something dormant, perking up its head. Hollander’s eyes were shaded from above by his helmet and visor. But the fluorescents reflected off the white ice and illuminated them that way. He looked alert, watchful. Ilya felt something turn over, deep within the pit of himself.

The Metros won 2-0.

—November 2019—

November saw the Metros jumping around, one away game, then one at home, then another away. But they finished out the month with a solid ten days and five games at home, the first of which was a 2-0 loss to Ottawa. The locker room was subdued after the loss, but the guys were still discussing a night out. It had been a while since they’d done a team thing in Montreal, what with all the flying around.

“What about you, Hollzy? Gracing us with your presence?”

Ilya put his face towards his stall and focused on putting his pants on. They had not really talked about Ilya’s attitude, that night in October. It could have been the case that Shane didn’t care too much. But Ilya did feel him watching, and the watching was different to how it had been before. Shane had always had an eye on him; it was part of the job, keeping a rookie. But now there was something a little more thoughtful in his gaze, like he was considering something. Ilya didn’t know what to make of it, and mostly hoped that he wasn’t secretly in trouble.

He certainly wasn’t expecting what Shane said next.

“We’ll go,” said Shane.

The guys cheered. Ilya whipped his head around to stare at him. Surely this couldn’t have anything to do with that night…But he was getting to know Shane better, bit by bit, and it seemed like the sort of thing that Shane might do. To hear something, register it, and then do something about it all on his own without consulting anyone.

Ilya ducked his head and wondered at the strange, hot feeling that was unfurling beneath his sternum. He didn’t have a name for it. But then, when Hollander sidled up to him as they left for the car and said in a low voice, just for Ilya: “okay?” Ilya knew exactly what it was.

Affection.

Ilya spent the rest of the time before they headed out to the bar battling with his pride. He knew he needed to thank Shane, but the idea of doing so was almost repulsive. It made him feel needy and small, like something to be handled. Ilya didn’t need to be taken care of. He didn’t need to be kept like this.

In the car, Ilya forced himself to turn to Hollander and spit it out.

“Thank you,” he said, and then crossed his arms and sunk into the seat.

There. Polite.

“Oh,” Shane said. “Sure.”

“You don’t have to do.”

“No, but. I know I’m no fun. I want you to be happy, living here. On the team. What’s a few more nights out on the town, eh?”

Ilya hummed. Most of the prideful tension he’d felt since leaving practice had dissipated within the past hour or two. But now it was fully gone. He focused instead on what Shane had said. No, Shane was not fun. But it wasn’t a bad thing, not to Ilya.

He was the sort of captain that commanded respect. A lot of guys looked up to him. A lot of them said he was the guy they looked up to most. But the way he maintained the room and captained the team wasn’t ‘fun.’ He wasn’t the type of captain that would instill a lot of warmth, or touchy-feely connections. Some teams, Ilya knew, grew together almost like relatives, cousins. The Metros, under Shane, were coworkers. Coworkers who liked and respected each other and worked well together, but there was nothing below the surface.

It was one way to manage a team, surely. It was true that plenty of teams in the league were probably the same. But it was surprising to counter the fervor that the fanbase had versus the levelheaded truth of the locker room, of practices. The only time Ilya saw real heat from Shane Hollander was on ice during the games.

‘I know I’m no fun,’ Shane had said, almost as a throwaway, like it was so obvious it barely needed to be mentioned. He must have heard it a lot, those past nine years. And before he was drafted, too. It made a prickle of protectiveness flare in Ilya’s hindbrain, despite the fact that he had been thinking the exact same thing.

“Okay,” Ilya said, and turned his face towards the passenger window. He didn’t know what else to say.

“Do you know if he,” Ilya said and then paused.

The bar was one Ilya had not yet been to. The space was set up with half high top tables and half dance floor. The music was loud, the bass reverberating through Ilya’s sternum.

“He what,” Misha said.

They had their heads together at one of the high tops. Ilya was trying to do what Sasha had suggested during their phone call, and get a bit more information. It felt almost unbearably awkward. But he’d already started. Now he would have to press on and finish it.

“Did the usual thing. You know, for rookies. With Henrikson?”

Misha wrinkled his nose and Ilya felt cowed, just a little. You really weren’t supposed to talk about it. He’d make sure Sasha would get an earful, suggesting crazy things and making Ilya consider them.

“It’s not really my business,” Misha said, a bit primly. “And Henrikson was dating someone pretty seriously. From what I remember, they got along fine in the locker room.”

“He said he wouldn’t, with me,” Ilya said.

“Well, that’s okay then, right?”

Exactly. That was how Ilya should look at it. Instead he was a mess of twisted feelings. He could never be normal or good about the things he should be normal and good about. Twisting. Always twisting.

“Did you, your first year?”

Misha shrugged.

“That was before I was traded here. But the guy was married and had a toddler. Sometimes he got me on away games when I was super moody or something. But it wasn’t really like how it was talked about back home.”

There was a pause. The bass rattled around Ilya’s ear drums. He felt a nudge against his side. Misha was grinning at him.

“You’re the first to ever ask me outright.”

Ilya made a face. The fact that he’d asked was all Sasha’s fault. But it was a relief that Misha hadn’t shut him down, that he was still entertaining this conversation. And it was even better that Misha knew where he was coming from, how this sort of thing was talked about in Russia.

“You would have thought they’d be chaining us up in basements or something,” Misha joked.

“Yes, they did make it seem like that,” Ilya said.

Hollander didn’t have a basement, and he’d looked appalled when Ilya had dropped to his knees. It was nothing like the rumors. Not at all. And now here Shane was, making an effort to go out just for Ilya, so that Ilya could have fun.

Ilya watched as Hollander juggled conversation with various strangers. He was like a magnet. People in Montreal were obsessed with him, possessive, almost like they knew him personally. Someone with the complete opposite personality might enjoy that sort of thing. But it was clear why Shane preferred to stay in most of the time. It was always a big to-do when he came out, and he spent the whole time fending off free shots and wandering hands. But Hollander was a pro, shrugging them off, redirecting. He was always offering a smile, only a little bit strained, only a little forced.

They were both looking at him then, or rather, at his back. Their conversation lulled as they watched him juggle a group of four guys who had surrounded him and were enthusiastically talking over one another and the loud music.

“Hollzy’s getting antsy,” said Misha eventually.

“How so,” Ilya demanded.

“My sister’s like him. Low touch. No touch. She does that same thing with her shoulders when someone is too far into her bubble.”

The guy to Shane’s left had been putting his hand on Shane’s back, which Ilya had noticed immediately. But Shane was good at shifting his body, making it seem like he was moving to follow the conversation, when really he was dislodging the guy’s hand. The guy kept putting it back and Ilya hadn’t noticed how high Shane’s shoulders had climbed until Misha pointed it out.

He felt, abruptly, like the worst sort of teammate, the worst, most selfish sort of person. Shane was in that situation because of Ilya. Shane, with his shoulders taut, rising up to his ears.

“I will save him,” Ilya professed and went over, ignoring whatever chirp Misha was calling out behind him.

This was the issue with Shane. Ilya might find all sorts of things about him infuriating and annoying, but when it came down to the foundation, Ilya just wanted him to be happy.

“Hi,” Ilya said, sidling in between the touchy guy and Shane, taking advantage of the narrow space to press himself all along Shane’s side, and to pinch him at his mid-back. Shane jumped and then saw it was him.

“Oh guys, this is Rozanov,” said Shane. “We were talking hockey.”

Of course, Ilya thought at him, giving him a look. What else.

“Hello,” he said out loud.

“Eighty one!” said one of the guys, beaming. “You’re having a great rookie season, eh, bud?”

“Yes,” Ilya said. “Work hard. Sorry, but guys looking for you. Pike. J.J.”

“Oh, okay,” Shane said easily. “Well nice to meet you all.”

He avoided another round of handshakes by keeping his hands deep in his pockets and nodding, before turning and following Ilya towards the back of the bar.

The team had a couple booths back there, both of which were abandoned, filled only with jackets. Ilya herded Shane into one and then sat down after him, blocking him in.

“So,” Shane said. “Hayden left twenty minutes ago.”

“Yes,” said Ilya.

Shane had pressed himself all the way into the corner and the pile of jackets, and was sort of facing Ilya at an angle. Ilya folded his left leg flat onto the booth’s bench seat and rested the side of his head against the back.

“It looked like I needed rescuing that bad, eh?”

“Misha say, ‘look, he’s annoyed.’ So I go.”

You’re here because of me, Ilya didn’t say. It was the least he could do.

“Okay,” Shane said. Then, hopefully, “Maybe we can leave soon.”

Ilya shrugged. Before, it wasn’t as if he had any say over when they left when Shane came out. Hollander always hung around until either the majority of the guys left or the night devolved into dancing. That night, the married guys had gone around the time Pike had, and the stragglers were paired off with women, scattered throughout the bar. In Ilya’s opinion, Hollander’s captainly duty had been fulfilled. But of course it wasn’t for him to say, as the rookie.

But now it seemed like Shane was deferring to him. Ilya blinked slowly at him. On paper, Shane was dull. Boring. But in reality Ilya could never predict what he might do.

“You weren’t talking to anyone you, uh, liked. Right?”

He didn’t understand the question. Was it a test? Or was Hollander just confirming what he already knew…restating his claim, keeping the leash tight?

“No…” Ilya said eventually.

It was the truth, and it seemed like the right answer, at least. The smile Shane gave him then was small, but so sweet that it went right to Ilya’s head like a shot of something pure, something strong.

Slowly, he smiled back.

It didn’t escape Ilya that Shane had plenty of prospects when he did go out with the team, plenty of women coming up to him. He never once seemed interested in what they had to offer, his demeanor never more than friendly. Maybe he thought he was too good for regular civilians. His last relationship had been with a movie star. Maybe he was waiting for Angeline Jolie to call him. Regardless, he never brought anyone back to the condo. Ilya supposed he could be going elsewhere, in order to be polite. Shane had the various meetings and dinners and overnight trips (the season’s schedule permitting) of an A-list athlete. Perhaps it was during those outings when he hooked up.

Or maybe he was a monk.

But Ilya wasn’t. He liked to flirt. He liked skin on skin. Kissing. Making someone feel good. He liked getting attention from beautiful people. It was infuriating to be out with some guys from the team and to be chatting with a hot girl, someone he’d take home if the situation was any different, but to ultimately have to leave her at the bar. Maybe he could have done so, if Hollander was treating him normally, the way a kept rookie should be treated. But he wasn’t. And so Ilya didn’t know what the repercussions would be if he did leave to hook up. Was Hollander watching and waiting for him to fuck up?

“She seemed really into you, mon chum,” said J.J., during one such instance a few nights later. “Sad for you that Hollzy keeps you on such a tight leash.”

Ilya shrugged and tried not to look too pissed off. The guys joked like this every now and then, about how he was being such a good boy for their captain, how well trained he was. It only further solidified his assumption that if he did go home with someone, or God forbid, bring someone to Hollander’s home, that he’d really be in for it in a bad way.

“Aww, c’mon man,” Pike said, waving a hand as if to dispel a bad smell. “Shane’s not like that.”

“Of course not!” J.J. exclaimed, jostling Ilya’s shoulder and willfully ignoring how tense it was. “Our capitaine is the best in the whole league.”

With that proclamation, J.J. slung himself out of the booth and into the sea of the bar. Ilya turned back to Pike.

“Henrikson,” he said.

Pike raised his eyebrows over his pint glass. He swallowed and set it back down on the table.

“Yeah? Are we just saying players’ names now? I’ll go next: Hunter.”

Ilya rolled his eyes. Pike was so annoying and yet thought he was so funny, an irksome combination.

“He’s…tight leash too?”

Hollander had begged off this night, but had said Ilya could go because Pike and J.J. and a couple other vets would be out too. Ilya had used his newfound freedom out from under Shane’s watchful eye and thrown back a few extra shots. He was just drunk enough to push past the impropriety of asking such a question to ask it. Out loud.

Pike did not respond how Ilya might have expected. He was laughing. Hard.

“What is funny,” Ilya demanded.

“No, it’s just,” Pike said and paused to sigh and shake his head. “Shane doesn’t like keeping rookies. If he wasn’t captain, he wouldn’t at all. He doesn’t like anyone in his house, really. It’s why I host all the team stuff. Henrikson, he met someone on one of the first nights out during training camp and basically lived with her the entire season. They kept up appearances because it’s good media: the captain and the rookie. But no, there was no leash. Now, with Henrikson’s girlfriend? That’s another story. Very, very tight leash. And they’re married! Here, I have a photo from the wedding…”

Ilya did not care about some random ex-Metros’ wedding photos, but since Pike had been so obliging to answer Ilya’s question in detail, he made a show of peering at Pike’s screen and nodding approvingly.

“Okay,” he said.

He sat back in the booth and considered what he’d just learned. Maybe he could find a girlfriend too and get out from under Hollander’s thumb. The problem was, he didn’t know if that was what he really wanted.

—November 2023—

The next week, Ilya picked up his phone and his heart almost fell out of his ass. Shane Hollander, read the text notification. Ilya swiped open the message.

It’s a favor. Hayden was going to take him but they’re going through this diagnosis with Amber. And it’s just me over here, so.

Ilya could picture exactly how Hollander had looked, frowning at his phone, biting at the inside of his cheek and typing out the explanation. He refused to feel fond about it.

Ok, he sent. Then, because he wasn’t a complete asshole, is pike baby sick.

The typing bubbles popped up immediately and the text came through seconds later.

It’s behavioral stuff.

Ilya considered what to say next, and decided to go with the facts.

She will get good help. She has good parents.

Yeah. What’s up with you, you’re being nice.

I am an angel.

Please.

Please what?

Fuck off.

You texted me.

The typing bubbles appeared and disappeared for a minute or so. Then:

I didn’t think I was ever going to keep another rookie. No matter the optics.

Ilya felt a twinge in his sternum. He didn’t know how to read that, couldn’t begin to guess at the whys behind it. He wanted to ask, wanted clarification. Instead, he waited to see if more would come. It took three minutes.

I was concerned it would make me think about you more than I should.

Ilya couldn’t help himself. Why, he sent. Because I’m so bad?

No.

Ilya’s heart leapt. It wasn’t bad; Hollander didn’t think he was bad. Hollander was worried about thinking about Ilya too much. This whole time Ilya had assumed he was just a blip on the trajectory of Hollander’s great career, something to be looked back on fondly at best, and a mistake at worst. But, ‘no,’ Hollander had said. No to bad, implying the opposite.

Ilya clicked on the contact icon and then hovered his thumb over the call button. He felt insane.

Was Hollander feeling anything like this, anything at all similar? Or was he just absently texting while he sat through a brand deal meeting on Zoom, or reviewed tape in his living room? Shane had always been good at saying vulnerable things like they weren’t a big deal. ‘It would make me think about you more than I should,’ he’d said. Just straight up. God. He was a crazy person!

And how was it that he still had such a hold over Ilya, even after all of these years and all of this effort to detach himself? One word from him and Ilya was ready to…

No. What was he doing? What had gotten into him? Ilya swiped away and tapped into his call history. He pressed the top one and held the phone to his ear. He took several deep breaths.

“Hi,” said Sveta after the fourth ring. “I’m at work, Ilyushka.”

“I’m going crazy,” Ilya said.

Svetlana hummed. “Okay I will take a coffee break.”

Ilya listened to her leave her desk, head to the elevator bank, go down to the lobby, and exit the building. He knew she was outside when he could hear the rush of traffic in the background.

“Sorry,” he said, belatedly.

“So,” she said, ignoring the apology. “You are going crazy at 3:30pm on a Thursday.”

“Yes,” Ilya said. “Very crazy.”

“Why?”

“Fucking…” Ilya said, rubbing his face with his free hand. “Shane Hollander.”

“Oh, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

Right, because he’d made an effort to keep it that way. But Ilya could not admit that out loud.

“He is texting me,” he said instead. “I answered.”

“What, out of the blue for no reason?”

Ilya was quiet.

“Ilyushka,” Sveta said.

“Well, I asked him about his new rookie. During the game last week. So.”

“Ah so it’s your fault.”

“No it’s his fault. It’s always been all his fault.”

Svetlana didn’t reply for a moment. Ilya heard the opening and closing of a door and then the soft background music and quiet conversation of a coffee shop. He listened to her order a small soy latte, hot. Then,

“Listen, I think I’ve been very patient when it comes to your private vendetta against Shane Hollander. But isn’t it about time you let that go? You know how trades work. And didn’t it all end up for the best anyways? The Raiders are your team, Ilyushka. If you were still on the Metros, you’d be on Hollander’s team, under Hollander’s playing style, under Hollander’s captaincy. That isn’t what you were meant for. You’re too good of a player for that.”

“I am letting it go!” Ilya burst out.

That was the whole problem! He was letting it go so freely and so completely all at once that he was on the verge of calling him! Calling him up randomly and…and doing what? Apologizing? Begging forgiveness for how cold and rude he’d acted for the past several years?

“I want to talk to him,” he admitted.

Sveta was quiet for a long moment. Maybe she was processing, or maybe she was trying to think of something nice to say. Ilya didn’t know. When they discussed things like this, it was always about her relationships, or Sasha’s, never Ilya’s. Ilya didn’t have relationships. He had hook ups and one night stands and, occasionally, friends with benefits. He had never come to her with something like this before.

“So what’s the problem?” she said eventually.

“Well…” Ilya started, and then came up short. The problem was himself, obviously. The problem was… “He probably doesn’t want to talk to me. I gave him the cold shoulder for so long.”

“Maybe not,” Sveta acknowledged. “But maybe he would. You haven’t asked him.”

She said the last part as a statement, not a question, because she knew Ilya all too well.

“No I haven’t,” Ilya confirmed anyways.

“So then, ask him.”

That was all well and good for someone who was as self-assured as Sveta to suggest. But, “I’d rather die,” said Ilya.

Sveta laughed. “I’ve never heard you like this before. Ilyu’kha, are you finally growing up?”

“I regret calling you,” Ilya said.

“Well, let me get back to my job, hmm? Think about what I said, though. It’s very rare that I’m wrong about this sort of thing.”

“Except when it comes to your own situations,” Ilya said, bratty.

“Hurt people hurt people,” Sveta quipped, and then hung up.

Ilya tossed the phone down to the far end of the couch, put his head back and flung an arm over his eyes. Perhaps he’d think about what she’d said, but he certainly wouldn’t act on it.

—December 2019—

Misha had said that for him it happened sometimes on the road. If it had been the start of the season, maybe Ilya could have held out some hope that that might be true with Hollander. Maybe he had no interest at home. But maybe on the road, in hotel rooms that would all blur together by the end of the season, maybe his rules wouldn’t apply.

But they did.

In mid-December the team headed out on a road trip that would last until the end of the year. They would start in Vancouver and end in Raleigh on the thirty-first. They would have the twenty-fourth through the twenty-seventh off for Christmas, not that the holiday mattered too much to Ilya. Although, he was both intrigued and nervous about what it would be like spending the time at Hollander’s childhood home for the short break. He had met Yuna and David Hollander several times already that season. They were doting parents who still seemed to take real pleasure in showing up for their son’s games whenever possible, despite the fact that he’d been doing this job for a decade. Ilya found Yuna to be particularly fascinating, the career she had made for herself out of her son’s career. She’d turned that business-minded focus onto Ilya only a couple times, but he’d left those conversations feeling both steamrolled and uplifted.

But before the holidays at the Hollanders, there were several cities to visit and games to play. In Vancouver at the hotel, the room keys were passed out. Two were given to Hollander, as usual. No one shared rooms unless you were a rookie with your keeper. By now, this was all rote to Ilya. But he remembered during their first roadie in October, a part of him had been stupidly excited, weaving pathetic fantasies about a singular bed and getting to see what Hollander looked like when he was asleep. The other part of him, the part that was grating, chafing against the rules Ilya had conscripted himself into, wanted to scream in frustration at the idea of being in even closer proximity to Hollander. Ilya had thought that he’d probably make Ilya unpack and hang up all of his clothes, even the t-shirts.

It hadn’t turned out like that. Shane let Ilya keep his things in the open clamshell of his suitcase on the floor. And there were always, always two beds.

This time, after Hollander opened the door to their room, Ilya went over to the window to look at the view. He had not yet been to Vancouver, and the skyline was better than he’d expected.

Shane came up to the luggage rack to the left of the window and put his suitcase on it. Ilya watched out of the corner of his eye as Shane took off his plane shirt and put on another t-shirt. He went head first into the garment, shuffling the fabric around clumsily before his face emerged. Then there was the fight to get his arms through the sleeves. It made no sense, but Shane always put his shirts on like that. Every other person Ilya had ever seen went arms first. But Shane still dressed himself as if he were a toddler and his parent was there, putting the shirt on over his head. The first time Ilya had seen it, he’d sat in his stall staring. Now, he was used to it, or as used to it as he could be. He saw it frequently, especially since Shane refused to stay in the clothing he’d worn on the airplane for a moment longer than necessary. He always changed immediately when they got into the hotel room, even if they weren’t heading right out to dinner.

That night, though, they were. The restaurant put the team, already rowdy with pre-holiday cheer, in a private room. Ilya had two glasses of red wine, ate too much bread, and spent the dinner arguing with Misha and mostly ignoring the English conversation. Hollander was sitting across from him and had his attention commandeered by Pike. But Ilya still found himself staring at him from time to time, his fingers on the cutlery, his tongue licking the corners of his mouth clean.

Back in the room, Ilya picked up a call from Sveta without thinking. She had a whole tirade going right away, some idiot in her economics seminar, before Ilya had the thought that maybe it wasn’t polite to take a call like this in the room. He fumbled with the phone, muting himself, and then looked at Shane.

“Sorry, I can go to hallway? For call?”

Shane looked surprised.

“No,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

So Ilya stayed on his bed, sank back into the pillows, and let Sveta file complaints about all the dunderheads in her various university classes.

The next day, they lost the game. It was an irritating loss; each period the team was slogging behind, missing chances. Miitka could only do so much, and frankly, Ilya was impressed that by the end only three pucks had snuck past him. Hollander went to do media with a grim, self-sacrificing air. Ilya had seen plenty of post-game clips of him. The difference between the wins and losses was only marginal, in the curl of his mouth or the furrow of his brow. But that was media. How would he be behind closed doors after a truly shitty loss? In his condo, they had their own separate spaces to decompress. But this was the first time they’d experienced such a depressing game on a road trip. They would be in the same room, their beds only a couple feet apart.

The bus ride back to the hotel was silent. All of the guys either had their headphones on, or were just zoning out. Ilya rested his head against the seat and watched the orange pools on the asphalt from street lights slip by. He was getting more ice time as the season progressed. But the loss wasn’t his fault. Except that it was, actually, in the way that it was partially the fault of every guy on the team. Ilya rolled his head towards Hollander and his eyes got stuck on the fine lines of his profile. There was no pull to the corner of his mouth, no tightness around the eye that Ilya could see. He was just blank, breathing evenly, his hands folded in his lap, loosely gripped. He had his beloved noise-canceling headphones on. Probably listening to a podcast about guys a hundred years ago who went to the Arctic circle and froze to death, or something. Hollander liked stuff like that. Ilya wanted to climb into his head and see what he was thinking. If he asked, he knew Hollander would give him something politely rote, something akin to the media answers he’d parroted earlier. Ilya didn’t want that. He wanted the truth. Especially if it was ugly.

But Hollander was just quiet. There was no banging of doors or throwing of clothes back in the hotel room. There was no tense pull of his shoulders, no irritated jerk of his arms, no tetchy sighs. Did he even care that they’d lost? Or maybe it was just one away game in a very long season, one season out of nine that had come before it.

They made it through their separate turns in the bathroom without speaking. Then, once they were both under the covers, Shane rolled over to face Ilya’s bed.

“Who do you talk to on the phone,” he asked. “The one that makes you laugh so much? Like last night?”

Ilya turned his head on the pillow.

“I’m loud, sorry.”

“No,” Shane said immediately, shaking his head. “No that’s not what I meant. It’s…it’s nice. Hearing you. You sound happy.”

Ilya stared at him. Even if the room had been brightly lit, Hollander’s expression would have given him nothing. This whole time Ilya had assumed he was thinking about the game, but instead, this? He was wondering about Ilya’s phone calls?

“Last night, Svetlana. Her father Sergei Vetrov.”

Shane made a noise of recognition. “No way. From the Raiders?”

Of course Shane would remember goalies from the 1980s.

“Yes. She is born here, goes back to Russia as baby. She is in school in Moscow, but is thinking maybe next year, an exchange. Somewhere in Boston, maybe. East coast.”

“Oh,” Shane said. “Closer to you, eh? Yeah. I’m sure it’s hard to do long distance. I don’t think girlfriends will put up with that sort of thing for too long.”

“Not girlfriend,” Ilya said. “Just friend. Since babies.”

Shane was quiet. It felt pointed.

“Okay, maybe sometimes more,” Ilya said, and laughed a little.

Shane huffed, and his legs rustled a bit under the duvet.

“Well if she wants to come visit Montreal this season, she can stay in the third bedroom. Does she like hockey?”

Ilya blinked. Shane had offered that up like it was a given. But did he really mean it, or was he just being Canadian? Ilya couldn’t know. He still felt like, most of the time, he was seeing Hollander behind frosted glass. The true shape of him was blurred and vague.

“Yes,” he said eventually. “She like hockey.”

“Likes hockey,” Shane corrected.

“Likes,” Ilya echoed.

“Good,” Shane said, and Ilya tried not to feel too pleased about it.



The next night, in a new hotel in Calgary and pleasantly tipsy off of more red wine from dinner, Ilya suffered through several biting chirps from Sveta about the loss before he was able to get a word in edgewise.

“Hollander was in the room when I was on the phone with you last time,” he said. “He brought it up. He was wondering who was making me laugh so much.”

He was lying on his side, the phone balanced on his ear. Ilya felt so snuggly and warm with the duvet wrapped tight around his shoulders. Shane was just across the way, wearing his glasses and looking like everything soft and good in the entire world wrapped into one man’s body.

Sveta made a delighted sound. “I’m glad he recognizes my comedic genius. Is he there now?”

“Yes, he’s here,” Ilya said, blinking at him. “You know, he said if you visit this year, you can stay in the third bedroom.”

There was a long pause as Svetlana processed.

“Really?” she said.

“Yes, he’s very Canadian.”

“He probably was just being polite. He probably didn’t mean it. He’s too hot. I couldn’t stay there, I’d explode.”

Ilya laughed. Sveta had been nursing a crush on Shane Hollander for years. And unlike Ilya, she’d been allowed to put up posters in her room. As younger teenagers when they’d fooled around, it was always under the watchful brown eyes of the Metros’ captain among other various heartthrobs.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sveta was saying. “I won’t be able to apply for an exchange year until I’m a sophomore anyways.”

They talked for another twenty minutes or so, mostly about why the team was sucking so bad on this roadie, before ending the call. Ilya put his phone down and turned his attention to the TV, which was on mute.

“Florida will lose,” he announced after noting the score on the screen.

“Probably,” Shane said, turning the volume on now that Ilya was done with his call.

There was an image forming in Ilya’s head of getting up onto Shane’s bed and then pitching forward, flopping his body down on top of Shane’s. He wanted to put his nose into the fabric pooling at the neckline of Shane’s comfy-looking hoodie. He wanted Shane to put his hand in Ilya’s hair. Maybe he’d gotten drunker than he’d originally thought.

He was so pathetic. Ilya directed his eyes firmly towards the TV and determinedly watched Florida fumble their one point lead.

Chapter 5

Chapter Notes

—December 2023—

With one game down, the Raiders would play the Metros three more times that season. Ilya had wasted the first game by saying something stupid, no surprises there. The surprise had come afterwards. Hollander, texting of his own accord to explain his new rookie. It had to mean something…that he cared what Ilya thought, maybe. If Ilya called him as Svetlana suggested, some of that meaning might become clear. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, his thumb always hovering over the call button before swiping away. What would they even talk about? Ilya internally cringed just imagining it. The awkward pauses, the forced laughter. They weren’t anywhere close to the same wavelength after so many years, and Hollander was atrocious at small talk unless he was performing his public persona at a gala or an awards ceremony.

Still, Ilya wanted to talk to Shane about anything. Anything at all. Even if it was atrocious small talk or awkward fumblings or stilted questions and answers. Ilya wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist and clicked the treadmill speed up by 0.5. He had meant to train in interval sprints but instead, ruminating, he’d lulled himself into a long distance jog. Outside in the too-large backyard of his house, all of the trees were bare and the grass had gone brown. But it was still beautiful because it was snowing. Light flurries spiraling down from a sky as gray and soft-looking as kitten fur.

The next time he’d see Shane would be in January, when the Raiders would host the Metros for their second game. There were an interminable number of days between then and now, it seemed. Ilya had the wild urge to just get up and go. He had several fast cars. He could climb into one, start the ignition, and make it to the Canadian border in four hours. He imagined walking through the front door of Hollander’s condo again, pushing him down on his giant, soft sofa, putting his face against Hollander’s throat and biting. Ilya turned up the speed again to quell some of the urge.

It was a reckless impulse, one so abruptly all-consuming that it disturbed him. It was only a short time ago that Ilya had been convincing himself to shore up the vestiges of his grudge and pretend Hollander didn’t exist. But then they’d spoken during the game. Hollander had looked Ilya right in the eye. And then, Hollander had texted him. Maybe that was the impetus for all of this, now. The concrete truth that Shane was thinking about Ilya too. Impulses dulled by time and self-imposed machinations were firing again. The wanting had resurfaced and was tingling in his palms, behind his front teeth.

Ilya had lived just fine without Hollander for several years. He had not thought about him or wanted him. He had had many beautiful people in his bed and had been in the beds of many others.

“Fuck,” Ilya said and pressed the emergency stop.

The treadmill slowed and then shut off. Ilya braced his arms on the side bars and ducked his head, panting.

The truth was that he’d been lying to himself the whole time. Every time he slipped up, Ilya would ignore it. Every time he thought about Shane, he course corrected and then pretended like it never happened. He’d been sneaking around in his own mind for years, fighting with himself, trying to convince himself of his own lies. Well, they weren’t convincing. They never were. Ilya was just good at pretending, like a prey animal hiding an injury.

If he stopped pretending it was clear he’d been thinking about Hollander the whole time. Wanting him the whole time. How could anyone compare? Nothing compared. Shane Hollander was it. He’d always been it.

“Fuck,” Ilya said again.

With sweaty hands, he swiped open his phone and went to their text thread.

No.

That was the last thing Shane had sent. No, he didn’t think Ilya was bad. No. Ilya typed up a message and sent it.

Christmas soon. How long is ur break.

God. He was making small talk. Small talk, after cringing over the very idea of it minutes earlier. Ilya should just fling his phone into the Charles River to spare himself the indignity.

Ilya flopped down on his yoga mat to do some cool-down stretches. His phone buzzed. He did not lunge for it. He simply grabbed for it enthusiastically.

5 days.

Ilya huffed.

Ok, mine only 3. Ilya tacked on several frowning emojis and then sent it.

Sorry.

Ilya gritted his teeth. In Cyrillic he typed, SHANE I AM TRYING TO FUCK YOU AGAIN. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF I MIGHT BE ABLE TO FUCK YOU AGAIN AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE. He deleted it all.

What will baby do.

This would irritate Hollander enough to warrant an answer longer than 2 words. Sure enough, the typing bubbles popped up.

You’re kind of obsessed with Otto. What’s up with that? He’ll come home with me, obviously.

Otto, Ilya thought snidely.

He probably does not bring gifts. Only I do.

Probably not because he doesn’t have to. You didn’t have to do that either!

No, but I do. Best rookie.

There was a long pause. While Ilya waited, he went back upstairs to his kitchen and made a protein smoothie. The blender covered the noise of the text alert, but Ilya saw the screen light up out of the corner of his eye.

I still have your present, by the way. Shane had sent. I still wear them.

Ilya stared at the words, his ears ringing. Not many people knew that Shane had the ability to wield honesty with brute force, like a cudgel. And Ilya had always been an easy mark. Wide open, ready to take the hit. Wanting it.

—December 2019—

They flew into Ottawa on the twenty-fourth. The airport was a mess with last minute Christmas Eve arrivals and departures. They slogged through the chaos and then fielded a number of fan interactions while waiting for their bags.

David was loitering in the pick up lane, evading the traffic cops in his own sensible SUV; the owning of such vehicles was apparently genetic.

“Your mother is so excited to have you home,” David said when they were in the car. “And with a friend!”

“Uh, yeah,” Shane said from the passenger seat.

Ilya, in the backseat, wondered about that. Were they friends? It seemed like they were probably more than just coworkers. The roommate thing had certainly forced it further. But in the preseason and the early weeks of the regular season, Ilya had largely kept to his room, trying to stay out from underfoot. It was only recently that he’d started hanging around downstairs, watching TV or a movie with Shane on the giant sofa, lingering over dinner conversations, or tagging along when Shane went to do his off-day workouts.

“Thank you for letting me stay,” Ilya said, when they were in the entryway of the house, surrounded by David, Yuna, and a woman who could have been Yuna’s twin. Thanks to Shane’s short debrief on the plane, Ilya knew her to be Yuna’s older sister and Shane’s aunt Emiko.

“Of course,” Yuna said, dissipating the gratitude with a wave of her hand, as if it was woodsmoke. “We’re so glad you’re here!”

They proceeded to have a very Canadian conversation, still in the entryway, about the flight, how busy the airport was, the traffic on the drive back, and the weather forecast. Then Shane was permitted to show Ilya up to the guest room. It was a big house, four bedrooms on the upper level and something Shane called a mother-in-law suite above the two-car garage. That was where Emiko, who Shane called Emi, always stayed when she visited.

The house was tastefully decorated in creams and sandstone colors, accented with greens and blues. The stairway wall was lined with a fascinating collection of black and white framed photographs, mostly of Shane, but also older shots of people in vintage-looking attire that must be David and Yuna’s parents when they were young.

“Don’t look at those,” Shane said, noticing Ilya had paused to peer more closely at a shot of Shane sitting splay-legged in the middle of an ice rink, grinning a smile that was missing several baby teeth.

“Why,” Ilya said. “So cute. Baby.”

“Come on,” said Shane, ignoring the question. “Your room is up here.”

It was a guest room reminiscent of the one in Shane’s condo, but this room had been dressed up for the holiday. Ilya put his suitcase against the wall and patted the duvet, outfitted in a green plaid cover. The sheets were white, with little green Christmas trees. He was charmed. Shane had no holiday spirit, no matter what the occasion. For Halloween he had worn black jeans and a black t-shirt and claimed he was Batman. He had seemed surprised and incredulous when Ilya asked him if he was going to put up a Christmas tree in the condo.

“What’s the point?” he had said, entirely serious.

Ilya didn’t bother any further.

But it was clear he didn’t get his curmudgeonly ways from his mother. Back downstairs, there was a beautiful tree, a real one that scented the room with piney fragrance, decorated with warm white lights and sparkly ornaments. There were even stockings hanging from the fireplace mantle.

“Here,” Yuna said, noticing him noticing. “You had to have one too, of course.”

Ilya, touched, put his finger to the green sock. ‘ILYA’ it read in gold embroidery along the top band.

“Thank you,” he said.

Yuna pressed her hand briefly against his shoulder.

“Would you like something to drink? We’ll have dinner in a couple hours or so.”


 Ilya had not known what to expect from spending the short Christmas break at the Hollander’s. From previous meetings he understood that they weren’t as quiet as Shane was, but how would it be in their own home, rather than in a restaurant? Ilya was prepared for unspoken tensions, spikes behind pleasant words. Holidays usually brought out this sort of thing.

But the Hollanders seemed to be a genuinely comfortable and happy family, at least from what Ilya could tell. Yuna and her sister were content to talk each others’ ears off, reminiscing, discussing their jobs, gossiping about people from their past. And David always had plenty of Canadian-approved topics on hand for whenever his son went quiet. They had a cozy dinner and then moved to the living room where a Christmas movie was put on and a puzzle was laid out over the coffee table. It was the type of domesticity Ilya had only ever seen on television. Families who liked to hang out together only existed in fiction, surely. But here they were. 



Ilya slept well and woke up to Christmas morning. Downstairs, the stockings were stuffed and there was a small collection of gifts under the tree. The house smelled like coffee and woodsmoke; David had started both the coffee pot and a fire in the fireplace.

Ilya went back up to his room to retrieved the gifts he’d brought, added them under the tree, and then sat on the couch to blink blearily at the fireplace. It felt like, on the flight here, he had slipped sideways into a different reality and was now living in fantasyland. Was this how Shane had spent his entire childhood? No wonder he was so level-headed and emotionally regulated.

“Oh, hi, you’re awake.”

Ilya turned and his eyes almost fell out of his head. Shane had emerged from the basement where there was probably gym equipment, Ilya was inferring. He was shirtless and glistening.

“Merry Christmas,” Shane said, and smiled.

Ilya wrenched his gaze away, back to the fireplace. His face felt hot.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” Shane said. “I’ll shower and then we can open presents.”

Ilya was having an absurd reaction to a guy whom he saw shirtless pretty much everyday. But it was different here, with the pale winter light streaming in through the big living room windows, and Shane, so comfortable in the home where he grew up. Smiling. Maybe happy to see Ilya, or at least, content to have him there.

‘Friends,’ David had said in the car. And Shane had said, ‘yeah.’ Ilya found that the idea of being Shane Hollander’s friend made him want to squirm in pleasure, like a child who’d been given one of those giant swirly lollipops.

Within the next twenty minutes, the family slowly gathered in the living room, holding cups of coffee. Shane was a multi-millionaire, but it was clear by the gifts under the tree that there was some sort of agreement that everyone gave and received one gift from each person. When it was discovered Ilya had brought presents too, there was a whole to-do of exclamations and handshakes and hugs.

“You have not open yet! Maybe really bad!” Ilya said, embarrassed and pleased at the attention.

But the gifts were well-received. Ilya had conscripted Sasha for help in getting a Diptyque discovery set from the flagship store in Paris for Yuna, and Sveta for help in sourcing a variety box of Russian teas for Emiko. David got a bottle of very nice vodka. And Shane…

Well, Shane had been difficult, due to the whole multi-millionaire thing, and also that he didn’t talk much about material items. He was not a car guy. He was not a jewelry guy, and even if he had been, he had a brand deal with Rolex. He didn’t care about clothes and already had plenty of them. But then Ilya had noticed something. Shane was almost never barefoot. He always wore socks. Socks that, Ilya noticed now that he was spending more time downstairs and on the sofa, Shane often tugged and pulled at absently, as if uncomfortable but used to the irritant. He didn’t like the tight band at the top, Ilya realized.

So then, socks. Ilya did some research online and ordered a set of three, hand knit in soft, not scratchy, wool.

“Oh, thank you,” Shane said, when he opened them.

“Look,” Ilya said, pulling at the band. “Not tight. For wearing in house. Comfy.”

Shane looked up at him.

“I hate when socks are tight there,” he said.

“Yes,” Ilya said.

Shane turned his face back down towards the socks, but Ilya could still see the curl at the corner of his mouth. He was smiling. Ilya sat back, feeling smug.

From the sofa, Yuna was watching her son with soft eyes.

“That’s so thoughtful, Ilya,” she said, turning to him. “All of these are so thoughtful. Thank you.”

Ilya shrugged. “Just little things.”

“Shane, give Ilya your present!” Emiko said. “Ilya, I think you’ll like this. I helped.”

So Shane handed Ilya a box, around the size of a book. Beneath the candy cane striped wrapping paper was a familiar logo. Ilya whistled.

“YSL!” he said. “What’s this?”

It was a passport holder made of supple black leather. But it also prominently featured the branding, which to Ilya, was the whole point. It was clear why Shane, who didn’t understand the point of designer-branded items, had enlisted his aunt’s help.

Ilya loved it.

“Fancy!” he said, opening it to inspect all of the inner flaps and cardholders. “Thank you.”

“You know, we always need our passports, so…” Shane said.

“Yes. Now I’m so fashionable, I have best passport.”

Ilya looked up from his treasure to see a smile on Shane’s face, one so big his eyes were crinkled. 



Later, coming down from his room to deposit a mug in the sink, Ilya heard low voices murmuring and stopped automatically, out of sight in the hallway. He used to eavesdrop on his parents when they were both still alive, a habit that he and Alexei relied on to understand what sort of overall mood they’d be dealing with for the next several hours.

But this was different. Yuna and David were a happy couple. Ilya felt low and dirty, listening to them, and kept on doing it anyways.

“…happy,” David was saying.

“He’s been so…” Yuna said, her voice fading in and out so Ilya could only catch a few words here and there. “For years…and he’s said…but…this year…I’ve never seen…”

David’s reply was incomprehensible under the sudden rush of sink water and the clattering of dishes being loaded into the dishwasher.

“I know that…” came Yuna’s softer voice. “Emi has always…independent…and she is so…but Shane is different…at least…”

“I always thought it might be good for him, having a rookie stay,” David’s deeper voice was naturally a bit louder, and Ilya could hear his words better.

“I think Ilya is good for him,” Yuna said, her tone pointed on Ilya’s name.

Ilya jolted and, scared that they’d hear the floorboard creaking, fled back up to his room. Ilya, good for Shane? Ilya had never considered himself good for anyone or anything besides hockey and maybe, sometimes, sex. Privately, he’d always thought of himself as not very good at all. Something had gone off a little, in the underlining of his soul or his brain. It wasn’t something he examined closely. It was just a feeling he’d always had, something that had been seeded in childhood and cultivated from age twelve onwards.

But Yuna Hollander thought Ilya, in some way, shape, or form, was good for her son. Ilya pressed his fingers to his mouth and stared out the window in his guest room. That year it was not a white Christmas, but despite the barren brown lawns, the Ottawa suburb was still cheery with twinkle lights in trees and bushes. Some yards even had inflatable snowmen and Santas. It was around 4:30pm and twilight was falling in earnest, laying itself blue and languid across the houses. They would have dinner in a couple hours, and Ilya would eat and make small talk and answer Emi’s increasingly detailed questions about Moscow. All the while being good for Shane Hollander. Apparently.

He didn’t know what he was feeling at that final thought, but whatever it was scared him a little bit. It felt so good.

—January 2024—

Ilya woke up and took stock of his surroundings. He was not at home nor in his apartment. He rubbed his eyes until the gritty dryness turned into tears. He blinked them open and peered around the room again. Right. Hotel. Detroit. They’d won last night, 5-3. Then they’d went to a New Year’s Eve party at some club and…then…and then Ilya couldn’t remember. His skull felt like it was full of compost. Hot, decomposing, wormy.

Ilya fumbled a hand out and found purchase on the bedside table. His phone. The screen lit up and told him it was 11:32am. He groaned and sat up. They had another game tomorrow and a flight out to Columbus that afternoon. Ilya needed to get his bag packed and not miss the team charter to the airport. He’d already missed breakfast.



 On the way to the flight, he opened his phone to do some reconnaissance. First, FaceTime. Right around midnight he had a ten minute call with Sveta. At 12:09am he had a FaceTime call out to Sasha, which was rejected.

“Bitch,” he observed.

He looked at his photos. There were around twenty new ones, but most of them were blurry. Club lighting streaking across darkness, a sparkler in a champagne bottle, Marleau wearing 2024 glasses and, for some reason, a tiara. Ilya swiped out to his texts, expecting more of the same. He froze. The first one on the list was Shane Hollander. But that couldn’t be right. He had no memory of texting him recently. Ilya gnawed on his bottom lip and opened the thread. He had to scroll up several times to get to the last text he remembered, the one about Christmas presents. Then, on January 1 2024 at 12:17am, the incriminating evidence began.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Sorry I can’t read Russian.

Means hsappy new year Holly and her

Oh ok.

Say it back

Happy new year, Ilya

Good

How drunk are you right now?

So beer

Right. Good game earlier, though. Nice smooth little goal.

The timestamp jumped from 12:21am to 12:49am.

Who was. usr new yr kiss

Oh hello. I thought you might have passed out.

Kiss

I got a lot of them unfortunately

Whoo yours sell me

Huh?

Tell me

Well first there was J.J. and then Hayden and then Jackie and then all of the Pike kids. Hayden let them stay up for the ball drop. And then there were some other WAGs who were pretty drunk and then the guys called me a home wrecker and fined me fifty dollars each.

Family dosnenent count. Which wags

There was a five minute pause in the time stamps.

It’s cute you think J.J. and Hayden are my family.

Wagging

Will you remember this conversation in the morning? And I don’t really know. The younger guys have new girlfriends all the time. I can’t keep up when they keep changing them out.

GIrlks are not spare tires !

No, you’re right. I should make more of an effort to remember them.

You odnt have girl fried

No Ilya, I think you know very well that I don’t have a girlfriend.

Boy fried

No.

Id kiss you for newn year elves

Hmm. I’ll pass. You’d probably throw up on my face.

No rusinsasns ndont do this

Okay. Why don’t you go lie down?

I’m in Detroit

Okay Ilya. Have fun.

Miss you . I’m you wish your hear Detroit

I’ll see you later this month.

Too far

Ilya, you are not going to be happy when you read these later.

Fveyr y happy you text me

We’ll see.

And then Ilya had sent about fifteen red hearts, after which the exchange ended.

“Mary, mother of God,” Ilya said under his breath.

“What was that?” said Marleau in English.

“Uh, nothing,” Ilya told him.

Nothing but the last vestiges of his dignity being absolutely annihilated over text.

On the team plane, Ilya put his hood up and leaned against the window. What he’d just seen on his phone warranted at least one plane flight of stewing in self-pity. 


They played strong in Columbus, winning 4-1. But when they returned back home to host Pittsburgh, the Raiders got their asses handed to them, only managing one goal while Pittsburgh sent in six. After an eight-day road trip punctuated with several more losses, the Raiders finally landed back in Boston to host New Jersey, Colorado, and lastly, the Metros.

It was through sheer grit and force of will that the Raiders eked out two wins before the Metros skated onto TD Stadium ice. Ilya was absolutely not going to face Hollander coming off of a losing streak. He’d played grimly, doggedly, and the rest of the team followed suit. So then, they had two fresh wins under their belt by the time Ilya was bending over at the face-off and Hollander was flashing his serious, ‘it’s game time’ expression at him from under his visor.

And Ilya…Ilya smiled.

There was no thought behind it, just pure instinct. Despite the fact that he’d made a complete fool of himself on New Year’s Eve, Ilya was so glad to see Shane that the gladness took control of his musculature and moved his mouth. He was such a sucker.

Hollander blinked. He was too much of a pro with too many games under his belt to be thrown off by anything. But Ilya won the puck and the Raiders won 4-3 in overtime.

You’re in a good mood.

The text came in while Ilya was still in the locker room, getting dressed post-shower. It would be certifiably insane to invite Hollander over to his house, but that was what his hindbrain wanted desperately. But he’d already embarrassed himself enough on New Year’s; he could be normal in a text thread even if he had to fight tooth and nail for it.

You like my goals? 1…2

You got lucky on the second one.

Ilya scoffed.

No

You’ll see during tape review.

Go back to hotel and sleep old man

Fuck off

Hmm, Ilya texted, and then sent the winking emoji.

Hollander didn’t respond.

—January 2020—

If Ilya had been a kinder person, a more grateful person, he would have kept how well he’d been treated during that Christmas break in the forefront of his mind. He would have remembered that he was supposed to be being good for Hollander. These things together would have helped him avoid what he went on to do in January. But it was just as he’d originally thought: he wasn’t a good person. And while he was grateful, it wasn’t enough to quell anything.

First, there was New Year’s Eve. They played North Carolina at 6pm and lost 3-1. It had been Ilya’s goal on the board, and it was finally his holiday, a Russian holiday. Though they would be going out in Raleigh and there would be no seasonally appropriate weather, Ilya wanted to make the most of it. He wanted to have vodka and champagne, to toast to the new year, and to dance with as many women as possible. But after the countdown struck midnight and the confetti had all settled to the ground, Shane grabbed Ilya’s wrist and jerked his head towards the door.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back. I’m exhausted.”

Ilya tugged, trying to free himself.

“No,” he said. “I want to stay, dance.”

“Ilya, come on.”

Stubbornness and ire welled up in Ilya’s bloodstream, burning hot. He glared.

“No,” he said. “You force me?”

Shane flashed hurt eyes at him.

“No,” he said. “But I’m going.”

“I don’t care,” Ilya said, and turned away.

He shouldn’t care. He didn’t. But his night had been effectively ruined. He kept thinking about the glint of Shane’s eyes, his warm, firm grasp around Ilya’s wrist.

Ilya got too drunk and spent the flight back to Montreal the next day trying not to puke. Shane sat next to him in the window seat, stoic and yet radiating disapproval.

Then back home, it was more of the same. It seemed like since the spat on New Year’s Eve, Shane was digging in his heels about going out. There were no more compromises. Shane went home, and Ilya was only allowed to go out if the older vets were going too. Resentment began to churn in his gut, building up, inescapable. 



In mid-January, Ilya snapped. It was 2020. He was nineteen, out from under his father’s thumb. His English was getting better and better. He wanted to meet people. He wanted to get drunk and dance, listen to music, and… Really, he wanted to fuck. But for the past several months he had been trapped in Hollander’s condo. Hollander, who seemed as sexless as a Ken doll, even if Ilya had checked him out in the locker room plenty of times and knew better. Hollander, who had an iron fist around his sleep schedule. No cheat days, no fun Hollander.

Here was where he should remember how kind Shane had been to him over Christmas break, how decent a person he was, how much Ilya looked up to him, how much Ilya liked being on a team with him, how much peace he felt living in his home. How Yuna Hollander had said in such a pointed tone, low-voiced and pulsing with some kind of meaning Ilya couldn’t glean: ‘Ilya is good for him.’

Ilya gritted his teeth and tried to hold it back. He was grateful. He was grateful. It should be enough, but it wasn’t.

Ilya marched downstairs, fists clenched.

“If you don’t fuck me, I go out. Find someone,” Ilya announced, challenging.

“Oh,” Shane said.

He was sitting on the sofa with his legs propped up, reading. Wearing those infernal glasses. Everything about him looked soft and caught off-guard. Ilya rankled against it, against how it made him want to soften in return.

“You trap me in here,” Ilya accused. “I want to party. I want to meet people. Girls. I want to have fun. It is January and I have not fucked someone since August.” He paused and then, for emphasis, “Last year August.”

Hollander’s mouth pulled flat. Ilya’s pulse was pounding, preparing for a fight. He was expecting to get yelled at. This had to be where Shane drew the line. Placid Hollander would disappear and Ilya would get smacked around. He was still a kept rookie, after all.

Shane put his book down. He looked at Ilya solemnly with his big, brown eyes and his stupid, sexy glasses.

“Sorry, I didn’t meant to…” He winced a little. “‘Trap’ you.”

Ilya stared at him. Even though he was trying to hold onto it, some of the self-righteous ire drained away.

“You know I don’t like it. Going out. But I…” Shane said. “I mean. Yeah. We can find you places to pick up.”

Ilya blinked. ‘We,’ he’d said.

“Sorry,” Shane said again. “I don’t want to, like, cramp your style. But the team put you under my supervision. You’re a big investment. So I’ll have to go with.”

“Babysitter,” Ilya accused.

“But if you meet someone, I’ll, I’ll let you…I mean. You can leave with them. That’s, that’s okay. I won’t stop you. I’d prefer it if you didn’t bring them back here.”

“You not sit in cuck chair, coach me?” Ilya said, pressing, unable to resist needling him.

Placid Hollander. As smooth as a lake. But Ilya’s words had caused ripples.

“Gross,” Shane exclaimed. “A ‘cuck chair!’ Ilya, where did you learn that?”

What did Shane think teenaged boys did with internet access?

“Porn,” Ilya said.

“Great. Well, I have no interest in watching you fuck strangers,” Shane said, prim. “But I have to go with you, when you go out. To make sure you don’t cause a media scandal.”


Even though he had technically got what he wanted, it still felt like defeat when Ilya retreated to his room. It was not an ideal situation, having to drag Hollander around while he tried to pick up women at bars. It was straight up annoying, actually, but that was how it was when you were kept.

It was the bare minimum, really. Shane could have Ilya do any number of things, as long as it didn’t interfere with the team, with the games. But he didn’t.

Ilya flopped down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. His heart had stopped pounding and the adrenaline was draining, leaving him feeling a bit numb and very heavy. He imagined what it might be like, the two of them going out for the sole purpose of finding Ilya someone to fuck. Abruptly, Ilya could picture it all. Hollander, watching him at a bar or a club, sitting in a booth or at a table as Ilya made the rounds. Watching him talk to people. His dark eyes, his serious brow. Maybe he’d nod, even, when Ilya was with someone he approved of. Maybe he’d even tell him, ‘that one,’ and push Ilya out towards them, his hand on the small of Ilya’s back.

Ilya had received the permission he’d wanted, the go-ahead that he was allowed to hook up with other people. Now he just had to work up the courage to orchestrate it. In the meantime, he had to revise even more of his preconceived notions about Shane. It was truly the case that he didn’t fuck rookies ever, and didn’t even like keeping them in the first place, as Pike said that one night months ago. Even though Ilya had had plenty of evidence to support it, a part of him had been doubting it the whole time. But now the doubt was gone.

But if all those things were true, then why the hell was Ilya living in Hollander’s house?

“Why you keep me?” Ilya asked, on the way to practice one day.

The midwinter streets were frozen, dusted white with old road salt. They were spoiled because Hollander’s building had a heated garage. But when they’d get into the car after practice, their breathing would cloud in the sharp air and Ilya’s lips and nose would sting from the cold.

“Misha say…” Ilya continued, but paused to think about verb tenses, and the construction of the sentence. Earlier that month his tutor had accused him of being lazy, that he knew people could infer what he meant from just a few words, so he didn’t bother with anything further. But that wasn’t the point of learning a new language, she’d said. “Misha said you did not keep rookies. For years, no rookies. Now me. Why?”

Shane gave him a shifty glance out of the corners of his eyes. Ilya stared at his profile, the elegant line of his nose. He was lucky it hadn’t been broken playing hockey for so many years. There was one game years ago when he’d gotten several teeth knocked out. Ilya remembered the bright spill of blood down Shane’s chin, the color shockingly red even through the screen. He couldn’t tell which teeth were fake now, the replacements were too good.

“Uh, optics,” Shane said.

Ilya huffed. Of course. A word he didn’t know.

“What means—” Ilya said. “What does ‘optics’ mean?”

“Like, appearances. Or how something looks to everyone else. Management said it wasn’t a good look, having the captain avoid taking in a rookie. I’d only ever hosted Henrikson. And in the years after, I didn’t volunteer. So, it was about time.”

“They force you,” Ilya said.

But Shane shook his head. “No, they can’t really force me to do anything at this point. Because…you know…”

He gave a self-deprecating laugh.

“Right,” Ilya said. “Shane Hollander’s Metros.”

“But like, I said I’d take you. I…I watched your tapes. Liked what I saw. I thought, if we got you in the draft, I’d take you.”

The part of Ilya that was constantly craving Shane Hollander’s attention perked up. He had watched tape of Ilya. He had thought Ilya was good, even before the draft. He wanted Ilya on the team, had even been open to having him in his home. Ilya put his hand on Shane’s shoulder and jostled him.

“Hey!” Shane squawked. “I’m driving!”

“I’m best rookie,” Ilya said.

“You’re the rookie with the biggest head,” Shane grumbled.

But he didn’t shake Ilya off, and so Ilya was able to give Shane’s shoulder another squeeze before he got a hold of himself and forcibly peeled his hand away.

It would all be so easy if Shane would just fuck him like he was supposed to. Ilya had several of these glum thoughts while watching Shane warming up his hands, stick handling. He was so handsome. His body was so solidly built, so strong with muscle and tendon and bone. His skin was so smooth. What on earth was he doing with a body like that, a face like that, and not putting any of it to good use? Hockey, sure. But besides that!

Ilya generally didn’t like to bottom, but he’d bend over more than willingly if it were Shane’s hands pushing him. One on the back of his neck, maybe. Firm. Talking in his self-assured captain voice, ‘stay down, Ilya, be good for me.’ Down over the kitchen counter… Ilya shook himself. He absolutely could not pop a semi during practice, for godsakes.

But maybe it wasn’t like that at all, Ilya thought in the car back home. This was an even more dangerous line of thought, only because it so perfectly fit with Ilya’s own desires, how Ilya liked it best. But it could be the case that maybe Shane didn’t want to top at all. Maybe he wanted to be the one bending over the counter, panting open mouthed against the smooth granite. Ilya went a little dizzy and shifted in his seat. He needed to not think about this. Not in front of anyone. He needed to scratch this itch, needed to fuck someone. He needed to get his dick wet.

Maybe he was a slut, or maybe he was nineteen. Or maybe he was both. Whatever. The needing pressed and pressed until finally he turned to Shane that night at the kitchen counter and said,

“Will you take me out tonight?”

Shane chewed his bite of roasted Brussels sprouts and swallowed. He took a deep breath and then let it out.

“Okay,” he said.

His tone and his face were both so bland, Ilya thought he must be imagining the glisten in his eyes. 


Then, later, at the bar. It was a college crowd, close to McGill. Ilya fit right in and Shane, beguiling despite his boring going out uniform of black shirt and dark jeans, stuck out like an iris in a sea of dandelions. Or something. He was eye-catching, was the thing. But Ilya was supposed to be looking elsewhere, it was the whole point of this excursion. Ilya abandoned Shane at the bar in exchange for the dance floor, where he determinedly put his captain-cum-babysitter out of his mind. He danced with several people before a woman with voluminous, chin-length hair and huge clusters of freckles on her bare shoulders put her arms around his neck. She was hot, she was willing, she said she would take him back to her place. It was enough for Ilya.

“I will say goodbye to my friend,” Ilya said, loudly and slowly into her ear, so his accent wouldn’t jumble things.

She nodded and told him she’d wait outside.

Ilya found Shane in the same place at the bar, holding court with a gaggle of coeds, two girls and three boys. They probably all wanted to fuck him, Ilya thought bitterly. Join the club. He snaked his way behind one of the guys and put his mouth too close to Shane’s ear.

“I’m going,” he said.

Shane turned. They were so close for a moment, Ilya could feel Shane’s breath on his cheek. Then, Shane moved his head back.

“Okay,” he said. “Text me.”

“You want play-by-play?”

Shane’s brow pulled.

“No,” he said, irritated. “I want to know you’re safe. And when you’re on the way back. Don’t sleep over.”

“Colette will not murder me,” Ilya said, rankling against the admittedly logical ground rules.

“Ilya,” Shane said in his ‘don’t fuck with me’ voice.

Ilya ruthlessly smothered the tingle in his gut.

“Yes, captain,” he said. “Can I go?”

Shane nodded, and Ilya went. He ignored both the prickle on his nape and the urge to look back. 



Ilya returned to the condo before 1am, a completely respectable hour. He’d texted as instructed, and even sent another one as he was climbing the stairs to his room: home.

He’d thought that would be the end of it, but at the top of the stairs, Shane’s door opened and Shane poked his head out.

They blinked at each other. Shane looked like maybe he was sleep walking, except he was way too anal-retentive to do something that vulnerable. So he was awake then, but barely.

“Okay,” Shane said nonsensically. Then, “goodnight.”

Ilya stared. Didn’t even have a chance to respond before Shane had closed the door again.

With the first time done, it got easier, almost like another one of their routines. Dinner was a no-phone time of day. They alternated circuits in the small home gym Shane had put into what was supposed to be an office or den. They drove to the rink together. They coordinated their pre-game naps. They went out so Ilya could hook up.

Not that it was all that frequent. They had a schedule to keep and their jobs to do. Sometimes Shane was too busy with his own business meetings and brand deals. Sometimes he would look at Ilya with pleading eyes and say, ‘sorry bud,’ all Canadian and pathetic. ‘I’m beat. Next time, okay?’

But it was still better than before, feeling like Ilya couldn’t do anything, wondering if he’d get in trouble if he slipped up one night and made out with someone and Shane found out. Now he knew he wouldn’t be in trouble and some of the chafing, some of the pressure, had abated. Surely it would also help ease some of the feelings Ilya had when it came to Shane, feelings that had only solidified as the weeks and months passed. He’d probably always want him, but Ilya could shift that wanting elsewhere now that he knew he was allowed. Eventually, he told himself, he’d be out from under the weight of his crush.

Chapter End Notes

currently reading: luminous by silvia park (i like it!)

Chapter 6

Chapter Notes

—March 2024—

They played New York on March 2nd. Ilya always liked playing in the city, despite how much of a clusterfuck it was getting the team to and from the airport. Even professional hockey teams were not above New York City traffic.

Carter Vaughn had been the Admirals’ captain ever since Scott Hunter had retired. He was a good guy and for some reason seemed to like Ilya. It had become habit for them to grab lunch or dinner whenever they were in each other’s cities.

Ilya was late when the hostess showed him back to the table. It was pretty big, an eight top. Ilya saw several Admirals on the side facing his way, including Vaughn who spotted him and waved. The guys facing away Ilya couldn’t recognize of course, though there was one dark head on the far left that caught his eye and his brain pinged ominously…But then Vaughn was standing and pulling him into a hug and slapping his back and the other guys were greeting him and Ilya was brought down the line of the table to the empty seat, the one opposite the guy on the far left and it was—

“Hollander,” Ilya said and took the hand that was offered to him automatically.

They shook. Ilya sat down and had the strange sense that the world had narrowed, all of his senses zeroing in.

“We put you down by your old captain,” Vaughn crowed, pleased with himself. “You can get some tips for when you get the C.”

“Hi, Rozanov. How are you?” Shane said.

“Good, cap. You?” Ilya said, because he knew the guys would get a kick out of it, which they did.

While they were laughing, Ilya’s brain scrambled to come up with a reason why Shane was sitting in front of him at a restaurant in Manhattan. The Metros had played the Admirals four days ago. Hollander should be gone by now. There was no world where Ilya could have expected this.

“Good,” Shane said. “I, uh, had some campaign stuff in the city so I stayed back. Flight tomorrow morning.”

Great. So Ilya would probably have to brace himself for a new round of Rolex billboards in the near future. Hollander in a well-tailored suit, flashing his enticing eyes and expensive wristwear at passersby.

“Okay,” Ilya said. “Mr. Businessman.”

Said enticing eyes were now peering at him from over a menu. Ilya ignored them and focused on deciding what to eat. His ears felt warm.

The food was good and conversation was surface-level and amiable. The guys who Vaughn hung out with were always decent people. It made sense that Hollander was part of his cohort. Ilya fought the urge to drown his shock and confusion in several martinis, sticking instead to sharing the couple bottles of wine that had been ordered for the table. The guys talked about their teams, the season so far, their families and pets. Ilya accepted some razzing for being young and single, and wondered why they didn’t poke at Hollander for being old and single. But Hollander had pretty much always been that way, except for the stint with the movie star. They were used to it.

Of course there was also talk of the Cup. The Admirals had won it during Ilya’s rookie season, their first since Hunter’s retirement. The guys started to reminisce pretty heavily, the conversation turning inward at that end of the table. Ilya knew Shane was staring at him and was trying to ignore it in favor of eating the last of his green beans.

It was no use.

“Your Cup game,” Shane said, lowly under the rest of the conversation. “I wish you would have answered when I called…I wanted to talk to you. Congratulate you.”

“I was very busy,” Ilya said lamely.

“You cried.”

“Yes.” Ilya had bawled his eyes out. There were plenty of clips and gifs of it online.

“I wanted…I wanted to hear how happy you were.”

Ilya fought against a wave of something hot, cresting up from his stomach into his throat. Some sort of old hurt, leftover from that first year fallout. It could have been them together winning the Cup. Shane could have seen it for himself, on ice, how happy Ilya had been. But.

“I was happy. Shane, the Metros trade me. What did you expect?”

“So, what? You blame me?”

“No,” Ilya said shortly.

That was a lie. True, Shane wasn’t the GM or an executive. He wasn’t orchestrating trades. But he was the hero of the franchise. And he had been Ilya’s entire world for his rookie season. For Ilya, as blindsided and betrayed as he felt, there was no one else to blame besides Shane. It was easy; everything had orbited around him anyways. The trade was no different. Ilya had felt as callously and cruelly discarded as a bag of kittens thrown into a river.

“You didn’t have a no-trades clause, bud,” said Woody, who’d apparently been eavesdropping, clapping Ilya on the shoulder. “Anyway, it worked out, eh? The Cup first and now the C next season.”

Ilya grumbled and shrugged under Woody’s hand. Curse Carter Vaughn and his coterie of affable, handsome men. There had been no room for the logic or level-headedness that Woody was spouting when Ilya had received word of the trade. Ilya had gone into survival mode. Part of that had been burning bridges. Shoring up defenses. And shoving everything to do with Hollander to the far recesses of his mind. It was easier to be angry instead of sad.

Ilya cut his eyes to Shane now, who was frowning down at his empty plate. His shoulders were curved slightly inwards. Ilya felt a twinge in his chest. He had been very young and very hurt at the beginning. But then he got a little bit older. And older still. Looking back on all of it, Ilya knew he hadn’t treated Shane fairly at all.

—February 2020—

February was the shortest month, but that season if felt longer than any of the months that had come before it. For the first half of the month they stayed in Montreal, hosting Dallas, St. Louis, Anaheim, and Washington. Coach was pushing them hard in practice; he had his sights set on the team coming out on top of their division for the playoffs. Ilya had markedly more ice time than he’d had at the start of the season, but he knew he wasn’t clicking with the overall coaching style. And Theriault as a person just irritated him, frankly. Some personalities were like oil and water.

Ilya knew better than to let it show. He was a rookie. He needed to put his head down. Hockey was a team sport. Ilya knew all of those sayings. And he had been doing all of that. Still, sometimes he got so aggravated he knew the guys could pick up on it. To say nothing of Hollander, who seemed to have a specific antenna attuned to Ilya’s various moods.

“Ilya you’re the best rookie in the league. No doubt. But this is a team sport, eh? Coach is coach for a reason.”

Ilya groaned and rolled his eyes.

They were in the car on the way back from practice. Ilya had been complaining. It was frustrating not to be used to his full potential, and he could trust Shane to hear him out without judging him, or God-forbid, bringing it back to the front office.

“They draft me for new blood, for refresh,” Ilya said, poking at the seat warmer. “How I’m supposed to refresh when they don’t use me?”

“I know, bud. You’re doing the best with what you’ve been given.”

It was a tired conversation, one they’d been having since the new year. They went in circles again and again. The way the lines were structured, Ilya’s potential was curtailed. He felt like the Metros’ legacy and its coaching staff were smothering him, keeping him and, by extension, the team down.

The most frustrating thing about it was that Ilya knew that Shane was on his side, and knew that he was right. But Shane, despite the weight he held in the locker room, only had so much say when it came to the coaches. They’d hear him out, but whether they’d implement his ideas was a different thing entirely.

“If we make it to playoffs and they have us like this, we lose.”

Just like every year before, Ilya managed to not say. He wanted to be nasty, but he was talking to Shane, who carried the team and the entire fan base’s expectations on his shoulders at all times. It wouldn’t be fair.

“I’m pissed,” Ilya concluded. A very satisfying English phrase.

He was grouching mostly just to grouch at that point. The warm car and Shane’s steady presence at the wheel had lulled Ilya back into a less irate state of mind.

Shane laughed. “That’s fair.”

Some time passed quietly. They hit traffic. The radio station, which Shane preferred over hooking up either of their phones to CarPlay, was babbling in French about the weather.

“You know when I was young, my first couple of seasons, I’d get super pissed. Like really, really pissed. I think I was pissed off all the time.”

Ilya rolled his head on the seat back to look at Shane, intrigued. Shane wasn’t the type to reminisce about himself. His favorite things to recount were hockey games, often ones in which he hadn’t even played.

“Why? You were star rookie.”

“Yeah exactly,” Shane said, and then sighed. “I don’t know. It was hard. I wanted to win. I was really young and I wouldn’t say naive but. Clueless. Maybe. And there was the whole thing my rookie year that I wasn’t kept. The guys got the idea that I thought I was better than them. Then it turned out I was, at least, on ice. So, I don’t know.”

Ilya hummed and crossed his arms. Fuck those guys. They probably all just wanted to have a go at teenaged Shane. Creeps.

“If I’m captain I protect you.”

“Oh yeah,” Shane said in his chirping voice, like he thought it was funny.

But Ilya was dead serious.

“Yes. I say, ‘leave rookie alone, or else, fine. Five hundred dollars.’”

“Tough guy, eh.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, slouching back in his seat.

He was overcome with several very delicious visions of teenaged Shane under Ilya’s older and bigger and stronger wing. That version of Ilya would be cool and self-contained. Exactly the opposite from as he was now, embarrassing himself in front of Shane left and right.

“If you were the captain back then instead of Leblanc, my mom would probably have let you keep me,” Shane said thoughtfully, mostly to himself. “She likes you a lot.”

Ilya twitched and tried to play it off, shifting his legs. Good God. Keeping Shane Hollander. Ilya’s train of thought would have eventually led him there to be sure. But Shane had just come right out with it, like a sucker punch. Instead of Ilya getting the ‘good boy’ and ‘so well trained’ chirps, it would be Shane. Shane on Ilya’s tight leash. He certainly would not be letting Shane hook up with random strangers at bars if Ilya kept him. In that universe, would Shane have gone down to his knees like Ilya had, immediately on the first night? Ilya, biting his thumbnail now, could imagine exactly what his face would look like. His eyes. A rush of goosebumps followed by a prickle of sweat swept up Ilya’s torso and arms.

It wouldn’t be creepy, it if was Ilya. Ilya was different from all of those guys on Shane’s rookie year team roster. There was no comparison. Ilya knew Shane and cared about him. He wanted Shane to be happy. He liked him. Liked everything about him, even the annoying things and probably even the things he’d yet to learn. It would have been the same in that alternate, reversed reality too.

“English worst language,” Ilya muttered.

It was mid-month and they were back in the hotel after soundly beating the Admirals at the Garden, 6-2. A one-stop away trip to New York before flying back to Montreal. Ilya had perhaps drank too much at the celebratory team dinner. So what? He needed to blow off some steam. What with Coach on his back and Shane’s eyes on him more often than not, Ilya felt like he was being pressure cooked. Admittedly for different reasons coming from Coach vs. Shane, but still.

Stumbling a little, he stepped on the heels of his shoes and kicked them in the direction of his suitcase. Then he vaulted himself onto his bed and rubbed his hot face into the smooth, white bedding. Lying down was so wonderful.

“Sorry, I can’t explain things well,” Shane was saying.

Ilya had already forgot what he had said to illicit the response, but it came back quickly enough. English. Stupid English.

“I wasn’t, like, into school,” Shane continued, rambling a little in the way he only did in very small groups or one-on-one. “I only got good grades because my mom said she’d pull me out of hockey if I got anything below a B. But that was before I started in the junior league and billeting in Ontario.”

Ilya imagined a young Shane working through his math homework or conjugating French verbs, but all the while thinking about hockey. He was so single-minded. He wondered if Shane had ever bucked against his parents’ strict rules as a child, or if he’d just put his head down and did the work. Probably the latter.

“Were you good in school?” Shane asked suddenly.

Ilya, still on his stomach, turned his head towards the other bed, the one closest to the bathroom. Shane was already wearing his pajamas, a t-shirt and striped cotton pants. He was sitting on the edge of his bed closest to Ilya’s, just looking at him.

“No, bad.” Ilya said. He paused and then amended, “Terrible.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mm.”

“Why? I bet you were popular. Were you playing hooky with girls? Smoking beneath the bleachers?”

Ilya could tell by Shane’s sweet little smirk that he was chirping, though he didn’t know what ‘hooky’ was. It was flattering that he thought Ilya was popular, but that had not been the reality.

“Do you know about my mother?” Ilya asked.

The question had flowed out of his mouth easily, aided by the liquor sitting warmly in his belly. He had not ever brought up his mother before, not once. Shane’s smirk dropped and his brow pulled.

“Oh. Uh. Yeah,” he said. “Or, well, your agent mentioned she had passed several years ago. But that’s all he said.”

“I was twelve,” Ilya said. “Before, I did not care about school, but I go. After, I did not care about school and I did not go.”

The only thing he’d studied with any sort of effort was English, and that was only because it was necessary.

Shane, sitting on the edge of his bed with his chin tilted down, looked at Ilya like Ilya was the only person on Earth. Like he could listen to him fumble through discussing his mother’s death in awkward, half-slurred English for the rest of their lives and it would not be a burden. This quality of Shane’s was one among many behind why he’d been captain for so long. Most hockey players did not have that sort of patience.

“That makes sense, of course,” Shane said.

Ilya was already regretting bringing up his mother. Upon moving away, Ilya had been determined never to do so. She would stay separate from hockey, from Canada. But something had dissipated that resolve, the liquor, or maybe Hollander himself. How well he listened, how Ilya had slowly but surely developed an instinctual safe-feeling when he was around. Ilya swallowed around a lump in his throat. He should change the subject. But Hollander’s melting eyes in the bedside lamplight had hooked him, snagged him, like a tractor beam of empathy. And Ilya found himself saying,

“I found her.”

There was a long pause. Ilya blinked. Nausea had started to unfurl in his belly. His eyes were stinging. Maybe he could unhinge his jaw and eat the words, take them back into his body so they’d never have been put out in the open in the first place. You were not going to talk about this, he told himself. Why are you talking about this?

“You—” Shane cut himself off and several expressions flitted across his face, one after the other like minnows in clear water. Confusion, surprise, understanding, grief. “Ilya.”

Sympathy. Ilya couldn’t handle it. Grief welled up from the bottom of Ilya’s stomach up into his throat, strangling him. He swallowed viciously against it all until he could speak. Then, he focused on the grammar so as not to focus on anything else.

“So, no. I was not popular at school, Hollander.”

He tried to smile and probably failed. Shane watched the expression and then stood up. Though he could read Shane’s movements, it was still surprising to find Shane sitting down on Ilya’s bed. Even more so to find Shane’s hand on the side of Ilya’s head, his thumb rubbing against Ilya’s hairline at his temple. Shane was so solid, so kind. The nausea in his stomach turned into a pit that started welling with a huge glut of emotion. He wriggled forward on his front until he could put his forehead to where Shanes’s thigh was angled on the mattress. His pants smelled like the laundry detergent that the cleaning service used, a scent that reminded Ilya of the condo, of home. Ilya took a few deep breaths and squeezed his eyes shut against the stinging.

“I’m so sorry,” Shane said.

They were simple words, ones that many people had said to him over the years. But they felt particularly meaningful when the two of them were like this, when he could feel Shane’s good, human heat on the side of his face and against his forehead.

“Okay,” Ilya said. “Thank you.”

Eventually, Shane pulled away and disappeared into the bathroom to brush his teeth. Ilya sat up and went to change out of his dinner clothes just to have something to do. He felt shaken and awkward and also, somehow, relieved.

He could not have predicted what that short, alcohol-fueled conversation would do to his subconscious. It was like an internal smoke bomb had gone off, scenting and veiling everything with Shane, Shane, Shane. Though he didn’t remember most of his dreams, the ones he did recall were now always of Hollander. Skating, doing mundane things like washing dishes, or doing strange dream-logic things like fostering several lop-ear rabbits. During his waking hours, Ilya found himself hanging around Hollander as much as possible. Gone were the days of holing up in his room. Ilya spent what little free time they had wherever Shane was, whenever possible.

His feelings for him had always been strong, right from the beginning. But they had been manageable. Now, Ilya could feel himself start to slip up. He was flirting too much, poking at Shane with his words and with his staring. He was testing limits, trying to push boundaries. He wanted to see how far Shane would let him go. With Ilya, Shane had always been pretty forgiving. He let Ilya grab at him during practice, launch into his arms during cellies, and put an arm around his shoulders when they went out with the team. Ilya liked that Shane let him do these things. Of course, he wanted more.

For his part, Hollander was still placid, obliging. These were foreign concepts to Ilya, who felt like there was always some sort of emotion roiling inside his brain or beneath his sternum. He wanted to be moving and seeing and doing and touching. But Shane seemed to have none of those compulsions. Ilya wanted to climb into the bowl of his skull and overturn all the rocks in his brain to see the bugs underneath. Surely there were at least a few. And what sort of bugs would they be? Would they be like Ilya’s? What were Shane’s worst and most unsightly wants, his darkest desires? Did he have any, even?

The only sign was that, with more and more frequency, Ilya caught him watching. Shane’s big, dark eyes, the pull of his straight, dark brows. What was he thinking during those times? And on the nights when he took Ilya to the bars to pick up, what was he thinking then, watching Ilya, watching him leave?

It would have been prudent for Ilya to let Shane be. But he didn’t. Instead he kept flirting, teasing, and walking around the condo shirtless at every possible opportunity. Look, he wanted to say. I’d like to give this to you. I could be all yours.

It was getting dire. Ilya was well on his way to convincing himself to try again, to do what he’d done on his first night in Canada. To go down to his knees for Hollander and offer himself up for whatever Hollander wanted.

Instead, Ilya asked Shane to take him out again. His fail-safe.

At the bar, Ilya felt everything. The shadows, the bass, the song lyrics. The colored lights. The couple shots of tequila fizzing in his veins, making his blood shiver. The woman he was dancing with was blonde, hot, curvy. When he put his mouth to her neck he tasted salt and skin and his nose filled with the ambery scent of expensive perfume. He pressed his hips to her ass, got his hands on her waist, felt low-grade arousal start to simmer. And then his eyes, scanning the room from over her shoulder, snagged. Hollander. He was leaning against the bar. Not even drinking. Not even pretending, not even holding something as a prop. He had his arms crossed and was just watching. Staring.

Something deep in the muck of Ilya’s brain zinged to life and reverberated through his whole body. Like tapping into a new radio frequency, the static turning into clear music. Ilya slowly pressed his mouth to the woman’s neck again, but kept his eyes locked with Shane’s. Shane’s brows were dark slashes across his forehead, pulled. His eyes were like black fucking holes with their own gravitational pull. Ilya wanted to push the woman aside and stalk over there, press his body to Shane’s instead. He’d go down on his knees right there, in public.

Ilya tore his eyes away, burying his face into the relative safety of the woman’s neck.

Ilya was teetering on the precipice of insanity, panting after his captain. He did not want to go on the upcoming, end-of-month roadie, did not want to be subjected to sleeping in the same room as Shane. A room that would remind him of how it had felt to press his forehead to Shane’s thigh. Why had he done that? Why was he always so needy, always pushing and pushing, seeking more?

But he couldn’t healthy scratch himself because he was afraid of his own impulses. So here they were, in Edmonton. As he always did when they got to a new hotel room, Ilya went straight to the window to peer out at the view. He could feel Shane at his back, and, with effort, ignored him.

Ilya thought that he probably wasn’t imagining it, how things had shifted since the last time they had gone out. Though Hollander didn’t seem to be acting any different; it was more intangible than that. Something in the set of his shoulders and in the way Ilya felt eyes on the back of his neck, but when he turned to look, Shane was busy doing something else. Ilya couldn’t ascribe meaning to it. Maybe Shane was worried Ilya was a crazy person, a sex addict. Or worse, a temperamental teenager who needed a firm hand. Ilya knew that he didn’t have to be so greedy. He could be Hollander’s docile little neutered pet, and only show his teeth on ice during games. He could stop asking to go out and therefore avoid whatever look Shane had been giving him at the most recent bar. Avoiding that look would probably be for the best. But as usual, Ilya wanted what he shouldn’t—couldn’t—have. That look from Shane had lit Ilya up from the inside out. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“How’s the view,” Shane said from near Ilya’s left shoulder.

He realized abruptly that he’d just been standing there like an idiot for several minutes.

“Bad,” Ilya said.

It was of rooftops and parking lots. He turned, and there was a far better sight: Hollander in golden hour light, the setting sun licking warmly all over his face like it loved him.

“Yeah,” Hollander said. “Most of ‘em are like this, I guess.”

“What do you think is best hotel view,” Ilya asked. “During season.”

“Oh,” said Hollander, sounding surprised. Then he tipped his head, considering. “I like views of the water. So, Florida, maybe.”

“Alligator,” Ilya said, and snapped his teeth together a few times.

Shane laughed. It was so gratifying when Ilya could make him do that genuinely, when it was the real thing and not just a polite, pity laugh. Ilya wrenched himself away and went to rummage through his suitcase, hiding his face.

“What do you like? Views, I mean.”

Ilya pulled out his dopp kit and fiddled with the zipper. He hadn’t really ever thought about it.

“New York,” he said, mostly on a whim. But it felt right, imagining the city skyline, the lights from thousands of windows glimmering in the blue dusk. The bridges and the crawling traffic.

“City boy,” Shane said in his chirping voice.

“Yes,” Ilya said, deciding then that it was probably true.

Shane smiled at him, then. Happy and genuine, the corners of his eyes crinkling warmly. His mouth is so nice, Ilya thought, staring. His teeth. Ilya felt his blood start to rush hectically and escaped to the bathroom.

Late the next night, Ilya got back to the room drunk and thrumming with arousal. He felt frenetic, buzzing like a kicked hornet’s nest. Stupid Hollander, he thought as he yanked off his shoes and started stripping down to his boxers. Stupid fucking Hollander, up in his ivory tower, untouchable. And Ilya down below wanting him so badly that it was starting to fuck up his one outlet: hooking up.

After dinner that night, Shane had let Ilya go out with some of the younger guys and J.J. A woman had deigned to give him a blow job in the bathroom, but the orgasm had been short and unsatisfactory. The whole time he’d been thinking about the game, about Hollander’s glove coming down on Ilya’s helmet, the insufferable way he chewed on his mouthguard.

Ilya flopped down on his bed and angrily kicked the covers down to the end. He was too hot and his skin was too tight around his muscles and bones. The arousal was worsening, deepening, his gut was cramping. He was getting hard thinking about Shane chewing on his mouthguard. What the fuck.

Ilya turned his head to look at the other bed, the lump that was Shane under the covers. He was on his side, facing Ilya. Ilya watched him. There was a cut of dim illumination coming into the room from the bathroom nightlight, landing on parts of Shane’s face. His right eyebrow and cheekbone, the right corner of his mouth. He had the covers pulled up under his chin. He looked good and warm, an animal safe in its burrow. Ilya put his hand down his boxers and squeezed himself. He was already fully hard, breathing loud from it, near panting. He had not been quiet when coming into the room. Was Shane really asleep or just pretending?

Ilya wriggled on the mattress and got his boxers down to his thighs. He was being crazy, he was way over the line. But Shane’s eyes were still closed. Ilya felt more turned on now than he had with Cassandra between his legs earlier. His blood was shivering with it, his mouth watering. He imagined going over to Shane’s bed and climbing in, crawling down into the warm cocoon of the covers, pressing his face into Shane’s smooth, soft stomach. Ilya spat into his palm and started jerking off in earnest. He could be so good, make it so good, why didn’t Shane see that? Why did he have to be like this, why couldn’t he be like the other guys, the ones Ilya had heard about, whispered in locker rooms of his youth? Why couldn’t he ‘get’ Ilya on road trips, like Misha’s keeper had done? Ilya imagined rolling Shane onto his stomach and pushing between his thighs, and Shane sighing and yielding and telling him, ‘yes.’

Ilya came.

He was too wrapped up in the teeth-grinding release of it to smother his noises. Behind his closed eyes was the image of Shane’s nape, his dark head, the rolling muscles of his back. Ilya’s dick kicked hard, one last time.

When he came down, caught his breath, and looked over, Shane was still asleep. Ilya went into the bathroom to give himself a cursory clean up and to sloppily brush his teeth. In the mirror, he was flushed all the way up to his hairline, his eyes at half-mast.

He was abruptly bone tired, and, back in bed, sleep came up upon him fast. When he woke up the next morning, Ilya couldn’t tell if the glint of Shane’s eyes in the darkness had been something he’d dreamt, or something he’d actually seen before his eyes fell shut.

—March 2024—

After New York they had gone to play Toronto, and then returned to Boston for a stretch of home games. March weather in Boston was typically unpredictable, swinging wildly from gray and frigid to sunny and mild. Some intrepid snowdrops and crocus were sending out shoots in Ilya’s backyard. There was no snow left on the ground, but rain and sleet still froze over in patches, and muddy, slushy puddles welled up along the curbs. It was the worst part of spring, the teasing pendulum between freezing and thawing. Ilya wished fruitlessly for an away game in Florida, for a brief reprieve from the gunmetal sky, the clouds, winter’s sharp bite still snapping in the air.

The first four home games resulted in an even two wins and two losses. At least they were able to redeem themselves against Pittsburgh, much to the delight of the Boston crowd. They had one more game at TD Stadium before they would fly out again to Montreal. Ilya kept thinking about it and then pushing it away. He had to focus. He wanted the Raiders to make the playoffs, but they needed more points, had to keep up their scoring. March was no time to moon over Shane Hollander, but seeing him in that Manhattan steakhouse had shaken Ilya to his core. Sitting across from him at a table over a meal had brought back so many memories of his rookie year, when Ilya rarely spent a dinner without Shane’s company. It was so easy to fall back into Shane’s orbit when Ilya was right across from him and a hockey game wasn’t happening around them. Shane had looked so handsome. Though the conversation had ended on an awkward note, what Ilya remembered best from that meal was how often Shane had smiled.

It almost felt like he’d manifested it, when the phone call came.

“Hello?” Ilya said.

His heart had kicked, seeing the caller ID, and his thumb was shaky swiping to answer the call.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, at a loss for what else to say.

There was a pause.

“How are you? What’re you up to? ”

There was something in the quality of Shane’s voice, something a little slippery, a little mushy. It was 11pm on a Sunday night. Surely it wasn’t what Ilya was beginning to suspect…

“I’m watching Russian show. Very good, important. Smart.”

He was watching a soap opera and mindlessly scrolling on Twitter.

“Oh cool,” Shane said. “So I didn’t wake you up?”

The question ran together fuzzily. Ilya sat up straight, narrowing his eyes.

“Are you drunk?!” Ilya asked, scandalized.

Shane did not drink during the season. If he had anything it was one drink, used mostly as a prop. On the other end of the line, Shane groaned.

“It was my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. They had a party.”

“Okay?”

He was drunk-dialing Ilya. But for what? Ilya abruptly felt kind of drunk himself, head beginning to spin like a carousel slowly picking up speed.

“They had this guy there. I think they were trying to set me up.”

Ilya stood up and went to the window, where he could mostly only see the TV and himself reflected in the glass. It was pitch black outside.

“He’s bad? Ugly?”

“No, he was nice.”

“But not good enough for Shane Hollander.”

Ilya couldn’t believe his voice still sounded normal. It felt like his heart was trying to climb out of his throat. Logically he knew that in their years apart, Hollander might have had any number of flings and relationships. But hearing about it directly from the source made him feel crazy.

“He’s just not what I like,” Shane sighed.

Drunk as he was, his tone was a little more animated, a little more prone to petulance. Ilya liked it when Shane got whiny.

“No? What do you like?”

“Ilya.”

“Well?”

He heard Shane huff, a rush of breath. Ilya could almost feel the air move against his ear. His arms broke out into goosebumps. He wished he was there. Hollander, drunk. Ilya’d only experienced that a couple of times in person.

“I liked seeing you at dinner. That dinner. With Vaughn and those guys. You wore your hair pushed back.”

“Shane,” Ilya said, feeling truly dizzy now. He hadn’t expected Shane to play along, let alone say something so baldly truthful. “What’s happening?”

“You keep texting me,” Shane slurred in accusation.

“I’m sorry,” he said, knee-jerk.

“No,” Shane said. “Don’t do that.”

“No?”

He wanted to ask if Shane was mad, to confirm whether he was or wasn’t. But Ilya was too much of a coward. Out of the two of them Shane was always better at confrontation, at bringing up the heart of the matter.

“You used to talk to me all the time,” Shane said. “Remember? Remember, you’d say, ‘what do you think about this,’ ‘what do you think about that,’ and I’d answer. And we’d talk.”

“Yes, Hollander, you are describing a conversation.”

“Wow, ‘describing a conversation,’” Shane said, parroting. “You’re so good at English. I guess you got good when you weren’t speaking to me, eh.”

“Shane,” Ilya said. His heart felt sick, swollen. He suddenly wanted to call him by a pet name, a tender word. The English ones weren’t as good as the Russian. My little darling. My little soul. “I got traded. I was upset.”

“Yeah. I want to talk to you about that.”

“Now?” Ilya asked.

The whole conversation was leaving him reeling. He didn’t know if he could handle anything more, anything deeper.

“No,” Shane said, laughing a little. “I’m fucking wasted.”

“Okay,” Ilya said. “Later, then.”

“Yeah, I think I’m gonna regret this in the morning.”

“No,” Ilya said. “I’m glad you called.”

Shane had done what Ilya’d been too cowardly to do and now Ilya got to have this: Shane’s voice in his ear, his truthful words, his sighs and laughter.

“I texted you on New Year’s Eve,” Ilya reminded him. “Drunk.”

“Yeah,” Shane said, laughing again, a low sound that tumbled pleasantly over Ilya’s eardrums.

He pressed the phone as close as he could to hear it better.

“That was cute,” Shane said. “Those texts.”

Ilya felt his face get hot. He put his forehead to the cold glass. It would leave a smudge. He didn’t care.

“We’ll play against each other soon, remember?” Ilya asked, mostly just to have something to say, to keep Shane on the line a little longer.

“Yeah, you’re coming here.”

“Yes.”

“Will you smile at me again when we face off, like last time?”

“Probably.”

“Okay.”

They fell silent, just breathing. The glass heated from Ilya’s skin and clouded from his breath. After a few minutes, Shane sighed again.

“Well, I should—”

“—Shane?”

“Yeah.”

“Forget that guy.”

Shane made a low noise in the back of his throat, a considering sound. Then,

“What guy.”

Ilya could hear the smile in his voice. He grinned too, and his reflection in the window beamed back at him, the expression reckless and too wide. He could practically see all of his teeth.

—February 2020—

The road trip continued. They went to Vancouver, Seattle, and Colorado. Ilya did not allow himself to drink a single alcoholic beverage for the rest of the trip. He could not believe that he had done what he’d done in Edmonton. The flirting was one thing, but jerking off in the bed next to Shane had been way over the line. He’d been very drunk, true. But Ilya felt low and gross about it, embarrassed at himself and the depths of his own depravity.

Worse, he couldn’t get a read on Hollander. More and more, he stared at Ilya in the way Ilya had been noticing ever since that one night at the bar in Montreal. But what did the staring mean? Was he watching and waiting for Ilya to mess up again? Gathering evidence? Did it mean that Shane was only waiting for the right moment to sit Ilya down and say something like, ‘look, I know what you did and you have to move out of my house’? Or did it mean something else entirely?

Shane acted normally for the rest of the road trip. He did not shrink from Ilya’s hands when, out of habit more than anything, they made their way onto his shoulders, his back. He smiled at Ilya’s jokes and snide comments about the other teams. He talked inanely to Ilya about various boring subjects when they were alone in their hotel rooms.

But all the while, there was the staring. 



Back in Montreal, Ilya found himself reverting to old habits, hiding out in his bedroom. He called Sasha. He called Sveta. He even thought about getting back to Alexei, who had left several irate voicemails over the past few weeks, and then wondered why he was such a masochist.

He should just rip the bandaid off, as North Americans said. Go downstairs and attempt to hang out with Hollander as usual. Shane was not afraid of confrontation. If he had something to say to Ilya, he would have said it by now. Besides, there was something he’d been meaning to talk to Shane about. A purchase.

Ilya went down and hovered by the sofa. Shane was in his usual place, sitting with his feet stretched out in front of him, his back against the arm. He was on his laptop.

“Hey,” he said, looking up. “What’s up.”

“I want to buy car.”

Shane blinked for a second, processing. Then he perked up.

“Oh, yeah? That’s a good idea. What kind are you thinking?”

It seemed a genuine reaction. And there was no hint of awkwardness that Ilya could take to mean, ‘I saw you jerk off in the bed next to me last week’. So maybe Ilya was in the clear and maybe the glint of Shane’s eyes in the dark had really been a dream. Emboldened, Ilya went to sit by Shane’s feet. He took out his phone, unlocked it, and then handed it over. Shane looked at it and his face scrunched.

“I don’t think this is very practical,” he said.

“No,” Ilya said.

That wasn’t the point. Shane looked up at him.

“I think you should get something with all-wheel drive. Something you can drive in the snow. And something with four doors.”

Ilya leaned over and snatched his phone. In the process, and feeling like he was getting away with something, he had pressed his thigh against Shane’s feet, and had gotten his free hand on Shane’s left ankle. Shane, Ilya noticed, was wearing the socks Ilya had given him for Christmas. He refused to feel giddy about it. Shane wore them all the time.

“No,” Ilya said. “Two doors. Sexy. Cool. Fun.”

He tilted his head and pressed his luck even further, squeezing Shane’s ankle and smirking coyly. Understanding broke across Shane’s face, followed quickly by a smile.

“Stop trying to be cute,” he said. “Are you joking?”

Ilya laughed then, feeling relief that things were normal, that he’d gotten away with something. Plus, Shane was so fun to tease. He closed out the tab and switched to the real one. Handed it back over. Shane looked down at it, still smiling.

“Yeah,” he said. “Looks good.”

So maybe he hadn’t seen anything. If he had, Ilya would have to hand it to him: he was the best compartmentalizer on the planet.

Ilya’s final check would be to see how Shane reacted when asked to go out again. Would he be relieved? Would it spark any sort of conversation…’speaking of picking up, what the hell was that in Edmonton?’

Ilya waited until Shane had set down his knife and fork at dinner. They didn’t have a game tomorrow, so it was the perfect night for it.

“Take me out,” Ilya said.

He should say please, but he didn’t. When Shane looked at him, Ilya tilted his head and widened his eyes.

Shane pressed his lips together. Ilya blinked at him slowly, like a cat. Shane sighed.

“Okay, I guess.”

Something surged beneath Ilya’s sternum then, something more than just triumph over getting what he wanted and relief at another normal response. It was more primal than that, something to do with Shane yielding.

Ilya wore a patterned silk shirt, unbuttoned to the split of his ribcage. Shane wore a black cashmere sweater that probably cost four thousand dollars, and dark wash jeans. The usual outfit—he was so boring. Ilya kept staring at him in the car, watching the orange streetlights licking across his face one by one. Shane always drove on these nights.

There was already a low thrum of arousal pulsing in Ilya’s gut, just from watching the side of Shane’s face. Ilya bit the edge of his thumbnail. Soon he would be in a place with other people, and he could wrench himself away from the siren song that was Shane Hollander’s elegant nose, the guileless purse of his full mouth. Soon he would be in the arms of a woman, and she would help him untether and forget himself, forget that strange thing he’d done, even if it was just for a few hours.

Chapter End Notes

#mydrunkshane: ilya, your hair looks sexy pushed back.

Chapter 7

Chapter Notes

—March 2024—

Ilya floated through his road trip routine, so habitual that he barely needed to think about it. Packing his bag, making his way to the airport, boarding the team plane. He was on autopilot, his thoughts scattering and coalescing, always onto their one favorite subject.

They were one hour into the flight when the text came in. Ilya was pretending to nap in order to avoid the poker game; he’d get fleeced what with the headspace he was currently in.

Come over after the game.

It was embarrassing how Ilya’s heart leapt, reading that message. He slouched down in his seat and held his phone covetously close to his face.

What abt ur baby

Ugh. Don’t call him that.

Ok, rookie.

I want to talk to you. And I’d rather not have TMZ taking photos through the restaurant window.

U barely B list celeb, Ilya chirped, tacking on the snoring emoji for good measure.

Otto will be there but he’ll give us space. He’s a good kid, Shane sent back, ignoring the dig.

Ilya made a face at his phone. Otto, he mouthed, and stuck out his tongue.

Around thirty minutes later they were landing in Montreal and getting bussed to the hotel. It was a gray afternoon, the sky was heavy with cloud cover. Tomorrow the weather app predicted clouds again.

Tomorrow…

Tomorrow they would be in Bell Centre and afterwards, Ilya would be back in Shane Hollander’s condo. He didn’t know what he was feeling. Anticipation, yes. Nerves, though he didn’t want to admit it. On ice, Ilya could intuit Shane’s next move like it was second nature. Off ice was another matter entirely. During his rookie season Ilya often found himself surprised at the things Shane would say or do, how unpredictable he was despite his numerous routines and rigid calendar. He was certain he knew what Shane wanted to talk about generally, but it was pointless to try and think about how the conversation would go specifically. Pointless to worry about it. And yet still Ilya perseverated on it, drifting in and out of the team’s chatter at dinner and later, at some cocktail bar Marleau had wanted to check out.

The game was tough, chippy. Miitka was like a rhinoceros in the Metros’ goal, solid and sharp-eyed. They went into OT tied 1-1. In the end the Raiders managed a lucky tip-in and the horn sounded to the wailing and booing of the Bell Centre crowd.

In the media scrum Ilya was asked the same question that was always asked after a Metros-Raiders game.

“How was it facing off with your former captain now four years later?”

If it had been last year, or the year before, or the year before that, Ilya’s answer would have been tinged with snark. But everything was different this year. All of his bitterness had mellowed. He was as soft as an overripe plum, ready to split wide open.

“Good,” he said.

The word was too honest. So was his tone. Even worse, his smile.

But he wasn’t thinking about media training or his public persona. His brain was already skipping ahead to later, when after the media scrum, the bus to the hotel, and evading his teammates who would want to go out and celebrate, Ilya would be setting foot in a place he never thought he’d return to.

The guys ragged on him when he begged off going to dinner, but Marleau came in clutch.

“Come on guys, we can’t stand in the way of Roz rekindling an old flame,” he said above the general clamor and hubbub in the visitor’s locker room. “These Montreal girls have all been pining for their Russian rookie. Let’s let one of them get lucky.”

The team hooted and Ilya waved a hand. Marleau seemed to think Ilya still had a harem of devotees in the city, which was flattering though completely untrue. It wasn’t like Ilya could correct him anyways.

Back at the hotel, Ilya rummaged through his suitcase, trying to decide what to wear. They were just going to be talking at Hollander’s condo, so there was no reason to dress up. But he also didn’t want to show up looking like a slob. The rookie would be there, no doubt peeking around corners, curious. Maybe it was silly, but he wanted to look good.

He settled on athleisure, all black. Some track pants that were nicer than what he’d wear to work out in, a hoodie, and his leather jacket. Once dressed, Ilya managed to get down to the lobby and call a car without any of his nosy teammates interfering.

Outside, waiting for the Uber, Ilya considered having a cigarette and then pushed aside the impulse. He had not smoked when he’d lived with Hollander, not one single cigarette. Ilya still remembered a couple years ago at the All Stars weekend when Shane had come across Ilya outside the hotel. The face he made when he’d noticed the cigarette in Ilya’s fingers had been almost comically scandalized, like he’d seen Ilya spray-painting the side of the building with four-letter words. Ilya had blown out a cloud of smoke pointedly towards his face and Shane had hurried into the hotel without a word.

Now, Ilya turned his face up to the sky. The overcast daytime sky had become nighttime dark, the clouds a solid blue-black dome over the city. No stars, the moon a filmy and nebulously obscured light. It had been mild, earlier, but now the temperature was dropping and Ilya could see his breath when he exhaled.

The car pulled up and Ilya got in.

He looked out the window and tried to take stock of what he was feeling. He was on his way back to the condo. They were going to talk.

It was a good thing, Ilya knew, though his instincts were clamoring for him to protect his vulnerable underbelly, to shore up his defenses. They would talk and Ilya would embarrass himself, he’d turn to mush. So what, Ilya thought. He rubbed his nose. In November he’d told Svetlana that he wanted to talk to Shane and now he was going to.

He’d spent the past several months coming to a series of realizations, each one of them a step down a new path. He didn’t want to backtrack. He’d lived enough years being aloof and uncaring. Recently Ilya had felt more like himself than he’d had in a while. Besides, the not-caring was exhausting. He was tired of pretending.

—March 2020—

Shane had three parking spots in his condo garage. One he used for his own car and one was now occupied by Ilya’s brand new acquisition. It was a nice car but not anything crazy; he didn’t have five hundred grand to drop on a sports car. Yet. But it was still his first big purchase made with with his MLH salary. Ilya was proud of it, and at least it was flashier than Hollander’s boring make and model.

He and Shane stood in Shane’s empty third parking space and admired it.

“Looks great,” Shane said.

“Next year I buy Bugatti,” Ilya said. “Park here.”

He bounced a little on his toes and then tapped pointedly with one foot. Shane nudged him with an elbow.

“Next year you’ll have your own place.”

“Oh,” Ilya said, dumbly. “Yes.”

Of course he knew that. In the autumn he’d been practically counting down the days until that was the case. But now he’d settled in. He liked Shane’s condo; he liked Shane. The idea of having to find his own place didn’t seem like such a tantalizing prospect anymore.

Ilya shook off the brief cloud of doubt that had fallen over him.

“My place I get four-car garage,” he said, and watched Shane laugh.

When his father called later that night, Ilya was still in a good enough mood to answer it without trepidation. Mistake number one.

Number two was telling his father about his purchase. Number three was admitting he hadn’t talked to Alexei in several weeks. He got an earful about being selfish, about not taking care of his kin, his blood. He got an earful about being reckless with money, as well as plenty of aspersions on the sanctity and security of his chosen career path. Things turned even further when Grigori brought up Sergei Vetrov.

His father knew fuck-all about hockey and yet talked about it like he was the supreme authority on the sport, in the same way many men who played a sport when they were young (and only when they were young) did. The fact that he was good friends with a retired MLH goalie only added to his confidence. He’d talked with Sergei, who’d been watching the Metros’ season, and had a lot to pass along. Ilya gritted his teeth throughout the whole lecture. Yes, he knew his playing style didn’t totally mesh with the Metros. Yes, he knew he was too much of a pest on ice. Yes, he knew he wasn’t getting the ice time he’d been getting in Russia. Yes, things would be different if he had stayed in Russia and played for the KHL like he’d been told to do. Yes Papa, yes Papa, yes.

“At least you’ll have a nice car to live in if, or when, they dump you,” Grigori summarized.

Then, after a few orders to return Alexei’s calls, he hung up.

Ilya set his phone very carefully on the kitchen counter. The instinct to throw it against the wall was spiking through his muscles. Ilya breathed in threw his nose and blew it out through his mouth, tightly pursed. He was not going to have a fit over a stupid fucking phone call.

Ilya stood up from the stool and tried to shake all of it off. He lifted his arms up and brought them down hard, as if he could flick off the bad feeling. But it was deep inside him, at his core. Pulsing and toxic straight into his bloodstream, into his brain. He was so frustrated, so choked with hurt and rage. It wasn’t fair. Did his father or his brother ever feel like this? He couldn’t imagine it. He never seemed to be able to get under their skin like they got under his. And worse, Ilya kept answering them, kept trying to be, if not a good son or a good brother, at least one who still talked to them. Instead of blocking their calls, instead of cutting Alexei off, he kept answering, kept sending money. Why did he do any of it, if not out of love, and how could he love people who made him feel so badly?

He had been avoiding thinking about it since the new year, but now with the stirrings of spring thaw and Shane’s comment about Ilya having his own place next year, it was inescapable. Soon his rookie season would be over, and with it would come summer in Russia. Soon, sooner, depending on the what happened with the playoffs, Ilya would be right back with the people who made him feel like shit, an ocean and several thousand miles between him and the safe haven he’d built for himself that season.

It was a horrible, looming thought, now more prevalent in his mind than ever. Tacked on to the phone call, it made his head spin. Ilya should go up to his room. He had never seen Shane so soon after a call with his father, had always taken them in his room and spent at least an hour afterwards stewing. But he was thinking about the summer, now. Thinking about how few months he had where things would be exactly like this. Where he would be living here, with Shane. It was moving him back towards Shane, not away.

When Ilya returned into the living room, Shane sent him a big-eyed look, concerned.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ilya said shortly, flopping down onto the sofa.

He did not want to take his anger out on Shane, but it was buzzing so close to the surface. He shouldn’t have come in here. He should have gone to his room.

“Was that your dad?”

“Yes.”

Ilya crossed his arms and glared at the TV. Yes, it has been his fucking father, in all of his miserable, tyrannical glory.

“He’s tough on you, eh?”

Ilya scoffed and muttered under his breath, “You don’t know the half of it.”

“If you want to talk about it with me, you’ll have to do it in English.”

“I not want,” Ilya said, with malicious compliance.

His voice was too mean, too petulant to be directed at his captain, at his childhood idol who was now his friend. At the man who had kept Ilya so well in his house for so many months, and who was now checking in with such a gentle voice.

“It might be helpful,” Shane said.

Irritation flared. Ilya snapped.

“Helpful? The last thing that would be helpful for me would be to discuss my fucking father with you, Shane Hollander. You have a perfect family, what the hell would you know about anything. What the hell could you even say to me that isn’t a fucking platitude? You’ve made it very clear that the one thing that I do want isn’t on the table, so excuse me if I don’t appreciate this attempt at bonding, this whole fucking farce.”

Shane watched him through the whole tirade. His eyes were so serious, catching the blue light from the TV, glinting. The pull of his earnest brow. His smooth cheeks illuminated on one side by warm lamplight and on the other, the cool-toned screen.

“Okay. In Russian, then. What else,” Shane said, and made a beckoning motion with his hand, a wordless gesture that universally meant, ‘give it to me.’

Ilya blew out a breath. It was so stupid, Shane couldn’t understand. But maybe it was what he needed. He’d felt marginally better after that first outburst.

“What else? What fucking else? It’s everything. It’s…I’m still fucking homesick. I never thought I would miss Russia. Maybe I should have stayed and played for the KHL like Papa had ordered, even though he only wanted me to do it for his own career. Fucking politics, fucking Russian politics. But no, I said I would leave and now here I am. My dream come true. And I like it here. I like it here so much. So how is it that I still miss it? How is it that I miss it and yet when I think about having to go back for the summer, I dread it? Fucking Russia. It’s so stupid. But I miss my friends and the city and I miss my father who hates me and my brother who hates me and my mother…And my mother, who knows? Maybe she hated me too. She’d rather die than see me grow up. So yes, maybe she hated me too. I miss it all and I hate it all. All at once, together. None of it makes any sense. And on top of it there’s you.”

Ilya cut himself off there and shook his head. He could not start talking about Shane to Shane, even if it was in another language.

“Hey,” Shane said.

Ilya heaved in a deep breath and let it out, shuddering. He felt like he’d lanced something putrid somewhere inside and he was leaking. He swallowed around the hurting in his throat and turned his head away. He should leave, go to his room. He did not want Shane Hollander to see him cry. He’d dissolve from mortification. But Shane had put his hand around Ilya’s wrist.

“No,” he was saying. “Don’t hide. I’d listen to you all night, if you want. Please.”

Ilya tested Shane’s grip, twisting his wrist. Shane’s fingers squeezed, tightened. He wanted Ilya to stay.

Ilya gave in. He let all of the pathetic want surge upwards instead of beating it back down. He turned his head back and then bent over to curl up on his side and to rest his cheek on Shane’s thigh.

“Oh,” Shane said, softly surprised. He was still for a moment, but then slid his hand ever so gently into Ilya’s curls. Then he said, “I’ve got you.”

And Ilya let himself cry.

—March 2024—

“Hi,” Shane said. “Come in.”

Ilya stepped through the door. The first year after the trade, Ilya had dreamt regularly of this condo. Mundane dreams about doing chores or having meaningless conversations in the kitchen. But he had strange ones too, people trying to break in, men looking in through the windows. It felt like a dream now, seeing the credenza in the entryway just as it always had been, seeing the sofa and all of its pillows and blankets. All of the warm, low light everywhere. Shane’s broad back, retreating into the space, leading Ilya to the living room.

Ilya had been afraid of what he might feel upon entering this place again. The leaping of his heart at Shane’s texts had been alarming enough. He had worried what it would be like seeing the real thing, the man and the space, together in the flesh. How intense it might feel.

But his head was not spinning now. This was the first place that had felt like home to him in the years after his mother’s death. His brain knew it still. Upon walking in, all of Ilya’s senses had recognized it as familiar and settled. Even after several years it was safe; it was where Shane lived.

Ilya followed Shane as he walked into the living space and sat down on the sofa. All of the sudden, the full force of his dark eyes were turned upwards towards Ilya, whose breath caught in his throat.

“Uh, sit down,” Shane said.

Ilya sat. Quiet fell and lingered for several minutes. Ilya looked around. The TV and the various shelves around it were all the same. Even the photos. Eventually, Ilya cleared his throat.

“Where is—”

“—If you call him ‘baby’ again I swear to God,” Shane cut it.

Ilya held up his hands. Shane heaved a sigh.

“Sorry. I’m a little, well,” Shane paused and shook his head. “He’s upstairs. But he really wants to meet you. I felt mean, telling him to give us space.”

“Big meanie,” Ilya said, and smiled just a bit.

Shane blinked at him. Something, some expression skittered briefly across his face before he turned his gaze down to his hands, which were twisting in his lap. They sat in a silence again and Ilya shifted, prepared to wait. But Shane spoke within another minute or two.

“I was…” he started, and then stopped.

Ilya watched as his hands twisted and then stopped. Came to cup his knees. Shane straightened, pushing his shoulders back, as if if bracing himself.

“I was glad when you texted,” Shane said. “In September.”

He turned his head and leveled Ilya with a look. Ilya swallowed around a dry mouth.

“Okay,” he said.

“After the trade…you…you wouldn’t…”

Shane trailed off. His brow had pulled entreatingly, his eyes glinted in the warm light from the table lamps. But Ilya didn’t know what he wanted. Shane was the one who had said they should talk. Knowing Shane, he had a whole plan for how he wanted the conversation to go. But Ilya didn’t know his lines, hadn’t even been provided with a script outline. He made a motion with his hand for Shane to continue.

“You wouldn’t reply,” Shane said, finishing his sentence. “And you’d barely look at me whenever…” Again he trailed off. Shook his head. “I thought…” His mouth twisted and he sighed.

The bracing set of his shoulders curled inwards and he deflated, just a bit.

“What,” Ilya prompted.

“Well, that maybe you’d never, uh, talk to me. Again. You said in New York you didn’t, but it was like you blamed me, for the trade.”

“Ah,” Ilya said. “Yes.”

Shane sent him another look, frowning slightly, his gaze pinging over Ilya’s face trying to read his expression. When he realized Ilya was being serious, his eyes widened.

“But that’s,” Shane sputtered, waving a hand. “Illogical!”

“Yes, I know!” Ilya snapped, defensive. “So what? Is your team, the Metros!”

“Ilya,” Shane started, and then stopped.

He pressed his lips together as if withholding something. Again his eyes darted across Ilya’s features, flitting from his eyes to his mouth to his forehead and back again. Shane’s expression had gone solemn, as if he had followed a certain train of thought and ended up at a concerning station. Ilya hated that the worry coming from Shane made him feel defensive, irrationally so. But that was how he was wired to react when faced with concern. He knew Shane’s good heart, he knew that Shane would never come at him with unfair judgement. And yet his pride was pricking him, urging to strike out. Because it was illogical, and yet Ilya had still been hurt down to the quick. Right down to the marrow of his bones, his guts, his heart. He’d been hurt in a way that had defied logic. Trades happened all the time, but to him it had been more than a trade. It had been the upending of everything he’d come to rely upon as safe and good.

“Ilya, you know I couldn’t have stopped it.”

Ilya shrugged and nodded, a familiar and years-old sullen bitterness curling in his chest. Of course he knew that.

“So then what were the last three years about? Why were you…why didn’t you…” Shane trailed off and shrugged.

Silence welled up and drowned them again. With his defensive instincts and his old bitterness, it felt like Ilya was spiking a fever. He was dizzy and too hot, his throat was dry and his pulse was pounding. He hated to be vulnerable. He hated to confront the truth of himself. And yet Shane was looking at him with such confusion and such hurt. Ilya did not want to be the cause of an expression like that, but he was.

“You could have warned me,” Ilya heaved out.

The shock of the trade had been bad enough. But worse, it was the definitive severing of any ties Ilya had to Shane. It took away Shane, the home Ilya’d had with him, and the thing the two of them were creating with each other. The trade was the ultimate dumping, and it had been shoved upon Ilya without a single word of warning. Even a comment from Shane about gut instincts, or getting a vibe from the front office would have been welcome. But there had been no word like that, no heads up. It had seemed clear to Ilya at the time, heartbroken and blindsided and embarrassed as he’d been, that Shane didn’t want him anymore. Not in his house, not on his team, not as his friend, not as his lover. The era of Shane taking care of him was over and done. Ilya was on his own.

“You had a little bit of idea before it happened,” Ilya said. “Yes? So why did you not tell me?”

Shane grimaced and slid his eyes away. Ilya watched him breathe, the steady expansion and contraction of his back, the rise and fall of his shoulders. One of the only outward signs of his inner workings on display. The rest of what was going on in there, in his head especially, was a fucking mystery. Towards the end of his rookie year Ilya had thought maybe he was starting to understand Shane a little more fully. Then the trade had reared up and struck him like a snake in the grass, and Ilya had told himself, ‘no, you don’t know this man at all and you never did.’

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” Shane said.

Ilya boggled. “How?” he asked, almost plaintive. “How? Why?”

“What we were doing at the end of the season…come on Ilya, how was there any way forward with it? Like…What…We were just going to keep fucking each other for years and years on the same team? You were going to keep living in my house?”

Ilya must have made some sort of pathetic, truthful face. Shane’s expression tugged and pulled.

“Ilya,” he said, his mouth downturned.

Shane’s voice was so gentle. There was a hard lump forming in Ilya’s throat that he kept having to swallow against.

“You were nineteen—twenty. Your whole career was in front of you. It was a good trade. You made a name for yourself. Out from under me, out from under the Metros. You made the Raiders. The Raiders are a great team now, because of you. What would have been the point of warning you? It was happening no matter what.”

Of course there was no logic to a warning. The point was caring. Ilya had trusted Shane, had thought he cared. That he didn’t see how a warning would have been meaningful to Ilya was fundamentally hurtful, a deep misunderstanding.

“I did not want you to be my fucking agent, Hollander! I wanted to play hockey with you. And…”

“And? What else.”

Shane looked at him and waited. Ilya wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Stop making me say things, he thought, glowering.

“And to me, it was not just a trade,” Ilya said eventually.

He scrubbed his palms over his face. His hands were sweaty. How could he explain without sounding pathetic? It was impossible. But Shane already knew that Ilya was pathetic. Maybe he should just say it all, right then, and then Shane would know the extent of it.

“It was you. It was a home. Gone. The trade killed it. And you sent one text. ‘You’ll be fine, it’s for the best,’ you said. ‘Call me if you want,’ you said. You did not care. But how could I be fine?” Ilya paused and shook his head. “How? It was not just hockey. Not to me. Okay, so there is no point to warn me about a trade, you say this. Fine. But there is a point to warn me about everything else. I needed this from you.”

Ilya propped his elbow on the back of the sofa and leaned his head against his fist. He’d said his piece. He probably could have done a better job explaining, but that was always the case when it came to serious conversations in a second language. Besides, how could he really explain the tumultuousness of the hurt and anger he’d experienced? At the time it had felt as big as the sky.

Shane’s eyes had slid to some point over Ilya’s shoulder and were hazy, turning inwards. Meanwhile, Ilya’s ears were ringing with all of the words he’d just said. He breathed in and out and tried to keep calm. You’re tired of pretending, Ilya reminded himself as he watched Shane process.

“I didn’t think of it like that,” Shane said eventually. “I was thinking of it in terms of hockey. In terms of your career. But you’re right. The text wasn’t great. I just…I didn’t know what else to say. You weren’t answering my calls.”

Ilya shrugged. Of course he hadn’t answered Shane’s calls.

“I just wish you would have let me talk to you about it that first year,” Shane said, sounding rueful. “I would’ve understood all of this earlier.”

But no, that would have been a disaster. Ilya would have been cruel and Shane would have been bewildered and then defiant, trying to push his point. They would have ended up yelling at each other. And Ilya, knowing himself, would have said things he couldn’t take back.

“What would you have done if I showed up at your apartment?”

Ilya blinked, disconcerted. “You were planning this?”

“That first game we played against each other. You were so…you looked right through me like I was invisible. But Hayden said it was crazy. He said some guys got pissed about trades and there was nothing to do about it besides letting you cool off.”

“Pike is right,” Ilya conceded. “Would have been very bad if you had come, first year. I’m too hurt. Too mean.”

“Ilya, I’m sorry,” Shane said. “I had no idea that you’d take it that way. But of course you…I mean…it makes sense.”

“Okay,” said Ilya. And then, because that sounded flippant by itself, “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to forgive me,” Shane said. “That we’re talking is good enough.”

But Ilya had already forgiven Shane the moment he’d texted him in September. It just had taken him a while to realize it. Ilya told him as much, and got to watch a small smile flirting at the corners of Shane’s mouth.

“Still, I wish…” he trailed off and shrugged. “I know sometimes I just steamroll through decisions.” Shane wrinkled his nose, then, charmingly. “I’m too much like my mom.”

“Ah,” Ilya said, like he had not realized this truth about Shane less than five minutes into the first time he’d met Yuna. “Maybe yes, little bit.”

They sat for another moment, looking at each other. Or rather, Ilya was looking at him and Shane was looking at various different points in the room and flicking his eyes briefly to Ilya’s, to-and-from, to-and-from.

“Do you have anything else you want to say?” Shane said after a beat. “Or should we call Otto down for dinner.”

Ilya narrowed his eyes.

“I’m having dinner with baby?” he accused, feeling conscripted against his will.

“Yes, and you’ll be nice,” Shane said in his bossy captain voice, which Ilya realized he still liked very much even to this day.

Ilya waved a hand. They could bicker about the rookie later. There was something he wanted to say.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I know is not fair, how many years I’m blaming you. How many years I’m avoiding you instead of talking like this. So yes, I’m sorry. But I’m not nice like you. Not patient. I say sorry, so you have to forgive me now. I can’t wait.”

Shane’s expression broke open. Surprise, pleasure, and then a sweet little curve of his lips. He was just as beautiful as he’d ever been, Ilya thought, or maybe it was just that Ilya was still just as much of a sucker.

“Okay,” Shane said, smile growing, eyes crinkling. “I do forgive you. Of course I do.”

Ilya could admit to himself that it was useful to have Otto there afterwards, otherwise Ilya would have done something ill-advised and greedy. Instead they ate one of Shane’s serviceable, nutritionist-approved meals and talked about hockey. Otto was very German, and Shane was Shane. If Ilya hadn’t been there, he wondered if they would have spent the meal in silence. Instead, he asked questions and professed his own opinions liberally. Otto kept sneaking glances at Ilya out of the corners of his eyes and then flushing bright red when Ilya caught him at it.

When dinner was over and Ilya stood to go, Otto blurted in an urgent monotone,

“I am a big fan. It’s so nice to meet you.”

Ilya slung his arm around Otto’s neck and jostled him, which illicited the first genuine, ear to ear smile he’d seen from the kid all night.

In the car ride back to his hotel, Ilya got out his phone.

Ur baby love me. More than u, he texted, along with the angel emoji.

I mean yeah, you’re cooler than me. He thinks I’m old as fuck.

Ilya grinned down at his phone and sent the dinosaur emoji with the slam effect.

—March 2020—

They did not talk about Ilya’s brief breakdown afterwards. They had plenty of hockey to focus on, and even if they didn’t, Shane was good at accepting things as they came and then letting them go afterwards. Maybe it came with age, or maybe it was just another facet of his personality. Regardless, Ilya was glad for it. He felt skittish about the vulnerability he’d shown that night. Shane let him hole up in his room for a few nights, giving him space. Eventually Ilya found himself back in the living room after dinnertime, half-watching whatever was on TV and half-watching Shane fastidiously peel and savor each segment of his dessert clementine. There were plenty of these nights to be had at home towards the end of March, due to a stretch of home games. And Ilya got over his embarrassment quickly, mostly because it had morphed into something else.

He felt like he was going to burst out of his skin. He wanted…something. He wanted something strong. He wanted to push and be pushed back. What he wanted, he quickly realized, was to hook up with a man. It was clear that Shane didn’t care who Ilya fucked. And he certainly wasn’t going to to be the one to help Ilya out. But hooking up with a man was what Ilya needed, he was coming to understand, if he wanted some of this feeling—this crazy, Shane Hollander feeling—to be smothered.

The next night Shane agreed to take him out, Ilya directed him to a bar that he was almost certain no one on the team had ever visited. He felt reckless, buzzing with untapped energy. He was imagining strong hands on his body, the confident grip of a big fist around him, a dick in his mouth. He was absolutely not imagining any of that with Shane, who he had promptly abandoned at the bar, forgoing getting a drink himself. Ilya slunk onto the dance floor and kept an eye out. He turned down the first woman who approached him, and hoped there was someone in the crowd who’d seen and gotten the message.

He didn’t have to wait long. Within ten minutes a man came up to him. He was a little shorter than Ilya, but bulky with muscle. Older. Older than Shane. He seemed confident, pushy. Ilya could already read what the man wanted from him and was willing to go with it. Anything to shut up his hindbrain, which was whining for the one specific person it could not have.

“Buy you a drink?”

Ilya nodded, and let the man steer him back towards the bar with a hand on his elbow.

At the bar, Ilya sipped on his vodka soda and propped an elbow on the counter, sinking down into his spine and hips, making himself smaller. The guy, Raphael, postured in easily, responding to Ilya’s body language.

“You’re cute,” said Raphael. “I like the accent.”

“Thank you,” Ilya said.

He could play the coquette just fine. If that’s what it took for this guy to bring him home, so be it.

They talked, flirted. Raphael was charismatic and sexy. Ilya let him into his space, let him put his hands on Ilya’s hand, his arm, his shoulder. He was just about to agree to Raphael’s proposition of getting out of there, when he felt a looming presence over his shoulder.

“Hi,” said Shane, in a polite voice as bright and sharp as a blade. “Ilya, I need you for a second.”

Raphael eased back a little, blinking at Shane.

“Hey,” he said expression opening in recognition. “Aren’t you—”

“—Excuse us, be right back,” Shane said, easing the bite of the interruption with a big smile.

Ilya felt a hard hand gripping his bicep and then was being frog-marched out of the bar and around the side of the building into an alley.

“You will murder me,” Ilya wondered aloud, when Shane pushed him against the wall.

His pulse was flying. He was angry and intrigued and turned on, all at the same time. Was Shane going to go off on a homophobic tirade, or had he cock-blocked Ilya for some other reason?

“What the hell do you think you’re doing,” Shane said, frowning.

He was strong, had Ilya up against the brick like it was nothing. Ilya’s muscles and bones and blood shivered under the bite of Shane’s hands. Shane’s body was singing with tension, but his voice had been even and low-pitched.

“I like it,” Ilya said.

Shane blinked at him. Something like surprise bloomed across his face.

“You…like it,” he echoed.

“Both, yes,” Ilya said.

He had thought that had been clear when he’d so eagerly gotten down on his knees for Shane within the first couple hours of meeting him. Surely Shane couldn’t be that oblivious.

“Okay,” Shane said slowly, like he was mentally readjusting. He wasn’t frowning any longer, and some of the tension in his arms and shoulders had faded.

“Okay,” Ilya said, and some of his own tension, mostly internal, faded as well.

He felt guilty that he’d still been entertaining the minuscule possibility that Shane was secretly a bigot. Of course he wasn’t.

“But you can’t just, can’t just act like that. People will know. People will realize.”

Ilya shrugged. Shane’s hands, still on his shoulders, squeezed reflexively and then loosened just a little. Shane was right, was the thing. It would make a mess of things with Russia if it got out, and he didn’t want that. He knew he’d been reckless in the bar, too obvious with his flirting. But Hollander had driven him to desperate measures.

“Ilya,” Shane said. “It’s your career.”

“Yes,” said Ilya. “But also, it’s my life.”

Shane’s eyes darted all across Ilya’s face for several moments. He swallowed, visibly. Then he turned his head and looked back out towards the street.

“Okay,” he said. “But you…but that guy was like, fifty.”

“Yes,” Ilya said. “So what.”

Shane turned back to face him and his expression shifted, hardened. The wet of his eyes reflected the orange street light. Ilya watched and felt all of his senses zero in. It was the inch he needed to take a mile. Shane was jealous.

“I’m young, pretty. I can say, ‘ooh mister I’m so confused, teach me how to feel good,’” Ilya said, and slouched against the wall, once again making himself smaller, insouciant. “He like it, we have fun. But you kidnap me. Pull me outside and check me into wall.”

Shane’s breathing had picked up while Ilya spoke. His mouth had parted just slightly and his eyes were glinting now more than ever.

“You don’t want that,” Shane said, almost insisted. “You don’t.”

“No?” Ilya said. “What do I want, Hollander?”

Come on, Ilya thought. He felt like he was leading a stray, starving animal to food and shelter, but the animal kept darting left and right, away from what was good for it. Adrenaline was coursing through Ilya’s veins, making him almost lightheaded. He almost had him. Make the leap, Hollander.

“I’m not gonna—“ Shane said and then broke off to swallow, eyes flicking down to Ilya’s mouth. “I’m not gonna tell you want you want.”

“No?” Ilya said, using the question like a cattle prod.

But it turned out Ilya didn’t need to keep driving the conversation. It seemed like Shane had made up his mind. Shane was shaking his head, a short, jerky motion.

“No. You’re gonna tell me. I’m bringing you back home, and you’re gonna tell me.”

Giddiness spiked, followed by a heady unfurling of greed. Ilya felt himself grin. They left the alleyway, Shane’s hand a firm cuff around Ilya’s wrist.


In the car, Ilya shifted in the passenger seat so he was more fully facing Shane. Shane drove as conscientiously as he always did, two hands on the wheel, eyes on the road.

“Most men want to fuck me, so I let them,” Ilya said. “But I like fucking better.”

“Christ,” Shane muttered.

It was too dark in the car to tell, but Ilya imagined his ears going red, the flush on the back of his neck that was just begging for a mouth on it.

“My coach’s son, back in Russia, he lets me do this,” Ilya continued.

“So what,” Shane said. “You were just gonna let that old guy fuck you even though you didn’t really want it?”

“Yes,” Ilya said.

That had been the original goal of the night, certainly. Shane blew out a breath through pursed lips. His hands were gripped so tight on the steering wheel, his knuckles were popped out.

“You…you can’t do that,” Shane said, voice firm. “I won’t allow it. It’s too risky for a number of reasons. If you want to—need to—do something with a guy, then you’ll do it with me.”

Ilya rested his head against the seat back. A feeling of triumph surged up inside his stomach, something akin to how he felt when he scored a goal, or when he got drafted and knew he could leave Russia. It was a warm, huge feeling.

“Ah,” he said. “So only man in Canada allowed to fuck me is number twenty-four.”

It was exactly what Ilya had wanted from the very beginning all those months ago. His hindbrain was practically purring. The satiation, the satisfaction in his voice was palpable.

“No,” Shane said. “I said, you’ll tell me what you want. What you want. That’s what we’ll do.”

Ilya lifted his head and stared.

“You will let me fuck you?” he asked.

Of course he had imagined it. But Ilya had not considered it as a serious possibility, not really. He had been eager to take anything he could get from Shane, in any way he could get it. In no reality had he expected to be offered his foremost desires up on a silver platter.

But it was Shane, as unpredictable as ever.

“Yes,” Shane said, quietly, solidly.

Ilya had not ever gotten a read on what Shane might like sexually. The entire time Ilya had known him, he’d never once noticed Shane looking at someone with wanting or desire. But maybe he’d been wrong, or, he just didn’t know what Shane looked like when he wanted someone. Because right then he was looking at Ilya in the way he had done a few times before over the last several weeks. Intent, assessing, and a little dewy-eyed. But this time the look was sent upwards from where he was, down on his knees.

“Whoa,” Ilya breathed. “Whoa, whoa, Shane…”

They were just inside the condo’s front door. Shane had slipped off his shoes, placed his keys neatly on the credenza, and had gone down as easy as anything. Ilya’s hands fluttered around Shane’s dark head while Shane made quick work of Ilya’s skin-tight jeans. Ilya’s pulse was pounding in his gut, in his dick. He was already hard enough to leak.

“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Ilya said as Shane pressed his face against Ilya’s groin. Then, in English, “Fuck!”

His hands found themselves in Shane’s hair instinctively, needing something to hold on to. Ilya felt like he might spontaneously ignite into flames. It was Shane fucking Hollander, on his knees, sucking Ilya’s dick. Ilya was pulling his hair. He was being too rough, too greedy, but he couldn’t stop. It felt too good—his brain couldn’t handle it. It felt like time was jumping, skipping, going too fast. He had never felt this lust-sick, this crazed before from a blow job. But how could he not?! It was Shane Hollander’s mouth!

“What the fuck,” he said, head spinning, spine bowing, and came.

“Wow,” Shane said after he swallowed.

Ilya stared down at him, mouth hanging open. Shane was smiling. His hair was a mess and there was high color all over his face. Ilya felt an ominous shifting in his soul, the tectonic plates in his foundation sliding, reworking themselves. He was so fucked. It was one thing to imagine it, but this was the real thing. There was no turning back from this sight.

“That’s flattering,” Shane was saying. “I haven’t done that in a while.”

“You cock block me at bar,” Ilya said hotly.

So what if he came in minutes. He was nineteen. At any given moment he could be one step away from horniness. He had a huge crush on the man who just sucked his dick. Pick one. But he didn’t want to argue about how fast he’d come. He had more important things to focus on.

“My turn,” Ilya said, and joined Shane on the floor.

“Hey, I’m too old for this,” Shane protested, but went where Ilya’s hands pushed him, flat on his back on the hardwood.

Shane blinked up at him and tongued almost absently at the swollen plushness of his lower lip. Ilya, on his hands and knees above Shane, immediately got distracted from his initial goal and swooped in to kiss him.

Shane put his strong hands in Ilya’s hair and opened his mouth for him. Ilya licked in, greedy. The bitter taste of himself, tongue, teeth, spit. Shane was making small noises in the back of his throat. Ilya was going to lose it. He was going to get hard again, and soon. He reared back, gasping, and then made his way down Shane’s prone body to get at his pants.

“Why you not let me do before,” he accused, pulling down Shane’s jeans and underwear and wrapping a hand around him. Fuck, he was so wet. How was this real. “Waste time. Months.”

Ilya put his mouth on him and sucked meanly, harshly. Shane jerked, hips bucking.

“Fuck,” he said. “Ilya!”

Ilya worked at him unrelenting until Shane was near keening, fingers tugging in Ilya’s hair. Then, Ilya pulled off and bit him on the hipbone. He wanted an answer to his question.

“Why,” he said, and watched Shane’s dick kick all by itself, dark as blood and glistening.

“Fuck you,” Shane said. “God. Fuck. Because. You know I think it’s fucked up. The kept rookie thing. I’m not gonna take advantage of some kid who just moved here from Russia. It’s gross.”

So then it was a morality thing. Of course stalwart Shane would think something like that. And maybe he was right. But Ilya was not going to let him off so easily.

“Hmm,” he said. “Or maybe you scared you like it too much. You let rookie ‘take advantage’ of you.”

Ilya sucked over his bite mark, tongue laving. He was expecting Shane to tell him to cut it out, to not leave any evidence. But Shane didn’t. He just lay there, writhing as much as he could beneath Ilya’s body, his hands in Ilya’s hair, holding him in place. All of his thick muscles straining towards pleasure, towards release. When he came, he made a high, loud noise, like he was shocked at the good feeling.

After, when they were making their way up to their respective bedrooms, Shane stopped Ilya in the hall with a hand on his shoulder.

“Look,” he said, his sincere voice at odds with the well-fucked appearance of his hair and mouth, his hazy, sleepy eyes. “I think I was a little overbearing in the car. But it is risky, you know? If you want to hook up with other…uh…guys or whatever…we’ll have to be really discreet about it. Have them sign NDAs…”

Ilya scoffed. As if he would have any interest in other men when Shane Hollander had just gone down on him!

“No guys,” Ilya said, very clearly, grasping Shane’s wrist and squeezing. “I want to fuck you.”

“Well,” Shane said, and Ilya thought maybe he looked a little pleased. “Okay.”

Chapter End Notes

thank you for all of the support on the last chapter! wips are not my thing so this is an interesting new experience for me.

Chapter 8

Chapter Notes

—April 2024—

Ilya returned to Boston feeling like a freshly washed shirt that had been vigorously flapped up and down to rid it of wrinkles, and then pinned over a clothesline to dry in the sun. Rinsed clean, shaken, aired out.

Upon arriving home, Ilya went into various rooms only to stare vaguely at the walls and then retreated to do the same in other rooms. He sat and tried to watch TV. He went and opened the fridge to look at the eggs and butter and many bottles of Gatorade. He went up to his bedroom and looked at his unpacked suitcase.

He’d left his brain in Hollander’s condo.

Ilya abruptly realized he did not want to be alone in his too-big house. He sent a text and then got into one of his cars.

“What’s your mood like?” Sveta said as she let him into her apartment. “I wanted to go dancing.”

“Then we’ll go dancing,” Ilya said.

He trailed her into the unit, past her well-stocked bar cart with all of its spindly glassware, past the abstract art on the walls, and into her bedroom where she was in the process of doing her makeup.

Ilya starfished down onto the bed’s confection of pink and white blankets and pillows.

“What’s your team doing now that you’re back in Boston after beating your historic rivals? Do they want to party?”

“They probably did in Montreal,” Ilya mused.

“‘Probably?’ Well, what were you doing?”

“I saw Hollander.”

“So that’s why you’re like this.”

“Like what,” Ilya said, piqued.

He propped himself up on his elbows and watched her brush on a coat of mascara. Sveta glanced at him through the mirror.

“Like an old kitchen sponge. All soggy.”

“I’m not soggy,” Ilya said. “I’m thinking.”

“Oh, then I was right,” Sveta said, closing her tube of mascara with a self-satisfied wrist twist. “He did want to talk to you.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, and flopped back down onto his back.

He found himself smiling up at the ceiling as he listened to her rummage through her little acrylic makeup drawers, the plastic-on-plastic clacking nicely under the getting-ready playlist she had coming from her phone.

“Did you say sorry to him?” she asked after a minute.

“Yes,” Ilya said.

“Did you?” she exclaimed.

Ilya lifted his head again.

“Why are you surprised? I can apologize,” he said, affronted.

“I don’t think you’ve ever once apologized to me.”

“I have!” And when she made an incredulous face, “I have so! When I gave you that black eye!”

“When we were fourteen,” she said.

“Yes! I said sorry a thousand times then! I almost cried!”

“Okay then, you’ve apologized to me for things that you’ve done on accident. It’s a different story for the things you’ve done on purpose.”

“Svetik,” Ilya said, pleading. “I just had one session of spilling my guts, at least give me a week to recover before I have to have another.”

“Fine, fine,” Svetlana said. “I’ll give you a week.”

She was mostly teasing, but still Ilya groaned and put a pillow over his face. He did not want to get into this, not in a week and not ever. She’d always forgiven him without the words, something he’d never asked her to do. It was on her!

“Ask some of your teammates to come, if you’re going to be a head case,” came Svetlana’s muffled orders.

“Marly will come,” Ilya decided, into the pillow. “He just got dumped.”

At the club, Ilya was beginning to rethink the wisdom of his decision. Marleau was obsessed with Sveta in a way that had started out as a joke, but as the years passed, had begun to be limned with sincerity.

They had first met during Ilya’s initial year on the Raiders because she had moved to Boston. Sveta had been with him in Moscow when he’d gotten the call about the trade, and had immediately begun making plans to transfer to a university in Boston. This had been easy enough for her to do, what with her high GPA and ability to pay the tuition in full, and she knew what it looked like when Ilya was on the verge of a breakdown.

There had been many times in the years after his mother and before he went to Canada that Sveta and Sasha had taken turns handling Ilya. Svetlana had been handling him again then, but at that time he was grateful for it. He didn’t know how he would have spent that first year, angry and heartbroken as he was, adrift alone in Boston. But that was when Sveta and Marleau met.

Now they had known each other for years and were more friends than acquaintances. Marleau was dumb and funny and Svetlana was smart and funny, so maybe their senses of humor should not have meshed. But they did. She delighted in being made to laugh and making others laugh. With Marleau these things happened easily, frequently. It was fun when it was the three of them, but that night Marleau was in between women and his act of worshipful infatuation smacked more of truthfulness than it did of humor. Ilya was not sure if Sveta had noticed. Sometimes she could be surprisingly obtuse about men.

“Would you kill me…” Marleau asked, watching her as she leaned over the bar to talk into the bartender’s ear.

He did not need to finish the question.

“Yes,” Ilya said at once. “Leave her alone. She does not need chlamydia.”

Marleau gasped. “Fuck you, Roz, I’ve never once had an STD.”

Ilya considered that proclamation doubtfully and then waved a hand. It was the principle of the thing, and Cliff Marleau was a whore. Even worse than Ilya, because he had a bad habit of cheating on his girlfriends. At least Ilya did not have girlfriends, and therefore never deluded women into thinking he was exclusive.

Sveta returned then with the drinks. Nothing would come of it, Ilya was pretty sure, though he’d keep his eyes open.

Ilya was only on his second drink of the night when he felt his phone buzz in the back pocket of his jeans. He pulled it out, looked at it, and immediately made a beeline for the exit, forgetting his chaperoning duties.

“Hi,” said Ilya, pushing out the door and out into the cool night.

“Oh. Uh, Hi,” said Shane. He sounded surprised.

“Hi,” said Ilya again.

There was a pause. Ilya rubbed his nose. He didn’t know what else to say and waited to hear why Shane had called.

“Uh,” said Shane eventually. “I didn’t know if you’d pick up.”

“Ah,” Ilya said.

“Like, after that conversation. I just thought maybe you’d go MIA…”

It was not a bad prediction; Shane had known him very well. Ilya felt embarrassed by his past self who had acted in such a way to instill those expectations.

“Rookie year? Yes,” he allowed, and was thankful he was no longer nineteen.

“Right,” Shane said. “Well, I’m glad you answered.”

Ilya thought about Shane thinking about calling and worrying about whether he’d answer. It made his heart prick. But it was true in some sense that he didn’t want to linger on that night any further. They had both said sorry and he wanted to move on.

“You will come over to my house, this time,” Ilya said.

There was silence from the other side of the line. The statement had kind of come out of nowhere and maybe his tone was a little stiff. But Ilya couldn’t take it back and wouldn’t have wanted to even if he could. He wanted Shane in his house.

“After the game?”

“No, Hollander, right now,” Ilya said rolling his eyes. “Start driving.”

“I’m in Anaheim so that might take a while,” Shane said, laughing a little.

Well that explained the late phone call. Ilya had missed the game and would have to watch a replay of it tomorrow. He wondered if the Metros had won.

“But okay,” Shane was saying. “I want to see your house.”

“It’s very big. Too big.” Ilya said, scuffing his shoe on the concrete. “I don’t know why I buy it.”

Actually he did. It was a ‘fuck you’ to his father as well as a way to pretend to himself that he had his shit together.

“Four car garage?”

Ilya blinked. It seemed that Shane would never stop surprising him at how well he listened and remembered.

“Yes,” Ilya said. “Only three cars so far. Space for you.”

“Yeah right,” Shane said. “I’m not driving down there just for you to chirp my car.”

If they lived in some world where Shane would be driving to Boston rather than arriving via team plane, Ilya would certainly be chirping his car.

“Okay, you Uber. Boring.”

“That’s me,” Shane said.

He sounded warm, his tone of voice. Ilya pressed his phone hard against his ear. He could imagine exactly how Shane looked in his hotel room in his post-game comfy clothes, freshly showered.

“Is baby there?”

Shane groaned. “I wish you’d stop calling him that.”

“Fine, Wagner.”

“No, he’s gone to Disneyland.”

Ilya paused and then huffed. “You are trying to make a joke?”

“Yeah. He went out with some of the guys. They wanted fried chicken.”

“Hmm. Not good for Hollander diet.”

“Nope,” Shane said. “You were good with him, I don’t think I told you. Actually, I don’t know why I was surprised.”

Ilya hummed, he didn’t want to interject and stop Shane from complimenting him, but wanted to make sure Shane knew he was listening.

“You always,” Shane paused and sighed. “You always had such an easy time connecting with people.”

“Mm. I like it. New people.”

“Yeah. So I guess, and not to keep bringing it up, but I’ve been thinking about what you said. I didn’t know it meant so much to you, staying with me. You seemed so independent. It didn’t seem like you needed me at all. I was just something interesting for a little bit. I thought.”

Ilya groaned and shoved his phone in between his shoulder and his ear. He needed a fucking cigarette.

“Shane,” he said. “We already say sorry and forgive each other.”

“Sorry,” said Shane. “But I wanted you to know that. I keep thinking about how callous I must have seemed to you, but like, I didn’t know that it actually mattered to you. You know?”

“Yes, you just said.”

“Or maybe I talked myself into believing that it didn’t matter to you, despite that I probably should have known better…”

Shane trailed off, no doubt lost in the whirling spirals of his own thought patterns. Ilya, who’d been fumbling with the lighter, finally got his cigarette lit and inhaled. He blew it out on a heavy breath. He wanted to tell Shane to stop self-flagellating but didn’t know how to say it in English.

“Listen,” he said instead. “I forgive you. Believe me.”

Shane made a noncommittal grumbling noise.

“Shane,” said Ilya, so exasperated and so fond all at once. “Yes, I was very sad. Very angry. But now I am not. I am so happy to be talking to you, I leave club and stand outside in middle of the night. Understand?”

“Okay, okay,” said Shane. He paused and then, sounding like he was finally convinced, “Okay.”

“Okay.”

“So, you’re at a club? It’s late there?”

“Yes,” Ilya said, smiling a little to himself at the clumsy subject change. “I’m with Sveta and Marly. He’s obsessed with her. I’m watching him, but you call and I go outside. He’s probably in there, proposing. Big diamond. Bottle girls bring out with sparklers.”

Shane laughed.

“Oh, for sure? I didn’t know that you were all friends.”

“My mistake, I introduce them first year in Boston.”

“No, I’m sure it’s good. Marly’s a good guy, eh?”

Ilya scoffed. “He’s big slut.”

“Uh,” Shane said. “Well. Maybe I should let you get back in there?”

“Yes,” Ilya sighed. He suddenly wanted very badly to be where Shane was, to be lying next to him and to put his head on his shoulder. Ilya was such a sap, so pathetic. “I want to see you.”

There was rustling on the other side of the line. Shane, getting more comfortable. Ilya took a drag and imagined the black spill of his hair on a white pillowcase. Shane was someone who, despite being so upright and rigid in his day-to-day, looked like the epitome of coziness when he allowed himself to relax. It was tantalizing to imagine him surrounded by clean hotel sheets, lit by the warm glow of a bedside lamp.

“I want to see you too,” Shane said.

His voice was so quiet and soft. Ilya steeled himself. He’d see Shane in less than two weeks. He needed to end this conversation before he said something even worse, even more needful.

“Okay. Shane, I will hang up now,” Ilya said. “Take diamond from Marly.”

Shane laughed. “Yeah. Okay.”

They breathed together for a few moments longer before Ilya made good on his word.

—April 2020—

Ilya blinked awake to the sound of his name being called over and over. He’d been in deep sleep and it took a minute to gather the wherewithal to blink open his eyes. Then he was met with the incongruous image of Shane, in his room, bending over his bed. He had a hand on Ilya’s shoulder.

“Ilya,” Shane was saying. “Are you okay?”

“What are you doing in my room?”

Shane’s face creased in confusion. “Huh? Ilya, wake up. We have morning skate.”

Ilya fumbled a hand out and found his phone on the bedside table. It was well past the time his alarm usually went off. He went into the clock app and saw he’d never set it.

“My alarm,” he said, in English. “I forget.”

“Oh,” Shane said, straightening. “I thought maybe…”

He trailed off and just stared. Ilya put his phone down on his chest and blinked up at Shane. Ilya was so warm and comfortable in his bed. He’d been sleeping so hard. He wished Shane would lie down with him. Shane never came into Ilya’s room, seemed to have some sort of personal boundary about it. A few times he’d hovered by the door and chatted, but that was it.

“Never mind,” Shane said. “We have to go in ten minutes. Get up, okay?”

“Yes,” Ilya said, and heaved his sluggish body up to sitting.

In the car, Ilya squinted out into the bright morning. It felt like the shutters on a different world had been flung wide open, and all the little glimpses Ilya had managed to see peeking through the slats were now on full display. It was all Shane, of course. Shane’s mouth and body and hands and—fuck—his dick…

Last night Ilya’d careened headfirst into sleep, hadn’t even had the time to think about what they’d done, about what had happened. It had felt surreal while it was happening and it felt surreal to remember it now. Ilya squirmed in his seat. How was he supposed to go about life normally when he had all of these visions in his mind’s eye? How was he supposed to function as a normal human being when he knew what Shane Hollander looked like when he sucked cock? It was insane. Ilya’s left leg was jiggling rapidly and he made a concerted effort to stop. He put his hand on his own knee and squeezed.

“Um,” Shane said. “So…”

They went through several traffic lights. Shane did not continue.

“So,” Ilya prompted.

“Well,” Shane said. “Do you, uh, do you regret it?”

Ilya laughed, a loud, shocked sound. But then he realized Shane was deeply serious.

“No,” he said. “No. Not even little bit.”

The car slowed to a stop. Red light. Shane turned to look at Ilya full on. His eyes scanned Ilya’s face carefully, looking for the lie. He didn’t find it, of course. Ilya watched relief sweep openly across Shane’s features. He moved his hand from his own knee to Shane’s.

“I will prove it,” he said. “I will blow you right now.”

Ilya began sliding his hand pointedly upwards. Shane yelped and slapped at him.

“I’m driving!” he exclaimed.

“Fine, when you park at rink.”

The light turned green. Shane hit the gas too hard and they jerked back in their seats.

“Whoa,” Ilya said, a little smug at how affected Shane seemed. “Crazy guy.”

“Sorry,” Shane said. “Just, keep your hands to yourself.”

Ilya put his hand demurely back into his own lap.

“So, you regret it?”

“What?” Shane said. “No way.”

Ilya rested his head back against his seat. It could have been the case that Shane was using the question to take back what he’d said last night, that he’d let Ilya fuck him. Ilya meant to follow through, but not if Shane didn’t want it. But Shane had said ‘no way’ like the very idea of him regretting it was ludicrous.

“Okay,” Ilya said. “Tonight I fuck you. No game tomorrow. Is good timing.”

“Jeez,” Shane said.

When Ilya turned to look at him, the ear that Ilya could see was bright red.

“Yes?” Ilya prompted.

Shane’s jaw worked a little, hesitating. Then he took in a deep breath and squared his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

That night, Ilya let Shane finish his clementine and then pounced on him. Earlier, Shane had taken a long shower, longer than usual, and Ilya could infer pretty well what he’d been up to in there.

Ilya wanted everything; he’d been waiting so long and there was so little time left before the summer.

He smushed Shane down into his giant couch and kissed him. Ilya’s heart was in his throat, still unused to the fact that he was allowed to do this, still feeling like he was getting away with something. Citrus burst across Ilya’s tongue when he pushed into Shane’s mouth. Shane made a surprised sound that quickly careened into a moan. His hands came up to Ilya’s back and began stroking. Ilya fit their hips together and rolled against him.

“I want to fuck you in my bed,” Ilya said, pressing the words down Shane’s neck and up under his jawline.

“God,” Shane gasped. “Okay, okay.”

Somehow, in between kisses, they got upstairs. Ilya then got to see Shane naked in Ilya’s bed. For a moment he just knelt there on the mattress and stared.

“What,” Shane said. “Nothing you haven’t seen before.”

Ilya rolled his eyes. As if this could be comparable in any way to the locker room. Ilya kneed over and settled by Shane’s side. He spread his hand over Shane’s ribs, fitting his fingers in between the bones and pressing. Shane blinked at him, seemingly amenable to Ilya handling him as he liked. Ilya stroked his hand up and thumbed over his nipple. Shane arched into it, just a little bit.

Ilya’s heart was flying, pounding, trying to climb out of his throat and prostrate itself on Shane’s chest. He swallowed hard.

“When was last time you do this?”

“Ages ago,” Shane said. “I like it, though.”

Ilya wanted to know who Shane had deigned to let fuck him in the ass and whether it was another hockey player, but decided the interrogation could happen after they’d both come.

“How do you like it?”

But Shane shook his head.

“No,” Shane said. “Do it how you want it.”

“Okay I’m in charge,” Ilya said, grinning, teasing. He pinched Shane’s nipple meanly between his thumb and pointer finger. “I boss you around.”

Ilya had been mostly kidding around. But Shane’s eyes went hot and he arched again.

Well, okay then.

Shane had not been pretending when he said he liked getting fucked. This became clear the moment Ilya got two fingers up in him and found his prostate. Things went out of control quickly after that. Ilya became one pulsing, desirous organ, his whole body glutted with lust. He’d swallow Shane whole. He’d shove into him and make room for himself. He’d make Shane come until he cried, until he forgot any asshole who’d fucked him prior, until only Ilya was left in his head, in the echos aching in his muscles.

They’d started face to face, but it was too much, seeing Shane’s cracked open expressions of pleasure.

“Flip,” Ilya gasped, pulling out and circling himself viciously. Staving off the orgasm that was leaping in his gut. “Flip.”

Shane, half-senseless and clumsy, flopped over onto his belly.

“Up,” Ilya said, hands gripping into the soft flesh of his hips. “Up for me, come on.”

Shane got his knees under him and then arched so sweetly, offering himself.

“Good,” Ilya said. “Fuck, Shane. That’s good.”

He pushed in. Shane groaned, long and low, rubbing his face into the duvet. Ilya squeezed his eyes shut and gave himself over to it. He was losing his mind. So what. It was too incredible to care.

Ilya fucked him hard. Too hard, maybe, but Shane was red-faced and moaning. He liked it. Ilya felt as big and as powerful as the ocean, surging against him, relentless. Shane was so fucking good, so sweet, so hot, he couldn’t be real. But he was.

“If I kept you,” Ilya said through gritted teeth. “I would not let you go out to bars, pick up. Never.”

If Ilya was in his right mind, he’d know to shut up, to keep his illicit fantasies to himself. But they were spilling out of his mouth, all of these wild, strange things. Shane rolled his forehead from right to left in the blankets.

“I,” Shane gasped. “I w—I wouldn’t.”

“No?”

Ilya reached around and fisted Shane’s dick, which kicked immediately.

“I wouldn’t want to,” Shane said on a groan, coming all across Ilya’s hand, the bedclothes. “If you kept me.”

He was devastating.

“My God, you’ll kill me,” said Ilya, and followed him into orgasm.

There weren’t words to describe how it felt, coming inside Shane Hollander. Ilya pressed him into the mattress and got lost in it, grinding, shaking, his teeth in Shane’s shoulder.

“What did you say, at the end?” Shane asked, after Ilya had left, dealt with the condom in the en-suite bathroom, and returned.

His eyes had been closed, but he blinked them open now. They were swimming, the brown was so warm, the warmest thing Ilya had ever seen. Ilya rolled back onto the bed and, pushing his luck, rubbed his hand into Shane’s sternum. There was a streak of come there.

“You kill me, Hollander,” Ilya said in English. “I am dead.”

Shane, who had been watching Ilya’s hand with a vaguely disgusted look on his face, flicked his eyes up.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, you can’t die. I need you.” There was a pause. “The playoffs are soon.”

“Yes, captain,” Ilya said, and, pushing his luck again, kissed him.



They had perhaps chosen the worst possible time to start fucking. The Metros had cinched their spot in the playoffs and the season was wrapping up. Soon they’d be catapulted into the first-round games. Ilya wondered if Shane might come to his senses and put a stop to things, because Ilya certainly wasn’t going to, no matter how stupid they were being. But Shane didn’t. They devolved into each other, equally ravenous.

The next time they fucked was on the first night of their last roadie. A hotel room, as interchangeable and nebulous as any of the many other rooms they’d stayed in over the season. But this one Ilya would never forget, the one in which he had Shane, face-down, ass-up on his bed.

Shane had his face buried in the towel he’d laid down. At first he’d just been moaning and panting, the noises strung together like pearls on a necklace, one after the other. But now he was saying something. Talking. The words were getting smushed too. The only thing Ilya could catch was ‘you.’

“You…you…”

He couldn’t hear the words in between. Ilya fisted Shane’s silky hair and tugged his head up.

“What,” Ilya said. “You tell me.”

“N—o,” Shane muttered, the single syllable cut into two by a heaving gasp.

Ilya slithered a hand between Shane’s torso and the bed. Found a nipple. Pressed his thumb nail into it. Shane made a sound that was nearly all breath.

“Tell me.”

“—f,” Shane said, and Ilya thought he might get cursed out. But then, “y…if you…kept me…”

“Ah,” Ilya said. The temperature of the room felt like it ratcheted up a couple degrees. “If I’m captain and you’re rookie, yes?”

“Yes,” Shane said. “Yes, yes.”

Ilya pinched him and then dragged his hand back down to palm Shane’s stomach, low, almost at the line of his pubic hair. He pressed his palm in hard and imagined he could feel himself through the thick wall of muscle.

“If you,” Shane continued. “If you kept me…”

“Yes,” Ilya said.

“If you kept me you…could just do this all the time. No matter what. You could take me, fuck me, whenever you wanted.”

The words swirled around Ilya’s brain for a moment before they clicked.

“Fuck,” Ilya said.

Deep in that opaque brain of his, Shane was certifiable. Ilya was obsessed.

“This is what you are thinking, Hollander, on the flight here, checking into hotel room? Me, using you?”

Shane moaned, a sound that was like deep red-violet. Luxurious, smooth, sumptuous. Ilya was going to come too quickly, as usual. But it was too hot to think about: Shane, imagining things like that, liking it, getting off on it. The fact that it was Ilya starring in his fantasies.

“You are my good rookie, yes? Whenever I want.”

“Yeah,” Shane said, shuddering.

“On bench. In locker room. On plane. Everyone sees. Everyone knows how good you are.”

Shane keened, a long, unspooling noise pouring out from his throat. He came.

“That’s good,” Ilya said, bucking into him, unhinged. “Fuck, that’s so good, Shane.”

Ilya came so hard he couldn’t keep upright. He hunched forward, groaning, hips working, nearly insensate.

“I’d be good,” Shane was murmuring when a part of Ilya’s brain came back online. He was flat under Ilya’s body, unmoving, seemingly content to be kept there. “The best. The other rookies you had weren’t as good as me.”

Ilya ground his hips forward. He was too over sensitive for it to be enjoyable but it was basic instinct, wanting more from Shane. Wanting to take whatever he could get.

“You are crazy, Hollander.”

It was delicious. He wanted to know every fucked up fantasy Shane had cobbled together in that brain of his.

Shane made an unhappy sound. Ilya put his nose to the top vertebra of Shane’s spine. Kissed him.

“Okay. Yes. I stop keeping rookies after you because you are best. Keep you instead, every year.”

“Mm,” Shane hummed, the sound so low and rumbling it could have been a purr.

“Was it too weird?” Shane asked the next morning before practice.

He was holding himself very taut. Ilya blinked at him through the bathroom mirror. They had been brushing their teeth in what Ilya had thought was companionable silence. Ilya’s head had been empty. It was too early in the morning for thinking and he’d come all of his brains out the night before anyways.

But Shane, apparently, had been doing plenty of thinking. Ilya had never seen Shane look so self-conscious in private before.

“Weird,” Ilya echoed.

Shane winced and shrugged. Ilya spit in the sink and rinsed his toothbrush before setting it in the glass.

“Yes, weird. But good.” Then, so that Shane wouldn’t wrongly extrapolate, Ilya added, “I liked it.”

Shane stopped sending him glances through the reflection and turned to face Ilya full on. Leveled him with one of his intent, assessing looks. But Ilya was telling the truth, not placating.

“I liked it,” he said again. “It’s hot. You tell more weird sex thoughts.”

Shane’s brow, which had been pulled, loosened and released. The corner of his mouth twitched.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

Shane made to leave the bathroom, but Ilya snagged him. Looped his arms around Shane’s neck and drew him close to rub their cheeks together. He liked when Shane was freshly shaved, his skin was so smooth and perfect.

“Yes,” Ilya said, wheedling.

He put his face into the crook of Shane’s neck and smelled the fancy soap he always brought with him on road trips, the one he kept in his shower at home. Green, citrusy, fresh, and beneath it, just skin.

“No,” Shane said, but he wrapped his arms around Ilya’s low waist and held him.

Ilya would never admit it, but he liked this just as much as he liked everything else. Just a hug, Shane’s strong arms keeping their bodies close.

That was how they ended the season. As close as they’d ever been, and growing closer.

—April 2024—

That year it happened that the Raiders’ last game before the playoffs was on April 16th against the Metros on home ice. It was a high energy game, fun in the way that the games usually stopped being towards the end of the season. In the end, the Metros won it, but Ilya had a good time chirping Pike and J.J. and watching Shane fly deftly around the ice. He was still so sharp. Ilya couldn’t ever imagine him retiring, though logically he knew it would have to happen at some point.

After the cool down, the media scrum, and the showers, Ilya went home and changed into a pair of sweatpants. He chugged a protein shake and then a glass of water. He turned on the TV to watch the highlights and post-game commentary. It would be over an hour before Shane got there. The wait felt interminable.

But then, finally, Shane in Ilya’s front entryway. He toed off his shoes and lined them up neatly on the door mat. Ilya watched. Even his little habits were charming. But maybe that was only because Ilya was such a goner.

“Nice place,” Shane said.

He looked assessing and interested. Maybe even sort of happy. Ilya tilted his head.

“This way.”

He showed him the kitchen, living room, dining room, and study, which was where he played video games and read none of the books in the bookshelves.

“Dostoevsky?” Shane said, leaning forward and peering at the spines. “You like this stuff?”

Ilya shrugged. “Decorator.”

When he’d seen all the English translations of Russian authors, he wondered if he’d been getting pranked and then decided he didn’t care. It wasn’t like he would read any of them anyways, even if they were in Cyrillic.

“You want something to drink?”

“Um, just water, thanks.”

Ilya went back to the kitchen, filled a glass, and set it on the island. He felt awkward and also like he might do something drastic and insane at any moment. His hands were tingling. He hopped up on the counter and kicked his legs, just to have something to do. Shane took the glass and sipped before setting it down.

“So,” Shane said inching closer. “Uh, do you want to talk some more?”

“No.” Ilya absolutely did not want to talk some more.

“Right,” Shane said, smiling a little. “Then, what do you, uh, what do you want?”

His eyes were downturned, watching his fingers fidget and pick at each other. Ilya could have very easily answered. That first year, Shane had relied on Ilya to hold the onus for what they did. Ilya understood that it made Shane feel less like an old creep trying to take advantage if it was Ilya doing the asking and the wanting. But several years had passed and they were more equals now than they’d ever been. Ilya found that he needed to hear Shane answer that question.

“Mm, no. What do you want, Shane?”

Shane laughed softly, almost a sigh. He shook his head and his fingers clasped together tightly. Ilya watched the skin turn white and red from pressure.

“A lot,” he said. “Too much.”

When he turned his eyes up, Ilya saw the truth of it there. They were limpid and wanting, the iris nearly eclipsed by pupil.

Ilya reached out and put his hand on top of Shane’s and tugged. Shane went very easily, as he always did. Ilya pulled him into the splay of his legs and put his other hand under Shane’s chin. Tilted it up.

“Start with one thing,” he said, and he knew exactly what Shane would say.

He was already lowering his face to Shane’s when Shane murmured, “Kiss me.”

Ilya did.

It was bliss to kiss Shane. Ilya had not let himself think about it during the years in Boston, and so of course had accidentally thought about it many times over. But he never expected he’d get to do it again.

Shane’s lips, his tongue and teeth. Shane’s hands sliding up Ilya’s chest and around the back of his neck, pulling him down. Shane pressing up, his hips against the island, his torso against Ilya’s. It was so much all at once. Ilya got his hands up under Shane’s shirt and rubbed greedily against the smooth skin of his back and then around to to the solid cut of his abdominals. Shane kept surging up onto tip-toes, grasping almost painfully at Ilya’s nape, his hair. Ilya wrapped his legs firmly around Shane’s hips and held him fast. A long groan tumbled out of Shane’s open mouth and into Ilya’s.

Ilya had not forgotten the sounds Shane made when he was slowly going out of his mind, but they were pale in his memory compared to the real thing. Those insistent, guileless noises could drive Ilya half hard to rock in only a matter of moments.

He tore away, gasping, and the protesting moan from Shane made Ilya squeeze his eyes shut until stars burst in the black behind his lids. He wanted him so much, it was all he was, right down to his core.

“Shane,” he said. “Fuck, Shane. Please. Let me fuck you. Please.”

“Yeah,” said Shane, and then suddenly was taking off his shirt in the middle of Ilya’s kitchen. “Yeah, do it.”

Ilya watched, panting, as Shane’s hands moved to his waistband. For a brief moment he entertained the fantasy of bending Shane over a kitchen counter, just like he’d imagined his rookie year. Then he snapped his jaw shut and slid off the counter.

“In my bed,” Ilya said, palming Shane’s cheek and then sliding his hand down to Shane’s neck, his shoulder.

He was real, under Ilya’s hand. Hot skin and muscle and bone. He was here in Ilya’s house, watching Ilya with eyes that held the entire world in them.

“Oh, right,” said Shane, his cheeks flushed, his pants half-unzipped.

Upstairs, clothes off. On the bed, inside of him. Time was going too fast, dizzyingly fast. Ilya kept bringing both of them to the brink and then stopping. He didn’t want it to end. He’d only just gotten him back. He would fuck him forever, keep him like this forever, watching the red blush spilling further and further across his skin. Everything made sense again, now that he had Shane under him like this.

Shane had given up begging a minute or two ago and was just breathing in great, whoops of breath, a keen sometimes eking its way in between the end of one breath before it became another. His eyes were closed. His face was wet with tears and fuck-sweat. But if his muscles hadn’t been bunched with tension, he would have looked almost serene. His expression was beatific.

Ilya flattened down, pressing their slick skin together, and put his lips to the corner of Shane’s.

“You are so good, Shane,” he said.

Shane hummed, rolled his hips just once, and then spasmed. He was coming. Ilya felt it around his dick and bit his lip hard against the urge to close his eyes and ride into that gorgeous clutching. He stayed still and deep, watching the orgasm break across Shane’s face. The sweet pull of his brow, the open fall of his mouth, the sound pulled deep from somewhere beneath his sternum.

“Good,” Ilya said, his English abandoning him entirely. “That’s so sweet, you’re so beautiful. I can’t believe it still feels like this. Fucking incredible.”

He pushed up on shaky arms and started to fuck again, his movements mindless now. He didn’t want it to end and yet he was too greedy, feeling Shane come around him had been too good, he was just instinct, driving forward towards release.

Ilya came moments later, shuddering, groaning, Shane’s name on his tongue.

Shane did not like to lay around in mess, but he was too worn out to protest when, afterwards, Ilya scooped him into the curve of Ilya’s body and held him instead of going and getting a wet washcloth. Ilya put his nose against Shane’s nape and breathed, the comedown settling over him like a blanket.

His heart was thumping against Shane’s back, and when he slid his hand up and pressed it to Shane’s left pec, he felt an echoing rhythm, solid and quick.

—April 2020—

On April 15th the Metros were set to play their first game of the playoffs hosted at Washington’s stadium. There were a wide variety of superstitions that hockey players subscribed to and Ilya knew that these would most likely escalate in the playoffs. He did not know which superstitions Shane might latch on to (besides the facial hair, a given for everyone) and was alarmed when he heard the guys joking about Miitka’s no-nut mindfulness meditation plans. It sounded like just the thing Shane might to do himself, and therefore to Ilya.

“You do this?” Ilya had asked him as they’d driven to the airport for the flight out to Washington. “No coming for whole playoffs?”

“No,” Shane said.

“Good,” Ilya said, relieved. “Superstition only for goalie, does not help anyone else. Beard is enough.”

“You just want to keep getting your dick wet.”

Ilya made an affronted noise. As if the things he did with Shane could be reduced to ‘getting his dick wet.’

“I don’t have to,” he sniffed. “You say stop, we stop.”

“No,” Shane said again. “I tried the no jerking off thing my rookie year. Didn’t do shit besides make me more pissed off. And I kept having wet dreams like I was going through puberty. We lost in the third round and I told myself never again.”

Of course Shane had already tried it. At least it had happened before Ilya’s time, although the mental image of Shane coming in his sleep was pretty titilating.

“Besides,” Shane said a little while later, thoughtfully, and mostly to himself. “Even back then I’d already given up enough, for hockey.”

Ilya looked at the side of his face. He thought about all of the regimented aspects of Shane’s life, about the way Ilya’d thought about Shane at the beginning, his life of one million buttons. He thought about how Shane had responded when Ilya had kissed him the first time, how he’d surged for it, how he’d grasped at Ilya, trying to keep him as close as possible.

Ilya bit his lip. He wanted very badly, right at that moment, to reach over and take Shane’s hand from the steering wheel, to hold it in his own. Instead, he clasped his hands together in his lap and made himself look out the window.

It was raining on game day, off and on as the hours ticked down. Ilya was flat on his back in the hotel room listening to the faint tapping of water on the windowpane. It should have been soothing, but the time they had to nap was slipping away and Ilya couldn’t settle. He felt nauseous and frantic, like he’d done one too many lines of shitty coke. His instincts were telling him that comedown was going to be a bitch, despite the fact that it was just adrenaline. Nerves. His own brain chemistry sending out distress signals. He usually didn’t get pre-game jitters, but this was different. These were the playoffs. His first playoff game ever.

In his bed, Ilya went from his back, to his side, to his stomach, and then onto his back again. He tried to move quietly so as not to wake Shane. Apparently he was not successful.

“Settle down,” came Shane’s voice. “You need to sleep.”

“Okay,” Ilya said grimly.

It was impossible. He felt like a live wire, humming with potentiality. From the other bed, Shane groaned and then sat up.

“Sorry,” Ilya said. “I can go to lobby. Let you sleep.”

“No,” Shane said, getting out of bed and then kneeing up onto Ilya’s.

“What,” Ilya said, confused.

Shane’s heavy body came down on top of him, a wonderful, warm weight. Ilya felt the breath leave his lungs in a whoosh.

“Stay still,” Shane said. “Sleep.”

Greedily, Ilya wrapped his arms around Shane’s back. He had never been so happy to be squished in his entire life. The weight was so good. It was Shane everywhere, pressing him down and holding him together. Ilya’s brain latched onto it and smoothed over. Ilya rubbed his hands up and down the soft cotton covering Shane’s back and closed his eyes.

When he was seven years old he got influenza and spiked a high fever. Before the acetaminophen kicked in, he had laid on his little twin bed shivering, body wracked with fever chills. He could not stop shaking and could not fall asleep because of it. His mother had come in and laid on top of him just like this, smushing him down into the mattress so that his shaking was contained and pressed down into something less violent. It had been the most basic form of care, just gravity, weight, and warmth. As it was now.

Both times he was able to fall asleep.


 They knocked out Washington in their first round, despite losses in games four and five. April was quickly swallowed up by the brutal machine that was the playoffs. Ilya felt like when he wasn’t on ice, he was either training or sleeping. Or eating, but he couldn’t seem to keep on weight. He was alternatively bone-tired and wired, swinging between adrenaline spikes and crashes. Once, he nodded off at dinner, and Shane had to shake him awake with a hand on his shoulder.

In the four-day break they had between the first and second rounds, Pike had the team over for a barbecue, ostensibly to celebrate all the April and May birthdays that were shafted to the wayside due to the playoffs, but mostly to celebrate Shane, who was entering his last year of his twenties. So the guys and their families gathered at the Pike residence where they grilled and hung out in the backyard. It was unseasonably warm for the end of April and a sprinkler had been turned on in the grass for the kids to run through.

The team was in a good mood coming off the first-round win, although the energy was mellow. Ilya chatted with some of the younger guys’ girlfriends, most of whom were also experiencing their first playoffs (albeit in a different way), and then got roped into playing capture the flag with the kids. He avoided the beer and punch so that all of his stomach space could be used for food, and ate a lot of everything.

“At least he had it in the afternoon,” Shane said in the car ride back. “Now we can go to sleep at an appropriate time.”

Ilya grunted, his head tipped back against the seat. He’d eaten too many cheeseburgers. But that wasn’t going to stop him from giving Shane his birthday present.

In the kitchen at home, Ilya crowded up against Shane as he filled a glass of water from the sink.

“What do you want, handsy,” Shane said.

Ilya put his lips to the crisp hairline at Shane’s nape and rubbed back and forth. He smelled like sweat and sunscreen and grill smoke. He put his forehead between Shane’s shoulder blades and relaxed his weight, just a little bit. Shane drank his water and put the cup down. Turned in Ilya’s arms.

“Tired?” he asked, adjusting Ilya’s head so now it was in the crook of his neck.

Ilya hummed. His heart felt too full. He loved that Shane held him like this, that he never pushed him away. The playoffs were crazy and though Ilya knew he was adapting, he still felt like a basket-case some of the time. Shane was a lodestone. In training and during games he was intensely focused, pushing the team hard, centering them, urging them to do and be better. But at home when it was just the two of them, he softened and let Ilya cling to him. When Ilya pushed into his space, Shane’s arms always came around him.

“You take shower, lie down. I come give you present.”

“That sounds naughty. I’m too exhausted to get fucked.”

“Blow job,” Ilya said. “Then sleep.”

Shane sighed and rubbed his cheek against Ilya’s curls.

“That would be nice, but you don’t have to.”

“No,” Ilya agreed. “I want to.”

“Okay.”

Then, spread out on his bed. Ilya still couldn’t believe he got to see Shane like this, relaxed and prone in his own bedroom. Shane’s most private space, a place pretty much no one got to see. Ilya’s eyes were too greedy, darting around everywhere on Shane’s body. His face, his neck, his pecs, his hipbones, his dick, still soft. Ilya laid down on top of him and kissed him. Shane always responded so well to kissing. Pliant and willing and luxurious. Always asking for more when they broke apart. His chin upturned, his eyes wet. Everything about him seemed designed purposefully to press every single one of Ilya’s buttons. Ilya had had plenty of sexual encounters, some bad, some good, some average. But with Shane it felt like something else entirely. Even this, just going down on him, had Ilya lit up and vibrating, so desirous he could barely think or breathe.

“Ah, Christ,” Shane whined when he came, hips wrenching, legs kicking.

Ilya groaned and swallowed before pulling off to gnaw at the point of Shane’s left hip bone. He ground his erection into the mattress. He had made Shane do that. Had made him lose control of his impeccable body, had made him feel so good he flailed.

“God,” Shane was saying, his hands plucking at Ilya’s hair, at his nape. “Come up here. You’re crazy. Come up here.”

Ilya obeyed, and let Shane boss him around until he was in the position Shane wanted, cradled against the side of Shane’s body.

“Here,” Shane said and got a spit-slick fist around Ilya’s dick.

Ilya made an involuntary high-pitched sound and fucked into his grip, arms grasping around Shane’s torso. He was so tired and so turned on. He was so obsessed with Shane it made his eyes sting. It was a core truth, Ilya felt, that he’d never stop wanting him, wanting as much as he could get.

Shane kissed his forehead when he came. It was so tender that Ilya could have cried, but instead, he fell asleep.

“Sorry,” Ilya said when he woke up to the sound of Shane’s infernal phone alarm.

He had not ever slept in Shane’s bed before, and Shane was so particular about his sleeping routines. After hooking up, they would always go back to their separate rooms or separate beds. The nap before the initial Washington game had been the first and only time they’d ever slept together.

Shane fumbled with his phone before it went blessedly silent.

“No,” he said, gravel-voiced. “It’s okay. It’s…kinda nice.”

He said the last sentence slowly, as if figuring out his opinion while he spoke.

“Nice?” Ilya confirmed.

Shane nodded, his cheek smushed against his pillow. He was lying on his side, facing Ilya. Well, if given an inch Ilya would take a mile. Ilya wriggled in and kissed him.

“Eugh,” Shane said. “That’s not nice. Morning breath.”

“Yes,” Ilya said. “Nice.”

He kissed him and kissed him until he could feel Shane give himself over to the sensations, and then they were tangling their legs together and rocking.

“Fuck Ilya,” Shane said, his hand fisting in Ilya’s curls. “We have to get up for practice.”

“Then come quick,” Ilya said.

So they did.

The second round against Chicago began promptly on May 1. Within twelve days, the Metros were out of the playoffs. It had been a hard slog, the pendulum swinging back and forth. A win, a loss, a win, a loss. And then more losses until it was over. Shane had borne it grimly. Ilya knew how pissed he was, how disappointed, but he was too much of a professional to show it to the general public. Him and Pike handled most of the media, but Ilya couldn’t escape a few questions either. He tried not to sound bitter and probably failed. It wasn’t like he’d expected to win the Cup his first year, but winning the first round had made him hope more than he’d ever done before.

He had been stupid to do so.

Their playoff dreams were squashed. Ilya’s rookie season with the Metros was over. The summer had come down upon them like a lid over a pot. He would be back in Russia by his birthday.

Chapter End Notes

again, thank you for all of the comments on the last chapter. it's so heartening to hear that you look forward to the updates!

currently reading: emma by jane austen. (obsessed with mr. woodhouse, what an iconic supporting character.) i only have sense and sensibility left after this and then i will have read all of austen!

Chapter 9

Chapter Notes

—May 2020—

Ilya realized with chagrin he was probably the sorest loser on the Metros. But it was different for him. The playoffs ending meant a definitive sentence back to the motherland. The guys would return to their various summer locales with their girlfriends or families to rest and bulk up and Ilya would go back to Moscow and…And what? Try and fail not to fight with Alexei? Try and fail not to fight with his father? Drink too much? Party too much? Try not to regress into the thing he’d been before his year in Canada?

“It’s only a few months,” Shane said uncertainly, watching Ilya throw clothing into a suitcase.

Ilya bent his head and swallowed back any number of bitter retorts. He wished he did not have to go back. He wished his rookie season had not ended. He wished Shane could keep him forever.

Ilya had arrived at the complete one-eighty from where he’d been in the pre-season last year, when he’d resolved to endure his year of being kept. Maybe at the beginning it had felt like enduring, but towards the end not at all. Of course, he still imagined sometimes what it would have been like if he and Shane could have met as equals, just like he still imagined sometimes the reality where he’d been the one keeping Shane. But the reality he’d just lived through had been sweet enough, almost unbelievably so. How much time on the ice had they spent together? How many little quirks had Ilya gotten to learn about him? How many times had he made Shane come? How many times had he gotten to kiss him? Ilya had stopped counting after the first four or five, but regardless of the number, it hadn’t been enough. Even if they’d been doing it since the first week, it wouldn’t have been enough.

“I’ll be downstairs,” Shane said, correctly reading the black mood Ilya was brewing and retreating.

Ilya finished packing seething with bitterness. But then, when he went downstairs and saw Shane on the sofa, all of his asperity drained away. Ilya went up to him and took the laptop from his lap and put it on the coffee table.

“All packed?” Shane asked.

Ilya arranged Shane’s legs so they were straightened out and a little spread, and then laid down in between them, putting his face against Shane’s stomach. Shane’s hands came up to hold him just as they always did. One in his hair and one flat against his shoulder blade.

“Hey, bud,” Shane said, patting him. “You’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” Ilya agreed, though he couldn’t hide the moroseness from his tone.

He just wanted to sulk, and Shane was as content as ever to be quiet. For a long while they laid there, Ilya listening to the laugh track of the sitcom that was on TV and Shane rubbing his fingertips against Ilya’s scalp, against his t-shirt.

“Thank you for keeping me,” Ilya said a little while later.

“Oh,” said Shane. “No, don’t thank me for that.”

“Fine, I take back. No thank you.”

Shane huffed, the movement rocking Ilya’s head a little.

“I meant,” Shane said, emphasizing the word with a tug on Ilya’s curls. “There’s nothing to thank me for. I think this was the happiest season of my career.”

And Ilya, despite his moping, found himself smiling into the fabric of Shane’s hoodie.

Shane drove him to the airport a few hours later. Ilya sat in the passenger seat and rubbed a thumb over the branding on his passport holder, the one Shane had got him for Christmas. That felt like it was ages ago, now. He probably would never be invited for another Hollander Christmas.

They had successfully avoided discussing what might become of their hook ups next season. Ilya was glad to not talk about it. He would do anything to avoid the case in which Shane said he wanted it to be over. It was a logical breaking off point, after all. But Ilya was nursing private delusions of grandeur. He was determined that, when he was back in Montreal for his second season, he’d try and start things again. Shane had been easy for him once they’d begun. Ilya could only hope a few months wouldn’t change that fact.

He was grateful that the drop-off line at the airport was public so he couldn’t start crying. Shane helped him pull his two giant suitcases from the trunk and stack his two duffle bags on top. Then they stood, facing each other, by the back of Shane’s car. Around them was the frenetic movement of people and traffic, the sounds of planes taking off and landing in the distance. Shane’s face had taken on its usual public-facing mask of politeness, and Ilya tried hard to mimic him. He could compartmentalize. He could be normal. It was only a few months, as Shane had said.

Shane stuck out his hand and Ilya took it immediately. But he didn’t shake, he just held it firmly. Shane squeezed back.

“It was a great season,” Shane said. “Have a safe flight, okay?”

Ilya nodded. There was too much that could be said, and none of it appropriate for the departures lane at YUL. Maybe he could say some of it next season. Or the season after that. There was no rush.

“Okay cap,” Ilya said.

And that was that. 


He spent the first week in Russia acclimating to the time change and scrambling to find a short term apartment rental. He had thought he’d spend the summer at home, but within the first twenty-four hours Ilya realized it was unbearable. True, Alexei had not lived at home for years, but there was still his father, his stepmother, and too many memories of Irina.

Ilya did not give his father an opportunity to comment on his new housing plans. He found a place that came furnished, paid a deposit, and moved in all while his father was at work. His stepmother had come in the door when Ilya had been leaving with his last suitcase. If she could have raised her eyebrows, she would have.

“Leaving so soon?” she said.

“I’ll be out of your hair now,” Ilya told her, and did not wait around to hear her reply.

So. He had at least escaped the confines of Grigori’s house, but now he still had to deal with the entirety of the summer. At least Sasha was coming back from Paris for a little while. And of course, there would be Svetlana.

“You overpaid,” she announced upon arriving to his sublet.

“I would have paid a million Canadian dollars for this place, if it meant getting away from the other one,” Ilya said.

They circled each other, or rather, Ilya circled Svetlana as she made her inspection of the apartment. They had not seen each other for ten months, the longest time apart they’d ever had in their friendship. She had highlighted her hair with honey gold, but otherwise she looked the same. He wondered if he did, to her. It felt like there was not a single cell in his entire body that was the same as it had been before Canada. He was a little wary, wondering if she’d be able to read it on him, the things he’d gotten up to in the past couple of months.

“I guess it’ll do,” she said, leading him back into the living room and sitting down on the sofa. “It’s just so…sparse.”

Ilya looked around and shrugged. It was all whites and grays, very modern. The opposite of Shane’s condo in every way possible. He didn’t care much what the place looked like; his mind was already jumping ahead in time to next season when he no longer had to live there anymore.

They fell into discussing a few old friends, some new ones of Sveta’s, and the plans they would make with Sasha when, in a couple weeks’ time, he got in from Paris. Sveta liked to have a full calendar and was always saving trendy spots she found on social media to try out. By the time she had to leave to meet up with a few friends from university, Ilya was viewing the next few months with markedly less pessimism.

Sasha came back later in May, and the three of them spent several days drinking and eating too much and catching up on all that they’d missed in the months apart. Ilya was lulled in to a sense of security. Maybe the summer wouldn’t be that bad, after all. Out of his father’s house there was almost nothing to wound or irk him, and he’d created a nice routine of training during the day and meeting Sasha, Sveta, and any variety of their respective friends at night. He had not heard from Shane, who he knew was up at his cottage where he unplugged for at least a few weeks after the season.

One evening towards the end of the month, Sasha and Sveta gathered in Ilya’s apartment to have a drink or two before heading out to try a new restaurant. Ilya was one cocktail in when his phone rang. He was in a good enough mood that, when he saw on caller ID that it was the Metros’ GM, he had no initial sense of foreboding. He answered it blithely, unsuspecting.

By the time Ilya hung up the call, his whole world had tilted on its axis. Ilya had only felt this close to fainting once before and, distantly, was glad he was sitting on the sofa. Surely there was no blood left in his head at all; it felt like all of it had drained away. He heard the GM’s voice echoing in his ears. Platitudes, gratitude, and then the cruel truth.

Sasha and Svetlana were looking at him with twin pairs of giant eyes and tight mouths. His expression must have been horrific, but Ilya couldn’t get a hold of it, couldn’t get a hold of anything anymore. Nothing was making sense.

“Ilyusha,” said Sasha. “What—”

“—They traded me to the fucking Raiders,” Ilya said.

It felt like he wasn’t in his body anymore, like he hadn’t just moved his mouth, hadn’t just spoken. Vaguely, he noticed Sveta and Sasha exchange a look.

“Okay,” said Sveta. “Focus. You are probably going to get a few important phone calls very soon. You will have to answer them and you can’t be angry. You can’t be floating away either. Do you hear me? Just get through the calls and then we’ll deal with the rest of it.”

Ilya found himself focusing on her. Sveta’s tone brokered no room for argument. He found himself nodding.

“Answer that, then,” she said, nodding at his hand.

Ilya looked down and was surprised to see his phone screen lit up with an incoming call. He hadn’t felt it buzzing.

In the hour or so that followed, Ilya became an automaton of professionalism. He took the call from the Raiders’ GM, accepted his words of welcome, and tried his best to seem excited and grateful. He talked to Team Services about the move, finding an apartment, and other logistics. He had no idea what he agreed to; his agent would have to find out for him later. He couldn’t focus on particulars. Inside there was something howling, whimpering, an old dog that had been sent out back, its hunting days done. He tried to shove it back and away, to ignore it, but it was loud, growing louder.

By the time he was done with the Raiders’ front office, the news had broken. There were other trades too, but Ilya’s was the big headline. The Metros had given up their star rookie to Boston. Almost immediately the team chat was pinging, the guys sending their shocked exclamations and well wishes. It was morning in North America, and a lot of players had Google alerts set for trades. Ilya had not gotten through the first five messages when his phone rang again.

“Well, what the fuck?” said Misha when Ilya answered. “We only just got you and now they let the fucking Raiders steal you away?”

Ilya sucked his lips between his teeth and bit down on the insides. Misha’s outrage was gratifying, but it was doing nothing to help soothe his own.

“I just don’t see how it makes any sense,” Misha continued.

“It’s hockey,” Ilya said grimly.

“Fuck,” Misha said. “Well. You’re going to light it up in Boston. I have no doubt.”

“Thanks, Misha,” said Ilya.

“Hey…” Misha said, suddenly hesitant. “Things with Hollzy were fine, yes? At the end?”

Ilya dug his pointer finger into his temple, where there was a headache brewing. Fuck. Hollander. His brain had flew over the matter of Shane like someone running over hot coals, avoiding as much as possible.

“Yes, why?”

“Well. You know. The rookie thing. Sometimes they send the rookie away if things got a little dicey with their keeper. It’s all I could think of, for a reason. Otherwise I’m at a loss.”

Ilya rankled. “Shane wouldn’t do that. Even if he hated my guts. He cares about hockey too much.”

“You’re right. Hollzy is crazy.”

“You didn’t hear anything after I left?” Ilya said, now suddenly doubting his entire rookie season, mind spinning back over the weeks and months, wondering if he’d misread every little thing.

“No, no,” Misha said, and made a regretful sound before continuing. “Ilyu’kha, sorry. I was thinking out loud. I shouldn’t have said that. Forget it. You two were always solid. The whole team knew it. That’s why it’s just so surprising.”

“Yeah okay,” Ilya said.

He felt dizzy again, and sagged down until he was slumped sideways on the sofa.

“Listen, I’ll be in Moscow in two weeks. Let’s meet up and train a little. I want to see you.”

“Yes,” Ilya said. “That sounds good.”

Ilya didn’t even have time to process Misha’s call before another one was coming in.

“Hey, bud, how are you?” It was Hayden Pike, sounding concerned.

“Bad,” Ilya said.

All of the vestiges of professionalism he’d somehow managed to shore up had dissolved with Misha’s phone call. The idea that Shane might have suggested the trade…might have pushed for it…because he hadn’t wanted Ilya anywhere near him or his team for another season…

He couldn’t believe it was possible. But then again, he’d never have believed that he would get traded either.

Nausea welled up in his throat and Ilya swallowed thickly.

“Yeah, I feel you,” said Pike. “I just wanted to call and say that we’ll miss you. I’m not sure…well, obviously I can’t speak for the front office. I guess they think this was the best decision for the team. But yeah. We’ll miss you.”

“You did not know? Did not hear something?”

“No. Honestly I’m shocked. When I saw the article…well. Yeah. I’m glad you picked up. Has Shane reached out?”

“No,” Ilya said. “Did he know?”

Pike paused.

“I’m not sure. In the past they’ve always given him a cursory heads up.”

Ilya felt his heart, which had been teetering on the verge for the past hour, break right then.

“Okay,” he said, defeated. “Goodbye, Pike.”

He hung up and rolled up off the sofa. He would not answer another call. He would not even read Shane’s texts, if they even ever came in. He did not want to know the truth of the matter, whether Shane had known or not. Whether he’d wanted this or not.

It was happening regardless.

“I will blackout now,” Ilya announced.

Sasha nodded from where he’d been sitting at the little dining table and pretending to look at Instagram.

“Okay, well, give me your phone. I’ll keep it until tomorrow.”

From the kitchen came the vigorous sound of ice in a cocktail shaker. Sveta, fixing them all another round of drinks.

Ilya woke up and had no idea where he was. His hip joint was throbbing in pain, same with his shoulder. The floor, then. He blinked open his crusty eyelids and saw he was in a bathroom. It took another moment to remember that it was his bathroom, the one in his sublet. Ilya didn’t bother trying to remember why or how he’d gotten there. A miniature man with a jackhammer was busily drilling holes into his skull. His mouth tasted like a biohazard.

He sat up and gagged, dry-heaving over the toilet. Nothing came up. He crawled over to the sink and turned it on, managed to get up onto his feet and then ducked his head under it, opening his mouth, letting the cool water rinse away some of the foul taste.

Ilya turned the water off and left the bathroom, avoiding his reflection entirely.

In the bedroom, Sasha and Sveta were together in the big bed, as deeply asleep as a pair of puppies. Ilya glowered resentfully at them and went to stand over the left side, where Sasha was. Sasha was a freak of nature and always slept like a corpse when he was coming down off of coke. Ilya shoved him over and then got in, jostling him further into the center. Sasha did not flinch, did not even make a sound. Just kept sleeping with his mouth wide open.

After all of that activity, Ilya had to lay very still for several long minutes for fear he might start retching again. He took in deep, slow breaths and tried to ignore how his mouth tasted.

Sasha was always experimenting with cologne and perfume. He never smelled the same from one day to the next. The one he’d worn yesterday was lingering all over the sheets. It smelled like twigs and sticks. It was better to focus on that smell than anything else, and so Ilya did.

The next time he woke up, the bed was empty and he could hear the sounds of low conversation and dishes clinking coming from the kitchen. He rolled over onto his side and saw his phone on the bedside table. It had been turned off. Probably Sasha’s doing. Ilya turned it on. He had never before received the amount of texts that came in at that moment when the screen lit up.

Ilya grimaced and opened the team chat—the old team chat. He scrolled all the way to the bottom, not reading any of the messages.

Thx for good season, he sent.

Maybe he should try for a joke, something jovial. Or something additionally sincere. He didn’t have the energy for it, or the heart. Ilya clicked on the chat info and left the group.

Next was the new team chat. All of the Raiders had texted in the group by that point, sending along their contact info so he could save them easily. They seemed happy and excited to have him, although his head hurt too much to do anything but skim through the messages.

Thx guys, excited for season, he sent.

After that, he methodically opened and swiped out of all of the other unread messages, just to clear the notifications. He did not read any of them, not even the one from Shane. Knowing himself, he’d return to that one later at least, but for now his aching brain just wanted the little red numbers gone. He went to his missed calls and cleared those too. He wanted to create a reality where the surprise of yesterday had never happened. He was always going to play for the Raiders, was always going to live in Boston. It hadn’t been a shock; it hadn’t hurt so badly. It wasn’t hurting, still.

There were five missed calls from Shane, each about an hour apart. Ilya cleared those too. When his phone had been purged of all unread notifications, he turned it off again and went to see if he could stomach anything to eat.

One day at a time, and he’d get through this summer. That’s what Ilya had told himself on the flight to Moscow. It had been soothing to promise himself this: just make it through the summer and there would be Shane at the end of it.

Perhaps while Ilya had been thinking such things, consoling himself with them, the trade had been being planned. He felt like an idiot, the world’s stupidest man. How could he have been so ignorant, so naive, so blind?

There was nothing for him at the end of these few months, now, besides hockey. This was the new reality of his life. There would not be Shane at all. Not ever again.

—April 2024—

Eventually, Ilya made some cursory attempts to clean up. Shane was limp, going easily where Ilya’s hands pushed and pulled him. A little more out of it than usual.

“Hey,” Ilya said, putting his hand on Shane’s forehead. “Let’s drink something. Water.”

Shane’s eyes were still closed but Ilya felt his brow pull beneath his palm.

“M’tired,” said Shane.

He was too adorable to bear, the pout of his full mouth, its downturned corners. Ilya thumbed his temple, at the fine, dark hair there.

“You want to sleep here?” he asked, not daring to hope.

Sure enough, Shane heaved a sigh and blinked open his eyes.

“No,” he said. “Morning flight. Why is your house so far out in the boonies?”

Ilya did not know what ‘boonies’ were, but he knew what Shane’s chirping voice sounded like.

“Okay,” he said. “You shower, get dressed. I feed you and you leave.”

“Okay,” said Shane.

Downstairs in the kitchen Ilya shoved a couple frozen dinners in the microwave and filled up two glasses with ice water. He brought them into the living room, put everything down on the coffee table, and then turned the TV on to a baseball game. Shane came in a few minutes later, his hair wet and his face all pink from the hot water.

Ilya looked down at his food and tried to get a grip on himself. Everything about Shane was so appealing. It made Ilya feel crazy, the urge to bite tingling behind his teeth.

“Clean?” he said, poking his lasagna and watching the steam rise.

“Yeah,” said Shane, sitting down next to him on the sofa. “Nice shower.”

Ilya nodded. It was a good shower.

They ate efficiently, in companionable silence.

“How was it, by the way?” Shane asked out of nowhere. “The rest of the night with Cliff Marleau and Svetlana?”

“Ah,” Ilya said, setting down his fork and leaning back against the sofa. “Good. Sveta wants to dance so we dance. Marly meets a redhead and leaves us alone. Good ending.”

Shane, who had been taking a sip of water, put his glass back down on the table very carefully, and then was quiet, staring at it.

Ilya, sitting as he was, could only see the back and left side of him, but it was clear that he’d gone tense.

“Shane?”

Shane shook his head, a tight, small movement. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck.”

“Shane, what’s wrong?” Ilya asked, sitting upright, alarmed.

Shane had covered his face with his hands. Ilya tugged on his wrist, trying to see him.

“You’re hurt?” Ilya said, anxiety swooping up from his chest into his throat.

“No. Fuck.”

“Shane, talk to me,” Ilya pled, tugging again at Shane’s wrist.

“I’m so stupid. Fuck. I went about this backwards,” Shane said, muffled into his palms.

“This…” Ilya said, faltering.

He felt as dumb as rocks, had no idea why Shane was acting like this all of a sudden.

“You make me crazy. You make me. Not think.”

“You…” Ilya said. “Regret what we did?”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean…Listen. I…I can’t watch you fuck other people. I hate it. Let’s just forget this happened. As long as we can still talk, that’s enough for me.”

Ilya thumbed Shane’s wrist, back and forth, and parsed through his words. The thick-brained feeling had started to dissipate. In its place, understanding was coalescing, an idea of what Shane might be thinking.

“I do not want to just talk to you,” Ilya said.

“I can’t. I can’t be chill or casual. I can’t, if you and Svetlana are…Ilya, I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”

“Svetlana and I have not fucked for two years.”

Shane dropped his hands and whipped his head to look at Ilya full on. He was frowning, searching for the lie. But it was the complete and honest truth.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Then, you and random women.”

Ilya tried not to be offended. Theirs had been a brief period of monogamy, totally undiscussed and bookended by Ilya’s long parade of flings and one night stands. But Shane should know better…that he was different. That he was everything. What could Ilya want with strangers when there was Shane?

“Rookie year,” Ilya said. “I fucked ‘random women’ because I thought I could not have you. After trade, because I knew I could not.”

“You…oh…”

“I don’t want to fuck random people. I want you.”

If he had been nineteen, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to say those words aloud. He’d have been too cowardly, too avoidant, too uncomfortable with vulnerability. But he was older now, and knew what it was like to spend years without Shane. The words were easier to say than he’d expected.

Shane blinked, his eyes darting to and from Ilya’s face and elsewhere. His lips flattened and pursed, probably unconsciously. He was chewing over what Ilya had said, comparing it to what he’d believed, what he’d thought. Ilya let him process, but gave into the impulse to take Shane’s hand in his and hold it. Shane’s fingers curled instinctually, holding back.

“Well that’s…” Shane said eventually, turning his face down to their hands. “That’s good.”

“I hope so,” Ilya said, smiling in spite of himself.

“Because I liked you, back then. I like you now,” Shane said. “I like you. Too much, probably.”

Ilya felt his body well up with hope and affection and, yes, still some disbelief. Shane was in his early thirties. Even if some commentators had started to hint that his best hockey years were behind him, Shane was still in the prime of his life. He had no business pining after anyone, let alone some Russian asshole whose frontal lobe was only now just on the verge of fully developing…

Ilya thought back to all the embarrassing things he’d done his rookie year in front of Shane. Crying over his father, crying over his mother, being a sore loser, sniping at the coaching staff, his temper, the mood swings, almost outing himself at that bar that one time….needling Shane, badgering him, flirting with him, poking at him until he gave in. Taking and taking and taking. He had been nothing but himself, and that included all of the ugliest parts. And then, afterwards, years of icing him out.

And yet Shane was saying this, that he’d liked him. That he still did.

“Shane,” Ilya said, scooting forwards until he sat on the edge of the sofa, ducking to see Shane’s downturned face.

Shane’s eyes were brimming. “Do you know why I agreed to take on Otto instead of letting one of the other guys keep him?”

“…To help Pike.”

Shane sniffed and shrugged. “Well, partly, yes. But also? Because I thought maybe the house wouldn’t feel so fucking empty if I did. It had been three years and it never got any better.”

Ilya could barely speak, then. His throat was strangled, full to the brim with emotion. Fear, hope, devotion. He wanted to bolt and run for miles. He wanted to pull the heft of Shane’s body down on top of him and lie there, being kept, forever.

“Remember when I said you shouldn’t, with that guy, because it was your career on the line?”

Ilya nodded. That had been the first night he’d kissed him. Shane, so possessive at the bar, and then so yielding once the front door had closed.

“And you said…” Shane prompted.

“It’s also my life,” Ilya said.

“Yeah,” Shane said. “You were right, of course. That season after the trade, I realized it over and over. I thought if there might ever be another chance, I’d listen to what you’d said. I wouldn’t ignore it. Because it was my life too. But I’d been thinking of my career above all else for ten years—more than that, even— and I didn’t know how to change that way of thinking. It scared me, the idea that I could. That I should.”

Ilya stared at the side of his face. That night in the alleyway outside the bar, it had been an honest statement, but one that Ilya had not given much thought to when he’d said it. He had other things on his mind, namely, trying to persuade Shane to fuck him. He never could have expected that such a short sentence from him might’ve left such a large impact on Shane.

“I was such a fucking idiot that summer,” Shane said, leaning, almost collapsing, against the sofa back. “I thought the trade would be good for you. I told myself I was doing the right thing by not fighting it. The smart thing. For your future. For my future, too. A clean break. I thought I had a stupid crush and I’d get over it. But I didn’t. I don’t think it was just a crush at all.”

Shane turned his eyes back up towards Ilya, then, entreating. He was always so honest when it mattered. So brave.

“Do you understand?” Shane said.

“Ah, God,” said Ilya.

His head was spinning so badly he didn’t even know what language he’d just spoken. All of Shane’s words were too much; they were everything he could have ever hoped for, everything that he as a rookie had fantasized about in his most embarrassingly tender fantasies.

Ilya’s arms moved instinctually, one and then the other hooking around Shane’s neck. His left leg followed, slinging over Shane’s lap into a straddle.

“Ilya,” Shane said, his voice a high, quiet thing, almost pulsing on the vowels.

Ilya put his face down in Shane’s neck and breathed. He was so dependable. His clothes still smelled exactly how Ilya remembered, the same detergent. Shane’s hands came up and began stroking down Ilya’s back.

God. Ilya was so scared. So full to bursting. He might love him. He might have loved him the whole time, ever since he had gone down to his knees in Shane’s guest bedroom’s en-suite.

“It is not a crush,” Ilya said. “I understand. Not for me, either.”

Shane was saying his name still, murmuring it again and again against Ilya’s temple.

“It’s our life,” Ilya said.

“Yeah,” said Shane, holding him, keeping him. “If you want.”

And Ilya still, after those several long years apart, had the same feeling as the first time he’d walked into Shane’s condo, the first time he shook Shane’s hand, the first time their eyes met. A feeling of possibility. That here, with this person, he had found a home.

“Yes,” said Ilya.

They bickered over whether Shane should take an Uber or let Ilya drive him. In the end, Ilya won, and got to see how Shane looked in his McLaren.

“This is a little ostentatious,” Shane said.

He would look hot sitting in the passenger seat, if he hadn’t been gripping the the door handle for dear life.

“Sounds like compliment,” Ilya said. “Ooo so sexy, Ilya. Car too.”

Shane ignored Ilya’s high-pitched tone.

“I meant more like, how many orange sports cars are there in the city of Boston? People will probably suspect who’s dropping me off at the hotel at 2am.”

Ilya shrugged. He didn’t care if the entire city knew. He had Shane Hollander in his car, had just had him in his bed, and would hopefully have him in his life for many more weeks, months, years to come.

“This bothers you?”

“No,” Shane said. “I got in, didn’t I?”

Ilya nodded and put his right hand on Shane’s thigh. Shane picked it up and put it back on the steering wheel.

“You’re driving too fast for that,” he said primly, and Ilya grinned helplessly out at the night, enamored.

“I decided that, since it’s my life, I’m not going to care,” Shane said after a few minutes. “I actually, I actually have a lot of plans. Ones that we shouldn’t get into now. But I have them.”

This sounded both ominous and intriguing. Ilya wondered if he might be involved with any of these plans and, if so, how much say he’d have versus how much he’d get bossed around.

“My first plan is for this summer,” Shane said.

“Okay,” Ilya said, expecting to hear something about interval training or a mediation retreat.

But Shane said, “Will you, uh, will you come spend it with me? At my cottage?”

Ilya turned to look at him.

“You mean this?”

“Of course,” Shane said, and then, after they’d stared at each other for a moment, jerked his head towards the windshield. “Hey, focus on driving.”

“You are the one that brings up plans in middle of drive!” Ilya accused.

“Sorry,” Shane said. “I needed to ask, though. I told myself I wasn’t going to let anything go unsaid, not after so long…So yeah. Just think about it, eh?”

“Shane,” Ilya said. “I do not need to think about spending summer with you. Of course I will do this. For as long as you will have me.”

“Oh,” Shane said, and then was quiet for a long minute.

Ilya snuck a glance in his direction and saw that he was smiling.

“Well,” Shane said eventually. “How long do you need to be in Russia?”

They spent the rest of the drive planning. Ilya had largely forgotten what it felt like to have Shane’s problem-solving brain in his court, on his side. It was wonderful. The few logistical snags Ilya brought up were steadfastly and logically picked apart until a resolution was found, and then the next thing was tackled. It was clear that this idea was not something Shane had just come up with; it was something he’d been thinking about for some time.

By the time they pulled up into the hotel drive, Ilya was so full of anticipation and excitement for the summer that he couldn’t help himself. He leaned over and kissed Shane’s cheek.

“What’s that for?” Shane asked, bringing a hand up and pressing it where Ilya’s lips had just been, as if trying to keep a hold of the sensation.

He was smiling, so sweet and shy, almost glowing with quiet joy. Ilya felt his own mouth mimic it.

“I’m happy,” Ilya said. “I never looked forward to summer. But now I am.”

“It’ll be great,” Shane said.

“After Raiders win again, I’ll have my Cup day out there. You can take selfie with it.”

Shane’s smile was broken in two by an outraged squawk.

“Fuck you,” he said, reaching out to thump at Ilya’s shoulders with his fists. “Fuck you, who says the Raiders will win anything this year?!”

Ilya laughed and grappled with Shane’s flailing hands.

“I say,” he crowed.

“We’ll see about that,” Shane said, breathing a little heavy.

Ilya had gotten both hands around Shane’s wrists and was holding Shane’s palms flat against Ilya’s chest. Shane blinked at him. The lights from the hotel entrance were dim through the tinted windows, but still enough to catch and glint in Shane’s eyes.

“Fuck,” Shane sighed. “I gotta go.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, giving him a squeeze and then relinquishing him.

Shane closed his eyes briefly and then nodded, as if psyching himself up to leave.

“Okay,” he said. “Bye, Ilya.”

He got out of the car and was just about to shut the door when Ilya called out, “Call me after flight.”

Shane bent down and peered at him.

“Okay. You’ll keep answering?”

Ilya could sense several other questions behind that one. But the answer was all the same, no matter what. When it came to Shane, for Ilya, it was always yes. And so that’s what he told him.

“Yes,” said Ilya.

Shane smiled.

Ilya drove back home with the windows rolled down. It was a little too cold for it, but the rush of the air matched his mood. The swirling heft of it, the refreshing chill. The luscious dark night stretched out in front of him, the pools of orange street lights punctuating the deep blue-black. Spring was here. Trees were budding with new leaves, blooming with pink flowers. Tulips were opening in the Public Garden again. Another season, over. But this year it was different. He had always dreaded the seasons’ endings, the impending summers back in Russia. There had been nothing to look forward to in the summer months, nothing to look forward to after them besides hockey. But there was no dread now.

That summer, and hopefully even after it, there would be Shane again.

Chapter End Notes

thank you for reading! for those who have supported me with your kind comments chapter after chapter, i hope your futures are full of many more stories that you look forward to and enjoy :) and what an honor it's been that you looked forward to mine for the time it took to complete it!

currently reading: sense and sensibility by jane austen. my last one...goal almost achieved! i will say that after reading emma and sas back to back, jane is haunting me. i'm trying to write a new fic and i keep typing out insanely austen-sounding sentences and i'm like...no #myshane simply does not sound like this...jane...pls leave me alone...