Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Kip Grady, Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Career Ending Injuries, sorry to shane hollander for ruining his life by taking away hockey again, Suicidal Thoughts, in the past, but they are referenced in the present, there is some sugar daddying, but it's about the TRAUMA and about the CAREER he should have had, kip: anyway that's why I didn't let my hockey boyfriend sugar daddy me. it's bc i have dignity, shane: oh okay that's cool. i don't tho, typical ilya behavior (being lovable but refusing to realize it about himself), im so sorry I think i made them toxic again, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander is Obsessed With Ilya Rozanov, ive invented a new gay crisis for shane to have (thinks he's not gay enough for kip and his friends), post concussion syndrome, all of the injury stuff is VERY vaguely described btw, shane's other gay crisis in this is that he's gay for hockey and ilya rozanov is its personification, Angst with a Happy Ending, i keep forgetting to tag that but it's like a blanket thing with me i promise, these idiots will not be sad for long they will confess their love in a very stupid way, and ilya WILL get hard every time shane insults his dad

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-06-05 Words: 28,933 Chapters: 10/10

his sugar baby, his sour coach, his jock bro lady macbeth

Summary

Shane and Ilya collide on the ice in 2008, and Shane's career is over before it begins.

In 2014, when they meet each other in a club in Boston, Ilya wants to make it up to him.

Notes

posting this all at once because I do NOT have the patience for a wip!

this fic came about after a discussion with my bestie hannah, during which we started out joking about Kip not wanting to take any of Scott's money and how both Shane and Ilya, in his position, would have been like "pay my loans, actually", and then talked ourselves into the vague premise of this fic in the typical deranged way of online friends who have been dropping into each others discord messages for 5+ years with "hear me out"s (i love u hannah). It's also slightly molded on the fact that when I first started doing important research for my first fic in this fandom (trying to figure out the Skip timeline), I found a thread on reddit that theorized that from 2014-2017, Kip and Scott were On a Break while Kip did his degree in Boston.

anyway, this whole thing might be insane, but be cool about it, please. I'm nervous about this one lmao

Chapter 1: Ilya

The last time Ilya Rozanov saw Shane Hollander, it was 2008, and Shane was all wilted and lumpy with swelling bruises in his hospital bed. Ilya hadn't known, then, that he'd just inadvertently ended the career of his only real competition. Shane hadn't even woken up after his first surgery yet, but Ilya had been about to leave for Moscow with the rest of his team, so it was his last chance to visit. He couldn't leave without at least seeing that Hollander was all right; he’d been more rattled by the horror of the collision than he wanted to admit. 

His own arm had been strapped to his chest in a sling, and his head swam from his concussion, making English more difficult than usual, especially with the awkwardness of meeting Hollander’s parents without Hollander awake as a buffer. But there was no reason for him to think that he wouldn't see Hollander again the following year, and so he hadn't thought it was a big deal that Hollander was still asleep. He could wait a year to mock himself and Hollander both for getting tangled up with Ilya's teammate like they did, neither of them looking where they were going because they were too busy fighting each other for the puck. Hollander would laugh and look all bashful the way he had in the parking lot, and Ilya would get to admire it again. 

But Hollander was still sedated, and so Ilya had instead stumbled through apologies to Hollander's parents for the stupid collision while trying not to look too often at Hollander's pretty face gone nearly unrecognizable with all the bruising. Hollander's parents were probably kinder to him than they wanted to be; he noticed how Hollander’s mother in particular tensed up when he entered the room, as if she thought Ilya was there to finish the job. Hollander’s father was more friendly, but that only made Ilya feel worse, especially when he heard the news, later, that Hollander was done playing for good. 

Ilya has tried, over the last few years, to track down information about his one-time rival, though he's not even sure why he still thinks about him so much, other than the obvious. Hollander was friendly when they met in the parking lot, like a golden retriever is friendly. He was beautiful, too, of course. Ilya had been looking forward to seeing more of him, and maybe that's why he feels sometimes like he misses him, even though they only got to play each other the one time. 

He hasn't been able to find anything, anyway. Hollander is a ghost. 

Which is why Ilya isn’t sure what he thinks he’s looking at, at first, when he spots Hollander at a club in downtown Boston. Hollander is standing alone at a small round hightop table on the edge of the dancefloor, looking awkward as ever, guarding a horde of half-full drinks that look likely to spill off the edges if anyone tries to take one. As Ilya watches, trying to figure out if it’s actually Hollander or just a man who looks so much like him that Ilya might have to risk it for a chance to fuck someone who looks close enough to perfect, various people keep wandering up, hugging maybe-Hollander, talking at him with drunken abandon before heading back out to the dancefloor. Hollander always hands over a cocktail or a water glass, apparently having memorized which drink belongs to which person, and it's that silly little detail that makes Ilya think this is actually Hollander and not just an unfairly sexy random Bostonian. It just seems like such a Hollander thing to do, in Ilya's admittedly limited experience. 

He's at the bar with the rest of his team, debating whether to approach. Hollander is clearly here with friends, and he probably doesn't want to see Ilya, considering. And maybe it's good enough to see him like this, clearly happy, clearly still boring and polite and probably too nice for his own good. Maybe Ilya can stop feeling guilty now for the collision, which wasn't really his fault, anyway. 

But Hollander looks up and catches Ilya watching, and Ilya finds himself waving, a half smile on his face, feeling off-balanced, as if Hollander has caught him doing something a lot more embarrassing than just staring. 

Hollander frowns at him, looks away, looks back, squints, looks around as if he thinks Ilya is looking at someone else. Well, now Ilya has to go over. If Hollander tells him to fuck off, Ilya can just fuck off. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. 

“Shane Hollander!” he says as he approaches, pretending to be happy to see him, or maybe not pretending. But pretending not to be fucking terrified to see him, at least. He holds out his hand. Hollander, clearly surprised, shakes it. 

“Oh my god, wow! Rozanov! You– it's actually you. Sorry. I thought you were just…I'm not wearing my glasses.”

“You wear glasses?” Ilya asks, bizarrely enchanted by this detail. 

“Uh, yeah,” Hollander says. “Usually. Had to start after the, uh. Accident.”

“Oh,” Ilya says. Great. Wasting no fucking time, Hollander. Jesus. “I bet you look very cute in your glasses.”

He says this like the peace offering it probably is, and he delights in the way Hollander's expression goes through several very interesting contortions after he says it. 

“Thank you?” Hollander finally says, voice all befuddled. He’s exactly the Hollander that Ilya remembers, and it’s a relief.

“I will buy you a drink. Are any of these yours? Or are you just here to watch them because you are too polite?”

“Oh, uh, this one,” Hollander says, picking up a glass with about half an inch of liquid still in it. “I don't know what's in it. It tasted like pineapple?”

He's just this side of tipsy, which is good. Maybe that's why he's not telling Ilya to fuck off yet. Ilya takes the glass from his hand and brings it up to the bartender to figure out what it is so he can order another one. When he comes back, Hollander takes the drink with a pleasantly surprised smile, but the smile fades quickly when he sees that Ilya is also carrying a drink of his own. 

“What?” Ilya asks. 

“Don't you have a game tomorrow?” 

“Yes?”

“And you're having another drink? Isn't it kinda late?” 

Ilya leans back a little and gestures to the bar behind him, where almost all of the Boston Raiders are happily pounding back shots. Hollander frowns, his brow furrowing as he opens his mouth to speak, but he stops himself. Has to physically shove his straw in his mouth and start sucking at it aggressively to prevent himself from speaking. 

“You are surprised?” Ilya asks. 

“No,” Hollander mutters. “I guess I'm not. Whatever. It's your career.”

“Yes, and I'm very good. Maybe you have heard?”

“But just think of how good you'd be if you…” Hollander bites back what he was going to say, and he sips even more aggressively at his drink, refusing to make eye contact. Ilya laughs. 

“You can say it.”

“No. Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m an idiot.”

“It's nothing I haven't heard before.”

Which is true, and it feels bitter in his mouth suddenly, and he knows it has come out bitterly in his tone, and he doesn't like that. 

“Well, why don't you listen to whoever is telling you that?”

“Do you listen to everything your father tells you to do, Hollander?”

Hollander looks confused by this. 

“Most of the time,” he replies, so fucking guileless. So prettily confused. “If I didn't, I'd have probably killed myself trying to get back into hockey like I wanted to, so.”

“Fuck,” Ilya says, giving up. “Okay. Sorry.”

“No, I'm…shit. What are you sorry for? I'm the one being an asshole. It's your body. Your career. You can do whatever you want with it.”

But his tone is bitter, too, and Ilya understands, of course. He thinks of perfect Hollander coming up and introducing himself with his very strong Canadian handshake and his comment about smoking. Hollander would probably not be drinking the night before a game, right? He would be tucked into bed already, dreaming of various plays and possibilities for the next day. Dreaming of training. And of course Hollander is probably thinking the same thing. Thinking that Ilya has the career he should have had, but Ilya is out drinking and partying, and doing it “wrong”. Yes, that seems like a Hollander thing to think, and Ilya is going to make fun of him for it, once he can figure out how to say it in a way that will make Hollander laugh instead of bristling too defensively. 

But then it all goes wrong, because Hollander finally makes eye contact, and his big brown eyes are wet with stubbornly held-back tears, and Ilya feels the sort of panic you feel when you come across a wounded animal in the wild and have no idea what to do to help it.

“Holy shit,” he blurts. “Please don't cry.”

“What? Fuck you, I'm not crying,” Hollander hisses back at him, and then he storms away to the bathroom, which is not helping his case. 

Ilya follows. 

The bathroom is disgusting, as all club bathrooms must be, but blessedly empty. Ilya locks the door behind them. Hollander is bent over the sink, splashing water on his face, like he thinks Ilya will fall for that. 

“I'm just drunk,” he argues when he confirms that it’s Ilya looming behind him. “I'm not crying. My eyes just do that when I'm drunk. It's stupid. People always think I’m crying.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. He can pretend to believe that, if that's what Hollander needs. 

“Shut up. I forgot what a fucking asshole you are.”

“I think I was very nice to you when you came up to me in the parking lot and harassed me about smoking.”

“Fuck you,” Hollander says, but he's smiling a little, somehow, like it’s a fond memory for him too. Hollander might be drunker than Ilya thought, or maybe he's just more fucked up than Ilya thought, generally, to be smiling at him like that. It makes Ilya bold enough to say what he really wants to say.

“I am sorry, you know. For what happened. I know it doesn't fix anything, but I wish it…hadn’t.” Great, all that leadup and he sounds like a fucking idiot.

“Yeah, me too,” Hollander agrees. He splashes his face with water again, and makes eye contact with Ilya in the mirror. “It wasn't like you did it on purpose.”

“Of course I fucking didn't,” Ilya snaps, because he hears something dark in Hollander's tone, and it makes him feel sick. Hollander is already shaking his head. 

“I didn't mean it like that. Shit. Sorry. I'm just. Bitter. And drunk. And sorry. I mean, who fucking cares what I think? Have like ten more shots. You’ll still crush it tomorrow. You're the best player in the world. What do I know?”

If he sounded self-pitying, or passive-aggressive, or coy, even, Ilya would probably leave the bathroom and leave Hollander as a ghost in his mind, but Hollander doesn’t sound any of those things. He sounds so earnest, so disappointed in himself for being so judgemental, and it does something to Ilya, unfortunately, and so he doesn’t leave. He moves in closer instead, pulls his arm across Hollander's shoulders, jostles him a little, trying to come off like a bro and not like someone who wants to put Hollander into his pocket and carry him around. 

“You would have been as good as me,” he says. His voice is probably way too low and flirty to be bro-y, but at least he’s trying. Hollander’s eyes are locked on his in the mirror, breath hitching. “We would have been at the top together.”

“You didn't seem to think so the first time we met.”

“Ah, of course I thought so. I was just also very charmed by a nervous boy with pretty freckles who thought I needed lecture about smoking.”

“You don't still smoke, do you?” Hollander asks pathetically, watery in that same way that makes Ilya want to protect his feelings. He ignores that impulse, though, because it’s too dangerous. He grins a little and pats his shirt pocket, where his cigarette pack crinkles. Hollander groans and twists out from under Ilya’s arm.

“Man, fuck you,” he laughs desperately. “I would kill you in this bathroom right now, with my bare fucking hands, if it meant getting to be in your position. And you're limiting yourself for no reason.”

“I really do get enough of this from my father. You are so lazy, Ilya. You are wasting your potential, Ilya. You are a waste of my time, Ilya.”

“Your dad sounds like a fucking idiot,” Hollander snaps. Ilya is so delighted that he would swear his heart almost stops. “That's not what I'm saying. You're not lazy. You're not a waste of time. You're the best player in the world, but you could be the greatest player of all fucking time if you didn't make so many simple mistakes. It's not laziness. You're just a self-sabotaging idiot who gets bored and starts fights because no one can compete with you.”

Ilya is, he realizes abruptly, half hard. 

“Okay,” he says. “Tell me. What mistakes? Not smoking, or drinking, or partying. What mistakes am I making in hockey?”

Hollander's eyes are no longer quite so devastating in their wetness, but they're devastating in an entirely different way because he gets this focused look on his face, and he leans in, one hand braced on the disgusting sink, the other hand gripping Ilya's forearm. Ilya finds his hand drifting down to rest on Hollander's hip, the arm Ilya broke in the collision touching the hip Hollander apparently shattered. Hollander doesn't seem to notice. 

“I wasn't just talking shit. You get into too many fights. I know you're going to say that's just Boston's style, but it's not just Boston's style. It's your style, because you're bored, because you're the only person on any team who can skate as fast as you do. And maybe because you’re bored, or maybe because Boston’s strategy is to lean on you for everything, you're not a team player. Don’t get me wrong: you're a great captain. I've seen the way your team worships you. You make them all feel fucking special, and that's great, but the team needs more depth, and they can't have it if they're relying on you for fucking everything. I remember what that was like. I know it was like that for you too, growing up.”

“Yes,” Ilya admits, unable to look away from Hollander's pretty freckles and his scary eyes. Hollander keeps talking, and Ilya is listening, he really is, but he also feels like Hollander’s eyes are going to steal his soul, so he maybe is only listening to half of it. Blah blah Marleau blah blah St. Simon blah blah, etc. etc. Pucks in net, goals in puck, shoot puck, whatever whatever. Hollander is so beautiful like this, in this horrible lighting. 

“...and yeah, you need to work on your endurance, and you need to stop fucking smoking and drinking so much, and you need to get more sleep, and you need to eat better. I know it’s stupid, but you do. You're phenomenal, you really are, and you run yourself into the ground every game to prove it to everyone, and that's why every other game turns into a fucking slog.”

“You watch my games?”

“What? I live in Boston now, dipshit. Of course I watch your games. I watch every game. You're an amazing player to watch. But it should have been me.”

He doesn't look away from Ilya's eyes. His jaw clenches a little on the last word, like he expects Ilya to hit him for the comment, or maybe laugh at him. His hand holds on to Ilya's arm even tighter, almost possessive, like he can steal the fucking life force from Ilya's body if he tries hard enough. Ilya is no longer half hard. He is fucking rock hard. He is harder than a diamond. 

“Holy shit,” he says, and then suddenly he is kissing Shane Hollander, and maybe that is a massive mistake, because he doesn't know, exactly, that Hollander wants to kiss him. He doesn't know if he's reading all the signs wrong. There have been hints—the men who were coming up to Hollander were varying degrees of visibly queer, Hollander's big wet eyes keep moving to Ilya's lips, Hollander sucked on that cocktail straw like he was trying to send a message—but Hollander makes him want to be stupid and reckless, and the door is locked anyway, and if Hollander tries to ruin his career by outing him, well, maybe it would only be fair for Hollander to destroy his life the way he destroyed Hollander’s.

But no, Hollander doesn't pull away or scream or vomit or punch him in the mouth. Hollander makes this desperate little sound against his lips and then suddenly he's shoving Ilya against the wall and kissing him hungrily, and he's pressed up against Ilya, and his hand is fumbling with Ilya's pants, and suddenly Ilya has to be the responsible one. 

“Whoa, whoa, hey, come on, Hollander,” he says, grabbing Hollander's wrist and trying to ignore the offended little sound that Hollander makes at that. “You are drunk, I think, yes? I should not have done that.”

“You're drunk too,” Hollander says. 

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “Maybe not as much?”

“Fuck you, come on,” Hollander grumbles. “Can't I just…”

He wiggles his fingers a little in Ilya's grip, trying to free them, trying to reach for Ilya's dick, which makes Ilya laugh helplessly and rest his forehead against Hollander's. 

“Give me your phone,” he says. Hollander frowns at him and snatches his hand away, but he does retrieve his phone from his pocket and hand it over, unlocked. Ilya enters his contact information quickly, hands the phone back. “If you don't want to fucking kill me tomorrow, text me.”

“Are you serious?” Hollander whines. “I'll never be able to text you sober.”

Ilya is a little hurt to hear that, but not necessarily surprised. He nods, and he makes a big show of checking himself out in the mirror and fussing with his curls to put some space between them without looking like that's what he's doing.  

“So then you don't text me,” he says, shrugging one shoulder. Hollander is looking vaguely scandalized beside him. “Or you text me to tell me more mistakes, after the game. That could be good, too.”

“But,” Hollander says, but he doesn't say anything else after that. Just looks, eyes shining, and Ilya laughs incredulously, too breathlessly, and leaves the bathroom before he can do even more damage. 

 

---

 

In the morning, Ilya goes for a run, and he tells himself that he's not disappointed that Hollander hasn't texted him yet, because he knows already that Hollander won't. Not right now. He might, if Ilya is very lucky, text after the game, but even that isn't a guarantee. He certainly won't text now that he's sober and remembering that he offered the guy who ended his chances at a professional hockey career a sloppy drunk handjob in a club bathroom. 

Like, yes, Ilya went home and desperately jerked off about it, but it's not like Hollander can know that, and he is probably very embarrassed about the whole thing. 

By the end of the morning, Ilya is beating himself up for not insisting on getting Hollander's number too, but he thinks it will be easy enough to trigger a text. 

It will be especially easy because they’re playing the Admirals tonight, and Ilya is always looking for a reason to goad Scott Hunter into a fight.

Chapter 2: Shane

“This is a huge betrayal, actually,” jokes Kip when he enters Shane's apartment and finds Shane sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees, leaning forward eagerly to watch the game. 

“I know, I know,” Shane says apologetically, but he doesn't offer to turn the game off, because he doesn’t want to. “Sorry, I forgot you were crashing here tonight.”

“The whole reason we became friends was that I was assured by Pete that you hate hockey just as much as I do!”

“We've established that Pete's an idiot and that I don't actually hate hockey, though, so…” Shane points out. Kip huffs and glances at the screen, and then looks away again quickly. 

“Emotionally compromised by hockey, then.”

“Yeah, okay. I'm that. Sorry. I can turn it off, if you really want.” 

Shane knows Kip well enough to know that he won’t actually make him turn it off, though, which is why he offers. It’s possible that he’s not a very good friend to Kip, but he can try and make it up to him later.

“No,” Kip mutters. “That's all right. You're saving my ass by letting me stay here tonight. I'm not going to put you out.”

Shane has never gotten the full story of why Kip hates hockey so much, because Kip has been coy about it since he and Shane became friends, and because Shane is bad at gossip in all its forms, and is especially bad at gossiping with Kip and his friends, who are all much funnier and quicker than Shane, and always leave him feeling like a moron. It's one of the many things he's trying to work on with Kip, generally. Kip isn't that much older than him, but he's definitely been out as gay for longer, and has personally accepted being gay for even longer than that. Shane still has trouble admitting it to himself sometimes, so Kip has been a great friend to have, even if they did become friends under false pretenses, because they met in the like six month period when Shane was trying to force himself to stop thinking about hockey because watching a bunch of subpar players get to live his shattered dream was making him suicidal again. 

But that was more than a year ago now, and he feels much more settled than he did, and his new therapist and his new meds and his new commitment to a sports medicine degree are all working as intended: he no longer feels like he's literally nothing without hockey. 

Humiliating himself in front of Ilya Rozanov in a club bathroom is definitely setting him back a few steps, but it's not a complete crisis yet. 

It might become one if he texts Rozanov after this game and doesn't get a response, but that's a problem for future Shane to have a complete fucking meltdown about. If Rozanov does respond, it might also become a crisis, depending on what the response is, and depending on whether or not Shane overthinks it. So, really, it’s definitely going to be a crisis, but Shane’s entire life since his injury has been about controlling its various crises, so he's used to that. And he wants to do it. He wants to do this stupid, reckless thing. Kissing Rozanov was the first thing in so long that made him actually feel something, and even if that feeling was a weird blend of lost, horny, and mortified, it’s still better than nothing.

“I just need to see one thing to text Rozanov about, and then we can turn it off,” Shane promises. “It won’t take long. Rozanov’s an idiot, and he’ll do something stupid soon.” 

Kip looks at him like he's just busted out a sentence in Portuguese. 

“What? Rozanov? Like Ilya Rozanov, the hockey player?” He points at the screen. “That hockey player? The one on TV? The one who plays for Boston?” 

“I mean, yeah. I think you narrowed it down.” 

“You have Ilya Rozanov's number?”

Shane, hoping to give off the gently confused air of someone who doesn’t know why this is a big deal because he has always had Ilya Rozanov's number and definitely didn't get it off him less than twenty-four hours ago while trying to jerk him off in a club bathroom, attempts a nonchalant nod while staring resolutely at the TV.

“Yeah, we played against each other once. He's the one who, uh.” Shane gestures from his head to his hip to his knee.

“What? Really? Did I know that? I feel like I should have already known that. Am I a terrible friend? I literally just tune you out every time you say the word hockey. Do we hate Rozanov for it?”

“Eh, I don't know. No? Not really. It's not like it was his fault. If I ever do blame him, it's when I'm, you know. Unmedicated and spiraling, which isn't fair. He didn't do anything wrong.” Shane knows that he sounds too defensive. It's just that he has occasionally had dreams of taking a baseball bat to Rozanov’s kneecaps, and he knows that's fucking deranged. “We collided with each other and then his giant fucking moose of a teammate slammed into us both. Rozanov fractured his wrist and broke a couple of bones in his arm or whatever, got a minor concussion. I, you know. Shattered my pelvis, broke my leg, ended up with post-concussion syndrome, had headaches and escalating anxiety and depression for two years, almost killed myself because of it, and had to give up my dream. I guess we both had it rough.”

Kip looks largely unimpressed by the deadpan pity-party, which is why he’s probably Shane’s best friend. He’d been horrified the first time Shane told him the whole story, but now he knows enough about Shane’s personality to know when he’s being snarky.

“Is this, like, emotional terrorism? Are you emotionally terrorizing this man by texting him chirps because he ended your career?” 

Kip looks at him like he can’t decide if he should be proud of that idea or not. Shane laughs. 

“Listen to you with the terminology. Chirps.”

“I never said I know nothing about hockey,” Kip mutters, eyes drawn to the screen when they show a closeup of Scott Hunter looking sweaty and annoyed on the bench. 

“Oh, okay,” Shane laughs, leaning back in his seat, very pleased. Sometimes he feels like a Bad Gay, because he doesn’t talk about Gay Stuff enough, even around his Very Gay friend Kip. It’s nice when he gets to tease him in the way Kip’s other, gayer friends seem to do so effortlessly.

“Shut up,” Kip says.

“No, I get it.”

“Now you're emotionally terrorizing me.”

“Oh, come on. Scott Hunter is hot.”

“Of course he's hot! But I will not be condescended to by my own baby gay!”

“Your own baby gay,” Shane laughs. 

“My son, my flesh and blood.”

“Is this like the drag daughter thing you tried to explain to me?”

“No,” Kip sighs witheringly. “And the fact that you asked me that means that I've been a terrible gayfather.”

On the screen, Rozanov and Hunter are battling for the puck. Rozanov says something to Hunter, and then suddenly they’re swinging at each other. The camera gets a good shot of Rozanov’s savage grin, and the entire rink erupts into a fight around them.

“There we go,” Shane says, and he picks up his phone. “Another stupid fucking fight. Right on schedule.”

“Well don't turn it off now!” Kip yelps when Shane reaches for the remote. “I, uh, want to see what happens?”

“You just want to see Scott Hunter covered in blood, you freak.”

“It's hysterical how wrong you are, oh my god,” Kip mutters, but he doesn't look away. 

 

---

 

Shane's text is a fairly tame: five minutes in the sin bin down by one when you could be scoring goals? Come on, man.

He has other thoughts he could share, but he doesn’t, because he doesn’t want to overdo it and have Rozanov check his phone after the game to find fifteen fucking texts about it. He has to be normal. He has to wait. He obviously isn't expecting a reply during the game, and once the fight is over, he can tell that Kip is emotionally done with the whole game, so he turns it off and offers to go somewhere if Kip wants to meet up with any friends. This is, he thinks, a very magnanimous thing to do, and it also guarantees that he won’t be tempted to turn the game back on. 

Kip is one of those people who seems to make friends everywhere he goes, and Shane is mostly just grateful to have been adopted, so it’s no surprise that Kip arranges a dinner with some of his friends from one of his incomprehensibly boring art history classes with less than ten minutes’ notice. The friends they’re meeting all have names like Sonja and Henri and Julietta, and they all wear extremely loud clothing, and they’re all varying degrees of Not Straight, which is nice, obviously, and they’re nice to Shane, too. It’s not their fault he always feels so stupid and out of place next to them. Like they’re all these elegant, artistic, generous gays, and Shane is regretting the lost opportunity to suck off a Boston Raider in a dirty club bathroom but still doesn’t feel gay enough for them. 

He feels, a lot of the time, like he’s caught in this liminal space between jock and gay dude, and he still doesn't know how to be both at the same time, even though he knows plenty of guys do it successfully. One of the reasons he and Kip got along so well even once they cleared up the hockey misunderstanding is that they’re both unrepentant gym rats who push each other to be better, but Kip has all these hidden depths, and Shane is just…Shane. Weird and laser-focused on hockey and on keeping all of his routines and his emotions as carefully regulated as possible, because sometimes the injustice of his situation threatens to drown him, drag him back under again, and he really doesn't want to put his parents through another disaster like his 2010 Year of Depression. 

People like Shane. It’s not like he’s just Kip’s weird loser former athlete friend who intrudes too straightly into all of their very gay spaces. He has been told by multiple drunk queer friends that he makes them feel safe, and welcomed, and accepted, and that he is soft and cuddly and sweet and helps do something to heal their near-universal jock bullying trauma, or whatever. So, like, that’s good. It always makes him feel nice. It’s just that he’s not like them, really. He’s not sure if he wishes he was or not, but he thinks it would make things easier if he was more like them. Smarter and more well-read and well-traveled and experienced in things other than hockey and occasional messy blowjobs exchanged mostly anonymously in semi-public places because he has so far been too emotionally stunted to reach for more. 

He’s been trying, though, especially this year. He knows that he was weird over the summer; his parents treated him like fragile glass more than usual. It’s just that he’s finally been feeling settled in Boston, his first full year of school finished, no longer feeling so much like the weird old guy in class, and it was hard to go back home, where everything reminds him of the hockey he can't play anymore. It’s not like he never thinks about hockey in Boston, but there are other things to distract him, like schoolwork and his carefully cultivated friendships. It’s hard to be home with his mother, too, because she’s always trying so hard not to talk about hockey at all, because neither of his parents seem to believe that he’s actually doing any better about it, no matter what he’s told them. It's not like he can totally blame them; they're the ones who had to deal with those awful fucking first years, and they were so wary but so proud when he said he wanted to try college again, after failing spectacularly the first time at twenty. 

But it's frustrating, too. Even when he tells his mom that he wants to watch the games, wants to talk about them, he can sense her fear. Like she thinks she's going to accidentally say something wrong and set him off again. It just always feels like he’s failing her. She spent seventeen years raising a hockey star son, and now she has this fucking reject who was so broken by hockey that it has dampened even her love of the sport. He’s been trying to think of the right way to say those things, talking it over with his therapist, but he’s not sure he’s there yet. 

His dad loves him too, of course, but his dad never understood the hockey thing. He’d begged Shane quietly, after his second concussion, to let it go. Shane had worked himself to the fucking bone to get back after that collision with Rozanov, but it wasn’t good enough, and he’d ended up back in the hospital his literal first game back on the ice, and of course his dad was right. Of course he was. Shane isn’t sure he’d have even been able to come back successfully, if he kept trying, and if he had kept trying, he probably would have been, like, mediocre at best. There was just too much damage to his leg, and the post-concussion syndrome made him skittish with the puck in ways that had seemed insurmountable at the time. 

But it’s hard not to resent his father for it, just like it’s hard not to resent his mother. It’s like their love for him is so strong, so baked deep into the fabric of him, that he doesn’t know what to do with it now that it no longer feels earned. 

So he’s been trying, this year, to go out more. Be out with friends more. Accept Kip’s invitations. Be gayer, or whatever. Explore that part of himself in a way that makes him uncomfortable, because he thinks maybe that will be the key to making him feel that there’s something worth staying in the world for. 

They meet up with Kip’s friends at this shitty little pizza place that has half-decent sandwiches but more importantly has big, comfortable booths and an owner who never cares that they bring booze. Shane is half-listening to Kip’s friend Sonja complain about the ex-girlfriend she's probably going to be dating again by next week, and then his phone buzzes in his pocket. He has a finely tuned sense of hockey math, and he knows the game isn't over, but the period probably is.

You're going to feel like a fucking idiot when it's just mom, he tells himself, and then he pulls out his phone and, well. It's Rozanov. He fucking knew it would be.

 

Rozanov

Well u were too embarassed to text me this morning, so i had to get ur attention somehow.

 

It's like all of the air has been sucked out of the room. Shane literally chokes on his own spit for a second. Kip, wedged in the booth next to him, glances at him, reads the text on his phone, looks away, looks back at the phone more sharply, and then slowly looks up at Shane, his eyes wide. Shane feels like his head has suddenly been filled with helium and is about to float away. Not in like a cartoon way where little hearts are floating around his head, either. He feels like he's going to fucking die. 

Because, okay. The only reason he hasn't been freaking out about this completely is because all of this has been hypothetical. He remembers everything that happened in that bathroom yesterday, technically, but he’s been staving off the panic by trying to convince himself that he can’t be remembering it correctly. Because he remembers Rozanov's dick hard and huge in his pants more than he remembers almost any other part of the conversation, and he remembers Rozanov kissing him desperately after Shane said ‘fuck your dad’ and then claimed that everything Rozanov has should be his, and those things just had to be hallucinations, because if they really happened, Rozanov might be an even bigger freak than Shane. So he figured he'd do the normal thing and text Rozanov about his game, because he remembers Rozanov inviting him to do that, and that was way more doable than texting him hey it's me I'm sober and I still want to choke on your dick so where do you live? 

If he was smart, he would have deleted Rozanov's number, but he's not smart, especially not when he's drunk, and especially not about Ilya Rozanov. Shane has been jerking off to videos of Rozanov's gameplay and interviews for years like a fucking creep, and now the man himself is starting fights with Scott fucking Hunter for him, like a cat bringing home a dead mouse as a present. He should be as disgusted as that cat’s owner would be. His dick should not be twitching about it.

“Smoke break,” Kip declares, shoving Shane out of the booth. If the others think that's weird because neither of them smoke, they don't say anything. Kip drags him outside—a bit like how that hypothetical normal person whose cat has just delivered them a rodent corpse should react—and then pushes him around the corner for some privacy. “Shane, with all the love in my heart, are you out of your mind?”

“I’m starting to think so, yeah,” Shane admits warily. 

“He punched Scott on purpose just to get your attention? That's insane behavior.”

“Hunter punched him first,” Shane argues, knowing that that's not going to win him any points. Kip looks at him in righteous disgust.  

“He shattered your pelvis first!” 

“Well, maybe I want him to do it again, but sexily this time,” Shane tries to joke. It falls flat, like all of his attempts at joking do. He'll get there eventually, he hopes. Kip just looks unimpressed now. 

“Shane.”

“He kissed me, at the club,” Shane whispers, shame-faced, scuffing at the ground with the toe of his sneaker. “You can't tell anyone! I shouldn't have even said that. The shit they say in locker rooms is like the one thing I don't miss about hockey. It would completely fuck up his life.”

“I'm not going to out a Russian hockey player for having good taste,” Kip promises gently. “I wouldn't do that. I know it's not safe for him. For any of them, really. I know. But I'm just…I'm going to be judging my young Canadian son for having awful taste, maybe.”

“Yeah, that's probably fair,” Shane says. He looks down at his phone again. “I thought he'd just blow it off. Act like it never happened. And then I could follow his lead and just text him about hockey, very occasionally, and it would be normal.”

“And instead he started a fight on national television just so you'd text him about it, and then he admitted it over text in the middle of the game. Like a murderer would.”

“Yeah,” Shane says. He tries to sound disgusted. It doesn't work. Kip heaves an enormous sigh. 

“I fucking hate hockey,” he says.

Chapter 3: Ilya

Ilya is maybe in over his head, but he has been in over his head since he was born, probably, so this isn't very upsetting. He shows Svetlana the texts with Shane when they meet up after the game, because he thinks he probably needs a sanity check, and Svetlana will tell him her honest opinion. He most likely won’t listen to it, but he can judge from his reaction to her opinion whether he's going to be normal about this. He suspects he knows the answer already, but it's always good to confirm. 

“Shane as in Shane Hollander? The boy you nearly killed? A generational talent destroyed by your clumsy ass?” she asks. Ilya pretends to fake a wince, actually winces instead. He knows she would never say that if she knew how much he really blames himself, but that doesn’t make it much less painful. Svetlana reads the texts and then scrolls back up and reads them again. “Okay, well, he's right that was a stupid fight, but I don't care about this. Are you flirting with him? And he's flirting back?”

“I think so, yes,” Ilya hedges. “He tried to…we kissed, at the club. In the bathroom. No one saw. Don't look at me like that.”

“You are addicted to trouble.”

“Maybe a little. But also, just…he was there, and he is so…” He makes an expansive gesture that tries to encompass everything at once. Svetlana looks unimpressed. 

“You feel guilty for what happened, even though you also know it wasn't your fault, and now you think it's your responsibility to fuck him happy? Is that what this is?”

“No,” Ilya answers immediately. He considers. “Not only that. I think I just want to fuck him, mostly. But also, I don't know, he does something to me. He got mad because he thinks I party too much, and he started crying at me because he can’t play hockey anymore and he hates me for it, and I followed him to the bathroom, and I'm not sure if I wanted him to yell at me some more or if I wanted him to apologize and kiss me. I think maybe both, at the same time. He’s very pretty, but it isn’t just that. I don’t know what it is.”

“You’re too smart to get in trouble with something like this,” Svetlana says gently. “This could ruin you.”

But Ilya has done lots of things that could ruin him, and Svetlana knows this. Maybe that's why she looks so resigned. 

“You're right,” he says. “I won't text him again.” 

Svetlana rolls her eyes and doesn’t even pretend to believe him. 

 

---

 

His conversation with Hollander after the opening text is short, fairly flirty. They banter back and forth, Ilya insisting that Hollander has to compliment him on the good parts of his game for every insult he offers. Hollander obliges, though even his compliments are snarky. Hollander calls him a “fucking neanderthal” at one point, and Ilya sends him a picture of SpongeBob SquarePants in a loincloth looking confused, which Shane sends a laughing emoji about before saying that Ilya should just text the next time he wants advice, rather than starting a fight with Shane's favorite hockey player. 

Ilya texts i know you're lying. I'm your favorite. Shane texts back a picture of a horrifying x-ray that was probably his shattered bones, but Ilya doesn’t look closely enough to figure it out for sure.

Sorry, Shane texts after a while of no response. That was so unnecessary. I'm being an asshole again. I can't seem to stop. 

Ilya lets him sweat it out while he's out with Svetlana, and when he's headed home, he finally texts: make it up to me? Followed by his address.

 

---

 

He's feeling insane as he paces in his apartment. He'd sort of wanted to bring Hollander out to the house he rarely visits out in the suburbs, but he figured it would be easier to get Hollander to go somewhere in the city, and he's glad he did, because Hollander already looks like a skittish horse when he shows up, incredulous, like he hadn’t actually made the conscious choice to come here and only now realizes where he’s ended up. He looks around Ilya's apartment, eyebrows lowering a little bit as he examines everything. Ilya finds himself looking at everything in the room with fresh eyes, trying to see it all from Hollander’s perspective, worried that Hollander will judge it, find it wanting. Like Ilya is currently trying to pass a test. 

“Shit. This is a really nice place,” Hollander finally says. “Jesus, look at these cabinets.”

“Cabinets?” Ilya asks incredulously, trailing Hollander as he makes a beeline for Ilya's kitchen. Hollander knocks his fist against the granite countertop of the kitchen island, and then he opens one of the cabinets. Ilya fights back a smile, and Hollander turns in time to notice it, and he flushes.  

“You should see my place,” he says defensively. “I dream about a kitchen like this. Mine’s, like, one-third this size.”

“I don't even really cook,” Ilya admits, and Hollander looks at him with baffled disgust. It does unfortunately go straight to Ilya's dick, because Ilya is fundamentally broken as a person, he thinks. 

“You're such an asshole,” Hollander says wonderingly. 

“Mm, yes,” Ilya agrees. “And yet, here you are.”

“Maybe I just wanted a chance to see how rich people live,” Shane says. “Spend some time outside my sad, shitty apartment. See what it’s like to sit on a leather couch.”

“Maybe,” Ilya agrees. “We can play video games, then, if you want.”

He's grinning, and his smile grows even wider because Hollander is frowning at him now. 

“No,” Hollander says simply, and then he walks back across the room to Ilya and kisses him desperately. It's even better than the first kiss, probably at least a bit because it's not in a disgusting club bathroom, though Ilya has enjoyed kissing far less perfect people in worse places than that. Still, there is something about Hollander, about kissing him in his home. Ilya is already wanting more. He’s smiling into the kiss, and Hollander pulls back to look at him, frowning, like he can feel the shape of it and isn't sure what Ilya has to smile about. This makes Ilya laugh, and then Hollander frowns even deeper. “What are you laughing at?”

“You, Hollander, holy shit. So fucking desperate. I thought I would have to work harder than this.”

“I'm not desperate,” Hollander insists, horrified. He's gripping Ilya's hair hard in one of his hands, and he seems to realize it, and he releases it, to Ilya's displeasure. Ilya tuts a little and grabs his hand, brings it back up. 

“No, you are. Keep being desperate. It's very sexy of you. I wish you had worn your glasses.”

“What? Really? No. I'm wearing contacts.”

“Ugh. Terrible. Next time, wear glasses. I know you look cute in them. I have to see it.”

“Next time?” Shane scoffs, but then he's reaching for Ilya's sweatpants, and then he's falling to his knees, and then he's looking up at Ilya through his eyelashes, and Ilya is thinking this would be so much hotter if he was wearing glasses, which is technically true, but it's still the hottest thing he's ever seen. 

And it's all tied up in the stuff with the collision, and he knows almost immediately that Svetlana was right that this was a terrible idea. Hollander is touching Ilya’s cock, and then he's kissing it, and then he's licking eagerly, too eagerly, his mouth so wet and wanting, and Ilya is remembering the terror of the second and a half before the collision when he'd realized that he was going to hit Hollander at a brutal angle and that his teammate was still coming in hot. He remembers trying to stop, and hitting Hollander at an even worse angle as a result, slamming him hard into the boards, and then slipping, tripping, trying desperately to keep from stepping on Hollander's prone form just as the bulk of his teammate slammed into them both. Hollander is maintaining eye contact with Ilya now, as he sucks the tip of Ilya's dick into his mouth, and meanwhile Ilya is hearing that horrible crack and that horrible scream as Ilya tried to get off Hollander but couldn't, because his stupid fucking teammate was flailing all over the place. And it's kind of fucked up, is the point. It's fucked up that Ilya is hard at all, never mind that he's already so fucking close. 

“Wait, wait,” he says quickly. “Jesus, Hollander. Do you always have to be the best at everything?”

“What?” Hollander asks, laughing, and Ilya pulls him up into a kiss. 

“I want to fuck you,” he says. “Okay? Is that okay?”

Hollander looks put off by the question. 

“I mean I'm not here to play fucking video games,” he says, and Ilya laughs and pulls up his sweatpants so he can hoist Hollander into his arms despite his irritated, shocked protest. Ilya laughs and kisses Hollander and flings him on the bed once they get to his bedroom, and Hollander is already wrestling himself out of his shirt. Ilya is very pleased with all of it, so hard he could pass out from the force of his want, and even remembering his own lack of action, his own helplessness when Hollander was down on the ice and sobbing in pain while the medics took so fucking long to get there isn't enough to stop him. I can make him feel good, he tells himself, giddy. I can make it up to him. I can finally help him. 

Hollander is impatient with him, but when Ilya is slow and careful in response, he seems to appreciate it despite himself. He's a bit shaky with his desire, which is gratifying, but Ilya wants to make sure that he's not shaky with anything else, and he touches Hollander gently, probably reverently. He can't help it. 

“Have you ever done this before?” he asks. Hollander hesitates, nods. 

“Um, with a. Thing. A dildo.” Defiantly at the end, like he expects Ilya to laugh. Ilya doesn't laugh, because he's trying very hard not to die at the mental image. 

“But never with anyone else?”

“Um, no. I've fooled around? Like hand and mouth stuff. Shut up. Don’t laugh at me. But not…this.”

Ilya blows out a breath, taking a second. 

“Okay,” he says. “But you still want…?” 

He gestures, and Hollander slaps his hands away, flushing furiously. 

“Yes!” he hisses, like it’s obvious. Maybe it is; his dick is perfect, hard, already weeping, and Hollander is breathing heavily now. Still, Ilya doesn’t want to fuck this up. 

“We will go slow, and you will tell me if you want to stop.”

“I'm not made of glass, Rozanov.”

“Okay. Anything I should know about your leg, or your hip?”

Hollander looks briefly cracked open by the question, mortified, and Ilya is afraid that he's going to come to his senses and leave like he probably should. 

“What?” Hollander asks. Ilya touches the faint surgical scar as gently as he can, trying not to notice the way his fingers shake as he does.

“It was a bad break, it looked like, in the x-ray? My arm still hurts sometimes in the cold, and sometimes my wrist freezes up, if I don't stretch it enough. Is there anything like that?”

Shane shakes his head, mouth opening and closing for a few seconds, like he’s trying to figure out what to say. 

“No- not really? Cold sometimes, yeah, but I do a lot of yoga, and I worked really hard on getting back to full strength.”

“Of course you did,” Ilya says soothingly, because Hollander sounds so defensive for some reason he can't fathom. “What do you think would be more comfortable? Hands and knees or on your back?”

Hollander's face goes so red that Ilya has to kiss him again about it, and he has to kiss his freckles after, and he has to hold him close. 

“I’m not sure,” Hollander finally says miserably, and Ilya's heart unclenches, just a bit. “We can try either?”

“Okay, good,” Ilya says, and he does a very good job of not acting unhinged at the idea that he's going to get to help Hollander figure out what he likes and wants when it comes to being fucked. He's going to get to help him learn his own body. It's fine. He can be normal about that. 

He's still careful, of course. Hollander is just as yoga-flexible as promised, and he only grimaces a little bit when Ilya starts touching him with his very lubed-up fingers. He looks vaguely startled, like he's been caught wanting something he shouldn't, but that's exactly how Ilya feels about the whole thing too, so he doesn't mind it. He plays Hollander's body carefully, touches him gently, catalogues exactly where to touch to make Hollander soften into a molten puddle in his arms. He sees Hollander flinch in pain, one time, when Ilya too eagerly lifts up his leg to try and get a better angle, and Hollander goes even redder when Ilya insists on slowing down, making sure he's comfortable. 

He seems affronted by every gentle touch, but he keeps begging for more, and when Ilya finally presses into him for the first time, he looks like his brain has just completely rewired and invented new sounds and colors and emotions, so Ilya is glad that he didn't abort too early in his caution. He would have missed this, the agape expression of blissed-out adoration, the empty-headed pleasure, the way his eyes flutter closed and then snap open again like he wants to keep looking. 

It doesn't last very long, of course, because they're both worked up by each other, but that's all right. Ilya is feeling pretty good about this becoming a bit of a regular thing. Like if this was an audition, he would have crushed it. 

 

---

 

Hollander briefly almost panics, after, his eyes wide and his breathing too fast, but he's talked down easily when Ilya cleans him up and kisses his hair and says “Hollander, what is it like being the hottest fucking person on the planet?”

Hollander laughs a little, and he puts his hands to his face to hide away for a bit, but not for very long. When he pulls his hands away, he looks more composed, like he just needed a second to freak out in the relative darkness. He looks over at Ilya, after. Ilya, who's lying next to him. 

“That was…thank you,” he says.

“So polite. I can't believe you don't get eaten alive at those clubs.”

“Stop laughing at me, you dick. I don't usually go to those clubs. I was just out with some friends.”

“Okay, that makes more sense. I have never seen you there before.”

“Maybe you just didn't notice me.”

“Don't be fucking stupid,” Ilya scoffs. “I would notice you. Look at you.”

He kisses Hollander again, because he can. Hollander laughs into the kiss, squirms away from it in a way that feels also like he doesn’t want to move away at all, still vaguely incredulous, like he doesn't understand what's happening. He keeps looking at Ilya as if to make sure that he isn’t making it up, like he thinks maybe this whole thing has been a hallucination. Ilya can relate to it. It makes him feel even hungrier. Like he wants to prove his presence, mark Hollander’s skin even more than he already has. He thinks he might deserve a reward for his restraint, actually.

Hollander’s fingers shake a little as they reach up and brush some of Ilya’s hair out of his eyes, where a curl has rebelliously sprung loose and hangs over his forehead. He looks fond when he does it, achingly soft in the way Ilya sometimes still imagines him, in that parking lot in Regina. Soft and too gentle and too sweet. He knows that it’s the years and the guilt that have softened that first impression, but he doesn’t think that’s so unusual, or that it’s a particularly bad thing. It feels right, now, with Hollander’s fingers against his overheated skin, and this shaken, rattled look in Hollander’s eyes. Ilya should want to look away, should want to hide his face. He always does, when people look at him like this, too closely, like they know him. Ilya is not a person who appreciates being seen by anyone who isn’t, like, Svetlana, and maybe Marleau. Maybe. But Hollander sees him, and knows him, he thinks, in ways that scare the shit out of him. 

“You know I know it was an accident, right? You know you don't actually have to make it up to me.”

Hollander says it gently, and it’s like, see, this is exactly what I meant. Like he’s capable of seeing past all of Ilya’s bravado and all of his nonchalance, and he just casually says the devastating thing that Ilya has been trying very hard not to feel. Ilya almost laughs, but can’t quite manage it. It gets caught uncomfortably against the walls of his chest. 

It’s not like he doesn’t believe Hollander, exactly, but there’s something about the way Hollander says it. There’s that edge to his tone, the same edge with which he says almost everything else. He had the same edge when he talked about the cabinets in the fucking kitchen. It should have been me. This should have been mine. It’s like those quiet, unfair thoughts that Ilya has about his father, and his brother, and his friends, and even Sveta, sometimes. You should have been better. You should have known me more. You should see that I’m dying, every day a little more, and that I’m not the person you think I am. So Ilya knows that Hollander would deny ever feeling those unfair things; Ilya does the same. They aren’t real thoughts. They’re base thoughts. Thoughts you hide away.

But Ilya also knows that pretending not to feel something doesn’t mean that you stop. It just means that you get very good at deceiving even yourself, because you know that you should know better. 

It’s probably also difficult to talk himself out of it, because those mean inner thoughts are true, in Hollander’s case. Of course Hollander should have a place like this. He should be on the ice. He should be challenging Ilya, pushing Ilya to be better, giving Ilya that special thrill he felt the first and only time they faced each other. They would have been so good against each other on the ice. They would have been fucking legendary. It's not Ilya's fault that Hollander can’t play anymore, maybe, technically, but it has always felt like it. If only he didn't try to stop, maybe it wouldn't have been as bad. If only he hadn't been dogging Hollander so closely, too genuinely annoyed that Hollander had stolen the puck from him, wanting to impress his stupid fucking father and his stupid fucking Russian teammates. Maybe Hollander would be in Boston if he went first, but more likely Montreal, playing perfect fucking hockey, but he's not, because Ilya hurt him. Does it matter that it wasn’t on purpose? Does it matter that he’s sorry? The result is the same. Hollander is apparently in college according to their texts earlier, getting a degree he probably never wanted, probably drowning in debt like everyone else their age who isn't a professional athlete. It isn’t fair. Hollander shouldn’t have to think about those things. He shouldn’t have to think about anything but hockey. He was made for it, and Ilya stole it. Does it need to be healthy, that thought spiral? Does it need to make sense? It’s true, whether it makes sense or not.

“Maybe I want to make it up to you,” Ilya says. “Maybe you can keep texting me about hockey, and maybe I keep making it up to you. Making you feel good instead of bad.”

Hollander's expression does some interesting things. Like he's thinking the problem through and his face is broadcasting his thoughts in real time. 

“Okay,” he finally says. “Yeah. Maybe you can make it up to me eventually, I guess. Enough to replace a whole career, or whatever.” 

He sounds uncertain as he says it, like he's trying to chirp but not sure if he’s going too far, being too mean, getting too close to the heart of things. Ilya only smiles and kisses him again, like a reward. 

Chapter 4: Shane

To no one's surprise—certainly not Kip’s—the Rozanov thing gets weird fast. 

It was always weird, technically. It was weird from the second Shane desperately tried to give him a handjob in a club bathroom and was turned down, and it was definitely weird when Rozanov started a fight with fucking Scott Hunter just to prompt Shane to text him, and it was weird when Shane sent him a picture of his x-ray to joke about why Rozanov isn’t his favorite player (which, like, was an obvious fucking lie. Of fucking course Rozanov is his favorite player). It was definitely weird when Rozanov invited him over despite that, and it was weird when Shane found himself getting fucked for the first time by the man who ruined his life when they were seventeen, and it was weird afterward when he floated his way home in the cab Rozanov paid for. 

But, like, objectively, he can see the line between normal weird—or at least, like, psychosexual weird—and just…weird. And it gets just weird pretty fucking fast. 

The main issue, though, is that he loves it. Loves it despite how weird it is. Loves it maybe in part because of how weird it is. 

“Oh, no, this is totally normal,” says Kip with so much obvious sarcasm that even Shane can immediately hear it. “He's just your sugar daddy.”

“Shut up,” Shane hisses, even though they’re alone in the campus gym, because they’re the only two freaks up this early working out before classes. They're too gym bro even for the regular early bird gym bros, which is sort of a point of pride for them, because they're both obnoxious. “That's not…that’s not what’s happening. It's not like that. He’s just trying to make it up to me. I told you.” 

“Yeah, and I told you that doesn’t make any fucking sense,” Kip scoffs gently. “He's sugar daddying you no matter what you want to call it. And what is he even making up for? I thought you said you don't blame him.”

“I don't!” Shane insists, too quickly. And he doesn't, and it's the truth, but…

It should have been yours.

Ilya keeps saying that, every time he offers up something. First it's just drinks at bars, or picking up the check whenever they get takeout. They keep meeting up to fuck, obviously, because it’s incredible, and because Rozanov is so fucking hot, and because apparently he wants Shane just as badly as Shane wants him. But they always talk about hockey, too, and it feels almost like an exchange. Not in, like, a sexual way. Or like a way where Rozanov is putting out for Shane’s superior hockey opinions, or whatever. But it just creates this reason for Shane to be seeing him so often. Rozanov will text before a game and say will you watch? And Shane will say of course I will, and Rozanov will say text during game, all your thoughts. We meet after to discuss. And then Shane can pretend, even to himself, that he’s being just a helpful bro who used to love hockey so much it almost killed him, and then he’ll go to Rozanov’s beautiful apartment and he’ll suck Rozanov’s beautiful dick, and Rozanov will pound him into the heavenly mattress on those phenomenal sheets, and Shane will get to 1) talk about hockey for hours with his favorite player and 2) get at least 2-3 orgasms and a hot meal out of the deal, and that’s literally the best bargain anyone has ever gotten in the history of the world, and so there’s no reason to feel weird about it no matter how much Kip reminds him that he should have some dignity and try to pay his way at least sometimes. 

Shane, it turns out, doesn't care very much about dignity.

Except, of course, it evolves from there, and it's with the kind of slow and careful escalation that means Rozanov is doing it on purpose, and Shane knows it, but he can only watch it happening like a slow-motion car crash, because the alternative is stopping it from happening, and he just doesn’t want to do that. Rozanov starts doing these little caretaking things. Shane will say offhandedly that he lost one of his gloves on the T, and then Rozanov will stop in some random, insanely expensive store and buy him a new pair like it’s nothing, ignoring all of Shane’s protests that I can literally buy a pair for like five dollars at CVS, Rozanov, this is ridiculous. It’s things like Shane texting that he’s not feeling well, and suddenly Rozanov is sending a delivery driver to his apartment with cold medicine and fucking soup. It’s things like Rozanov ordering too much takeout every time they meet and insisting that Shane has to take the leftovers home with him. Then it’s bigger things, like Shane mentioning a brand of athletic wear he likes, trying to recommend them to Rozanov, but then he gets a package a few days later with a shitload of items from that particular company. Shane offers to pay Rozanov back once, and Rozanov gives him this brutally offended look and says do you know how much money I make with all my fucking endorsements? It should be yours. And Shane just, like….doesn't argue. He doesn’t even pretend to put up a fight about it. He folds immediately. 

Because, yeah. Okay. It should have been his. 

Maybe it makes Shane a bad person. Kip certainly seems to have some opinions about it, but Shane doesn't get why. The logic of the whole thing feels so clear to him. He really doesn't blame Rozanov for the collision, except deep down in the very center of his heart where all his most horrible, unfair opinions live. But the logic tracks anyway. If they hadn't collided, Shane would have money too. Shane would have a nice apartment and he would be able to buy nice things for himself, and he wouldn't be stretching his money thin, desperate not to bother his parents for more, but not having time to work more than a few hours a week at the campus bookstore, and having minor panic attacks every time he realizes just how in debt he’s going to be after he gets this degree. It had seemed like a good idea when he first got accepted; the program for sports medicine is one of the best in the world, and it was in Boston, literally a whole country away from his parents and their watchful concern and their hidden disappointment. He hadn’t really thought about the money at the time, because he was thinking about surviving the year and assuming he'd probably end up dead anyway, and now he looks at his loan statements and he thinks about how he won’t be paying these fucking things off until he’s in his forties if he’s lucky. And maybe it’s good that he’s planning for that now, and not just assuming he’s going to fucking kill himself instead, but still. It’s a lot. It’s overwhelming to suddenly care about surviving, and to realize that your money doesn’t go nearly as far as it needs to if you’re planning on making it to old age. 

And so, okay. Maybe he lets Rozanov spend a hundred dollars on a pair of gloves. It saves him the five dollars that he would have spent at CVS, right? And sure, Shane lets Rozanov buy too much food, because it saves him the hundred or so dollars he was going to spend throughout the week on groceries. Why is that bad? Rozanov spends hundreds of dollars a night buying drinks for girls at random clubs. Why shouldn’t he spend some of that money on Shane? 

And why shouldn’t Shane get some of that money? Why shouldn’t he allow himself that? 

It’s not like Rozanov doesn’t like spending money on Shane. Shane’s bad at social cues, but Rozanov literally gets hard the first time Shane wears a gifted jacket to a hookup, so that one's easy to figure out. His eyes get so huge when he sees Shane wearing it, when he watches Shane taking it off at the front door. They don’t even make it to the bedroom that day; Rozanov bends him over the back of the couch, the coat still clutched in one of Shane’s hands as he does. So, like, clearly he’s getting something out of it, too. They’re two consenting adults. Why does it have to be weird?

Except, okay. It’s true that Shane has trouble decoding whether or not Rozanov’s fixation on him is all guilt or not. He doesn’t think he would like it if it was only guilt, and he doesn’t think it is the only thing, necessarily. He just worries about it, at odd moments. When Ilya is eagerly pressing some new gift into his hands, or when he’s fucking Shane and kissing a line down the knobs of his spine, his hand spread huge and possessive over Shane’s once-wounded hip. Shane will find himself wondering is all of this only because…But then something will distract him, or he will force himself to stop thinking about it, because it’s so good, what they have. Shane is happier than he’s been in years, when he allows himself to stop worrying about it. He doesn’t want to sabotage it just because he doesn’t understand it. 

He doesn’t think it’s all guilt, anyway. Rozanov genuinely seems to enjoy talking hockey with him, and he listens to Shane's advice. Shane watches basically every game now, not just Raiders games, and he takes fucking notes, and he sends those notes to Rozanov, and Rozanov actually incorporates his thoughts into his play style the next time he plays those teams. Rozanov is so fucking smart, and with Shane’s added advice, he becomes even smarter. And if Rozanov can get hard about seeing Shane wearing his gifts, maybe it's an appropriate amount of weird that Shane gets hard every time he watches Rozanov do something unexpected that gets praised by the announcers, knowing that Rozanov only did it because of his advice. 

Rozanov always responds to Shane’s texts with seeming nonchalance, and he always laughs loudly at Shane’s analysis when they’re talking in person, but sometimes when Shane says something about another team, or suggests something about Rozanov’s own game, he locks in, gets serious, and it’s so fucking hot. He watches Shane when Shane talks, very intent, and Shane always feels like he’s saying something valuable, because Rozanov makes him feel it. 

Sometimes he leans hard into the sugar daddy thing in a way that feels performative. Like assholeish peacocking. Like he can't help himself. Preening, showing off. But Shane knows better than to think he’s special in that; Rozanov does it with the girls he takes out, too, based on the comments Shane sees online in those first early days when he's trying to figure out what the fuck is happening. Because of course Shane looks up the comments, and the pictures, and the videos posted on Instagram. It makes him feel better, on the surface. He tells himself it should make him feel better, and so he forces it to be true. If Rozanov was only generous with him, it would have to mean that it was all about the guilt, and obviously Shane doesn't want that, and so he should technically be glad about the girls. 

Rozanov is a bit of a slut, which makes sense, looking the way he does, and having the kind of profile he does. Shane wonders idly if he would have been a slut if he'd gotten to have a career in professional hockey, but he can't imagine it. Would he have even realized he was gay without meeting Kip and hearing Kip talk about it like it was no big deal and realizing that it wasn't? He probably would have figured it out eventually, but he probably wouldn't have been able to do anything with it, right? 

Would he rather be happily gay or happily playing hockey? Definitely the hockey one, for sure. No question. So maybe he wouldn't have been a slut. It's not like he's even a slut now. If he is, he's a slut for one person, and it feels like that's probably against the spirit of the definition.

Rozanov sleeps around, meets girls at clubs, especially when he's on the road, and obviously that's fine. That's his right or whatever. Shane knows they're not exclusive. They're not even dating. They're fucking, and sometimes Shane gets presents out of it, and in return he gives Rozanov advice, and it's all very good, and Shane doesn't need Rozanov's full attention, anyway. Shane can't find anything about Rozanov with guys, even salacious rumors that are largely dismissed, and he's a little impressed. Rozanov wants him; that much has been obvious since the club bathroom. It's not like he thinks that he's the only man who has ever caught Rozanov's interest, but apparently he’s better at covering his tracks in that arena than Shane would have expected, considering how fucking overt he was with Shane.

It wouldn’t matter if he was with any guys, anyway. It wouldn’t matter if he was with every guy in the whole fucking city. It wouldn’t make Shane feel unspecial that the gifts and the caretaking and the generosity aren't just for him. Aren’t just making up for something that, yes, Kip, wasn't even technically Rozanov's fault.

Of course not. Shane's not a complete fucking monster. 

Except maybe he is, because every time Rozanov says it, it should have been yours, it lights a fucking fire at the base of Shane's spine, tickles in his once-fucked hip bone. Shane can't remember the accident, which he knows is a good thing, because he's seen the video enough times to know it must have really hurt, but sometimes he thinks he can feel that phantom pain, his body remembering what his mind chose to excise for self-protection. He thinks of the video, seventeen year old Rozanov trying to get up, helmet abandoned, head bleeding, yelling for the medics over Shane's screams before Shane finally passed out. He probably remembers the accident. Maybe that's why he always holds Shane like he's so precious after they fuck, for a few seconds at lease, before releasing him and going back to his pleasant aloofness. Maybe. 

Or maybe he just likes getting his dick sucked, and Shane is good at that and always willing and also always willing to talk hockey, afterwards, which is probably a pretty good deal, from Rozanov’s perspective. More than once, Shane has still been talking about Rozanov’s game, praising certain goals or certain smart plays, while Rozanov's dick is literally inside him. So it can’t just be about the guilt. Shane has to be giving him something that he likes. 

It's not just about the pain for Shane, either, but maybe that's part of the problem. 

 

---

 

“You like him,” Kip accuses, trying and failing not to say it gently. It just makes him sound limp and a bit sad. Shane shrugs. Kip is taking a break from one of his many part time jobs to sit at a table with Shane and inhale a Dunkin bagel that Shane brought him. Shane doesn't have the heart to tell him that Rozanov offered to pay his rent this month when Shane said he couldn't meet up because he had work, and that Shane had accepted with absolutely zero guilt in his heart. 

“Of course I like him,” Shane says. “He's fucking incredible.”

“I'm not talking about him as a player.”

“Okay, well, he's incredible at more than just hockey.”

“Of course he is,” Kip says witheringly. “They all are.”

Shane arches his eyebrows a bit, but Kip doesn't seem to realize what he’s implied, still picking at his bagel with disgust. 

“We don't have to talk about it,” Shane says. 

“I know we don't, but I feel responsible for you. You know that.”

“You don't have to feel responsible for me. I'm like super old for a college sophomore. You remember that, right?”

“No, I know. But I know I was, like, your gay awakening or whatever.”

“Don't say it like that,” Shane laughs, knowing that Kip said it like that specifically because it always makes Shane laugh when he does. 

“I awakened your inner gay,” Kip continues, fake mournfulness really ramping up. This means that he's done trying to have a serious conversation, and is going to let Shane continue to like Rozanov too much without at least outer judgement, which is nice. 

“You let me know that gay is an okay thing to be, yes.”

“I exorcised your internal homophobe.”

“I like that,” Shane says, an olive branch, and Kip nods back at him. He gives Shane one more long look, cataloguing. 

“If you're in over your head, you'll tell me, right? I will feel really guilty if you get hurt over this.”

“Well, then maybe I'll have two sugar daddies,” Shane says bluntly, and Kip laughs loudly, disgustedly. 

“Yeah, no chance. I can't afford another shift in my schedule, and you have expensive fucking taste.”

Shane grins and turns back to his food, feeling like he has successfully hidden the fact that he knows he's in over his head. 

Chapter 5: Ilya

Ilya understands on some level that he's doing something very strange, with Hollander. Fucking him, no. That's not strange. He's wanted to fuck Hollander for years, from even before he met him, but especially after he met him. That Hollander is so pretty and apparently gay and perfect and strong and muscular and beautiful and so breathtakingly willing to try new things is all just bonus for Ilya specifically. If that was all it was, it wouldn't be strange at all. 

The gift-giving, the money spending, okay. That's more of a puzzle. 

It's strange because his family has treated him for years like a bank that never charges interest and never demands repayment. They ask for more, and he gives more, and he resents them more and more deeply as time passes. And maybe it should feel the same with Hollander, but it doesn't. Ilya wants to pamper him. He wants to give him everything. He wants to give him even more than he does, really. He's being restrained in his gifts. 

And Hollander isn't demanding anything. He always gets this little furrow in his brow when Ilya offers something, like he knows it's fucked up. But all Ilya has to do is remind Hollander about the career that might have been his, and Hollander will accept it. 

“He has to be doing it on purpose,” Svetlana says. She sounds torn between angry for Ilya and impressed with Hollander's hustle, which is not a surprise, but it does make Ilya laugh. 

“I don't think so,” Ilya says. “I'm doing it on purpose, though.”

“Yes, because you are a masochist who will give pieces of yourself away until you die, like that tree in that horrible children's book. I know you. I know how you look when you give your fucking brother more money. You're really telling me this is different?”

“Yes, because I can take care of him. Because I want to. Because he's letting me.”

Svetlana's eyes roam his face. She really does know him, is the thing. She knows the things he can't say aloud, and she knows the things he would never think to say aloud. She nods, decisively, as if she has seen something in his expression, but he has no idea what it is. 

“Okay,” she says. “But if it gets to be too much…just tell me? Maybe you don't remember what you were like when you heard about him, but I do.”

“I wasn't that bad.”

“You were devastated.”

“Too big a word for that,” Ilya argues. “I was upset.”

“You soften things like this,” Svetlana argues dismissively. “We all know it.”

“Okay, whatever. I wasn't devastated. I was guilty and sorry and upset because he was supposed to be as good as me.”

“And it was never your fault.”

“I know.”

“Do you actually?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Except probably for deep in your heart where you're convinced that it's your fault because you ruin everything you touch, yes?”

“God, you're so annoying. Sometimes I forget.”

“Yes, okay,” Svetlana says, grimly pleased with herself. “I understand better now.”

 

---

 

And it isn't like that's all there is. Maybe he would agree with her that it’s unhealthy if that was it. But Hollander is beautiful and funny and sharp and wants Ilya just as much as Ilya wants him. Physically, anyway, at least. Ilya knows Svetlana is right about some things, possibly all of it, and so he knows that he has to temper himself in some ways. Not fall too hard, or whatever. He can feel the threat of it happening, sometimes. Hollander will have something incisive to say about some other player’s weaknesses, and he will praise Ilya unthinkingly in the same sentence, comparing him favorably, and Ilya will find it hard to breathe for a second. Yes, of course there is a danger. It's like Hollander was made in a lab to get past all of his defenses. So he keeps his feelings for Hollander on a very short leash, and he examines them often, checking them for cracks or for too deep fissures. He makes sure not to spend too much time with him. He goes out with Svetlana and hooks up with girls at clubs, as he always has. He doesn't rub Hollander's face in it, exactly, but he also doesn't hide it. He thinks he does a pretty good job of making it obvious without making it obvious that he's making it obvious. 

But it's good. It really is. It's just not the kind of good that he can explain aloud, and so he understands why Svetlana might not understand it. He wishes idly that he was better at explaining these things to her, but he's not sure he would ever find a way to make this seem anything other than fucked up. He could maybe explain to her that he has been lonely at the top, and that he has always missed the potential of Hollander in his life, and the thrill of being on a team with him, even if it's just in this way, this weird private coaching, this weird fucking and caretaking and advice-giving arrangement, banishes some of the dark clouds that have been gathering over his head the last few years. 

He won't tell her that, though. He thinks maybe she would take it the wrong way, and he doesn't want to hurt her, or frighten her, or make her think that she hasn't been enough. 

 

---

 

“You aren't going to argue?” Ilya asks with pleased surprise as he hands over the folded-up jersey. Hollander gives him a very unimpressed once-over that barely hides his rampant attraction. 

“It's your jersey. Even beyond whatever weird shit we're doing, I'd let you give it to me. They charge way too much for these things.”

“Hmm,” Ilya agrees. “Weird shit we're doing?”

Hollander thinks he's smooth, sometimes, but he isn't. Ilya learned this quickly. Maybe their fourth time meeting up. There's this particular way Hollander talks when he wants to introduce a conversation but thinks he's sneaky enough to make Ilya be the one to mention it first. It's cute, so Ilya lets him get away with it. He's letting him get away with it now. 

“Well, yeah,” Hollander says, unfolding the Raiders jersey and inspecting it. “Whatever this is.”

Oh, Ilya thinks to himself. He doesn't know what this is, and he wants me to tell him. 

This is adorable to him, for some reason, though he knows it would annoy him if Hollander was literally anyone else. 

“Why would it be weird? We fuck. I buy you things. We fuck again.”

“So I'm, like, a prostitute?” Ilya watches Hollander's reaction to his own words. 

“No,” he answers, when he's sure he's seeing discomfort.

“My friend Kip says I'm your ‘sugar baby’. I don't know if that's more or less gross than prostitute.”

“You give me advice on hockey. You are helping me train. You are running me ragged, Hollander. I'm down to three cigarettes only per day. Have you noticed? And I am focusing on endurance, and I get in not so many fights, and I have been running very intense drills with Marleau in particular and have maybe ruined our friendship because now he hates me for it. And you were right about Hunter's blind spot, and you were right about Seattle's weakness without Marev, and you were right that San Jose would not know what to do when I took your advice about St. Simon.” Hollander is looking at him hazily. Some people, Ilya knows, would probably like him more for the gifts, but of course that isn't Hollander. Hollander clearly likes the things that Ilya gives him, but he craves this most of all: being told that he was right. Being told that he is still so fucking good. “You are smart about hockey in a way that makes me want to hire you or maybe lock you up in the practice rink like a hockey genie we can all rub for answers before games.”

“I don't think that's how genies work,” Hollander finally says, but his eyes are doing that big, wet thing they do, and have always done. Ilya thinks of them locked on his own eyes on the ice, in those moments after the crash. Incomprehending pain and horror and confusion. Now, they are gratifyingly more lust-filled, but still. Ilya kisses Hollander so that he can stop looking, and pulls him into a bruising hug so that he can keep not looking while also being close to him, and he speaks lowly into his ear. 

“If your friend Kip makes you feel bad about taking my gifts, I say fuck him. But if this is weird for you, we can stop. We can still fuck, or not. You can still give me advice, or not. I was going to ask you to help me plan a new gym routine. I think you would be good at this. I usually just ride the bike or run for a bit and then lift weights. I can feel you getting tense, holy shit.” He laughs, pulling back, and Hollander glares at him. 

“Of course I'll come up with something for you. And stretches. You need to start doing yoga.”

“And you will do yoga with me? Show me how? Go for runs with me? Train with me? Make sure I'm following your plans?”

“Yes, when I'm free,” Hollander says, defiantly, and Ilya smiles at him. 

“Okay. But I mean it. If it is too weird for you, we stop. Whenever you want. If it's not too weird, maybe we hang out more. As friends, you know? I can tell people you are helping me. There are enough people who remember your name. They will know I'm very smart for listening to you. But I like giving you what you deserve, which is everything, and I would like to keep doing it. It should have been yours.”

“You can't just keep saying that to me. It makes me…” Hollander trails off, shakes his head. 

“Makes you what? Hard? I know this already.”

“It makes me want to take it, I think.”

“Good. I want you to take. So take.”

 

---

 

Hollander comes up with a meal plan for him. He comes up with a yoga routine and a workout routine. Ilya mostly follows everything, with some cheats here and there. Hollander calls him after every game with diligent notes, and Ilya pretends to also be taking notes, though mostly he just quietly jerks off while listening to Hollander's strange, intense voice. Stuff gets through anyway. He's playing better than he's ever played in his life. After the games, in interviews, he says that he's been working with a personal trainer, and he winks into the camera. He's still waiting for Hollander to approve a name drop. He thinks it might be coming soon. 

He leaves tickets for Hollander basically every home game, same as he does for Svetlana, even though both of them can’t always make it. The first time they both go to the same game, Ilya almost trips over his own skates when he looks up and sees them sitting next to each other in their matching Rozanov jerseys. They both wave at him, and he waves back, and his heart could not be more full, especially when they both go back to talking very intently, and he knows they're probably not even talking about him at all. They're just talking about hockey, his two favorite people. 

He's not sure when Hollander became one of his favorite people, but he did. Maybe Svetlana is right that Ilya is a bit of a masochist. He doesn't mean to be, but it creeps in. He likes that Hollander is uncomfortable sometimes, that he hates him clearly sometimes, that he hisses and goes all snippy if Ilya pushes too much, gives too much, reaches for too much. He likes that Hollander isn't very good at showing affection, because it makes the crumbs of affection he does dole out shine brighter. Hollander is clearly insecure about what they have going on, clearly listening too much to his friend Kip, who seems to think one of them has to be taking advantage of the other, though it's unclear from Hollander's confused ramblings which one is supposed to be the one being disadvantaged. 

He likes that Hollander is ashamed of it, probably. Likes that Hollander knows it's a huge mistake to keep allowing himself to be fucked by the guy who ended his career, but who keeps coming back anyway. Ilya likes reminding him of it, likes saying it should have been yours, because it always makes this gleam of something erupt behind Hollander's careful blankness, and Ilya fucking loves it. He has given up on trying to understand it on any level deeper than that. 

Chapter 6: Shane

“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” Kip says, at the door to Shane's new apartment. Shane shrugs, like it's not a big deal. He's been trying to convince himself for the last two days that it's not a big deal, since he woke up to a text from Rozanov with an address and instructions on how to retrieve the key. The worst part is that Rozanov had come to him for advice about the apartment, asking all sorts of questions, claiming he just wanted to invest in some more property. Shane had been happy to help, because Shane likes nothing more than he likes looking at listings for apartments and houses he's never going to be able to afford, and so he'd picked this place out himself, somehow not realizing he was picking out his most insane gift yet.  

Shane tried, for like two seconds, to channel Kip and refuse the apartment on the grounds that it was way too much, but somehow Rozanov had convinced him. Over text, too, so he didn't even have to use Shane's lust against him. He'd done one worse, and used his logic. Talked about what a great investment it would be if he sat on the place for a few years and let it appreciate in value, and of course he couldn't just leave it empty, and of course it was so hard to find a tenant who could be trusted to be a good, quiet, responsible boy, so really, Shane was doing Rozanov a favor by agreeing to stay there, rent free. Then he reminded Shane just how small a percentage of his income this purchase was, and how it would improve Shane's year in such a disproportionately better way, if you looked at the ratios, and so Shane had folded, of course. 

Shane has done nothing but fold for Rozanov, this entire time. It's beginning to become a problem, mostly because he doesn’t think it’s a problem, but he knows from Kip’s reaction that it probably is one. 

Shane has always been sort of different from other people. If he ever said that in front of his dad, his dad would say everyone is different, bud! That’s what makes humanity so awesome! or something else just as corny and supportive. His mom would pretend to agree, but Shane knows that his mom feels the same way he does, sometimes, about herself. Probably about Shane, too. She’s the one who talks him down best whenever he spirals, and he owes her a lot, but it makes talking to her difficult, too, because he always tries to weigh the whole picture, and she's like him in that she lasers in on something and then sticks to it. 

Like, when he imagines telling his parents about this, about the details, he knows exactly what they’d say, and how they’d react. His father would be mildly horrified but would do an okay job of hiding that horror. 

His mother, he imagines, would probably want to brainstorm ways for him to get more out of this arrangement. 

“You keep saying that you're not his sugar baby,” Kip says, sounding a little horrified as he pokes around the apartment. It's not as nice as Rozanov's place, technically; Shane is holding on to that fact to deploy later, if Kip gets really mad, even though he thinks Kip probably won't be impressed by that argument anyway. It's still so far beyond what Shane was living in before, and it's so far beyond what he would be able to afford on his own. His balcony literally has a view of the Raider's practice rink. It's so fucked up. 

“I'm not his sugar baby,” Shane says, trying not to sound defensive. “I don't think there's much about it that's sweet, and we mostly talk about hockey when we're not fucking.”

“So you're his sour coach,” Kip laughs bitterly. He turns around to face Shane, his hands on his hips, less impressed by the countertops than Shane expected. They're nice countertops. There was a part of Shane that literally thought they'd make his argument for him, but not everyone appreciates that stuff the way he does, he knows. “You're his, I don't know, his jock bro Lady Macbeth. You're using him to play hockey. Like a proxy.”

“Maybe,” Shane admits, laughing. He can hear how awkward he sounds. He can feel how tense he's getting. “It's not like it's just that, though.”

Kip is looking at him searchingly. 

“I don't want to tell you I'm worried about you again, because I think it's bordering on offensive.”

“Okay.”

“But I am worried about you. And maybe about him. This guy clearly needs therapy.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I've told him that, too. I tried to sell it as a way to help with his hockey, but I started talking about how it helped me after the accident and he changed the subject. He doesn't like talking about it.”

“Okay, but see, that's exactly what I'm talking about.”

“I know.”

“It's not healthy. It's weird. I know you know this.”

“He's so fucking good, Kip,” Shane says, though he knows it's not going to work. “He's so fucking good, and he actually listens to me when I talk about hockey. He trusts me. He needs me to help him.”

“I know you can hear yourself, Shane. I know you know how insane you sound.” 

“Yeah,” Shane admits, giving up. “But, fuck, I don't know. I don't think I care.”

Kip looks at him for a long time, and then looks around at the apartment. 

“Okay,” he finally says. 

---

Shane doesn't need Kip to understand, and he doesn't need Kip to approve, but it still bothers him that Kip doesn't. Shane has other friends, but he's become close to Kip, and he likes the easy way he can make Kip laugh. He hasn't had a lot of people like that in his life. People who think he's more fun than he is weird. 

It bothers him, maybe, that Kip can't see the logic in it, because it seems so obvious and so clear to Shane. Why does it matter if Rozanov is giving him stuff? They're fucking. People who are fucking can give each other things. And it's not like Shane isn't giving Rozanov anything back. It probably works out to an equitable exchange, if you do the math. 

But of course he notices more, after Kip's clear disappointment about the apartment thing, because he did do a lot of fucking therapy after the accident, and even though he's mostly blown it off in the last few years, determined to white knuckle his way through the rest of his life because he's still kind of awkward about emotions at heart, he cant help but look at things through a different lens. 

It's just hooking up with extra perks he tells himself every time he opens his apartment door to find Rozanov smirking on the other side of it. It should have been me. It should have been me. When he goes to Rozanov's games and sits in his seats and pretends that he's just a friend who helps out with Rozanov's conditioning. When Rozanov takes him to a team dinner one time and Shane feels sick with nervousness about it right up until he gets roped into a conversation with two random players and realizes that he still has something to contribute. It doesn't have to be weird. They can be friends. They are friends, probably, he thinks. 

Rozanov makes everything easy, because he's so easy for Shane to figure out. He's so open about everything. Rozanov wants him, desires him, maybe always, but there's a distance there, and Shane prods at the edges of it sometimes, but never too much. The last thing he wants to do is humiliate himself by trying to reach for something that Rozanov doesn't want to give him. So when he sees Rozanov picking up a girl at some club when he's there with Kip and his friends, he turns his back and pretends not to notice, and he lets Kip take him out to a gay club after, and he lets himself be hit on by several guys who are clearly interested, and he even lets himself make out with one of them on the dancefloor, but the whole thing feels so awkward and so not him. 

Maybe Kip is right that it's fucked up that he's using Ilya Rozanov as some kind of hockey proxy and maybe it's even more fucked up than he realized. Maybe it's the hockey shit that makes him so fucking hard for Rozanov all the time. Maybe that's why other guys just don't do it for him in the same way. Maybe he's only interested in really good hockey. Maybe he's more of a freak than he realized. 

He doesn't want to believe it about himself, mostly because he thinks it would make him a pretty shitty person, but the alternative—that other guys don't do it for him because he has allowed himself to catch actual feelings for Rozanov—is so fucking scary. Maybe in the beginning, sure, every time he thought the name Ilya Rozanov, he pictured his skating, his beautiful goals, his frenetic energy and his beaming, savage grin under his helmet. Now, though, he almost always imagines Rozanov soft and sleepy at his apartment, the heavily lidded way he watches Shane leave, almost like he wants him to stay. 

And Shane feels more himself around Rozanov than he feels anywhere else. He's allowed to like men with Rozanov, obviously. He's very encouraged to like one man specifically. His gayness is definitely a benefit in that particular area. But he's also allowed to chirp and call him an asshole and he doesn't have to worry about coming off like too much of a straight bro the way he always worries about with Kip and his friends. He can talk about hockey all he wants, and Rozanov is willing and ready to talk about hockey to him, too, and they also talk about video games, and about Shane's coursework, and about Ilya's childhood with Svetlana, and basically everything, and Shane hardly ever feels awkward about it, anymore, like he's going to say something weird. Rozanov likes him weird. Laughs at him, sometimes, calls him weird and strange in this voice that's all wondering affection, and Shane knows it's not a negative when it's said like that. 

It's fucking perfect, is the thing, except that Shane doesn't know where he stands with Rozanov as anything other than, sure, an occasional sugar baby and a sour coach and maybe even a jock bro Lady Macbeth. 

And he doesn't know how to ask for more, because whenever he tries to hint his way into it, Rozanov starts asking things like what kind of car would you like to drive? No boring answers, and Shane feels a little sick, and changes the subject, so Rozanov doesn't get any ideas.   

It's not like he doesn't understand it; he's totally shit at talking about his emotions, too. Of course he gets that it's easier to not talk about these things. And he gets that Rozanov is deflecting on purpose, and he figures that he should just take that as his answer, but it's getting harder to do that. 

Shane just likes him. So fucking much. 

Rozanov is having an incredible season. Which, of course he is. He's an incredible player. He won the cup last year; he didn't need Shane's help to do it. But he's even fiercer this year, even better, and Shane knows it, and he holds it close to his heart. Like, okay, he's having a small but measurable effect on hockey. He isn't dead yet. He isn't gone completely.

“When you graduate, I will hire you as a personal exercise coach, trainer, PT, whatever you want. I will pay you so much fucking money,” Rozanov says when he's literally inside Shane, and Shane fucking hates the punched out little whine of eagerness that comes out of him at the thought. 

“How much money?” he asks, and Rozanov laughs and makes his own embarrassing sounds, and Shane is grinning up at him, and for like two seconds, everything is perfect. They're on the same page. Shane understands him completely. 

Chapter 7: Ilya

“You can still skate, yes?” Ilya asks Hollander one day. “Run drills, even?”

“Yeah, sure,” Hollander says, blissed out, lying on his back in the middle of Ilya's bed. It's pretty pathetic that Ilya is trying to come up with ways to keep Hollander around, but actually he thinks this one might really be a good idea, and not just a way to try and live the fantasy of Hollander never being allowed to leave his side again. 

“Okay. Let's go skating, then. Practice rink.”

“What, now?” Shane asks. “I don't even have skates.”

“Wow, I wonder where you could get some.”

“I'm not wearing some random person's skates, Rozanov,” Shane says, mouth creasing down into the grumpy frown Ilya unfortunately likes very much. 

“Of course not. Do I look stupid? I bought you some.”

Hollander sits up abruptly, eyes doing that flashing thing they do when Ilya spends money on him. 

“What? Already? You didn't even know if I could skate a second ago.”

“Mm, true. I guessed.”

“Jesus,” Hollander breathes, collapsing on his back. “I haven't skated in, like, two years. I don't know if I'll be any good.”

Ilya snorts. 

“Shut the fuck up, Hollander. You'll be perfect,” he says. 

 

---

 

Ilya is right, of course. He and Hollander have the rink to themselves, and Hollander gets warmed up. Ilya worries about him at the beginning. Not physically, because he's put Hollander's stamina and flexibility in the pelvis department to the test the last few months, and he knows that Hollander's old injury isn't that limiting. But he's worried about the look on Hollander's face when he talks about hockey sometimes. The love of it, the ambition to be better than anyone else. The strength of that love and the jarring, sudden loss of it. How will he feel skating alongside Ilya, the man who was supposed to be his rival? How will it feel knowing that he can no longer measure up? But the pinched look on Hollander's face only lasts for a single warmup lap, and Ilya finds the tension in his shoulders beginning to dissipate. 

Hollander is still fast, and his turns are mostly still okay, though there are a few times he wobbles or hesitates when Ilya knows he wouldn't have before. Neither of them mention it. They pass cleanly, back and forth. Hollander makes a few comments on his passing form, on his increased chemistry with Marleau, on how he has cut back a bit on the aggressive showboating in a way that is able to take teams by surprise, because they're waiting for the old, brash Rozanov. The surprise won't last for long, but for now it's keeping the other teams on their toes, and it's good. Ilya laps up all the praise Hollander gives him, of course, feeling a little like a pathetic dog, but who cares about that? He circles around Hollander, begs for more attention. He and Hollander take turns taking shots on net, and it's a bit childish, the way they play and banter with each other. But it's a childhood Ilya never got to experience. A memory of someone else's childhood, maybe. 

“You are still a better skater than anyone except for me,” Ilya says, afterward, when they're packing up. Hollander shrugs a little to deny it, but he has this pleased look on his face, which means he's happy Ilya said it, even though he thinks it's just empty praise. Maybe it's an exaggeration, but it isn't much of one. Hollander is still fucking beautiful out there. 

“I used to still skate all the time, back home,” he says. He looks at Ilya like he's trying to see if Ilya is going to call him boring or change the subject, which makes Ilya feel vaguely bad, so he gestures for Hollander to continue. “Even after. Especially after, I guess. I fucking missed it. I don't know. I hated myself for not being good enough anymore, but I still loved it so much. I could only do it in total privacy. I didn't even let my parents watch. I didn't want them to be disappointed with me when they saw how different I was out there, I guess. It wasn't really helping, though. I had like all this love for hockey, all this obsession for it, and I had nowhere to put it. Maybe that's stupid. I had, uh, you know post-concussion syndrome?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, because of course. He's heard the stories. 

“Well, I had this like orbital bone fracture, so I guess at first I thought the headaches were from that, and the light sensitivity, and the blurry vision. And maybe some of it was, but then I started having these mood swings. I couldn't sleep sometimes. I felt sick, like, all the time. Totally nauseas. Any time I tried to skate, I'd feel like I was on a boat. My parents were afraid I'd…well.”

“Well? Well what, Hollander?”

“Kill myself, I guess? Maybe they were right to worry. I don't know. It's not like I really had a concrete idea, but I'd think about it a lot.” Ilya deserves an award for not reacting the way he wants to react to this. He stays silent, lets Hollander keep talking. “They got me into therapy, and my neuro doc was the one who eventually told me that all those symptoms were from the concussion, and it was kind of a relief, I guess? To know that there was a cause, or whatever, but then it just felt unfair. Like, people get concussions all the time and they don't want to kill themselves, so I don't know why I did.”

“So you did? Want to?”

Ilya can't help the choked-up quality of his voice, and he knows Hollander notices, because he backs off so immediately and so intensely. 

“No, no, not really. I wouldn't…my parents, you know? I couldn't do that to them. It was just really hard to remember that for a little while. But I'm okay now, seriously. I just…when I started to get back into it, I was afraid I would just be mediocre, I guess. I wanted to catch back up with you. I wanted to be the Shane Hollander everyone wanted me to be.” He laughs a little. “Probably tried too hard to prove it, but it didn't even matter. I got another concussion. Wasn't even my fault, really, I guess. I think we all thought I was going to burn myself out training too hard, injure my leg again, but I was doing fine. Just got hit too hard, went down. Passed out. When I woke up, my dad asked me to stop playing. He waited until my mom was out of the room. I don't know if she even knows he asked me.  I don't know if he ever told her. But he asked me to stop playing, and I…” he trails off, looks at Ilya again like he didn't mean to talk so much. Ilya gestures at him to keep going. He wonders if Hollander can see how badly he wants to pull him into his fucking arms. He hopes not. “I don't know. I guess I realized I was going to have to choose between my health and hockey, and my parents and hockey, and I decided that I couldn't put them through it.”

“It was probably the right choice,” Ilya finds himself saying. He's not sure he would have made the same one. Hollander laughs hollowly. 

“I regret it every day,” he admits. 

“Yes. I do too,” Ilya says, sort of trying to joke, but also, maybe not. Hollander looks at him piercingly, those eyes going straight to the heart of him, as always. Ilya thinks about how beautiful he was out on the ice, and how beautiful he is here, too, and how beautiful he is in Ilya's bed, or in his own, in the bed that Ilya bought for him. He knows Hollander is not his to want or protect or to provide for, technically, but he's Ilya's something. Ilya's regret made flesh. His hunger made flesh. His desire for more, always more. He's Ilya's mistake, and Ilya loves fixing his mistakes, and he almost loves that he knows he can't fix this one, technically. No matter how much money he pours into this problem, Hollander's career is over. It's so strange that it doesn't make him want to stop trying. He's never felt like that before. He's usually good at pulling out of something when he knows it's a lost cause, except when it comes to his family, maybe, but this thing with Hollander is like the exact opposite of that. Or it feels like the opposite of it, anyway. It makes him feel such different things. 

Ilya has always liked the idea of being needed. He likes the idea of being indispensable to someone. It's harder to throw away a thing you need to survive. But his family never makes him feel needed in a good way. They make him feel like an object they can't live without, but in a way of a deep and buried resentment. Hollander, maybe, resents him too, but at least Ilya understands what he did to earn that resentment, and at least Hollander is also open with his gratitude. Confused and baffled by it, maybe, but in a way that makes him shine. And he's always giving back to Ilya, making Ilya feel wanted, important, special. Yes, Hollander should have been allowed to have these things, and this career, but he can't, because of Ilya, and so he can take and take from Ilya, and Ilya can give gladly, and they can exist like this forever in each other's orbit. It doesn't ever have to be more than that. It's a self-sustaining thing, this bizarre attraction between them. When Hollander graduates, Ilya will hire him, if Hollander isn't too proud. He'll make sure the Raiders hire him, if he is too proud, and then he'll monopolize Hollander’s time anyway, and Hollander will not hate him for being a grasping, greedy thing any more than he already does. 

But Hollander is looking at him now in a way Ilya can't quite read, like he can see the same future spiraling out in front of them and for some reason isn't as pleased with it as Ilya is. 

“You know I don't actually blame you for it, right?” Hollander says. He's said it before, of course, many times, but this time he says it without that bitter, biting edge that Ilya has always taken refuge in, because he knows the truth is that Hollander does blame him, and that makes it safe. 

“It was me who broke your leg,” Ilya says. “My body that shoved your head into the ice.”

“Well, sure, but not…I mean, Rozanov, fuck, we were just, like, kids. I was distracted, trying to show off, I guess. Probably trying to impress you? I don't know. I don't remember, but I've seen the tape.”

“No, no, you did nothing wrong. I was taking it too far. Trying to make my father proud.” He was proud, too. That's the worst part. His father had been more proud of that injury than anything Ilya had ever done, and for a few sickening seconds it felt like the warmth of the sun, and Ilya has never forgiven himself for that, really. 

“We were both stupid,” Hollander agrees. 

“No.”

“Rozanov, come on. I just…”

“This only works if you hate me,” Ilya finds himself saying, almost panicked. He's not even sure, after, why he puts it like that. Hate. Does he actually think that Hollander hates him? Maybe. Maybe down deep, where he's not ready to admit it. Sometimes it feels like hate when Hollander complains to him over text about all the things he's fucking up in his career. The career that should have been Hollander's. Sometimes it feels like such a deep, cloying resentment that Ilya feels choked by it. It hasn't ever really hurt, he doesn't think, to be the object of Hollander's hate. He would rather be hated than forgotten, than not thought of at all. 

“What?” Hollander asks, stunned. 

“If you are angry, I mean. That's the only way this works.”

He gestures between themselves, as if Hollander could misinterpret what he means. Hollander looks furious, then. He looks back through the tunnel, out on the ice. 

“I'm not angry,” Hollander says weakly. “This was fun, Rozanov, fuck. We have fun.”

“Yes, yes, of course we do. I am maybe not saying it right.”

“I am so fucking tired of being angry,” Hollander says, and he drops his equipment bag and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, and he crouches down there, right in the tunnel, right in front of Ilya, and Ilya is afraid of his headaches and his apparent desire to kill himself, but Hollander only crouches there for a second, like he needs a break. He stands up at last, and his eyes are red-rimmed, and he dodges away when Ilya tries to put a hand on his shoulder. “Do you really think I hate you? Like, this whole time, you've thought…”

Ilya considers lying, or changing the subject, because he hates the way Hollander is looking at him now. Fucking devastated, almost, and his eyes are so lethal like this, the way they glimmer at him. 

“Of course you do,” Ilya admits, because he can't look away from Hollander's eyes in time to think up a lie. “I ruined your life.”

Hollander's expression wavers, his eyebrows drawing together and then moving apart and then drawing together again, tighter. Angry, then sad, and now furious. Ilya wishes he could say he doesn't love Hollander's anger, but he does. He unfortunately loves it quite a lot. 

“I'm not some fucking monster,” Hollander says, which is confusing, because that has never been on the table. Ilya is the monster. Ilya is Hollander's monster. That's how this works. Before Ilya can do more than open his mouth to say that, Hollander snaps. “Is that what you think of me? That I'm just fucking you and taking your gifts and making you listen to me talk about hockey all fucking day because I hate you? Because I hate you? Really?”

He starts angry, but it devolves into a desperate plea at the end, and it makes Ilya's stomach and his chest hurt. It makes him want to take everything back. 

“You’re not a monster for taking what I want to give you,” Ilya says. “That's what this is.”

He tries again to reach for Hollander, but Hollander jerks back instead, mouth twisting even further. 

“No,” he says. It's so abrupt and barked out that it’s almost startling. “No, fuck you. No. If that's what this is, I'm done with it.”

“Hollander,” Ilya says, alarmed and surprised by the speed at which Hollander has suddenly decided this. Hollander has been so sweet and trusting with him, but now it's like he has made up his mind, and Ilya realizes just how easy is to coax Hollander out of his poor temper usually. Now, it's like a switch has been flipped. 

“I'm done,” Hollander insists, and he turns and walks away, leaving his skates and his bag there, on the floor. 

“Hollander, come on,” Ilya laughs. “It's not that serious.”

Hollander glares over his shoulder. 

“Not for you, apparently,” he snaps. “I'm keeping everything you gave me.”

“Good! You should! Come get the skates, at least.”

Hollander doesn't listen; he slams through the door at the end of the tunnel, and he's gone. 

 

---

 

Ilya does something very stupid after that, but he's been angling towards it for a while, just waiting for Hollander's final permission, because Hollander kept saying the gesture was too big. He transfers the money, the amount that he knows is on Hollander's student loans, and he sits at his kitchen counter and waits, trying to pretend he isn't anxious. 

When his phone lights up with a text, he jolts, grabs desperately to unlock it. 

Hollander has sent: fuck you. Are you fucking kidding me? I'm giving it back. 

Don't give it back, please, Ilya types, before he can talk himself out of it. Apology money. If you give it back I will spend it all on new car.

Hollander doesn't text back, but he doesn't send the money back, either, so Ilya takes that as a win right up until he tries to text Hollander again, two days later, and finds that he has been blocked. 

Chapter 8: Shane

Kip is too nice to openly brag about how he told Shane all along that Shane was in over his head. Shane wishes he would be an asshole about it so Shane could wallow more or blow up their friendship, but Kip just offers to take Shane out and then offers to hit the gym when Shane says he can't even think about dick at the moment. He's a good friend, and Shane feels like shit. 

He doesn't tell Kip that Rozanov gave him enough money to pay for the rest of his degree. He knows exactly what reaction he'd get if he did. 

He tells Kip most of the truth as they work out. He hedges around some parts, mostly the parts where he got too attached, too quickly. He thinks it comes through in his tone anyway, from the way Kip looks at him with pity throughout. He keeps thinking things like at least I got something out of it, but he doesn't think he can manage to say it aloud without feeling sick. He hates the way things with Rozanov ended, because he really was enjoying himself. He really did like feeling useful for once, and he liked being taken care of, and he liked taking care in turn, and it was so fucking nice. Shane's angry that it's over, and he's angry that it was never what he thought it was, too. This doesn't work if you don't hate me, Rozanov had said. Like the whole thing was just some masochistic fantasy, and Shane was ruining it by not staying steeped in unfair resentment forever.

He manages to keep it at least a little tidy in his retelling. It doesn't sound like his heart is being crushed repeatedly in his chest as he drags the words out, he doesn't think, which means he's doing a better job than he expected. He doesn't finish talking until after they've worked out, showered, and are getting lunch at the little cafe next door, but Kip doesn't seem to mind, and so Shane takes advantage. 

Kip watches him carefully, eating his little salad, apparently musing over what to say. When Shane is finished speaking, he feels exhausted, like way more tired than he's ever felt after a workout. He hates this. 

“I'm going to tell you something now,” Kip says, setting aside his utensils and making sure that they're still the only people here except the guy behind the counter, who is openly sleeping. “And you can't tell anyone, okay? I'm so serious.”

“When have I ever told anyone anything? All my friends were your friends first.”

“Don't say it like that, oh my god.”

“What? It's true!”

“I know, but you're looking at me with those baby deer eyes, and it makes me want to cry.”

“Shut up. Tell me your thing.”

“Okay. So. I may have recently been, uh. Seeing someone. Before I met you. Also in the same…field? As your…someone.”

Shane narrows his eyes. 

“Scott Hunter,” he says, and Kip jolts and slaps his hand over Shane's mouth and checks again to make sure they're alone. Shane snorts. 

“What? How did you…did you know?”

“You call him Scott every time you talk about him. You hate hockey, but you wouldn't let me turn off the Admirals game when Rozanov was fighting him. You were so pissed about that fight. And you had a lot of opinions about me whoring myself out for hockey money, almost like you were in a similar situation but chose to be the more noble person or whatever. And you have good taste, and Hunter's hot, so. Feels obvious.”

“Jesus Christ,” Kip hisses. 

“I mean, obvious to me. Probably not obvious to everyone else.”

“It's not obvious to anyone else, because I do a really good job of not making it obvious and not just blurting it out in the middle of the day in fucking Brookline.”

“Whatever,” Shane scoffs. “You know I'm not going to tell anyone. I know why it has to be a secret.”

“Yeah,” Kip sighs. “Okay, fine. Yeah. Him. And that's why we're not really seeing each other anymore. The secrecy. I didn't like being back in the closet, like that. And he was so fucking scared all the time. It felt like we were just hurting each other, so we, uh, kind of put a pause on things while I'm getting my degree. With plans to talk about it eventually. And we still text, and stuff, sometimes, if either of us are too weird and desperate to leave it alone.” A sad little laugh, then, and Shane feels sorry for him. The secrecy of the thing with Rozanov never wore on him, but he supposes he can understand how it might, especially for someone like Kip, who's so used to being himself. Shane doesn't even like being himself to himself, so maybe that's why it doesn't bug him in the same way. “Anyway, I wasn't just bringing this up to compete in the pathetic loser Olympics with you. I was going to say that he was kind of like that at first, too. Always trying to give me money. Offered to pay my student loans.”

“Wow, that would be crazy,” Shane says, with no trace of guilt in his heart. 

“I know, right? And this was like, two weeks after we met. He kept saying he didn't have anything to spend his money on. I'm glad I didn't take anything from him, in the end. I think it made it easier to tell him I needed the break. Like I didn't feel beholden to him, or whatever.”

“Mm,” Shane says. Kip is clearly waiting for something more. “I mean, I don't regret that part, I'll be honest.” Kip laughs. “What? I saved so much money this semester and I got really good sex regularly for a while. What's not to like?”

“What happened to my sweet, innocent boy,” Kip bemoans, and Shane laughs at him. 

“I was never innocent. I was just a shy little freak, I guess. Whatever. It isn't about the money. I just really liked him, and it sucks that he thought I hated him, like all this time. Like it was just some fucked up roleplay thing for him. Taking care of me because he hurt me and I hate him. He was imagining this whole aspect in his head that wasn't there, I guess. It fucked me up. I really liked him, Kip. Like a lot.”

“But you blocked him?” 

“Yeah. I blocked him.”

“Okay. Is he gonna stay blocked?”

Shane considers. 

“I think he has to, or he'll just ragebait me into fucking again, and I'm kind of determined to not do that.”

“There’s my boy,” Kip says, with a weary, parental pride. 

 

---

 

Kip graduates, and he moves back to New York, and Shane tries to be cool about it. He pretends that he's going to be fine. He goes back home to his parents for the summer, and he lies to them about how fine he is, too. He still hasn't come out to them, and he almost does it four separate times that summer, usually during quiet moments when he can't stop himself from imagining what either of them would say if he just dropped the bomb. It's stupid, because he knows they'd be fine about it. They've met Kip and a bunch of Kip's friends multiple times now. They probably already have an inkling about Shane, just from that, and they never had any issues with Kip. They're not going to have any issues with Shane. 

It just feels different, when it's him. He doesn't want them to be disappointed. He doesn't want to have to watch their faces absorb the information. If he sees even a hint of unhappiness, even if it's smoothed over, he doesn't know how to survive it. 

He remembers the way his mother looked at him when he said he wasn't going back to hockey. It had just been a flash of it, that sickening denial, like she could see all of her hopes for him crumbling because he was too weak to risk himself for the sport he loved. He almost took it back immediately. Almost disappointed his father, instead. 

They've recovered, since then. He's been through therapy about all of it, and he knows that she talks to someone, too. But he's not sure things are ever going to be the same between them, and the last thing he wants is to make it worse. 

So he doesn't tell them. He goes back to Boston at the end of the summer. He feels weak, and lonely. He still hangs out with his group of friends, but they're not Kip, and he knows that he sticks out among them, an odd, ill-fitting piece. Not really one of them, no matter how much they have in common. 

 

---

 

He unblocks Rozanov when he finally finds a new apartment. It's not as shitty as his old one, but it's farther from school, which is a pain. It's better than continuing to mooch off Rozanov, though. 

He texts Rozanov that he's all moved out, and he almost blocks him again immediately, but there is a weak, petty part of him that wants to see what Rozanov will say. 

That's your apartment. Do not move out, is what Rozanov settles on. 

Shane texts back: too late found a new place.

Rozanov’s reply, almost immediate: tor how much money? Fucking waste. U know it should be urs.

And Shane is so fucking angry about it. So fucking angry that Rozanov still doesn’t get it, somehow. 

Find someone else to assuage your guilt, dickhead. I'm done with this shit.

This is where he should just block Rozanov’s number again. Pull out completely. Leave it alone. 

He waits, instead. He doesn’t have to wait for long. 

Can we meet at my place? Rozanov asks.

Shane stares down at his phone, aggrieved. 

“No,” he says aloud, mostly to himself. “Don't be fucking stupid.”

 

---

 

He knocks on Rozanov's door, annoyed with himself for capitulating and Rozanov for everything and Kip for graduating and being too busy to immediately answer his SOS I'm about to make a colossal mistake text. Annoyed that the elevator took so long and annoyed that the elevator didn't just break down or drop to the bottom floor and put him out of his misery. He's like fifteen minutes late because he left his apartment and then turned around and went back in a solid three times before he headed to the T, and then he did two laps around Rozanov's block because he couldn't make himself go in. The fact that he made it this far is maybe a miracle, or maybe just testament to the fact that Rozanov has him in a fucking chokehold. 

Rozanov opens the door shirtless, because of course he does. Shane resolutely does not look anywhere but his face, which is another miracle, because Shane is terrible at maintaining eye contact even under the best of circumstances, and this certainly isn't that. 

“Thought maybe you were not coming,” Rozanov says. He's difficult to read. His tone is sort of friendly, neutral. Like they're friends meeting up for a casual hang. It's fucking infuriating. At least he could help Shane out by being an obvious emotion. 

“Thought about not coming,” Shane admits, seething openly, because he's polite. He enters Rozanov's apartment and lets Rozanov shut the door behind him and tries not to, like, immediately sink to his knees in Pavlovian instinct from almost every other time he's been here. 

“I am glad you did. We should…”

Rozanov gestures towards the couch. There are Chinese food boxes politely waiting for them, from the place down the street they both like. Fucking asshole. Shane sits mulishly, tries not to smell it. 

“I'm not moving back in to that apartment,” Shane says. Rozanov shrugs, hands him a plate.

“Okay. It is empty for you, if you want.”

“No! Fucking sell it, Rozanov. Or at least rent it out, fuck. It's such a waste of money.”

“I don't need more money,” Rozanov says, plainly, meeting Shane's eyes when he says it. Shane rolls his eyes and focuses on getting himself some food. 

“Whatever. Why did you ask me to come here?” Clearly it wasn't with the intention of immediately fucking, given the food, and Shane is so stupid to be disappointed by that. 

“Because I missed you,” Rozanov says, and Shane freezes, and looks at him, and lets his eyes flicker over Rozanov unhappily for a second, like he thinks he can spot the truth hidden behind that. 

“What?” he asks. 

“Is the truth. I missed you. I think you are…” Rozanov hesitates, meets Shane's eyes, looks horribly embarrassed for the first time Shane can remember. “I think you are one of my favorite people to talk to. About hockey, about anything. Maybe even more than Svetlana. Don't tell her I said that.”

“You don't mean that,” Shane insists. 

“No, I do. The other stuff…even beyond all the other stuff. I don't know. I like you. You are my friend. Okay?”

Shane leans back against the couch, feeling deflated. 

“You thought I hated you.”

“Yes.”

“And you were like ‘great friend, that Shane Hollander guy'.” 

Rozanov laughs, tilts his head a little to the side. 

“Yes,” he admits again. 

“Rozanov, that's so fucked up. I thought I had self esteem issues. I mean, Jesus. This whole thing. You were like my best fucking friend in the world. I was obsessed with you. Every time you texted, I dropped everything to answer it. And you thought I hated you.”

“You did, Hollander, come on. At least a little bit.”

“I will take all of this food back to my sad, shitty, overpriced apartment if you try to tell me one more time how I fucking feel about you,” Shane snaps, and he means it, and he lets all of that meaning bleed into his tone, and he hopes Rozanov hears it. Rozanov raises his hands in surrender, briefly. 

“Okay, okay,” he says. “Sorry. Just. Maybe I'm not saying it right.”

“You're not an idiot. You're saying it how you mean. You're just wrong.”

“Shane,” Rozanov says gently. “I ruined your life.”

“You didn't ruin my life. Jesus.”

“I did. We both know I did. We both know it isn't just…I'm not just making this up, yes? I'm seeing what's there.”

“You're not seeing what's there. You're not seeing what's very fucking obvious. And this dynamic, whatever weird shit this was, it doesn't work if we can't understand fundamental shit about each other. When you said…when you were…fuck. I hate talking about this stuff. It's so stupid. Why can't you just read my mind?” Rozanov laughs a little, and Shane forces himself to keep going. “You kept saying it should have been yours, and it felt really good, yeah, sure. It's nice to think it could have been mine, if I wasn't hurt. I liked helping you. I liked giving you advice. I obviously liked the other stuff. The, you know, the fucking. Obviously. And I liked that you wanted to take care of me. I liked that you thought I deserved to be taken care of. I don't think I've ever felt that before. Like someone just wanted to help me. Wanted to give me stuff. Wanted to, I don't know, pamper me? I always feel like people are expecting the opposite, especially like, hookups or whatever, but also my friends, my family. There's always this pressure to be, like, the strong one, because I put them through hell, and I have to prove to them that I'm okay to live on my own, in a whole other country, because I don't want them to be afraid that I'm going to disappear again, inside my head, or whatever. But you were just always…I don't know. Giving. And listening to me. And believing me. And I really fucking liked that. I didn't hate any of it. I guess I realized you felt guilty, that guilt was part of it, but I thought it was, like, an excuse, maybe. I thought you just liked it, too, and were just as bad at wanting things as I was.”

Shane isn't sure he's ever said so much at once, and certainly not to Rozanov. It might be more words than he's ever said to Rozanov, like, combined? Rozanov just watches him throughout. Shane is used to friends interrupting him, laughing, even if it's meant kindly, but Rozanov just lets him keep going. He's not actually sure he likes being the center of attention like this. It makes him feel like he's probably saying something stupid, but it’s too late to take it back, and he’s not sure he would even want to. He’s fucking glad it’s out there, even though it sucks that he had to say it. 

“I did like it,” Rozanov says finally, awkwardly, like he knows he has to say something but doesn’t know what. Shane scoffs, but Rozanov holds up a hand, considers, thinks about what to say. It’s good, at least, that he’s thinking about it, and not just blurting out something defensive. “I liked it. I liked taking care of you? Taking care of someone who deserved it, maybe.” 

“You thought I hated you and you still thought I deserved it.” 

“Ah, yes,” Rozanov says, considering. “Maybe that is…not healthy?” 

“No, it fucking isn't.”

“Yes. I just.” A groan of frustration, like talking about this stuff physically pains him. Maybe it does. “My family. In Russia. My brother, my father. I give them money, always. More and more and more money always, every week, every year. Whenever they ask. And they do ask. They demand. They beg. At first, maybe, I think, this is good. I think they will need me, if I keep giving them money.” 

“Jesus,” Shane breathes. “That’s so fucked up. I didn’t…” 

“No, I know you didn’t. You are not like them. That’s what I’m trying to…it was different, with you. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. They take and take, but with you, I wanted to give and give. I can’t…” He breathes out a frustrated breath, his cheeks puffing up adorably when he does. Shane nods, tries to look understanding. He knows it isn’t easy to say these things aloud. His own little speech still makes him want to crawl out of his skin. But he’s trying to be patient. He’s trying to stay calm and let Rozanov say what he needs to say. “I don’t know if it was only the guilt. I don't think so. It was some guilt, yes, maybe. But I know it was not my fault. Not really. But I wanted things to be easier for you. I wanted to give and give until there was nothing left.” 

“But that’s not right,” Shane says, unable to help himself. “That’s not…you’ve fucking earned all of it. You’re such a phenomenal player. You really are. I know I give you shit, and I know I’ve…” 

“You have been helping.” 

“Well, maybe.” 

“The stats do not lie, Hollander. My game is better than it used to be.” 

“Well, okay, maybe, but you won the cup last year, didn’t you?” 

“Yes, and now I will do it again. Because of you, this time.” 

“You can’t just keep saying shit like that.” 

“But it’s true. Of course I can say it.” 

“I’m trying to tell me you don’t need me, because you’re amazing, because you’re so fucking good. Maybe I would have made it too, if we didn’t…if the collision didn’t happen. But, I don’t know. Maybe I would have fucking flamed out. Maybe I would have turned out to be a nothing player like Lemaire. Number one draft picks flame out all the time.” 

“Oh, you would have been number one, of course,” Rozanov laughs, and Shane feels like they have moved back into familiar ground at last, and he’s so relieved. 

“Well, yeah,” he insists stubbornly, and Rozanov laughs, like Shane knew he would. “But I’m just saying. We can’t know. Maybe I would have gotten hurt anyway. Maybe I would have…” 

“You would have been great,” Rozanov insists, cutting him off, eyes intense. “Almost as good as me.” 

“Fuck off.” 

“I am serious.” 

“I know you are. But there’s just…there’s no point. It’s not what happened. I liked all the times you told me that it should have been mine, but it’s not even true. It’s your stuff. Your career. Your talent. It was never mine.” 

It aches, saying that. Aches even though he knows it’s true. He wishes that he didn’t have to say it, because it’s true that he has liked the fantasy of it. He’s liked the excuse to accept gifts from a man who would have otherwise been just a fantastic casual fuck. He’s liked the excuse of letting Rozanov pamper him, take care of him, look after him in that half-guilty way he does. But maybe that’s sick of him. Maybe he’s been taking advantage of Rozanov all along. He’s noticed, of course, that Rozanov doesn’t seem to have many good friends aside from Svetlana and a few of the Raiders. He doesn’t seem to enjoy talking to his family, and of course now that makes sense, with the things he said. He did say that the thing with Shane was different, but how was it different? 

Rozanov is looking at him in the way he always does. He always seems like he’s trying to come off as calm and casual, but he has this way of looking at Shane that makes Shane feel like he’s under a microscope. Shane has noticed it about him on the ice, too. He’s a lot more perceptive than commentators give him credit for. They’re always talking about his strength and his aggressiveness, but they don’t seem to realize just how much he sees, and how well he reacts to those things he sees. Because he's so fucking good at hockey. It comes off as effortless because of the way he is, but it's not effortless. Of course it's not. He works so hard to make it look that easy. 

Rozanov finally sighs, looking put-out again. 

“I had such a stupid crush on you when I saw you the first time,” he says, as if he would rather not be saying it. “When you came up to shake my hand and tell me not to smoke where I was standing, like a good little boy.”

“Shut up,” Shane says fondly. 

“No, it's true. I thought, who is this beautiful idiot trying to boss me around? And then I saw you play, and I was even more impressed. I hate saying these things out loud, so once I say it, we will pretend I never did, but: I think it broke my heart a little when I was the one to ruin your life.”

“You didn't, though,” Shane insists gently. “It's not ruined, and even if it was, it's not your fault.”

“Malysh, please.”

“It's not ruined. It's different.”

“You can't lie to me about this. I know how you feel.”

I know you is implied beneath it, and it's frightening, because Shane thinks that, actually, it might be true.

“Okay, whatever,” Shane admits. “It ruined my life, but I'm still fucking here, and I don't blame you for any of it, because it wasn't your fucking fault! Maybe sometimes I seem like I do. I don't know. I'm angry that it happened. Maybe sometimes that seems like I'm angry at you for it, or I hate you for it, but I don't! I never have. I should have avoided the hit. It was my fault for not reading the play correctly.”

“You could not have realized what was…”

“Well, neither could you! I mean, fuck, we were just stupid kids. It was a freak accident. I was angry, I am fucking angry, but I don't hate you. If this doesn't work because you need me to hate you, then it doesn't work, and we delete each other's numbers, right now.”

He tries not to let anything show on his face when he waits for Rozanov to reply. Rozanov looks like he's thinking it over, weighing the possibilities, and it makes Shane feel a little bit sick. Does Rozanov really only want him if it's fucking toxic?  

“I don't want to stop,” Rozanov says finally, his voice tight with what sounds like genuine emotion, and Shane feels his entire body relax with the relief of it. “I like taking care of you. I like spending time with you. I like training with you and playing games with you and fucking you. All of it. When you aren't here, I miss you. I get angry at your stupid fucking classes because you are too well behaved to text me during them. Svetlana always says I am maybe too hard on myself. I judge myself too harshly. Listen to my father and brother too much even though I shouldn't. Maybe she is right, but do not tell her I said that. I just mean it was easier for me, maybe, to believe that you hated me. It made everything make more sense. It's not so easy to understand why you would like me the way I like you.”

He looks as pained as Shane feels, to have to voice it, and it's a bit of a relief to be so similar in this. 

“Okay, so we don't stop,” Shane says, and he tries to say it as neutrally as possible. Like it isn't a flash of hot relief. “But I don't hate you. I won't hate you. I like you too much, maybe, to an embarrassing degree. Can you live with that?”

Rozanov grins, and it's crooked and adorable on his face. 

“Yes, I think so,” he says. “I can at least try.”

Chapter 9: Ilya

Svetlana is afraid that he's moving too fast now, which is laughable, because she has spent months trying to convince him that he has something more than just lustful hate fucking with Shane Hollander, and now that he's easing into it at a perfectly respectful speed, she's telling him to slow down. 

“There is no pleasing you,” he says, but he's too pleased, himself, largely because he likes it when Svetlana admits that she cares, even if it's only by mocking him with a little extra hint of concern. 

“You have been obsessed with this man in a very strange way for years, and now suddenly you are secret boyfriends? And you just said you want him to move in with you.”

“Well yes, of course. He's my personal trainer.”

“Does he know that? I thought he was studying sports medicine. Doesn't he want to be a physical therapist?”

“He hasn't decided yet. He can do both. He's so smart, Sveta. And you know my arm still gives me trouble sometimes, so I will need him regardless.” 

Svetlana laughs at him fondly. 

“I just want to make sure you know what you're doing. I know you pretend to be such a very world weary man, but I also know what you really are. It's so easy for you to be hurt.”

“I won't be,” Ilya promises. To himself, he adds not unless he ever tries to leave, anyway. 

 

---

 

Hollander is sort of like Ilya in that when he decides to do something, he is all in. Ilya's father has always called him lazy, but the truth is that Ilya gets bored doing things he doesn't care about, and so he finds reasons not to do them. He has known since he was twelve years old that life is a finite resource, and he never understood why he should do boring things when he could instead be doing fun ones. 

When Ilya says that he wants to make it work with Hollander, it's like he has given Hollander permission to be himself as loudly in Ilya's space as possible. Ilya isn't sure what he was expecting. Hollander is gay, he knows, and out, and every time Ilya sees him, he seems to be surrounded by people who are all clearly at least somewhere on that particular spectrum. For some reason, he is not expecting Hollander to go to the gym with him so much, or eagerly suggest going running together for hours, or going to various sports bars or on hikes outside the city. 

“I don't think I'm very good at being gay,” Hollander says when Ilya manages to express this somewhat clumsily. “I tried, for Kip's sake, and I do really like my friends. But they look at me like I'm an alien sometimes.”

And then he shoves Ilya off the couch for laughing so hard at him, and then they end up wrestling about it, and then they end up fucking about it, so Ilya sort of understands where Hollander is coming from. They get each other. They are the same sort of person, even beyond the fantastic sex. It's just an added bonus that they're fucking. 

Hanging out with Hollander more in a way unrelated to fucking is really nice, actually. Hollander seems a little wary at first that Ilya is going to want to keep his life separate from Hollander, like no one can even know that they know each other. Hollander is at first always wearing baseball hats pulled low over his face if they go out to eat together. Ilya eventually figures out why. 

“You think I am ashamed?”

“I mean, I know it's different, for you. Fuck, I thought I was gonna die when I accepted that I was gay, just because of how long I heard all that shit in the locker room. And I know it's even worse for you, with Russia.”

“Mm, yes, I will not be posting on Instagram how much I like to fuck my very sexy friend Shane,” Ilya says. “But we can be friends. That is not an issue. You can be my trainer.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. My father will probably be pleased that I am seeking your help, actually. He used to compare you to me all the time.”

“Well, now I don't want to do it, actually. Fuck that guy.”

“Ugh, stop trying to make me hard again, Hollander. I am exhausted!” 

 

---

 

And it's fun, actually, to include Hollander more openly in his life. It's fun in a sneaky way, makes him feel like a spy. He starts slow, with pictures of the entire team at some club, Hollander tucked into the corner with a few other friends. Pictures of his meals, complaining that there are green things on his plate, blaming his friend and trainer for being a tyrant. The first time he drops a selfie of them, it's after a charity 5k that half the Raiders signed up for. He and Hollander are both making stupid faces at the camera. His caption credits Hollander for being faster than him even after Ilya shattered his leg bones. Hollander suggests, in the comments, that it's probably because Ilya smokes. Ilya responds with a kissy face, and he watches the comments roll in. 

He had known that there would be people like him, people who always wondered what happened to Canadian phenom Shane Hollander, the boy who was supposed to be Ilya's rival before they were ever even drafted. Hollander is gratified but maybe also a bit mortified by the comments. Ilya catches him with his hood pulled up over his head on the couch one day, chewing on his sweatshirt strings with a pleased, scheming smile on his face, scrolling through them. 

Hollander is funny when he wants to be, which is less often than Ilya would like, but more as the weeks go on and he begins to feel more comfortable with what they're doing, which is how Ilya knows he can start pressing for more. When Ilya suggests Hollander should move in with him, Hollander hesitates for only a little while, and then he says ‘I’d like that' in a tone like he's confused by the prospect. When he does finally move in, Ilya feels like a satisfied dragon hissing over his treasure horde, but he forces himself to be normal about it, at least outwardly. 

Hollander has his own room, and he cuts a check for rent every month that Ilya dutifully pays back with gifts. Everything feels brighter when they live together. They are allowed to be openly friends, openly roommates. Everyone thinks it’s so normal. Marleau is obsessed with Hollander, thinks he's hilarious. He doesn't even bat an eye when Hollander accidentally mentions being gay. It's not like Ilya was that concerned that his best friend on the team would turn out to be a raging bigot; Ilya has a sense for people, and he's marked Marleau as a well meaning fuckhead from the start. Still, it's nice. It makes him feel like he can breathe a little easier. 

His teammates love Shane, love that Shane is making Ilya more serious about things. They make jokes about them being married, but not in any negative way. They call them inseparable and best friends. They tell Hollander he's a wizard for getting Ilya to stop smoking. Shane looks hungry for the praise always, and it's probably gross how he's basically training Ilya's dick to start firming up whenever a team hangout at their place is winding down, because he knows that Hollander will be ravenous afterwards, so pleased with himself, and wanting Ilya to please him, too. 

Of course it isn't hate. It was never hate, for him, but of course now he can understand that it was never hate for Hollander, either, and he supposes he must feel a little guilty for ever thinking that the way Hollander looks at him could be anything like hate. He finds himself daydreaming sometimes about a future where he and Hollander can tell everyone who they really are, but it's so nice, in the meantime, that they get to have so much. It feels strange, sometimes, that he jumped so quickly into making this thing with Hollander such a huge part of his life, but he doesn't see the point in wasting time. He knows what he wants, with Hollander, and he's starting to figure out that Hollander wants the same things.

Chapter 10: Shane

Shane's mother calls him exactly seventeen minutes and twenty-three seconds after the interview in which Rozanov credits Shane with his fitness levels going into the playoffs, which is a remarkable amount of restraint, for her. 

Rozanov calls him “one of my best friends in the world” in the interview. In those seventeen minutes, Shane has rewound the video and watched it three times. He shuts the TV off entirely when his mother calls, like she will be able to sense it, if it's paused on Rozanov's face. 

“Shane, sweetheart, my favorite child,” she starts. 

“You saw the interview,” Shane says. 

“Yeah, I saw the interview, and I'm sitting here scrolling through his Instagram and seeing you in all these pictures. We can talk about why you didn't tell me about any of this later. What I really want to know is when I raised such a traitor! You're helping the Raiders get better? Shane!”

She's laughing, delighted, and Shane laughs along with her, relieved. Not like he really thought his mother would be angry about this, but, well. It's hard for him to tell, sometimes. 

“I know, I know.”

“This is a joint, hyphenated, Centaurs and Metros household.”

“Well, add Raiders to the list, I guess.”

“Over my dead body, Shane. You know that.”

“I'm actually wearing a Rozanov jersey right now,” he says, deliberately poking at her in a way he hopes he can get away with. He's pleased with himself when she laughs loudly. 

“No! Betrayed by my only son!” she cries, but she sounds so happy. So relieved that he's apparently okay with this. With hockey, with Rozanov, with being involved. He knows she's trying to strike a balance between relieved and annoyed and still afraid for him, and he wishes he didn't know how hard it is for her, but he does. “Seriously, Shane. How did this happen? I didn't know you even knew Rozanov anymore.”

“We just ran into each other,” Shane says carefully, because it is technically true. “He was really, uh, nice? About everything. The injury, and stuff. Even though I was kind of an asshole and basically implied that I could have done better? And then we kind of got really competitive about it, I don't know. And now we're friends?” 

He hates the way it all sounds like a question. He almost blurts out the entire truth on the phone, because he wants her to know, suddenly. He only doesn't because he thinks that he should probably talk to Rozanov about it, first, and so he manages to tamp down the impulse for now. He imagines asking Rozanov about telling his parents, and he surprises himself by thinking he would love that, and they would love him, and he deserves that. To be loved. He shoves that back down, for now, maybe a little more aggressively than he needs to. It's just that he has all these ideas in his head about the way things should be and the way they need to be and the way Shane should just let them be without trying to be too weird. Moving in with Rozanov was definitely a choice, and it's a choice he's glad he made, but it's also a choice that has made them even more ridiculously on top of each other. Sometimes Shane thinks it's probably a mistake. Usually, he ignores that little voice. He knows what this is. He knows what he's doing. And he's going to keep doing it, because it makes him happy. It's as simple as that.

“I'm really happy for you, Shane,” his mother says, and he knows that she means it. 

“Yeah, uh, I'm pretty happy, too,” he says. 

 

---

 

Kip texts him, Scott sent me that interview and was like ‘is he talking about your friend Shane’ which is how I found out you're a whore again. Shane parses it for bitterness for a little while, but eventually decides that there isn't any. 

Loan free, baby, he texts back, and smiles to himself at the long string of angry emojis followed by the even longer string of laughing emojis he receives in reply. 

 

---

 

He waits until Rozanov is back in Boston, and after they've fucked out the frustration from being away from each other for the last couple of days. Rozanov, no surprises, is not the kind of player who believes in a playoffs sex ban, and Shane doesn't particularly care about it either, and cares even less when Rozanov enters the apartment in his travel suit looking so good it makes Shane’s mouth water. Rozanov teases him about it, because of course he does. Acts like Shane is breaking some sacred hockey rule by allowing Rozanov to fuck him, or whatever. Shane ignores him. 

They're eating dinner on the couch, later, Rozanov starting to look pleasantly exhausted and not just playoff exhausted. 

“I, uh, know this might not be the best time,” Shane says. “But I've been thinking I want to tell my parents about, uh. This. Us. But it's totally up to you. I don't mean that, like, it's that important. Like if you say no, that will be totally fine. I'll probably tell them that I'm gay, this summer, either way. When I'm at their cottage? But, um. It might be nice to tell them about you, too. I just think, like, they'd really like you a lot. And I think you deserve better than just your fuckass brother and your fuckass dad in your life. So I'd like to, I don't know, loan my parents out, I guess. Let them know about you so they can love you, or whatever, like, uh. Wow. Like I do, I guess?”

He looks up from his plate, already cringing, to see Rozanov with a bunch of lo mein literally hanging out of his mouth, mid chew. His expression turns briefly affronted, and he sucks the rest of the noodles into his mouth so fast he sets off a coughing fit, and Shane feels his face reddening in mortification as he slaps Rozanov's back to hopefully help clear his airways. 

“Hollander, what the fuck,” Rozanov croaks after he has finally managed to stop choking, and after drinking fully seventy five percent of his beer in one desperate chug. “Why would you do that to me? Are you trying to kill me and steal my apartment?”

“No, shut up. I don't know what I was thinking. I take back everything.”

“No, too late. Fuck, I love you. Of course I do. Don't be fucking stupid. And your parents will love me too, yes, of course, because they will see what a good provider I am when I tell them I paid your loans.”

“We are not telling them that. That's, like, maybe in three years, if we're still…”

“If? You drop a love confession and then if? You are so terrible at this, Hollander.” But Rozanov is cackling in unbridled delight, and Shane can't help but smile back at him. 

“Okay, whatever,” he says. 

“My little weirdo,” Rozanov coos, and Shane snorts and shoves him away.

“Would you, uh. I don't know. Want to come with us? To the cottage? Maybe it's lame, I don't know. For you. And I know you said you want to go back to Russia for some of it, but…”

“Yes, I will go. Before Russia. That way I will have happy memories to think about.” Rozanov says it like he's joking, like he always does when he talks about Russia. There are definitely things he doesn't like to say about his family, but Shane doesn't mind that so much, anymore. It feels like stuff he's going to be able to get eventually. Like there are levels of Rozanov that he has to unlock with time, and Shane has always been really good at puzzles. 

“Okay,” Shane breathes out, relieved. 

“Tell me about this place. This cottage. Why you like it.”

Shane does, because even he can't miss the wistful way Rozanov makes his demand, like he's trying to capture Shane's happy family memories for himself. 

 

---

 

Boston wins the cup for the second year in a row, and Shane gets to watch it happen on home ice, next to Svetlana, and he gets to watch Rozanov skate around the rink, holding the cup high, and he gets to know that Rozanov's wink to the stands is for him, and he gets to go out on the ice, too, Svetlana pulling him along by the hand when he wonders if it's too much. Rozanov towers over him on his skates, pulls him into a tight hug that could be plausibly bro-ish, and then pulls he and Svetlana into a three-way hug that feels so familial, so desperate, in a way that makes Shane understand how much Rozanov really does care about him. It used to kind of bother him, how close Rozanov is with Svetlana. Now he thinks it probably bothered him more because of how deep their love is, rather than the fact that they used to fuck. But hugging Ilya together with her, it feels so good, and so different, and about so much more than just fucking and friendship and whatever else it is. They are Ilya's family, the family he deserves, and that's such a heavy weight to carry, but not in a bad way. It feels like a fucking honor, actually. 

Rozanov keeps patting Shane on the head patronizingly for being temporarily so much shorter than him, laughing at his outraged expression. The other Raiders come up and hug Shane, too. It's kind of scary, sometimes, or maybe sad, to think about how things might change if they find out the truth of what Ilya and Shane are. Tonight, it doesn't feel scary at all. 

 

---

 

So he loves you, is what you're saying, Kip texts, at some point during the celebration. Shane hopes that he watched the game with Scott Hunter. He hopes that Kip and Scott have talked. He hopes Scott can be what Kip needs. He wants that for Kip. He's so happy with what he has for himself, and he's in the kind of generous headspace where he wants everyone else to have it too. 

Gross, right? Shane texts back, the next morning, when he finally has time to look at his phone. He's not normally one for staying out late, or clubs, or bar hopping, or any of the wild shit that happened last night, but his secret boyfriend just won the cup and then several times, in several interviews, loudly credited Shane with being a part of that win, so what was he supposed to do? Not desperately follow Rozanov everywhere, dragged along in his wake, helplessly and happily? 

Rozanov is laid out next to him in bed now, fully nude, bruised and scraped up, and he probably won't regain consciousness for at least three hours, and Shane is happy to lie in bed next to him, scroll through every video of the celebrations posted last night, and occasionally rub his hand up and down Rozanov's bare back to hear the happy mumbling that always comes out of him. 

Kip sends him a few screenshots that must be popping up on his own feeds: Rozanov getting showered with champagne in the locker room, Rozanov hugging Shane and Svetlana on the ice, Rozanov on top of the bar at the club last night, arms spread wide for the adulation of the crowd while Shane laughs up at him. Shane sees the same videos, the same pictures, and clocks himself in almost all of them. He's a little embarrassed, at first. Like he's some weird has-been clinging on to Rozanov's glory. A cryptid in a backwards Raiders cap and the Rozanov jersey he wore to the game and then out afterwards specifically because he knew Rozanov would want to fuck him in it when they got back to the apartment. Some of the commenters point him out, and Shane feels a little embarrassed by that, like they will all assume he thinks too highly of himself.

Rozanov turns over in his sleep, arms flexing tighter around the pillow, turning his face towards Shane, and Shane watches him, his steady breathing, his slightly furrowed brow, and he remembers not to worry or care about what people might think. They might be a little right about some things, but they are wrong about most of them, and so he can go back to being proud of what Rozanov accomplished last night, and glad that he got to be a part of it at all.

 

---

 

“I have been thinking,” Rozanov says, later that afternoon. It is barely an hour after he woke up, and his voice is still hoarse with sleep, which puts him in real danger of not being able to get the thought out, because it makes Shane want to suck his dick about it. Rozanov looks so soft and sleepy, happily drinking the protein smoothie Shane just made him. Shane stays on the other side of the room and pretends to be going through his mail to prevent the urge from taking hold. 

“About how to win the cup three years in a row?” 

Rozanov laughs, as Shane knew he would. Shakes his head. 

“No, malysh. More property, actually. I want to sell the house in the suburbs. We never use it anyway.”

Shane has only been to it twice, actually, so he can't argue. He wants to, for a second. It's such a nice house. It reminds him of home, which is a silly thing to say, so he doesn't. 

“Okay. And buy where?” 

“Well.” Rozanov takes another long sip of his smoothie, and Shane sees the way his fingers dance on the glass for a minute. Shane perks up a bit at that; Rozanov is nervous. That happens infrequently enough that it usually heralds something big. “There is some land, you know. Not far from, uh. Your parents' cottage.”

Shane's eyebrows shoot up. Rozanov cringes a little bit. 

“You haven't even met them yet. What if you hate them?”

“Ah, malysh. Come on. It would not really be for me.”

“You are not buying me land.”

“Well, there would also be a house.”

“You are not buying me a house.”

“There is no house yet, on the land. You would need to design it. Actually, it might be a lot of work for you. So really, you would be doing me a favor. You know what I like.”

“Ilya,” Shane says. Rozanov sighs, shoulders slumping a little. 

“I will talk you into it eventually, you know.”

“Baby, come on. You can't…that's too much.”

“But, I was thinking, it would be nice to have a place in the summers that is not here, or Moscow. It is a good investment, really.”

“You can't just say that every time you try to do something insane.”

“It works, doesn't it?”

“Well. Shut up.”

“It would not be a house just for you. It would be our house. A house you design the way you want. You care about things like cabinets and windows and floors.”

“Yeah, because I'm a human being with eyes.”

“And I am hopeless at design but I have lots of money and a beautiful boyfriend to spoil like he deserves.”

Shane tries to stay firm. He even opens up a credit card bill, which should keep him firmly in the land of adulthood and making reasonable, responsible decisions. It doesn't. He looks at Rozanov and sees him still looking nervous. He looks young, suddenly, and Shane remembers him standing outside in that parking lot in Regina, alone, in the cold. It's so easy sometimes to get caught up in the projection that Rozanov shows to the world. It's easy to believe it, even for someone who's supposed to know better, because Rozanov is so fucking good at making himself seem like he doesn't need anyone. And Shane usually just takes people at face value. It isn't always easy for him to see past it. Even with Rozanov, sometimes. 

He sees him now, though. The nerves, the way he's trying to reach for something more than what he's saying. He wants to give Shane a house, okay, fine. That's fucked up on the surface, but what does he really want?

A home. A place designed by the man he loves. A place where Shane can be comfortable, close to his family. A place where they can be together, all of them. Yes, that's what he wants. And does Shane want it too? Of course he does. So it's a little much. Whatever. His desires are a little much. The aching, roiling love inside him for Rozanov is a little much. He is a bottomless, hungry pit of these feelings, but Rozanov still wants all of him. 

“I'll make you a deal,” he finds himself saying. Rozanov arches an eyebrow, amused. 

“Oh?”

“Win me another cup, and I'll let you buy me a house.”

He's nervous about saying it. It will sound too serious in his voice, maybe, or like he's goading him, or like he really means it, even. It will make Rozanov think that Shane only wants him for hockey, for what he can do. He's afraid he will sound grasping and greedy and, well, like a whore. Like Kip said. 

But Ilya smiles at him in the way he does when he's really happy. Like the sun, bright and wondering. 

“Okay,” he says, like it's nothing. “But you should start designing the house now.”

“Pretty sure of yourself, huh?” Shane asks. He finally gives up on trying to look like he's doing anything important, and he puts down the mail, and he drifts towards Rozanov, unable to stay away. 

“With you in my corner?” Rozanov scoffs, and then sighs happily when Shane is in reach, and he plays with the hem of Shane's sweatshirt, almost shyly, almost flirtily. It makes Shane feel insane, for a second, that this is allowed to be his life. That this is his, apparently for as long as he wants it. Does Ilya realize that that's going to be forever? “I feel sad for the other teams, my sweetheart. Think of how I'll play with this motivation.”

“I think you'll destroy them all,” Shane says, and Ilya smiles at him, all savage glee tempered with the soft adoration Shane is coming to recognize more easily. And maybe it won't be that simple. Maybe three cup wins in a row is crazy. Rozanov really can't win every game by himself, and even though his performance has been insane, and even though the rest of the team has been rising to meet him, sometimes it just doesn't work out. Shane will probably let him buy the house anyway. He likes the idea so much it makes him want to cry, almost, just imagining it. Just imagining the life they could build together. 

But it's so easy, the day after the win, to imagine it actually happening. Three wins in a row. Shane wants it for Ilya so badly. 

And okay, fine. He wants it a little bit for himself, too, in the usual fucked up way, like Rozanov is an extension of himself, his proxy hockey star. He has like a year to work on those feelings in therapy, maybe, if it gets too weird.

Or, you know. Maybe not. Apparently Rozanov is into him weird. Why change anything if it's working?