Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, past Ilya Rozanov/Original Male Character, Background Shane Hollander/Rose Landry

Characters:

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

Additional Tags:

Outing, Non-Consensual Filming of Sex, leaked sex tape, Past Ilya Rozanov/Original Male Character - Freeform, Set During Episode 4: Rose, Post-Tuna Melt (Heated Rivalry), Pre-Club Scene (Heated Rivalry), Internalised Homophobia, Toxic Masculinity, Mental Health Issues, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Ilya Rozanov is an Asshole, shane hollander is an asshole, Ilya Rozanov Angst, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Slurs, Referenced Homophobic Violence, Suicidal Thoughts, Supportive Cliff Marleau, Canon-Typical Shane Hollander/Rose Landry, Ilya Rozanov Gets Outed, Ilya Rozanov comes out, Tuna Melt is haunting the narrative, Arguments, Paparazzi, unhealthy alcohol use, Hangover, Vomiting

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-28 Updated: 2026-07-31 Words: 17,516 Chapters: 8/12

x-rays

Summary

A video is posted to Twitter showing Ilya Rozanov having sex with a man.

It isn't Shane Hollander.

Notes

I fell into the Heated Rivalry fandom and I can't get up.

I've seen several really good fics where Shane gets outed and I wanted to give Ilya a turn suffering. There will be comfort eventually, but it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Based solely on the show, I haven't read the books.

Huge thanks to my friend Ink for encouraging me with this idea and beta-ing this first chapter!

Chapter 1: break

Ilya was finishing up an evening workout in an ugly hotel gym in Pittsburgh when he heard the message arrive. Since he didn’t particularly want to read yet another article about Hollander and Rose Fucking Landry, he continued with his cool-down, only checking his phone when he was done stretching.

Marleau:

Is this for real?

The text was followed by a link to Twitter. It led to an account whose name was some long string of numbers posting “am i seeing things or is this Rozanov???” accompanied by a video.

The video was grainy and from a bad angle, but it was immediately obvious what it was. Two figures were kissing, their hands roaming over each other’s bodies. Men, both men. The figure against the wall pushed the other to his knees, revealing his face, and –

Yes, it was for real. He remembered this night. Early last season. They had played in Miami, a win but a frustrating one, drawn out into overtime. He left the rink with that frustration itching under his skin, and drinks with the team had done nothing to take the edge off. So he had found another club without them.

Ilya had been looking for someone, yes, but he normally found a girl – didn’t allow himself to show interest in men, no matter how gorgeous. But this man had made his own interest clear, and he had not seemed to recognise Ilya, not as anything more than another warm body in the dark room, so Ilya had let himself pretend that was all he was.

They’d gone to a hotel – not the team’s, it was the stranger’s room. Ilya couldn’t remember his name now – Bob? Rob? Something like that – but he remembered tasting rum against his lips, his hands on a slender, unmuscular body, his fingers running through short, brown hair as he said –

“Keep going. Yes, your mouth is so good. Yeah, da, like that.”

The tinny sound of his voice through the phone speakers echoed with his memory. The taste of bile rose in Ilya’s throat, but he couldn’t look away. The video lasted for almost six minutes and he watched every second, his fingers clenched so tight around his phone that he felt the plastic creak. After five and a half minutes, he had pushed the stranger off, finishing with his own hand as his come spurted across a pale, distinctly flat, chest.

The video cut off there. That wasn’t the reality – Ilya had pulled the guy into the bathroom to clean up and jerked him off there to repay the favour, but that part wouldn’t have been in shot of the camera, would it?

The camera Ilya hadn’t known was there. The camera that the stranger must have set up, intending to bring someone back and film them – film this –

Had he recognised Ilya all along? Was it a set-up from the first look? But the video was over a year old. Why release it now? They could have ruined him at any time they wanted.

At least it hadn’t been Hollander in the video. He was clear of this, him and his perfect movie-star girlfriend. Ilya hated that he was thinking of Shane – of Hollander, Hollander who had run out on him last time they had seen each other and who could never be anything more anyway. And even so, Ilya knew he would see this, and he would be scared, and he – he didn’t want that.

Ilya frowned at his phone, opened his messages. Sent to “Jane”:

Ilya:

There is a video online. Do not worry. You are not in it.

Because if the video made it to Marleau, he would not be the only one. The tweet only had around a hundred retweets, but that was not surprising. Given what it was, many people would not repost – certainly no hockey players, not on official accounts. But that did not mean they did not know, were not talking about it, were not posting links in group chats and sniggering on locker room benches as they crowded around a phone to see.

Ilya knew how he was supposed to respond to a situation like this.

No, that is not me. What, you cannot tell Russians apart?

Denial. Refusal. More than that – if he didn’t want to have slurs jeered at him every game, if he wanted to be able to walk down the street in Moscow again, he was supposed to show disdain, disgust.

Fuck you, you think I am some kind of –?

He thought about it. Thought about a press release with the right edge of offended pride, maybe a Russian-language interview over the next break where he used harsher language, the League turning a blind eye even as the fans whispered about his new reputation as a homophobe. Regaining the support of the worst kind of people, at the price of the respect of anyone with a sense of decency.

No. Ilya would not do that. He flicked across to Marleau’s contact.

Ilya:

Yeah, is me. You are jealous that both women and men suck my dick and no-one sucks yours?

He bit his lip, and tapped ‘send’.

Then he slipped his phone into his pocket, walked into the hotel lobby, pushed through the main doors and stepped out into the night.

#

Shane was in bed reading, the first chance he’d had in a couple of weeks to relax in his own bed after a gruelling string of away games.

Then the name Lily flashed up on his screen, and the peace was instantly broken. He hadn’t spoken to Ilya since that day at his house in Boston. He was meant to be with Rose now. Rose who was funny, and beautiful, and exactly the kind of person everyone thought he should be with.

Shane knew all of this. And still, he opened the message.

Lily:

There is a video online. Do not worry. You are not in it.

Shane’s stomach dropped like he was in freefall, and he hit the ‘call’ button before even thinking about it. He was on his feet, pacing, before Ilya even picked up.

Ilya answered with a sigh. “Hollander. I told you not to worry.”

“What video?” Shane demanded.

“On Twitter. You did not search before calling?”

“What? No, I called as soon as I – please. Tell me what’s in the video.”

Ilya’s voice was thick with bitterness as he said: “My cock getting sucked! What did you think?”

Shane’s blood ran cold.

“But not – you can’t see –?” He couldn’t even bear to say the words.

“Not by you, Hollander. Another man.” Oh. “It was one night thing, I don’t even remember his name.”

Shane stopped in his tracks.

“And you let him film you? Jesus fucking Christ, Rozanov –”

“I’m hanging up now –” Ilya snarled.

“No, wait, gimme a minute.” Shane took a breath, swaying on his feet a little. “Sorry. This is fucked, this is so fucked.”

“I’m aware of this, yes.”

Shane felt awful. Ilya was the one suffering here, and he was being completely useless.

“Is there anything I can do? To help, I mean?”

“How? How could you help?” Ilya demanded. “Do you want to leak gay sex tape too, then they talk about you instead –”

“You know that’s not what I meant, I just wanted –” Shane cut off. “Do you want me to come see you, or anything?”

“You have a game tomorrow, same as me.”

“After that, I mean. I can find a day or two, fly down to Boston.” His coaches might kill him for missing practise, but –

“Hollander, be serious, please.”

Shane, who was being entirely serious, bit his lip.

“Think.” Ilya continued. “They will be watching me. Always, from now on. If they see you anywhere near me…”

It’ll stick to him too. The suspicion, the stigma, the shame. If he gets caught alone with Ilya, it won’t matter if they both have all their clothes on. Just being near him could start a rumour that Shane won’t be able to stop.

The realisation hit Shane hard. He wished he was brave enough to say he would come anyway. Instead, he bit his tongue.

“That’s what I thought,” Ilya said softly. “This does not involve you, Hollander. Stay away.”

“Don’t hang up –” Shane blurted out, the words tearing their way out of him. “Please. Not like this.”

Ilya sighed. “Like what?”

“Like.” Like it’s the last time I’m ever going to talk to you. “Like you’re about to go wrap your car around a lamppost or some other fucking – please. Don’t do anything stupid, Ilya.”

There’s a soft snort of breath down the line.

“I will not do anything stupid.”

The line cut out.

Shane Hollander knows how Ilya Rozanov sounds when he is lying. The lies that he thinks are funny, the lies when he’s too proud to admit someone is better than him, the lies that are an echo of what he thinks he’s supposed to say.

That sounded like the kind of lie that Ilya Rozanov tells because he is too scared to admit the truth.

And Shane, stuck 500 miles away, is absolutely terrified about what that means.

Chapter 2: bleed

Chapter Notes

Do not get used to updates every week - I'm chronically ill, posts happen when they happen - but inspiration has hit and I'm trying to make the most of it.

This chapter gets pretty dark! Please take care of yourselves, and check the new warning tags if you need to.

Ilya hung up on Shane, and immediately put his phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’, ignoring the notifications that were flooding the screen. Then he started walking again, launching off from the street corner where he had huddled his phone to his ear.

Ilya made it less than a hundred meters before he broke into a jog, and then a run. He wanted to sink into the easy rhythm of motion, his pulse thumping in time with his footsteps, mind clear and body full of life. But today, the clarity would not come.

It must be cold out. His breath was fogging the air in front of him, body’s heat billowing out into clouds. It was a clear night in December, close to freezing if not below it. He wasn’t dressed for warmth, but that didn’t matter. He was Russian. He didn’t feel the cold.

It would be early morning in Moscow. Alexei would not be awake yet, sleeping off whatever he had taken the night before. But in a few hours, he would go to work, and if he did not see the news himself, one of his colleagues would tell him. He would call to curse Ilya out, of course, and start telling everyone that he had known for years his brother was a degenerate, but had never dreamed he would stoop so low.

Would he tell their father? It would be cruel to do so, but Alexei could be cruel. Grigori Rozanov did not use the Internet, and the mainstream media would not run the story – not yet, when it was still unproven rumour. But Alexei might tell him, out of spite or some twisted sense of duty.

Ilya could already imagine what his father would say when he called. That Ilya was a disappointment, a disgrace, a shame to his family and his country. That life in America had made him soft, lazy, degenerate. That he was an idiot that didn’t deserve a career, and would not have one much longer.

Nothing Ilya hadn’t heard before, many times. But it might sting more this time, knowing that his father was right.

And after all that, he would tell Ilya to come home. To Russia.

A group of men rounded the corner up ahead, and Ilya’s attention immediately snapped to them. They were rowdy, a little drunk. Not bigger than him, but there were three – no, four of them, and only one of him.

Were they hockey fans? Had any of them seen the video? Had they watched him as he came on another man’s face and felt disgusted, angered, amused?

He considered crossing the road to avoid them – but no, that would draw too much attention. He set his chin and kept running, willing them not to look at him.

One of them laughed, and Ilya did not let himself flinch.

There were many hockey fans in the world. It felt like every person he saw must know by now, must have seen it. Seen him. In truth he knew it was not every one, but it could be any one. Every person he passed had a question mark hanging over them.

At the next intersection, he turned. He did not know where he was, or where he was going, but he took the road that led away from bright lights, away from people.

The street began to seem quieter.

People would be angry at him. They would feel he had kept secrets – which he had, because they had no right to know this – and some would feel like he had lied. They believed that a hockey player who was big and strong and masculine could not want to fuck beautiful men. To them, his existence was a lie. They would want to assert the truth.

Growing up in Russia, there had always been rumours about people beat up for being queer. But since the new laws were passed a few years ago, everything had gotten much, much worse. Hurting a queer was not treated as a crime by the people in power. The police were men like Alexei, like father. If he went to them for help, they would laugh in his face and tell him he deserved it – if they weren’t the ones who came to hurt him in the first place.

He could never go back to Russia without fear. Even if he denied it all, married some woman to hide himself behind, some people would not believe him. Would push him away.

He was supposed to be Russia’s perfect son, and he broke their hearts by being a faggot.

So his choice was to never go back? Never see his father again, never drink at his funeral. Never again visit his mother’s grave. Never go back to his apartment, his family’s house, his first rink, the park where he and Mama used to go…

Ilya crossed another intersection, and the sky abruptly opened up before him. He realised he had reached a river, the road he was running beside turning into a bridge. He continued out over the water, the sound of the wind growing louder as the noise of the city dimmed. Somewhere out above the middle of the river he slowed to a stop and leant against the railing, looking out across the water.

The sky overhead was clear, although only a few stars were visible through the city light pollution. The water below seemed somehow darker than the sky it reflected, only the ripples of waves glinting with the lights of the buildings along the shoreline. For a moment he was home again, looking out over the Moskva as it wound its way through the heart of the city. The ache in his chest felt as old as Russia itself, older than his body could bear.

Then he blinked, and it was not the Moskva any more. It was some stupid American river. The Mississippi, maybe? He did not think that was right, but it was the only American river he knew outside of Boston.

The water lapped below him. His hands gripped the railing, the cold making his fingers ache.

Hollander had told him not to do anything stupid. And Ilya knew – of course he knew – that this looked stupid. Only –

Sometimes Ilya thought he might be cursed. Perhaps it was something passed down in the blood; everyone said he took after his mother. Or perhaps it had happened when he was twelve, and when he reached out to shake his mother’s shoulder and felt only the cold, her ghost had slipped inside to haunt him from that touch on.

He did not think he would live to see a good death – old, in his bed. “Natural causes”, as the Americans said. He had never been able to picture that future in his mind. He would die young – one brief burst of violence, and then it would be over. A hockey accident, or a fast car, or a fight outside a bar.

Or perhaps he would resemble his Mama, one more time. Cold water. Pills. Showing his face in Russia.

It wasn’t that Ilya wanted to go, not really. But sometimes it felt as though it was reaching for him, that death knew his name and called out to beckon him. The deep, black water seemed so inviting. It promised a place where none of his problems could find him. Everything cold and still, and he did not mind the cold so much.

But he could not die in a river he did not know the name of.

He pulled his phone out his pocket, his hand shaking as he dialled Sveta.

She answered immediately.

“Ilyusha,” she said, voice swelling with tenderness.

“You know,” Ilya said in Russian. “Everyone knows, yes? That’s good, I don’t have to explain.”

“Didn’t you get my messages?”

“Too many messages. I didn’t look at my phone. You saw the video?”

“I saw enough,” she said, apologetically. “Where are you?”

“Pittsburgh,” Ilya answered, knowing that she already knew that. Sveta always kept track of his scheduled games, probably better than he did. “How many retweets does the video have?”

“The post was taken down,” Sveta said, “But… people have been reposting. And many are talking about it. There is a hashtag.”

“What is the hashtag?”

“I’m not going to tell you the hashtag,” she snapped. “It’s a stupid hashtag, and if I tell you, you’ll be angry at me, even though I did not create it.”

“Okay.” Ilya paused for a moment. “Is my stupid hashtag trending?”

A few seconds of pause. “… No.”

“Not yet,” Ilya filled in the blank space. “But Russia is not awake yet.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If I could stop it, I would.”

Ilya laughed at that. “Yeah. So would I.”

“Where are you?” Sveta asked again.

Ilya looked down at the water.

“I don’t know where I am.”

“You’re not at the hotel?”

“No. I went out.” He took a breath. “I’m on a bridge.”

“Ilya.” Svetlana’s voice was hard as steel. She only used his name when she was furious or terrified. “Get off the fucking bridge.”

“… Yeah,” he agreed, turning away from the water and beginning to walk back towards the shore. “I should get off the fucking bridge.”

The hand that wasn’t holding the phone drifted to his neck, and he grasped his mother’s cross in his hand as he walked.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t going to…”

“I know,” Sveta said, sounding breathless. “You called me. You call me when you want someone to tell you not to do stupid things.”

“I won’t do anything stupid,” Ilya echoed, for the second time that night.

“You will walk off the bridge, and then you will find a taxi, or call an Uber. And when you are back at the hotel you will text me that you are safe. Yes?”

“Yes.” He took a deep breath. “I’m almost off the bridge.”

“Good.”

“I’m sorry,” Ilya said. Sorry for the bridge, sorry for calling, sorry for their whole fucking friendship – he didn’t know which.

“If you need anything else – anything at all, Ilyusha, call me.”

“Yes,” Ilya agreed, but he wasn’t sure if he believed it.

Sveta sighed a little. “Call yourself a cab. And text me before you fall asleep.”

#

When Ilya walked into the hotel room, he almost walked straight into Marleau.

“Rozy!” There were warm hands on his arms, and it was only then Ilya realised how cold he was. “Fuck, you’re freezing. Where the fuck have you been? It’s like one am.”

“I needed air,” Ilya answered, flatly. He fumbled for his phone in his pocket, and texted Sveta a picture of the hotel bed so she would not worry.

“I’m so sorry, man. This video shit must be a lot to deal with –”

“You told the team, yes? That it is real?”

Marly blinked at him.

“What? No. I didn’t tell anyone.” He paused for a moment, sounding a little hurt as he said: “I wouldn’t spread something like that around, not without talking to you first.”

“Okay.” Ilya didn’t really know how to respond to that. “I will tell them tomorrow, I guess.”

Cliff looked him up and down.

“Listen, Rozy. Are you good, man?”

Ilya didn’t know whether to laugh at that question or scream at the top of his lungs. He didn’t do either. Ilya Rozanov, captain of the Boston Raiders, was always good, man. He brushed off questions like that, or chirped Marly back for even asking.

After a few seconds with nothing to say, Ilya settled for “I need to sleep now.”

“Okay. Goodnight, Rozy.”

Ilya Rozanov lay in a hotel bed staring into the darkness for a long, long time.

Chapter 3: splint

Chapter Notes

Ilya did not know he had fallen asleep until he found himself jolting awake again, ripped back into alertness by some unremembered nightmare. He fumbled for his phone, and found that it was a little before 5am. His entire body felt stiff and aching like he had played a brutal game yesterday, been slammed into the boards a few dozen times, but he hadn’t.

In fact, he had a game tonight.

Sleep had slipped away from him with no sign of returning, so he decided it was as good a time as any to start dealing with the mess that was his notifications. Important contacts first: several missed calls and messages of concern from Sveta, all timestamped before he had called her last night. Many questions and calls from his teammates – mostly like Marly, not sure if it was real. A couple of missed calls from coach – he would be in trouble for not calling back straight away – and a message that he was to talk with Desjourneys before changing for morning skate.

Alexei had called him three times about half an hour ago, apparently paying no heed to time zones in his anger. This was followed by a message that read: “You have ruined us. I hope your faggot whore was worth it.”

Nothing from his father. Not yet.

To his surprise, there was a single message from Jane. It had arrived sometime around 1am, and it read: “If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”

Ilya hesitated on that message longer than any of the others. His fingers hovered over the keyboard for long, agonising moments, wishing he could respond.

But the truth was he didn’t have an answer for Hollander. There was nothing he could do to fix this. And the best thing Ilya could do for Shane was to keep his distance.

Still he stared at the message for several minutes, thinking about answering.

Eventually, he pulled himself away, and found one more important message. His agent, Marilyn, had messaged that he had a phone call with her at 7am sharp, and that he was not to talk to anyone until then, especially not anyone from the team or the League or the press or the public. This was immediately followed with “DO NOT TWEET ANYTHING”.

A couple of hours after that, she had sent him a recommendation list of immigration lawyers in Boston. Ilya knew this was a sensible suggestions and that he should look into some of them, start picking someone who can get him US citizenship at double speed.

Instead he opened Twitter.

Immediately, he checked trending. He was at number 7. He saw the stupid hashtag Sveta had been angry about, and he was angry too, but in a way that felt like someone had dropped a 25 kilo weight on his chest. Could he not have his life ruined without a stupid smug little pun attached? Did he not get to keep even that little trace of dignity?

He opened the fucking hashtag.

Someone said that he should be ashamed of himself. Someone said that he should come out and be a role model. Someone said it must be fake. Someone said that it was no big deal. Someone said he had always been a slut. Someone said it didn’t even look that much like him anyway. Someone said they can’t believe that a gay porn video is trending. Someone said he had been lying to the public for years. Someone said he should never be allowed to play hockey again.

Every tweet felt like a fresh punch on top of an old bruise, the deep pain of damage spreading under the skin. The ones that hurt the worst were those that sounded like his own voice speaking, and there were far too many of them.

He kept scrolling, even as he felt he was drowning in it.

Someone with his face as their profile picture said that the video was hot actually and even if it was fake they were saving it to rewatch later, winky face. Ilya wanted to throw his phone across the room. How dare they feel entitled to watch him, to get off on something he never agreed to share? How could they brag about it online, when they called themselves his fan?

He opened the quote-retweets. About a dozen people had added their own messages. Every single one was agreeing with the sentiment.

Bile rose in his throat.

The next tweet he saw was a repost of the video.

He threw his phone down blindly, lurched to his feet. Staggered into the hotel bathroom. He didn’t retch, but he came closer than he wanted to admit. He splashed his face with water. Looked at himself in the mirror until he started to feel sick again, then stormed back out the bathroom.

Marleau was sat upright on his bed. Shit. It was an hour before his alarm, and Marly normally had to be dragged out of bed even then.

“I woke you,” Ilya said, the words feeling clumsy in his mouth. “Sorry.”

Marly waved him off. “’s fine. I wanted to shower anyway, you done in there?”

Ilya moved out the way, and Marly entered the bathroom without another word. Ilya stared at the door, phone forgotten somewhere behind him, and listened to the water turn on.

He had not thought much before texting Marly. He had known what he needed to say, but not thought about what it would be like after. Impulsive, like he always was. Now there would have to be a conversation, yes? But what kind of conversation…

At the very least, they had spoken twice now, and Marly had not called him anything cruel to his face. That made it one of the better reactions Ilya had experienced in his life. But a terrible voice in Ilya’s soul said that somehow, Marly had misunderstood – that if he had grasped what Ilya was saying, then he would not still be here, acting as though it was just another game day.

All too quickly, the water shut off. Marly came out in a towel, as he always did, and Ilya made a point of turning to face the far wall. He had never bothered before, but this he was painfully aware of – he could not, ever again, be seen to be looking at men’s bodies in locker rooms or showers. No matter how casual the rest of the team was about nudity, he must always be aware of where his eyes might fall, and what it might be taken to mean.

“Roz,” Marly said after a minute. “Listen man…”

Ilya turned his head to face him. Marly was dressed already, T-shirt and sweatpants and wet hair, and a serious expression that looked out-of-place on his face.

“Rozy, if you want to tell me that you never texted me last night, no-one’ll ever hear different from me.”

Ilya blinked. He hadn’t expected that. It was kind, in a way, to offer to “forget.”

It also sounded a little like an ultimatum. Forget, or…?

“Is that what you want to do?” he asked, his tone sounding flat even to his own ears.

Marly met his gaze for a moment. Then he huffed and sat on the end of his own bed, mirroring Ilya.

“What I want,” he said, “is for you to tell me the address of the fuckhead who took that video so that we can go for a visit and teach him why he shouldn’t have fucked with the fucking Raiders.”

Marly punched his fist into his other hand for emphasis, and Ilya… didn’t understand, for a second. Some part of him flinched, expecting the violence to be directed at him, but. It was not.

Something swooped in his chest, like missing a step and finding your foot stepping through air. Hope felt a little like freefall.

“You know he is not living at hockey arena, yes? If you fight him, police will arrest you.”

“Let me worry about that,” Marleau said darkly.

“No, I am worried! How do you think I am going to win another cup with team’s best winger in jail?”

Marly blinked at him, and laughed. The tension in the air relaxed a little, and for the first time that morning Ilya did not feel like he was about to be pulled apart.

“No,” Ilya said after a moment. “No, I do not need you to forget, and no, I do not have address for you to do crimes to this man. No to both these things.”

“Okay,” Cliff answered. “It’s an open offer, though. I mean, going to the tabloids is already shitty, but posting a whole video like that?”

Ilya had half-forgotten for a moment, and it hit him all over again. A roaring noise rose in his ears. He bit the inside of his cheek, because he didn’t trust himself to speak.

“And just so you know, I might not be exactly aware of this kinda stuff, but… you know I don’t give a shit, right?” He gave Ilya a sidelong half-smile. “Like, it’s not exactly news to me that you get laid twice as often as I do.”

“More than twice,” Ilya chirped back. Automatic. Easy.

“Fuck you,” Marly replied.

He wiped his hands on his sweats and got to his feet, and it was clear that the discussion was over.

“Hey Roz. Do you think this hotel will do us a cup of coffee this early?”

#

For the draft, Ilya’s agent had been a man chosen by Grigori; old, Russian, and uninterested in Ilya’s opinion about anything. When his Entry Level Contract was finishing, he had decided to look for alternative representation.

Marilyn was American, in her 50s, and had got him some very good sponsorships in the last five years. Also, her agency’s website had a page which talked about how they “valued diversity of all kinds”, which was as much checking as Ilya had allowed himself in preparation for a day like this one.

He hoped that would be enough.

With Cliff sent in search of coffee for the next half an hour, Ilya answered Marilyn’s call on the first ring.

“Mr Rozanov,” she said, sounding tired. Her last message to him had been at 2am. “This is some mess you’ve found yourself in. Let’s begin.”

She asked him question after question, and he answered them all honestly. Yes, the video was real. No, he didn’t know the name of the other person. No, he had not agreed for it to be posted. No, he had not talked to any other hockey person about any of this, except his hotel roommate.

(Shane, Ilya told himself, didn’t count.)

Marilyn did not give any opinion on the subject matter, only gathered facts. She had always been brusque, to-the-point – Ilya liked that about her. She had not fired him as a client yet, which was good, because no-one else was going to want him now.

“Alright, Mr Rozanov. Tell me,” she said, “what do you want to happen next?”

Ilya looked at the abstract pattern of the hotel room carpet, not sure what to say.

“You are not a fool,” Marilyn continued. “You know roughly what options are on the table. I cannot put this genie back in the bottle for you, but barring that, what is your preferred outcome?”

“I stay in America. Or Canada, maybe,” Ilya answered immediately. “No going back to Russia.”

“Just that? Nothing else?”

Ilya looked up at the ceiling. Mama, pray for me. Time to say it.

“I do not want to lie,” he said, and he did not let his voice crack. “I know I could tell people it is fake, is not me, but – I do not want to do that.”

There is a moment of silence on the line.

“That makes the rest harder, yes?” He laughed a little.

“Difficult is what you pay me for,” Marilyn said. Her voice was completely calm, somehow.

“The League,” he said, urgently. “Can they fire me if I tell truth? If I am off team, I lose visa.”

She made a thoughtful noise.

“Legally, no. They can’t fire you for being gay.”

Ilya swallowed hard. “Bi.”

“They can’t fire you for being bisexual,” Marilyn repeated smoothly, as if it was no big deal. As if he had ever said it out loud before. “But we both know that the MLH will do damn well whatever it wants. The main thing on your side is that you’re worth a lot of money to them. They want you out there performing, selling tickets and jerseys. I’d also recommend that we put together a statement, as soon as possible. If you come out publicly, then it becomes very bad publicity to fire you.”

Ilya made some noise of acknowledgement in the back of his throat, because all that was in his skull was the words come out publicly come out publicly if you come out publicly –

“But you need to be aware that all eyes are going to be on you now, and some of them will be looking for an excuse to get rid of you. I’m sure this is hard for you to deal with, but you cannot let them paint you as a problem. If you break a photographer’s camera, or get a game misconduct, or even miss a damn team breakfast, they are going to say that this is a distraction to the team and they will try to force you out.”

“You are saying that I have to be Hollander?” Ilya asked, the words out before he thought about them.

Marilyn sighed. “Yes, Mr Rozanov. If you can act like Mr Hollander for the next few weeks, it may help save your career.”

Ilya nodded. And then, a moment later: “Okay.”

“But more than anything, I suggest you do whatever you can to stay on the ice, and then do what you do best.” Marilyn took a breath. “Play some hockey. Win some games. Remind the team, and the League, that you are Ilya fucking Rozanov.”

Chapter End Notes

This was meant to be the first 500 words of the next chapter and then it spiralled so much that I had to split the chapter in two. I promise we'll hear from Shane in the next one! 😂

Chapter 4: swelling

Shane was late to morning skate.

After Ilya had hung up on him, he stayed awake for hours turning the situation over and over in his mind, looking for absolutely anything he could do that would help. He hadn’t thought of any. Instead he had thought, over and over again, about how awful Ilya must be feeling, and how fucking scared Shane was for him, and how he had absolutely no right to be feeling any kind of way about it at all.

So he ended up sleeping through his first alarm, and then waking up an hour later when he should have been walking out the door. He scrambled to get dressed and got to the rink almost dead on the scheduled arrival time, which for him was late. Which meant instead of finishing his breakfast right as the other players started arriving, he walked in to a cafeteria which was already full of his teammates, and he could immediately feel eyes on him as he served himself oatmeal with almond milk.

“You get lost on the way to the rink this morning, Capitaine?” J.J. chirped as he sat down. “We were about to send a search party for you.”

Shane chuckled along with the joke. “Yeah, I guess I slept through my alarm.”

“You’ve been online though, right?” asked Comeau, leaning halfway down the table to get Shane’s attention.

Every muscle in Shane’s body tensed like he was bracing for a hit.

“Yeah, sure. A bit.”

“And?” Comeau demanded. “You have to have seen the shit about Rozanov, right? Or should I say Blowzanov.”

He made a lewd gesture, bulging his tongue against the side of his cheek, and several people laughed.

Shane had never felt less like laughing. Blowzanov, fuck. One of those stupid little portmanteaus that Twitter seemed to love. Rozanov had just had the worst night of his life, and the Internet gave it a stupid little name, and tonight someone like Comeau would spit it back at him and laugh just like that.

And Shane couldn’t do anything to stop it.

“It’s gotta feel even better for you than it does for us, watching Rozanov’s whole career go up in flames.”

All of a sudden, everyone started talking at once, in the way that always meant the conversation had started earlier without Shane present.

“Raiders have gotta trade him, right?”

“You really think anyone will take him?”

“I’m telling you, he’ll be sent down to the farm team…”

“Nah, if it goes to waivers, someone’s gotta be desperate enough –”

“– telling you, he’ll be expelled from the League and on the next flight back to Moscow –”

It felt like a nightmare. The room was too hot, and everyone was talking too loud, laughing too loud, as they argued about Ilya being forced out of his team, out of the League, out of America. Shane’s heart was pounding in his chest but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, as his teammates elbowed each other and cracked jokes about a world where Shane never played on the same ice as Ilya Rozanov ever again.

“Later, later, come on guys, let the captain talk!” Comeau laughed. “What do you say, Hollander? It’s gotta be pretty fucking good to be you today.”

All eyes were on him. Everyone in the room was watching him. Every pair of eyeballs was another knife in his flesh, skewering through his limbs and pinning him in place.

“Uh-huh,” he said, vaguely. “But, you know. It’s not like. The greatest?”

Two dozen pairs of eyes stared back blankly. Someone further down the table muttered: “… fuck’s sake…”

“I mean, the Internet stuff?” Shane explained himself. “Like yeah, fuck the Raiders, but I want to beat them on the ice, not cause Rozanov is…”

He trailed off, his mouth too dry to continue.

Drapeau rolled his eyes. “Save it for the press, Hollander.”

“No, I get it,” Comeau said, nodding. “It’s personal, right Hollzy? It’s not enough that Rozanov’s having the worst day of his life right now, you wish you were there to wipe the smirk off his face in person.”

Shane recognised the tone, the way his teammates prompted him when he’d said the wrong thing, reacted too much or too little. It was his cue to fall in line, to laugh along with the guys and mumble something about how Boston wasn’t making it to the play-offs this year.

But the words worst day of his life echoed in Shane’s ears, and he couldn’t fall silent.

“C’mon guys. You can’t tell me someone posted a video like that online and we’re all just fine with it.”

Shane looked around the table. There were a couple of guilty faces, but no-one said anything.

“We’re not fine with it,” Drapeau muttered. “It was fucking disgusting –”

It was clear he didn’t mean the same type of disgust Shane felt.

“Invasion of privacy, yeah,” Hayden said, speaking over whatever Drapeau had been about to add.

“If one of us had a tape like that leaked, I wouldn’t want to think other teams were laughing about it over breakfast,” Shane said.

He could see on the team’s faces that they weren’t with him. He was out of step with the mood of the room, yet again. Hollander the buzzkill, ruining everyone’s good time. But they had fallen silent, and maybe that was enough –

“I think Hollander’s worried he might be next,” Comeau joked, and a stab of fear buried itself in Shane’s heart. He had said too much and they had heard it in his voice, seen it on his face. That it too easily could have been him in that video with Rozanov, the butt of everyone’s joke. That he was –

“Don’t worry,” Comeau said with a lascivious smirk. “If someone posts a tape of Rose Landry on her knees for you, no-one is going to be laughing.”

Shane was on his feet so fast that his chair crashed to the ground behind him. For a moment, the rage burning inside him blotted out all sound. Then everyone was shouting, including him:

“Keep her name out your fucking mouth!”

“Hey, hey! Back off!”

“What the fuck is wrong with –”

“Take a walk, Comeau, get the fuck out of his face. Give us the room, come on!”

Hayden herded the rest of the team out of the room.

“Motherfuck!” Shane kicked at the chair on the floor and it clattered loudly. The last couple of guys out the door jumped at the sound.

“Respirez, ‘ollander. Breathe!” J.J. clapped a hand on Shane’s back. “We’re good here, yes?”

“Yeah,” Shane lied. “I’m good.”

He was shaking from the adrenaline. He took a couple of deep breaths, but his mind was still racing. He didn’t do this. He didn’t lose his cool or let people get under his skin. But today he had, and if anyone figured out the reason why –

“Comeau can be such a fucking asshole.” Hayden shook his head. “That was way out of line, man.”

Shane didn’t know what to say to that. There was a long moment of quiet.

“So,” J.J. said, awkwardly. “Things with Rose are going well, Capitaine?”

Hayden shot him a ‘what the fuck?’ look, and J.J. took a step back, holding his hands in the air defensively.

“I’m just saying!” he said. “I’ve never seen you lose your shit like that before. This girl must be something special to get that kind of reaction!”

Things with Rose were… fine. Last time they saw each other it had been kind of awkward, actually, ‘cause Rose had wanted to hook up and that… hadn’t really worked out.

But Shane couldn’t admit that he had wanted to take a swing at Comeau from the moment he opened his mouth about Rozanov, so he shrugged one shoulder and didn’t really answer. Instead, he reached down to pick up the chair on the floor.

Hayden moved in close to help him, his hand on Shane’s arm.

“Look, man,” he said in a low voice, “I know the paparazzi around you guys must be a lot to deal with. If you need to talk, I can’t promise I’ll get it, but…”

Shane glanced up. J.J. was several steps away, pretending he couldn’t hear even though he obviously could. He’d worried them both, he knew that.

But he couldn’t even begin to explain.

“Maybe you two should come have dinner with me and Jackie sometime?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Shane said non-committally.

The chair was back on its feet again now, and Shane sat in it heavily. He picked up a spoonful of oatmeal and forced himself to swallow it. Eating felt like slow torture right now, but it was game day breakfast, so he would fucking eat.

“Comeau will apologise before practise,” Hayden said, in a voice that said ‘or I will want to know why’. “You two will hash it out, no harm done.”

Shane swallowed.

“He’s gotta know he took it too far.”

J.J. nodded. “Just because she’s famous doesn’t mean he gets to disrespect the captain’s girl.”

Shane scooped up another spoonful of oatmeal.

No-one apologised for how they had all spoken about Rozanov.

After all, why would they?

#

After the call with Marilyn, Ilya went straight to Coach’s room to argue his case. It wasn’t a surprise that Desjourneys suggested that he should sit out the game, maybe the next few games, “until it all blew over”. Ilya was firm, but polite – or at least, he didn’t say “I won you the fucking Cup two years ago and this is how you repay me you fucking traitor?”, which was as close as he could manage. No, it would not be distraction. It was all nothing, reacting would only make it worse. He was first line and team captain, he had to set an example.

“You think you’re going to win games without me?” was another thing he did not let himself say out loud, but he thought that Desjourneys heard it loud and clear regardless. The team’s offence was built around Ilya’s speed and aggression – the rest of the team were good, yes, but no coach wanted to healthy scratch one of the League’s top points-scorers.

“Come to practise, we’ll see how the team react. If it goes well, you can suit up for the game tonight.”

So Ilya just had to convince the team to react well.

He was late for breakfast at that point, so he ate quickly while the rest of the team were on the bus to the practise rink they’d hired for the morning, and then jumped in a cab to catch up to them.

Outside the door to the locker room, Ilya took one moment to catch his breath. He squared his shoulders, and opened the door.

The room went quiet as he walked over to where his jersey was hanging and threw his bag on the bench. No-one jeered or insulted him, but the conversation fell dead. He had never heard the team so quiet.

When he turned around, everyone was watching him. It felt like the arena before the first puck drop, a whole room holding their breath.

“What, I have something on my face?” he asked, faux-brightly. A couple of the guys chuckled. A few more looked away when he tried to make eye contact.

“Okay, yes,” Ilya continued. “The Internet has found very hot video of me getting my dick sucked. You have all seen it. You have questions, things to say? We deal with it here, now.”

The silence in the room deepened. That was not a surprise – Ilya had expected that no-one would want to be the first to speak.

A few of the rookies were glancing nervously at Marly, however, which raised questions. Ilya narrowed his eyes.

“Why are they looking at you? Did you say something to them?”

Marly shrugged broadly.

“Probably ‘cause I told everyone at breakfast that the first person to give you a hard time would be carrying their teeth home in a bag.”

Ilya huffed. “Why do you say this?” He turned to the rest of the team. “I did not tell him to say this. Marly does not fight my battles, if there are teeth in bags I will put them there myself.”

“Whatever you say, cap,” said Marly, with the sharklike smile that struck terror into the hearts of the whole Eastern Conference. Ilya wondered if the other guys had noticed that Marly only ever called him “captain” if he was making some kind of point. Certainly everyone must be aware that he was making one now.

But their exchange back and forth had cut the tension a little, and finally Connors piped up with a question:

“So are you like… gay now, Roz?”

“I enjoy both,” he said, voice as casual as he could make it. “I fuck many beautiful women, you know this. Sometimes also beautiful men.”

He gave the casual one-shoulder it’s no big deal shrug he had perfected at the press table. He was leaning into his accent a little too. Everything that said I am an eccentric devil-may-care European who doesn’t understand your puritanical American culture. American reporters ate that shit up when it came to his more outrageous misbehaviours; hopefully it would work on American hockey players as well.

“You saying you don’t take it up the ass?” Carmichael said, voice sharp with the specific male fear that was only evoked by the idea of being penetrated.

The room held its breath for a moment.

“I’m not a pussy and I do not get fucked like one,” Ilya shot back, and hearing the whole team breathe out was almost worth what it cost him.

“That guy in the video, is he your boyfriend or something?”

Ilya scoffed.

“I do not date,” he said. “We met at club, it was one night thing. I forgot he existed until yesterday.”

“That’s our Rozy!” Dubek said from the far end of the room, just loud enough to carry. People laughed, and Ilya chuckled along with them.

Yes, he wanted to shout, still the same Rozanov. Please believe me.

“You been checking us out in the showers, Rozanov?”

The question was a late check, slamming him into the boards after he thought he was clear. Marly squared his shoulders towards Feller – of course it had been Feller, fucking asshole – who jutted his chin defiantly back at him.

Ilya laughed.

“Ah yes, I pick up supermodel at the club and then the next day I come to rink to stare at you.” His voice was sharp. “Be real, please. I am, uh, playing in better league than you.”

“You mean you’re out of our league?” Connors prompted.

Ilya waved a hand in acknowledgement. “That. I can do much better than ugly hockey players who leave socks on floor.”

He did not let himself think about gorgeous hockey players who modelled in the off-season and folded their clothes before sex.

“Any more questions? Things to say?” Ilya asked, looking around the room. No-one seemed willing to speak up. He smiled, letting a little hint of threat into it. “Okay, conversation over. We do not need to speak any more about this, yes? I am still captain of this team. If you have a problem, there is the door.”

He pointed dramatically across the room, and every head turned to follow where he pointed.

No-one moved. Not even fucking Feller.

“Enough,” Ilya said. “Let’s go play some fucking hockey, da?”

Chapter 5: shock

Near the end of practise, they scrimmaged. Ilya perfectly accepted Marly’s no-look pass, and carried the puck up the ice. As he approached the crease, he was well-positioned to take a shot, with Koslov in goal watching him like a hawk.

Normally, he would have taken the shot, gambled on his own skills over the goalie’s. That’s the Rozanov play.

Instead, he passed to Connors, who knocked it in easily over Koslov’s left shoulder. Connors whooped, and skated up to Ilya for a celebratory fist bump.

Desjourneys, watching from the boards, caught Ilya’s eye and gave him a nod.

He was in.

#

Marly was snoring on the other bed, stupid blackout mask over his eyes as he took his pre-game nap.

Ilya was checking his emails. There were many of them. Most of them got forwarded to Marilyn, if they weren’t already copied to her. The latest message from Marilyn herself told him that only two of his sponsors had dropped him so far, although that was probably not the end of it. She said they had to wait until the dust settled. She said they had been lucky, so far.

This was a lie. Marilyn had strong opinions on morality clauses; she said that if sponsors wanted an athlete who got filmed coming out of clubs at 2am, then they did not get to fire him for what he did in that club at 1:30. Most of his contracts specified that he could only be fired if he was charged with an actual crime.

If he had been another player, squeaky clean and family friendly, with contracts that assumed he would always be that way, then he probably would have been shit out of luck. But brands hired him to be a beautiful mess, and Marilyn made sure they could not abandon him so easily when that mess wasn’t to their liking.

Whatever sponsorship money he had left by the end of this month, it would be Marilyn’s Christmas bonus.

#

No matter where they were, the locker room always felt the same in the minutes before the start of the game. Everyone was dressed and the sticks were taped. Coach had run down tonight’s systems. The sounds of the crowd outside were starting to filter in.

Eyes started to turn to Ilya, and it was only then he remembered, like missing a step on a staircase he walked every day, that he was supposed to say something. He was the captain. He gave the big speech.

Ilya had never planned what he was going to say to the team before a game, didn’t have anything written down. Maybe some captains did, but he had never needed it before. Even when he barely spoke English, what little he knew had been hockey and team and winning.

But now, he looked around the room at men he had known for years, and it felt like every word he had ever known in any language was gone from his head.

He stood up, and the rest of the team turned to listen to him.

“We win this one,” he said.

Perhaps, with luck, it sounded like a boast. In truth, it was more like a plea.

Everyone watched him expectantly for more. He had nothing more to say.

Then:

“We’re winning with one,” Connors repeated.

“We’re winning this one,” Marly echoed.

“We’re winning this one,” several more guys chimed in at once.

And they were all saying it. Not a chant. Perhaps a promise.

That energy carried Ilya down the tunnel and onto the ice, to face the jeering crowd.

#

Sometime in second intermission, Marly shoved his phone under Ilya’s nose.

There was a video of Shane Hollander on the screen. Game day suit – pre-game interviews? Marly tapped play.

“Do you have any comment on the recent rumours surrounding Ilya Rozanov –?” someone off-screen was asking.

“I’m going to cut you off there, of course I can’t comment on another player’s personal life,” Shane said. Good, that was the standard answer, one that their press team’s had all drilled into them.

“– but –” he continued.

Ilya stopped blinking.

“– whoever it is in that video, it’s important to remember that they’re, you know, real people, and they didn’t ask for – uh, that – to be shared all over the Internet. So I hope they’re doing okay.”

That was not on script. The Metros press team would crucify him for that. Hollander was involving himself in a scandal that had nothing to do with him, and that was forbidden. What he said might have been morally upstanding, but it was not required of him to say it, and that made it almost political.

There was nothing press teams – or fans – or the League – hated more than players getting political.

“So… I guess he’s not a total dickhead?” Marly asked.

“He’s a good guy,” Ilya said.

Then, half a beat too late when he remembered himself:

“Shame he is so bad at skating.”

#

The Raiders made their way off the ice, exhausted but glowing with pride. They had won, a 3-0 shut-out that had the Puffins fans howling in rage.

Ilya greeted every one of the Raiders by the tunnel entrance, of course. A nod, the words “good game” on his lips. No hugging, no kissing helmets, no “I love you”s. Most players accepted a fistbump or clasped his hand for a moment, but those who pulled away, he pretended not to see.

He would not forget, though.

Marly was last off the ice besides him. He grabbed Ilya’s arm tight and knocked their helmets together, grinning broadly despite the black eye purpling on his face.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” he said as they made their way out of the arena. “Just like you said, Rozy.”

“You should ice that,” was all Ilya said back. “Coach will want you for press.”

“Marleau! Hurry it up!” came coach’s voice from across the room.

Marly grimaced.

“Duty calls, I guess.”

“Don’t say anything I wouldn’t say,” Ilya quipped back, and Marly let out a sharp bark of laughter.

Desjourneys had circled around the room to them.

“Rozanov, clear out of the locker room for now. We’ll send someone for you when the press is done with.”

Ilya nodded, shucking off his pads and helmet as quickly as he could. He headed through to the gym and took a seat on one of the stationary bikes for a cool-down ride. As he worked up to a moderate speed, he took a few deep breaths.

They had won the game. He had given everything to the ice. But the night was not over. He still had to change back into his suit, spend an hour on a coach, board a red-eye jet back to Boston. Then drive through the city, streets empty at 3am, back to a dark and empty house.

Every muscle ached. But there was nothing to do but keep moving.

Ilya grabbed his phone where it sat on the handlebars and opened his emails to Marilyn. There were already close to a hundred messages between them from the last day.

Agreed, he typed. Announce it whenever you think is best.

He hit send, then turned his phone off.

Ilya turned up the resistance on the bike, and rode until the only sound he could hear was the pounding of his own heart.

#

“Congratulations babe! Good game.”

It hadn’t been. Shane hadn’t been able to keep his focus where it needed to be, and the stress on a close game had only made him feel more scattered as the minutes ticked down. He’d fucked up the power play in second period by hesitating too long on a pass and allowing Colorado’s defence to check him, and compounded that with a breakaway in third period where he had completely missed the shot. The second line scoring spectacularly with four minutes left to go, which had pushed them to a 2-1 victory, didn’t mean Shane deserved any credit for the win.

All he wanted to do was go home, watch back the game, and start making a plan of how he was going to fix this. But he had promised Rose they would hang out, so he forced a smile and hugged her.

“Thanks,” he said, awkwardly. “It wasn’t my best night, but the team really pulled together and put the work in.”

Rose snorted at him.

“Have you just come from the press room?” she teased. “You sound a bit shell-shocked.”

Shane blinked. Right, girlfriend, not journalist. Different expectations.

“Sorry, I’m completely fucking fried right now,” he admitted.

“Aw, baby.” She put a hand on his cheek. “Come home with me, let me take care of you.”

Shane nodded. That did sound nice. Having someone there with him after a game, distracting him from his tendency to obsess over every mistake. Someone to help him relax.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad?

Rose twined their hands together as they made their way to the back entrance.

“You know, if they made me answer press questions right after a two hour workout, I would riot. I’d absolutely lose it on them.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Shane shot back, and Rose laughed. He liked the sound of Rose’s laugh.

They passed a few other Metros players on their way out the building, and Couillard waggled his eyebrows at the two of them behind Rose’s back. Shane ignored him.

He didn’t think Rose had noticed. But when they got in the back of Rose’s car (she had a driver; Shane still found it kind of weird) she turned to him with a serious expression.

“Are the guys giving you a hard time?”

“Ignore them, they’re assholes,” Shane said quickly. Then, after a moment: “I’ve not told them anything about you. Like, they know we’re dating, but I’m not gonna tell them… you know, private stuff.”

Shane’s face was heating up, and he hated that he couldn’t even say the word “sex” in front of his girlfriend. Who admittedly he hadn’t actually had sex with yet, but. They’d come pretty close at least.

“Yeah, no, I wasn’t worried about that.” Rose smiled, the same crooked smile that she’d given him the night they met. “I just thought they might be giving you a hard time about Rozanov?”

Shane wasn’t quite sure what his face did in reaction to those words, but he was pretty sure it was something. He schooled his expression, but he had absolutely no idea how he should be reacting.

“… No?” he said, uncertainly.

“You know, I thought it was a great thing you did, sticking up for his privacy like that,” Rose continued as she scrolled on her phone. “He could really use some people in his corner right now. God, I can’t even imagine. But I was worried that your team might give you shit for it, since he plays for another team and… you know. No-one said anything?”

“Well, I got chewed out by the PR rep for not sticking to my talking points,” Shane joked. “But no-one else mentioned it.”

Technically true, but perhaps not the whole story. Some of the guys had definitely fallen silent when Shane had walked into the locker room. No-one had tried to convince him to go out to celebrate with them. No-one was outright stonewalling him, except maybe Comeau, but he knew the energy had been bad going onto the ice.

His energy had been bad, going onto the ice.

“You know, I don’t think there’s anything to it anyway,” he said.

“Hm?”

“The whole Rozanov thing. It’s probably all a case of mistaken identity, the Internet obsessing over a video of some random guy who just looks kind of like Rozanov.”

The words burst out of him all in a rush.

“Really?” Rose asked. “I saw screenshots, it looked a lot like him.”

“Okay, but they say everyone has a doppelganger out there somewhere, right?” Shane shook his head. “Rozanov isn’t –” He broke off, swallowed. “Everyone says he scores with women all the time.”

“You do know you can like both, right?” Rose was smiling, but Shane immediately felt guilty.

“Yeah, I know, but.” He didn’t have another argument. “I just don’t think that’s Rozanov.”

“Well, I’ve never met the guy, so I guess you’re the one who’d know…” Rose shrugged and looked back at her phone. “Oh, speak of the devil. I guess we’re all gonna find out tomorrow.”

She showed Shane her phone screen. There was a tweet from NBC Sports, promising an exclusive interview with Ilya Rozanov tomorrow at 7pm.

Shane felt a rush of nausea, which was ridiculous. He had known that Ilya would probably need to make a statement at some point. Getting ahead of the story was a sensible idea.

But still. He couldn’t keep having this conversation right now.

He pulled out his own phone, not really paying attention to what he was scrolling through. He needed to get his head in order. Just for a minute, he wasn’t going to be an absent boyfriend, he just –

It was a context thing. He needed to stop thinking about Rozanov, and focus on Rose. He was in a car with his girlfriend, who was beautiful and kind and funny. She was going to come over to his place so he could make her stir fry and they could spend time together. And then after dinner – he should kiss her. More than kiss her. He should show her how much he appreciated her, with his body. Make her feel cared for.

He’d had some great sex after winning games before – no, fuck. Not thinking about Rozanov.

Rose. He was with Rose.

He could do this.

Chapter 6: compound fracture

The next day passed in a blur. Rose leaving early, work-out, practise, tape room, calling his parents – through all of it, half of Shane’s mind was skipping ahead to this moment. To 7pm, his bowl of sweet and sour lentils balanced on his knees as he turned his widescreen TV over to Rozanov’s interview.

It wasn’t like Shane didn’t know what to expect. The crisis management playbook was pretty well established: an interview with a journalist that one of Ilya’s people was friendly with. Pre-approved questions, pre-written answers, pre-recorded segment. Nothing left to chance, no space for anything to go wrong.

Shane didn’t even need to watch, not really. Nothing important would be said. Rozanov would deny everything, stick to whatever story his management team had agreed would sell best to the public, and then it would be over.

And still Shane couldn’t look away from the screen.

He kept the TV on mute until the intro to the section on Rozanov started. Several familiar clips and images flashed up onscreen: Rozanov on-stage at the draft accepting his Raiders jersey, winning his first Rocket Richards in 2013, celebrating with the Raiders with the cup in his hands.

Then the screen cut to an image Shane hadn’t seen before. Grainy video, strange angle, poorly lit. Ilya’s shirt was halfway unbuttoned, and he was looking down at something below the crop of the image with his mouth half-open.

Oh, Shane thought. It’s from the video.

He hadn’t watched it. In all honesty, he’d been avoiding social media for the last few days, wary of encountering it even by accident. And now here it was in front of him.

It wasn’t that Shane had thought he was the only person who had ever seen Ilya Rozanov’s pleasure – of course not. But to see that look on Ilya’s face – the one he knew so intimately, from a thousand hotel rooms and nighttime meet-ups – knowing that there was some other guy on his knees for him, and now everyone knew about it…

Shane feels sick. He puts his bowl down on a coaster, and turns on the volume.

“– allegedly shows Rozanov in an intimate situation with another man. With speculation over his sexuality spreading across the Internet, Rozanov agreed to sit down with me and share his side of the story.”

The image cut to Ilya, sitting in a chair across from the reporter, dressed relatively conservative, in a charcoal-gray blazer over a dress shirt that was almost fully buttoned.

“Mr Rozanov, thank you for taking the time to talk to me today.”

“Please, call me Ilya.” Ilya gave her a charming smile, and Shane’s stomach twisted again, even though he knew that the whole point of this was to make Ilya seem as charming and heterosexual as possible. “It’s lovely to be here with you, Erica.”

“So, Ilya. You’ve had a dramatic few days. How are you doing?”

“I have been playing some great hockey. Team played a shut-out in Pittsburgh yesterday, I scored two points, I am feeling good about our chances. This is what you want to talk about, yes?”

Ilya smiled, and Shane sensed an edge of something else under the breezy joke.

“No, this is not why I am news this week, I know,” Ilya continued. “It can be… loud, when there are stories like this. But being centre of attention is part of the job, yes? I can handle this.”

“So about that video… I know you have something you wanted to say.”

Rozanov shifted a little in his seat. Shane did too. This seemed… fast. Surely they hadn’t flown out to Boston for the interview to be over in two questions?

“This is clearly not how I wanted to say this,” Ilya said, and something in Shane’s mind stuttered. This wasn’t in the script. “But I have thought for a long time about sharing this part of myself with the world, and now that this video has happened, I do not wish to lie.”

What.

“I am bisexual. I have attraction to men as well as women.”

Shane couldn’t hear anything else past the rushing of blood in his ears. Ilya was still onscreen, saying something – something about the video being real, fuck – and Shane was on his feet, his breath coming too fast and –

This was a panic attack. He needed to breathe. He tried to breathe.

Shane sat down on the couch again, doubled over with his head in his hands.

“… not what people expect from me, but I do not do the expected, ever,” Ilya’s voice was saying. “Fans supported me when I was rookie hungry to win. Fans supported me as captain who led them to cup. Now, I hope they will support me as someone being honest about who I am.”

Shane’s head snapped up. The camera lingered on Ilya for a few seconds, his gaze open and calm, looking directly at the audience.

“I am the same person, through all of it. Still the best hockey player in the world, no matter who I love.”

Something in Shane’s chest shifted, as though his heart had come alive behind his breastbone and was trying to escape. He ached for Ilya. He had known Ilya was brave, of course, but this –

He was actually doing it. And even as it terrified him half to death, how could Shane be anything but proud?

“What about your teammates on the Raiders?” Erica prompted. “Are you worried that this announcement will change the dynamics in the room?”

“No,” Ilya said simply. “I have already spoken of this with the team, they were very supportive. Coach offered me time off to deal with Internet problems, but I told him no, is not worth taking time off the ice. I want to focus on playing good hockey.” He grinned. “We played good hockey.”

That smile was confident, almost lazy. Classic Rozanov. But the more Shane watched, the more he could see the tension in Ilya’s neck, the calculated edge to every move he made.

He’s worried, Shane thought. Of course he is.

There was so much at stake here. Ilya’s career, everything he’d worked for, his fucking visa. And suddenly, Shane wished that he was there. That he could pause the interview, pull Ilya to one side and –

Things Shane couldn’t want. To kiss him. To stroke his hair. To tell him he was going to be okay. Fuck, Shane could not want this.

Wanting sex was bad enough, but wanting –

Wanting –

Wishing for –

“Of course, many viewers will be aware of Russia’s controversial 2013 law criminalising discussion of LGBT identities in public. Are you worried about the reaction you’ll face back home?”

“Don’t ask him that,” Shane snapped out loud at the television. Ilya didn’t like talking about Russia. It was something private, painful. If Shane had been there, he would have interrupted, stopped the interview in its tracks.

But Shane wasn’t there. So Ilya spoke.

“I am not a lawyer. I do not know if law will cause problems for me, perhaps I will have to pay fine?” Ilya shrugged, but Shane could see the shadow in his eyes. “But my life is no longer in Russia. I live in America, I play here. I am free to speak my truth. MLH says that anyone can play, and I am lucky to have that support.”

Shane hissed in a breath. Ilya knew just as well as any of them that the League had its ways of punishing players who didn’t conform to the unspoken rules. But here he was, all but daring the League to punish him for coming out and prove themselves hypocrites.

It was playing with fire. When had Ilya ever done anything else?

“You are, as of today, the first openly LGBT player in Major League Hockey,” Erica acknowledged. “What do you think the impact of that will be?”

“I am not here to make big impact,” Ilya said. “I only want to be myself and keep winning games, keep winning cups. But in future… perhaps next player wishing to come out will have less drama, da? And in a few years, perhaps a player can have boyfriend and feel this is normal, no big deal. This is what I hope.”

Shane could picture it. It felt close enough to taste it. It tasted sugar-salt, bittersweet.

“Thank you for sharing your story.”

And it was over.

Shane reached for his phone.

#

Ilya Rozanov was home on a Saturday night, surrounded by paperwork. His brand new immigration lawyer had sent a long list of documents to upload and invasive questions to answer, and Ilya was meticulously going through it, step by step.

He did not want to be doing this. But it meant he did not watch the clock until the interview went live and refresh Twitter waiting to see the slurs. He did not go to a club and punch the first asshole who looked at him sideways. He did not tear his house apart over the creeping paranoia that his cleaning service had hidden a camera somewhere.

He did paperwork.

Before filming that morning, somewhere in between having his face powdered and rehearsing his scripted answers, Marilyn’s assistant had walked him through locking down his phone. All social media removed, notifications off, messages and calls accepted only from the shortlist of a dozen or so numbers he had approved. So when his phone rang, there was not a long list of people it could be.

And still, Ilya stared at the screen reading “Jane” for several seconds before he accepted the call.

For a few seconds, he heard nothing but heavy breathing.

“Holl–” he began.

“Ilya,” Shane said, his voice full of feeling. Then, after a moment: “I saw the interview.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, because he didn’t know what else to say, and even if Shane was about to yell at him, he couldn’t bear to have him hang up.

“I can’t believe you did that.” Shane sucked in another breath. “That was so fucking brave.”

It didn’t feel brave, Ilya thought, but he did not say it.

“It was only talking. You have been interviewed before, yes?” he joked.

Shane huffed out a laugh, which felt like a win. “You know that wasn’t what I meant. Was it okay, though? She seemed nice.”

“Nice enough,” Ilya agreed, not certain where this conversation was heading.

“Were you okay – I mean, did they pressure you about talking about Russia? That’s gonna have consequences, right?”

“It was easier to say now, get out the way.” That was what Marilyn had argued. If any other reporter tried to talk about it, Ilya could say he had already answered that and he had nothing to add.

“You’re not gonna be invited back for the Olympics again after that,” Shane observed, and even though it hurt Ilya’s mouth curved into a smile at how Shane it was, that this was what he cared about.

“I do not think that was likely anyway,” Ilya told him. As soon as the video had dropped, there was no way back onto a Russian national team for him. But it was true enough that the interview would put the final nails in the coffin – disloyalty was the only crime Russia hated worse than queerness. “Maybe next time I will be playing for different team?”

“You’re going for US citizenship?” Shane asked, sharply. “Do you have a lawyer already? I could –”

“I was working on green card paperwork when you called,” Ilya told him. “You know this country has special visa for rich, handsome athlete who wins many awards? I fill out forms, pay many fees, and I am permanent resident before play-offs.”

“Good, good,” Shane said, distractedly.

“Hollander,” Ilya said roughly. “Why are you calling?”

The question hung in the air for several seconds, but Ilya refused to take it back. He was so tired of pretending everything was fine until it fell apart around him. Better to bring everything crashing down himself than wait for the ice to crack under his feet.

“I don’t know,” Shane said.

“You called to make small talk about nice reporters and immigration papers? I think not.”

“I wanted –” Shane broke off, and Ilya heard him swallowing. “I wanted to tell you that I’m proud of you.”

Anger flared in Ilya’s gut at the words. Proud. As though Ilya had earned this.

“Proud of me? The fuck, Hollander?” His rage burnt hot and fast, a match to tinder. “Blyat, fuck off with that bullshit. I do not want you to be proud of me.”

“Oh. Well. Someone should say it.”

Shame flooded Ilya’s cheeks with heat and stabbed him straight in the gut. Did Shane pity him?

The ice was splitting open despite his best efforts, and the water beneath was cold and dark, and the only thing Ilya had to save him was the fire in his chest.

“Not you,” he spat.

“I’m just trying to say that what you did tonight is going to mean a lot to people. It would have meant a lot to me, if I’d seen something like that when I was a kid…”

“Ah yes. I am role model.” Ilya barked a fake laugh. “You are confusing me for you, Hollander. No-one looks up to Rozanov. They want my life, but they do not want to be like me.”

“Uh, yeah actually, they do. And a lot more of them will now.” Hollander’s annoyance was beginning to creep into his voice, the words louder and sharper than before. It sent a thrill of sick excitement down Ilya’s spine: he could still get a reaction. “A whole bunch of queer hockey fans are going to watch that interview and realise they aren’t alone, maybe for the first time ever.”

“Ah yes, I can teach them many life lessons,” Ilya snapped back. “Step one: do not fuck some asshole in Miami who will out you.”

“Okay, well, you did, and then you came out to the whole fucking world, and there are gonna be some consequences –”

“You do not get to talk to me about consequences, Hollander.”

There was dead silence for a second. Two.

“I’m not trying to fight with you,” Shane said, and didn’t that cut right to the bone? “I was trying to be nice.”

“Do not want your nice,” Ilya snarled. “You do not get to do this. You said you were done, so be done.”

“Rozanov,” Shane said. Then: “Il–”

“Do not call again,” Ilya snapped, and hung up.

Ilya was breathing hard. He stared uncomprehending at the table full of papers as the thrill of victory faded.

Around him, his house was silent. Outside the large windows, the world was black. You couldn’t even hear the hum of the traffic out here in the suburbs.

Ilya’s hands began to shake.

He slammed his fists down on the table, and the sound echoed.

“Blyat!”

Ilya stood, ignoring the papers that scattered to the floor, and went to open a bottle of vodka.

Chapter 7: infection

Ilya woke up the next morning half an hour later than he needed to, chugged a bottle of Gatorade, and started throwing clothes on. He pulled his socks on one-handedly while he opened the Boston Bugle app for the day’s traffic news, only to be greeted with a picture of his own face under “Top News Stories”.

It was enough to make him want to crawl back into bed and never move again. But he needed to prove to coach and the team that he wasn’t a liability, so he splashed some cold water on his face, sprayed on twice as much Lynx as normal, and headed out.

There were a crowd of paparazzi at his gate. Not a couple, either – that had happened a few times before, had happened the last few days even – but at least a dozen people, cameras flashing as his car rounded the corner even though the Audi R8 had tinted windows. He had to honk at them several times to get them to clear a path, cursing under his breath and reminding himself all the while that Marilyn would be very angry if he ran over a journalist, even one stupid enough to jump onto the hood of his car.

As he finally made it onto the road, several of the photographers were running for their vehicles to follow him. Apparently he had an escort to the rink. Which meant that his plan of stopping for breakfast at the nearest Dunkin’ drive-through was likely to turn into a fiasco.

Fuck.

The first time he stopped at a red light, he pulled out his phone and texted Marly:

Bring double espresso and breakfast sandwich to practise, I owe you one favor no questions asked.

He threw his phone onto the seat beside him, not bothering to read the response. Either Marly came through for him, or he was going to suffer through this practise with nothing in his stomach but whatever stale protein bar he had left in his locker. He wanted to light up a cigarette, but he knew that coach would be furious if he smelt it on Ilya.

Ilya was fucking furious. Furious with the ever-present Boston traffic, and the stupid asshole photographers who had nothing better to do than follow him around, and with his own past self for getting drunk.

And if he stopped there – if he didn’t think about anything else he was furious about – then maybe he would make it through this practise, and tonight’s game, and every day after that for the rest of his fucking life.

When he – finally – pulled into the practise rink parking lot, he checked his phone.

Marleau:

Big night last night? Can’t say I blame you, that was one hell of an interview.

I’ve got your order, usual spot.

Of course, Marly knew that Ilya only drank espresso when he was hungover. He went into the rink through the side entrance, next to the equipment storage room, where he and Marly sometimes sat when they were avoiding Desjourneys for some reason. Marly handed him a paper bag, and Ilya inhaled the breakfast sandwich at lightning speed.

“You look rough, brother.” Marly clapped him on the back. “How’s trending on Twitter for the second time in a week treating you?”

“I deleted app,” Ilya grunted out around a mouthful of egg, sausage, and bagel.

Marly grinned.

“You know, about that favour?”

Ilya winced, and gestured for him to get it over with.

“My niece texted me for the first time since Thanksgiving to ask if I knew you.”

Ilya paused for a moment between mouthfuls. “She knows we win cup together, yes?”

Marly laughed. “Man, I’m pretty sure yesterday, Rissa didn’t even know what team I was on. But you do one interview, and suddenly you’re her new favourite player!”

There was an obvious chirp there, and it hovered on Ilya’s tongue… but he let it go. Marly shot him a look that made it clear he’d noticed.

“Anyway, think you could manage to sign something for her?”

Ilya narrowed his eyes. Last time he had owed Marly a favour, it had been repaid with a $1000 bottle of whisky. The time before that, he had to let Marly borrow his Ferrari for a day. This was letting him off easy, and they both knew it.

But Ilya was tired down to his bones, and he was rapidly running out of the will to fight. So he shrugged his agreement, and held his hand out demandingly for coffee.

“You couldn’t make your own Dunkin’ run?” Marly asked.

“Got papped.”

“Fuckers,” Marly said, with more venom than Ilya was expecting. “You want to come hang at my place this afternoon?”

“No,” Ilya answered without thinking. Then, after a few seconds of searching for a reason: “Game-day suit is at home.”

Marly didn’t look convinced.

Ilya brushed him off. “I am fine.”

“Yeah, that’s why you smell like a bottle of vodka right now. Do you want coach to kill you?”

Ilya downed the last of his coffee, and grinned at Marleau. “He will not notice. I skate better drunk than the rest of you do sober.”

Marly rolled his eyes.

“C’mon and prove it then.”

When they walked out into the rink, Desjourneys looked furious.

“Rozanov! Marleau! What time do you call this?”

“My fault, coach!” Ilya called back quickly. “I made Marleau get me breakfast. He would be on time otherwise.”

Both Marly and coach seemed to double-take at this. Ilya absorbed the weight of their stares without speaking.

Coach recovered first.

“Marleau, we’re running shooting drills.” He jerked his head to the far end of the ice. “Rozanov, you owe me bag skates. I expect the captain to act better than this.”

“Yes coach, sorry coach,” Ilya said, flatly accepting the punishment.

He hoped he didn’t vomit up his breakfast.

#

Tonight’s game was going to be a challenging one. The Nashville Catfish were currently ranked second in the Western Conference, and their goaltender, Curtis Glover, was one of the best in the League. The Raiders’ main advantage was that Nashville were over two weeks into their current road trip in the north-east, and after that long hotel-hopping their stamina was almost certainly flagging.

The Raiders could break them, if they stayed focused, gave nothing away, and kept up the pressure until the final buzzer. Ilya said as much in his captain’s speech before the game, leaning on strategy as a subject matter when hype was hard to muster.

He followed his own advice. He stayed focused when one of the opposing players shoved him against the boards so hard his teeth rattled and hissed “fag” in his ear. He gave nothing away when an opposing defenceman blatantly tripped him right in front of a ref who had seemingly developed sudden-onset blindness. And he kept up the pressure right into a 1-1 overtime, with fourteen fucking shots on goal.

It didn’t matter. In the end, he wasn’t even on the ice when Nashville’s winger managed to score on a ricochet. Overtime loss.

Ilya followed his team off the ice, feeling scraped out and hollow. There was nothing left inside him but bitter recrimination. He had done his best, and it hadn’t been enough.

Then Desjourneys tapped him for interviews.

This was a punishment too, Ilya understood. He had let coach and team management think that he planned to sweep everything under the rug, then gone behind their back with the interview. The Raiders might have been more initially supportive than MLH central office, but neither liked having their options limited, and Ilya had ensured that they couldn’t get rid of him without facing uncomfortable questions.

Unless he became a problem. Like losing games. Like refusing to give interviews.

Ilya went to face the piranhas without a breath of complaint.

As soon as the reporters were admitted into the locker room, he was surrounded by cameras and microphones.

“Rozanov, tonight the Raiders lost on home ice. Do you blame yourself for that defeat?”

He had expected it, but it still felt like a punch to the throat.

“I know my team gave it their all, but Nashville got the better of us tonight, and sometimes that is the game. Of course as captain I have responsibility to make sure we learn from every loss and come back stronger –”

The same reporter cut him off, apparently unsatisfied with his answer.

“Do you feel that your recent public scandals have been a distraction to the team?”

“No-one is distracted. Nashville are a strong team and we put pressure on them all night. We have had great start to season and I see no reason that does not continue.”

He turned away to a different reporter. He may as well not have bothered.

“Has the atmosphere in the room been negatively impacted by the news of the last few days?”

“The Raiders is my team. I know they support me one hundred percent. That was true last week, it is true now.”

Every word felt like a gargantuan effort. Like he was fresh to the country again, tongue heavy and fumbling with a language he barely recognised from his own mouth.

“Ilya, do you feel the need to apologise to the fans for your recent behaviour?”

He didn’t even know what behaviour they meant – whether it was coming out he was supposed to apologise for, or “only” having a video leaked without his knowledge.

Either way, his answer was the same.

“No. No apologies.”

“Keep it to hockey,” called out Marco, the head of the Raiders’ PR team.

“You’ve said that your team weren’t distracted, but do you feel like your energy has been focused where it should be for this game?”

“I am part of team. Hockey has my full focus, and I put everything on ice tonight.”

Every word he spoke felt like another potential landmine, as though he might open his mouth to give some bland, PR-approved answer and instead say: “How dare you talk to me like this? Do you have any idea what this is like?”

“A fan petition calling for you to be removed as team captain has gathered over ten thousand signatures this week. In light of this, would you consider resigning your C?”

He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. Marco said nothing.

“Coaches pick the captain. If there are problems, they can let me know. I have heard no complaints.”

“As the first LGBT player in the MLH, do you feel that your recent infamy is providing good representation for the community?”

He blinked, trying to think of anything to say that wasn’t “obviously not.”

“Last warning,” said Marco. “Rozanov, you don’t have to answer that.”

But the crowd of reporters were staring expectantly, no-one jumping in with another question.

“… If another player thinks they can do better, they are welcome to try,” he said eventually.

It was almost a joke.

No-one laughed.

“Have any other players in the League spoken to you about your… situation?”

One. The only one that mattered.

“I have not had chance to check messages. Very busy few days. Lot of people want to talk to me.”

“Mr Rozanov.” This reporter shoved his way to the front, a smug gtin on his face. “TMZ is reporting that the leaked video of you was sourced from a pornographic website, where is has been available for almost a year. Do you have any comment?”

His mind went blank. A roar of sound erupted in front of him, but he could not make out the words of the reporters lunging forward or of Marco trying to regain control. His heart was beating fast as rabbit’s, and like prey animal, his muscles coiled to run.

One of his teammates pushed past the crowd, coming towards him. He bolted past them, out of the room.

In a toilet cubicle, Ilya’s knees hit the floor, and he retched until there was nothing left inside.

Chapter 8: prescription

Chapter Notes

Marilyn had the video taken down and the account suspended before Ilya even picked up her call.

Too little, too late.

Marilyn had talked about options, about filing charges, but Ilya had shrugged her off. He didn’t want to think about that. Trials and lawsuits and all of this dragging on for years, forever raked over by the vultures who circled outside his gate –

No. It was taken down. That was enough.

The account had other videos on it. Lots of other videos, TMZ had said. Same set-up – hotel rooms, fixed camera. Different men.

Some videos “appeared to be filmed in the same location as Rozanov’s.”

It hadn’t been about him. Not any of it. He was just one more dupe in a long line of them. An attractive body willing to follow a stranger back to his hotel room, passable as fetish content.

And then some pervert hockey fan had made the connection, and shoved the whole rotten mess of it under a spotlight.

TMZ had framed it like he was a porn star. Marilyn had drafted a statement that the video had been posted “without his knowledge or consent”.

He had made her change the last word to “permission” before posting.

The post had done nothing to calm down the leeches. They had been camped outside Ilya’s house by the dozens. He had hired a security guard to keep watch at his gate, and he hadn’t been anywhere for two days except for practises and last night’s game.

Dallas Longhorns. 4-1. A decisive victory. Ilya had scored a goal and two assists.

It wasn’t enough.

Coach had kept him away from the press again, but it had barely mattered. Nearly all the questions had been about him. He could see his teammates’ frustration as reporter after reporter brought up “recent controversies” and “Rozanov’s scandalous behaviour” instead of asking a damn thing about the fucking hockey.

Then this morning, Marly had texted him. Sharing information from team management about the logistics of their flight tomorrow. Boring, routine. Something that Ilya had done a thousand times. Because it was supposed to be the Captain’s job.

The cracks were starting to show. The only question was how fast it would all crumble into ash.

But Ilya’s despair was rudely interrupted by the doorbell ringing. He dragged himself off the couch to answer it, and was met with Sveta, skin even more sun-kissed than usual after her business trip to LA. She had flown back late yesterday and messaged she was coming over.

“I told you not to come,” he said in Russian. “I am not good company lately.”

“You are never good company,” she answered, with one hand on her hip. “Don’t keep me waiting, Ilyusha. Invite me in.”

He sighed, and held open the door. “Come in, Sveta.”

She immediately made herself at home. As soon as she’d slipped into the silk slippers she kept by his front door, she made her way over to Ilya’s drinks cabinet, while he trailed after her. She rooted through the bottles inside, frowning.

“Where’s your good vodka?” she demanded over her shoulder.

“I ran out,” Ilya told her.

“You knew I was coming! You couldn’t get more?”

“I’ve been busy!” he lied. “And I told you not to come.”

“Hm.”

Sveta had a trick of looking at him as though every thought he’d ever had was written in marker on his forehead. She closed the cabinet without pouring either of them a drink.

“Come.”

She grabbed him by the hand and led him back to the couch.

“Sit.”

She pushed lightly against his chest, and he sat down. Sveta remained standing, towering over him. She regarded him for a few moments. Then:

“This isn’t how you win another Cup, you know.”

“Fuck off,” he said with feeling, letting his head fall back against the back of the sofa. “Were you even watching last night’s game? My numbers are doing great.”

“Your numbers are up, but you were playing like you were daring the Longhorns to put you on a stretcher.”

“It’s hockey.” Ilya waved her off. “I didn’t start any fights. What more do you want from me?”

“For you to make it to the playoffs?”

“Enough!” Ilya snapped, lifting his head to glare at her. “Do you really think I want to talk about hockey right now? It has been a long fucking week, Sveta.”

“Okay.” She sat beside him on the couch, folding up her long legs underneath herself. “Then what do you want to talk about?”

Ilya stared at her, as though looking long enough might summon the words that would make her leave him alone again in the ruins he had made of his life.

“I told you. I’m bad company today.”

“Mm.” Sveta did not move. “Do you remember that night the week before my seventeenth birthday?”

Ilya blinked. “The one where you threw up on my new Nikes?”

The two of them had gone to a rave, fake IDs in their pocket that went completely unasked for. They had both gotten drunk, and Sveta had taken something more, and they had danced in a crowd of sweaty bodies until close to dawn. Then they had began to stumble their way home together, and Sveta had been spectacularly sick all over Ilya’s trousers and the sneakers he’d bought himself for his birthday only a few weeks before. He had never let her forget it.

“Yes,” she said softly. “You remember the rest of that night?”

At one point, Sveta had started screaming, incoherent and curse-filled and inconsolable. Ilya had never known if it was about her father, her mother, or her American boarding school. Maybe it had been all three.

“After I threw up on you, I curled up on the cobbles and told you to go home without me. Do you remember that?”

No. It was very possible it had happened, but that particular detail had been forgotten in the blur of alcohol and adrenaline.

“You told me that being high made me very stupid. Then you picked me up and carried me back home.”

She reached out and put her hand on his. He did not pull away.

“Ilyusha,” she said, softly. “I think perhaps being outed makes you very stupid.”

Ilya’s jaw shook a little, and he clenched it, so tight his teeth ached. Then, all at once, the tension in him drained away. He let out a slow breath, and let himself tip sideways, gracelessly, into Sveta’s lap.

“It’s all fucked,” he murmured against her thighs. “Sveta, I didn’t – I didn’t want any of this to happen. Not any of it.”

“I know,” Sveta said. “I’m sorry.”

Her hand stroked through his hair, nails scratching against his scalp. All at once he was a hundred younger versions of himself: nineteen and about to move across the world, as terrified of leaving as he was of staying; twenty-three and blindingly drunk after the Stanley Cup parade and missing something he didn’t let himself put into words; twelve, furious at the whole world, and yet pressing his face against Sveta’s bony knees as the only thing that still made sense.

This one thing still made sense. And that familiar comfort was what finally brought the tears to his eyes.

“I hate it all,” he gasped.

“I know, Ilyusha.” She kept stroking his hair. “I know.”

#

Sveta was very patient with him. It was probably more than thirty minutes before she began to shift uncomfortably and tap her foot. When she finally patted his arm to signal him to sit up, he grumbled a little but forced himself vertical once more.

She didn’t try to meet his eye, which was a mercy he didn’t deserve. Instead she rose immediately and walked into the kitchen. After a minute or so, she breezed back in and put a glass of cola on the table in front of him.

“I ordered you something deep-fried, it will be here in ten minutes,” she said. “The immigration paperwork is all on the table by the window?”

He nodded without speaking, and she swept off again to go nose about in his business.

Ilya came back to himself slowly. The Coke helped, the cold and the sweetness settling him back into his body. He felt vaguely that he should be embarrassed by what had just happened, but the hot rush of shame failed to come. He felt only fatigue, and a tenderness over his heart like he’d pressed too hard on a bruise.

Ilya texted the security guard to let them know he was expecting a delivery, and only a few minutes later he received the response that they had come through the gate. He answered the door with a smile and a generous tip, accepting a grease-stained paper bag.

The oil-and-salt scent of fast food ignited Ilya’s dormant appetite. The bag proved to contain a fried chicken sandwich, and Ilya tore off the paper and bit into it, still stood at his kitchen counter. Blue cheese dressing oozed between his fingers and dripped onto the marble, and he didn’t care in the slightest.

When Sveta found him, her eyes flickered over the mess he was making and she smiled smug as a cat with cream.

“You’re an animal,” she scolded, without any heat to it. “But your lawyer is passably competent.”

From Sveta, that was high praise indeed.

“You will have a green card by the end of the season. So what is the problem?”

“I will have a green card if I still have a job in hockey,” Ilya pointed out.

Sveta scoffed.

“Do not be a fool. Even if Boston’s GM lost his mind, more than half the League would want you if they got the chance, and at least a dozen teams could even afford you. Okay, perhaps half of those are homophobes, but some are more liberal – and I think more than one would become liberal, if it meant you as their centre. Marilyn will have a list already, I am sure.” She tipped her head. “All of which is unneeded, because Boston would not let you go without a fight. The only chance you lose your visa is if you break your body some way you can’t fix, which is why you need to stop trying to be fucking Superman.”

Ilya jutted his chin out stubbornly.

“Teams don’t matter if the Commissioner suspends me from the League,” he said.

“Crowell is an asshole but not an idiot. Or at least, not that kind, I think.” Sveta shrugged. “If he tries it, you pay your very competent lawyer to sue him into the ground. It will be annoying, yes, but a better use of your money than being snorted up Alexei’s nose.”

Ilya’s face spasmed somehow at that, making who-knew-what face for half a second, and Sveta’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Ilyusha,” she said, with the kind of sweetness that she reserved for deep displeasure, “tell me you are not still sending money to your shithead brother.”

“Okay, I will not tell you.”

“Why?” Sveta demanded, her face a picture of exasperation. “He disowned you! I know you saw the article…”

Alexei had given an interview to a tabloid, calling Ilya a degenerate and a pervert and a weak-willed fool corrupted by Western decadence. Fortunately, it had come out only hours after the TMZ article, so the American press hadn’t bothered to run with the story, but it had circulated widely in Russia.

“Of course I saw it,” Ilya snapped. “Alexei is a hypocrite. If he hates me so much, he can send the money back.”

Sveta folded her arms, staring him down.

It only took a few seconds for Ilya’s resolve to break.

“… It’s my father,” he admitted.

“He would say much the same,” Sveta pointed out. “If…”

“If he wasn’t old, and sick, and confused,” Ilya replied. “On his deathbed, probably, with my money paying for his medications. And perhaps I should hate him, you’re right, but that old man doesn’t even remember why I would, and I can’t – I can’t abandon him.”

Sveta’s gaze softened. She watched him for a moment, until something in Ilya’s chest began to squirm from it.

But he didn’t look away.

“You are a better man than they deserve,” she said, very quietly.

She closed her eyes and held up a hand, thinking.

Then: “Polina.”

Ilya frowned. “Polina did not answer my calls even before.”

“No,” Sveta said, “but she will answer my father’s. He will remind her that she is not yet a widow.”

Social standing was perhaps the only thing that could make Polina pretend to care about his father. But it would work, at least for a month or two. If the Minister asked, it would work.

“You send money to her account,” Sveta continued. “Perhaps she will still send it back, I do not know. But better her than Alexei.”

Ilya fumbled for the downside.

“Your father will know this came from me,” he said. “He will –”

“Do not worry about it,” Sveta said. “I am asking him, that is final. You know you cannot change my mind when I have decided something.”

He did know this.

“Sveta…” he began, but words failed him.

“Ilyusha,” she parroted back at him.

He smiled, and said with only a little teasing: “Svetochka…”

She immediately pulled a face.

“Enough of this,” she said. “You can pay me back with your tickets for the play-offs. I will remind you. Often.”

“Of course,” Ilya said, and hugged her anyway, holding tight for as long as she would let him. Then when she went to push him away, he picked her up off her feet as she squealed and cursed at him, spinning her around until both of them couldn’t help but laugh like they were children again.

Chapter End Notes

I did come up with a much funnier name for the Dallas team but I didn't want to distract from the seriousness of the rest of the chapter. Pour one out for the Dallas Beefsteaks.

Also yes there is now a (preliminary) total chapter count! Which I will not post here so that this does not become a retroactive self-own when I inevitably run over.