Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

Gen, M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Scott Hunter & Ilya Rozanov, Kip Grady/Scott Hunter, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Rose Landry

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Kip Grady, Shane Hollander, Irina Rozanova, Rose Landry, David Hollander, Yuna Hollander

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soul Bond, Platonic Soulmates, Hurt/Comfort, Scott and Ilya are platonic soulmates, Awakward Encounters at European Gay Bars, Smoking, Irresponsible Drug Use, somebody please give ilya a hug, spoiler alert by somebody i mean scott, Professional rivalries, roughly canon-compliant as it pertains to the romantic relationships, Accidental Outing, Kip Grady is a Goddamn Saint, Shane Hollander is a Fucking Mess, gratuitous textile metaphors, no beta we get whacked like Shane Hollander, Emergency Narcan Administration, Autistic Shane Hollander, Kip Grady Reads Scott Hunter Like a Book, Hockey Injuries, Ilya Rozanov is a Menace, Homophobic Language, Scott Hunter Whump, gratuitous astrophysics metaphors, everybody say thank you to my therapist as i project onto these fictional hockey queers, Ilya Rozanov Whump, Lessons in Grieving, Shane Hollander Is Bad at Feelings, Shane and Rose are platonic soulmates, the Cottage (Heated Rivalry), Quote: Stupid Canadian Wolf Bird (Game Changers), Found Family

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Unpicked and Restitched (All Works)

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-17 Completed: 2026-04-12 Words: 49,254 Chapters: 8/8

Unpicked and Restitched (apart and back together)

Summary

Then Scott Hunter looked at him, really looked at him with no panic or consternation or grief, just something heavy and piercing that made Ilya feel like his heart was on the outside of his ribcage. “Be safe out there, okay?”

“Okay,” Ilya said, softer than intended.

In real life, they both turned around and walked away into the night. But in Ilya’s memory, that never happens. They just stand there, eye-to-eye, until the sun comes up and it’s too bright to see anything else.

Notes

Straight (lol) obsessed with the idea of these two navigating the perils of the closet with each other as a support system.

• Inspired by anchor and allowance by Meadow_Wanderer

Chapter 1: Part One: Rethreaded

Saturday, November 9th, 2013 — Boston @ New York (5-1)

Ilya Rozanov usually loved playing in New York. The city was full of life, the things (and people) to do between games were endless, and the Admirals home crowd fucking hated his guts which made reducing them to that quiet state of mournful resignation at their inevitable loss to Boston that much harder and that much more satisfying. And usually, the Admirals were a decent enough team to make it at minimum mildly interesting. Which, if you know Ilya at all, is a sincere and genuine compliment.

But not so much lately. And Ilya, despite being the most singularly qualified person to know exactly why, had no fucking idea why Scott Hunter was six weeks into the season without a single goal. The Admirals Captain had been unusually closed off. And the Raiders’ latest stretch of away games had them on a plane to Tampa Bay just three hours after they curb-stomped the Admirals, so all Ilya could do was send a text that he could not get an answer to for the next four hours and project a feeling of questioning concern with a thin veneer of miffed indignation over the top because he was still Ilya fucking Rozanov.

He didn’t get an answer to either query until late into the balmy Florida night.

Ilya: So is it your eyes going or your hands?

Scott: Not funny.

Ilya: Age makes you feeble, is simple fact.

` Scott replied, For the last time, I’m only six years older than you knowing full well this had been a stock bit between them for years and would remain so probably forever.

Ilya: But in all serious, are you okay?

Scott: Slumps happen.

Ilya would have an easier time believing him without the cold creep of someone else’s dread radiating through his lungs. Something was scaring the shit out of Scott. Ilya didn’t like that. He sent back: you need to get laid, with an accompanying wash of sincerity.

Scott: Fuck you.

Ilya: You are not my type.

Scott: You mean I’m not Jane.

Ilya: Obviously.

The mention of Shane Hollander sent an involuntary wriggle of something Ilya could only identify as squishy up from his gut. He snipped that thread quickly, and if Scott caught the feeling he didn’t mention, because his reply came, If I agree with you will you go the fuck to sleep? You have an early game tomorrow.

Ilya: Keep me posted.

Scott: GOODNIGHT, Ilya.

Ilya: Сладких снов, дедушка {sweet dreams, grandpa}

Two days later, a heady wave of something not his own lighted Ilya’s face with a smile so wide he had to stuff a fist between his teeth to avoid letting out an extremely un-Russian giggle in the locker room. Seems like the old man took his advice.

Thursday, November 21st, 2013 — Amtrak 210 Northeast Regional

Scott Hunter definitely took Ilya’s advice, if the impressive turnaround he’d pulled off over the last few games was any indication. Sure, the Admirals still lost at Boston and Montreal, but that was Boston and Montreal. Most teams lost to them, was nothing special.

Competitive streak aside, Ilya was happy for Scott. Jokes about his age aside, hockey would be less fun without him on the ice. And would be infinitely more fun if the Admirals could keep this newfound momentum. There was a certain quiet joy to boredom in some aspects of his life, but his job was not one of them.

One of those boring joys was train rides. MLH had a weird obsession with flying its players everywhere, even if the distance could be reasonably covered otherwise. That made plane rides completely inseparable from work in Ilya’s mind. And every plane ride started to feel the same after a while, including the view. One could only stare at bright sunlight reflecting off uniform cloud tops for so long before you started hallucinating.

Train views, on the other hand, he couldn’t keep his eyes off. Especially in late November, when the forests and farmland between Boston and New York were awash with the patchwork warmth of autumn colors. Sitting there looking at it, it was easy to stop being Raiders Captain Ilya Grigoriyevich Rozanov and just be … Ilya, from Boston. He could count on one hand the places that made him feel that way.

Another was whatever hotel room he and Shane found themselves in, though he’d cut off his right hand before admitting such a thing to that pretty face with adorable freckles, eyes like an angel and mouth like a wh—

Anyway. The third place was five F train stops downtown from where the Amtrak spat him out at Penn Station. Ilya shouldered his overnight bag and climbed the steps to Delancey Street, anticipating the bite of November midmorning chill on his nose. Except… he didn’t really feel cold. In fact, he felt weirdly warm, as if under a thick blanket for too long. Shaking it off as subway funk, he scanned the sidewalks as he trekked, looking for just the right thing to… there!

The kiosk was like every other tchotchke pop up in the city, which is why is was perfect and displayed exactly the kind of items Ilya was searching for. The clerk wished him a happy Thanksgiving as he bagged the two small items, and Ilya was not so much of a dick as to not say it back. In fact, he was so not a dick he left a 200% tip as a thank you for doing business on a holiday. Despite popular opinion, his dickish behavior was reserved for Boston opponents and Shane Hollander in the bedroom.

The odd warmth stuck with Ilya as he entered the building and typed in the elevator code. As he ascended, the vague heat began taking shape, weaving around his guts, making him feel a lightheaded breathlessness that had nothing to do with the long walk over. Ilya almost suspected he was getting sick until the elevator dinged and he nearly fell through the doors as a rush of hot, slippery pleasure took his knees out from under him. He braced himself against the penthouse door as his soulmate’s afterglow tingled through his guts. The intensity of it left Ilya's own chest feeling tight.

Wait, fuck— what was that? Shock, embarrassment, and… guilt? Oh no, Scott knew he was—

Ilya took his weight off the door right as it swung inward.

“Ilya.” Scott was shirtless, one string of his flannel pajama pants stuck in the waistband and sweating like he’d skated all three periods.

“Scott,” Ilya answered.

“It’s Thanksgiving,” Scott said, as if just now remembering what day of the year it was and their longstanding traditions surrounding it.

“Yes, you have stated obvious. Do I get to come inside or is your friend still dumb from orgasm?”

Scott looked (and for the briefest moment felt like) he was going to say something else before he nodded and said, “Yeah, come in. I just gotta… I gotta, um,”

Grabbing the hand that wasn’t braced against the doorframe, Ilya softened his tone to match his feelings. “If you don’t want to tell him, I will take lap around the block.”

Scott sighed. “I am so fucking sorry. Don’t leave,” he added when a needle-sharp resignation crossed the bond between them. “Just… let me talk to him, for a minute? There’s coffee or Coke in the fridge for you.”

Ilya gently shouldered his way past his ridiculous, heart-melting soulmate and pressed a kiss to his scruffy cheek. He dropped his bag on the kitchen island and rooted through the fridge while Scott disappeared into his bedroom. As the soft sounds of a hasty, undoubtedly awkward conversation floated through the quiet, Ilya’s eyes lighted on a couple ingredients. He suddenly had a strong craving for blueberries. And bananas.

By the time Scott reappeared from the bedroom with a very cute man in tow, Ilya was pouring the first batch of pancake batter onto the griddle.The bright tang of blueberries cut through the rich scent of butter in the air. Keeping one hand on the spatula and half his attention on the stove, he called, “Hope you like pancakes, mysterious man who gives spectacular prostate orgasms.”

The pink echo of Scott’s beet-red blush creeping up his own neck was worth the daggers stared his direction. To his credit, the cute mystery man with the pretty brown eyes just pressed his lips together with a choked laugh.

“Ilya, this is Kip Grady. Uh, Kip this is my… soulmate. Ilya Rozanov.”

“Mmm, you have much to answer for, Kip Grady.” Ilya intoned. Letting the tension thicken while he flipped the pancakes, he set the spatula down and gave his full attention to Kip.

“Oh?” he asked as Ilya stepped just on the border of polite personal space.

“Yes, when we beat Admirals last week, Scott looked so much like kicked puppy I could not properly enjoy kicking his ass. I have you to blame for him being bad loser?”

“Ilya, for fuck’s sake — ”

He raised a hand to silence Scott’s words and sent a thread of humor to reassure the man he wasn’t actually about to tear the man who reignited Scott’s hockey mojo a new asshole. Frankly he just wanted to see how this Kip Grady would react. The fact that Scott was letting Kip meet Ilya at all meant he was fucking besotted, and that Scott trusted Kip enough to keep his secret. That said a lot about him to Ilya, but it didn’t say everything.

“Sounds more like you were being a sore winner.”

Ilya couldn’t stop the slow grin from splitting his face. “I like this one, Scott,” he said, then returned to his pancake duties.

Thirty minutes later with too many blueberry-banana pancakes stuffed into his gut, Ilya had a decent idea of who Kip Grady was. An aspiring Masters student, working at the nearby smoothie bar while he paid off his undergrad loans and waited for word back on his scholarship applications. Gay as a maypole and out since he was eighteen, the lucky fucker. Snagged Scott’s attention by being adorable and suggesting good smoothies and describing hockey players as hot lumberjacks.

Frankly, it was not difficult to see why Scott felt so strongly about him. Ilya assumed the intermittent highs he’d felt over the last few days had to do with the Admirals breaking their losing streak, but it seemed he’d, as the English say, put the cart before the horse. He had no inclination to hide the flutter of happiness he felt watching Scott’s eyes go soft every time Kip glanced his direction. It was good for Scott, to have someone to fight for. He’d been lonely far too long.

“Kip, who is your favorite superhero?”

“Ilya,” Scott sighed, unfortunately knowing exactly where this was going.

Kip thought about it for a moment, then replied, “Uh, is it lame to say Superman?”

Ilya made a show of thudding his head into the dining room table. The laugh he suppressed made its way out of Scott’s mouth. “Боже мой, {My God,} Scott, he is so perfectly boring for you.”

“I resent that.”

“No you don’t. Go get your present out of my bag.”

Ilya studied the phantom sensations against his fingertips, sending a flash of accomplishment when Scott’s hand found brown paper. Without looking back, he said, “Yours is in red paper.”

Scott privately studied the gift, his amusement and gratitude washing over Ilya before a little pinprick of realization Ilya interpreted as his soulmate remembering that Kip was in the room and would actually have to be shown the item in question. The item in question being a little plastic Captain America keychain.

To Kip, Ilya said, “See? You both love boring red-and-blue goodie-two-shoes. Is fate.” Then to Scott, much softer, “You were sad when last one broke off your suitcase. Now you have replacement.”

Ilya straightened up in anticipation of the hug Scott wrapped around his shoulders. “Thanks, kid.”

“Yes, yes, grandpa, now give me my present. Is other one in bag.”

“Is it a present if you bought it for yourself and know what it is?”

“You give it to me, that makes it present.” Scott’s unfiltered amusement wrinkled Ilya’s nose as he tried not to break Russian deadpan.

“Then who’s your favorite superhero, Ilya?”

Ilya answered by unwrapping the yellow tissue paper around the item Scott pressed into his hand. “Obviously is Black Widow.” He showed off the little black-and-red hourglass charm.

“Because she’s Russian?”

“Scott, why does everybody ask me this?”

“Because that is absolutely a reason you would give.”

“I resent that.”

“No you don’t.”

The table dissolved into a fit of giggles that had Scott’s head falling forward onto Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya couldn’t resist the urge to gently nuzzle his forehead against his soulmate’s temple.

Kip’s expression fell into something more serious. “So, obviously you two aren’t public about the whole soulmates thing, but… does anyone know?”

“A few people,” Ilya answered, as Scott retook his seat.

“It’s need to know, mostly. Our coaches, league HR, a couple lawyers.”

Soul bonds weren’t terribly rare, but when they happened it could cause a lot of logistical issues, especially in professional sports. Even with precedent, they’d had to fight tooth and nail with league corporate to let them play matches against each other. It had taken many conversations with a very skilled and determined expert in international bond law to make it happen.

“Your families?” Kip asked, and Ilya raised an eyebrow at Scott. Seriously?

“Um, my parents died when I was twelve, and Ilya…” Scott glanced at Ilya’s face and found it guarded. He trailed off, letting his soulmate take the lead.

“I am not close with mine,” Ilya answered. In truth, he had no idea if his family knew. While in America reporting was voluntary, Russian law required soul bonds, especially international ones, to be registered with the relevant ministry. So it was on record. The question was whether or not his father or brother ever thought to check. “But my friend Svetlana knows. She is like family.”

“Right. So… if you don’t mind me asking, how did this,” Kip wagged a finger between the two of them. “Happen?”

Scott and Ilya locked eyes over Kip’s outstretched hand. At this distance, they may as well be capable of telepathy. Scott’s brow furrowed just a little, questioning. Ilya answered with a tiny nod. If Kip was sticking around the way Scott hoped he would, it would come out eventually.

Decision made, Ilya smirked. “Is very long and embarrassing story.”

Scott chuckled. “But we’ll try to get you home by lunch.”

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 — Lisbon, Portugal

Ilya declined another phone call from Alexei. If his asshole older brother had any care about Ilya’s well-being, it was only borne out of fear over losing his coke allowance. Let the fucker sweat and wonder what his life would be like without Ilya as his personal checkbook for a few days.

The jetlag from Moscow to Lisbon wasn’t near as bad as when flying from Boston. Hell, he’d probably knocked a few days off his recovery going back west so soon after landing in Russia. All his father wanted to do was gripe at him for losing Rookie of the Year to “that slow Canadian boy” even though he would give zero shits about MLH awards otherwise.

(Ilya pretended the anger that tangled in his gut at his father’s words had nothing to do with the fact that they were disparaging of Shane Hollander. Or that Shane had made his own disappointment worse by being such a shitty winner.)

And all his brother wanted to do was bother him for cash. So what fucking reason did he have to stick around? They’d, well, neither of them ever forgave anything but they would forget it to keep their pride intact. The week he planned to be here was well-worth the guilt tripping that would come after.

The summer sun painted rows of gold across the floor of his hotel room as he studied the clothes in his bag. This trip to Lisbon, where no one gave a fuck about hockey or Russia or America or Russian hockey players in America, was his one chance to be normal for a few fucking days. Not the Boston Raiders’ star center, not his father’s pride and disappointment, not Shane fucking Hollander’s extended sexuality crisis or the second best rookie in the major league. Just… Ilya, from Boston.

Hmm, the sleeveless shirt showed off his biceps, but this one… Ilya smirked. Of course Svetlana would know how to dress him. The knit of this shirt was just open enough to be considered a mesh fabric. A fabric that did little to conceal the contours of his muscles or the shadow of his nipples. Yes, that was the look for tonight.

When it came to women, Ilya could find a willing partner anywhere. And he did, in many places. But when it came to men, he only had two options. Text “Jane” and suggest Skype sex, or go somewhere where nobody knew his face. And this little club on R. de Barroca was definitely not the kind of place to be recognized. Between the dark paint, strobing lights, and dance floor packed with bodies in various states of drunken undress, Ilya was having trouble remembering his own name.

Two glasses of vodka and some fruity cocktail another patron sent his way later, Ilya was well on his way to leaving with a cute local boy who was having a grand time watching his own hands run under the translucent fabric of Ilya’s shirt. Ilya let him play, rolling his hips just shy of contact and playing with the short hairs at the nape of his dance partner’s neck. He was a real cutie, all dark hair and olive skin and a couple small moles littering the edges of his cheekbones.

Determined to seal the deal, Ilya turned in the hold to press his ass against cutie’s crotch, arcing his body against his chest as his eyes traced the hazy edges of the room. The couple in front of him were tongue-deep in each other’s mouths, kissing sloppy and kinda hot and wait a second was that —

Scott Hunter’s hazel eyes snapped to Ilya’s. And didn’t let go. Not for a long moment that felt like the eternity of heat death, the universe unraveling into strings. Ilya couldn’t be certain either of them were breathing. He went still in his partner’s arms, unable to look away from the world crashing down around Scott Hunter’s ears.

Until the Admirals captain fucking vanished. Ilya’s gaze swung wildly, trying to regain contact on the man whose secrets he’d just barged in on. He spotted Hunter leaving the club, weaving through the throng so goddamn fast and Christ if he could channel some of that speed into his skating he might actually be a match for Ilya.

Ripping away from his partner and the prospect of a carefree night of casual sex, Ilya pursued Hunter out of the club and onto the street. He caught sight of brown curls disappearing up the hill, his own fast stride turning into a run.

“Hunter!”

He didn’t answer, so Ilya tried again. This time, the Admirals captain whirled around and fixed him with a look that pinned his toes to the cobblestones. “What do you want, Rozanov?”

Ilya swallowed around nothing. What was he supposed to say? He was so focused on tracking Hunter down, he hadn’t really thought about how to address this newfound knowledge they shared. And he sure as shit wasn’t going to admit that for the briefest moment, when the realization of being caught sunk into Hunter’s features, Ilya imagined that look on Shane Hollander’s face.

Instead he says, “Neither of us were here, da? I don’t know you, you don’t know me, nobody’s shit gets out.”

“You ran out here just to tell me that?”

Pretty fucking important ground rules in Ilya’s book, but the man is shocked so he can have a little grace. “And for smoke.” Thankfully the pack in his pocket survived the bump and grind with minimal sweat stains. He used the motions of lighting up to settle the wool-itch of nerves under his skin. It was actually hitting him now, that someone he didn’t know well, whom he never intended to tell, now knew more about Ilya than his own father. That being “just Ilya from Boston” was a goddamn pipe dream.

“You shouldn’t be smoking,” Hunter said. “How old are you, anyway?”

Ilya took the first puff and blew it out before answering. “Twenty. What, am I old enough to be your grandson?”

“Fucking pissant,” Scott scoffed, and with that same speed he really should figure out how to translate onto the ice, plucked the cigarette from Ilya’s fingers and shoved it between his own teeth. “Shouldn’t be drinking, then, either.”

“Is Portugal, Captain PSA,” Ilya snarked, more upset at having his cigarette stolen than anything else. “Legal at eighteen.”

Scott hadn’t taken a puff. Just held the cigarette in his teeth while the end burned down.

“Are you going to give that back or just waste my money?”

“Fuck off,” Scott said, and had Ilya not been so used to hearing the same shit out of Shane Hollander’s mouth when he actually meant just shut up for three seconds, he might have. Instead, he watched Scott consider the thing in his lip, take it in between two fingers, and give it a short puff.

To his credit, he went a full four seconds before coughing. “Jesus,” he sputtered, “Why did I do that?”

All the snark fled Ilya’s brain as he watched this veteran of the ice, a man who’d been shoved and punched and brutalized by equipment for a literal decade try not to hack up a lung the first time he smoked a cigarette. Instead, a breathless laugh forced its way out of his mouth. And then another one.

Scott Hunter tried not to smile. He really did. But once he started giggling, he couldn’t stop. And then Ilya couldn’t stop laughing, and soon enough they’re both in stitches on this random Portuguese sidewalk. The ridiculousness of it all sent Ilya into another fit.

When he could finally get a hold on his breathing, Ilya swiped the cigarette back from Hunter. It was mostly burnt down, but better than nothing.

“What the hell are you doing out here?”

Ilya could have set a lot of things. For some reason, he settled on the truth. Or a version of it. “Still too fucking cold in Moscow. You?”

“I, uh…” Hunter didn’t finish that sentence, but he didn’t need to.

“Right.”

“So.”

“So?”

“Neither one of us were here. I don’t know you, you don’t know me. Nobody’s shit gets out.”

“Yep,” Ilya said. “Just kid teaching random dinosaur how to smoke.”

Hunter scoffed. “Whatever you say, Rozanov.”

The cigarette burned down to the filter. Ilya snuffed it out on the brick beside him and pocketed the butt. “I hope not to see you again.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” Ilya let the moment stretch before continuing, “No fun, being cockblocked by grandpa with sad eyes.”

That got another giggle out of both of them.

“I’m only six years older than you.”

“Like I say, grandpa. Plus you treat me like kid anyway.”

“You are a kid.”

Then Scott Hunter looked at him, really looked at him with no panic or consternation or grief, just something heavy and piercing that made Ilya feel like his heart was on the outside of his ribcage. “Be safe out there, okay?”

“Okay,” Ilya said, softer than intended.

In real life, they both turned around and walked away into the night. But in Ilya’s memory, that never happens. They just stand there, eye-to-eye, until the sun comes up and it’s too bright to see anything else.

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 — Lisbon, Portugal

Despite their best efforts, Ilya and Hunter could not avoid each other completely. Bairro Alto was a small neighborhood, after all, and there were only so many places for queer tourists to go. So, by unspoken agreement from across the room, they worked out a solution. Ignoring the fuck out of each other.

And it worked. Ilya woke up somewhere other than his hotel bed more times than not, spent his mornings sleeping in, his afternoons exploring the neighborhood, and his nights barhopping up and down the R. de Barroca getting lost in a parade of pretty boys with dark eyes and hair.

Tonight, he’d fallen in with a mixed group of locals and expats at the same club from his first night, trading dances and drinks and flirtatious glances that were definitely going somewhere if Ilya had any say in it. They’d parked at a small table near the back of the bar, a little ways off from the dance floor. Ilya was just returning from a long stretch of dancing when he spotted it on the table. A line of white powder.

The Italian rolling a five euro bill — Ilya thought his name was Giacomo or something — smirked as he followed Ilya’s eyeline. He offered the roll to Ilya, saying something Ilya couldn’t hear over the bass in his chest and the pounding in his ears. For a split second, Ilya was drunk and endorphin-high enough to consider it. But then he remembered Alexei and the phone calls and the look in his constricted pupils whenever he got high and tried to hide it from their father.

Vodka and cigarettes were one thing. This… Ilya did not want to go there. He raised a hand to wave Giacomo off, only for it to be taken halfway through as brown curls and hazel eyes pressed in really close to his face. Hunter’s other hand pressed fingertips to his waist as he brought his lips to Ilya’s ear, and for a terrifying moment he thought Scott Hunter had officially lost his goddamn mind and was about to suggest something incredibly stupid until he heard, “Squeeze my hand if you need me to get you out of this.”

Ilya was so off-guard it took his brain a couple seconds to parse the English. Then his jaw clenched so hard he thought he might crack his newest crown. Fuck Scott Hunter with his white knight act, fuck Giacomo for offering him that five euro bill, fuck Alexei for his stupid addiction, fuck his father for the iron grip he held on Ilya’s brain, fuck Moscow for feeling less like home than random American hotel rooms, fuck Shane Hollander for reminding him of that fact over and over and over again, fuck the whole goddamn world and everyone in it.

Ripping his hand out of Hunter’s grasp, Ilya gave him a hard shove and disappeared into the crowd. He couldn’t fucking breathe in here. It was too loud, too crowded, too everything. Stumbling out the entrance, he leaned against the brick and let the cool breeze off the ocean fill his lungs and slow the rapid machine-thump in his chest. He still felt off-kilter, like he could punch someone or pass out any moment. Fuck, he needed to calm down.

A smell like burning grass joined the scent of salt in his nose. Off to his left, a couple Portuguese guys passed a blunt back and forth. Shit, he could really use some weed right now. Approaching the men, he asked in English and gestured to the smouldering cylinder. One of them said something in Portuguese, but Ilya just kept waving his hand until they relented and passed him the blunt.

The first hit tasted kinda funny. He blamed it on the sour taste Scott Hunter left in his mouth. Ilya was not stupid. He didn’t need some big brother hovering over his shoulder while he tried to have a good time. He already had a shitty big brother, anyway. Fuck, he really wanted to stop thinking about Alexei. Ilya took another hit and passed it back.

He stayed in the rotation until they were done, keeping silent while the pair chatted quietly. Ilya mustered his fifteen total words of Portuguese to thank them, then re-entered the club. The weed had done its work, helping his breathing even out and making his head feel floaty and relaxed. He let that languid sensation carry him through a few more songs on the dance floor, rolling his hips lazily against someone whose face he couldn’t really make out.

That heady, sleepy feeling built up in his muscles so gradually, Ilya didn’t notice just how tired he was until it became a struggle to keep his eyes open. Shit, what was that sound? Was somebody talking to him? Why did his chest feel so tight? Were the lights in here always so dark and smudgy? He leaned hard against his dance partner, trying to blink himself back to awareness and get his legs under him. Shit, what the fuck was going on?

Was this how Mom felt?

His partner’s hands went to his face. Wait, no different hands. Someone was holding him up by the waist while another patted at his cheek. Ilya was able to open his eyes enough to discern the blurry face of Scott Hunter searching his gaze. And by the look on his face, the Admirals captain wasn’t liking what he found. Ilya didn’t realize someone could look that worried.

His eyes slid shut again, and Ilya was vaguely aware of movement, then something cold and solid against his back, then a hard something being stuck in his nostril. A sharp, wet scent went up his airway and holy fuck he could breathe again. His lungs sucked a gasp of air as his eyes snapped open, tiredness vanishing in a brutal instant. He coughed a few times as his vision swam back into focus. Scott Hunter was still in front of his face, still looking at him with that naked expression and holding a little plastic applicator in his right hand. The left, Ilya belatedly realized, was cradling the back of his skull.

“Что случилось?” he croaked. {What happened?}

“Don’t worry, you’re gonna be okay,” Hunter said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Once Ilya was breathing somewhat normal, Hunter hauled him up and pulled Ilya’s arm over his shoulder. He wanted to protest, but that first step almost sent him falling against Hunter’s side and Ilya realized he did need the support. Hunter led him out of the club, eyes flicking back and forth between the sidewalk and Ilya’s face. He asked something in English Ilya simply was not understanding before he made the universal fuck it sound and kept walking.

By the time they got… wherever they were going, Ilya’s legs had steadied enough to carry his own weight. Hunter still kept an arm wrapped around his waist, the heat of his palm weirdly cold against feverish skin. The somewhere turned out to be a charming little townhouse, small like everything in the neighborhood and barely distinguishable from the others around it.

Inside was equally tasteful, some kind of guesthouse. Hunter deposited Ilya on the couch in the front room and knelt before him. He proceeded through a series of checks, looking at Ilya’s pupils and checking the temperature with the back of his hand. When Hunter tried to press two fingers to Ilya’s pulse, he slapped the hand away.

“I’m fine, dammit,” he lied.

“Rozanov, you’re fucking lucky to be conscious right now. I should be calling an ambulance.”

“No fucking hospitals.” That would result in a call to Moscow, or Boston, and Ilya absolutely could not deal with either of those things right now. Too many questions, too few safe answers.

Hunter heaved a big sigh, then riffled through his backpack before pulling out a red-and-white box. “I don’t think you properly OD’ed, but if I have to use this again I’m not giving you the choice.”

Ilya grabbed the box with weak fingers. The Latin script escaped his understanding for a second before he sounded it out. Naloxone. “You just carry Narcan around?”

“Yes, and it’s a good thing I did.”

Ilya tilted his head back onto the couch cushions and closed his eyes. In an instant, Hunter was hovering and tapping at his cheek. “No, you can’t fall asleep, okay?”

For the third time tonight, Ilya shoved Hunter’s hand away. “Relax, I am not dying. Just trying to figure out why you are so…” the English word escaped him. Something like chivalrous, but that was a bit too impersonal. He didn’t want to admit that the word was kind. Instead he rolled his eyes and vaguely flapped his hands.

“You could be a little more grateful, you know.”

“What, Captain fucking America here needs a thank you? I did not ask you to get involved.”

“For fuck’s sake, Rozanov!”

“If you had not acted little PSA savior earlier we would not be here!”

“You’re mad about that?” Hunter asked, disbelieving.

Ilya rolled his eyes again. “I am big boy, Hunter. I can say no to drugs.”

“Obviously not.”

“You piss me off, I go outside and see guys smoking, I thought it was just weed!” Ilya defended. “Did not know it had…” he trailed off. What even was that blunt laced with?

The hard lines around Scott Hunter’s mouth softened. “Well, considering you’re not significantly more fucked up, I doubt it was heroin. Probably opium if I had to bet.”

Shit. Then that definitely could have gone a lot worse. Now that the naloxone had flushed the high out of his system, the full weight of what could have gone wrong hit him. He could’ve died like—

or ended up at the mercy of someone far less kind than Scott Hunter. He really was lucky the Admirals captain had been there and done what he did. A tremor went through him that had nothing to do with the withdrawal.

Withdrawal. Wetness prickled the corners of his eyes. “I’m not a junkie,” he whispered. Not like his brother. He wasn’t like Alexei. He was smart. Careful. He knew better than to take too many drugs. He squeezed the tears away, trying not to think about that empty orange bottle.

“Never said you were,” Hunter answered. “But it was really stupid taking drugs from strangers. Even weed.”

“Do you always talk like Just Say No commercial?”

“Only when dumbfuck kids make me use my Narcan.”

And then Scott Hunter gave him that same naked look that made Ilya feel like the seams around his hard parts were coming loose. He’d never seen someone act so openly concerned in his direction. It scared the shit out of him.

“Ilya, is everything…okay, with you? Like, with work and at home?”

Ilya pulled that unraveling back to puckering tightness. “I am fine, Hunter. You do not need to save me.”

“I’m not trying to save you.”

“Bullshit!” Ilya spat. “Stealing my smokes, telling me to be careful, pretending to flirt so you can sweep me away from the big bad cokehead. You are fucking pathological, Hunter.”

“Jesus, is it so hard to believe someone just cares about your safety?”

“Yes!” Ilya roared, the naked truth ripping out of his throat. Nobody cared about Ilya, not really. His father only cared about his perfect little athlete, something to brag about to ministry officials and bring home gold medals. Alexei only called when he needed money. His coaches and teammates played nice but they either hated his guts for being better than them or weighed him down with expectations of a cup run his rookie fucking season. Even Shane Hollander only kept coming back because his anxiety permitted him no other options.

Be it the withdrawal, the fear of what almost happened, the haunted look in Scott Hunter’s hazel eyes, the seams were fully unraveled now. The hard exterior fell away and Ilya was just a scared twenty year old queer kid who could’ve died tonight and couldn’t think of a single person alive who’d really known him. And the one person who had — oh God, she’d be so disappointed in him. Tears wetted his cheeks, one after the other and Ilya couldn’t muster the willpower to make them stop.

Gentle hands on his shoulders pulled Ilya forward. Words whispered into his hairline. “I care, okay? I care about what happens to you.”

Ilya fell into the embrace and clutched at Scott’s back, pressed his damp cheek into the soft scratch under his jaw. Heart fully on the outside now, raw and squishy and bleeding and beating louder and louder, something hot and fuzzy burning wherever skin met skin. “I’m sorry,” he said. To him and to her.

“I forgive you.”

The pressure in his chest tightened unbearably before it released. Ilya could only hold tight onto Scott as an aching stretch from the depths of his being lurched forward, reaching and seeking and finding that other edge, frayed with the same pain and need and guilt and loneliness, two broken threads weaving together so tightly that nothing, not fear, not shame, not death itself would dare try to unravel it again.

In that moment, Ilya Rozanov and Scott Hunter became something rare: two souls intertwined, joys and sorrows and sensations and pains shared no matter the distance, no matter the time, an anchor and allowance for all time.

Soulmates.

...

If I’m Captain America does that make you my Bucky Barnes?

As if. Obvious I am Black Widow.

Because she’s Russian or because your names rhyme?

Because she is best Avenger, you star-spangled meathead.

Your insults are less effective when I can feel you smiling.

Ridiculous. You know nothing of Russian feelings.

I think I’ll learn.

Chapter 2: Part Two: Impact

Chapter Notes

Special thank you to R/AskRussians for having years-old answers to my dumbass language questions.

Monday, December 2nd, 2013 — Boston @ Montreal (2-3), Brooklyn @ New York (TBA)

“You killed me, Hollander. I am dead.”

Rozanov was dead? Shane thought that was rich, coming from the only one of them who trusted their legs to carry weight. When Rozanov announced he was going to wash after thoroughly rocking Shane’s world and possibly ruining him on the usual means of orgasm forever, Shane considered joining him for a few more minutes of lazy shower kisses. Until he tried to move his legs and found them distinctly uncooperative.

Not that he would ever admit this to Rozanov. Guy already had a massive ego, no need to stroke it anymore than Shane already had when he came untouched. Still, he was riding high on the whole experience, memories flashing across his brain every time he shifted and felt that strange, sweet soreness in his ass. Rozanov deserved an acknowledgement of that, at least.

“That was so fucking hot.”

From his spot tucked under Shane’s arm, Rozanov grasped the hand over his chest and shifted so he could look Shane in the eye. The cold slide of damp hair across Shane’s skin sent him shivering. “Worth the wait?” Rozanov asked.

Shane responded by cupping his chin and kissing those perfect lips. Then another, right on Rozanov’s hairline, wanting that coolness against his mouth. His rival liked to know he did a good job, checking in with Shane every time, even if he frequently slipped it under a chirp. It was… endearing.

In that way regular hookup partners felt, of course. Not that Shane had any other regular hookups. But that’s how it goes, right? You can’t fuck someone on a consistent basis without learning things about them. Like how Rozanov was perfectly punctual. Not in the way Shane was, arriving at least ten minutes early because he budgeted time for interruptions. But always exactly where he needed to be and never a minute sooner. Or how he had a mild oral fixation, given the frequent attention Rozanov paid to Shane’s nipples. And even outside the bedroom, teeth always worrying on a piece of nicotine gum or the strings of a sweatshirt or the Orthodox cross around his neck.

Or how the look in Rozanov’s eyes when he reduced Shane to a needy pile of whimpers and begging was the same as when the clock wound down in a winning match against a strong team. And when he played a high-value word in Words with Friends against someone he only identified with a Russian term Shane didn’t understand. The expression of imminent victory.

Not that Shane was studying Rozanov’s face, or anything. He just…noticed. Because they were… in close proximity.

In fact, Rozanov had something of that look on his face right now. That look like he was winning. A slow, genuine smile lighting his face. Then his eyes popped wide and the smile fell away and he was shooting out of Shane’s arms with a choking gasp that turned Shane’s blood to ice in his veins.

“Roz!?” Shane grabbed for his breathless rival, one hand on his back feeling the too-fast tattoo of his heartbeat, the other grabbing for the spot on his side Rozanov was clutching so tight the skin puckered under his fingers. But when Shane successfully exposed the area, there was nothing but red imprints of fingertips. “Roz, what’s wrong?”

Rozanov kept fighting for breath, sucking air for long, agonizing seconds as Shane really started to freak the fuck out. Did Rozanov have an injury Shane didn’t know about? Had he aggravated it during sex? Oh, God, Rozanov had really gone all out while Shane was begging for it. Had he dislocated Rozanov’s rib? Caused a small pneumothorax to become a fully collapsed lung? Shit shit shit shit he’d really fucked it up this time, Rozanov’s dumb joke about Shane killing him suddenly feeling way too real. Crap, what was he doing just sitting here? He should be calling an ambulance —

“No ambulance,” Rozanov croaked.

Fuck, did Shane say all that out loud?

“I will be fine, Hollander.

“You don’t sound fine!” Shane half-yelled.

“Trust me, this has nothing to do with you and your spectacular ass.” Rozanov’s breathing was evening out, sounding less and less like he was actively dying. “It’s…"

An expression Shane had never seen before crossed Rozanov’s face, almost shocking in its nakedness. Shane didn’t realize Rozanov could look that worried.

“I need to make phone call. Then I will explain, okay?”

Unsure of just about everything that was going on, Shane answered. “Okay.”

“Stay here,” Rozanov said, then slowly climbed off the bed. Whatever he claimed, Rozanov was not fine. Not if the awkward way he held himself while pulling on his sweatpants said anything. In the absence of any answers, Shane’s brain did what Shane’s brain did and started spiraling. Nope, nope, nope, not going there. Not imagining what could happen if Rozanov was being a stubborn fuck about not needing medical care. Nope, no sir, we’re going to think of something else.

He needed to do something useful before he completely exploded. Going into the en-suite, Shane threw on a pair of shorts and riffled through his drawers looking for any and all first aid items he could find. Lidocaine patches, arnica gel; ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and naproxen. He had ice packs and heating pads in the kitchen, but based on the muffled conversation still happening in his living room he would have to wait.

Rozanov was still talking as Shane laid everything out on his dresser. The way the volume fell and rose told him Rozanov was pacing. Rozanov never paced. Fidgeted with his hands, put things in his mouth, sure. But never paced. Every once in a while, when the movement brought Rozanov closer to Shane’s door, he could pick out some words. Home. Check on. Thank you. A couple Russian curses Shane actually did know the meaning of. And Shane stood there, shuffling the first aid items around so that all the edges were straight and all the labels were facing outward like they’d taught him to do with soda cans on commercial shoots. He was halfway through folding their discarded clothes when Rozanov re-entered the bedroom, still looking worse for wear.

If there was an expression on his rival’s face at the sight of the arranged medical equipment, Shane didn’t see it. He was focused on the massive black-and-purple bruise that covered Rozanov’s right stomach.

“Holy shit!”

Rozanov’s eyes followed Shane’s, as if just now noticing the staining under his skin. He let out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. “I can explain.”

“Please do,” Shane replied. “Now.”

“Before I do,” Rozanov raised a finger. “You need to know. I can tell you some things. But do not ask me for the whole truth.”

“Yeah, that’s not making me feel better.”

“I mean it, Hollander. Promise me you will not ask.”

Shane sighed. A partial truth was better than letting his brain keep spinning. “I promise. You know I can keep a secret.”

Rozanov gave him a tiny half-smile before going very still. “I have a soulmate,” he began.

That alone was enough to knock Shane’s socks off, if he was wearing any. Rozanov? A soulmate? Shane felt something pass through his chest as the words sunk in, something hollow and choking and wholly unfamiliar.

“And he had a…small accident.”

“Small? Roz, you look like someone hit you with a baseball!” Shane exclaimed. “Wait, he?”

“You promised not to ask questions, Hollander.”

“Fine!” Shane said, even as that hollow feeling got louder. “Can I ask if you want Tylenol?”

“I’m fi—” Rozanov started to say, before the words died in his throat. “Yes, thank you.”

Rozanov let Shane grab his hand and sit him down on the edge of the bed. The bruising was truly impressive, and Shane was very familiar with bruises in his line of work. This one looked as bad as some of his worst board checks, when the angle of his padding wasn’t enough to protect his arms from the unyielding plexiglass or the dig of an opponent’s elbow.

Filling a glass from the bathroom sink, Shane measured out the most effective combo of pain relievers and held them out to Rozanov, who accepted without complaint. Then he went to work warming the arnica gel between his fingers before gently applying it to Rozanov’s skin. He tried to be as delicate as possible, but Rozanov still flinched a little under his touch.

“That’ll dry quick,” Shane muttered. “I get the stuff that doesn’t leave residue. Drives me nuts.”

Rozanov made a soft sound that had Shane searching his face for signs of pain. What he found there instead was so gentle it threatened to take his breath away. So he stood up and turned around, grabbing for the lidocaine patches before realizing these were probably not the best thing to stick over bruises. Instead he said, “Does… does this happen often?”

“More the other way around,” Rozanov answered. “But we both have… physically demanding jobs. It happens. Usually not this bad, though. He decided to be big idiot tonight.”

“Sounds like a real winner.”

Shane turned around as Rozanov laughed, then winced. “And they say you are not funny.”

“Who does?”

“I do, usually.”

“Fuck off.”

Rozanov just smiled again.

Shane shouldn’t ask. He knows the answer. That’s his soulmate, for fuck’s sake. Of course they’re… “Must be nice. Having someone like that.” It came out as a statement, but Rozanov answered the question.

“Hollander, are you jealous?”

“No,” the answer was automatic.

“Come here,” Rozanov said, and Shane, as usual, was powerless to stop himself. His rival wrapped a warm hand around Shane’s waist. “My soulmate and me, we are, how you say? We do not like each other in that way.”

“Platonic?” Shane offered.

“Yes, that’s the word,” Ilya confirmed.

Shane doesn’t want to think about what that hot feeling in his chest means. “Oh.” A long moment passed. “He knows about…us?”

“I cannot hide there is guy I see in Montreal. And guy I see in Boston. But he does not know those guys are you.”

“But how does that work?” Shane blurted, before feeling his cheeks heat up. “Sorry, you don’t have to talk about it. I know that’s personal.”

“But you are worried there are things he knows you would not want him to.”

With the fear stated out loud, Shane discovered that he did, in fact, worry about that now.

“Hey,” Rozanov said, gently tilting Shane’s head towards him. Eye contact was too much right now. So Shane focused on the tip of Rozanov’s nose. “He has his own secrets. That is why I don’t tell you his name. And I respect your privacy. I will not tell him anything you don’t want me to.”

“But how? Don’t you, like, share emotions all the time?” Shane had an intellectual understanding of how soul bonds worked, but much of the flowery descriptions he’d seen in media he read went right over his head. Shane couldn’t reliably identify his own feelings half the time. What would it be like to have someone else’s mixed in?

“Feelings, sensations, yes. But we do not read each other’s minds, and it is not all the time.”

“You've lost me.”

“When we are close by, it’s… easy. Automatic. Takes much effort to hide things. But when we are further away, sharing is less intense. Always there, but we have to try harder to send things back and forth. But the bigger the feeling, the harder it is to hide, even at long distances. Like…” he trailed off and gestured to his side. “Big feeling. Couldn’t hide. But small feeling? Maybe a little tickle, but hard to read unless we want it to be shared.”

“So, how does he feel right now?”

Ilya smirked. “Embarrassed, but… accomplished. Like he did something important.”

Shane let out a tiny chuckle. “Is it weird? Not being able to…hide anything from each other?”

“At first, yes. Very embarrassing, pretty much all the time. But there is… little room for shame, in a bond. It’s… it’s helped us both, a lot.”

That hollow feeling, that jealous feeling, reared up in Shane’s chest again. What Roz had with his soulmate, the gentleness in his voice when he talked about their bond, that implicit understanding they have of each other…what could possibly compete with that?

The sound of Rozanov’s obnoxious ringtone cut the thick silence that had settled between them. He answered, “Rozanov…yes, I’m nearby. I’ll be back in 20 minutes.” Ending the call with a sigh, he told Shane, “I need to go. Team bullshit.”

That, at least, Shane understood. “Okay.”

Shane watched Rozanov move through his bedroom with new light. It struck him, with the revelation of such a massive part of Rozanov’s life, that Shane really didn’t know much about him. He knew his career, obviously. Knew what he was like in bed and the placement of every mole on his back. Knew that he was punctual and orally fixated and treated everything like a competition because he really hated losing but had absolutely no context as to why. No real perspective.

What did it mean that he wanted that context so badly? “You ready for the Olympic break?” Shane asked. “Your family must be happy they’re in Russia.”

“Mmm, yes,” Rozanov answered. His tone was jarringly flat after the softness of the last few minutes.

“My parents are pretty psyched for me. They’re pissed they can’t come, but my mom’s threatening to wake up at 4:00 a.m. to watch every game.” Fuck, he’s rambling. But he can’t stop. “I bet, uh, your parents will be there, right?”

Rozanov bent over to roll on a sock. “My father, yes. Maybe my brother, but who knows?”

“Cool,” Shane said, and just kept talking. “Anyways, I’m psyched. I’ve been dreaming about it my whole life.”

“Dreaming of what? Bronze medal?” There was the Rozanov Shane was familiar with. But why did it feel so…weird?

“You fucking wish, dude.” Shane shot back, letting that usual competitive fire cover up the mess in his head.

Rozanov stood up and leaned over Shane. For a moment he thought Roz was trying to plant a kiss on him, but he just reached behind and retrieved the shirt Shane folded. But then he didn’t back up.

“Remember when I made you come hands-free?”

“Go fuck yourself, Rozanov,” Shane answered, insult utterly defanged by the smile on his face. Because Shane very much did remember, and there was a certain satisfaction in the memory. If Rozanov was this proud of it, it must be something special between just them.

“Such a good trick,” Rozanov grinned, then made good on his threat to capture Shane’s lips. Once, then twice. It took everything Shane had not to grab his neck and pull him in for a third. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

Rozanov stepped away. Shane closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to watch him leave.

Monday, December 2nd, 2013 — Boston @ Montreal (2-3), Brooklyn @ New York (2-3)

Scott went down hard.

Kip almost didn’t hear his father’s words. “That shot must have been a hundred miles an hour!”

Five minutes left in the third period. The Admirals were up by one but down a player for another minute. They were fighting so hard to get the action out of their zone, to flip the script on the Brooklyn Scouts and run down the clock to victory. But that just wasn’t happening. And then Scott took control of a rebound and made a Hail Mary pass towards the blue line, only for a defenseman to shoot it right back at their goal.

And then this magnificent idiot jumped in front of the puck. For a split second he looked like Superman, flying through the air in slow motion, saving the day for his team and fans. But now he was crumpled on the ice in the fetal position, knocked down and hurt and all too human.

“Fuck, Scott, come on. Get up,” Kip whispered.

Fans around him speculated on where the puck hit. Kip couldn’t take his eyes off the fallen captain, pit in his stomach yawning wider and darker as Scott gasped for air. He was three seconds away from screaming for medics when Scott finally began to haul himself up. Two teammates held him up while he clutched his side, but he got off the ice on his own two skates. That meant it couldn’t be that bad, right?

“Kip,” a hand fell on his shoulder. Kip yanked his eyes away from the ice to look at his father. “You okay?”

“Yeah, that was just a lot,” Kip covered.

“Well, in case you didn’t notice, your phone’s been ringing nonstop.”

And yeah, there it was. A buzzing in his pocket. Pulling out his phone, the caller ID simply read Ilya. Shit, he must be worried sick. Getting hit with that kind of pain out of nowhere. “I gotta take this,” Kip said, then dashed up the stairs into the relative quiet of the concourse.

“Hey,” he answered.

Ilya wasted no time. “Kip, what happened? Scott got hurt during the game?”

“Yeah,” Kip answered. “He, uh, jumped in front of a puck.”

Ilya let out a string of rapid-fire Russian before sighing. “Of course he did.”

“Is… is it bad?” It felt weird, prying into Scott and Ilya’s soulmate connection for information. But Kip was so goddamn worried it was something serious he couldn’t help it.

“Hurts like a bitch, but should be okay. No worse than breaking teeth.”

Kip grimaced at the reminder of just how violent their chosen profession could be. “And if it is?”

Ilya’s tone went soft. Softer than he’d ever used on Kip. “They will give him X-Ray and draw blood on site. If it is serious, they will take him to hospital, then call me. And I will call you.”

“You don’t, that’s not really my—” they’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks. Kip didn’t deserve to be included like that yet.

“Please,” Ilya scoffed. “Right now he is worried about scaring you more than anything else.”

Kip blinked a few times at that. “Huh.”

“Can I ask you favor?” Ilya asked.

“Of course.”

“If they send Scott home, can you check on him? I can’t, uh…” Ilya trailed off with a frustrated huff.

Kip felt a rush of sympathy. It must be torture, knowing your soulmate was hurting but being too far away to care for them. “Right, yeah, of course I will.”

“Thank you, Kip,” Ilya said. “I am glad you’re there.”

“Always.” The certainty with which the word left his lips nearly stunned him. But it was true. Scott had become an important person to him, even in the little time they’d known each other. His willingness to let Kip in on his intensely private life, to introduce him to Ilya, for Ilya to the reach out to Kip so readily… there was something really special in that. Right?

“Just… keep me updated? If Scott… can’t.”

“If he does not text you within next hour I will play annoying Russian club music until his eyes bleed.”

“Appreciated. Violent, but appreciated.”

“I have to go now. Thank you, Kip.” Ilya said.

“Yeah, talk to you soon.” The line went dead.

And Kip had to pretend he could think of anything else for the rest of the game and the long, slushy commute back to Brooklyn. He tried to let his father distract him, half-listening to his usual easy chatter, but he just kept spacing out worrying about Scott. By the time they got back home, the hour was almost up for Ilya to make good on his threat.

He’d just gone up to his room to definitely not watch highlight reels of the game to try and get a better sense of what happened when his phone finally rang. Scott.

“Hey,” Kip whispered, as if speaking quiet could soften any potential bad news.

“Hey,” Scott answered.

“Are you…”

“Just a nasty bruise. No broken bones, no organ damage.”

“No bleeding eyeballs.”

Scott let out a big laugh that ended in a groan. “Fuck, that hurts. Ilya called you?”

Kip chuckled in response. “Yeah, he needed to know what happened and you didn’t have your phone, I guess.”

“He didn’t try to call me,” Scott said.

“What?”

“All I have are some texts. Stupid grandpa, you are too old to be doing this. Call Kip ASAP or I will listen to Черный Бумер until you cry blood,” Scott said in an intentionally bad Ilya impression that made Kip giggle into the speaker. “Which, if you aren’t familiar with obnoxious Russian rap, is like 3OH!3 for Slavs.”

“Damn, didn’t realize he was pulling out the big guns.”

“Well, he likes you, and being a menace, so being a menace on your behalf is, like, his fourth favorite thing to do.”

They both laughed into the line again, before it went quiet. Not awkward quiet, but soft quiet while Kip really processed what Scott was telling him. Ilya liked him. Kip hadn’t realized how much he wanted that. The two captains had carved out a tiny place in the fabric of the universe where they could be themselves. And they were letting Kip into it.

“He, uh, asked me to come check on you. If that’s okay.” Kip said, voice steadier than it had any right to be.

“Please,” Scott answered. “He’s dealing with Raiders bullshit and I would love the company.”

Kip couldn’t help the bubble of satisfaction he felt. Even with his soul bond, it was obvious Scott struggled with isolation. Being the captain, being closeted, being an orphan. Having that connection to Ilya was helpful, essential even, for managing the loneliness that came with those labels. But from what Kip had seen, Scott felt a certain responsibility towards the younger man. They’d been light on the details surrounding that night in Lisbon, but some things were apparent even through the softened language. Like that big-brother instinct Scott held to protect and care for that Kip guessed was foundational to their bond.

But that meant Scott was loath to be a cause of Ilya’s worry. It would hold him back from reaching out for more than their regular exchanges, especially if Ilya was dealing with his own troubles. But Kip could be someone he felt comfortable leaning on. Whom he’d asked for specifically. Shit, was it possible to be proud of someone you’d only known for a few weeks?

“Be there soon.”

Ilya wasn’t kidding. That bruise looked like it hurt like a bitch. Thankfully, Scott knew better than to try and pretend otherwise. Which is why he was parked on the couch with an ice pack pressed over his side while Kip cleaned up the breakfast-for-dinner he’d whipped up from Scott’s ridiculously organized fridge. Blueberry-banana pancakes and all.

“How you feeling, Cap?” Kip called as he loaded the last plate into the dishwasher.

“Like I got hit with a puck,” Scott answered, dry as a bone.

Kip turned off the sink and walked to the back of the couch. He leaned over the cushions until Scott’s head craned back to meet his eyes. “When I said Cap, I didn’t mean Captain Obvious.” he softened the jab with a gentle kiss to the forehead. Kip tried not to visibly preen at the way the frown lines smoothed out as he pulled away.

“I’ll be okay,” Scott answered, honest this time. “Thank you for being here. I, uh… it’s really appreciated. From both of us.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Kip smiled, going down for another kiss.

Scott’s eyes fluttered shut, then he whispered. “I wish you were here all the time.”

Kip couldn’t say anything. Not for a long time. So long that Scott’s eyes opened and the furrow returned to his brow. “I’m sorry, that was—”

Kip shut him up with a kiss on the lips, hand cradling the strong line of Scott’s jaw. “That was the single most romantic thing any man’s ever said to me.”

Scott’s hand circled Kip’s wrist. “Come here.”

For fear of jostling Scott too much, Kip did not copy his signature move of jumping over the back of the couch and opted to walk around. As soon as he was within arm’s reach, Scott pulled at his waist, bringing Kip down to sit close on his left side. For a moment he had that unfocused look on his face, the one Kip learned came alongside the push-pull interpretive ballet of his soul bond.

“I’m going to say a bunch of things, okay? And it’s going to be too intense but I want to say it and Ilya wants me to say it. Is that okay? Can I be too intense?”

The fact that Scott was asking for permission to be vulnerable broke Kip’s heart. “Of course.”

“Yeah, I, um… I never do this. Never bring anyone back here, never introduce people to Ilya. Like, ever. My life is complicated.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Kip responded, trying not to let himself get overwhelmed.

“And I can’t come out, not right now. Too many people depend on me for too much, and it would just fuck everything up. And so I just thought I would, I don’t know, wait I guess. Until hockey was over, and then maybe I could fade away a bit. But I… You. It’s just, I want you so bad. So bad. And I know you barely know me so why would you even consider something like this? This, probably fucked up. Like, I know I’m fucked up, I get it. And I try to be present and set a better example but I’m not perfect and there’s so much I’m scared of.

“But I really, really like you. And I want you to stay. So I’m asking for what I want. I want to wake up next to you tomorrow. And I wanna see you after you get off work. I want you and Ilya and I to spend Christmas Eve together watching Charlie Brown and stealing popcorn out of each other’s bowls. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.

“Is, uh, is that too much?”

This man. This wonderful, magnificent, idiotic man. Kip had nearly caused a scene in a hockey arena, been personally tapped by Scott’s soulmate to care for his injury, and braved the bullshit that was the C-F subway transfer thrice in one day in order to be there for him. And he still thought Kip wasn’t completely head over heels?

Scott deserved so much more than he gave himself.

“Thank you for telling me,” Kip whispered.

“Thank you for not running for the hills.”

“Oh, shut up, Hunter,” Kip said, then pulled Scott in for yet another kiss. He felt the way Scott’s breathing picked up, the way his lips couldn’t stop from splitting into a grin.

“Oh God, what did I do to deserve you?” Scott whispered.

“Easy,” Kip said. “You asked for what you wanted.”

Scott pulled back, eyes full of naked hope. “You’ll stay?”

Did Kip mention Scott Hunter was a bit of an idiot?

"Yes, I’ll stay.”

Another kiss, hard and claiming and joyous and melting into something achingly tender

“My heart feels like it’s gonna beat out of my chest right now,” Scott breathed.

Kip chuckled against Scott’s lips. “How’s your soulmate feel about all this?” He suspected he knew the answer, but it didn’t hurt to be sure.

“Crowing like a rooster."

Yep. Still, the mental image made Kip ask, “Ilya?”

“On the inside,” Scott admitted.

“That sounds about right.”

They sat there for a long moment, just wrapped up in each other.

“How about you get me out of these clothes?”

At the utterly incredulous eyebrow Kip raised in his direction, Scott failed to bite back a snicker. “So I can shower.”

Yep. It was official. If he wasn’t already, Kip Grady was well on his way to being in love with Scott Hunter.

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013 — Montreal, Canada

Shane didn’t mean to notice. He really didn’t. In fact, he wasn’t even trying to do anything but watch Sportscenter like he did every morning after his workout and breakfast smoothie.

And Shane Hollander was an idiot about a lot of things. He didn’t understand fashion, or the ins and outs of his sponsorship contracts, or music genres beyond, I like this and Rozanov what the fuck is this obnoxious shit? But the one thing Shane Hollander did understand, better than anything else, was hockey.

Scott Hunter took a puck to the lower right stomach last night. Five minutes left in the third period. Factoring in intermissions, stoppages, and TV breaks, that put the impact right around 8pm EST.

Right around when Ilya Rozanov couldn’t breathe from a soul-transferred lower right stomach injury.

Shane did his best to not think about what that meant.

Chapter End Notes

A little exploration of what Scott and llya look like from the outside. Man, was it fun writing such contrasting perceptions

Chapter 3: Part Three: Orbit

Chapter Notes

It’s so minor I don’t feel it needs to be included in the tags, but for the sake of trigger transparency, this chapter does contain a brief moment of self-harm ideation that is not followed through on. Protect yourselves out there.

Thursday, January 9th, 2014 — Boston @ Los Angeles (TBA)

“Yeah, I think we’re just browsing right now—”

“Excuse me.”

Scott was panicking, he knew this. He also knew he was an idiot for panicking. It drew way more attention to walk into the gallery wearing a hat and sunglasses indoors, then run for it at the first acknowledgement that he hadn’t attended alone than if he’d just acted normal. Acting normal was the thing that carried him through interviews angling for a glimpse into his private life or shitty outdated locker room jokes. Acting normal kept him safe.

But here he was, chest feeling like a vice grip clamped over his lungs and hands he had to press into the bathroom countertop to prevent them from shaking. Fuck, what was he doing? He hadn’t felt like this since…

It’s not a memory he revisits often. That junior league game when Jacob gave him that beautiful assist in the middle of the third period, finally putting their team in the lead. The way he’d smiled so wide and crashed into his teammate, hands gripping jerseys and helmets knocking together, faces so close the air between them turned warm despite the chill of the rink. That brief, fragile moment where Scott let himself believe that maybe, just maybe—

You fags done kissing yet?

It was just a stupid chirp. Some 16 year old pissed his team lost their lead. But it left Scott feeling like the ice beneath his skates had crawled up to his chest. Jacob hadn’t reacted. It was just a stupid chirp. But Scott… Scott couldn’t get away from Jacob fast enough. Couldn’t stop the pressure in his chest, the tremor in his hands. Blank face because blank was safer than angry. Safer than…

Fuck, he was being such a coward. He should be better than this.

A chime from his phone came alongside a heavy wash of concern. Ilya was worried about him. Forcing himself to take a deep breath, Scott clamped down on the bond, choking his unnecessary sharing down to a vague whisper. Kept breathing in and out, holding in between each breath the way he’d been taught, until his racing heart slowed down to something manageable.

Thank God this was a single-use bathroom. Imagine the possible headlines.

Holding onto that calm feeling, Scott checked his phone.

Ilya: What’s happening? Do you need to call?

Ilya had a game tonight. Fuck, had Scott made him feel an anxiety attack in the middle of practice? He replied, I’m okay, I promise. Thought I got recognized while out with Kip.

Then, right after: False alarm.

Ilya didn’t answer the text, just sent a wave of warmth, the feeling of arms squeezing around his torso; comfort and safety and a bone-deep empathy. Scott relaxed into the sharing, accepting his soulmate’s kindness with a rush of gratitude.

But he hated that Ilya knew anything about what that kind of panic felt like.

That calm Scott found ran out by the time they returned to his apartment. He ripped the stupid ballcap off his head and ran a hand over his face, Kip closing the door behind them.

“I’m really sorry,” Scott said, hating the way his voice sounded; all scratchy and anxious and small. “I thought I could do that. I really thought I could. I wanted to. I just…”

Kip cut him off with gentle fingers wrapped around Scott’s hands. He squeezed them both tight and said, “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Scott insisted. It wasn’t. It was childish, and overreactive, and it made the two most important people in the world to him worry for no good reason. He should be better than this. He wanted to be better than this.

“Come here,” Kip whispered, dark eyes boring into his with a look that was so soft and so forgiving, Scott didn’t need the assurances of a soul bond to know Kip understood how he felt. The tension bled out of Scott’s frame as his boyfriend pulled him into a hug, half-supporting his weight as Scott gave in for once and let himself be cared for.

Scott wasn’t kidding, that night he took the puck, the night he asked Kip to stay, when he questioned what he’d done to deserve such a wonderful person striding into his life ten toes down and willing to work with his schedule and his solitude and his secrets. Kip Grady was a goddamn marvel. The two of them seemed so different from the outside: professional jock vs. history nerd, introvert vs. extrovert, quiet observer vs. attention magnet. And Kip was an attention magnet, no matter how niche or weird he perceived his interests to be. Scott habitually zoned out during history lectures, but Kip had a way of telling those stories that made them feel alive and personable that had Scott hanging on to every word about 5th century BCE Athenian red-figure pottery like the secret to scoring a hundred goals in a season was encoded somewhere in the ancient paint.

But there was something underneath all the differences that just clicked. Scott’s two-man first line finally gaining its perfect second wing. But it wasn’t all so one-sided. Kip had a self-deprecating streak a mile wide, exacerbated by his tendency to compare himself to others his age. More than once Scott had to walk him back from an anxiety spiral about being twenty-five and still working a minimum wage job. He’d considered offering to fund Kip’s graduate degree, given the piles of money he kept accruing with little worthwhile to spend it on. But a phone conversation with Ilya on that subject made him realize such an offer wouldn’t be well received, not by someone who was as dedicated to succeeding on their own effort as Kip. So he kept supporting in any way he could.

Which reminded Scott. “Did you finish writing your scholarship essay?”

Kip’s fingers paused on their slow track up and down Scott’s spine. “You wanna talk about that right now?”

“You want me to remind you you promised to send that off by the end of the week?”

“It’s Thursday!”

“I’ll get my laptop.”

Listening to Kip proofread his work out loud was the best use of a Thursday evening Scott could ask for. And one day, after hockey was over and the cameras and the expectations and the brand recognition turned on someone else, he could have this all the time.

Friday, January 24th, 2014 — Dallas @ New York (1-5)

“It’s my birthday on Sunday.”

Scott finished pouring two glasses of Scotch and turned to slide one over to Kip. They both needed something to steady their nerves after the tense atmosphere of the St. Thomas gala. “I know,” he said. “I’ve already got a caterer lined up. Surf and turf, because we’re not choosing.”

When he wrote that joke in his head yesterday, he imagined it landing a lot better. But Kip just accepted his whisky and stared down into the ice cube.

“You know the Kingfisher?” Kip asked. “It’s the bar I told you about where I watch all your games.”

Scott knew better than to pretend it wasn’t starting. That little hole in the pit of his chest, dark and grasping. But he didn’t need them worrying about his stupid brain’s stupid trauma responses. Firm grip on his expression and his bond, Scott hummed an affirmative.

“A couple of my friends are throwing me a little party there.” Kip wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It’s not really even a party. It’s just hanging out or whatever.”

Scott hated this. Hated the feeling in his chest. Hated how Kip was downplaying his own fucking birthday celebration because there’s another shoe dropping and they both know it’s coming but Scott just cannot bring himself to silence Kip any further than he already had.

He’s crazy about you. Elena’s words from earlier rang through his head. He’s also miserable.

The shoe dropped. “It’s a… it’s a gay bar. But it’s not a club, it’s just a bar. It’s honestly more of a hockey bar now thanks to me.”

“Kip…”

“And I was thinking that you could just come as my friend, as somebody who buys smoothies from me.”

Nobody wants to be kept a secret.

“I mean, Maria knows, my friend Sean knows.” The flush of panic Scott feels must have shown on his face, because Kip reassured, “They know that you buy smoothies from me.”

The words slipped from his lips, practiced, prepared, safe. “I can’t.” Because that’s what Scott Hunter always does, right? Keeps it private, deflects the questions, watches his surroundings. But Kip wasn’t a reporter. He deserved a better explanation. “I wish I could. I want to. I want to tell people, I want them to know you’re mine, and that I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Kip said, zero hesitation and fuck if Scott wasn’t fighting tears.

“Soon, maybe,” he hedged. “In a few years.”

Kip’s face fell, the softness draining into exhaustion as he pushed his glass away.

“And I know how it sounds.” Scott whispered, desperate to salvage this. “But it’ll go by quickly, I promise. And then we can be normal. Like… like other people.” Some version of Scott that wasn’t so scared, wasn’t so careful, didn’t keep his face and his bond and his life blank because blank was safe, right? And even as the assurances fell from his lips, that hole in his chest yawned blacker and deeper and heavier. Vice grip on his lungs, hands pressed into the counter.

Kip’s words floated into his ears as if from very far away. “I heard what you said in your speech tonight. And I know that they’re your family, and that you feel responsible for them, and I get that, Scott.”

Scott owed so much to the people and institutions that put him on the path to success. That kept him from becoming a casualty of the system, kept him on the right track. It was because of St. Thomas and the Admirals and the people of New York that Scott Hunter got to be Scott Hunter. That he got to play this game he loved for a living, got to give so much back to his community in time and money and exposure, got the opportunity to find his soulmate in a twenty-year-old Russian spitfire because under what other circumstances could they have possibly found each other? He owed everything to them.

“But I have a family, too,” Kip said. “And I keep lying to them, and I don’t want to.”

He’s so in love with you that he’ll put up with it. But it’s killing him.

“And I miss them.”

Because Scott was keeping Kip away from them. Keeping him in an endless of loop of work and Scott and watching Scott play hockey. The first tear spilled its confines. Scott flicked it away while Kip’s eyes are elsewhere.

“I’m gonna go home tonight,” Kip said. “I need to.”

And that vile, selfish part of Scott wanted to beg Kip to stay. Would’ve said nearly anything to make that happen except the one sentence that would actually change things. But Scott refused lie to him.

In those frozen, disjointed moments as his boyfriend stood up, put on his jacket, and walked out of the apartment, Scott understood Kip. Understood exactly what Scott had asked him to do. And then, as the door clicked shut, he broke.

The glass fell from his hands, clunking against the counter, spilling watery Scotch all over the marble. It’s cracked in half. The razor edge glinted sharp under the kitchen lights as the hole in Scott’s chest became an inescapable pit, guilt and loathing and helplessness pulling him down and down and down. He gets it now, the way some people find solace in pain because anything was better than how he felt right now.

And then a wave of shame and panic replaced it. Because there is no hiding that feeling from a soul bond.

His phone rang. He picked it up.

“Стой!” {Stop!} Ilya sounded as broken as Scott felt. And Scott doesn’t know if he’ll ever forgive himself for that. “Не делайте этого.” {Don’t do this.}

“I won’t.” Scott doesn’t bother to promise out loud. He makes Ilya feel it. Earnest as a libation to the altar and fervent as grave dirt on a crossroads. Ilya will not lose another person to the worst voices in their head. “I’m sorry, kid. I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” Ilya whispered, still in Russian because English got too hard when he was scared. That didn’t matter. Scott still understood him. They could do this when needed, communicating in their respective first languages, years of lessons augmented by sharing the intent behind the words.

For the third time tonight, Scott owed someone an explanation for his behavior. “I fucked up, kid.” What he wanted to say was, I’m fucked up, but they didn’t need to go there. “Kip left. And it’s my fault.”

“Kip?” Ilya asked. Scott felt his presence over the bond, questing against the pit, running gentle threads over the edges. “Душенька, {Soul of mine,} I have never felt you like this before.”

The concern, the gentleness with which Ilya spoke his mother tongue that he hadn’t figured out how to translate over into English, the soft strings of sympathy and care he wound through every tense muscle fiber in Scott’s back and arms and chest, as if he could patch over that hole and make Scott okay again.

Scott didn’t deserve a fucking second of it. “It’s my fault,” he insisted. “He was right to leave. My life is just… I was so selfish, I thought I could keep him, thought I could be better and then he asked me to come to his birthday party and I said no. God, I’ve made him lie to his family for months. And at the gala he was right there and I kept looking at him and thinking that’s my boyfriend and then I would remember that he’s here with someone else and I can’t kiss him, I can’t dance with him, I can’t even acknowledge that I know him because then what?”

“Then what?” Ilya parroted. “Then what, Scott?”

“Then everything falls apart.” It’s the answer he’s always had. The inevitable outcome. The unacceptable outcome.

“So you will just give up?”

“What else am I supposed to do, Ilya?”

A hard knot of Ilya's emotions — feelings towards himself, towards Scott, towards a vague collection of others — so tangled up Scott cannot even begin to parse them, smacked him in the chest. Anger, longing, despair, affection, concern, and a heart-cracking yearning for something just beyond fingertips.

“How fucking dare you?”

The venom in his soulmate’s voice turned Scott’s blood to ice. That warm feeling dissipated, bond pinching tighter on both sides as they could not help but try and spare each other from pain. Could not bear to be the reason the other was hurting.

“I can’t ask this of him anymore!” Scott yelled, letting the cold cover the pit, a dark pond frozen over, ice too cloudy to tell if its safe to skate on. “I can’t… I can’t force him back into the closet just because I love him!” The tears, held back by panic and then duty and then anger, finally spilled.

Ilya must have sensed something from him, because he replied, question flattening to a statement, “So you will just… let him go.”

Hearing those words out loud threatened to shatter the ice. The prospect of never seeing Kip again, becoming a memory haunting the edges of his life, a bittersweet story to keep locked in his heart. But he can’t let that pit swallow him again, can’t subject Ilya to his pain, his weakness, his failure. Scott was supposed to be the steady one, the safe harbor. He closed the bond tighter, before the cold consumed them both.

“I have to.”

Muted and cloudy as they’d made it, they couldn’t close down a soul bond completely. Still, Scott wasn’t able to tell if the feeling that came to him was sent on purpose or strong enough to spill. Had it been someone else, someone who wasn’t bound so tightly to him, someone whose love and care and understanding had the option of being withdrawn, Scott would’ve labeled the emotion contempt.

But this was Ilya. And Ilya couldn’t help but love and care for and understand him. Which made the real feeling that much worse to bear.

Disappointment.

Saturday, January 25th, 2014 — Winnipeg @ Boston (TBA)

Something not his own woke him up. Skittering under skin, itchy and impatient. Details came slowly. The sky still dark above the city lights, the red glow of the alarm clock on his bedside table reading 5:12AM. And then the distant beep-beep-click of his front door unlocking.

Scott pulled himself off the mattress, eyes still foggy with restless sleep and the sticky remnants of tears. He pulled on clothes, feelings a blurred mess he couldn’t conceal if he wanted to. A tiny part of him considered just falling back into bed, tired and spent and not ready for what was coming next. Wanted to hide away until the sun swallowed the Earth.

The answering wave of boiling anger let him know that simply was not an option. He pressed palms to his eyelids, drew in a steadying breath, set his shoulders. Then turned the bedroom door handle. Ilya was on him like a shot. For a split second, Scott thought he was going to get tackled, taken down to the floor with the same ruthless force his soulmate used to shove opponents into the boards.

But as soon as Ilya had Scott in his arms, he just pulled him in, a wretched mirror of that long-ago night in Lisbon. “You are fucking idiot,” Ilya cried, words muffled by Scott’s t-shirt. Something unwound in Scott’s chest, relaxing into to the fact that his soulmate was here and in his arms as their hearts slowed to beat as one.

Then he remembered what he’d done. The fear. The disappointment. He tried to pull back, disentangle, but Ilya just grabbed on tighter.

“No,” he insisted, raising his head to capture Scott’s gaze, one hand cradling Scott’s nape to keep him there. “No more shame. Not with me.” A ring of determination in his chest, then desperation threading through their bond as Ilya’s soul begged Scott to understand. “Please stop hiding from me.”

And Scott did understand. Ice melted, distances erased, only the glow of their bond in front and the edge of the pit under his heels.

“You are always right there for me. But you will not let me be there for you. You shut me out and tell me not to worry and then you’re so far away you can’t feel how it kills me.”

“Ilya,” Scott whispered. Staring it the face, he can’t find the will to deny it. Not when he can feel the wound like its his own. But still. “That’s not your job, kid.”

“No.” Ilya growls, grip tightening. “This is not one way street. We are supposed to share. The good and the bad.”

“And it kills me every time you have to deal with my bullshit,” Scott countered, pressing his conviction into the words. “You’re so vibrant, and confident, and you’ve brought such joy into my life. And you’ve been through so much. How could I repay that with… this?”

He really let himself feel it, the confusion, the self-loathing, the fear. Just for a moment, just so Ilya could finally understand what Scott was protecting him from. He began to reign it in just a second later, practiced and careful and safe. But then Ilya grabbed on and yanked back, answering with his own feelings and Scott’s heart just broke. Ilya let him have it all, the resignation to secrecy, the fear of what could happen not just to himself but to his family, the bittersweet touch of another’s lips, happiness tarnished by the knowledge that this was temporary, could only ever be temporary, because permanence came with sacrifice neither could ask the other to make.

All their love and terror roiling and clashing and bleeding in and out of each other’s chests, opening veins clogged by denial and fear and mistaken mercy. Naked and unfiltered for once in their fucking lives. And in that bare space, Scott saw his own feelings for what they really were. For there was something in his that Ilya’s didn’t have. Something so buried he’d never let himself look at it, covered it up under layers of practicalities and obligations and logistics.

That feeling, small, but so weighty it was the black hole around which everything else orbited, the thing at the center of the pit. That he was broken. That there was something wrong with him. Scott felt the edge begin to give out under his feet, tears choking his throat, knees going weak even though his body felt so far away.

And then the agony of that knowledge, of what those feelings spoke about. Not about being gay, not about loving Kip, not really. No, what Scott felt was the pain of realizing that he’d accepted himself as queer.

And then let the world make him hide anyway.

His knees really did give out, then. Ilya took him gently to the floor, cradling Scott’s tear-streaked face against his neck, whispering something in Russian Scott’s head was too preoccupied to translate, listening with his body instead as the gentle syllables and the love they contained twined around his soul, a single port in the storm, a tiny piece of solid ground.

He tried to just accept it, lean into the care like he could with Kip. But old habits are hard to break. The trauma was still a part of him, even if it now had a name. So deep inside he couldn’t be sure excising it wouldn’t mean shattering the bedrock of himself.

That bedrock, that deep, well-trained instinct, sought safety. And for most of Scott’s life, after the death of his parents, safety meant being alone. Meant meeting expectations to be strong and confident and independent. Never learning how to separate connection from obligation, vulnerability from shame.

What a terrible example he set. Desperate for love but in lust with loneliness. Choosing the pain of staying the same over the pain of changing. And that dark, black-hole feeling from the center of the pit was calling for him now, telling him to retreat, to pull away, to unmoor the anchor and give in to gravity like he had time and again before.

“This summer, when I was in Moscow, I took my niece to the Oceanarium. Is big aquarium in a shopping mall, very scientific, very boring, you’d love it. And we are looking at penguins and of course I am making jokes about Pittsburgh she only laughs at because I am saying them. And she’s watching them waddle and swim and eat and then she sees an old bird, sitting on a rock by itself, looking very sad.

“And she wants to know why, so we find a keeper and she asks why that penguin was sad. And the keeper told her that’s because the penguin’s partner, her favorite penguin, had died just yesterday. And these kinds of penguins pair up for life, like spouses or soulmates, so it is very heartbreaking for them to lose their partners.

“And of course, Zhenya is upset. Is very sad story, and she is young. But when she saw that I saw the tears in her eyes, she turned her face and wiped them away. Tries to pull me along to the seals in the next room. But I ask her, Zhenechka, are you sad about the penguin? and she tries to tell me that she isn’t. Tells me it’s babyish to be upset by penguins.

“And Scott, my heart just fucking breaks because I know where this comes from. It comes from my brother, which came from my father. And I know because I would have done the same thing at her age. Told myself to be big kid and not cry because silly birds are sad. So I tell her, if it is silly to be sad about penguins, then I must be very big baby, because I am very sad. Do you think your Uncle Ilya is a baby? And she shakes her head and I sit her down on the bench.

“And I tell her, penguins are a lot like people. They have their favorites. That penguin makes me sad because I’ve also lost a favorite person. I told her about Mama, Scott. How much I missed her. And if that penguin felt like I felt, he must be very sad indeed. And then I told her you know what makes the sadness easier to carry? It’s when someone else helps you hold it. And she looked at me and nodded and said that she would help that penguin hold its sadness. And so we sat there and she let herself be sad about the penguin and I let myself be sad about Mama and you know why I could do any of that?

“Because you’ve held my sadness, Scott. And all I want, right now, is to hold yours. No more shame, Scott. Not with me.”

What would it be like, to let go? Not into the embrace of gravity, but of gravity itself? The decision was tiny. A stutter in the breath. But it was a start. And that’s enough.

Scott leaned in, and let Ilya’s arms and his soul and their bond take the weight of him, a new center of mass, two stars settling into orbit. The choice to to care, and accept care in return.

They fell into bed soon after, let the storm settle and the tension drain from their exhausted bodies. Their bond felt different, now. Closer to those first hours, when they’d been completely entranced by the newfound feelings, exploring the edge where one soul wove into another. Learning the delicate back and forth of sharing feelings, sensing the ghosts of their own soft touches on each other’s skin. Curiosity without judgement. Acknowledgement without expectation.

They followed the soft glow into restful sleep, only rising as the low winter sun crept around the building, turning motes of dust to embers. Everything about waking felt normal and alien at the same time. Same silly banter, same playful jockeying for sink space and slap-fighting over who got to use the toothpaste first because you apparently cannot put two professional hockey captains in a small room together and not have everything devolve into a competition.

It was too late for breakfast, so they skipped straight to takeout lunch, and thank God they decided the walk was a necessary band-aid for missing a morning workout because they went downstairs just in time to save Ilya’s most cold weather-capable sports car (which was, to Scott’s constant grief, not saying much) from getting towed. Apparently the kid had been so hell-bent on getting in Scott’s face about his shitty behavior he’d just left it on the street out front.

While he smoothed things over with the tow truck drivers, (who were exceptionally accommodating after realizing they were dealing with holy shit you’re Scott Hunter) he felt the familiar ice in his gut over what he’d put Ilya through. A three-hour drive through the middle of the night, so worried nothing else mattered but getting to Scott.

He didn’t even notice that he’d pulled away. Not until the interwoven threads of Ilya’s soul through his gripped tight, a plea and a threat at the same time. Scott almost fumbled the Sharpie he was using to sign an autograph, embarrassment at failing on his promise so quickly tightening his fingers. But he took a deep breath, relaxed his hands and his jaw and his soul, and leaned back in.

As the truck drove off, Ilya put a hand on his shoulder. “It will be hard. You will fuck it up. But I will keep reminding you.”

And Scott let Ilya have everything he was feeling right then. Most of all how proud he was. Ilya just knocked his head against Scott’s and started walking in the direction of their favorite Indian restaurant, eyes fully forward, trusting Scott wasn’t far behind.

He thought back to that night in Lisbon. The all-consuming need he’d felt to protect this kid whose eyes carried the same soul-deep loneliness of his own youth. To prevent symmetry from becoming parallel, to cut across the silence that kept them locked inside their own hearts, to make sure Ilya knew into the depths of his bones that yes the world is cruel but its people can be kind. Scott chose kindness that night. The closest thing to God he still believed in.

And it had worked. Ilya was many things. Reckless, argumentative, arrogant. Closed off to all but his chosen few. But kind. So much kinder than anybody knew. And if Ilya could extend Scott’s own kindness back to him… maybe Scott could do the same for himself.

“Are you ready for this?”

“You have to get going soon.”

“No, no,” Ilya grabbed his wrist, pulling them to a stop on the tree-lined street nestled in the sprawl of southwest Brooklyn. “That is bad answer. Tell truth.”

Scott met his soulmate’s gaze, taking a slow breath and checking in with his body, like it was 2nd Intermission and he needed to be objective about any pains the adrenaline had dulled. He was nervous, obviously. Scared shitless might be a better descriptor, but willing to push through it anyway. But he was ready.

Ilya searched his face, finding his answer in the fever-bright of Scott’s eyes. “Okay.” Then a few moments later, “Do you want me to be there or take lap?”

This was going to be messy. And embarrassing. And really, really vulnerable. “If you’re not there I might pass out.”

Ilya grinned, then gently knocked his shoulder against Scott’s. It was kinda weird, feeling Ilya’s sun-warm pride behind his own sternum. He could get used to that.

They’d arrived. And thank God Kip had sent his entire week’s schedule to him before last night so Scott knew he wasn’t working. And that Elena was more than happy to pass along Kip’s address after he spent five minutes profusely apologizing and confirming she was absolutely 100% correct and that he was a big fucking idiot.

Would Kip even want to talk to him? Ilya’s hand found the crook of his elbow, giving it a squeeze. Grounding Scott against the dread. His soulmate was right. He could do this. Better to lay it all on the table and accept whatever came than carry the regret of not knowing.

Scott knocked on the door. A short woman answered, silver-streaked black hair and familiar dark eyes. And Scott was gay as a maypole but it was obvious this is where Kip’s good looks came from. She wore a polite smile as she answered, before recognition dawned as she beheld the two star athletes that just showed up on her porch.

“Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed.

Other voices raised muffled questions from inside the house.

“It’s — it’s Scott Hunter! And Ilya Rozanov.”

Loud footsteps, and then Kip was in front of him again and Scott couldn’t help but smile.

“Scott?”

“Hi,” the word came out shy, his body becoming acutely aware that, for the first time, Kip had the home ice advantage here. If he wanted to, he could shut that door and never speak to Scott again.

Kip’s eyes darted around the empty sidewalk. “You’d better come in.”

Ilya, whose presence Scott had temporarily forgotten about, said, “Thank you.” Gentle fingertips on his back reminded Scott that he’d actually need to move his legs to follow Kip’s request.

The door closed behind them. Kip’s home was lovely. Full of warm lighting and dark wood accents. Cozy and well-loved, a little worn at the seams but softer for it.

“Scott?” Kip asked again.

And it occurred to Scott he’d said literally one word this entire time. “Sorry for just dropping in like this. We got your address from Elena. I thought,” Scott trailed off for a second. “I really need to talk to you, if that’s okay.”

If Kip wanted to say anything, it was interrupted by the arrival of George Grady. He gently brushed hand over his bewildered wife’s shoulder, then extended a hand. “Nice to meet you properly, Scott,” he said, seemingly unsurprised. Scott wasn’t sure he was ready to think about that that meant. But when George noticed Ilya, there was the surprise. “Mr. Rozanov,” he said as they shook hands.

“Ilya, please.”

George nodded. “Margaret, why don’t we go clean up from lunch give these boys some space?”

Ilya’s eyes found Scott’s, a gentle questioning drifting through the bond. Scott inclined his head deeper into the house and sent back a thread of resolve. He should have this particular conversation on his own.

Ilya said, “I will join you, if that’s okay. I am mostly, how you say? Moral support.”

“By all means,” Margaret said.

Ilya gave Scott one last touch before following Kip’s parents deeper into the house. As they drifted away, Scott heard George say, “I wouldn’t think you and Scott are so close, given how you act on the ice.”

“Oh, Scott and I go way back. But is embarrassing for him, if I treat him like grandpa at work. Makes his face squish up like angry cat, not good look for cameras.”

Scott sent a wave of gratitude. Ilya would work his charm and keep them distracted, give Scott some much needed privacy.

But now his attention was fully turned on Kip. Scott could read the confusion in his brow, the wonder at Scott’s change in behavior in the set of his lips. “First off, I am so fucking sorry,” Scott began.

“Scott, I get it,” Kip replied, echoing the previous night.

“Even if you do, you deserve an apology. I’ve been operating from a place of fear, and selfishness, and I’m no longer scared to admit this, shame. Not about loving you, I promise you that,” he added as Kip’s expression turned sad. “Never about you.

“But I’ve been a complete wreck, lately. Being with you made me want things I’d convinced myself I wasn’t allowed to have. So I tried to make compromises, have my cake and eat it too and in the process I asked you to do things, terrible things, that I shouldn’t have. And for that, I am so sorry.

“I just… I’ve gotten so used to hiding I didn’t notice how it affected me. Affected my closest relationships. But I don’t want that to be the case anymore.”

“What are you saying, Scott?” Kip asked. “Because I have a hard time believing it’s taken less than 24 hours for you to be ready to come out.”

The concern was valid. But he’d been thinking about it. Talking to Ilya, figuring out his feelings. “No, I’m not ready to come out,” he began.

Kip replied, “Then I can’t do this, anymore, Scott. I love you and I want to be with you, but the way we’ve been going is unsustainable. And it’s unfair to me to keep trying if nothing can change.”

Scott took Kip’s hands in his, an echo of that afternoon at the gallery. “I’m not ready to come out publicly,” he clarified. “But… I’m ready for a few people to know. Your parents. Your friends. My coach and some of my close teammates. Svetlana, even though I’m pretty sure she figured me out a long time ago. I know it’s not perfect, but… it’s a start, right?”

Kip was quiet for a few moments before he said, “I almost don’t believe you, but I can’t fathom why you’d show up here with Ilya if you weren’t being honest.”

Scott chuckled. “Yeah, I got a pretty hard kick in the pants, last night. You should probably send him a fruit basket, or something. Or a penguin plushie.”

“Okay I get the fruit thing as a gay joke, but penguins?”

“Long story, I’ll tell it to you soon. If you’ll have me.”

Kip looked at him, dark eyes drilling in, and for a moment Scott believed he could see into the depths of his soul.

“Promise me you’re being serious.”

“I promise,” Scott breathed. Then, a split second later, with Scott’s permission:

“He’s serious!”

Because Scott and Ilya were a package deal. If he was going to be in Kip’s life, so was Ilya. And if being in Kip’s life meant being honest, he was going to be honest. No more hiding, not from himself, and not from their people.

“Can I kiss you?” Kip asked.

“Oh my fucking God, please do.”

It would be messy. Embarrassing. Really, really vulnerable. But with Kip’s mouth under his and Ilya’s pride wrapping around his soul, none of that mattered. Scott Hunter was done being afraid. It was time to embrace love instead.

Does it bother you?

What, still keeping us as secret?

Seems kinda hypocritical, given what we just went through.

Yes, but… is different. You telling Huff and Bennett and Vaughan about Kip doesn’t change how they play. But about me… they may not mean to, but it will affect them. They’ll be scared of making needed plays because they will worry about hurting you. They will question if you let me win, which is obvious bullshit but they don’t know me like that. We both need hockey, Scott. I don’t want to risk that.

You sound like you’ve thought a lot about this.

Not really, but something like it.

Wow, you feel really complicated right now.

Tell me about it.

Do you want to talk about it?

Yes, but… I can’t. Not without hurting someone else.

I’m here when you’re ready,

I know.

Chapter End Notes

When I said “the perils of the closet” I fucking meant it. And yes, this is my patch over the 2014-2017 plot hole the show sticks in Scott and Kip’s relationship.

Chapter 4: Interlude: Christmas 2014

Chapter Notes

A little interlude between the two major arcs of this fic. I intended for this to be... significantly shorter but I found some important things to say here.

December 23rd, 2014 — Rochester, New York (1:15PM)

The drive to Rochester is a familiar one. Scott makes it four times a year; once in each season. In March, the lingering snow gives way to browns and fresh greens: trees along the highway just starting to regain their crowns, the ground still a carpet of deadfall but lacking the thick underbrush that would crowd the forest floor by summer. In July, when he came up on his own, the higher elevation offered a welcome relief from the sweltering humidity of Manhattan, nights still chilly even as the days were hot. September was his favorite time to visit. Ilya back stateside for the preseason ramp up, the heavy greens just starting to give way to the reds and yellows of New England autumn.

But now was the last visit of the year, when the snow piled up and the world went to sleep under its heavy blanket. The sky was blessedly clear, no risk of getting stuck in town for Christmas. Which was good, because if the three of them missed Scott and Ilya’s first Grady Family Christmas Celebration, they might just break Margaret’s heart. Or earn her ire for time and all eternity. Probably both.

Keeping his attention mostly on the road, Scott snuck a glance to check on Kip in the passenger seat. He was turned away from Scott, staring off into the matchstick jumble of bare trees that lined either side of the small state highway. This was his first time making the trip. The only time his NYU breaks lined up with Scott and Ilya’s ridiculous game schedule.

Then, Scott flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror. He already knew Ilya was sleeping, but the sight of his soulmate sprawled out over the entire back bench made him smile. This was the inevitable outcome, and no doubt preplanned, but Ilya wouldn’t be Ilya if he didn’t put on a whole production about how he totally didn’t deserve to be booted to the back but since he is nice and Kip is trying so very hard to be not-boring art history guy and make the kids care about dead people things he can sit up front with his grandpa boyfriend.

As they passed into town proper, a thread of nerves wormed up from Scott’s gut. Which was kinda ridiculous, but he’s trying to be less judgemental of his own emotions. After all, Kip was finally clearing that relationship milestone Scott obnoxiously vaulted over last year when he showed up at Kip’s house. Meeting the parents. Big deal. Apparently, even when said parents had been dead for more of Scott’s life than they’d been alive in.

It would’ve been nice to have Ilya at 24, when he’d realized that was now a fact of the world he lived in. But Scott was grateful he’d be there for Ilya’s own 24th birthday. And that Ilya would be there on Scott’s 36th. One year older than they ever got to be. Only 7 years from now.

Tomorrow, they’ll drive back down to the city. Spend Christmas Eve at Scott’s apartment watching Charlie Brown and stealing popcorn out of each other’s bowls. If it went anything like Thanksgiving, it would devolve into a minor wrestling match that resulted in no victors. Or all victors, if the resulting cuddle puddle was considered a win. Scott certainly did. Then Christmas Day with the Grady’s.

But today, Scott pulled into the driveway of their AirBnB, woke Ilya with the feeling of cold winter air against his face, and dropped their bags inside. It was a nice place; someone’s older home they’d converted to a rental. A little bungalow in a historic neighborhood. He had it booked for these trips several years out, under his agent’s name. Rochester wasn’t a small town by any means, but trying to visit his parents while some particularly tone-deaf fans wanted a piece of their hometown hero was… unpleasant.

That sour thought spilled into the bond alongside the rest of Scott’s general anxiety. Something dense and weighty sat in his gut; and he was too close to the feelings to make heads or tails of what they were trying to tell him. Scott leaned into the bond, and felt an answering check right before Ilya, still a little sleepy, flopped his bulk onto Scott’s back and laced his arms around his middle.

“You have been staring at wall for half a minute,” Ilya muttered.

Scott blinked a few times, finally seeing the butter-yellow paint in front of him. “Nervous,” Scott admitted, tapping his fingers against the backs of Ilya’s hands. In that dimensionless third space between their souls, Ilya drew the heavy thing out of Scott’s body and let it sit in the gap. It resisted at first, pressing inward in response to old gravity. Scott took a slow breath. Then, like the outer shells of old stars unfurling into nebulae, the weight relaxed. And Scott could see the individual spectra that composed his nerves.

“I don’t want it to feel weird for him.”

Ilya hummed. “That is conversation you have with boyfriend. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think guy who goes to school to become expert in dead people things will be freaked out by dead people.”

Scott pressed a kiss to Ilya’s temple, settled somewhat by the reassurance. Then he gently escaped his soulmate’s grip and went to find Kip, who’d busied himself with throwing open the curtains and letting the wan winter sunshine into the living room. An unnecessary task; and lower priority than most other things he could be doing. That meant Kip was anxious.

Scott’s immediate instinct was to apologize. But Kip had been on his ass lately about not reflexively saying sorry for things you don’t control so he swallowed it. What came out instead was, “This is gonna be morbid.”

Kip wrestled the drapery behind its hook and fixed Scott with a tight smile. “Yeah, I kinda got that.”

“Is that something that worries you?” Scott asked.

Kip was quiet for a long moment, dark eyes turning rich brown in the afternoon glow. Then he gave up his-self appointed busywork and walked over to Scott. “Yes and no?” he began.

Scott stayed quiet, letting his boyfriend collect his thoughts. For Kip, words were important. He’d rather take his time to get them right than rush it for the sake of filling silence.

“I think this is one of those, ‘Kip feels like he’s inserting himself into a Scott and Ilya thing’ things.” he finally answered.

Scott responded by pulling Kip in for a hug. “I hear you. But it’s not inserting yourself if we invite you. You know that right?” he asked.

“I do,” Kip huffed, drawing out the last vowel as he lolled his head back. “But the reminder is nice.”

Scott cradled a hand against Kip’s neck, pulling his face back down to his. “I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered. “Plus, this graveyard is old as shit so you can totally geek out over the mausoleum architecture on the way out.”

Kip snickered, and kissed him. “What happened to morbid?”

“Best solution is to laugh at it a little.” They lingered there for a long moment, content to just watch each other smile.

Scott caught a brief wash of sheepish urgency right before Ilya said, “Not to be asshole, but sun sets at like 4:30 here and…” he trailed off, letting the two of them insert their preferred Ilya-style chirp about too many bathroom breaks or stupid American weather into the silence.

Kip pulled away first. “You ready to go?” he asked Scott.

“With you? Anywhere.”

December 23rd, 2014 — Rochester, New York (2:45PM)

The graveyard really was beautiful. Even buried under thick snow, the groundskeepers kept the walkways and the stones clear but for a faint powder that must’ve fallen in the early morning. Mount Hope Cemetery was a sprawling, hilly lawn broken up by rows and rows of gravestones, obelisks, mausoleums, and statues. Kip had done some reading in the car; there were graves here going all the way back to the 1830s. And yes, he was absolutely going to nerd out over the Tiffany glass windows on the way out. But right now, his attention was on the pair in front of him.

Scott and Ilya did this thing, whenever they were nearby. And Kip wasn’t sure they’d ever noticed it. But especially after long absences, and especially when they were both in their feelings, something in their bearing would just snap together. They’d start moving in tandem, same set of the shoulders, same gait, one of them making a fidgety motion with his hands only for the other to do the same thing a split second later.

They were doing that right now. Hands in pockets against the chill, eyes scanning back and forth as they navigated through the rows. Slightly favoring the left leg as Ilya had tweaked his right knee last week.

It was both fascinating, and a little freaky. When he and Scott got serious, Kip spent a weekend conducting a research deep dive into soulmates. Forced himself out of his comfort zones of art and literature into the psychology and biomechanics. Plenty of fMRI studies catalogued how soulmates’ cerebral cortexes activated in response to soul bond activities: areas of sensory processing activating in response to a stimulus they aren’t being physically exposed to, language-processing structures engaging in ways unseen in baseline humans, etc.

But the real kicker had been the studies on the limbic system. Soulmates’ limbic systems registered 95% similar activity at all times. The area of the brain that processes emotions, so carefully attuned to its soulbound partners’ as to make distinguishing between the two systems functionally useless. Soulmates were, for all intents and purposes, one emotional organism in two bodies.

Scott had explained to Kip what that felt like, on multiple occasions. Used words like gravity and sunlight as metaphor. But that would never be sufficient, and Kip knew it. There would always be a part of Scott that Kip couldn’t fully understand.

Most days, that didn’t bother him. He and Scott worked very well as a couple. And every non-bonded romantic pair was the same in that regard; forced to rely on language and touch to communicate what was in their souls. But sometimes, it scared the shit out of him.

And right now, watching two people united not just by a soul bond, but by a grief Kip was incredibly thankful he’d yet to experience move in perfect sync; who passed understandings between them like atoms exchanged electrons…Kip was doing a very bad job of not feeling like a squeaky third wheel.

He was so lost in thought, he almost ran into Ilya’s back when the pair came to a halt. Kip collected himself before collision, taking a step back. Scott was staring off down the row of gravestones to their right, but Ilya wasn’t. His hands were on the straps of his backpack, thumbs running along the leather.

“This way,” Scott said, voice just above a whisper, before walking off down the row.

Ilya took a halting step to follow, but hesitated. Why, Kip couldn’t quite fathom. Scott also paused, looking back with a concerned expression.

Kip prepared himself for the wait. To let the two of them do whatever labor they needed in that space he couldn’t see. But to his shock, Ilya turned and reached a hand out to Kip. His eyes were downcast, something to the set of his mouth suggesting anxiety. Kip recognized the expression from his own face. That of wanting something, but preparing yourself for rejection in the same breath.

Did Ilya worry Kip would treat him differently, after this? That he’d see something that would change his estimation of the young man? Well that was fucking bullshit. Kip had learned a lot about Ilya Rozanov in the past year. His play style, his opinions on food and movies and art. How he moved through the world.

An unapologetic spitfire, exceptionally funny and painfully aware of it, the kind of guy who complained about fulfilling a request even as he secretly loved being needed. He liked to let loose: cheap smokes, clear alcohol, casual sex. But there were hard limits that he wouldn’t cross. No hard drugs, nobody in relationships even if they were non-monogamous. Rules born of an unhappy childhood and worse family life.

His father was a brutal man, his brother a parasite, his niece caught in the crossfire. But they were family and that meant something to Ilya. Even if Kip was of the private opinion they didn’t deserve his support. With Scott, Ilya had a different sort of family dynamic, one built on care above all else. And goddamnit, Kip was proud to consider himself a part of that.

With most other people in this moment, Ilya would’ve kept his hands to himself. Not hesitated to make that final corner. Hid any discomfort under a deadpan joke. But not right now. It filled Kip with equal parts heartbreak and pride that, at least with the two of them, Ilya let himself be a scared and ask for comfort.

Only a few seconds had passed. But that was enough for Ilya’s reach to falter. His fingers retracted back, ready to curl away.

Absolutely not.

Kip laced his fingers through Ilya’s, pocket-warm palm returning the heat December stole from his skin. Ilya was a tactile person. Always bumping or brushing or pressing into other people. Touch was a thing of comfort, of connection. So Kip squeezed his hand tight, stepped into Ilya’s space so they had to match strides to avoid tangling feet. And they walked, in tandem, not making a sound but for the crunch of boots through snow.

The graves of Sarah and Joseph Hunter formed a rare pair in the row, their headstones nestled close together within a coating of powdery snow. Maybe it was intentional, or just the angle of the drifts, but the twin slabs seemed to lean into each other, ever so slightly. The hill rose behind them, more headstones tapering off to the ridgeline. The sprawling canopy of an oak tree stretched from the end of the row, its boughs just long enough to cast spindly shadows over the pale gray marble as the sun traced its path westward.

Next to them, slightly out of step with the rest of the row; not a headstone but a small obelisk, wrought in the same grey marble. Near its point sat an Orthodox cross. On its sides, in Cyrillic and Latin, Irina Rozanova.

Scott had it placed here last year, when Russia’s political situation started turning more and more hostile towards queer people. A place Ilya could feel close to his mother, in case… well in case they ever had to invoke Ilya’s right to permanent residency. That hadn’t happened, yet. Hopefully never would.

The gravity of this moment settled into Kip’s bones. Now that he was faced with such tangible reminders, it was more obvious and painful than ever what terrible loss these two carried around. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes, stinging as they cooled in the winter air. He almost didn’t notice Ilya slip his hand away, moving Kip’s bereft fingers into Scott’s. His boyfriend gripped on tight, a soft expression in his eyes. He didn’t seem sad. Why wasn’t he sad?

“You ready?” Scott asked.

“I’m so sorry,” was the answer that fell from Kip’s mouth. The prospect of standing like this in front of his own parents’ headstones dropped like a stone into his stomach. How were Scott and Ilya even standing when the mere prospect of such a loss almost took Kip to his knees? “How do I do this?”

Scott chuckled. So light it shocked Kip out of the heaviness. “I’ll do the talking first, okay? Just follow my lead.”

Kip let Scott lead him closer.

“Hey Mom, hey Dad,” Scott began. “Merry Christmas! Hope it’s not too cold down there.” His voice was casual. Sure. Like he was talking on the phone and not into a casket. “The season’s started off really well. It’s early, I know, but I think we have a good shot at a playoff run. Even if someone,” he glanced pointedly at Ilya, “thinks otherwise.”

Ilya just shrugged. “You need to trade for better backup goalie by middle of January. Bennett is getting too old to carry like he used to.”

“And I’m of the opinion that Andersson has potential if he can get some good experience after the break. We play Colorado first, if he can hold his own against them it’ll be the confidence boost he needs to get out from Eric’s shadow. Andersson’s that Swedish kid we picked up in 2012, not sure I’ve talked about him to you guys. But I’m sure you keep an eye on my games. Never missed one when I was a kid.

“Anyway, if I keep talking about hockey we’re gonna be here all day. And I have more important things I need to say.”

Kip was, for lack of a better word, bewildered. The way Scott was speaking, like they were just catching up on a holiday visit. It struck Kip then that he didn’t have a very well-rounded perspective on death. Which was kinda ironic, considering his interest in dead people things. Both his grandmothers were still alive, one grandfather died before he was born and the other when he was five. He’d never lost someone he knew well. Didn’t know how to grieve.

“I know I’ve talked, probably way too much about Kip the last three times, so he doesn’t really need an introduction. But, um, I brought him with me today. We’re… we’re coming up on a year now, if you can believe it. January 14th, first meeting. Sometimes I think you guys had something to do with that. I mean, why else would I meet the love of my life and a certifiable genius at a random smoothie shop?”

Kip couldn’t help but blush at Scott gassing him up like that. Love of his life was the easy part, but certifiable genius might be a stretch.

“And he’s made this the best year of my life. And no, not just because of coming out or the gold medal, even though that was awesome, sorry Ilya.”

“Stop apologizing, you earned it. Besides, Svetlana thinks Boston will take the Cup, so we will be even.”

“And Svetlana’s never wrong.”

“Obviously.”

The three of them dissolved into light chuckles. And for just a moment Kip could forget that this conversation was directed to a pair of graves.

“I wish you could be here to shake his hand,” Scott continued. “I wish you could’ve been there, for real. I miss you all the time, but I want you to know that I’m not lonely anymore. Actually I’m a lot happier than I’ve been in a long time. Happier than I thought I could ever be. And I wanted you guys to meet the man that made it possible.”

As Scott had spoken, he’d taken a half step forward. But now, he glanced back at Kip, his fingers tightening, urging Kip forward. Kip closed that half step distance, but the grip didn’t loosen. Taking a deep breath, Kip stared at the pale gray slabs in front of him.

Follow my lead, Scott had said. Okay. He could do that. Just… keep it casual. Say hi. “Hello, Sarah. Hi Joe. I’d, uh, call you Mr. and Mrs. Hunter but Scott told me you guys aren’t formal like that and probably would’ve laughed at me, so…

“Scott made me sound way cooler than I am, but that’s part of why I love him.” Fuck, why was his heart beating fast? What had Scott done next? Talked about work. “I, um, in case Scott didn’t tell you I’m working on my Masters’ at NYU. Art History. I want to work in museums so grad school is basically a requirement.”

Okay, this was feeling a little less weird, now. Like he was chatting with his own parents. It made him feel brave enough to attempt a joke. “Ilya keeps calling it ‘becoming expert in dead people things.’ I guess you guys would be the best to confirm that.”

Nobody laughed, but he didn’t expect them too. “It’s going well, I think. I have this internship opportunity with the New York Historical Society. They liked my undergrad thesis; it was, uh, well I could talk about it like Scott talks about hockey and then we’d be here all night but my area of concentration is Depression-era leftist art and its sociopolitical motivations. Scott and Ilya pretend to know what I’m talking about but I’m fairly certain they’re just letting me talk at them while they replay game tape in their heads.”

To his surprise, neither Scott nor Ilya had a snappy comment for that. The feeling in the air was… well it wasn’t tense, but it was heavy. Like they were just holding the space for Kip to experiment in.

“Not that Scott is inattentive, or anything,” he hedged, imagining his own mother’s reaction to hearing such an accusation, however lighthearted. “In fact, you raised quite the romantic. I had to stop him from sending me flowers every week because of course he buys the quality stuff that lasts a long time and my parents simply don’t have the counter space for three or four arrangements at a time. But he’s definitely contributed a lot of material to my mom’s scrapbooking hobby, with all the ribbons and cards and pressed petals. So don’t worry about him in that regard. Really, my parents fucking love him.

“Oh shit are they cool with cursing?” Kip blurted, before the sting of the December evening reminded him where he was.

Scott’s hand tightened on his has he let out a snorting laugh. It sounded like a cannon shot through the quiet hillside. “They were hockey coaches, Kip.”

Were. Right. Dead people things. When had that stopped being so important? He catalogued the way Scott was looking at him, soft and sweet and achingly sincere. And then everything Kip had done up to this moment clicked into meaning. The point of these trips wasn’t to be sad. It wasn’t even to pretend like they were talking to living people.

Trips like these were for the living. To say things to yourself you needed to hear but couldn’t find permission to say.

“Your son is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Kip said, eyes still locked with Scott’s. “And I mean that. It’s only been a year, but this is it for me. I want to be there when he wins the Cup. I want to be there when he retires. I want to complain about stinky gym bags and how he puts way too much protein powder in his smoothies and how long every road trip feels. I want him there when I graduate, and to drag him to every new exhibit that comes up because he secretly loves listening to me ramble about art, and I know he’s paying attention because I see him Googling shit less than two minutes after I’m done talking. And I want to go to bed every night completely in awe of how hard I lucked out when this ridiculous, incredible man stumbled into my smoothie shop.”

Kip finally tore his gaze away from Scott’s, looking square at those slightly leaning headstones. “Thank you for bringing him to me.”

December 23rd, 2014 — Rochester, New York (3:13PM)

Ilya stood in front of his mother’s cenotaph and wished it was her grave. It was an unfair thought; Scott had put so much consideration into this monument. The St. Andrews Cross that adorned the point, her name in the scripts of both places he considered home. The same pale gray marble his own parents’ headstones were carved from.

It wasn’t that he wished this memorial was her grave in Moscow. No, he wished this memorial in Rochester was her grave. That her bones were safe next to Sarah and Joseph instead of waiting, lonely, in constant dread of his father’s coming to occupy the spot next to them; the man who hurt her beyond mortal means to repair, a man whose ailing brain spared him from the memory of what he’d done to her. How unfair, that Grigori Rozanov got to die with all his crimes forgotten while his victims had no choice but to remember over and over and over again. Every time he touched the gold that hung around his throat. Every time his shot hit the crossbar or the post. Every time Shane Hollander made him think maybe, just maybe, he deserved a moment of happiness unclouded by fear.

He stood alone in front of his mother’s memory, Scott and Kip having wordlessly backed off when they’d finished being hopelessly in love and incredibly mushy about it. Even through the intentional narrowing of their connection, some of that was still spilling into Ilya, a thread of light through the shadows around his heart; incongruous, but not unwelcome. Perspective, he guessed. Aspirations, maybe. Reminders, most certainly.

He knew that if he asked, Scott would stretch out those shadows and help him find the gaps in the clouds. Assure Ilya he wasn’t alone, that he was loveable, that he was welcome. He could reach his hand out again and Kip would take it in an instant. But Ilya didn’t want that right now. These shadows he wanted to unspool on his own, in his mother tongue, in front of his mother or as close as he could get this side of the Atlantic.

The things he couldn’t talk to Scott about.

“Hi, Mama,” he began as he always did, when he spoke to her here instead of over a morning cigarette. On those days, he didn’t let himself say the thing he always felt. Saved that for this place, where no one could understand him. “I miss you. Svetlana is back in Boston, landed a few weeks ago. She never misses a Christmas here, says she likes having two to celebrate. But her modelling career is taking off. She’s doing an ad for Dior after the new year. Says she’ll save up so she can start her own business. Doing what, exactly, she won’t tell me. But you know Svetlana, she’s always liked to be a little mysterious.

“Sascha is okay, last I heard.” Ilya didn’t really want to talk about Sascha, but Mama always worried about him, back when they were little. Never thought he was eating enough, always giving him extra blini for breakfast. “Mostly the same, enjoying Paris maybe a little too much.”

“Alexei is… well, you know how Alexei is. Much the same. Zhenya is doing well academically, I checked with her school. She’s so smart, doesn’t ask anyone for help with homework. Spends all her time in books. Trying to be grown, but I can convince her to talk to me about them, sometimes read them to her. I think she just likes laughing at the silly voices I give the characters. Makes her giggle and tell me I’m doing it wrong.

“Father is getting worse. But there’s nothing to do. Just… take things one day at a time.” Scott’s favorite reminder, when he starts spiralling about hospital visits and medication costs and just how much of that money is going straight up his brother’s nose. “Some days he doesn’t know who I am. And those are my favorite. When he looks at me like an intriguing stranger rather than a familiar disappointment.” Maybe it was wrong to speak ill of the man to his wife. But Ilya didn’t think she cared.

“And then there is the one I know you really want to hear about. Jane is… we are better, I think.”

One year. So much happened and yet it felt like nothing at all. Those terrible two weeks in Sochi, where not even Scott’s presence in his home country was enough to alleviate the suffocating pressure. A soulmate who could only be there for him from the next room and remind him over text that he’d played his best, it wasn’t his fault the coaches let an injured goalie play, Latvia had just played better. That regardless of what anyone else said, Scott was proud of him.

The figure skating arena where Hollander found him in the upper concourse, a concern in his eyes Ilya couldn’t accept from him, not in Russia, not where surveillance was everywhere and honesty could land them both in jail. He had good reason to be so cold to Hollander that day. Significantly less of one to ghost his rival for the rest of the season.

The way Shane looked at him in that event center bathroom, when Ilya’s acerbic teasing was finally perceived for what it was. A hard shell around genuine affection, the softness of it reflected back at him in warm brown eyes framed by starry freckles. The way he melted under Ilya’s hands and Ilya’s words, trusting his rival to catch him when he needed to fall.

The bone-deep wrongness he’d felt, letting Hollander walk out of that hotel room so obviously off-kilter. Scott had gotten on his ass about that, made him realize what a selfish dick he’d been, taking what he needed and convincing himself his partner didn’t want anything back. Talked him down from the resulting shame spiral, let Ilya hold onto him like a child. But Hollander had probed, smacked face-first into the same wounds he’d poked at the night Ilya confessed his soul bond, asking about family and Russia and failing to read just how much Ilya did not want to talk about them with Shane.

Shane was… Shane was the same kind of escape as hockey. A place away from his real life, where he could indulge in being a different version of himself and pretend he was that person all the time. Someone who could be tender towards another without the reassurances of a soul bond guiding every action. Who could be trusted like that on the promises of words and touch alone. A place where he wasn’t a bank account or a half-remembered trophy or a beloved piece of another’s heart.

“We met up, last month. Boston played Montreal, he actually messaged me first. Nothing about… well, anything but the usual. But I am, as Kip would say, ‘taking my cues’ from him. I feel…” Should he be talking about his fraught sex life with his mother? Maybe not. Ilya didn’t care right now.

“I am happy he is not mad at me anymore. But I am sad he will not talk about it. I am glad he still feels safe with me, but I wish this wasn’t all we’re ever going to be. I know it can’t be anything more. Father still needs me, Alexei still needs me even if he doesn’t like me. I have to be there for them. And besides, Jane doesn’t… whatever he really feels I can tell he’s not ready for something like that.”

Ilya didn’t let himself think about it often. How much he wanted Shane. How Shane seemed to want him but couldn’t let himself consider that option. But here, with her, he could feel it. Just for a little while.

“I will make my peace with it, someday. I promise. I love you, Mama. And we will win the Cup this year, I am sure of it. You will be the first person I thank. And to show you how much I mean it…” he unslung his backpack and crouched in the snow. It was mostly empty now, the majority of its contents arrayed among the tombstones. A bouquet of purple tulips for Sarah, cannoli from Ferrara Bakery for Joseph, a bottle of their favorite Scotch to share. Ilya pulled the final, patient item from the bag. A bear plushie, dressed in a black-and-yellow Raiders jersey. Irina liked to be visibly contrarian just as much as her son. Maybe someone would sneer at the enemy item so deep in Buffalo territory, but she would be smiling, he knew it.

He cleared off a smattering of snow from the base of the cenotaph, sitting the little bear snug against it. “This is Scott. Don’t tell Human Scott I named him this. Will be our secret, like Shane.”

Task accomplished, deep breaths taken, and clouds at least a little bit banished, Ilya closed the distance to Scott and Kip, and the three of them, hand in hand in hand, walked off into the evening shadows.

Chapter End Notes

Upcoming in the next arc: Scott seeing right through Ilya, Shane Hollander being Bad At Feelings, and Rose Landry being utterly clutch

Chapter 5: Part Four: Rewritten

Chapter Notes

October 19th, 2016 — Buffalo @ New Jersey (1-5)

“Fuck, Shane!”

The sound of Rozanov’s moan breathed straight on the fire in Shane’s gut, the last hit of oxygen needed to turn it from smoldering to inferno. Pleasure ripped through him, far better than it had any right to be in this position; straddling Rozanov’s lap, taut elastic from borrowed sweatpants digging into his ass, working hand a dry rasp but for Rozanov’s spit and whatever leaked out as they chased the edge.

But Shane was fucking flying. Ice and electricity racing up and down his spine, head going all soft and cottony, thoughts and worries banished to the point he didn’t care about the squeeze on his hips, the feeling of breathing on his face as Rozanov dragged him over the cliff, the little crick in his wrist that in any other circumstance would have him worried over a suboptimal top hand in tomorrow’s game.

None of that shit mattered because Shane was floating and Rozanov’s hands were against his back, keeping him safe on the ground like he always did. Taking him into that sweet, brainless space and back out again the same way he handled a puck: a perfect, precise back and forth that looked easy and like there was nothing else he’d rather be doing in that moment.

It made Shane want to say thank you. What came out instead was Rozanov’s name. Not the thing he always called him. His real name; the one that belonged to him and him only. It felt right, in that moment. A name for a name.

“Ilya.”

The man below him angled his jaw, lips questing upward. Shane answered, tongues that still tasted vaguely like ginger ale and Coke tangling and they’d had good kisses before, plenty of them, but this one was beautiful and so right, somehow totally familiar and completely different.

Different.

Why did it feel different?

They broke apart. Rozanov kissed him again, palms warm on his jawline and stomach. Then tried for a third, but that third kiss never landed because Shane was pulling away, tugging his pants back up, unsteady feet finding the floor even though a part of him desperately wanted to fall back down, let himself feel…

That part was drowned out by the ensuing cacophony that questioned, spiralled, tore his brain apart trying to account for that feeling. A cacophony that told him to run.

He spared a glance at Rozanov’s face. He looked confused, and something else. Shane kept his gaze elsewhere so he didn’t have to think about what that something else was.

“I should go,” he whispered, tongue thick in his mouth. He repeated himself, voice finally catching up to his mouth as he grabbed his discarded t-shirt. Then one more time as he put his back to Rozanov, pretending with all his might that it was for his rival’s benefit and not his own convincing.

“I shouldn’t… stay,” he said, peripherally aware of Rozanov’s hand thrown up in disbelief. “I can’t. Team meeting in the morning I forgot, so…”

“Okay,” Rozanov said. “You forgot team meeting?” Not calling out the obvious lie, just letting Shane know he knew.

Shane’s hands fisted in the shirt, too occupied with the spare comfort of soft fabric to put it on. “Thank you for the tuna melt,” he said, overwhelmed brain falling back on old scripts. But then he risked a second glance at Rozanov’s face and realized that was the wrong thing to say.

“I’m sorry,” he answered. Reflexive. Canadian. Shane. “This – I can’t.”

“Hollander,” Rozanov said. When had he started being Rozanov in Shane’s head again? When had he stopped? Why did Shane suddenly hate the sound of his last name?

“I can’t– I can’t do this.”

“Hollander.”

“I’m sorry.”

Shane ran. Put on the shirt, shoved his feet inside shoes, threw the door open. Regretted not putting on socks as he walked three blocks in borrowed clothes that smelled like Rozanov’s detergent to meet the car he ordered, because heaven forbid he take the chance that this particular driver knew Rozanov’s address and started putting dots together.

Safe in the car and safely away, Shane’s brain sought comfort in the familiar. Something went wrong. The careful calculus of his sex life upset by a variable unaccounted for. He needed to figure out what and why. So, like endless afternoons spent in the Metros’ video room, Shane started reviewing the game tape.

It had started so normal. Order a car to the shopping street three blocks from Rozanov’s house, act like he was thinking about popping into a cafe or bookstore or whatever for a few minutes before “wandering off” into the neighborhood beyond. Check the sidewalk before walking up Rozanov’s driveway, letting his shoulders relax once he was on the other side of the hedges. Ring the doorbell, go inside, let Rozanov have his way pressing him up against the wall or the kitchen counter and start to take him apart before they fell into bed and finished the job.

And every other time, Shane had taken a shower, gathered his things, and left.

But not this time. This time, Rozanov asked him to stay.

It felt like such a tiny decision at the time, and even still Rozanov had to convince him. But Shane said yes. Sat on a barstool, let Rozanov hand him a ginger ale, make him a tuna melt, walk him over to the couch to watch Detroit destroy Buffalo; teased Rozanov about his Russian skills because Shane was still weirdly fascinated by how little he talked about his life back in Moscow, ate a sandwich only nominally permitted by his diet, let himself melt into Rozanov’s chest while the clock ran down, the both of them waiting for the game to be over, an artificial countdown they silently agreed to because anticipation always made it feel better when they gave in to the arousal singing in their blood.

He’d let himself get comfortable. Too comfortable. He’d forgotten what the two of them were, and now he felt…

Well, his chest felt a little tight and his breathing was unsteady like he’d been drilling bag skates too long. His hands couldn’t decide what to do, alternating between rubbing against his thighs and pulling on his thumbs until they popped.

And he could feel the leather of his shoes directly against his toes and the smell of Ilya’s house on his clothes and a slight tackiness that reminded him he hadn’t yet washed his hands after holding two dicks in his palm and Shane was going to scream, his body yelling and yelling and yelling at him in a language he’d never been able to understand.

But he wouldn’t scream. He was Shane fucking Hollander. He couldn’t afford to scream. Not here, in the back of a stranger’s car. Not in the hotel room he shared with Hayden. Not in the visitor’s locker room at TD Garden. Not on the plane home. And by the time he gets back to his apartment in Montreal, he won’t feel the need to scream anymore.

He wondered what Rozanov was doing right now. Was he screaming? Probably not. Rozanov was so much better equipped for this. More than once Shane caught him smiling the sort of smile Shane never got directed at him while staring at his phone or off into space with that faraway look in his eye. Rozanov had people. A buddy in New York Shane only knew as “Kristi.” A childhood friend he sometimes fucked, apparently. A soulmate; someone nicknamed “Francine” in his contacts that Shane definitely didn’t suspect might be a certain hockey captain whose middle name was Francis.

A soulmate who no doubt was feeling whatever Rozanov was feeling right now. Who could look at the problem from the outside and put neat little labels on everything, make it all make sense and tie a bow on it before putting it away.

Shane would cut off a toe for something like that right now. Maybe the right pinky, which was squished up against a seam right now and driving him fucking crazy. Over the years he’d learned how to label a few emotions. The big ones. Elation. Disappointment. Frustration.

Jealousy.

And yeah, Shane was mature enough to admit he was jealous of Rozanov for having a soulmate. What he didn’t expect was the hard check of gratitude that sent his jealousy into the boards. Shane wasn’t completely oblivious about the guy he’d been fucking for most of a decade. Sure, it had taken getting unceremoniously dismissed from that Vegas hotel room to teach him that 1.) asking about Moscow was a bad idea, and 2.) what to look for to glean the answers he wanted in re: Rozanov’s contexts. But still.

He’d figured out Rozanov’s family situation was probably quite shitty. Dozens of declined calls from Cyrillic-labeled contacts, and the ones he took always sounded so strained and angry. How he never wanted to talk about them. Shane couldn’t imagine what that was like. He was lucky to have parents like his.

So, the gratitude made sense, in that way. Shane’s fingers finally found a measure of stillness. Rozanov might not have a ton of people, but the people he had mattered, and would be there for him. It made Shane feel just a little bit less shitty for freaking out and running.

The car stopped. He was back at the hotel. No more time for this, he had a game tomorrow.

Shane didn’t have time for his feelings, but that didn’t stop his brain from insisting on them anyway. And now his feelings about Rozanov were doing the very thing he swore they would never do.

Shane played like shit.

Okay, that was a massive overstatement. Shane played well, objectively. Led his team to victory 1-0 over Boston and racked up an assist from a pass across the crease to Hayden. Won faceoffs, made stellar passes through traffic, screened the net, and outskated just about every Raider on the ice.

He played excellent hockey. But he didn’t play back-to-back MLH champion hockey. Best player in the league hockey. Shane Hollander hockey.

He needed to figure this shit out right fucking now, he realized, still-sore ass parked in his rack in the visitor’s locker room. The first thing he needed to acknowledge was… okay, he was probably bisexual. That’s fine. He wished the thought hadn’t occurred to him sitting in a room full of his sweaty, half-dressed, aggressively heterosexual teammates, but nobody was looking at him weird and that was a good sign, right? He could be into men and women. He could still find the right girl to settle down with. It was fine. Shane could be bisexual and the world wouldn’t fall apart.

The second thing was putting an end to… whatever he and Rozanov were. Shane pulled up “Lily’s” contact information. This was the best possible thing. Delete the contact. Block the number. Put Rozanov and all the messy, game(life?)-affecting feelings Shane had about him in the past. Mentally thank him for the space he’d been given to explore his sexuality and move on. Just…press the button, Shane.

His finger wouldn’t move. Alright, fine. The Metros’ sports psychologist was always on his case about listening to his body. Sure she meant it in the “stop ignoring your injuries, you hockey-obsessed freak” way, but the lesson was transferable. Like skating on a sprained ankle, couldn’t do this right now.

He’d get better. Get around to it eventually.

Definitely.

December 2nd, 2016 — Arizona @ Montreal (2-1)

Shane liked Rose. Really. Being with her was easier than any other girl he’d tried to date. She let him talk about hockey while also carving space to talk about her own interests in pre-Code cinema, surfing, and science fiction novels. She was pretty, as committed to her career as Shane, witty as all hell, and had a fun circle of friends that welcomed Shane with open arms. Overall, they were the picture of the perfect celebrity relationship.

Almost. It was a minor blip, really. And something they could work on. The first time he could chalk up to nerves. She was Rose freaking Landry, after all. Of course he’d be starstruck and nervous and maybe a little insecure over his relative lack of experience with her… parts. The second time was definitely Rozanov’s fault. Staring at him from across that brain-meltingly loud club, practically undressing Shane with his eyes while his mouth and hands worked familiar magic on some busty blonde’s body. Screaming without words how little it all mattered. How easy it was to move on.

It shouldn’t have affected Shane. He’d moved on, too. And first! With Rose freaking Landry! Who wore that beautiful silver dress that slipped off her figure in a way he could aesthetically appreciate, but he was preoccupied by the memory of that other silver dress; the one Rozanov’s hands roamed over so practiced and perfect. So easy to imagine on Shane’s own skin.

Shane always had an overactive imagination. And Rozanov had an annoying way of stimulating that imagination. And, to Shane’s credit, he was very good at remembering old information and applying it to his current situations. That’s what made him such a good hockey player. So if he couldn’t help but think about Rozanov, so fresh on his brain and so deep in his memory, while performing for Rose, then that was the simple reason.

And it wasn’t a big deal. They were dating. They liked each other. He was getting out of the car to see her right now.

The wine bar was a place she picked; unknown to Shane despite its proximity to a cavalcade of other fancy locations various teammates or brand executives dragged Shane out to on a semi-regular basis. It was nice, if generic. Soft lighting, white tablecloths, a certain degree of professional discretion.

Rose looked lovely, as always. Silky black tank top, wide white pants. Her stylishness prompted him to put a little more thought into his own appearance. Nothing too crazy, but a nice brown leather jacket over his usual white t-shirt when he would’ve automatically reached for a hoodie. Pristine cream dress sneakers that actually fit the cut of his pants instead of whatever the Reebok promotion du jour was. She was good for him, that way. Made him look at himself more closely, prompting decisions instead of just going with the flow.

They chit-chatted for a minute until the server came to take their drink order; his exit dropping them down into that semi-awkward quiet while they waited on someone to restart the conversation.

Rose took the onus, giving his outfit a little updown and saying, “You’re so cute.”

Shane smiled at the praise.

“Have I told you how cute you are?” Yes, and frequently. He secretly loved it. She secretly knew that.

But there was a rhythm to this kind of thing, he’d learned. “No, I mean, maybe.”

“Well, you are,” she answered, buying into the game. But then she went off script. “Miles is extremely jealous.”

Why was Rose bringing up Miles right now? “Of me?” Shane asked.

“No, of me.”

Why would— “Oh. Oh,” Shane said, nodding perhaps a bit too big. Jealous of Rose because he thought Shane was hot.

“Did you not notice that Miles was gay?” Rose pressed.

Shane couldn’t quite figure out why Rose was insisting on this topic so hard. But, he answered honestly, “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.”

In fact, he’d tried really hard not to. Think about Miles’ flirty looks, the way his hands always found Shane’s skin and lingered a moment too long. The press of lips on his neck while his own tangled with Rose. The embarrassing rush of blood downstairs.

And sure, Shane was bi. And Miles was handsome. But he was with Rose, and didn’t want to give her the impression he was more into her best friend than her. That would be shitty, and untrue, but he’d learned to avoid not only the fact of impropriety but the appearance of it. Mostly.

“Well, he is,” Rose said. “And he’s low key in love with you.”

Alright, Shane was now completely confused. What was Rose’s point here? Fuck, had she clocked him? Was she going to suggest a threesome?

He didn’t say anything for a second, which prompted Rose, “Does it surprise you Miles is gay?”

Fuck, he really wanted to stop talking about Miles. “No, I mean, of course not, no.”

“Well, a lot of actors are. They’re just not all out.”

Okay. Better. Not directly about Miles.

“Are there any gay hockey players? I mean yes, obviously there are. But are there any openly gay players?”

Worse. Worse. So much worse. Could they please go back to talking about Miles? Weirdly, Shane’s mind conjured a memory of Rozanov, staring down from the concourse at that Olympic arena. Shane had been such a dumbass, walking up on him like that and trying to prompt any sort of emotional vulnerability. Russia wasn’t safe for people like them, and Shane had been too naive to realize how being friendly with another country’s player invited scrutiny Rozanov couldn’t afford.

Being out for Shane wasn’t an option because of his job. Being out for Ilya wasn’t an option because of everything else. A hot rush of something steely accompanied his answer. “Yeah, no. I mean, yeah there are probably gay players or whatever. But none that have said it publicly.” And you’re not getting me to tell you who.

Rose looked slightly taken aback, whatever she meant to say faltering on its way out of her mouth. Shit, had Shane been too harsh?

He asked, voice softer, “What?”

Rose sighed, eyes downcast and shoulders pulling towards her ears. “Sorry, I don’t think I’m going about this the right way.”

“Going about what?” Shane asked.

She looked at him for a moment, mouth twisting like it did when she was nervous. Why was she nervous? Had Shane made her nervous? She reached for his hand. He took it.

“I really like you, Shane,” she said.

“I like you, too,” he answered, honest. But her mouth twisted again and Shane suspected he’d fumbled the tone on that particular sentence.

“But I have a feeling that… maybe I’m not doing it for you?”
Okay. Definitely about his sexuality. Fuck. “Yes, you are,” he insisted. It was just a blip. They would get better.

“I know you like talking to me.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like kissing me?”

“Sure.” Oh, that was the wrong thing to say. Rose just stared at him, taken aback.

Shane couldn’t keep eye contact. His free hand covered his eyes, buying himself just a moment before he backpedaled, “No, no, of course I do. Sorry.” His eyes bored into the tablecloth. He couldn’t bear to lift them any higher.

“Oh, hey, don’t apologize,” Rose said. “I just… I have a feeling, and maybe I’m completely off-base here, but, I don’t know, I feel like maybe you’d rather be kissing… Miles?”

The way she was looking at him. No judgement, just curiosity. No expectation, just acknowledgement of something not even Shane himself had ever dared to put a name to. It was so honest, so caring, so gentle Shane felt something in his chest crack open. Like an old, dusty padlock finally finding the right key.

But Shane was still so scared of what he might find on the other side of that lock.

Rose’s voice brought him back to the present. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s really okay.”

“It’s not.” How could she be so nice about this? She thought Shane had the hots for her best friend over her! “I do like you,” he promised. “I like talking to you. I like being around you. I like all of it.”

She just fixed him with another look. The one she used when she wanted him to actually think about a decision. And she was right. He wasn’t being honest.

“I know that sex stuff is a problem, but—”

Rose cut him off, thumb rubbing over his clenched fist, a gentle reminder to relax and unstick his fingernails from his palm. “It’s not a problem. A problem is something you can fix. We’re more like a square peg in a round hole.” As soon as she said it, her face scrunched up in regret and a little bit of disgust. “Ew. No. Sorry, forget I said that. We’re just… not meant to fit. And it’s really fine. I just don’t think that we can keep trying.”

But Shane wanted them to fit. He liked Rose, genuinely. Clicked with her faster than just about anyone else in his life. They were good for each other. She encouraged him to get out of his own head and just listen, he encouraged her to let out all the things she’d trained herself to keep back. He didn’t want to lose that. But he didn’t want to have her if she didn’t want to be there.

“I get it. I just…” I don’t want to lose you. “I think…” I’m scared to open that door. “I think…” I regret hurting people over it.

“Hey, you don’t owe me any explanation.” Rose said.

“I feel like I do,” Shane insisted. Mildly flabbergasted that, for once in his life, he kinda wanted to talk about it. Rose was safe. He could tell her.

“You really don’t.”

Shane went to speak, to tell her about Rozanov in vague terms, but his brain was running faster than his thoughts and his heart was beating so fast and his eyes were watering and his throat was locking up and talking was just too hard all of a sudden. What came out was just a choke of air.

This had happened before. Words just…failing. But not for a very long time. He gave Rose an apologetic look, putting a hand on his throat and swallowing hard, like whatever blocking him was physical and not his own brain betraying him.

She took pity on him. “Can I ask if you’ve ever been with a guy?”

Yes or no question. He could do that. Brain full of memories — of that photoshoot in the rink, the showers, hotel room 1410 — Shane nodded.

Rose returned his nod. “Have you ever told anyone that before?”

No. But he was so glad she was the first.

“Was it different, with a guy?”

A hundred kisses, some rough and some teasing and some tender and some bittersweet. All of them special and consuming and right. Nobody else felt like him. Shane suspected nobody else ever would. Under Rose’s gentle direction, Shane let himself turn that key.

“Was it better?”

Shane opened the door. Let himself honestly consider her question. What that answer meant for them. What that meant about him. The bone-deep relief that washed through him, when he finally let the pieces click together, stopped trying to force a strategy that was keeping him trapped in his own zone, let his body and his heart take over and just…

Nothing had ever felt freer than blades under his feet and an open lane in front of him. Shane grabbed onto that feeling of freedom, and let himself skate.

His heart slowed down. Throat unclenched. “Yeah, it was… it was better.” He’d done it. He’d finally told himself. Told someone else. The relief was so strong he couldn’t keep a smile off his face.

Shane wasn’t religious, but he thanked whatever higher power there was for parking his ass in that restaurant booth.

“Thing is… I kinda prefer being the hole rather than the peg.”

The smile that lighted her face, the stories of her dating woes and uncanny ability to attract gay men, (the first time someone tossed that word Shane’s direction with affection rather than chirp-veiled derision) her insistence that they would be friends which Shane wholeheartedly agreed with, the hug that felt like sunshine and fresh ice. All those things combined just barely made up for the sweet sadness he felt over breaking her heart.

December 14th, 2016 — Boston @ Carolina (6-3)

Rose greeted Shane at his apartment door with a big pout downturning the corners of her mouth. She did stuff like that often, with him. Exaggerated her facial expressions just a little bit, telegraphing her mood in a way she didn’t offer to other people and Shane definitely noticed but never told her because it was so sweet and genuinely helpful and Shane did not want to make her stop by drawing attention to it.

“Oh, no,” Shane said in response to her sad face. “Hugs?”

Rose just groaned, then flopped into Shane’s grip. He chuckled a little as he backed them through the doorway and shoved the front door shut. Rose didn’t let go even as she toed off her shoes.

“Sounds like you had a rough day,” Shane said.

Rose lifted her face from where it was buried in his shoulder. “The worst.”

Shane moved his hands to her waist, a little bubble of euphoria under his diaphragm from the fact that they could still be like this without the undercurrent of romantic expectation. Even when they were dating, platonic cuddles with Rose were happy and comfortable in a way Shane didn’t feel with most people.

She was solid under his palms, slender in a way that belied the strength underneath. When they worked out together, Shane could technically lift heavier, but Rose could lift her max a solid five reps longer. Shane was glad he wasn’t stupid enough to be intimidated by it like some of his teammates thought he should be. That’s why he had the cool movie star girlfriend-turned-bestie and they didn’t.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Shane offered.

Rose considered for a second, then said, “I will in a little while, right now I wanna be distracted.”

“Colorado’s playing Anaheim in a little bit,” Shane offered.

Rose just fixed him with a look.

Shane couldn’t help but pushing it, even if he couldn’t keep the giggle out of his voice when he said, “I can have it on my phone while we play Overcooked?"

“Shane.”

Shane dropped his head back, feigning defeat while they both operated under the full understanding that his next suggestion was the plan since the beginning. “I already put my phone upstairs. You set up the PS4 and I’ll heat up some dinner?”

“Sounds like a plan.

“By the way, you still have some blue on the back of your neck."

“Oh, goddammit.”

They pretended to be tiny line chefs for an hour after a basic-but-dietarily-permissible- for-both-of-them dinner, crushing level after level because they were weirdly good at this game, close but not cuddling on Shane’s couch, before Rose spoke up. While they were dating, Shane figured out that Rose had a habit of stuffing her opinions if she felt they wouldn’t be listened to, when Shane dragged her through the Metros Hall of Fame on what he later learned was the last day of a farmer’s market she’d wanted to visit. From that day forward, Shane vowed to always be someone who would listen to her.

But he’d also learned that pestering her for disclosure was equally unwelcome. The best strategy was to let her know the door was open and wait for her to walk through it.

And so she started, with no introduction, “Spiegelman wants me to play Glamoura as conflicted over defecting to Polaris’ side.”

Rose had long-since given up on trying to keep plot details a secret from Shane. “And you’re not happy about that?” he asked.

“No! I mean, I can see where he’s coming from. She’s kinda wishy-washy about her allegiances throughout the whole franchise. But, with the things that happen to her in this film? It reads to me like she’s hit her breaking point with the X-Squad, you know?”

Shane technically couldn’t, but he just nodded and let her keep going.

“The script just hammers over and over that X-Squad’s ethical stance on Variants isn’t perfect and sometimes causes tangible harm to individuals like Glamoura who don’t fit neatly into moral categories or have powers with a level of damage potential that can’t be comfortably marketed as, ‘oh don’t worry, she promises not to use them for evil.’ The point of her arc in this script is to be the visible example of that harm, and playing her as ‘defecting but ideologically conflicted about it’ breaks the character promise the rest of the story sets up."

Rose thought about her acting the same way Shane thought about hockey. Ruthlessly granular and analytical as hell. He’d learned so much about filmmaking just listening to her talk shop. And the whole time she spoke, her concentration on her tiny chef never faltered.

Shane, also maintaining his rhythm, asked, “So how do you want to play it?”

“If there’s any source of internal conflict, it’s centered on her lingering attachments to her former teammates, not because of an ideological struggle. I’d want to put that at the forefront, especially in the fight scene with her and Honeybadger. Turn it into a question of whether or not her personal ties to the team outweigh the pain their actions caused her.”

“I like your idea better,” Shane said.

“You’d say that no matter what I thought,” Rose countered.

“Sure, but I also mean it. Your idea would be more fun to watch. Better debates in your comment sections.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And, I want to push for my interpretation but it’s Speigelman, you know? I don’t want to get labeled as difficult by someone that big.”

Shane’s hands slowed down on the buttons. His tiny chef mistimed a task. “Does he make you feel unsafe?” he asked, an edge creeping into his tone.

“No, nothing like that,” Rose reassured him. “He’s really nice to work with, like 99% of the time. But his name goes really far in Hollywood, you know? It’s probably better to just keep my head down and do what I can. Who am I to tell him he doesn’t know what he’s doing?”

Shane paused the game. Rose looked over at him, brow furrowed. His face felt tight, like someone had set it in marble.

“That’s fucking crap,” he spat.

“It’s really okay, Shane,” Rose said, surprised by his outburst.

“No, don’t do that,” Shane insisted, ideas stumbling into each other as he tried to make himself clear. “Not with me. We promised each other we wouldn’t do that. Rose, I’m Shane fucking Hollander and I love it when my teammates tell me I don’t know what I’m doing.”

She blinked at him a few times. “You’re… gonna have to run that by me again.”

Shane took a deep breath to settle his head. He wanted to get the words out right. “Okay, so if a director is kinda like a team captain, right? Then they’re the ones who keep everything running and work with the coaching staff, I guess producers for you? Anyway, they keep things running and make the big strategy decisions.

<“And yeah, that’s my job and I know how to do it well. But if I came up with a game plan and a player had an issue with it? I’d want to know about it right away. Especially if holding onto those concerns could negatively affect their play. Each player understands their role on the team on a different level than I can. It’s my job to make sure everyone’s able to do their job at maximum effectiveness, which means I have to be open to input. I’d be a much worse captain and we wouldn’t win as many games if I just assumed I know best all the time.”

Shane put down the controller and took Rose’s hands, brown eyes steady on blue as he said. “If you were one of my players, I’d consider your input in a fucking heartbeat.”

Everywhere their skin touched felt icehot and tingly like someone rubbed Tiger Balm all over their hands.

“And if Spiegelman tries to give you grief for standing up for your vision, you can tell him you’ve got 200 pounds of hockey player ex-boyfriend on speed dial.”

Rose’s eyes went watery, a loose smile stretching the edges of her mouth. She broke contact for a bare moment, just long enough to lean across the couch and wind her arms around his neck. Shane answered with his own arms around her waist, that buzzing, stretching feeling getting stronger.

“Thank you,” she whispered, a single point of wetness soaking into his t-shirt.

Shane pulled her tighter. “It’s not anything you haven’t already done for me.”

right. Like the grind of new blades turning on fresh ice. Something at the core of him was straining outward, was reaching out for something just in front of him and—

There she was.

His soulmate.

Holy shit, holy shit this feels so weird. What is this?

That’s… mine. Uh, shock, happiness… contentment?

Fuck, how do you do that? I can’t… what the fuck am I even feeling? It’s…good?

Hey, hey, it’s okay. No need to be scared. Just, follow my lead. Breathe slow.

How did you do that?

Do what?

Just… made the feeling smaller? Let the rest of my brain catch up to it?

Shane, that’s just emotional processing. Letting yourself feel the feeling fully and safely so it doesn’t consume your thoughts?

THAT’S what’s supposed to be happening?

Wow, the Metros need to fire their psychologist. Yes, Shane, that’s what’s supposed to be happening.

You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Hmmm… you doubt that.

Oh. Yeah, I suppose I do.

Who is he?

I, uh, I can’t tell you everything. I’m sorry, but it could mean, like, hard-core real-life consequences for both of us, and he has a soulmate too who doesn’t know my identity and I have to return the—

Shane. It’s okay. I understand.

I can… he’s Lily in my phone.

Do you want to tell me about Lily?

So much. So fucking much.

Chapter End Notes

Thank you so much for reading as we kick off this fic’s second arc! Writing Shane as an autistic person myself is such a joy, and yes I am doing a little self-healing adding someone as awesome as Rose to his emotional support network. I really love their friendship and think they click and parallel in a manner very similar to Scott and Ilya.

How’d y’all like my lazy X-Man parody names, lol?

I know a lot of you were expecting Ilya POV for Tuna Meltdown. I actually have a very strict structural outline regarding POV for this fic, and digressing into Ilya’s perspective takes too much focus off Shane and his arc. Fear not! You may have noticed this work is now part of a series. Click on over to Unpicked and Restitched (Unraveled) for all the heartachey Hurt/Comfort goodness between our OG emotionally constipated hockey captains + Saint Kip. This companion work is going to house this Bonus Scene and any others I think are worth writing but don’t fit into the structure of the main fic. Happy reading!

Chapter 6: Chapter Five: Unscripted

Chapter Notes

Hi. This is a monster. I have no regrets.

January 28th, 2017 — All-Star Weekend

Hollander was staring at him. Again. Scott acted like he didn’t notice. Again. They’d been doing this dance for about 20 minutes, since Shane came down to the hotel pool and plopped himself on a lounge chair on the opposite side of the water. Scott was in a similar boat, enjoying the fact that Florida was warm even in January while Ilya reigned over a gaggle of kids in the shallow end: challenging them to races, intentionally losing for silly reasons, and just generally making a loveable nuisance of himself.

Scott wished he could feel it more fully than the little spills he was getting, but circumstances demanded their bond be closed down the majority of their time here. Which, while it fucking sucked, was a familiar hazard of their jobs. They were already pushing it with League corporate just being here at the same time. Their players’ agreement stipulated they couldn’t play on the same team together, as that would constitute an unfair advantage on the ice. And that was an easy thing to follow, 99% of the time. Except this particular All-Stars Weekend.

And look, Scott and Ilya knew how much the League hedged around their bond. Generally they bent over backwards to accommodate the extra rules and keep playing, but circumstances had forced just about everyone’s hand. Ilya was a staple of the All-Stars circuit; constantly put forth by the Raiders and the League at large for the chance to play up the rivalry with Hollander. So, Scott did his best to not be that guy for the Admirals, asking his coaches to put forward Vaughan or Bennett or their new defenseman Matti Jalo. Scott had done enough of these in the aughts, it was better for the younger bucks to get exposure.

Except the Admirals had been on an absolute tear this season after a string of deep Cup runs that were cut short only by the utter dominance of Boston and Montreal. And, Scott was proud to admit, he had a lot to do with that. And the fans noticed. So when the audience vote came down in his favor for an All-Stars spot, there was nothing anyone could do except stipulate Scott and Ilya be assigned to different lines, pull strings to have Murdock coach the East team, and issue a stern warning that any appearance of impropriety would be thoroughly examined.

As if. Ilya and Scott were soulmates who wanted each other to win, but they were also dedicated sportsmen. Even before the League had to contend with their bond, they’d agreed to never use it for a competitive edge. No birds-eye heads ups, no limbic manipulation, no intentional pain-taking. The bond stayed as closed as possible for the collective 492+ hours of game time each season, no exceptions. It wasn’t perfect. Injuries still slipped through, and learning to manage the overwhelm of post-game neurotransmitter dump had been a minor nightmare. But they’d stuck to their ethics for six years now and had no plans of compromising that.

Ilya had introduced a new wrinkle, this particular year though. Called him up after the roster announcements and apologized profusely before admitting Jane would also be in attendance. The longest stretches they’d ever have to pull off, multiple times in one weekend.

It was fucking torture. Scott wished Kip could’ve come with them, but his internship with the New York Historical Society had turned into a full-time position after his graduation last month and they’d tapped him for a massive exhibition project right from the jump. Every now and then Scott fielded texts full of equal parts excitement and panic to which he responded with a well-practiced ratio of reassurance and hype-manning. His boyfriend was smart and capable and now everyone was gonna get to see just what he could do. But it meant Scott had to manage on his own for the first time in a very long time now. He couldn’t say he was much of a fan.

The sound of fake-drowning pulled Scott back to the present. Ilya was floundering in four feet of water, screaming about a shark attack while the kids giggled from their finish line. When the bit was exhausted, Ilya pulled himself out of the water next to Hollander’s chair and shook off like a golden retriever.

Scott couldn’t help but chuckle at Hollander’s blasé reaction. He’d known the rivalry was bullshit for a long time. Ilya rarely saw Hollander outside of game events, so Scott had never caught much. But what the vague stuff did feel was…warm. Sharp, but without malice. Ilya loved playing Hollander, not because he had something against the guy but because it was a legitimate challenge. The two pushed each other to be better players, and it was an indictment of the league’s media agenda that any serious friendship was headed off so early by the narrative spun around them.

If there wasn’t one.

Because, look, Scott may be a dumbass sometimes, but he wasn’t an idiot. And he has absolutely respected Ilya’s insistence on privacy when it comes to information about “Jane.” However, he can’t deny that the pieces, if one would seriously attempt to assemble them, could fit. But that’s not his business until Ilya decides its his business.

Regardless of whether or not Hollander was Jane, there was something undeniably different about him. Especially in how he interacted with Ilya. Scott had been on the phone with Kip while Ilya was down at the bar yesterday, but he’d arrived in enough time to see the tail-end of a conversation between them. And close enough to be mildly bowled over by a wash of relief spilling across his pinched-off bond.

Vaughan was up in his business as soon as his feet cleared the entryway tile, as was per usual for his nanny dog of a right wing. “Captain!” he exclaimed, one arm bro-hugging its way across Scott’s shoulders and then staying there, the smell of Mexican beer heavy on his breath.

“Vaughny,” Scott answered, eyes darting past just in time to watch Hollander rise from his seat. And was Scott insane or did he run his hand over the back of Ilya’s chair on his way out? He could feel the ridiculous smile threatening to split his soulmate’s face, so strong it spilled like nothing and Scott watched as Ilya covered his mouth with his hand, not trusting his face to keep it back.

Scott smiled for him. “You having fun out here?” he asked Carter, redirecting the smile into something friendly. Polite. Explicable.

“Always a fuckin party,” Carter answered. Then, noticing Scott’s eyeline, “You wouldn’t fuckin believe it, dude. Hollzy and Rozy, drinking beers and chatting and nobody got in a shouting match! Must really be getting into the team spirit.”

Damn the league and its narrative. These two couldn’t be in the same room together without everyone expecting them to rip each others throats out. Over what? A scoring race? Trophy counts? Numbers on a spreadsheet? It was ridiculous, and harmful, and just another example of a constructed narrative pigeonholing real people into ill-fitting archetypes. Plastic strings making puppets of flesh and blood. Painting hands over mouths to conceal a simple smile.

Scott had had enough of this shit. He widened the bond just a hair, giving Ilya a heads up before saying, louder than necessary, “Ah, come on, Hollander and Rozanov are fucking grown ups. And half the beef in the league is just media spins for clicks.”

Atop his words, Scott launched a questioning, packaged alongside sense memories of flash bulbs, the rub of a stiff shirt collar along his neck, the specific overwhelm of a dozen voices overlapping in a room with too many hard edges for the noise to bounce off. Asking in that non-language of theirs something that translated to, How do you want to play this?

Ilya answered with the hand-rattling of two sticks knocking together, the pull of cheek muscles into a triumphant grin, the anticipatory thrill of skating up against your strongest opponent and knowing he was just as happy to be there as you were.

The gentle, melancholy joy of watching someone finally earn what they deserved, even when they’d beaten you to get it.

Scott Hunter may be a dumbass sometimes, but he wasn’t an idiot. Ilya didn’t talk about Hollander. To anyone else, this wouldn’t be grounds for examination. Easily explained away by the rivalry. But Scott wasn’t just anyone, and the rivalry was bullshit. So he knew there was something between the two of them that neither wanted to be made public. The nature of that something wasn’t Scott’s business. But he would be damned if he couldn’t make this world just a little bit easier for them.

“Who knows?” Scott mused. “Considering how far ahead of the pack they are, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were friends.”

“Hunter!” Ilya called from across the pool. “Do you have cash? Hollander is being stingy with his Rolex money.”

“Come get your goddamn wallet, Rozanov!” he called back, snagging the offending item off the chair beside him and waving it in the air. “Unless you wanna trust your glove hand,” he teased as he mimed tossing the wallet across the pool.

Ilya’s smirk fell, then he took off in a brisk jog around the pool calling back, “No, no, no your eyes are too bad to aim that far!” He reached Scott’s location right as he finished, barely slowing down and half-diving over Scott, twisting at the last second to end up sprawled on his back along the scant space available in the lounge chair, knees draped over Scott’s calves.

Scott wished they could’ve stayed there for longer, close enough that the spills of mirth and affection may as well have been sent, their breathless laughs puffing out of each others’ mouths. But Ilya levered his body over the side of the chair and summoned his court of children over to start passing out dollar bills like a country lord on Christmas morning and they were back to pretending again.

Scott’s gaze found Hollander’s. Despite the sunglasses obscuring half his face, there was something in the set of his mouth. He looked… jealous?

Yep. None of Scott’s business. None at all.

January 29th, 2017 — East vs. West (7-5)

The Internet believed Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov had soulmates. And in typical Internet fashion, they were right in the general sense and dead fucking wrong about the particulars. But Scott couldn’t necessarily blame them for believing Ilya and Shane were secret soulmates. They’d certainly played that way.

Scott had never seen anything quite like it. Despite their jobs and proximity, he and Ilya didn’t get much private ice time together. Bringing each other to their home rinks on an off day was a non-starter, and during breaks they were too relieved to be doing anything else to even think about practice. Just once or twice a year, in the scant gaps between Ilya’s flights to Russia and the season’s obligations. But never anything intense. Never a real game.

He imagined it would look something like today. Passes that hit tape-to-tape across ridiculous stretches, the two of them confident — no, certain — the other was in position without needing to look. Coordinated forechecks that squirted pucks out of the corners with lightning precision. A defense that looked more like wasps swarming than men on skates, ever-shifting patterns of coverage that left nothing for the Western team to work with.

Scott was just grateful to have a rinkside seat to the action. All the while thanking God that no team could afford both their contracts and still have enough cap space to field another twenty players. Some of them still wanted a chance at a Cup, thank you very much.

He was happy for them. Really. They deserved it. And tomorrow, he and Ilya would head back to New York for the rest of their bye week and probably spend at least 12 straight hours plastered against Kip recovering from these interminable stretches of minimal contact. Scott didn’t know it was possible to feel sore in one’s soul.

And wait a second, shouldn’t Ilya be in his hotel room by now? It was getting late and their flight was early. They’d finagled adjoining rooms for this, an interior doorway letting them pass back and forth undetected. The proximity assuaging the worst of the strain that crashed over both of them when they finally collapsed into bed and reopened the bond for the night. But Ilya’s end was still shut up tight.

Probably something to do with Jane, then. Scott hoped they were making up. The aftermath of that afternoon in October still lingered over Ilya like a cloud, even with Svetlana available for direct support. His feelings were still a mess; okay most of the time, but then something Scott couldn’t know the particulars of would trigger anger, jealousy, humiliation. A solar storm Scott could weather but never abate, and just hope the rad levels never reached toxic.

Over Christmas, Scott had confided in Kip that he was questioning his ability to stay out of the loop. Ilya was hurting, and something as dumb as hockey was preventing Scott from doing his real job. But it wasn’t just hockey. It was Russia, and brand deals, and contracts legal and social. But that didn’t stop the air in the closet from growing stale. The dark space they’d created for safety slowly suffocating them.

Ilya was in his room, now. Scott could feel him moving around like one recalls the movement of a missing limb. He didn’t stay alone for long. The faint sound of conversation drifted through the wall, so soft Scott wasn’t able to tell if he was actually hearing it or just listening through Ilya’s ears. He kept the bond shut tight, regardless. The other voice was male. Jane.

And Scott tried. By God, he really tried. But Ilya was so close by and whatever conversation he was having was very emotional. They spilled into Scott one after another: Disbelief. Humor. Relief. Regret. Anger. Sadness.

And a tear suddenly slipped out of his eye. It collided into him with the inevitability of orbital trajectories, velocity meeting velocity at planet-cracking speeds.

Scott knew this sadness. It had lived in his bones since the age of twelve.

He didn’t think. Couldn’t think of anything else but getting to Ilya, higher functions annihilated by the all-consuming instinct to protect, to comfort, to care for. When he looks back on this moment, he doesn’t remember getting up from the bed, or crossing the room, or his palm against the handle. All he can recall is that Ilya is sad about his mother and I’m not there. The door between them was never locked. Not in this hotel and not in their souls. He threw both of them open at the same time, ready to take charge, to make everything better. “Kid, what’s going—”

Scott Hunter was a fucking idiot.

Ilya sat on the edge of the bed. Tear-stained face emerging from the shoulder of a dark-haired figure gathered in his lap. One who had fingers buried in golden curls, lips to the shell of an ear, heavy weight pressing in to comfort.

Jane turned his face to the intrusion. Scott watched the information compute in real time.

“You’re the soulmate,” breathed Shane Hollander.

“You’re Jane.” Scott answered.

It hit them all at the same time. At least, Scott knew it hit Ilya, and was 99% certain it hit Shane. “You knew?” Scott asked his fellow captain.

“Not for certain.”

“Um. Same.”

“Guess that makes Roz bad at secrets.”

“Only with us.”

And then a pinch appeared between Hollander’s eyebrows. The motion of his exhales speeding up as the realization sank in. His secret was out. He’d been outed.

Scott looked over to his soulmate, who’d sat frozen through the whole exchange. Bond wide open, he begged Ilya for some indication of what to do, deferring to his presumed expertise on all things Shane Hollander. He watched Ilya’s brain sync to the present moment, their bond a chaos of clashing vectors, stable processions disrupted by the addition of a third body of equal mass. Ilya’s hands tightened on Shane’s back; not to protect him from Scott but as an anchor, something real to keep his brain in his body and not somewhere they couldn’t reach him.

“Shane, hey,” Ilya whispered, bringing up one hand and gripping his chin, a movement Scott’s own muscles felt as if they’d made a hundred times. Hollander let his face be turned back to Ilya, though his eyes stayed unfocused somewhere in the vicinity of Ilya’s upper lip. “You are safe,” Ilya promised.

“What the fuck,” Shane whispered, completely absent of tone. They were losing him, and fast. Ilya was starting to panic. Scott could feel it underneath his sternum. In most things, his soulmate was an asset in a crisis. The one who catalogued everything, tracked its angles and exits faster than anyone could blink, moved on well-honed instincts to escape or avert. That Ilya wasn’t in the room right now. The one they had right now was scared and desperate and contending with the full weight of every secret he’d woven around his life unraveling between his fingers. He looked to Scott again, eyes shining and searching for the right thing to do, because he couldn’t lose Shane but he didn’t know how to make it better either.

Scott did.

When he imagined this moment, he thought it would be difficult. It always had been in the past, even after multiple times and generally positive reactions. George and Margaret, Maria, Shawn, Kyle. Coach Murdock. Huff and Bennett and Breezy and Vaughan. But there was always that fear lingering underneath: that no matter what they’d been in the past, his words would push them away forever. The pain of changing.

This time, it was easy. “I’m gay, too.” The words slipped gently off his tongue. “You’re safe here, Shane. Nothing leaves this room we don’t want to.”

Hollander froze again. But it wasn’t the panicked kind, the instinctive stiffness of a deer in the headlights. It was the dark of space holding its breath before an act of inevitability. The last bit of mass accretion needed to ignite a ball of dust into a star. Muscles going lax as fear turned to surprise turned to understanding.

Shane climbed off Ilya’s lap, sitting down on his right. Scott moved slowly, telegraphing his movement before finding a spot on Ilya’s left, the bed creaking under their combined weight. His soulmate’s hand gripped his, eyes still focused on Shane but their bond alight with gratitude.

“What the fuck?” Shane said again, this time in the form of a genuine question.

“Summer after rookie season, we ran into each other at a gay club in Lisbon,” Ilya began. “A lot happened and…we became bonded.”

Shane blinked a few times. “Holy shit, did you sleep together?”

The immediate, violent, visceral disgust reaction ping-ponged along the bond and sent them both into sputtering fits. Scott maybe almost threw up in his mouth a little. The tension in the room disintegrated under a duet of overlapping denials and creative expletives.

And sure, for a lot of soulmate pairs, bond compatibility translated into the bedroom. The assumption of a physical relationship was one of many reasons they kept it private from the wider league and why Scott never traveled to Russia on a tourist visa. But for them sex was something they absolutely wanted for each other but only from other people.

“Господи {Oh my God} Hollander, I told you we are platonic!” Ilya groaned.

“Yeah, no,” Scott added. “I think I’d rather get hit by a car.”

Ilya had the audacity to look back at him with hurt puppy dog eyes. “The idea of fucking me is worse than maybe dying?”

“Oh my fucking God, Ilya.” Would this kid ever stop being an absolute pest to him?

“Answer the question, grandpa.”

“You are the worst.”

The soft, radiant sound of Shane’s chuckle pulled them out of each other. “Scott’s right. I told him I was gay and he fucking laughed at me.”

Now it was Scott’s turn to be scandalized.

Ilya sputtered, “I have been fucking him for six years, I thought this was understood!”

The math hit Scott like a bullet. “Rookie season?!”

“No, the summer before,” Shane corrected.

“Wow.” And then the other math implied by Shane’s disclosures hit him like a train. “And you’re just now…” he trailed off.

“Yeah,” Shane said, smile dropping into something more tender, his expression a little bit vacant. “It took me a long time and some pretty epic encouragement for me to… figure myself out. I think I always kinda knew, but… I wasn’t ready to let go of ‘normal.’” Shane put that last word in air quotes, then turned to face Ilya. “And I’m really sorry about that. I was so scared of my own feelings that I wasn’t thinking about…”

Ilya shook his head. “Enough sorries. Things will be different now, yes?”

“Yeah. I hope so.”

Scott felt it in his own chest, the moment fear finally exhaled into relief. Shane had been pushed, and hadn’t run. He was staying. Looking at the man his soulmate fell in love with, Scott saw a piece of himself he hadn’t revisited in years. That freshness of being; the defining of a piece of yourself you’d spent your whole life trying to learn the shape of, watery edges finally turning solid.

There was a confidence that came from knowing yourself. And Shane was finally feeling it, even if he hadn’t yet realized. Scott couldn’t help but be proud of him. He carried himself so differently from the last time Scott attended an All-Stars weekend; that nervous genius who couldn’t make small talk to save his life but shaved a full second off his accuracy shooting record and ah hell these shits were definitely fucking in the hotel room next to him that night, goddammit.

Anyway. Hollander. Staying. “Shane,” Scott began, watching him blink a couple times as his focus shifted off Ilya. “I don’t need details on what ‘different’ means for you two. But… it seems like you’re gonna be a more permanent fixture now?” Scott could count on less than one hand the number of people Ilya trusted with information on his mother. It meant something that he’d told Shane.

Like gravity, Shane’s eyes found Ilya’s again. He spoke slowly, like he was thinking very hard about his words. “I know we said a lot of stuff earlier, but is that something you want?”

God, he wanted it. Ilya wanted it so bad Scott was having a hard time sifting out his own feelings from the cascade that poured across the bond. A tiny fraction of that seeped into the corners of Ilya’s eyes. Scott gripped onto him hard, a steadying foundation under the tide, made of pride and encouragement and an admonition to for once in your life ask for what you want and let yourself accept it.

“Yes, it is.”

A breath stuttered out of Hollander’s chest, somewhere between happy and relieved. His gaze went a little vacant even has he smiled. He leaned forward, caught himself midway, then glanced at Scott before presumably realizing that Scott was going to feel whatever he did regardless of where his eyeballs were pointed and finished the movement, pressing lips against Ilya’s.

Scott still did the polite thing and catalogued the contents of the hotel minifridge, trying not to let his own bubble of mirth over the fact that Ilya was making out with his longtime fuckbuddy-turned-something-more-serious while still holding Scott’s hand distract his soulmate from the heady cocktail of cottony emotions rolling off him in waves. A tiny squeeze informed him he’d been less than successful but quickly forgiven.

When the phantom pressure released his own lips, Scott said to Ilya this time, “So what’s that gonna look like?”

It wouldn’t be anything like their relationships with Kip. That looked like dressers and closets technically divided but hopelessly intermingled, the clicking of a lock at the same times every day. Saturdays at art galleries, Sunday lunches in Brooklyn, Amtrak tickets to Boston’s South Station planned for and faithfully used, the one face in a stadium full of fans they found first after every goal. A steady metronome keeping time amidst the epic highs and lows of two professional sports careers.

And now three. Yes, adding Hollander into their dynamic was going to shake things up. But they’d figured it out with Kip, and Ilya had conducted this relationship on his own long enough to have some of it prefigured. Boston playing in Montreal would be business as usual, as would Montreal in Boston or Boston in New York.

In fact, the meetups allowed by their game schedules were so business as usual Scott could only blink owlishly when Shane asked him, “Do you have any preferences about sheets? Or laundry detergent?” Shane took his silence as a question. “So I can set up the guest room at my apartment. It doesn’t really get used so you can change whatever. Do you need blackout curtains?”

“You’d want me to… stay at your apartment?”

“Yes?” Shane replied, completely guileless, as if he hadn’t even considered a world where this wouldn’t happen. “It’s not like you’re a stranger, Scott.”

In that moment, it didn’t matter who was the source of the affection curling across the bond. They both felt it equally. Shane wanted to spend time with Scott outside of Ilya. Despite the absolute tangle of secrets and baggage plopped into his lap, Hollander was taking their soulmate status with the same stride as he did an awkward puck bounce: lightning-fast adjustments borne from an intuition so deep it was beyond words to describe.

Scott mostly succeeded in keeping the wobble out of his voice as he said, “I should ask you the same question, then. Though, fair warning, my boyfriend will absolutely drag your ass through every museum in Manhattan if you let him.” Then a feeling of ice from Ilya’s gut. Scott took it and backpedaled. “That is, if you’re okay with someone else knowing. Which you don’t have to! He’d be totally fine visiting his parents when you’re in town.”

The ease with which Scott could formulate plans to protect secrets grated against his heart. Kip already gave up so much over Scott’s lack of public disclosure. He’d come a long way since that night he almost lost him for good, but even being known as Scott Hunter’s friend in the media still meant they couldn’t hold hands. Or kiss. Or go to dinner anywhere remotely romantic without other friends as buffers. But as willing as Kip was to push Scott in that regard, if he was asked to clear out of his own home so Scott could have time with Ilya’s closeted hockey-adjacent boyfriend, he would do so without complaint.

But then Shane said, “I like museums,” and the relief that washed through Scott was palpable even without a soul bond.

“What’s his name?” Shane asked.

“Kip.”

“Obviously Kip knows how to keep things private. So, yeah. You can… you can tell him about me.”

“Who else knows?” Scott asked, and a cold, sharp something that was not his writhed around the base of his spine. He almost didn’t catch Shane’s response.

“Just a few people. You two, my parents. Rose and her friend Miles. Actually, speaking of—”

“Svetlana knows.” The words ripped out of Ilya’s mouth, less by intent and more by the failure to swallow them.

That deer-in-the-headlights posture was back. “What?” Shane asked.

“I… I told her, after you left that day. I was losing my mind and I needed to tell someone and I couldn’t tell Scott because he is also hockey player and I couldn’t tell Kip because that wouldn’t be fair for him to keep secret from Scott. But Svetlana is not hockey person, or, does not work in hockey business and she knows all about the three of us already and I have known her since we were small and I trust her completely. I knew she would keep secret, she already keeps many for me.” Kip’s reasonings for pushing Ilya to talk, so sound when they were first laid out, now felt flimsy as paper in front of the flesh-and-blood human whose actions prompted them in the first place.

Scott tracked the way Shane’s breathing sped up. The way his brows drew together and his eyes slid down to the floor. “You just— how could— I didn’t even—”

Ilya moved to touch Shane, desperate for forgiveness and consumed with worry. But before his hand could land in the divot between Shane’s hunched shoulderblades, Hollander let out a long, loud exhale and the divot vanished as his muscles unclenched. That vacant expression returned, finally sustained long enough Scott could recognize it for what it was.

Bond work. Somewhere in the piece of himself that now resided outside his body, Shane Hollander was communicating with a soulmate.

Scott’s eyes found Ilya’s; perfect mirrors of shock. Ilya hadn’t known about this. Hadn’t even considered it a possibility.

“I need to take this call.”

Shane’s phone started ringing in his pocket before the last syllables even left his mouth. Without another word, he disappeared into the bathroom.

This time, it was Scott’s turn to say, “What the fuck?”

“This is recent,” Ilya said. “Look at how he moved. They are not practiced at multitasking yet.”

There he was. Crisis Ilya, who catalogued and tracked every variable, coiled tight like a cornered feline, prepared to attack or escape at a moment’s notice. But that wasn’t the Ilya he needed to be right now.

One hand still clasped around his soulmate’s, Scott put his other hand on Ilya’s cheek. “Whatever happens next, you have to let go of that guilt.” The spine-chilling writhe that still sat low in their bodies, a heavy weight threatening to take them both to the ground.

“I promised him,” Ilya argued, voice tight. “I was selfish and angry and I didn’t think it all the way through.”

“You were hurting,” Scott said. “You took a very well-calculated risk for your own mental health after maintaining his secret through way more than either of you were prepared for, and have continued to do so with everyone else.” The strain of the last 48 hours was a testament to that. “Svetlana’s proven highly trustworthy. You didn’t put Shane in any danger.”

Sometimes Scott wished Ilya were just a bit less of a good person. Someone who placed a little less value on a vow, whose sense of obligation to himself won out more often. Then he could finally stop bending over backwards for his family in Russia, could fully censure his father and brother for how they’ve cracked his foundations. Could forgive himself for being a human person who needed comfort and could accept it even when it expensed others to obtain.

Scott would just have to do it for him, until he learned to do it himself. “It’s okay.”

“What if he cannot forgive me?”

“I can’t claim to be an expert in you two,” Scott said, “But I think you’ve both proven stronger than this. He hasn’t run yet. After everything you’ve told him, he’s still here, kid. That counts for something. And even if the worst happens, you’ve got Kip. You’ve got Svetlana. You’ve got me.”

“I do not want to think about the worst,” Ilya said.

“Then don’t,” Scott replied. “Just… wait for him to come to you.” He poured calm over the bond, urging Ilya’s body to sync with his own: slowing down breathing, calming heart rate, pressing a thumb into the spot on Ilya’s palm that always made his spine go loose; redoubling parasympathetic activation across both their nervous systems until his soulmate was, if not relaxed, no longer actively panicking.

They sat in that space together until Shane finally opened the door. He was holding his phone speaker-forward. Scott could see the call was still active and the mic turned off, but too far away to discern the caller ID. Shane asked, “What did you tell her?”

“That we have been sleeping together since 2010,” Ilya answered.

“I know there was more than that,” Shane challenged.

Scott knew. Ilya hadn’t outright told him, not that day or any other. But Scott knew. Ilya Rozanov was in love with Shane Hollander.

And Ilya wished Shane knew that. Wished it could be easy, that everything would just fall perfectly into place. But layered on top of that, thick and choking, was the unbearable threat of rejection. Ilya had already given Shane so much of himself tonight. His mother, his soulmate. The implied but very real assurance that Shane Hollander was so much more than just a hookup partner to him.

If he gave up this most important and final secret, and Shane still chose to walk out that door, Ilya would shatter. And Scott wasn’t confident even he could pick up those pieces.

“You need to know why I told her?” Ilya deduced.

“Yes.”

Ilya took a deep breath. Let go of Scott’s hand. Stood up. Looked Shane Hollander dead in the face and said, “Because it wasn’t just you.”

“Even then?”

“Before.”

“Before?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t I love you. It wasn’t even I’m in love with you. Those words were still unspoken. But it was more acknowledgement than either of them had ever given to the thing that existed between them.

Scott held his breath, willed Hollander to not give up on this.

“I’m still mad at you,” Shane said. And the very contours of the bond crumpled like a spacecraft venting atmosphere, the airless pressure of the void bending all to its unthinking will. “But I’m not gonna be mad forever.”

Scott gave voice to the question Ilya couldn’t ask. “So what does that mean?”

“I ah, talked to my soulmate,” Shane began, as if that wasn’t incredibly obvious. “And she helped me understand where you might be coming from? I’ve talked about that day with her, and a lot of the other days, too. She, uh, she pointed out that we were in a really different place when we promised not to tell anyone. No soulmates, no…well, for me no perspective, I can’t speak for you. And that given how things changed, holding onto all that by ourselves was an unfair ask. I still wish you hadn’t done it, but I can’t fault you for it either. You trust Svetlana?”

“With my life,” Ilya answered. In the bond, the intent rang a little more like with your life. Because to Ilya, that meant more.

Scott would work with him on that. Anyway.

“Can I trust you to someone, then, too?”

Ilya glanced at the phone in Shane’s hand. Still connected, but unable to hear. He nodded.

“She’s been dying to meet you.”

Within the last few months. She. Oh, no fucking way—

Shane turned the mic back on. “Rose. Would you like to meet Lily?”

March 18th, 2017 — Boston @ Montreal (TBA)

It seemed to Rose that she would never fully escape hockey. When she was little, watching the MLH playoffs and attending her brothers’ junior games had been undertaken with the innocent attention of a child: wanting to be included in the family culture as well as not really having anything else she wanted to do more. That changed as her age crept into double digits. Discovering one’s self is a gradual process. Listening to her own music on headphones instead of whatever her dad put on the car radio. Believing she was special and unique for discovering a super underground band called The Grateful Dead.

So when she became old enough to be trusted not to burn the house down if her family left her alone for the weekend, Rose stayed behind and watched The Match King and Night After Night and the uncensored pre-Code version of Baby Face which in retrospect her parents probably didn’t want her watching at fourteen. Oh well. Stayed downstairs for only as much hockey as she wanted before retreating into her room. Her parents would listen kindly to her “I’ve just discovered media analysis” takes on her interests with politeness and encouragement, but still in that manner that indicated they were less engaged with the topic of conversation than the fact of the speaker. Her brothers just called her weird, as was their right and duty. She gave them shit right back. Siblings are there to keep you humble, after all.

Still, there’s a certain pain that comes from being different. When you chafe against the assumptions but ache for the belonging. So focused on finding your wings you scorn the nest. So hockey became a thing Rose defined herself against. No, she didn’t want to watch the playoffs against Houston. She was going over to Abby’s for a sleepover. She had a date with Tyler. She’d rather be in her room reading Temeraire anyway.

But as with many things, distance makes the heart grow fonder. Acting got serious, and she got serious with it. Moved away for school at the tender age of seventeen to a place where hockey was fourth or fifth down on the list of sports the city turned rabid about. So if, in a fit of homesickness, one or two Detroit or Princeton games playing in grainy resolution off a sketchy pirate site graced her laptop in between diction lessons and improv exercises and an unfortunate string of gay boyfriends, then maybe that was just Rose continuing her journey of discovery. She was a Landry, after all. And Landrys were sport people. Even the weird liberal arts ones.

So hockey always occupied the background of her life. Found its place among terrible FBI movies and thinking way too hard about the anti-feminist implications of Anne McCaffery’s worldbuilding and finding a home on a surfboard that felt right in the way ice skates just didn’t. Checking in on the standings sometime every March. Going to Peter’s AHL games every time she was in town. A couple accounts followed on Facebook just to catch the big news. But it was just that. Background.

And then she met Shane Hollander. A man who breathed hockey the way other people breathed air. Who, and Rose was very confident about this now, would not be remotely the same person without it. And hockey rocketed back into the foreground of her landscape with a vengeance both bitter and sweet. She really did like watching this game. But she liked it way more than she ever thought she could when Shane was playing.

His love was infectious. It was something they shared. Mutually assured obsession; hockey and movies. Two people who embodied their jobs down to the molecule, so aligned with it as to be indistinguishable from destiny. There were no versions of Shane and Rose that weren’t hockey players and actors.

The bond between them opened something in the choreography of their existence, a countermelody lilting over certain actions, making them more. Shane attacked film theory, burning through her recommendations and live texting long chains of analysis, taking repeated viewings to pick apart the camera work, the lighting, the acting decisions like it was game tape. And when Rose was working through an upcoming scene, Shane’s imagination ran alongside her own, adding novel sensory timbres and emotional embellishments as their bond became a playground of perspective creation.

And though — after the first time Shane nearly tripped into the boards over Rose’s reaction to an incoming backchecker — they’d learned to quiet their connection during games, she watched Shane warm up and felt the ice like an old friend under her feet. The sting of manufactured cold transformed from a minor annoyance to a mindstate trigger. She watched plays with new eyes, the dance of rush chances and forechecks, line changes and tic-tac-toe passes with new intuition. Felt burning calves and measured breaths and the snap of a perfect wrister and for the first time got it. The way players felt about the game.

All that to say, Rose now paid for an ESPN subscription and used it liberally. Like tonight, when she’d rescheduled a meeting with her agent to make sure she caught every moment of Boston playing at Montreal. It’s only three or four times a season one can watch their soulmate and their soulmate’s boyfriend (though Shane had yet to call Ilya that just yet) duke it out on live television. And to make it sweeter, Miles had some time off between filming locations and was currently occupying the couch cushion next to her, not necessarily following the game but doing his best to learn.

“Alright,” he said, “So that’s an icing call?”

“Yep,” Rose answered as Boston’s defenseman missed a pass and let the puck drift down the length of the rink. “So they’re gonna face off in Boston’s defensive zone.”

“But when do they use the dots in the middle?”

“That’s for faceoffs resulting from an offside, or if the puck goes out of play nearby.”

“Jesus, this game has so many rules.” Miles grumbled.

Rose just laughed. “You spend your weekends playing Warhammer 40K, Miles. Shut up.”

“No no no, I spend my weekends making narrow-minded neckbeards cry over an army of Pride-themed Adepta Sororitas kicking their asses. It’s a public service for the queer community.”

“Your sacrifices are acknowledged and appreciated.”

“Naturally.”

They chatted in a similar manner for the rest of the scoreless first period and intermission. A few minutes into the second, Rose went for her can of sparkling water and realized it was empty. Montreal’s third line was on the ice.

“Want anything from the fridge?” Rose asked as she walked into her kitchen.

“All good.” Then, a few second later, while her head was in the fridge, “Boston scored!”

Moving quickly, Rose re-entered the living room to catch the replay. A lucky rebound off Miitka that a third-liner chipped over his pad. She stayed standing as 24 and 81 skated to the center face-off dot, Shane’s enflamed competitive edge spilling into her legs.

Her soulmate wasn’t letting that goal go unanswered. Shane won the faceoff, protecting the puck as he turned and passed it to Pike on his right wing. The pair shot though Boston’s scrambling defenses, leaving Ilya to backcheck while Shane retook the puck. He crossed back through center ice, ripping over the blue line while Boston’s defensemen attempted to cut off his shooting lanes.

Rose saw it coming. A few years ago, she picked up a small role as the sister of an MMA fighter in a sports drama. She’d learned from that script what impact could do to the body. The angles that, when struck from, loss of consciousness was swift and inevitable.

So she knew. With the same slow-motion of lightning through a high-speed camera; the ice-cold intuition that now took root in her soul. Shane was focused on the net. Already calculating shot angle and swing speed. He didn’t see Marlow hot on his blind spot. There was no stopping it. Nothing she could do.

“Catch me,” Rose whispered.

And then, just like her soulmate, she went down for the count.

March 19th, 2017 — New York @ Nashville (TBA)

Shane was going to be okay. Rose had been telling herself that ever since she regained consciousness in (thankfully) Miles’ arms. It’s what she’d been telling Yuna and David since she got a hold of them. And she knew for certain, then. Could feel him alive and kicking on the other side of the bond; the head fog and the ache in his cheekbones and the sharp burn of his broken collarbone.

But she didn’t know, now. Not for certain. Many things had been decided for her, while she split Shane’s pain over their connection; instinctive and inevitable and apparently diagnostically problematic. When Miles drove her to the nearest ER under Yuna’s direction, she learned that standard protocol, when one soulmate had to go under anaesthesia or suffered a traumatic brain injury of sufficient severity, was a course of Canoxetine for the other. Otherwise known as bond blockers.

There were plenty of good reasons to do so. It helped medical providers objectively evaluate the effects of the injury without soulmate compensation skewing the test results. Gave the brain one less thing it had to do while trying to heal. Kept the non-injured soulmate from experiencing symptoms, though that last one was more of a short-term benefit as transferred injuries faded within hours.

Rose fucking hated it. She’d hated it when they kicked in at the ER, hated them as she cleared her schedule and boarded a plane, and hated them so much right now because she was sitting next to her soulmate, had his hand in her hand and couldn’t sense a damn thing from him, had to rely on the heart monitor to know his was still beating when she should be able to feel it in her own chest.

It was like missing a limb. Their bond had become a part of her, another appendage she was aware of in the same way one notices an arm or a leg. Just… there. Manipulated, inhabited, compensated for. Until it wasn’t, and the hole it left behind felt more than the thing itself ever did. A part of her found it ridiculous, to be so bereft of something she’d only had for three months. A bigger part of her just missed him.

She’d been sitting here a long time. Hours, maybe. Yuna and David, once assured his brain was only bruised and not bleeding, had gone to Shane’s apartment for clothes. He’d be staying with them while he recovered. Out for the season. News which, despite the blockers, Rose knew he only took so calmly because he was high off his gourd on IV painkillers.

He was sleeping now. She liked to think being here, even without the comfort of their bond, helped him feel safe. Shane detested hospitals, ever since he had to go through an MRI at 7 when he broke his wrist at the growth plate. Obviously not enough to avoid a career known for frequent injuries, but hey. Everyone had their contradictions. That didn’t stop Rose from wanting to get him out of here as fast as possible.

Shane didn’t belong here. In this place with bright lights and constant sounds, on a bed that made a 200 lb athlete look small. With yellowing bruises on his cheeks competing with the spray of freckles and his arm in a sling. Strong, skilled fingers completely limp against hers. Was the connection coming back? Was she feeling his drug-hazed discomfort like her own again? God, she hoped so. Anything was better than this solitary purgatory—

“Hey.”

She didn’t feel him wake up. The thought nearly made her cry. “Hey,” she whispered back. “How are you feeling?” Because she had to ask, now.

“I feel really good,” Shane said, expression loose and dopey, then started giggling like he’d said something funny. She smiled back, gripping onto his hand, physical contact a poor substitution but the best they were going to get. Then Shane’s expression soured. “Where are you?”

“I—” They’d told him about the blockers when he woke up the first time. Seems it didn’t stick. She faltered, not knowing how to tell him that she couldn’t be there right now. That he had to hurt all alone and fuck she hated this so much.

Then the door opened.

“Ilyaaaaaaaaa!” Shane sing-songed, long vowels slurring together. Damn, they really did have him on the good stuff.

Her soulmate’s boyfriend-but-we-don’t-call-him-that-yet slipped through the door like he was being chased. Closed it with excessive care and then made to step further into the room. Rose watched as he clocked her presence, then aborted mission, frozen by the doorframe.

Refocusing on Shane, he said, “I, uh, I just wanted to… are you okay?”

Ilya Rozanov was an interesting creature to Rose. Ever since Shane revealed them to each other, they’d been in contact. One big Whatsapp chat the Internet would lose its mind over if they knew it existed. Three famous hockey captains, a even famous-er actress. And Kip. But unlike Scott and Kip, with whom she chatted about true crime podcasts and Depression-era media respectively, she’d never gotten Ilya to engage with her one-on-one. Messaged him a few times. Never got anything back.

Now was not the time to try and interrogate him over that, though.

Shane answered, “Concussion and a broken collarbone, and I’m out for the playoffs, but…”

“Could have been worse,” Rose whispered.

Shane echoed her sentiment. Ilya was still standing by the door. “Marlow feels terrible. He did not mean to hurt you.”

“I know,” Shane reassured. “Part of the game. We all get our bell rung eventually.” He looked at Rose while he said that, fingers squeezing. Fuck, she must look like death warmed over if Shane was trying to comfort her right now.

Ilya was still standing by the door. And apparently Shane was over that. Moving Rose’s hand up to his shoulder, he reached out with his one good arm, fingers flicking as he tried to entice Ilya further into the room. Ilya looked at her again, posted up in the only chair at the bedside.

“I can step out, if you want.” Rose found herself saying, despite very much not wanting to do that. “They have me on bond blockers until he’s off the morphine. I won’t catch anything.”

Shane made a little huffing sound, clearly displeased at the prospect. Ilya just looked…stricken.

“I’m sorry,” he said, finally acknowledging her presence over just skirting around it like a skittish cat. “I don’t… we have never had to do that.”

“I hope you don’t. It feels like shit.” Rose said. She took her hand off Shane’s shoulder. She could go down to the vending machine and get a snack. Take a walk and stretch her legs. Pretend the thought of leaving Shane’s side didn’t prompt her imagining the long whine of a heart monitor flatlining.

She took three agonizing steps away from the bed.

“Stay.”

Rose stayed.

And they talked. Well, Shane did most of the talking. The drugs made him real chatty, rambling along in half-finished streams they could only follow because they knew him so well. Easy subjects. Hockey, movies, complaints about hospital food and hospital sounds and hospitals. Until halfway through a story about being so obsessed with strawberries as a kid he would eat them until he got sick, Shane’s voice dropped away. Eyes shut. Dead asleep.

It was quiet for a long while after that. Ilya’s hand kept fidgeting, alternating between holding Shane’s and running his thumb along the spread of his freckles. Every few seconds, he glanced at Rose. She pretended not to notice the first five times. On the sixth, she’d had enough.

“Alright, spill it.”

He had the audacity to look surprised.

“Obviously there’s something you need to get off your chest about me. Don’t worry about breaking me, I’m a big girl.” She was a fixture in Shane’s life, just as much as Scott was in Ilya’s. If these two were going to be together long-term, she and the tight-lipped asshole in front of her needed to straighten out whatever was bothering him sooner rather than later.

“It’s nothing,” he said, scratching at his nose.

“And if I call Scott what’s he gonna tell me?”

“You would not.”

“Fucking try me, Rozanov. He owes me one for introducing him to Up and Vanished.”

Ilya was quiet for a long minute. “I see why Shane likes you.”

“But you don’t. Like me.”

She’s hit the right button, she’s sure of it. From the way his jaw tightened and his eyes found the stark white bedsheets. Tough shit. He was going to handle this and he was going to handle this now. She refused to be a wedge between them, willing or otherwise. He took a long breath before saying, “It is not fair. I am not being fair.”

She knew better than to try and be gentle with him. He wasn’t like Shane. Guiding questions wouldn’t get her anywhere. What Rozanov needed was a challenge. “Considering this is the first one-on-one conversation we’ve ever had, I’d say so.” Like the best chirps, her accusations were founded in truth.

“You are…” he trailed off, jaw working as he collected his thoughts. Rose let him. “When you met Shane, we had just… we were in a bad spot. He had not spoken to me in a while. And then I see him with you.”

“Ah, yes, Tuna Meltdown,” Rose said.

The sound that ripped from his throat was half a scoff and half a laugh. “Is that what we are calling it?”

“You’re welcome.”

“Is funny. Nice work.” Air just a little lighter, he continued, “And you are public and smiling and holding hands and the entire world is rooting for you. You are… everything we can’t have. And I know it wasn’t like that. Obviously. But I just… I’m sorry.”

Rose took a second to put herself in Ilya’s shoes. Watching the man he felt so strongly for rebound so publicly. The humiliation and jealousy that accompanies such a display. It wasn’t difficult to see why he’d have some hangups. But his words told her something important. Something vital and sad and comforting all at once.

“Nothing I haven’t dealt with before,” Rose admits. The expression on Ilya’s face prompted her to continue. “I’m an actress. I’m used to people seeing me as a symbol or an abstract. Something they can see themselves in, good or bad. An inspiration or a scapegoat or an ideal.” Her gaze drifted to Shane’s closed eyelids. “He did too, for a little bit. And so did I.”

When Rose found Ilya’s face again, he was looking at Shane. “It kills him, even when he doesn’t notice.”

“I know,” Rose said. It was one of the reasons they bonded, she was sure of it. The pressure of being molded by forces outside yourself. The soul-deep relief of someone seeing underneath all that. Of giving you permission to be the real you. “We’re working on it.”

“What makes it better?” Ilya asked.

“Same way you make friends with all your partner’s exes. Taking those green-colored glasses off and responding to my damn DMs.” The last attempt she’d made was asking his opinion on which dress she should wear to her next premiere. Shane was useless for such things.

“The purple one. Yellow washes you out. And don’t let them convince you to go blonder, ever.”

“See, this is why we need to be friends. By the way, you’d look good in like half the new YSL collection.”

For the first time since he’d arrived, Ilya Rozanov looked her in the eyes. “It’s nice to meet you, Rose Landry.”

She looked right back. “Nice to meet you too, Ilya Rozanov.”

…nd then she started keeping them on the top shelf of the fridge so I couldn’t reach… when did you move?

You’ve been sleeping for past fifteen minutes.

Oh, shit…. HEY I GOTTA ASK YOU SOMETHING.

… we’re listening, Shane.

I was gonna ask you two…will you come to my cottage this summer? You can invite your people too! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease I want my favorite people and my favorite people’s favorite people. We can have a week or even two! And it’s so private and there’s a lake and hiking and I have a game room and a Playstation and there’s plenty of room and we can all hang out together—

Shane, you don’t need to sell it so hard. You asked me this last week and I said yes.

Yeah but I didn’t ask Ilya! Will you??? And Scott and Kip and Miles!

Shane, if I invite Miles to a house full of men who are both all gay and all taken I think he’d actually kill me.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm fine.

If Kip puts in for time off now… I think we can make that work.

Yes!

Chapter End Notes

For those of you interested in the bonus scenes, I've updated that fic as well!

Chapter 7: Part Six: Bound

Chapter Notes

Forenote: Giving a third-line rookie center the Cup-clinching goal is 100% me being a Justin Hryckowian stan on main.

June 8th, 2017 — Arizona @ New York (3-4)

New York was going to take the Cup. The Arizona Jackals had pulled their goalie to try and send the game into an extra period, but Ilya could tell even with two minutes left they would not score. Bennett had become an absolute brick wall the entire third period, and the New York defense had clamped down like a vice after Scott’s game-tying goal. Arizona had only registered six shots on net and no goals since last intermission. And with only four minutes left in Game 5, the Admirals’ third-line rookie center deflected one in and set the home crowd roaring so loud the seismometers under the city must’ve surely tripped in response to the cacophony.

Ilya was right there with them. Even if he was up in a private lounge with their friends and Kip’s parents instead of down in the crowd. He could’ve taken Scott’s seat next to Kip but… this was Scott’s moment. Ilya didn’t want the cameras panning to him, speculating on his emotions with a criminal lack of context, painting some spiteful picture of a rival captain who’d been jilted his chance at a second Cup.

Would he have liked to be the one on the ice? Absolutely. Losing to Scott didn’t make losing any worse. But if it wasn’t going to be the Raiders, there was no part of his being that wasn’t abso-fucking-lutely elated it was the Admirals. So he’d bowed out of the offer, letting Elena take the second chair. Retreated to the lounge where he could smile in peace. Plus, Kip’s friends were cool as shit.

One minute left. The Jackals were still scrambling but unable to generate any solid offense. Vaughan iced the puck to buy a breather. Eyes flicking from the ice to his phone, he sent in the group chat: I’m feeling lucky on an empty net to seal the deal. Shane and Rose were in their own lounge a few spaces down.

Shane responded, Not gonna happen. This won’t go to OT but AZ’s d-men aren’t going to allow a breakout.

Ilya: Hmmmmmm loser has to take a hickey on place of winner’s choosing?

Shane: Deal.

Rose: Why can’t you two bet money like normal people?

Thirty seconds left. And Ilya decides, fuck it. If there was ever a time to break the rules, it was now. He closes his eyes, focuses on his soul bond, and inhabits it fully as Scott responds. Sense memories of his own Cup win interweave with the clattering of sticks on ice, the hissing scrape of a puck gliding, adrenaline and dopamine and oxytocin flooding the veins like cold fire. Exhausted breaths sawing in and out, dead legs pushed just a little further. He doesn’t add anything. Just lends his presence to the moment when his soulmate reaches the pinnacle.

The clock runs out. The score is the same. The Admirals have won the Stanley Cup. Ilya pushes tight into Scott as the realization hits him, a steady mountain that cradles the avalanche of emotions as it thunders down the slope. He’s done it. After years of fighting, pushing his body and mind to the brink and beyond, he’s done it.

If it weren’t for watching Shane do this exact thing twice, Ilya wouldn’t know loss could be this sweet. He opens his eyes, still focused on Scott even as everyone else in the lounge converges on him. He lets them hug him one after the other, sending the pressure and excited chatter along the bond. Using the touches to ground Scott as he comes down off the initial high, exhaustion and aches sinking into his muscles while they wait for their prize to reach the ice.

When Scott finally hoists the Cup, Ilya is the first one to cheer. Scott takes his lap, then passes it off to Vaughan. The empty tunnel to the locker rooms suddenly teems with people, families slipping carefully onto the ice, walking with the baby-deer gait that comes from flat shoes on roughshod ice.

Scott stands by himself. And though Ilya is right there beside him in almost every way that matters, the pit still yawns. Why can’t he have this, too?

Ilya knew how Scott’s feelings about his secrets had changed. Felt the frustration and sadness, connected them to the look on his face when fans asked Kip to take their pictures with him. The tightness in his voice when interviewers brought up his love life. The set of his shoulders when he made donations to queer shelters and hotlines with the address line marked Anonymous.

Ilya felt the exact moment Scott reached his breaking point. He couldn’t do this anymore. The feeling was a flash, the last winking of sunlight before it disappears under the horizon. Put away. Covered.

Ilya grabbed onto that feeling, flipping the bond landscape on its head, pulling it back up on the other side. It was still dark, but now there was potential. Dusk transformed to dawn. In that quiet, Ilya asked Scott a question. Is this someone you want to be?

Then something new happens. In all their years of being soulmates, the information sent across the bond was emotions first, sensations second. The interior always felt more readily, more intensely, than the exterior. A soul bond was not mind-reading. Pairs developed information shorthands, learned to relay intent with surgical precision that made it look like mind-reading to the ignorant observer. But they couldn’t actually know each other’s thoughts directly.

But just for a moment, the landscape of their bond, so fluid and dreamlike, real and not-real, stilled in its constant flux. Ilya watched Scott watch him watch Shane, in that Florida hotel room. Heard his own throat speak, I’m gay, too. Observed the immediate shift in Shane’s posture. The way his spine uncoiled. The way his eyes, for the briefest of moments, turned hopeful.

And Ilya understands. Something changed inside Scott that night. Something Ilya was too busy with his own emotions to fully register. He’d seen, in the microcosm that was Shane Hollander, what knowing you are not alone can mean.

And Scott wanted to be that for everyone.

The sun rose clear and blinding over the bond. What can Ilya do but give his full consent and encouragement? So he stayed with Scott, unthreading the panic and nerves that still lurked beneath the conviction, pushing new energy into his tired body. Watched Scott wave Kip down from the stands. And when his hand finds that of the love of his life, the man that enabled this in ways he couldn’t even fathom, Ilya stepped back. This was Scott and Kip’s moment.

He melted into the crowd. Became just another of the thousands of observers unknowing of the history they are about to witness. The new dawn that was breaking over their faces. His phone buzzed. Shane. What is he doing?

Ilya doesn’t bother to answer. The kiss speaks for itself. Scott Hunter. Captain of the New York Admirals. Stanley Cup Champion.

MLH’s first openly gay hockey player.

Shane: Holy shit.

Ilya felt the kiss on his own lips. And maybe it’s the atmosphere of the bond space. The unshakeable feeling of rightness and relief and joy. But something changed in Ilya, too. For the first time, he lets himself ask the question, What the hell am I hiding from?

And for the first time, he cannot find a good answer.

Tearing from the lounge, he dodged past the handful of pedestrians on this level, heedless of how he must look. He reached Shane and Rose’s door, tearing it open to find only one occupant.

At the look on his face, Rose said, “He went to find you. Where do I send him?”

Ilya thought for a moment. “Family room, downstairs. Will be empty for next while.”

“I’m coming with you,” Rose insisted, grabbing her purse. “To run interference.”

Fuck, how had he ever been jealous of this girl? She was more ride-or-die for his relationship with Shane than any of them.

“Get me there, I’ll guide him.” Under Ilya and Scott’s tutelage, Rose and Shane’s proficiency with their bond had grown at a frightening pace. They were freakishly gifted with auditory sharing, which made sense considering Rose spoke of her experiences in terms of music. Shane, because of course he did, thought about it like plays on a whiteboard. So while they navigated the less-trod pathways inside the Garden, Rose gently muttered directions and landmarks for Shane to follow.

No sooner did Ilya ensure the coast was clear did the sound of Shane’s voice drift from the other side of the cracked door. He thought he caught Rose say something like, “... now or never.” But before he could spiral on what that referred to, Shane slipped into the room behind him.

The space felt cavernous with just them in it. Recently vacated by the WAGs and kids of the Admirals’ players; sensory room turned staging area turned abandoned. Lots of couches, doors to smaller spaces, a big TV playing post-game coverage at a low volume. Decked out in red and white though the dim lights softened their hues. Ilya didn’t miss the way Shane’s posture relaxed when the noise of the stadium disappeared behind the closed door.

“That was,” Shane began, “Holy shit.”

It was a good descriptor for the successive bursts of mile-high feelings Ilya was catching off of his soulmate. “You think so?” he teased.

“How are you…”

Ilya answered honestly. “Not entirely sure how I’m still standing.”

Shane seemed to take that literally, moving in close and cupping his hands under Ilya’s elbows, ready to bear his weight at a moment’s notice. “I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now,” he trailed off for a moment, eyes going vacant because despite his progress Shane was still terrible at poker faces of any kind. “Okay, uh, shock, pride? Scared shitless but really hopeful. What made him do that?”

Once again, Shane Hollander was utterly blind to the staggering effect he had on people. Ilya couldn’t keep the softness from his eyes as he answered, “Because of you.”

Now Shane was the one who looked like he could fall over. Ilya put his hands on Shane’s hips. Shane kept his grip through the motion — easy, instinctive.

“It was… things were strange, when the families walked out. The bond became like memory, of All-Stars weekend. You felt unsafe and he fixed it.”

“I…wow,” Shane stammered. “Mission fucking accomplished. I feel like I could do anything right now.”

Ilya shifted him in his grip, Steadying hands wrapping into an unmistakable embrace. Anyone who walked in and had eyes could see the truth of what they were to each other. “What do you want to do right now?” Ilya whispered.

Shane’s eyes bored right into his. A privilege he was constantly chasing. Direct eye contact meant something to Shane. He felt it more intensely, and thus reserved it. Feigned it often by focusing on an eyebrow or nose bridge or, if he was feeling particularly uncharitable, an earlobe. Forewent it entirely when the scripts of typical politeness were out of play.

So when Shane felt it necessary to look someone in the eyes, it meant they should fucking listen. And despite the waves of Scott’s emotions crashing in and out, Ilya was listening.

“I want to tell you I’m in love with you.”

Ilya has always been of the opinion that words have power. Call it a vestige of his mother’s religion. The idea that speaking something, on some level, made it exist. The kind of belief that turned pleading to prayer, transformed a careless bluster into a curse. His father had been careless in his words. His mother careful, perhaps too much so. Maybe if she had spoken her sadness into being, things could have ended differently.

Ilya was careful with is words, too. Knew which ones to employ for desired effect, evoking emotions like storybook wizards evoke fire or water. How to speak without really saying anything, burying truth behind clever facades. Words used as a cloak, or sometimes a dagger.

Shane was also careful, though differently so. He could not say what he did not mean. Couldn’t fake authenticity and was thus measured with his sentences. Always on the hunt for the correct turn of phrase to render his meanings as close to his thoughts as possible.

So when Shane Hollander tells Ilya Rozanov, I’m in love with you, it’s because he couldn’t possibly say anything else.

And when Ilya Rozanov tells Shane Hollander, “I’m in love with you, too,” it’s because denial is no longer an option. It exists outside of them now, dangling in the air between their mouths, a thing with its own sort of power and meaning and soul. Irrevocable. Inevitable.

Their kiss is not public. Witnessed by none but themselves and the other halves of their hearts. But it is real. By God, it is real.

July 5th, 2017 — Lanaudière, Quebec

“This is what you call a cottage?” Scott said, punctuating his incredulity by closing the door to Shane’s boring-but-spacious Land Rover.

“Welcome to Canada,” Rose jokes from the other side of the car. “Where beanies are toques, whole milk is gay, and lakeside McMansions somehow count as ‘cottages.’”

“Hey, hey,” Kip cuts in, “There’s gay Milk in America too.” His words were met series of blank stares. “And filing that one under puns that only work in writing.”

“I got what you meant, babe,” Scott said, pressing a kiss to Kip’s temple.

“Yeah because I forced to you watch that movie last month. Shane, can you believe this guy had never seen Milk?”

“What’s Milk?” Shane asked.

“Rose!”

“It’s on the list, I promise!” she defended.

Ilya watched with unguarded amusement. It really was a far cry from any of their ideas of what a “cottage” is. But that’s what Shane calls it and English is a bullshit language anyway. He let them bicker while he popped the hatch. He went for Kip’s first; a simple black hardcase with a Winter Soldier charm dangling off the zipper, when Shane and Scott bullied him out of the way and start loading themselves up.

“I can carry my own bag,” he protests.

Shane just levels those wicked brown eyes at him. “How are your ribs?”

“Still sore. Don’t make him laugh for both our sakes,” Scott answered.

“Snitch,” Ilya grumbled, but left them to their task. Still, he couldn’t resist huffing a deep breath in and coughing it out as he walked away. The sharp twinge in his side was worth the high-pitched, undignified “OW!” that floated to his ears.

Shane’s cottage really was beautiful. Tons of windows facing a large lawn that sloped down to the water’s edge. Everything done up in shades of forest green and woody browns, with pops of red and blue. A large kitchen he and Kip were definitely going to be taking over at some point. Shane is rambling, something about well water? But all Ilya can focus on his how utterly preposterous this entire scenario feels. The walls between the different parts of his life have been collapsing for a long time now. It’s one thing to see the cracks forming. It’s another to stand in the rubble and see through to the other side.

What the hell did he do to deserve this? So many people with no apparent reason to ever become close, together in the same place willingly, with no obligations or expectations or reasons to hide. Not for the first time, but definitely the strongest so far, Ilya feels like the anchor knot in a web of netting. The central line on which all others are looped. Pull him out and everything falls apart.

How long does he get until it falls apart?

In response to the sour turn of his thoughts, Scott checked him lightly. Pulled Ilya’s gaze to where he’s standing beside Shane, listening intently to the lecture pointing out the different features of the property. Without fanfare, and intentionally so, Scott loops an arm around Shane’s shoulders, asks a polite question about how his firepit works. Shane doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t seem to consciously notice the contact. Maybe leans into it, a little.

New York had played in Montreal back in March. Ilya remembers the eucalyptus smell of Shane’s kitchen soap finding his nose as he sat on a plane to Denver. Kip and Rose had started up their own sidebar, hypothesizing a course curriculum of must-watch queer cinema. Ilya let the overlapping chatter wash over him, breathing it in.

The message is clear. Ilya might be the through-line, but they’ve all formed their own loops around each other. That’s why they were here, right? No obligations, no expectations, no reasons to hide. They could just… be honest. Learn. And maybe, just maybe, pull those loops so tight they could never be undone. Slowly, intentionally, Ilya let himself want it.

This was going to be the best week of his life. And maybe the scariest.

There wasn’t much in the way of a beach on this lake, but the floodplain around the shoreline was just as soft. Gentle enough to string up a net and play a game of volleyball. Kip magnanimously bowed out of playing, claiming he would keep score but thumbing through his trashy vacation novel in a manner that made it obvious he was just going to make up random numbers if they asked.

While Scott aired up the ball, Shane and Rose drifted together on one side of the court. Shane was gesturing to different spots in front of the net, his expression focused as he laid out potential plays. Because God forbid Ilya’s boyfriend (were they there yet?) take any competition less than utterly serious.

This would not do.

“Ah, no, no!” he called, waving a hand in their direction. “No fucking fair! You two on same team is cheating.”

“You’re playing with your soulmate,” Shane pointed out.

“Who said shit about soulmates?” Ilya countered. “You get girl who played star setter in silly Shakespeare adaptation while I get dinosaur.”

Scott had long since stopped reacting to Ilya calling him old. At least on the outside. “If you want to be on a team with Shane all you have to do is say so, kid.”

“What are you talking about? I’m playing with Rose.”

Shane scoffed. “By your own logic, that’s an unfair advantage.”

“You want to win more, you’ll make up for it.” Ilya smirked, softening the blow with a kiss to his cheek.

Voice lowered, Shane said. “And if I do win? You willing to bet another hickey? Last one’s still pretty dark.” And proudly on display, dressed as they all were in swim clothes.

“No, no. If I win, when I get out of the shower tonight you will already be three fingers deep and begging for it.”

The thrill of making Shane’s breath hitch never went stale. “And if I win?” he whispered.

“I’ll still find you with your ass in the air but you can take my mouth as a treat.”

The blush began rising up Shane’s neck just as Rose butted in, “Can you two issue a warning before getting horny on main?”

Commiserating, Scott said, “It’s fucking useless.”

Ilya took a slow step back from Shane. “My apologies, Rose. Are you ready to crush these losers?”

It was on purpose, obviously. But Ilya had taken Rose’s offer of friendship to heart. And she was a fucking beast on the court, besides. The first time she snapped a quick that Ilya buried right behind Scott’s ankle, between all the cheering and groaning, he read her posture just in time to open his arms and brace himself as she jumped inside.

Needless to say, despite a valiant effort, their soulmates got destroyed. But Scott, for guy for whose chosen sport going in any way airborne was a bad time, had some decent hops and watching Shane’s expression sink deeper and deeper into that angry kitten face was delightful. Especially when Ilya got to kiss it off him afterwards.

They wandered down to the water’s edge to cool off, the sun low enough to cast the hill in striping shadows. While Scott, Shane, and Kip debated what to make for dinner, Ilya found Rose standing ankle-deep in the water. He kicked his feet across the shallows to signal his approach. As she caught his eye, she smiled, “Not bad, for a hockey player.”

“Not bad for a surfer,” Ilya answered.

They stood in silence for a few minutes, watching the lights of Venus and Mercury prick the growing darkness over the lake.

“I watched X-Squad 2 on the plane ride over,” Ilya began. “You were very good. Even if they glued down your eyebrows. Who thought that was a good idea?”

“I don’t know, it was a fun challenge figuring out how to emote effectively,” Rose said. “But thank you. It’s a cheesefest but I’m proud of it.”

“You were best part. The fight with Honeybadger was…” he took a moment, trying to compose his thoughts in effective English. “I could see her pain. They hurt her, but they were family.”

“Thank you,” she repeated, but it sounded like she really meant it this time. “That’s exactly what I was going for. And I had to fight my director a little bit to get there. You know, it was actually Shane that pushed me to push for that read on the character. Spiegelman wanted to take it in a different direction. Good thing he listened; probably saved the studio a fortune in reshoots.” she paused, then with a profound wistfulness, “That was the night we bonded.”

Ilya’s heart had long gone soft to his rival’s soulmate, but it ached sweetly all the same. “Yes, he has a way of making you want things you’ve told yourself you cannot have.” Before he could stuff the impulse, Ilya raised his arm and wrapped it around Rose’s shoulders. She leaned into the side of his chest, her own arm finding a place along his waist.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Ilya whispered, meaning every syllable. Not just as Shane’s soulmate, though he was forever grateful to her for being that person. Their bond took a different contour than his own, their means of support rooted in comparing perspectives whereas he and Scott orbited in patterns of mutual responsibility. On one particularly enlightening phone call, Shane gushed about how they used their bond to compare ideas real-time on whether or not a girl was trying to flirt with Shane or just genuinely enjoyed his game. Ilya could’ve told him (and Rose had concurred) that of course she was flirting, but things like that didn’t come easily to Shane. After that success, it became their most frequent trick. Shane had returned the favor just a week later when Rose’s real estate agent tried to bullshit her on a potential new condo’s “obvious” ventilation issues.

But even if Rose had never become Shane’s soulmate, Ilya was glad she became their friend. Someone who understood how lonely their lives could be. How families can love you and hurt you and not mean it but not apologize for it either. How to make new moorings when your old anchors cracked away.

And of course, he would never be able to repay her for that night in Tampa. How she reached him through his panic when Ilya couldn’t. Helped him listen to his heart and stay.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Rose teased.

“I will take it.” Gladly.

The sky was black but Ilya was wide awake. Shane was still sleeping, face squished into the hollow of Ilya’s armpit. He should go back to sleep. Let the little snuffles of his love’s breathing lull him back to dreams.

But it was the dreams that were the problem. He was craving a cigarette, and he’d long learned better than to try to resist it when nights like these happened. Nights when his mind twisted and tangled around a handful of sense memories: cold tile under scabby knees, Tchaikovsky through an ancient, staticky radio; the plastic fluorescence of an orange bottle. The smell of vomit only the acrid sting of cigarette smoke could banish from his nostrils. Ilya disentangled himself from Shane’s koala grip and fished the emergency pack out of his bag.

It wasn’t as wee an hour as he first thought. The horizon over the lake was just turning milky with pre-dawn glow. A chill breeze blew up the shore as he sat down on a boulder near the water line, contrasting with the burn of smoke in his lungs.

Over the years, Ilya learned it was best not to ignore his brain when it dredged up those old pains. Better to man up and talk through it instead. He’d always been more frank with his mother in death than life. Greeting and treating her phantom presence like a trusted friend.

The last time he woke up like this — a freezing Boston February — Ilya discovered he could speak out loud about how she died. Whispered it in English to the faint stars of Gemini. The last piece of filial piety finally relinquished, now that the shell of the man it protected was dead. That night, he’d said everything he couldn’t at the funeral. Spoke of the deceased for what he was. A backwards, prideful, abusive bastard who had no business marrying a girl that young. So blind and so selfish he could not see the pain he wrought. His mother hadn’t deserved that. He and Alexei hadn’t deserved that.

This time, it wasn’t about deserve. He knew why her memory found him, even so far away from her usual haunts.

“Прошу простить меня.” {Please forgive me.}

He wasn’t expecting a response. One came anyway.

“Couldn’t sleep?” The gathering dawn picked out the edges of Kip against the blue-tinged landscape. “I never sleep well the first night in a new place. You feeling scared or nostalgic?”

The question was so sudden, Ilya couldn’t come up with an immediate response. Kip clarified, “You only smoke these days when you’re scared or nostalgic. Which is it?”

Ilya made room on the rock. Kip accepted the silent invitation. Then watched his face or maybe the starry pinprick of the cherry growing fainter as the light around it increased, just waiting.

“Both,” Ilya answered. “I dreamed of my mother last night.”

“Ah,” Kip said. Ilya didn’t have to elaborate. This wasn’t the first time he’d been caught smoking at dawn. They sat in silence for a little while, until Ilya’s cigarette burned down and he stubbed it out on the rock, butt disappearing into the pocket of his lounge pants.

“I talk to her, sometimes,” Kip said. “Sarah and Joseph too. Is that weird?”

The admission was so unexpected, Ilya had to blink a few times to collect his thoughts and really consider Kip’s question. Was it weird? To speak to ghosts you’d never met? Did “never met” apply when he was so intimately familiar with what they left behind?

Ilya landed on no, and he said as much. “What do you tell them?”

“Mostly stuff about you and Scott. How you’re doing, what made you laugh, what made you cry. What made me want to tear my hair out. Just… things I’d want someone to tell my parents about me.”

Ilya filed that last part away. “Yes, I’m sure you are much more honest than we are.”

Kip chuckled. “Probably. You don’t mind?”

“It is sweet,” Ilya said. “Morbid, but sweet. I tell her about you, too. You two are very similar.”

“How so?”

“Artsy,” Ilya began. “She was a seamstress, you know? Always making and mending things. I don’t think I wore store-bought anything until I started hockey. If you let her, she would keep you in a museum for hours talking about how all the clothes were put together.”

It wasn’t lost on Ilya. How his mind conceived of his bond as threads and webs, the intermingling of their souls along lines of warp and weft, knit and purl. Maybe that was what made him her son. Maybe that was penance for what he was about to do.

“I’m never going back to Russia,” Ilya blurted. “That’s why both.”

“Congratulations.”

The response was so far from anything Ilya was expecting, his surprise wrote itself plainly on his face.

Kip sighed and said, “I know you, Ilya. You don’t say things out loud until you’re absolutely sure. Questioning your reasoning is a waste of time. So I get to skip to the part where I’m happy for you. Russia doesn’t deserve you anyway.”

Last night, while they left their men to bluster around the kitchen, Rose told him a little more about the night she and Shane bonded. How he made the impossible seem not just easy, but obvious. How she’d done the same for him.

Every time he thought about it; cutting ties completely, looking at a calendar and not automatically marking off ten weeks of summer, really sitting with the understanding that he’d never see his childhood home or his middle school or the rink he’d learned to skate or the first bar he ever got drunk in or the underpass where he had his first kiss, Ilya’s first instinct was guilt. Russia was his roots, even if the soil had long since gone barren.

But Kip had offered him another emotion, and the space to feel it. Mercy.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Kip looped an arm over his shoulders. Solid warmth bled through the predawn chill that had settled against Ilya’s skin in the absence of the cigarette. They stayed there until Scott found them, edges lit up and bleeding together against the light of the rising sun.

That evening, Shane showed off his firepit like the real estate fetish Ilya teased him as having was unironic. The day had been much the same as previous, singles and pairs and trios idly drifting in and out and between the cottage’s endless amenities, coming together at set intervals for communion around the dining room table. But now the closeness of night descended and they all collected into the glow of the firelight, cradling beers or soda cans, making angles with each other across the sturdy outdoor couches.

Ilya found himself with his head pillowed on Scott’s thighs, head angled so he could idly stare at Shane across the flickering of the firepit. He and Rose and Kip were all caught up in some debate; or at least Rose and Kip were while Shane had his “I’m trying to follow this but it’s not about hockey so my processing speeds are a half-second slower” face. The warm glow made his freckles disappear in and out of the shadows on his face, like sparks of sunshine on flowing water.

Ilya kept his eyes on Shane as he whispered, in Russian because English made it feel too real, “I need to ask you something.” The echo of his words across the bond carried threads of trepidation, obligation, finality.

Scott’s finger traced the outside of Ilya’s ear as he said, “What do you need, kid?”

“When we go back to New York, can we make an appointment with Immigration?” he whispered, “I want to get my green card.”

The hand on his face stilled. Scott’s lungs and bond holding breath as the truths held within Ilya’s words sank in. “Are you sure?”

He was, but Ilya considered it anyway. He was perhaps being unfair to Russia. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t hate it. It was home, and there was always a piece of him that relaxed when surrounded by the sensations of his childhood. Letters and words that felt like they took less than no effort to understand because his baseline had been warped just a little higher. Going into stores and restaurants and knowing exactly what to expect. The flow of traffic, the rhythms of the streets as people worked, played, and rested.

But there was also the piece of him that tensed. A tension so long-wired into his bones he hadn’t noticed until his father’s death and that terrible funeral had twisted it past the point of snapping. The enduring, increasing expectations. The love he couldn’t pretend was love anymore now that he had the real thing. The hiding. For so long, Ilya from Boston and Ilya from Moscow had felt like identical twins inside of him. Made of the same threads, but different.

But after Scott had held him that night, took his pain and made a home for it right beside his own; after Kip dried his tears and put on his favorite braindead action movie and made him tea so that his restless hands would have something warm to hold onto; after Shane called him every day he was in Russia, ready to listen or distract and remind him that there was something good to come back to, he couldn’t hold both and say he was complete. Something had to give. Ilya had made the decision weeks ago. Now was just the moment to make it real.

Ilya didn’t answer with words. Instead, he gave Scott the feeling of the rock under his seat, the press of Kip’s frame against his. The empty space in his chest where mercy now curled up like a cat on a rug, cradled by the soft fibers, safe and warm. His own sunshine, rising steadily over the lake, sparks on flowing water.

Gaze still locked on Shane, Ilya said, “My family is here.”

Mornings in someone else’s arms, be it in Boston or New York or Montreal. Two sticks clattering together in the face-off dot. The ping of a Whatsapp notification: landed safe! Game tape and research papers and scene scripts. Charms on suitcases, debates about movies, the snap of a volleyball, fingers dancing across a game controller, the clatter of a cue ball through a break, hands and mouths wandering in the dark, black coffee and specialty teas and cola and ginger ale and the smell of blueberry-banana pancakes.

“Yeah, we can do that,” Scott whispered. “I love you.”

“I love you.”

Then a high, piercing howl ripped across the quiet. Ilya startled so hard he almost fell off the couch. In an instant, he was taking to his feet, weight just barely resting on the cushions as he prepared to grab Scott and bolt inside. “What the fuck was that?”

Nobody else reacted. Or at least, nobody else looked like they were prepared to go full Terminator on whatever had made that sound. Shane’s face was blank in a way Ilya would’ve found hilarious in any other situation as he said, “A loon?”

“A what?”

“A loon,” Shane repeated, blankness curling into an incredulous smile. “It’s a bird.”

“Sounds like a fucking wolf.” Ilya insisted.

Shane was fully laughing now. “It’s a bird, trust me.”

The howl came again, and Ilya tightened with the effort of keeping himself in his seat. The others were beginning to join Shane in his confused humor at Ilya’s expense.

“You’re so scared,” Scott said.

“What kind of a bird makes a noise like that?” Ilya defended.

“A loon!” Shane giggled. “A fucking wolf?”

And now everyone was laughing and Scott was threading calm and safety and gentle laughter through his tensed shoulders and okay the initial panic was wearing off enough for Ilya to see the comedic overblow of his snap reaction. Half-attempting to salvage a shred of his reputation and half-buying into the bit that had constructed itself around him, Ilya snarled, “Stupid Canadian wolf bird.”

That sent the group into another round of giggles which Ilya pointedly did not join in on. He caught the faintest twinkle of mischief in Shane’s dark eyes before he raised cupped hands to his mouth and made a warbling call in the same register as the howl.

“Oh, so now you speak bird, too?” On top of English and French and passable Japanese and some baby Russian and whatever else rattled around that beautiful brain.

“What were you saying, Shane?” Kip asked.

“Loons are territorial,” Shane explained. “Just telling it not to get too close.”

Rose draped herself dramatically over Shane’s shoulders. “Our brave hero saving the princess from the Big Bad Birdie.”

Ilya picked himself up off the couch, this time with very different intent. “Yes, I think brave hero deserves reward from his princess,” he said as he planted a hand over Shane’s shoulder and started peppering his freckles with noisy kisses while Rose chuckled at his side. “So fearless,” more kisses, “so handsome.”

Eventually, Shane started to protest under the excessive affection, putting his hands on Ilya’s hips. Ilya took this as an invitation to collapse into Shane’s lap. The two of them immediately compensated for the extra bulk until they were comfortably sprawled, Ilya across Shane’s thighs with Rose tucked against Shane’s side between Ilya’s knees and the back of the couch, calves going the only place available, aka over Kip’s lap.

Scott quickly grew weary of being left out, slipped himself in behind Kip, and from there the couch truly devolved into a cuddle puddle, valiantly holding up the weight of their antics. And they laughed and chatted and watched the fire, until a random moment of silence descended. And it struck Ilya — real, in the chest, finally feeling with his body what he’d before only known in his head — that this is what summer meant now. Not smoggy skylines and cigarette-strewn underpasses, a sun that never felt warm enough and soil choked by ash. Maybe not always this specific place, but the space they’d carved within it was theirs to keep.

And for the first time since he watched Moscow disappear beneath the clouds, Ilya felt like he was home.

Shane and Ilya rose early the next morning, though this time with the sun after a night spent tangled in each other in a manner Scott politely ignored the same way Ilya politely ignored what Kip was doing to his—

Anyway. The morning light over the lake lit the white of their sheets on fire as it streamed through Shane’s exhibitionistically large windows. Shane’s face was in its customary place buried in Ilya’s armpit. He felt the stirrings just before those beautiful brown eyes blinked open, glassy and unfocused and perfect.

“Good morning,” Shane mumbled.

Fighting the heaviness in his lids, Ilya pulled Shane in just a little closer. “Good morning,” he parroted, and then before he convince himself not to, “I like you.”

Shane smiled. “I like you, too.”

It wasn’t what he wanted to say. The words were of a similar contour to what they’d already said after the Cup final. But Christ, was the meaning so different. Instead, he brushed Shane’s hair from his forehead, adjusted his head to let his lover rest against his neck, and let the morning unfold slow and honey-gold.

Of course, being them, they couldn’t stay idle for too long. A quick breakfast with the others turned into a jog which turned into a racing sprint the last half mile that left the both of them sweaty and restless. So while Scott and Kip availed themselves of the pool table and Rose chipped away at her 100% file in Breath of the Wild, the pair of them exchanged running gear for swim trunks and spent the rest of the morning in the lake. Or, Shane spent enough time in the water to wash the sweat off before posting up on a rock while Ilya fucked around doing handstands in the shallows.

When he came up for air after a lengthy breath-hold, Ilya caught a pinch in Shane’s expression. The kind he got when he wanted to ask a question but wasn’t sure he deserved the answer. Swimming up to the rock, he wrapped wet hands around Shane’s ankles, the cold and the squeeze pulling him out of his head.

“I can hear you thinking from underwater,” Ilya said.

“It’s nothing,” Shane deflected.

“Tell me anyway.”

Shane sighed. “It’s not really my business,” he began, “But… what were you and Scott talking about? Last night. Before you got scared shitless by a bird.”

Ilya rolled his eyes and took a playful bite at Shane’s exposed thigh.

Shane continued, “You were talking in Russian and Scott looked like he was gonna cry.”

Ilya had missed that. Unlatching his teeth, he hauled himself up to sit next to Shane. “I told him I wanted to apply for green card. Permanent residency,” Ilya said, like he was reading an address off an envelope and not admitting a life-altering decision. “Soulmates automatically qualify, if one is citizen.”

“And you didn’t before because…”

“Russia,” Ilya finished.

Shane nodded. “Russia.” He was quiet for a moment, then asked, “So you’re not going back?”

“No,” Ilya answered. He may not have a soul bond with Shane, but the pity was rolling off him in waves. “There is nothing keeping me there, anymore. It was this or marry Svetlana,” he joked, the feeling of Shane’s gaze boring into the side of his face a weight he was a little desperate to shake off.

A sound, not quite a scoff but not really a hiccup, puffed air against Ilya’s neck. Then another long silence. “Would you?”

“Would I what?”

“If you didn’t have Scott and didn’t want to go back to Russia, would you marry Svetlana?”

A weird hypothetical, but Ilya supposed he did start it. “She would do it. We are friends, it would be fine.”

“But is she… someone you would want to marry?”

Was Shane actually…jealous? “Hollander,” Ilya said, pouring every ounce of why the fuck would I be here at your cottage sitting on this hard-ass rock if I wanted to marry Svetlana? into his tone.

“You’re not gay,” Shane blurted.

Puzzled by the nonsequitur, Ilya confirmed, if for no other reason than to keep him talking, “No. We have had this conversation.” In Tampa, where Ilya now understood he’d been unfairly dismissive of Shane’s struggles with the inner closet that kept him from believing the truth. Just because it was obvious to him doesn’t mean Shane putting words to it wasn’t a big deal. He’d apologized, they’d moved on. Or so Ilya thought?

Shane started pulling on his thumbs. They popped once each, but he kept doing it. “I mean, you have options, right? You could, you don’t have to—”

“Don’t have to what?” Ilya asked, beginning to catch Shane’s drift and severely disliking its direction. “There are many things I could do.”

“Yeah, and I can’t. Fuck, I thought I’d already dealt with this,” Shane said, half to himself as he scrubbed his palm over his cheeks. “You don’t have to lie. You can find a woman you love and marry her for real. But there’s no… there’s no easy way out for me.”

“Is that what you want?” Ilya asked, ice in his veins creeping out of his throat. “An easy way out?”

“No,” Shane said, “It’s dumb, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Why not marry Rose, then, huh?” Ilya asked, and it was mean and unfair but Ilya was too fucking angry at easy way out to care all that much in that moment. “Would make things easy, with the press. And the league.”

“Fuck you!” Shane said. “That’s not the same.”

“Is same kind of hiding,” Ilya said. Because despite his anger, and maybe a little because of it, he could see what Shane was struggling with. The closet, the lying, the perceived privilege Ilya had being attracted to the “correct” gender. And sure, he could be straight-passing. But Shane was forgetting an extremely important detail.

“No, it isn’t,” Shane insisted.

“Yes,” Ilya hissed, grabbing Shane’s chin and forcing their faces together. “I could marry Svetlana. I could marry anybody. Would still be hiding, would still be lying. Because despite what you seem to think, I have this massive fucking problem. I like women, yes? And everywhere I go I am surrounded by beautiful women and they love me. And they’re so sexy and fun, but I am always thinking about this slow fucking hockey player with beautiful freckles. And a weak backhand.”

“A weak backhand?” Shane’s tone was still angry but at least he was breathing again.

“Yes, very weak. And no matter what I do, I would always be wishing these women were him. You think I want choices? I already chose you, Hollander. So do not sit here and pretend there is any easy way out for me.”

“Are you for real?” Shane breathed.

“What, do you need a written statement of boyfriend status? I will call notary, they can be here in two hours,” Ilya said. “Yes, I am fucking for real.”

“Are we boyfriends?” Shane asked, and Ilya realized what exactly he’d said.

“Yes, I think so, probably,” he answered, the grip on Shane’s chin going lax as a bashful smile crept across freckled cheeks. His boyfriend took full advantage of the lapse and closed the scant distance between them, a kiss worthy of the silver screen witnessed by none but the stupid wolf birds and the sun on their skin.

When Shane pulled back, Ilya almost didn’t hear as he said, “I love you. And I mean that. You’re kinda it for me. Rose figured it out the second we bonded but I guess I am fucking slow. Fuck, I’ve been wanting to say that since you got here.”

Not for the first time, Ilya was deeply grateful for his soul bond. Because without Scott yelling at the top of his metaphysical lungs to go get what you want right fucking now Ilya would have simply passed out and drowned in the lake. “You’re it for me, too,” he whispered. Then kissed Shane again. “Я тебя люблю,” another kiss, another admission. “I love you so fucking much.”

Ilya held onto his boyfriend, and Shane held on right back, as the last piece of themselves found being in the air between their mouths, slotted into place among the trees and the sky and the water lapping at their toes. A home. A family. And now, nine years in the making, a love finally unburdened by all the things they’d left unsaid. It would not be easy. There were still reasons to hide. But not from each other.

Does it fucking kill you, too?

Not anymore.

Chapter End Notes

HEY SO GIVING SCOTT ASTROPHYSICS METAPHORS FOR HIS SOUL BOND WAS SUPER INTENTIONAL ACTUALLY DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?

Also, you may have noticed the chapter count went up. I have ONE more section of this fic that got a little out of hand lengthwise and I decided it works better as an epilogue. It's already done so I won't make you wait too long for it! I just want to sit on it for a day and give it a second pass, so keep your peepers peepled, friends!

Chapter 8: Epilogue: Summer 2017

Chapter Notes

So this is the second longform fanwork I've ever written, and the first I've ever posted. I can't describe how out-of-body it feels to see the numbers this fic has gained, both in wordcount and engagement stats. Thank you so much to everyone for reading, kudosing, bookmarking, and commenting. Y'all really kept me going.

July 7th, 2017 — Lanaudière, Quebec

David Hollander was a deeply practical man. As a child, he had the same fanciful aspirations as the rest of his peers. Exciting professions like astronaut, racecar driver, movie star. But as with most people, such youthful flights quickly grounded themselves as the realities of living began sticking to their shoes. His one chance at that kind of life had been hockey, but by the time the scouts really sniffed around, David had long decided his career ended the day he earned his degree. Hockey was fun, but like most university extracurriculars, it was just that. Extra.

Hockey had the wonderful side effect of introducing him to his lovely wife, and had been the thing that put sparks in his son’s eyes like nothing else ever could, so he would always love it. But he never inhabited it the way Yuna and Shane did. But that was okay. He could be the ground on which they landed when the ice went soft. Could quietly maintain the metronome of normal life around practice schedules and make-up examinations, then later on the contract meetings and the brand deals and 82+ games a season he refused to miss a single viewing of.

He and Yuna were very good about splitting household and parenting responsibilities around their respective professions. Systems borne of trial and error and many years of both. Yuna preferred to cook, so David washed up after. David liked taking care of the home exterior, so Yuna cleaned the inside. Yuna pushed Shane to expand his limits, David gave him a place to fall back on when he needed to regroup. Yuna handled the bills, David handled the grocery shopping. So it was completely understandable for him to notice they’d arrived at their cottage with the minor oversight of failing to pick up more dishwasher pods during their initial supply run. The container left over from last summer only had one left.

And David Hollander was a deeply practical man. He made no deal of it to Yuna, simply reasoned that driving 40 minutes to the closest Sobeys for a single item was inefficient. Much better to see if their son who was staying ten minutes down the road could spare a few. Shane didn’t respond to his text or both phone calls, but that wasn’t much cause for concern. He often abandoned his phone while enjoying the freedoms of his cottage, and no doubt had more reason to now that Rose was visiting.

Surely Shane wouldn’t mind if he just popped in real quick and grabbed what he needed. In fact, it was a fairly common occurrence between the two households. So David really thought nothing of firing up his SUV and turning down the long gravel path to Shane’s property. Kept it perfectly business-as-usual as he used his spare key to gain entry. Boy, Shane sure did have a lot of shoes. And none of them were Reeboks, which made David smile. His son really was terrible at repping.

The house was empty, or at least the main space was. No reason to bother Shane, he’ll just grab a Ziploc and a handful of pods and be on his way. It took David a minute to locate the Ziplocs; Shane kept them in a different spot than his own kitchen. He accidentally opened the trash drawer first. Coke cans. Huh. Did Rose like Coke? Maybe he should pick up a small pack, then, if they decided to come over for dinner.

The dishwasher pods were under the sink. David scooped a few, zipped up the bag, and stood up. Oh, there was Shane. He must’ve been swimming in the lake. But… that wasn’t Rose coming up the path with him. No, this figure was distinctly male.

Memories of Christmas floated through David’s mind. When he’d brought Rose over right after his last game and explained that they were soulmates. Yuna had been immediately over the moon, practically planning a wedding already. But David had seen something in the set of Shane’s shoulders that made him believe there was more to it.

It started with an explanation of platonic bonds that felt like Shane was quoting from a parenting blog. Which, maybe he was. David thought his son was giving them a little less credit than they maybe deserved. They weren’t ignorant; soulmates weren’t terribly common and the bonds that did form were majority romantic, but one of his coworkers at the Treasury Board was platonic with her soulmate. Cheryl described him as something like a brother/best friend combo, while she was happily in love with her husband and he with his wife.

But that wasn’t it, either. The words spilled from Shane’s mouth, perhaps practiced but certainly unplanned for this particular occasion. Prompted by his lovely wife sticking her foot in her mouth and implying it might be too soon to tell the exact nature of Rose and Shane’s relationship. To which Shane very confidently rebutted that No, Mom, I can’t fall in love with Rose. I’m gay.

Shane’s eyes went shocked, then scared, then vacant. Rose held his hand. David put a hand on his son’s knee and thanked him. He and Yuna weren’t ignorant. They’d discussed the possibility after Shane’s tepid high school experience with Jessica. Idly, without really believing it, but still accounted for. And if David was being honest, the march of years where it was decently obvious Shane was getting laid on the regular while failing to introduce them to any women friends had slowly grown his suspicion. His immediate infatuation with Rose had been a bit of a surprise, really. Though, the reason for it was now obvious.

Yuna was a second behind him getting up to speed, but once she was there she pivoted like she always did. Reassured Shane that this changed nothing about how they loved him, affirmed his decision to remain closeted for the time being, which broke their hearts a little even as they understood his very good reasons for doing so. Had dinner and got to know their son’s new soulmate.

All of which to say, seeing Shane with another man wasn’t shocking. David could come up with many reasons why he’d kept this visitor a secret from them. Maybe the relationship was new and they weren’t at the “meet the parents” stage. Or they were just casual and had no intentions of ever getting to that point. Or the other guy was also closeted and wasn’t comfortable with them knowing and oh, shit, yeah, he should probably clear out if that was the case—

Then the approaching figure got just close enough for David to put a name to his features. Yep, there was no denying it, that was Ilya Rozanov. Okay. David could come up with a number of reasons why Rozanov would be here. He had to dig a little harder, but they were there. Had Shane grown tired of the rivalry and brought him out here to bury the hatchet? They seemed friendly, chatting idly about what to eat for lunch.

But then David watched Rozanov crowd Shane into the sliding glass door, gaze at his son with naked adoration and then kiss the ever-loving shit out of him and all those reasons collapsed together and David Hollander was faced with the startling realization that his boy was very possibly in love with his biggest rival and they were making out in front of him and Rozanov had a hand on Shane’s ass and oh fuck he’d been spotted.

The emotions flicked through his brain like files in a cabinet. Shock. Fear. And then Shane turned around and David saw that same fear in his eyes and all he could feel was was guilt. This wasn’t his to witness. He needed to leave.

But then something entirely unexpected happened. A third voice, accompanied by racing footsteps from down the hall that hosted the guest quarters and game room. “Ilya? Kid, what’s going— oh, shit.”

Stepping into the living room was none other than Scott Hunter, followed closely behind by the man David recognized from the Stanley Cup broadcast as his boyfriend. Whatever gears were turning in David’s head froze, brain jumping around conclusions with little rhyme or reason. Did Shane have… three guys? Did David just walk into a super secret hockey captain polycule?

Scott Hunter looked just as bluescreened as David. Then his eyes flicked to something over David’s shoulder.

“David!” Rose called, smile that was trying to be calm and reassuring but wavering into something significantly more anxious plastered across her face. And okay, maybe it was unfair but David relaxed a fraction. Here was one person who was supposed to be here. “Yep, uh, this looks weird! I promise it makes sense. Do you want to sit down?” She kept her eyes trained on him, but they had that look he sometimes caught on Cheryl.

He looked back through the window. Rozanov had Shane by the shoulders, their faces close, Shane’s eyes screwed shut while Rozanov’s mouth moved by his ear. Shane whispered something. Rozanov whispered back. Rose huffed out a slow, heavy breath to David’s left. To his right, the boyfriend — David really needed to remember his name — took Scott’s hand. Shane’s shoulders relaxed. He leaned into Rozanov’s chest, which quickly turned into a proper hug.

This wasn’t casual. Or a burying of the hatchet. Whatever his son had with Rozanov, it was very, very real. How everybody else in the house factored into that was secondary for the moment. What mattered right now is that Shane Hollander was in love with Ilya Rozanov and was scared his father would hate him for it.

“Mr. Hollander,” Scott Hunter blurted, moving closer and extending his hand. “It’s nice to officially meet you. I’m Scott, this is my boyfriend Kip.”

David could see what he was doing. Pulling his eyes away from the scene on the patio. David let him.

“Not sure thorough introductions are all that necessary, Scott,” David said, voice and handshake way stronger than he felt. He stuffed the urge to cling on to the proffered hand and demand to know why the fuck he was here and how he had gotten this close to Shane and what the fuck he had to do with Ilya Rozanov, but David could be patient when he needed to. “Congratulations on the Cup win. And the MVP. And the other thing.”

“Thank you, uh…” Scott was saved from continuing his slapshod plan by the sound of the back door sliding open.

“Dad,” Shane began, flat in that way he got when feelings were too big for his face. “I, uh, we’re gonna go change? You, um, you should call Mom. It’s better if you’re both here.”

David let go of Scott Hunter. “Yeah, kiddo. No problem.”

Shane and Rozanov disappeared into the master suite, leaving David standing in the middle of the world’s most awkward celebrity and celebrity-adjacent triangle.

Once again, Rose took point. “Scott, would you mind putting the kettle on? And Kip, uh, you might want to grab that bottle from the downstairs freezer.”

Blessed with a concrete task amidst their panic, the two men hopped into action. David let Rose guide him towards the couch. Once he was sat, with Rose watching him like a hawk and no doubt relaying his words over to Shane, he called Yuna. Kept it brief. Just asked her to come over because Shane had something he wanted to talk about. Didn’t mention Kip Grady or Scott Hunter or Ilya motherfucking Rozanov. Used that tone which told Yuna not to ask questions yet. She complied.

A few minutes later, raised voices drifted from the direction of Shane’s bedroom.

“That is not going to help.”

“Oh, they don’t know I play for Boston?”

Did Shane think they would really care about that?

“You don’t have another clean shirt?”

“I didn’t expect to be wearing many clo—” the words turned into muffled noise.

“Okay, fine, whatever, just shut up please!” Then, a second later, “Ew, Ilya!”

David was distracted by whatever else they were saying by Scott Hunter suddenly spitting into the sink, running his tongue across the back of his teeth. “Fucking lake water,” he muttered, then resumed placing tea bags into mugs.

Well, that was interesting.

By the time they’d all drifted into the living room, Rozanov in the offending Raiders T-shirt and steaming mugs of chamomile clutched in hands or resting on coasters, Yuna was knocking on the doorframe and announcing her arrival.

By unspoken (maybe?) agreement, Shane went to answer her.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hello, Shane. What did you want to talk about? I thought you and Rose were doing that soulmate retreat thing you sent us.”

“Yeah, uh, Rose is here. I just, uh. There are some other people here too? And it’s gonna look weird and not make any sense but I promise it does? Please don’t freak out?”

Yuna’s words grew louder as she moved into the house. “Shane, whoever it is I don’t think I’m going to— what the fuck?”

David watched it happen to her, like him, in stages. The cataloguing of familiar faces divorced from their comfortable contexts. Brain spinning trying to conjure reasons, any reason, that made sense within their existing schema. The slow, then all-at-once realization that those schema were dead fucking wrong and needed to be recalibrated. The fear of what reality would turn out to be.

“I said don’t freak out.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Yuna said, clearly freaking out.

“You’re totally freaking out!”

“Shane,” Rozanov’s voice cut through the burgeoning argument. “Invite your mother to sit down and we can start answering questions.”

Yuna’s gaze locked onto Rozanov, as if finally believing he was real and in the same room as her. It wasn’t really an order he’d given to Shane, but Yuna was determined to take at least some offense to it on his behalf.

David said, “Honey, come sit.”

His lovely wife blinked a few times, then took a spot on the couch next to him. Rose handed her a mug. She did not take a sip.

Shane stood in the center of the room, thumbs in the pockets of his shorts. “So, uh, there’s really no easy way to do this so I’m just gonna tell you the whats and then we’ll get into the whys. Is that okay?”

It was okay. He was their son.

“Alright, great. I’ll…” Shane trailed off, eyes on the ceiling, sucking in a deep breath.

“Start with what they know,” Rose said, “Then go from there.”

“Thank you, yes. So, Rose and I are soulmates. You know that. And Kip and Scott are boyfriends. What you don’t know is… first off, Scott and Ilya are also soulmates.”

Before Yuna got here, David promised himself he would be calm and rational and sit with whatever information was handed to him. Most of that flew right out the window as he worked through the implications of that relationship. Not only was Scott Hunter gay, but also apparently non-monogamous and Shane really was caught up in a super secret hockey captain polycule and—

“Platonic, Shane,” Rozanov interjected. His voice wasn’t terribly expressive in general, careful with his words, but David could detect the hints of the underlying panic.

Scott Hunter had no such compunctions about tone. “Very, very platonic, fuck Shane you have to lead with that.”

Okay. Great. The truth was at least one layer removed from the most outlandish scenario. David couldn’t quite decide if made things easier to understand or harder.

“Yes, right, platonic. Fuck, sorry. Yeah, uh, the only person here I kiss is Ilya. My boyfriend. Ilya Rozanov is my boyfriend.”

David had the benefit of witnessing them in an intimate moment. One that he’d necessitated, and was going to be beating himself up over for a very long time, but still. He’d seen. Yuna, whose only impression of Rozanov was hours of game footage and presser sound bites and commentator speculation and a goddamn Boston Raiders t-shirt stretched over his shoulders as he glowered from the corner of the couch, had no such benefit.

“But you hate him,” she blurted.

It broke David’s heart, the way Shane flinched. But Rose whispered something no one could hear and his son’s shoulders steeled up. “I mean, I get that, but no, I actually, uh… I love him. I did not want this to be how I told you, but it’s true.”

Yuna looked less than convinced, and David could tell Shane could tell. Thinking quickly he, threw his son a bone. “The All-Stars Game,” he said, thinking back to January. “You two had so much chemistry.” Whether or not that was an accurate assessment of their timeline was moot. He just wanted to put Yuna’s mind on a tangible moment of them acting like something other than bitter rivals.

“Yeah,” Shane said. “That was, um, actually—”

“Shane,” Scott Hunter interjected. “It might be easier to start from the beginning.”

“And when was that, exactly?” Yuna asked. “For… I guess all of you.”

The five of them exchanged a series of rapid-fire glances, communication across two bonds and an as-yet-unknown number of years of learned nonverbal signals.

After a moment, Rose took to her feet. “I’m gonna grab the whiteboard out of the practice rink.”

Whiteboard and color-coded dry erase markers in hand, the five of them sketched out a rainbow timeline that spanned the last decade, holy shit of introductions, encounters, and perfunctory glosses through sections David suspected were simply not the kind of thing you wanted your parents to know the intimate details of. They learned about the rink in Regina, the club in Lisbon, the house in Brooklyn, the wine bar in Montreal, the hotel room in Tampa and the boxes in Madison Square Garden. But there was one moment that was still missing.

“So, Shane, you and Rozanov—”

“Ilya, please.”

“Ilya, sure. When did you and Ilya make it official?”

Ilya swallowed hard and asked, “What time is it?”

Kip answered, “Um, 1:15?”

“Then about … ninety minutes ago?”

Yuna choked on her cold tea. Kip smacked Scott upside the head. “That’s why you were giggling like a fuckin preschooler and made me scratch that shot. You owe me a rematch!”

“Is not Scott’s fault you have no aim, solnyshko.”

“I was in the middle of a lynel fight when this one starts panicking and popping his thumbs so hard my fingers jerked Link off a cliff! If we’re handing out compensation I want mine, too.”

“Oh, come on, Rose, I cannot be held responsible for stick drift.”

“That wasn’t stick drift and you know it!”

“But you can never prove it, no?”

David watched the chaos unfold around him. Overlapping voices and a whiteboard full of history and a house covered in other people’s things. For so much of Shane’s life, it had just been him and his parents. The three of them against the world. But David knew that his son was lonely. Being close with your parents was a good thing, but it didn’t replace peer relationships.

He took Yuna’s hand in his. From the set of her eyebrows, David could tell she had come to the same conclusion. Messy and long-winded and explanation-defying as it was, these five were a family now.

David watched Ilya Rozanov. He hadn’t strayed much from his spot on the arm of the couch, within arm’s reach of his soulmate. Letting Shane and Rose handle the board, interjecting with a gentleness that belied his on-ice persona. Now that the markers were laid down, Shane drifted into his orbit, and Ilya’s entire body angled in response.

Despite how complicated the timeline was, David had made a profession out of making meaning from long streams of data. How to pull stories out of patterns. And the story that whiteboard told put Ilya Rozanov right in the middle. The axis from which the strings unfolded. A lonely, likely very scared boy, who’d stitched a brand new world between his fingers. A place where all the other lonely and scared people around him could build something real.

And they had worried, when Shane got serious about hockey. And again when he came out as gay. Worried about the loneliness and the fear. What David and Yuna saw before them didn’t look like loneliness or fear.

It looked like love. Five people, unpicked and restitched, apart and back together.