Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Canon Divergence, shane pygmalions ilya, testing the limits of compartmentalization, wildly exceeding the limits of compartmentalization

Language:

English

Series:

Part 6 of perfect from now on

Collections:

Anonymous

Stats:

Published: 2026-07-21 Words: 30,425 Chapters: 2/2

your famous golden touch

Summary

“What?” Shane’s lip twitched slightly, the most antagonistic expression he could ever muster. “You thought I was just gonna start handing over wads of cash?”
"Maybe leave it on the nightstand," Ilya said, shrugging. Shane’s jaw clenched and Ilya held his hands at his sides instead of touching the tight muscle.
“We’re going to do this the right way,” Shane said. Ilya sucked back laughter. There was no right way to do something this crazy, no standard procedure to follow, but he was curious what Shane would come up with.

The reigning NHL MVP can't afford the rehab he needs after getting in an off-season car wreck. Shane adds Ilya Rozanov to his investment portfolio.

Notes

title from dress rehearsal rag by leonard cohen, song of the fic. generally show canon has trumped book canon for me just bc the show is what I knew first, but for the sake of this fic I am reinstating book canon where instead of the two year sexting campaign they were hooking up regularly pre-Sochi. which i don't think ever comes up in the fic but is important to me in terms of the level of familiarity they have with each other at the point of canon divergence.

in my heart this is a one shot. It's separated into chapters at roughly the halfway mark purely for readability, rather than any real break in the story.

CW for like, weird power dynamics - ilya is reliant on shane for money and is also fucking him and it's not not being eroticized. And then CWs for references to suicide, drugs, sex work, car crashes, for mild internalized ableism during injury recovery, and for a hook up with an ethically dubious power imbalance not between shane and ilya. happy to elaborate in comments :)

this is all sort of ridiculous, suspension of disbelief starts NOW

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

Ilya was defined by extremes. Hockey was an identity-shaping vocation before it had a chance to be an enjoyable pastime, and he was the best before he had the chance to be good. He either slept until noon or didn’t sleep at all. His mother wasn’t miserable the way other kids’ moms were miserable, quietly and secretly; that was taken to an extreme too. His coaches always tried to get him to ease up in practice, because he’d risk hurting himself or a teammate, but Ilya never managed restraint for longer than one drill. His casual hookup was Shane Hollander, the most ill-advised casual hook up it was possible to conceive of, and two weeks after he won MVP, four weeks after he gave Boston their first championship in decades, he wrapped his car around a tree and was told he’d never play hockey again.

Obviously he got a second opinion, and the second opinion was: maybe. If he put the work in to his rehab, and if he was patient, and if he readjusted his expectations, maybe he’d get back on the ice. Ilya didn’t realize what the doctor meant about readjusting his expectations until his first night home from the hospital, when the world beyond the immediate needs of his body started seeping back in. He’d thought at first the doctor was referring to the expectations for the time frame, that he wouldn’t be back the next season, or even the season after. It clicked when he was staring at his bedroom ceiling that actually what he was allowed to expect was recovering to a degree where an NHL team might be willing to employ him. He couldn’t expect to be their focal point. That MVP, that cup, fuck, that all-star appearance, were likely his last. It was possible the car crash was the extreme to end all extremes; that he had reached his zenith and it had catapulted him into a life of mediocrity.

For a dramatic moment Ilya wanted to eschew the rehab entirely – because why be anything if he couldn’t be great – but his often belated yet nevertheless ruthless pragmatism finally showed up and took over. Ilya sat up in bed.

He had very few marketable skills, and even fewer licit ones. His education was a distant and sparse memory. He wasn’t sure he’d survive having to live in Russia all year round. Hockey was his only option for a livelihood, so he’d hold onto it with both hands, even if he could only grasp the fringes. His hands started sweating. He’d been ignoring everyone except his doctors since he woke up in hospital, but that was no longer a luxury he could afford. He wasn’t sure what luxuries he could afford; probably very few. He called his agent, but it was three am, and his agent did not pick up.

Ilya was due for a new contract this summer. It felt ridiculous that it hadn’t crossed his mind before. It had been the subject of every second conversation he’d had post winning the cup and pre near death experience. Boston had been going to give him fucking everything, they had been going to make him feel like a baby oligarch. And now they would give him nothing at all. Technically he had another year left of his current contract but he’d burned through the money and Boston would likely cut him instead of paying the advance he’d been banking on, and the prospect of his recovery was so distant it wouldn’t make sense for any team to give him a contract this summer.

Ilya was bad with money. He figured that out that night, on his own, after years of not thinking about it even once. His coke fiend brother, yes, but the cars and the clothes and the clubs, too, and the less frequent but still significant handouts to more distant family members, and the league fines he wore like badges of pride, and the apathy toward any sponsorship deal he couldn’t parlay into sex with Hollander. He’d known his bank accounts did not match the net worth reported online, but the next contract, stuff of legends, had been the answer to every brief foray into concern.

To stop feeling entirely helpless he canceled every direct debit he had set up that wasn’t for utilities, including one for a psychic reading service for a few rookies that he’d completely forgotten about. Jesus God, he was bad with money. Surely that would have been the same level of funny with a cheap psychic.

He had never worried. Ilya was good at not feeling safe, at not relying on anything, so how the hell had he come to rely on hockey? It was so temperamental, and with far more power to do him harm than any of the people his nervous system hissed at. But Ilya was defined by extremes; if he was going to be betrayed, it would be by something that could make the hurt count.

He met with his agent the next day, and belatedly wondered how he’d continue to pay them. He got the answer quick enough, part of the not unfeeling but no-nonsense debrief he received about his state of affairs.

He wasn’t entirely fucked – yes, Boston were cutting him, but so long as he was pursuing recovery and had a reasonable chance of it, the NHL would sponsor his stay in the country. His health insurance came from the player’s association, not his contract or the team, which he hadn’t realized before, so he could still get medical care and rehab, albeit not with the best of the best. His credit card debt could be repaid if he just returned or sold his most frivolous possessions. He owned his house and most of his cars, which he’d sell – if not for being in dire straits, then because his license had been confiscated by the state of Massachusetts. Maybe he’d sell the house, too, maybe it would be worth downsizing; he’d ask Svetlana what she thought. In the wrap up his agent described the meeting as a courtesy, and suggested that if Ilya was interested in retaining some form of representation during this next stage of his life (not career) he could contact this number to explore some of the less hands on services offered by the agency. It seemed the sports world had mourned him and moved on while he was still knocked out in surgery.

He texted Svetlana a summary of the meeting on his way out the door, and when he arrived back at his place she was already there. She was watching some documentary on the history channel, and – like she hadn’t rushed over to perform a welfare check – didn’t let him talk until it was over. He hadn’t seen her in over a month, because he hadn’t allowed visitors at the hospital. He supposed this was his punishment.

She yawned when the credits rolled and curled in to face him. “Not as bad as it could have been,” she said.

“No,” he agreed. This optimism was an ironic inside joke between them, and had been since his mother died. “I could be…”

“Yes, that would be worse,” she said, and smiled a little. “Oh, well. You’ll make it back, you’ll just have to be patient.”

He nodded, and wished it wasn’t an ironic inside joke. If all it took was his own tenacity and strength, then sure, but he was instead reliant on subtle orchestrations of the body that nobody could predict. He’d broken the bones in his leg straight through at three places, and he’d have missed at least a season for that alone, and maybe it would have stolen his speed and agility from him, made him a lesser player, but such a blunt injury was easy to respond to. The history channel told him cavemen had known how to handle broken bones. His actual problem was the nerve damage in his left arm. He couldn’t make a fist or move his fingers independently of each other, and the rehab would not be blood, sweat, and tears, how he’d like it, but rather learning to tie his shoes and maneuver cutlery and board game pieces. And for as small and dissatisfying as the work felt, it dictated whether or not he’d be able to hold a hockey stick for a living. Brute force would not knit his nerves back together.

“The money,” Svetlana said.

“I could sell my house,” he said, tilting it slightly into a question.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “It would be slow money, but money. Maybe. If you were willing to live somewhere shitty. It would be risky, during a period of instability, giving up a home you can count on. Renting is risky, and you won’t get a mortgage.”

Ilya shrugged.

“You could live with me for a while,” she said, and then they both laughed at how pained she’d sounded.

“I’ll need an income,” he said. “Even if I get back to the NHL, it could be years. It would be good to have enough for specialist care, but even if not. I’ll need something steady.”

“You’d be able to do ads,” Svetlana said. “Local ads. You’re basically becoming Boston folklore as we speak. But nothing high end, and you’ll only be able to do so many.”

Ilya nodded. He hadn’t really thought about the fans, about what it meant to have lost him so soon after he won for them. He didn’t want to think about it. High end sponsorships had been off the table for him since his rookie year, because he’d had a sponsorship with some cologne brand and then someone in a club had asked him to say fuck that brand and he had, and it had been on video. His agent had said with the cup win they’d roll out a narrative that he’d matured, but that was obviously off the table too.

“Also,” Svetlana said, slowly. “You have access. People pay a lot of money for access.”

Ilya shifted in place, tried to work it out, never liked having to ask for an explanation. “You mean the people I know,” he said, and at her nod: “The places I can get into.”

“Yes,” she said. “You could make connections. People would pay you to make connections on their behalf.”

“Do you know these people?” he asked.

She nodded. He opened his mouth but she spoke over him. “Don’t agree straight away,” she said. “Think about it. It’s risky, and you haven’t been so lucky lately.”

Ilya’s decision wasn’t made by thinking about it. He got a call after Svetlana left that evening, late enough to make it morning in Russia. It was from Polina, the name on his screen a surprise both because she had never called before and because he hadn’t realized he had her number saved. His father had wandered from the house and gotten lost. She had found him again, but it was getting worse, had been getting steadily worse, and she couldn’t handle it any longer. His father needed proper care. If his stepmother knew about the car crash, she made no reference to it, and it wasn’t like it would change the situation at hand. Ilya was responsible because Alexei couldn’t be, and even in the mess he’d made for himself he was more reliable than his brother. He no longer just needed what it took to get by; he needed real money, to pay people for hours of backbreaking work. So he told Svetlana he was interested.

Ilya had been a big enough deal in the hockey world that he’d been able to cross bridges to other worlds, worlds of real wealth and celebrity. He wasn’t sure how long it would last – the general public didn’t know yet that he might never play again – but he found his name hadn’t been taken off lists. So he went along, and brought plus ones, or just talked about friends of his.

It got him a nice allowance and he was good at it. He wasn’t even sure what he was doing was illegal. It was probably illegal, but it wasn’t like he was taking cash for drugs. Svetlana wouldn’t let him do something so risky or so gauche. He was just making introductions. Passing on information.

He’d seen people like him at parties before, their presence never directly questioned or explained, feeding off the real guests but making it worth their while. Now he was the tiny insect sucking on the great beast, and he expected it to be humiliating. It was, of course, such a reversal of fortune laid bare, being confronted with questions that never reached him in his fortress of a home, but in another way it was re-affirming. He was a tragic figure, stripped of wealth and status, and he still never flinched first. He could still make grown men try desperately to impress him. Some of his power, it seemed, was not incidental, some of it was in the core of him. Even with everything he’d lost, something of Ilya Rozanov remained.

Time moved slowly. He’d been working on rehabbing his hand essentially since he woke up from surgery, and soon after being discharged he started on his leg, too, learning to walk again. He’d dropped weight and lost muscle in the hospital, and he wasn’t getting much back. The people his health insurance paid for were not used to working with professional athletes; their goal was getting him functional in a very basic sense. If there was a regime he could follow to feel more like himself, he didn’t know it and neither did they. It felt impossible to imagine getting from where he was to what was needed to survive on the ice, but he couldn’t think like that. At the very least he couldn’t let other people think like that, he needed everyone to keep believing he had a shot. He got good at hiding his state from other people; if the guests were drunk enough, he could get through a party without people realizing he was hurt.

The season started and he kept up with it. He’d tried to avoid hockey at first, but Svetlana made it impossible, continuing to talk about it and putting it on the TV whenever she was over. She was right, of course, and it didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought it would. He could rise above his bitterness, just appreciate the sport for what it was. It was more beautiful to him now that he’d lost it, became almost mythological, like he was watching Gods battle. He wished he’d gotten injured on the ice instead of in his car, so that he could more firmly feel like part of the mythology too.

He didn’t watch Boston games, and he didn’t watch Montreal, so when the headline game of the night was Montreal and Boston’s first match up of the season, he kept the TV off. Even if he were to watch one of the other games, there would be clips and stats and comments shared on that broadcast too, everybody’s attention half in Boston.

At eleven he began contemplating sleep, and the unduly complex decision making process was interrupted by his phone ringing. He was probably more shocked than he should have been to see Jane’s contact flash to life. In his city for the first time in half a year.

Shane had been among the clamor of questions and concern on Ilya’s phone when he’d finally examined it after being released from hospital, and he had firmly shelved those texts in the no-response-required category. His hockey purgatory was an obvious end to what they had, their night in Vegas a fitting farewell, a perfect representation of what they had been, hot and painful, with Ilya never fully convinced the former made the latter worthwhile.

Shane hadn’t given up immediately, more texts filtering through during the off-season, tortured attempts at casual check ins that Ilya couldn’t respond to on account of how deeply they pissed him off. The last text would have been during Montreal’s training camp, and Ilya wasn’t surprised that the contact had ended once the season started. Two diverging paths, Ilya and hockey, getting further and further away from each other. Ilya didn’t let himself feel too much regret about it. He regretted now pulling away after the Olympics, squandering opportunities to see Shane as though they were plentiful and guaranteed. But it was done, and in the past, and it already felt like a different life.

Ilya rejected the call, and Shane called back and Ilya rejected it, and Shane kept calling back and Ilya kept rejecting it instead of just letting it ring out, less because he was so adamant about not talking to Shane and more because it was weirdly satisfying, like a game of whack-a-mole. Eventually he pulled up their chat while the phone kept ringing and texted – one handed, slow and awkward – what do you want. Shane responded, where do you live.

Ilya stared at the text in surprise. This wasn’t how Shane conducted himself when he wanted sex, and it was making Ilya curious. He was also antsy from not having had the opportunity to pursue a bad idea in a while, legally gray source of income aside. And, frankly, he was bored. Turning to Shane Hollander for a reprieve from boredom might at first sound oxymoronic, but he would at least feel startlingly different to the people Ilya had been spending time with recently.

For one of these reasons, or maybe for another, Ilya sent Shane his address, and then got himself ready. As he showered he tried to imagine the night in front of him. He knew there was no chance Shane would be willing to show up, fuck, and leave, that Shane would come with questions, and Ilya was wary of the faces he’d make if Ilya answered them. Ilya wondered what the questions would be, and if Shane would have the guts to ask the ones he really wanted to. Shane must have some morbid curiosity about it – did it cross his mind, that something like this could happen to him? That one day hockey could just be gone? He was surprised Shane was willing to stand in the same room as him, superstitious as he was. Maybe Ilya’s bad luck would prove contagious.

Ilya dried off enough to pull a hoodie on before answering the door to Shane, in equal parts due to the surgical scar along his forearm and the depleted muscle mass. He wore sweat pants loose enough to cover his boot without any telling stretch. Shane looked him up and down, and Ilya didn’t know what conclusion he reached before pushing Ilya aside and walking in. Ilya grinned, instantly giddy. Nobody had been less than gentle with him in months.

“Nice place,” Shane said. It was, which made Ilya feel a little weird, being in the situation he was in and still living in the home of a star hockey player. He hadn’t sold in the end, because he didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with the process and he couldn’t quite work out how worthwhile it would be.

“You want to buy it from me?” Ilya asked. “Looking for investment?” Shane couldn’t really know why that joke worked, and he looked confused when he turned to face Ilya again.

“No,” he said, and then shifted. “How are you?”

Ilya didn’t know how to answer that, and Shane flushed, as though it was an embarrassing question to have asked. It was an exceedingly normal question, and Ilya was embarrassed by his own inability to respond.

“I mean, other than weeping over us beating you tonight,” Shane added, lame as anything. Ilya refused to acknowledge Shane still seeing him as a synecdoche for Boston.

“I did not know Boston lost, I did not watch,” he said, and Shane looked shocked and hurt, which Ilya didn’t know what to do with. “Why are you here?”

“The team were talking about you, about what you’ve been up to,” Shane said. “There are rumors.”

“Okay,” Ilya said.

Shane lowered his voice. “They say you’re fucking dealing drugs.”

Ilya tried not to laugh. “I am not dealing drugs.”

Shane looked so relieved Ilya clenched his one working fist. Shane said, “So they’re lying?”

Ilya wouldn’t go that far. “They are confused.”

“What does that mean? What are you doing?”

Ilya should have told him it was none of his business and kicked him out. Ilya wondered how lonely he’d been, these last few months, that he didn’t do that. “I am helping some people out, it is not drug dealing, but it is… maybe not fully legal.”

“Are the people you’re helping dealing drugs?” Shane asked, and Ilya shrugged.

Shane turned around and walked further into the house, leaned his hands on Ilya’s kitchen island and hung his head. It was overly familiar with the space. Ilya got goosebumps.

“You are going to report me?” Ilya asked.

“Fuck no,” Shane said, spinning around. “But someone could, if my dumbass teammates somehow know about it. What the hell are you thinking? You’re just going to throw your life away for some thrills? Didn’t get enough of those crashing your car?”

“Wow,” Ilya said. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been this clueless around Shane before. He had no idea what was going on with him.

“Sorry,” Shane said, wincing. “Not – I’m obviously very sorry about what happened to you, it’s awful, I don’t mean to make light of it.”

Ilya knew that. The first few texts Shane had sent in the aftermath had been pretty telling. Ilya should delete them. “I am not throwing my life away,” he said, placating.

“That’s what it looks like,” Shane said. “You could get, like, kicked out of the country or something. I don’t get it. Don’t you want to play hockey again?”

“That is all I want,” Ilya said, and then was hit by how strong that desire really was, more of a need, the oasis in the desert, glimmering but impossibly distant and possibly a mirage. He felt momentarily breathless. He’d been holding it at bay for a while. He’d been holding a lot of things at bay. He’d been as present as he needed to be during all this to survive, and no more. It reminded him of the first year after his mother died, and the last year before getting drafted, existing slightly outside himself, waiting. He felt like he’d just fallen back into his body from a considerable height, the impact jarring him. He’d known that inviting Shane over would prove a bad idea – he’d just been curious to figure out bad in what direction. “This is how I do that.”

“Criminal activity does not lead to a successful hockey career,” Shane said.

“Money does,” Ilya said. “I need money.”

“You have money,” Shane said, frowning. “You were the first overall pick, you got money.”

“I was banking on big contract this summer,” Ilya said, trying to keep the shame invisible and inaudible. “Was not exactly saving.”

“Okay,” Shane said, taking a moment to adjust to the news. “But surely there are other ways – you could do sponsorships, ad campaigns.”

“Yes,” Ilya said. “I have looked at that, it would not be enough. I cannot get big brands now, and it would dry up, too. I will be in recovery for long time, I need reliable income.”

Shane shifted in place. “How much do you need?”

Ilya was already being shockingly forthcoming, but he wasn’t going to tell Shane about his father. “A lot,” he said. “For recovery. Proper recovery.”

“Right,” Shane said. “Player insurance doesn’t get you shit.”

Ilya nodded. He was still relying on the player insurance, but if he lived in the world where he wasn’t paying for his father’s care, he wouldn’t be.

Shane sat down and Ilya went to the fridge, which contained nothing that Shane would accept, so Ilya didn’t offer. He got himself a soda and wondered if Shane noticed that through the process, opening the door, picking up the soda, closing the door, popping the tab, he only used one hand. He sat down beside Shane, in the position that hurt his leg the least without drawing attention to it. He wondered if he could salvage sex from this interaction, and if so, what kind of sex he’d be comfortable with.

“Okay,” Shane said. “Okay. I’ll pay for it.”

Ilya took a sip. “Pay for what?”

“The rehab,” Shane said. “Whatever you need. I can pay.”

Ilya stared at him, and Shane didn’t blink. Ilya laughed.

“Shut up,” Shane said. “It makes sense. Makes a lot more sense than ending up in jail.”

“It makes sense?” Ilya asked. “Paying for your rival to recover and come back to league?”

“Yes!” Shane said.

Ilya made sure it sounded patronizing when he said, “That is very kind—”

“I’m not being kind,” Shane said. “This isn’t just about you, you know, this doesn’t just effect you. I mean, haven’t you thought about me at all, through this?”

Every second thing out of Shane’s mouth was knocking Ilya off center. “Yes, Hollander, I have missed your mouth very much.”

“Not what I fucking mean,” Shane said, teeth gritted. “I mean I wiped the floor with your old team tonight and it was barely interesting. Boston games used to be such a highlight. And now when I win my first cup, and my first MVP, it won’t even count as beating you because you won’t be there. We made the league exciting. You don’t get to just squander that, I should have a say in it too.”

Ilya inhaled and exhaled, tried to sound reasonable and reassuring. “I am going to come back,” he said, almost like he believed it. “I am going to—”

“Not if you’re in jail!” Shane’s hands squeezed his knees. “You really have no other options? You’re not thrill seeking with this, it’s really your best option for money?”

“Yes,” Ilya said, because that was mostly true. If he really had an issue with it he could have said no and tried to get by on ads and living with Svetlana.

“Well, now you have a better one,” Shane said. “And maybe this is weird or crazy of me, but what does that matter to you? If you’re willing to take money from whoever you’re taking it from right now, why not take it from me?”

Ilya stared at him. “Is a lot of money,” he said.

“I have a lot of money,” Shane said.

“This is – a lot,” Ilya said, not sure how to be more eloquent. He was pretty convinced that even if his father wasn’t ailing, and he’d been responsible with his money, he’d still struggle to make what he had last for the next few years.

“So you’re getting the best care?” Shane asked. “Good. Look, I can afford it. You’re the one always making fun of me for the ad campaigns and the real estate. I don’t do that shit for fun.”

Ilya was pretty sure ad campaigns and real estate were exactly Shane’s idea of fun, but he got what he meant. Shane looked serious, as earnest as Ilya had ever seen him. It was a stupid idea but not stupid for Ilya, stupid for Shane. Ilya wouldn’t be the one to fuck it up. He tried to tread carefully.

If he could rely on his and Svetlana’s math, his expenses, including the care, were sixty thousand a year. Not having to pay rent was a blessing. But Shane wanted him to do more advanced physical therapy, and Ilya knew from his ill-advised research that could be an extra twenty or thirty grand. Part of Shane’s motivation was making Ilya stop engaging in his illicit work, so he couldn’t just take Shane’s money for the PT and continue with the current arrangement to cover other costs. That meant Shane would have to cover the cost of his father’s care, a situation Ilya had no intention of telling Shane about. So he would have to lie to Shane about what he needed the money for.

“I need around ninety thousand a year,” Ilya said, and Shane didn’t flinch. Distantly, Ilya noticed himself finding that attractive.

“Canadian or American dollars?” Shane asked.

Ilya made a face. “Why the fuck would it be Canadian?”

“Okay,” Shane said. “I can do that. It’s an investment, right?”

Ilya realized he should lie about something else. Shane wanted him back on the ice because he wanted the restoration of their rivalry, but that wasn’t in the cards. If Ilya got back on the ice, he’d likely be one of the players Shane found it insulting to go against in a face off. He should lie about that, as easily as he’d lied about how much PT would cost, but found he couldn’t. “Hollander,” he said, his voice regretful. “It is not – you could get me back in league, but it is not guaranteed. And even if I do end up playing again, they say I will not be myself. You will not get your rivalry back. You will be alone at the top.”

Shane sat up straight, looked insulted. “Who said that?”

“My doctor,” Ilya said.

“Just one doctor?”

“The other doctor said I would not play at all,” Ilya said.

“You only spoke to two doctors?” Shane shook his head. “Doctors always underestimate recovery, especially for athletes. I’ve read about it. Sports medicine moves so fast, it gets better every year, their prognoses are always like half a decade out of date, at best. If you’re getting the best treatment, I bet you can be back to yourself in two or three years.”

Shane didn’t even know the details of his injuries, so this was nothing more than wishful thinking. But if he needed to believe the Hollander Rozanov era of the NHL had not met its sordid end, then Ilya wouldn’t argue. “Maybe,” he said.

Shane nodded resolutely. “So you’ll let me pay?” he asked. “And focus on your recovery, and take it seriously?”

“Hollander, this is really crazy.”

“People spend money on stupider things,” Shane said.

Ilya recalled the psychic. “Yes, okay. If you do not change your mind, I would do this.”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” Shane said, and Ilya believed him. He stood up and then started moving slowly down, hoping the slowness looked like teasing. He really shouldn’t kneel on tile, and he’d been good at complying with all that was asked of him up until this moment. It was a little ironic, considering what had motivated Shane to come over, that the visit was what made Ilya reckless with his recovery.

When his knees touched tile, and he kept his face blank of pain, Shane said, too breathy, “What are you doing?”

“Thanking you,” Ilya said.

“I don’t—I don’t need to be thanked.”

Ilya looked up, dubious. “You don’t want blowjob?”

“That’s not what I said,” Shane said, flushed. “Just. The blowjob and the money should be two different things.”

Ilya laughed. “Okay,” he said, and got Shane’s dick out. Soft, which was disappointing. Ilya had found their discussion pretty hot. At least Shane was just in boxers and sweats, and Ilya had been able to maneuver him free one handed without it being all that conspicuous. His other hand cupped Shane’s thigh, because he could at least manage that, and he leaned in. In what felt like another life, Ilya had planned for his first time with Shane after Vegas to be softened, to be nicer. He wasn’t sure he could muster that now, but he could at least not be mean. It didn’t take long for Shane to harden beneath his tongue and fingers, and Ilya didn’t drag it out, taking Shane into his mouth and working him fast enough he risked pulling a muscle in his neck, in no small part because he didn’t want to spend too long kneeling.

He hadn’t just been fucking with Shane, he was grateful, he was motivated by gratitude. He still couldn’t entirely believe that this offer would go anywhere, but even just this evening, the way Shane had talked to him, exactly how he’d talked to him when Ilya was the league MVP, made Ilya feel closer to living than he had since he’d woken up in the hospital. Shane’s hands curled into his hair, firm and pulling because that was how Ilya touched Shane’s hair, and Ilya pushed in further, his nose brushing Shane’s neat pubes. His fucked hand stayed curled on Shane’s thigh, trying to squeeze like it was one of his rehab exercises, the other slipping up and feeling over Shane’s chest. He was turned on and high with sex in a way he’d forgotten he could get, his dick heavy between his legs. Shane’s breaths started cutting off, and Ilya could feel the heat of him bending over him, one of Shane’s hands slipping down to slide over Ilya’s neck, down the back of the hoodie. He wondered if Shane noticed his back feeling different, less.

His hand moved from Shane’s thigh to his balls, knuckling at them with a light touch that could be read as deliberately teasing, even if it was unlike Ilya to bother with teasing this far along. Shane came and Ilya took it, kissed exaggeratedly on Shane’s thighs as Shane caught his breath. Pulled back and grinned up at him, and Shane, shining and blissed out, grinned back. “Fuck, I needed that.”

Old pride bloomed in Ilya. There was a decent chance it was Shane’s first sexual encounter since Vegas, which would explain why he was so effected, but Ilya was willing to take some credit too. It was something he would have said before, and had now proven true – that he could make Shane see God with one hand tied behind his back.

Ilya stood, turning away so Shane wouldn’t see the wince, and then felt Shane’s hands at his waistband. He flinched away. “I jerked off in shower before you came over,” he said. “Not up for it.”

His extremely up for it dick twitched at Shane’s wide eyed disappointment. He couldn’t explain the decision, really. It made sense not wanting to get naked in front of Shane, given his current state, but Shane hadn’t removed a single item of clothing and he’d still come down Ilya’s throat. There was no reason to think Ilya couldn’t find a way to return the favor.

“Oh,” Shane said. Ilya picked up the neglected soda can and took a mouthful, gurgling to be obnoxious. He finished it, squashed it in his hand, and threw it in the trash. Shane was frowning, his eyes fixed on Ilya’s backsplash, his fingers tapping on the island counter. Oh, God.

“You want to shower?” Ilya asked, because often that was what Shane needed when he got in his head after sex. Ilya had on multiple occasions sent a distracted Shane into the shower and received a resolved and happy Shane from it minutes later. A kitchen blowjob didn’t really warrant one, but it was apparently a good place for him to think things through.

Shane looked up at him and shook his head, which meant whatever was going on wasn’t something he needed to come down from. “I’ll arrange a meeting for us,” he said. “To sort it out. It’d have to be in Montreal, if you could get up.”

Ilya squinted at him. “Meeting for what?”

“What?” Shane’s lip twitched slightly, the most antagonistic expression he could ever muster. “You thought I was just gonna start handing over wads of cash?”

“Maybe leave it on the nightstand,” Ilya said.

Shane’s jaw clenched and Ilya held his hands at his sides instead of touching the tight muscle. “We’re going to do this the right way,” Shane said. Ilya sucked back laughter. There was no right way to do something this crazy, no standard procedure to follow, but he was curious what Shane would come up with.

“Okay,” he said.

“It’ll be with my money manager, Pete,” Shane said. “The meeting.”

“You are making this job up,” Ilya said, after a pause.

“Jesus Christ,” Shane said, almost to himself. “I’m not. My money manager and my lawyer, just to be careful. Obviously my lawyer has to keep everything confidential, and Pete’s on NDAs too, but I’d still prefer they know as little as possible about – us. So don’t say anything, don’t hint at anything. Please.”

The please had a notably different tone than what Ilya was used to from Shane, a begrudging formality like a child prompted by their mother to be polite. Ilya said, “They will not understand why you are doing this if we do not tell them how good I am at sucking dick.”

“Oh my God, that, don’t make jokes like that.” Ilya hadn’t really been joking. “And I don’t need them to understand, they’ll still facilitate this.”

Ilya was hit with a pang of sentimental longing for the kind of assuredness in other people’s compliance that only came from having more money than them. He shrugged his own compliance.

“Good,” Shane said. “I could probably do two days from now. Tuesday. Would that work for you?”

“Yes,” Ilya said, deciding not to make a sarcastic show of checking his calendar.

“Good,” Shane said, again. “I’ll, um. I’ll book you a flight.”

Ilya’s eyes flickered up just as Shane’s dropped down. That would certainly make things real. Ilya wondered if he’d shell out for first class. “Okay,” he said.

Shane’s exit was flushed and hurried, like they’d done something a lot more depraved than an unreciprocated blowjob, which maybe they had. Ilya texted Svetlana I found a sugar daddy and fell asleep smiling.

Shane did pay for first class, which honestly proved less of a luxury and more of a necessity. Ilya could probably have gotten a doctor’s note for extra leg space. Shane also sent a car to pick him up from the airport, so Ilya couldn’t show up late the way he would have liked.

The meeting was taking place in a bland but high class office building. First floor, which Ilya hoped wasn’t a concession to his limited mobility. A woman at the front desk smiled when he gave his name and led him to a conference room. He was surprised to find Shane waiting by its door, rather than already inside. Shane grabbed him, ungentle again, and pulled him to the side. He spoke quietly. “Look,” he said. “These are my team, they’ve known me for years, known my family for years. They’re already really confused about why I’m doing this. I really need you to be discreet. Can you do that?”

Shane had asked this of him when he was in Ilya’s house, and Ilya couldn’t understand, after years of trust, where the paranoia was coming from. And then he could – they had trusted each other because being outed was mutually assured destruction, a premise that didn’t hold now that Ilya was already destroyed. What did he have to lose, if he no longer played in the NHL? It disturbed him most that it seemed like Shane had already thought of this.

“I will say nothing,” he said, and took some comfort from Shane accepting that, at least.

They walked in together, but when Ilya sat in the closest available seat to the door, Shane rounded the table and sat beside the man who must have been Pete. The room’s other occupant, a woman and presumably the lawyer, sat on a chair away from the table, with a laptop on her lap.

“So,” Shane said, apparently holding court. “Um, we all know why we’re here—”

“Why?” Ilya asked.

“You know why,” Shane said.

“It might be good to lay it out,” Pete said. “So we know we’re starting on the same page.”

Ilya smiled.

“Well, Rozanov can’t afford the rehab he needs to get back to the league,” Shane said. “So I’ll pay for it.”

“And—” Ilya began.

“And whatever else he needs to get by until he gets himself another contract,” Shane said. As Shane spoke, Ilya largely kept his eyes on the money manager. He’d never gotten to watch someone realize Shane was insane before.

Although, having given it more thought, it wasn’t insane to Ilya. If Hollander had been taken out of the game he’d feel the same way. There had been times, over the years – when he was on a five game road trip against mediocre teams with lackluster crowds – where what drove him to put on a show was the knowledge that Shane had put on a show the night before. It was obviously the same for Shane. Ilya was surprised no hockey nerd had ever tracked how their successes clustered, how Shane having a big game was so often immediately followed by Ilya having a big game and vice versa. If Ilya had lost that, he’d have lost a lot of the magic of hockey. He understood how Shane felt, but he was the only person on earth who could.

“He should get sportsmanship award,” Ilya said.

“That would mean this going public,” Shane said. “Which it never will.”

Pete and the lawyer looked relieved by that. “Right,” Pete said. “Well. How this meeting will go – first we’ll talk about what’s expected of you, Mr. Rozanov. And then once that’s agreed, we can talk about what you need from Shane.”

“Call me Ilya,” Ilya said, smiling wide.

“Ilya,” Pete said, cautiously returning the smile. “This is all just about getting on the same page. Don’t let the lawyer scare you, there’s no contract or anything. But we will produce a document, just so nothing discussed today gets lost in the shuffle. Consider it a memorandum of understanding. Okay?”

Ilya nodded.

Pete nodded back and asked, “How much are you currently paying for your rehab?”

“Around five grand a month,” Ilya lied.

“Around?” Pete asked. “We’ll need specific figures. Because of the condition of anonymity, we’ll transfer the money to you rather than paying directly, but we’ll need to see receipts. Where are you currently receiving it?”

Ilya really wished Shane would have just left the money on the nightstand. “Um, well, thing is, I want to change,” Ilya said. “I am not so happy there. So I do not know how much it will be if I change. Specifically.”

Pete looked skeptical, but before he had a chance to interrogate Ilya, Shane leaned forward. “Oh, good, because—well, are you with the Liberty Clinic right now?”

“Ah, no,” Ilya said.

“Okay, because I was doing research, and I think that’s where you should go,” Shane said.

“Okay,” Ilya said, as Pete pushed over a wad of papers toward him. Research indeed.

“Really?” Shane said. “They’re doing some cutting edge stuff. And they have a sensory deprivation tank.”

“Yes, I said okay,” Ilya said. Whatever got him the money easiest. Shane looked disappointed he didn’t get to lay out his case.

“Okay,” Shane said. “And obviously part of this arrangement is minimizing the amount of risks you take. So there’s an understanding that you won’t do anything stupid.”

“Do anything that could set back your progress,” the lawyer revised in real time.

“Well, I don’t have a driving license any more,” Ilya said, but it wasn’t the right audience for the joke.

“Drinking and drugs,” Shane said.

“Illicit substances,” the lawyer said, and Ilya was delighted when Shane rolled his eyes. He bit his tongue against asking if Shane thought Ilya having sex with people other than him counted as risky behavior. Not in front of Pete.

“I am having drink every now and then, but I am not partying or anything,” Ilya said, which was honest. “You want me to stop drinking?”

Shane frowned. “Moderation is probably fine.”

“Okay,” Ilya said.

“Okay,” Shane said. “And are you still smoking?”

Ilya made a face. “Only very rarely.”

“Well, you’ll obviously have to quit. And we’ve focused on physical rehab, but there are other elements of a recovery that are important too. Like nutrition is massive, so I’d like to pay for a nutritionist and a chef too. Are you up for that?”

“Yes,” Ilya said, and it did not get the reaction he expected. He wasn’t sure when Shane had become so hard to predict.

“Stop fucking saying yes,” Shane hissed, leaning across the table, as though he expected his lawyer and money manager not to hear. “Argue back.”

Ilya smiled. “You read book on business negotiations?” he asked. “You want to test your new skills?”

“Fuck off, shut up,” Shane said. Not only were Pete and the lawyer seeing Shane’s insanity, but his immaturity too. This meeting had a silver lining. “That’s not what I mean. Just – don’t just go along with things. When have you ever just gone along with things?”

Ilya shrugged. “You are giving me money, so I am getting what I want,” he said. “I do not mind you getting what you want too.”

Shane looked at him, wide eyed and tensed. “Fine,” he said. “I want updates on your rehab. Weekly. And I want to be able to talk to the doctors and PTs and trainers you’re working with.”

Ilya couldn’t tell if Shane actually wanted that, or if he just wanted Ilya to balk. If it was the latter, the gambit succeeded. “I will tell you if I am not making progress,” Ilya said.

“That’s not what I said,” Shane said. “I want to know if they think you’re not eating right.”

Ilya’s fucked up hand made its most valiant effort to date to form a fist. “You are not my nurse.”

“No, I’m just paying the nurse. I need to know you’re as serious about this as I am.”

The idea that Shane could care more about getting Ilya back to the league than Ilya did should have been laughable. Ilya opened his mouth to protest again, but Pete leaned forward.

“Actually, Shane’s making a good point, Ilya,” he said, and Ilya whipped his glare to him. Pete looked only momentarily thrown off. “Monitoring return on investment. We should get updates.”

Ilya stared at him. He couldn’t see what Shane’s face was doing, but he heard the distaste when he said, “Not we. And not – that’s not what I mean.”

“Okay, yes,” Ilya said. “Monitor me, fine.”

“Rozanov,” Shane said, and somehow, with all the power he had, it sounded pleading.

“What else do you want?” Ilya asked. He couldn’t help being so hostile – he’d liked this idea when Shane had brought it to him, and it wasn’t the kind of thing to injure his pride. He liked less the boardroom setting and the lawyer taking notes.

Shane stared at him for a few moments before shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said. “That’s it.”

“Okay,” Ilya said. “So now I get to say what I need?”

He directed it to Pete, who nodded.

“I want a driver,” Ilya said. “Full time.”

“I’m not paying for your own personal driver, that’s ridiculous,” Shane said. “We’ll put a service on retainer.”

To Ilya’s ears that was the same thing. Shane did not use a driver, or a service, but it did not surprise Ilya that he still had an opinion on which was the more fiscally responsible option.

“I want a cleaning service,” Ilya said. Probably the worst part of his newfound lack of money was having to clean his house himself, which he could at least partially blame on the fact that he was essentially operating one handed.

“Done,” Shane said.

“And I want a dog.”

“I’m not getting you a dog.”

“You do not need to pay for the dog, I will get them from shelter,” Ilya said, waving his hand. “But food, toys, vet trips. You know.”

“I have no idea what owning a dog entails, actually,” Shane said. “And I’m not going to find out. You’re not getting a dog. No distractions.”

“I do not like you being this controlling,” Ilya said, because that was as good a way to frame his next ask as any. “I think you should just give me monthly allowance I can do what I want with. I am not signing up for you controlling everything about my life.”

“How much?”

“I can be reasonable,” Ilya said. “Like four grand a month. I have lifestyle expectations.” Ilya was not quite sure if that was the phrase he was trying to think of. He was trying to think of what it had been called when the universally (locker-room-wide) reviled ex-wives of some of his former teammates had demanded large and regular payments on the grounds that their having been rich before meant it was unjust to make them suddenly not rich.

Shane glared at him. “I’m not paying for you to get coked out every weekend.”

“So cute to think I wait for weekend,” Ilya said, and then rolled his eyes. “I don’t want fucking coke, I will go along with your rules. But I want nice food and nice clothes. And to watch movies and play video games.”

“We’re happy to provide you with enough to cover living expenses,” Pete said. “But I wouldn’t say it’s that steep, given my understanding you don’t pay rent. And considering you’ll have food covered by the chef, something more along the lines of two thousand a month would already be generous.”

“Canadian or American dollars?” Ilya asked.

“He’s fucking with you,” Shane said, before Pete could answer. “Just give him what he wants. I can afford it, it’s okay.”

Pete sighed but acquiesced and Ilya tried to tame his smile. That was his father taken care of, with a little on top to cover Ilya’s actual lifestyle expectations, which it seemed would largely be electricity and water.

“Any further requests, Mr. Rozanov?” Pete asked. First name basis hadn’t lasted long.

“No, that is all,” Ilya said.

“Great,” Pete said. “Now, I understand there’s a lot of uncertainty around your prognosis. What makes sense to me is reviewing how things are going every three months—”

“Six months,” Shane said.

“Okay, six months,” Pete said, not sounding surprised, as though it was a disagreement they’d already had. “To make sure you’re making progress and that this…”

“That you are not wasting your money on me,” Ilya said. “I understand.”

Ilya had been hoping for a little alone time with Shane, and it seemed like Shane had scheduled it in because there was still four hours before the return flight when the meeting wrapped up. In the lobby, a safe distance from his team, Shane said, “Your car will be here in five.”

Ilya glanced at him. “And bring me to yours?” he asked, voice low.

Shane frowned. “No, what? To the airport.”

Ilya’s eyes widened. “You cannot be serious. Four hours early?”

“Traffic is rough this time of day,” Shane said. “It’ll be three hours early.”

“Deranged.”

Shane’s lip twitched.

“Come on, Hollander,” Ilya said. “You don’t want to get off? You don’t want another thank you?”

It bombed harder than Ilya had ever bombed with Hollander before, which wasn’t saying much. He had a pretty nice track record up until now. Shane grimaced and folded his arms across his chest, a physical barrier between them. “That’s why I don’t want to,” he said. “Look, I think we need to put distance between what went down in that room and what happens between us when we’re alone. I don’t want them getting tangled up. Okay?”

Ilya smiled, enjoying the implication that Shane thought of their hook ups as ongoing. “Fine,” he said.

Within a week everything was as Shane wanted: Ilya had moved to Liberty Clinic, his fridge was full of meal prepped food, and he’d gifted his last pack of cigarettes to Svetlana. As Ilya wanted, too: he had a driver to bring him to and from his appointments, instead of having to beg lifts, and his father was looked after, everyone in Russia quiet and happy. The one source of contention between him and Shane was regarding the sensory deprivation tank, a technology Shane apparently swore by but which took five minutes to make Ilya feel on the brink of insanity. Shane relented, and otherwise approved of Ilya’s regimen.

His new team of doctors and physical therapists were terrifying and relentless and Ilya doubted he’d get out of this without a sexual fixation on at least one of them. The first time he impressed any of them happened a month in, while playing a video game designed to improve hand reflexes and coordination, which he kind of hated on principle, the condescension inherent in the veneer of fun. Despite its manifest lameness, he got through a level that had been stumping him thus far and Dr. Rita Gould slapped him on the back like a coach or a teammate and he felt a rush through him he hadn’t felt since the playoffs, or at least an echo of it. Dr. Rita Gould didn’t even chastise him for the profanities that slipped out in his celebration.

“I heard it was a good week,” Shane said over the phone the next evening. Ilya was in two minds about these calls. Hearing from Shane usually proved entertaining, stimulating, but it always followed Shane hearing from the Liberty Clinic staff, and the reminder of that made Ilya uncomfortable. He’d always controlled so carefully what parts of his life Shane had access to, and now it was like Shane was picking through it at will, Ilya splayed open in front of him. When Ilya sent the payments to his father’s carers in Russia he always felt a satisfied little thrill that it remained secret from Shane, even if it was Shane’s money.

“Yes,” Ilya said. Tried to think of a joke and blanked. It had been a good week.

Shane took a moment to respond, like he also had been expecting a joke. “They’re all really happy with how you’re doing,” he said. “You’re making good progress. This is what I meant, doctors don’t understand how advanced our bodies are, how resilient.”

“Hollander, I can’t make a fist,” Ilya said, because Shane was getting ahead of himself, as much a habit as the phone calls.

“Right,” Shane said. “I just mean… It’s good, that you’re doing good.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, and cleared his throat, a joke finally occurring to him. “Maybe when I’m recovered I will sign with Metros, and there will be no more scoring droughts. Just wait for me, I will save you.”

“Shut up,” Shane said. “It’s only two games.”

“Oh, this is normal to you?” Ilya asked. “Okay. Interesting. I do not think this ever happened to my team. You should look that up, maybe I am forgetting. Look up if a team with Ilya Rozanov ever—”

“Shut up,” Shane said again, but he was laughing. “You’d think being out for at least two years would put an end to the shit talk.”

“I thought being out for at least two years would put an end to Shane Hollander annoying me,” Ilya said. He was smiling, he realized, and couldn’t remember when he’d started. “But here we are. I would have to maybe change my identity or something to get away.”

“I’d hire an investigator,” Shane said. “You’d do a terrible job. Choose a stupid name.”

“David Hollander,” Ilya said.

“What?” Shane said, outraged. “How the fuck do you know what my dad’s called?”

Ilya laughed, declined to answer, unsure if having read in depth profiles of Shane in magazines was more or less embarrassing than having read his wikipedia page.

“Anyway,” Shane said, pointedly. “Your chef is slightly less happy than the doctors.”

Ilya groaned. “I am eating healthier than I have ever eaten in my whole entire life,” he said.

“That’s deeply concerning,” Shane said. “Considering all the dinners you’ve canceled to have take out instead.”

“I eat stupid healthy breakfast and stupid healthy lunch and have stupid healthy snacks,” Ilya said. “I get to dinner and I literally cannot take it. I cannot do it. I run out of strength.”

“Two takeout dinners a week,” Shane said, negotiating. “Your body isn’t infallible the way it was last year. You need to pay attention to all of this. You need to do everything you can to get back to where you were.”

Ilya made a face. “Three,” he said.

“What is it you’re getting?” Shane asked. “Is it fast food?”

“Not always,” Ilya said.

“Three takeouts a week and no fast food,” Shane said.

Ilya resisted saying fine and instead said, “Or what?” It had been nagging at him for a while. Shane had a lot of rules, and Ilya’s compliance was guaranteed by the threat of withdrawal of financial support. The issue was that Ilya knew Shane wouldn’t do that over minor infractions, so he was curious what power he would try to wield instead.

“Or I start paying for a non-luxury car service,” Shane said, so obviously he’d thought about it too. It was a smart threat, but Ilya was a little disappointed it wasn’t all that sexy.

“Fuck,” he said. “Fine.”

“Good,” Shane said, and then there was some awkward shuffling noises that made Ilya grimace, because he knew what that meant. “Okay, well. That’s all. Talk later.”

“Night night,” Ilya said, and Shane hung up.

Ilya stared at his phone in frustration for a few moments before throwing it to the other end of the couch. He and Shane hadn’t seen each other since the business meeting in Montreal, but they talked on the phone almost every week, and not once had it developed into phone sex. Ilya had tried the first few times, but Shane kept shutting it down, presumably because the phone calls were about their arrangement, and Shane wanted that separate from the sex. But then when would they ever interact about something other than the insane amounts of money Shane was transferring to Ilya’s account every week? Maybe when Shane was in Boston for games he could come over and they could not talk about it, but that was only twice a year. Twice wouldn’t cut it, wouldn’t come close.

Shane’s denial became bigger, more frustrating, given how empty Ilya’s life otherwise was, in general but also in particular with regards to sex. Svetlana had continued to be a better friend than he’d ever deserve but he knew this version of him, neither fun nor powerful, was unattractive to her, and they didn’t fuck. He’d hooked up a few times at the parties he’d worked prior to Shane’s intervention, but that had obviously had to come to an end, and he’d largely cut himself off from his social networks. He was starting to want to act out.

Salvation came in unexpected form. Ilya had severed contact with his former teammates after responding to a few well wishes in the week after getting out of hospital. He hadn’t been removed from the team group chat and for some reason he hadn’t left it, either, although it was on mute. One evening, after another good week of rehab, he watched the unread messages in that group chat go up by the dozens even as he continued to refuse to open it, and his heart jumped into his throat when it was displaced at the top of his inbox by a direct message from Marlow. Ilya tipped his screen to the side so he could read the whole message without opening it.

Three wins is a streak, first of the season, you should come out with us if you’re not dead

While Ilya had built up tolerance to watching Metros games he still avoided the Raiders, and hadn’t realized they’d been playing well, although not since his rookie season had three consecutive wins warranted celebration. Without thinking much, and despite having not talked to Marlow in months, he sent, You are so concussed I do not play with you anymore remember.

Frustratingly he had to wait five minutes for Marlow to get back to him. He wondered if they were already out. I think it’d be a real morale boost for the boys to see you. And it would freak the shit out of our rookies.

Ilya tapped his phone against the kitchen counter. His limp was slight, his hand mistakable for functional, his shoulders broader than they’d been in the summer. His financial precarity was secret and glossed over, his dependence on hired drivers unremarkable on a night out. And if he wanted to sign with Boston again in a few years, it would be good to not burn every bridge. Okay he said.

Fucking get it. I’ll pick you up in twenty.

Ilya had the most fun he’d had since before the crash, which was a low bar. He didn’t drink as much as he used to because he discovered, to his horror, his tolerance had seriously diminished. But nobody else was tracking his drinks and no jokes got made when his words started slurring after only his third shot. Marly had been right, the rookies were freaked out to see him, staring in awe at every move he made like he was somehow still relevant, like he was still someone worth knowing. They were all under twenty one, none of them should have been there, but this was the same club where Ilya had eaten out a bartender in the backroom at nineteen. And, he learned, a call up, Samuels, was turning twenty one tomorrow, so he obviously agreed to go out for that too. His enthusiastic acceptance of the invite was partly because he had gotten too drunk to hook up with anyone, and he wanted very badly to have sex.

Ilya had deleted social media off his phone as soon as he recovered possession of it, but Svetlana kept him updated on anything important via screenshots. The next morning he woke to one of a tweet from a Raiders fan that read “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Rozanov is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9, complete with a few blurry ill-lit photos from the previous night, Ilya center stage. Ilya laughed, and again when Svetlana sent, I thought Boston people were good god fearing catholics, they will be excommunicated for this, and his laughter faded when he noticed the number of likes and retweets the post had and wondered what the chances were that Shane hadn’t seen it.

Ilya had hardly had to spend any money in the club, his old teammates excited to buy him drinks, and probably because of his diminished tolerance he hadn’t burned through all of that good will in a single night, so he had more free drinks awaiting him at the call up’s birthday too. He still kept himself in check, focused on finding someone to fuck. He was in no rush. Just scanning the space, catching the gaze of different women, made him feel hot and alert. He often had a mood for something in particular, but after so long without his hunger was indiscriminate; he wondered if a threesome was the way to go. The heady speculation was interrupted by his phone buzzing against his thigh. Ilya had already missed two calls from Alexei that week and he set his limit there, so he pulled it out to see if it was his brother, and it wasn’t, it was Shane, infinitely stranger considering they’d had their check in only three nights prior. He couldn’t resist. He answered it, pressed it hard against his ear, and said, “Give me a second.”

He bullied his way off the dance floor and found his way outside, a quiet side alley meant for smoke breaks and quick fucks and phone calls with rivals turned benefactors. He glanced at the screen and saw that a minute had elapsed since he’d answered, a small, easy thrill shooting through him. Even with this he liked making Shane wait. “Okay,” he said, putting the phone back to his ear. “Is there emergency, is someone in your house?”

“No,” Shane said. “Why would you think that? You would’ve made me wait?”

“I could not hear, is not my fault,” Ilya said, smiling.

“Are you out right now?” Shane asked.

“Yes,” Ilya said. “Why are you calling?”

“Because I saw those photos from Reilly,” Shane said.

Ilya’s eyebrows shot up. Reilly, Ilya’s former right winger, had taken pictures of Ilya with the birthday boy maybe ten minutes ago. “You are keeping tabs on me?” he asked, unable to keep the delight out of his voice.

“No,” Shane said, defensive. “I just happened to see. I’ve known Reilly since I was fifteen, it’s normal that I follow him.”

“He took those pictures like five minutes ago,” Ilya said, still smug. “You are so quick.”

“Shut up,” Shane said. “That’s not the point.”

“There is point?” Ilya asked.

“Well, just.” Shane seemed stumped. Ilya wondered if he’d put any thought into calling at all.

“Maybe we can talk about this later,” Ilya said, feigning boredom. “I have things to get back to.”

“No, wait,” Shane said. “Just. You went out yesterday too, right?”

“Yes,” Ilya said.

“That seems like,” Shane started. “Kind of a lot.”

“Well, yesterday Boston won three games in a row for first time all season,” Ilya said. “And today is Sammy’s birthday.”

“It’s good that you still talk to your old team,” Shane said. “Do you think you’ll sign with Boston again, once you’re better?”

Ilya wasn’t drunk, but there was too much alcohol in his system for this. “Hollander,” he said.

“Sorry,” Shane said. “We kind of talked about this, you know. That you could drink in moderation, and shouldn’t do anything risky. Going out two nights in a row, I don’t think that’s moderation.”

Ilya smiled, the thrill returning. “You are sending me home?”

“No,” Shane said, defensive. “I shouldn’t have called – I wasn’t sure when those photos were even from, or the other photos. We can talk about this when I call on Thursday.”

“Let’s talk now,” Ilya said. “You don’t want me here?”

“Not if you’re doing something stupid,” Shane said.

“I’m trying to get fucked,” Ilya said. “Is that stupid?”

Shane said nothing.

“It’s been long time for me,” Ilya said. “I gave this pretty guy head, but he did not get me off, so I am all worked up.”

“That’s not – I would have, you know I would have,” Shane said, sounding pained.

Ilya made a non-committal noise. “All I know is I make stupid decisions when I’m thinking with my dick,” he said. “And there are so many hot people here tonight, Hollander. They want to fuck me so bad. They think I am like Jesus.”

“I don’t think people want to fuck Jesus,” Shane said. “So are you—you’re going to fuck someone? Who?”

Ilya wondered if Shane really wanted to know that. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe having anyone but you suck my dick is bad for my recovery too, no?”

“Shut up,” Shane said. “But, I mean. You shouldn’t be drinking too much two nights in a row. And you shouldn’t be, like, stressing your leg.”

“Yes, we have to think of my leg,” Ilya said. “So, do you have other idea?”

“Yeah, go home,” Shane said, on a stilted breath.

“But why? What is there for me at home?”

“Watch porn or something,” Shane said.

“Not good enough,” Ilya said. “If you’re asking me to pass up getting my dick wet.”

He wished desperately he could see how Shane looked in the second of silence before he spoke. “What is good enough?”

“I like your voice,” Ilya said. “Your dirty talk has gotten better.”

“Okay,” Shane said. “We can – we can get off.”

“Okay,” Ilya said. “I’ll call you back when I’m home.”

“If you’re not there in the next forty minutes I won’t answer,” Shane said, and Ilya laughed.

Ilya made quick work of goodbyes, allowing the assumption that he was leaving with someone go unchallenged. If he was still driving he would have been speeding home, which was, he supposed, in large part why he was no longer driving. Still he made it back within Shane’s time frame, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he kicked the door closed behind him.

“You must need it too,” Ilya said as soon as Shane picked up. “Been a long time for you.”

“Yeah,” Shane said, confessional.

“I should’ve fucked you when you were in Boston,” Ilya said, yanking his pants down to his thigh and sliding down into sitting against the wall in his hallway. No strain on his leg. “Wasted opportunity.”

“Yeah,” Shane said again. “What would you have done?”

“I’d have made you do all the work,” Ilya said, which would have been hot for very few people other than Shane. “Because I am hurt, so I would just lie there, make you get yourself off on my dick.”

“I would’ve loved it,” Shane said.

“I know it,” Ilya said.

“Are you touching yourself?” Shane asked.

“Yes,” Ilya said. “Had to stop myself from touching on the drive home. I like thinking about you in your house, thinking of me, waiting for me.”

“I’m doing this out of concern for your welfare,” Shane said, and Ilya laughed.

“So good to me,” Ilya said. “Keeping me safe, not letting me fuck anyone else.”

“That’s not—” Shane broke off. “This was your idea, you asked for this.”

Ilya couldn’t look at that head on, not right now, passing up on a warm body for the echo of Shane’s voice. “You don’t want me to regret it, do you?” Ilya asked. “You will make it worth it?”

He heard Shane swallow. He was painfully hard, wasn’t sure he’d ever been this hard before without another person in his vicinity. Shane said, “I always make it worth it. I know what you like, I know how to give it to you.”

It was unexpected, and sounded slightly rehearsed. Ilya almost came right then. “What do I like?” he asked. “What would you give me?”

“I’d let you fuck me after only two fingers,” Shane said. “So you have to fight to get in.”

“You like that,” Ilya said. “You fucking love that, you wouldn’t keep me around if I didn’t make it hurt.”

“Don’t know if I should keep you around,” Shane said, lobbing the ball back into Ilya’s court.

“Yes, you’re so hard to satisfy,” Ilya said. “Never know if I’m up for it, you need to get fucked and sucked and kissed and have your nipples played with, all at once. I should have someone else there to help me. You want too fucking much—”

“Fuck, Rozanov,” Shane said, sounding shocked, and Ilya laughed.

“Or maybe you just need this,” Ilya said. “Some man, half drunk, telling you filthy things over the phone. Is that all you need, can you come from that, are you that easy?”

“Yes,” Shane said. “Yes, yes—”

And Ilya came too, hunched over and spasming, almost dropping the phone and thanking God he hadn’t as he listened to Shane’s breathing stop entirely and then return ragged and quick.

“What the fuck,” Shane said, and Ilya hummed out his agreement. The orgasm had been good enough he didn’t have to think too hard about what it meant that he’d passed up on taking someone home.

Ilya’s recovery kept progressing and Shane’s check ins kept coming, now sometimes with phone sex. Ilya hadn’t realized he was keeping score, but that seemed like a victory marked squarely in his column. The calls also frequently featured Ilya complaining at length, about the food or the slowness of the recovery or the staidness of the paid drivers or the activities his PTs continued to insist he wasn’t ready for. It felt remarkably safe, contained, Shane placidly buffeting the negativity, sometimes even seeming to get a kick out of it. Of course they both knew how meaningless it was. Even if Ily complained for fifteen minutes straight, he was still going to do what Shane wanted him to do. He was as Shane wanted him, early to bed and to airports, living a thinned out life, not just because he had quit cigarettes and fast food but because the allowance supposed to make his life bearable was being funneled to Russia, and what was left over provided for nothing more exciting than his phone’s data plan. The calls with Shane were often the highlight of his week, which terrified and disgusted him. He knew this whole scheme, devised by Shane to minimize risks, came with its own profound dangers. Shane was all-powerful the way hockey once had been all-powerful, and look how that had turned out. But, as had been the case with hockey, Ilya wasn’t feeling the danger all that deeply.

Soon an entire regular season had passed without Ilya playing a single game, and he hadn’t even tried to kill himself. The breaks in his leg had healed entirely but his leg still didn’t feel right, felt brittle and stiff, and it brought a new kind of recovery that caused more straightforward physical pain than anything he’d been assigned before, but which was also more familiar to him as the work of an athlete, building muscle and speed. There was still no way of knowing how far his recovery would take him, if his most ambitious aim should be a normal walking gait. Shane continued talking about his return to the league like it was a given, and the faith made Ilya feel a little sick even as he knew it was in his best interests to let it grow unchecked.

When the playoffs started, without meaning to, Ilya watched every single game Montreal played. It hadn’t been like that in the regular season, during which he’d spaced Montreal games out with restraint Shane would respect. But once the play offs came, the most exciting series, the one everyone in the hockey world was talking about, was always the one involving Shane Hollander. Ilya wasn’t sure he’d ever watched more beautiful hockey – in previous years if he wasn’t in the playoffs himself he was moping about being out of them, getting wasted and fucked instead of following along. Again his lack of bitterness surprised himself. He found himself thinking stupid things, thinking that maybe Shane was right, maybe Ilya could get back to this level, could play games like this, breaking records, creating legends.

It surprised nobody when Montreal got to the finals. They were favored to win the championship, the bloodbath against Miami in the conference finals likely to be their toughest series. Shane had been battered and bruised and was still somehow untouchable, and with concerningly little discussion Ilya found himself on a flight to Montreal for one of the nights Shane had free between knocking Miami out and the first game against Winnipeg.

It had unfolded like a dare, like a crazy hypothetical, and then the plane tickets were in Ilya’s inbox, and then he was in Shane’s apartment. They gave themselves ten seconds for awkwardness, and then Shane had him up against the wall. Ilya laughed into his mouth and it made Shane kiss him harder, his hands curling into Ilya’s hair, Ilya’s hands floating beside them with indecision, so many places to touch. Eventually they landed on Shane’s waist, and he guided him further into the apartment. Gone were the days of fucking against walls and on the floor, and despite his impatience he herded Shane all the way to his bedroom, pushed him down on his bed. Shane took his clothes off, the movements made clumsy by his refusal to take his eyes off Ilya, and after inhaling and exhaling Ilya started stripping too. Even with all his progress, Ilya was skinnier and weaker than he’d ever been as a professional athlete. He had no doubt that he was still hot, just some doubt that he was the specific kind of hot Shane was into. He hoped Shane was desperate enough to get fucked that he could lower his standards at least this once.

Shane didn’t seem to register a change, reached for Ilya the way he always did after a particularly long spell without. In a moment Shane had Ilya under him, flat on his back sideways across the bed, Shane perched over him like a predator. Ilya smiled. Shane cursed and kissed him again, his fingers folding between Ilya’s where his hands rested on the mattress. Ilya ground up into Shane and Shane pulled away for a sharp breath, and then his eyes caught on something. Ilya didn’t know what until Shane lowered himself again, his lips latching onto the surgical scar on Ilya’s forearm. He tongued over it, sucked, and Ilya’s fingers dug into the sheets like Shane was reawakening his hand, more effective than months of occupational therapy. He could only handle it for about five seconds before his other hand was tangling in Shane’s hair and firmly pulling him off, holding his head up and away to get a look at his glazed over expression.

“Sorry,” Shane said, like maybe Ilya just hadn’t been into Shane making out with his arm, and Ilya pulled him into a kiss, letting his free hand, still shaking from Shane, slide down Shane’s back and grip at his ass.

“Yeah,” Shane said, and reached over Ilya, his dick dragging against Ilya’s stomach, to grab lube.

Ilya heaved himself into sitting and reached his hand that was capable of manual manipulation behind Shane, using the other to keep him spread, began fingering him, awkwardly angled and without line of sight but still enough to have Shane curling into his shoulder.

“Fuck,” Shane said. “Fuck, fuck. I can’t believe it, it doesn’t feel real, got you to fucking fly in.”

It should have hurt, should have humiliated, that language familiar from locker rooms, but for some reason it didn’t. That was what Ilya was, now. It must be so strange to Shane, for Ilya to be someone he could summon. It was the closest he’d gotten to referencing their arrangement during sex, usually so good at keeping them contained, preventing cross-contamination.

“I am yours,” Ilya said. “You own me.”

There were past sexual partners Ilya probably could have made come with those words, but Shane pulled away from Ilya’s neck and grimaced. “Shut up, shut the fuck up,” he said, and grabbed Ilya’s dick.

He magicked up a condom and applied it to Ilya himself, something Ilya remembered from their last couple of hook ups, the most recent one nearly a year ago now. Ilya knew about the psychology of habit formation from coaches, from the rehab he was in currently, how to get in the rhythm of something you needed to do it every day, that if you let it slip for a week it would feel like you’d never done it once, and he didn’t understand why that never happened with Shane. Time always collapsed for them, the weeks or months between their meet ups disappearing, everything fresh and clear and automatic. Ilya pushed inside Shane like it was something he did every day, falling back on his elbows and Shane sitting up, back arching, putting himself on display for Ilya. Shane did own him. Ilya wanted to own him back. He got his hands on Shane’s hips and fucked up into him with as much force as he could muster, watching the way it jolted through Shane, the way he had to gather himself to get steady, to not fall apart like a ragdoll on Ilya’s dick. Ilya was loud enough that Shane’s hand ended up on his mouth, and Ilya bit down on his fingers as he came.

After, they lay in quiet side by side. Ilya’s return ticket was booked for the morning. When they’d made the plans all that time had felt necessary to make the trip worthwhile, and Ilya had thought about it purely in terms of how many rounds of sex they could fit in, not contemplating what the in-between time would add up to. Now it loomed large, felt inescapable. Shane fit his fingers along Ilya’s ribcage, visible with him splayed out and breathing deeply, no longer sheathed in muscle. Ilya swallowed, tried not to tense.

“I don’t think we can do it like that too many more times,” Shane said.

“You on top?” Ilya asked.

“No, like, you fucking me,” Shane said. “I don’t want to be sore.”

Ilya laughed a little. “I could fuck you ten minutes before you went on ice against Winnipeg and you would still destroy them.”

Shane tucked his face down. “It’s my first ever finals,” he said. “Even if my opponent isn’t all that good, I want to be good.”

Ilya didn’t have it in him to tell him he’d be good. He said, “League is handing it to you this year, with me gone.” It would have been a joke except it had become a legitimate talking point among idiots, what it meant that Shane’s first year in the finals was the first year without Ilya in the league.

“Fuck off,” Shane said, but he was grinning. “I’d be here no matter what. We would have destroyed Boston.”

Ilya made a face like maybe, maybe not.

“They were going to hollow themselves out to pay for you, your defensive core would’ve been ruined,” Shane said.

“Maybe I take team friendly deal.”

“No chance,” Shane said, and then after a pause that Ilya associated with him building himself up to a joke: “I know how much you love money.”

Ilya turned to look at him, grinning, and found Shane already smiling back.

Even though Ilya didn’t get inside Shane again with more than a finger and his tongue, it was some of the hottest sex of his life. It felt like the hedonism he’d forsworn, like it should be bad for him, like he was hurrying on his doom. Everything else this electric and glorious and gluttonous was bad for his body. “If you win I should get ring too,” Ilya said at the door, the car to take him to the airport waiting outside. “Or at least bonus.”

“What are you talking about?” Shane asked, trying for exasperated and failing, every bone in his body too relaxed. Ilya already wanted to fuck him again.

“I fucked you so good it’ll give you superpowers,” Ilya said. “I am doing more for the Montreal Metros than some of your teammates.”

Shane put his hand on Ilya’s cheek and pushed him away, and that was the extent of his protest.

Shane won the cup, and then won MVP, and a month after that he was in Boston. He dressed his visit up as a logistical necessity for the six month in depth review of their arrangement as set out in the memorandum of understanding Ilya had a printed copy of somewhere in his house. Ilya’s rehab kept him from returning to Russia, and while his family complained the way they would always complain he knew really they understood that his prioritizing his fitness to play was in their best interests too. The accusations they lobbed at him still weren’t off-base; he was relieved, a part of him, to not have to see his father, to only have to know about his condition secondhand. The cowardice made him hate himself. Shane was a welcome distraction, even if his visit involved going along to Liberty Clinic after hours, to get a more thorough run down of what work Ilya had been doing so far.

Ilya had known he would hate it, but he was surprised at the distinct tenor his hatred took. It wasn’t shame or embarrassment at the exact parameters of his limitations being laid bare to Shane. Rather there was something sickening about seeing Shane in that environment, Shane who was always so vibrant and strong and capable, in a sterile well lit building Ilya associated with failure and doubt and the putting off of inevitable tragedy. Ilya couldn’t stomach it, couldn’t look directly at it or speak properly, and Shane and the scant staff permitted to be present let him away with it, assuming it was his hurt pride. Shane was vaguely apologetic in the way a nurse would be about a needle, but he seemed to genuinely believe he had a right to be there, which exploded open other feelings that Ilya didn’t want to attempt to name. He was aware that once they got back to his place Shane would expect to get fucked, so he started working on pulling himself together. Mostly this meant zoning out until Shane said his goodbyes. Ilya had been getting through his treatment without any issue, and he hadn’t realized he had so many negative emotions associated with it until he was there with Shane. He’d never before been antsy to leave, Shane saying, “Sorry if that was weird for you,” as soon as the door closed behind them. Ilya shrugged.

“No, seriously,” Shane said. “Maybe that was fucked up of me to do. I just really wanted to – I care a lot about this, you know.”

“You are putting a lot of money into it,” Ilya said. “Makes sense you want to know how it works.”

“Right,” Shane said. “I just, I do feel like I have a better understanding of it all now.”

He said that like it was supposed to convince Ilya of the merit of his visit. A better understanding was the problem. Ilya said nothing. It was a quiet area, the outskirts of the city, so they felt safe being together in public for the thirty seconds it would take them to get in the car parked across the street. When they reached the pavement Shane kept walking, apparently intending to cross despite the oncoming car. Ilya grabbed his arm and pulled him back and only then realized that the car wasn’t actually all that close. Shane looked back at him and laughed. “What the fuck?”

“Jaywalking is crime,” Ilya said, dropping the sleeve of Shane’s shirt. His voice was steady, his heartbeat less so.

“There’s no way you don’t jaywalk,” Shane said. The car only passed then. “We jaywalked on our way in here.”

“Obviously I jaywalk,” Ilya said, and started crossing the road to illustrate his point.

“So what was that?” Shane asked, following alongside.

“I thought the car was closer,” Ilya said, shrugging, and surprisingly Shane let it go.

Back in the house, Shane got a version of fidgety that wasn’t quite the fidgety he got when he wanted to get fucked. He looked uncomfortable, unsure, and Ilya gestured at the same stool by the kitchen island from which Shane had made the initial proposal. Shane sat, and Ilya remained standing, folding his arms.

“So,” Shane said, clearing his throat and putting his hands on his thighs. Ilya didn’t know why it made him want to fuck him so bad. “How do you think this has been going?”

“Ah,” Ilya said. “This is six month review?”

“Yes,” Shane said. “It’s – it’s about you, too, not just me.”

“You do not want to call your lawyer?” Ilya asked. “Or get Pete on the phone?”

“Shut up,” Shane said, which was fair because Ilya was teasing him, but he would also genuinely have preferred for this conversation to happen with Shane’s lawyer or money manager present, in an upscale conference room in another city. He knew what he would say, then – that his team was still hopeful he’d make a full recovery, that he was spending the money within the parameters set by their original deal, that he hadn’t done anything stupid, that it all continued to suit his purposes just fine. He didn’t know what to say without the buffer of strangers, just the two of them in Ilya’s house, Shane wearing clothes Ilya already knew he was going to take off him later. He had thought Shane was the one who wanted to keep these things separate, but here he was cornering Ilya into a mess.

Ilya couldn’t say how he felt about what they were doing because he felt a dozen different things. Logically, it was the safest way for him to get what he needed, his and his father’s bodies looked after. He didn’t entirely understand Shane’s commitment but he had never in his life looked a gift horse in its mouth. He was not embarrassed to take money because nobody in his family ever had been. He was embarrassed that Shane called his doctors, that Shane had gotten a guided tour of the rehab facility. He felt guilty that it was quite likely he would fall short of Shane’s expectations, but he’d been feeling some version of that guilt since the first time they’d hooked up. He still wanted to fuck Shane, and the money didn’t lessen that. When he’d had money, he’d liked when it turned people on. He’d bought people things and brought them places and he’d liked that that was part of why they wanted to fuck him; one time he’d paid for sex, and he’d liked that too. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder what it felt like on the other side of the equation, but he enjoyed it just as much. It wasn’t his position he relished, he realized, as much as the knowledge that there was an equation at all, that some neat math was being done, a balance being struck, no ambiguity about what either party was getting out of the arrangement. He found it a little frustrating that Shane wouldn’t admit to the ways the money was hot, but when he masturbated recently it was to the idea of finally getting him to give in to that.

Shane repeated himself: “How do you think this has been going?”

“Fine,” Ilya said. “You spoke to my recovery team. All going good.”

“Yeah,” Shane said, swallowing. “And am I—am I giving you enough?”

Ilya tilted his head. He didn’t see how Shane could really doubt that, so maybe he was fishing for compliments. “You have been looking after me very well, Hollander.”

Shane flushed, jaw jutting out the way it did when he intended to say something difficult. “But you didn’t get a dog.”

Ilya’s eyebrows went up. “What?”

“You said you wanted a dog,” Shane said. “What are you spending your money on?”

This wasn’t a risk Ilya had anticipated; he’d forgotten the things Shane picked up on, for all the things he missed. “You know,” he said. “Video games, food.”

“What games? What food?” They landed like accusations even if Shane’s tone was purely curious. “You get take out three times a week. What about clothes? You said you wanted clothes, and a dog. But you didn’t get a dog and you don’t wear your stupid clothes anymore. It’s not like I’m giving you pocket change. I’m giving you a lot of money. What are you spending it on?”

“What does it matter?” Ilya said. “Whole point of that is I get to spend it on whatever.”

“But why won’t you tell me?” Shane asked, still just curious. Curiosity was the only motivation he needed to get pushy, like a child. “Is it some big secret?”

Ilya’s father’s expenses were in fact a big secret, but the phrase was embarrassing. “No secret,” he said. “Maybe I am saving.”

“Okay, for what?”

“A fucking Cessna,” Ilya said.

“Don’t joke,” Shane said, and not for the first time repeated himself: “Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s not your fucking business,” Ilya said, voice finally rising.

Shane opened his mouth and then shut it so sharply his teeth clacked. Ilya smiled. He knew what Shane had been about to say – that it was his business, because it was his money. But Shane didn’t want to admit to that, to how tangled up this arrangement made them.

“I am happy with how things are,” Ilya said. “You are happy too, yes?”

“I—”

“Good,” Ilya said. “Six month review done. Jesus fucking Christ.”

Shane looked at him for a good three seconds and then said, “Okay.”

Ilya said, “Fuck it.” He strode to Shane, bent down and cupped his jaw and kissed him. Shane kissed back, and they stopped talking about the arrangement, sweeping the mess aside.

Thank God Shane was back in Montreal by the time the picture dropped. Ilya wouldn’t have wanted to have to react to it with anyone else in the room. Like all news these days it was delivered via screenshot from Svetlana, and initially Ilya thought it had been faked, altered, even as he could remember the moment it depicted perfectly. The two of them on the side of the street, his hand on Shane’s arm, expression urgent, Shane looking back at him, half his laugh visible, the rest of it still just for Ilya. It was of mediocre quality, taken on a phone from a distance, the lower halves of their bodies blocked by the hood of a car. Still. Svetlana followed up the photo with a tweet about it: the lady bynge is Hollander’s this year they said he’d never do it but no trophy is safe from the goat. haters eat your heart out.

So people were framing it as sportsmanship; that made sense. Obviously nobody would jump to the conclusion that they were fucking, and with Ilya out of the league there wasn’t even a rivalry for people to get mad at them for violating. They would see it as Shane taking an interest in a charity case, and they wouldn’t exactly be wrong. It was clean, easily digestible, not dangerous, but Ilya still couldn’t take his eyes off the photo. He couldn’t believe that this was what they looked like, and he couldn’t believe people who saw it didn’t at least wonder. Somehow it felt as revealing, as calamitous, as a picture of him fucking into Shane would have been.

For a moment, too, it felt as hot as a picture of him fucking into Shane would have been. Ilya had been told he could get turned on by a road sign, by anything, and he wasn’t helping his case getting turned on by the idea of Shane exhibiting good sportsmanship. Gracious to other players, doing the honorable thing on and off the court. It was the honorable thing, when he got on his knees for Ilya, when he called him when he knew Ilya was at the club, when he gave Ilya money without knowing what Ilya was doing with it. He was being a good sport. Ilya really needed to get Shane to a point where he could say things like that to him in bed.

Ilya had been expecting Shane to call, but he just texted, later that day: If it’s alright we’re not going to acknowledge this or put out a statement or anything. Nothing damning, better to just not give it oxygen. Okay?

It was sucking up all the oxygen in the room Ilya was standing in, but he still sent back, Okay. He understood the strategy, although it was purely public facing. What about Shane’s locker room, what about his parents? What would he tell them? Maybe he’d borrow from social media; that he was being a good sport, doing the honorable thing.

Chapter End Notes

i really don't care about anachronisms in hollanov fic but it does make me happy that i can talk about twitter/tweets instead of x and it's just period accuracy.

Chapter 2

Slowly, as the next hockey season started, Ilya slipped back onto social media. His algorithm was still programmed to show him posts about himself, but there just wasn’t all that much to see these days, which could be disturbing or comforting depending on the hour. For the most part he really did just want to be an anonymous observer, staying up to date with the only world he’d ever prospered in, and it helped to not be taken out of it by reminders of how he’d lost it.

Other times it hurt to confront how forgettable he was, even to the fans who had really loved him. After all, they had games to watch, and the games had nothing to do with him. They might still love him but the love was no longer relevant to their daily lives. It was just sitting there, undernourished.

So, a couple times, cringing at himself even as he did it, he searched his own name. It was something he associated with the most mediocre of players, something he’d never had to do because the praise and admiration and interest was served up to him directly. Now he was desperate for scraps. The on this day posts recounting achievements and stat lines of his from seasons past, shared by accounts with handles like RaidersHistory, made him feel sick. Most of it made him feel sick. From months ago, but popular enough that it still showed up in the results for his name, you know he didn’t actually die right, quoting the tweet, Ilya Rozanov is like the James Dean of hockey. The most popular reply to that popular quote tweet was, okay but he’s hockey dead. He imagined people had spoken with a little more decorum when his injury had initially made the news, but he’d missed that window. Now it was as much an inside joke as anything.

Those weren’t his lowest moments of social media use. That came when he looked up his and Shane’s names together. The first five results were all to do with a record he’d held for three seasons that Shane had broken the week before. The next one was a tweet that read, league sucks now I feel bad for new fans who missed the whole hollander rozanov era, which made it sound as though that era had ended a decade ago. The tweet beneath that was just the photo from Boston, which popped back up now and then, taunting him, as did videos of Shane answering questions about Ilya’s crash early last season, which Ilya never had the guts to watch. He had an inkling of their tone, though, from one user saying, I don’t know if it’s just his media training but the way he fully thinks Roz is coming back makes me so sad lol.

Ilya moved on from that quickly, but it wasn’t like any of the results were exactly comforting. The next tweet was, What’s crazy about how completely different Rozanov/Boston’s situation is from Hollander/Montreal right now is how spookily closely matched those guys always were. Should have been like that forever. Feels wrong that Hollander is still out there dominating while Rozanov has become a New England cryptid. Cursed timeline.

So, in a way, the article didn’t shock him. He knew how his image had changed, that the people who still thought about him had become fixated on him as a figure of misfortune, no longer one of America’s favorite escapist fantasies. In the very first conversation he’d had with Svetlana after his injuries she’d said he was becoming a folk hero, and he was, but of the tragic variety. And he couldn’t really deny it. The fans were seeing something that had always been there, and he could no longer deploy his cheap tricks to stop them from taking a closer look.

He’d been approached a month earlier about a profile for an online sports outlet but he had turned it down. He didn’t want to do any media until he knew what his future held. He’d assumed that meant the profile was dead, but instead they’d repurposed it as a career retrospective that went beyond his career. It framed him as a figure marked by tragedy and loss hidden beneath a thin veneer of glamour, as though the car wreck and the injuries were somehow fated, or at least came as no surprise. Svetlana called it hack. They found out about his mom.

He didn’t know how but it didn’t really matter. All it would take was asking the right coach back in Russia, the right former teammate. The only reason it hadn’t gotten out before was because he’d always kept the media so well fed. They hadn’t ever had to go looking overseas. The writer knew about his brother’s drug and gambling issues too, as far as Ilya could tell, although the article kept it vague because his brother was still living and could sue for defamation. His mother couldn’t; the writer was free to describe her as luridly as they wanted, tormented and unable to overcome her demons. They didn’t seem to know much about his father – not the dementia, anyway. They knew he’d married later in life and seen combat, and they described him as struggling to keep up with two rambunctious young boys and a troubled wife, and Ilya couldn’t imagine a single person who had ever known his father characterizing him that way.

Ilya didn’t read the whole thing. He read the opening section about the dark legacy he’d tried and failed to leave behind in Russia and then closed the tab and deleted social media off his phone and, without really thinking, as a precautionary measure, blocked Shane. He would have liked to go to his room and lie in the dark for hours, or maybe get trashed, but he had rehab, so he went to rehab. He didn’t think about it. When he arrived back home Svetlana was there, and that was when she called the article hack, and that was the only thing she said about it. He shut down the way he’d shut down before Shane had made his offer, got through everything without thinking, kept on the rails by Svetlana’s quiet, near-constant presence. Something he thought about Svetlana and had never told her, too much even between them, was how much he wished his mother had had a friend like her.

A week passed in this cocoon, and then Dr. Renier interrupted Ilya while he was doing one of his favorite exercises, resistance training in the pool.

“There’s a call for you in my office,” Renier said. “Come take it, you can get back to this in a bit. Shouldn’t be long.”

“From who?” Ilya asked.

“Marissa,” Renier said. “She’s planning some changes and wants to talk to you about them.”

“Right now?”

“Just come on,” Renier said, so Ilya did. He made a bit of a show of getting out of the pool, because he half wanted to fuck Renier, which was how he felt about all his doctors. Given that Renier had said he would be resuming the exercise after he didn’t bother getting changed, draping a towel over his shoulders and slipping into his slides before following Renier down the hallway and into his office. The phone was off the hook, on the desk, and Renier gestured at it before leaving Ilya to drip all over his floors.

Ilya stared at the phone for a moment before picking it up. “Hello?”

“Hi,” Shane said.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ilya said.

“Well, you haven’t been talking to me, and that’s not—we should talk,” Shane said, and Ilya didn’t understand how he sounded so flustered. Shouldn’t he have planned what to say? “Sorry for getting your doctor to lie.”

“Talk about what?” Ilya asked, as though daring Shane to bring the article up, which was a fool’s game given that Shane was utterly bereft of tact and absolutely would do so. That was why Ilya had blocked him.

“Um, well,” Shane said.

“Jesus Christ,” Ilya said again.

“I’m really sorry about it,” Shane said. “I mean, I’m sorry about what happened to your mom, and I’m sorry that it got out—”

“Okay,” Ilya said.

“We don’t ever have to talk about it,” Shane said. “Any of it. I mean, I would, if you want to—”

“Obviously I don’t fucking want to, Hollander,” Ilya said. It had occurred to him that the article, in combination with that photo of him and Shane, was probably good for Shane’s image. It elevated Shane’s kindness to him from sportsmanship to something saintly, helping someone who was fucked up and no good all the way down. Ilya was not the one who should have been drawing Jesus comparisons. He could better play a leper or a whore.

“Right,” Shane said. “So let’s just do what we were doing before, okay? This hasn’t changed anything.”

“What were we doing before?” Ilya said. Often his antagonism led him to stupid places. It wasn’t a question he really wanted an answer to, but he wanted that split second of uncomfortable silence as Shane devised his response, and apparently a split second was as far ahead as he could plan.

Shane bowled him over. “Well, I think it’s good for us to make sure we’re on the same page about our whole… arrangement,” he said. “But also, I don’t know. I like talking to you.”

Ilya pulled the phone away from his mouth to swallow. As surreal as it sounded he couldn’t say it was ridiculous. He liked talking to Shane too, had from their very first call. It had gotten increasingly friendly, increasingly far from what they had been like before his injury. Not by much – still the call was almost exclusively concerned with his rehab, and it was an anomaly if it lasted even twenty minutes, but each week Ilya could rely on one or two sentences being exchanged between them that would stay with him, making him smile whenever he recalled them, until the next time they talked. It was small enough, incidental and casual enough, that there had been no cause to name it. Even now, it wasn’t like Shane had been cornered. He could’ve talked around it.

“I am very charming,” Ilya said, the easiest way out.

Shane wasn’t distracted from his own sincerity. “And I don’t think it’s good when you just cut me out like that,” he said. “I mean, I don’t like it. You’ve done it before, after the Olympics, and after your crash. I don’t want you to.”

Ilya rubbed at his eyes, almost frustrated. “It was not like it was forever,” he said. “I would have unblocked you, like, next week, probably.”

Shane huffed out a laugh. “Oh,” he said. “My bad. I guess I should have just been patient then.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, keeping his eyes closed.

“Okay,” Shane said. “I’m going to call you on Sunday, okay? So unblock me by then. And I am sorry, about lying to your doctor, and interrupting your rehab. Obviously I don’t want to do that.”

“It’s okay,” Ilya said, even as it made him feel very weird. Not the disruption to his routine but that Shane had the power to disrupt it, that Ilya’s doctors complied with Shane’s will like that. “I am going to get very mad and be very mean to Dr. Renier, and it’s your fault, but it’s okay.”

“No, be nice,” Shane said.

“Okay, bye Hollander,” Ilya said. “I am off to suplex my doctor.”

He hung up with Shane still laughing, trying to withhold his smile.

The phone calls resumed and while Ilya felt sick all through the first one, waiting for evidence that Shane saw him differently, it never arrived. The next call he felt less sick, and less again. Ilya got worse at denying what the conversations meant to him. Svetlana’s presence in his life grew lighter, which Ilya used as a barometer for his well-being. He did not return to social media. He finally returned Marlow’s, I’m sorry about your mom man text. Every now and then he went out with the Raiders, and sometimes on those nights he slept with someone. The season passed. Montreal won the cup again. This time he didn’t see Shane during the playoffs, but Shane returned to Boston and stayed longer than he had last summer.

By that point Ilya’s leg was all but recovered. He wasn’t quite as fast or smooth as he had been before, but it no longer seemed impossible that he could some day get there. He could sprint, he could balance, he could hold a wall sit. His hand seemed like the major barrier to returning to hockey. The Liberty Clinic wasn’t so holistic as to have its own ice rink, but it did start renting him time on one nearby. Ilya wasn’t sure if they took such care with all their patients or if they went above and beyond with him. He liked to imagine he was their favorite.

The first time he got back on the ice he almost cried. It was the longest he had ever gone in his life, to his memory, without skating, and it was such a singular activity, such a singular feeling, that it stimulated a part of him that had been entirely dormant since the last game of the finals. He felt larger, more. It worked like that physically too – his team hadn’t brought him to the rink just as a kindness. Skating used different muscles to walking or running and he needed to start strengthening them as well. He felt stiff and sore after the first day back in the rink in a way that felt deeply sentimental, in a way that reminded him of Russia.

When Shane visited, he joined Ilya at the rink. The first time, as they were lacing up their skates side by side, Ilya trying to keep his excitement in check even as Shane’s knee knocked into his, Shane asked, “Why can’t you use the Raiders facility?”

Ilya shrugged, and Shane persevered. “I’m sure they’d be happy to let you. For the content if nothing else.”

“They cut me,” Ilya said, even though he’d had that thought too. He just hadn’t had the guts to reach out.

“All the more reason,” Shane said. “They should start trying to win you back. It won’t be long until you start hearing from other teams.”

Ilya pulled his laces extra tight and said nothing. He and Shane didn’t even have hockey sticks, they were only here to skate. That morning he’d jerked Shane off at an exceedingly awkward angle because his hurt hand couldn’t grip as tight as Shane liked. Right now he could just about tie his laces, the loops lopsided and fallible. He was a long way off from fielding interest.

All angst and annoyance was forgotten once they got on the ice. A couple times one of Ilya’s team had gotten skates on and come out with him, but there was a world between that and skating alongside Shane Hollander. He and Shane had never done anything like this before, shared ice just the two of them, getting to spend every second entirely focused on the other. They started gently, warming up, and soon that grew into racing. Shane won because Ilya wasn’t on that level yet, but Shane didn’t seem disappointed, taunted him like he was an even match. They laid out a line of cones a couple feet apart to swerve between, and Ilya’s injury interfered less, and he managed to beat Shane if only once. That was the only moment of tension for the whole afternoon, Ilya crowing and saying you lost to a fucking has been. Shane’s face fell a little and he refused to play along. He at least didn’t make a big deal of it, let Ilya move on quick.

They played a game that probably wasn’t conducive to Ilya’s recovery where they threw themselves on the ice and measured who slid furthest, and then a game kind of like chicken where one of them would stay in a fixed spot and the other would skate at them full speed and stop abruptly, getting as close as possible without a collision. With Shane just steadying himself in front of Ilya, missing him by an inch, Ilya leaned forward as though for a kiss and Shane fell backwards, shocked. Ilya laughed for what felt like ten minutes. He hadn’t fucked around on the ice like this since he was a kid, and he couldn’t have imagined Shane ever doing it. Maybe, very obliquely, the skills that these games took were transferable to hockey, but they were far from standard drills.

He could see that Shane would like to keep going, like a young dog with too much energy, but after an hour or so Ilya’s heart was pounding and his hip was aching and he was trying, for the first time in his life, to know his limits. “Okay, I’m hungry,” he said, knowing that Shane could see right through him and being strangely okay with it.

They left the rink slowly, shoving at each other and skating in circles around each other, and then sat side by side each other as they had earlier, this time pulling off their skates.

“It was really good to see you out there again,” Shane said, looking away with a faux casual tone.

“Was not exactly hockey,” Ilya said.

“No, but it’s what I like about your hockey.”

“My skating?”

Shane shook his head. “How much you enjoy it,” he said. “You always seem to be having fun. Like it’s a game.”

Ilya half smiled. “It is a game, Hollander.”

“Right,” Shane said, but then kept on. “Sometimes you do these things and pundits don’t understand why. Because it’s not, like, the optimal decision. But it’s the most exciting one. Sometimes I wish—” He stumbled, faded off.

“What?”

“It’s funny,” Shane said. “We got asked about each other so much, I’ve probably talked more about you on record than any other player, but I don’t really ever get to talk about your play. Not in detail. I wish I did. I feel like a lot of people don’t understand it.”

Ilya yanked his right skate off with too much force. “You can give speech at my hall of fame induction,” he said. “Or maybe present my next MVP to me. That would be nice.”

“Fuck off,” Shane said, but he sounded unduly pleased, and it took Ilya a second too long to figure out why. It wasn’t like him to talk about returning to MVP form, not even as a joke. He stood up and walked to the locker room, trailed by Shane. He stripped mechanically, hearing Shane do the same a few lockers down, and then he heard silence. He looked up, saw Shane standing naked and still, and smiled slowly.

They had the run of the place. Maybe there was facility staff around somewhere, Ilya didn’t know, but it wasn’t like they’d be walking into locker room showers while they were in use. He raised his eyebrows at Shane, still smiling, and walked into the showers, turning one on and standing under it, tilting his head down to wet his hair.

Shane followed, and stood two down from Ilya, which made Ilya laugh.

“We shouldn’t do anything stupid,” Shane said, barely audible over the water.

“Yes,” Ilya agreed easily. “Is against the rules. What would Pete think?”

“Shut up,” Shane said.

Ilya did for a minute or so, using the cheap body wash to clean himself, and then said, conversationally, “I think you deserve to know what it feels like to suck someone’s dick in the showers.”

Shane turned to him with a look of utter disbelief, but he was, unsurprisingly, hard. Ilya shrugged dramatically, turning to show off his own hardness. “But, like you said, we should not be stupid,” he said. “I am sensible guy now. No more risks, no more danger. Right?”

“Fuck you,” Shane said, and dropped to his knees. He did it where he stood, not coming to Ilya first, and something about that made Ilya madly aroused. He wrapped his hand around his dick and approached Shane, who was waiting, his jaw already a little loose. Ilya ran his free hand, the hurt hand, through Shane’s wet hair, slick against his skull, pushing him back a little before landing his dick on Shane’s lower lip. Shane held eye contact.

“Be quick, Hollander,” Ilya said. “We don’t have much time.”

Shane’s eyes widened, alarmed, like he thought that sentiment might be more than just charade, but swallowed Ilya down regardless. Ilya had to squeeze his eyes shut, had to let the drone of the shower drown out his thoughts. It was just too much, having someone so beautiful on their knees for him in an ice rink shower. Having Shane Hollander, reigning champ, on his knees for him. It made him feel powerful, made him feel like something other than what he knew was. This was, surely, as good as winning MVP. Or it would be so long as he could fucking last.

He tried to slide his leg between Shane’s, but Shane pulled off immediately. “You’re standing in the fucking showers,” he said. “Keep your feet under you or you’ll slip.”

Ilya withheld his grin. Not so risky after all. He did as Shane said, and Shane took him back into his mouth, warm and wet and sucked tight, all the different textures pressing and moving against him. Ilya’s hands were on Shane’s head, one resting, one gripping, and they held him in place as he came, Shane’s sounds amplified by the hard acoustics of the tile. Ilya got his breath back with Shane’s head resting on his hip, and then slid his hands under Shane’s armpits and pulled him up. He pushed him against the cold wall outside of the stream of the shower, watched goosebumps prickling his pretty skin. Shane wasn’t trying anything, looking for anything, but Ilya still pressed his forearm against Shane’s chest to keep him there as his other hand gripped his dick, as hard as it always was after sucking Ilya off, and jacked him between them.

“God, fuck,” Shane said, face twisting, like this was more than a handjob, like he’d gone longer without than maybe six hours.

Ilya smiled. “How many times have you gotten off to porn like this?” he asked, and laughed when Shane turned his head to the side and came on both their stomachs. As in sync as they’d been on the ice, they stepped under the water to let it run off their bodies, Shane’s head falling to Ilya’s shoulder.

Ilya spent the rest of the day – Shane’s last in Boston – braced for a break down, but it didn’t come. Shane seemed completely at peace with what they’d done, with the ways it could have gone wrong. He seemed at peace in general, smiley and relaxed as Ilya fed him and fucked him. After, as they lay in Ilya’s bed, Ilya went to replenish the ice in Shane’s now room temperature water. When he returned Shane said, with no real protest, “You didn’t have to.”

Ilya made a considering noise as he settled back into bed. “Now I am three ice cubes less in debt,” he said.

“Oh,” Shane said. Ilya heard the ice rattling as he drank, and then heard the glass being set down again on the nightstand. “It’s not like that. Don’t talk about that.”

“What?” Ilya asked.

“Debt,” Shane said.

Ilya said nothing. He was happy to not talk about it, but he didn’t get the idea that the debt didn’t exist. Obviously it did, and not even the abstract kind like his debt to Svetlana or his first coach in Russia, but the kind that had a figure attached.

“I’m so grateful I get to do this,” Shane said, slowly. “Do you get that? Before we agreed to this I was…”

Ilya, despite himself, got curious. “What?”

“Helpless, I guess,” Shane said, after a moment. “Or I felt helpless. You weren’t talking to me, we don’t really know any of the same people, I was relying on podcasts and articles to answer my questions. And after a while there stopped being new podcasts and articles, but I still had so many questions. I hated it. I hated it so much. I was having nightmares, that summer.”

Ilya turned to him abruptly, slightly horrified. “Hollander, I—”

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” Shane said. “I’m just trying to explain. I don’t like when you act like I’m doing you this huge favor, like you have to make it up to me. I want to do this. If I wasn’t doing this I’d be losing my mind. I had been losing my mind.”

“Hollander,” Ilya said again, and sighed. “I think maybe you are still losing your mind.”

Ilya started applying more fervor to his recovery than ever before. Previously he had wanted back in the league because he wanted to not be terrified of how he would survive, but the fantasy that hockey could save him from anything more than that had been roundly squashed when he’d won the cup and MVP and still felt half dead. Probably this meant he should lower his expectations, but the feeling of fucking around with Shane on the ice stayed like a taste in his mouth, on the edge of his mind like a dream. He wanted to replicate it, he wanted to have an infinite store of it to gorge himself on. He did his exercises, and he trained, and he pushed himself, and he spent as much time on the ice as he could, resurrecting the single-mindedness that had gotten him a cup.

The clinic had referred him to a hockey trainer, even. It wasn’t rehab anymore, not for his leg, it was just coaching, albeit with a limited curriculum. Of course Shane paid for that as well, but hockey was too small a world for them to reveal to the trainer their arrangement, so Shane could only get his updates from Ilya. Which Ilya enjoyed, until he sprained his knee.

It happened a month after Shane’s visit, toward the end of the off-season. His feet skidded out from under him and his knee hit the ice wrong, the kind of thing that had used to happen two or three times a season but which now felt disastrous. He was told it wasn’t – it hadn’t been caused by his previous injury nor had it exacerbated it. But questions were raised about how hard he was pushing himself, the level of strain he was putting on his body that was just getting used to this level of activity, and he was sentenced to a week of rest, where his only rehab would be using his fucked up hand to move the pieces around in a puzzle that reminded him of ones he’d seen people give to dogs on instagram.

“It is not too bad,” he told Shane over the phone, after Shane’s silence stretched a little too long. It had just occurred to him that he was supposed to be selling his recovery to Shane on these calls, convincing him it wasn’t a sinking ship. He’d lost sight of that. “Not, like, real set back.”

“I know,” Shane said. “But it still… I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, a little stiff.

“Hey,” Shane said. “I’ve a couple meetings in New York in two days. I could make a detour.”

“Because Boston is right on the way,” Ilya said.

“It’s just a couple meetings,” Shane said. “I could fit you in.”

It was a ludicrous, unnecessary, dangerous idea, and if Ilya asked why Shane would do that that would be all it took for Shane to crumble, chicken out. A part of Ilya still wanted to ask, but a bigger part of him wanted to see Shane, so he said, “Okay, I can fit you in too.”

Shane showed up on his doorstep two days later at eight in the morning. He’d leave again at noon, so Ilya didn’t waste time with pleasantries, pulling him in and kissing him. Shane kissed back, but when they were halfway to Ilya’s room he turned his face away and said, “You know, this isn’t why I came.”

Ilya kissed him again. “You came to check on your investment. This is best way to test me out,” he said.

“Fuck you,” Shane said, but let Ilya drag him to his bedroom. Shane rode him, Ilya mostly just lying there and watching like more than his knee was out of commission, and afterwards Shane lay down on Ilya’s arm, his knee on Ilya’s thigh, closer than they usually got.

“So I did also speak to your doctor about it,” Shane said, tentative.

“Of course,” Ilya said, closing his eyes. It hadn’t occurred to him, but it wasn’t surprising.

“I know it could just be a harmless, random injury,” Shane said. “But also it seems like there’s some fear you’re pushing yourself too hard.”

Ilya made a noise of acknowledgment.

“Maybe you should take it easy for a while. Even when you’re back from this. Maybe you should slow it down.”

Ilya tilted his head to look at Shane, raising his eyebrows. “This feels hypocritical,” he said. “Do you ever slow down, Shane Hollander?”

Shane flushed, shrugged. “Do as I say, not as I do,” he said, and Ilya felt his eyes widen. Shane’s widened too. “Shit, that’s not—obviously you don’t have to do what I say. That was a joke. That’s something, like, parents and teachers say. Like if you don’t recognize it, maybe it’s not in Russia, but it is a thing.”

He looked so freaked out Ilya let him off the hook – or at least fucked with him over something less sensitive than the dubious claim that Ilya didn’t have to do what he said. “I am confused,” he said. “Do you want to pretend you are my teacher or my parent?”

“You’re so gross, fuck off,” Shane said, rolling away from him and freeing his arm, and Ilya laughed. He pulled his arm against his chest and pressed into the pins and needles with his other hand.

“Seriously, though,” Shane said, having never let anything go in his life. “Maybe you should take it easy for a while.”

“I don’t know if I know how,” Ilya said. “You made me in your image.”

Shane inched closer, and spoke quietly. “You made me in yours first.”

Shane left and Ilya hated how listless he felt in his absence, Shane who was on the way to business meetings, who had come here as a detour, albeit a circuitous one. The feeling of unease ate at him until Svetlana came that evening, distracting him and cheering him up. Still, for the next few months, even with the knee sprain a thing of the past, the unease kept recurring. It got sharpest after his calls with Shane.

Ilya had too much time to think. He could see what maybe Shane was too busy or self-disciplined to allow himself to even glance at. He could see how stupid they were being, that whatever they were doing fell into no category, had changed utterly from those hook ups of their early career, and that only half of what they did could be entirely explained by Shane funding Ilya’s recovery.

Shane checking up on him after an injury after already speaking to and receiving assurance from Ilya’s doctor was entirely unnecessary. The days he’d stayed at Ilya’s – not even in a hotel – to review their arrangement were entirely unnecessary. At least ninety percent of what they said to each other on the phone calls was entirely unnecessary. They were too tender with each other, too interested in each other. It was fucked up, for all the reasons it had always been fucked up and now for some new ones too.

Ilya was overcome by an intense need, too rabid and all-encompassing to have any detail. He wanted Shane with every heartbeat, even if how and for what was less clear. He knew he couldn’t just run headlong into his desires the way he used to. He couldn’t take risks with Shane, not when Shane could take everything from him. As Ilya recovered his father deteriorated, and each month he was sending more to Russia, keeping less for himself. The doctors said he might be able to return to the league some time next season – it wasn’t guaranteed, but it was a possibility. He knew himself, knew how easily he fucked good things up, and he couldn’t do that with this. He couldn’t push Shane any further.

And for as much desire he felt for Shane it wasn’t all that was there. He remembered a line from scripture his mom had often quoted: All these things will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me. He remembered it because for years he had assumed it was Jesus who had said that, or God, but it wasn’t, it was the devil, and his mom had been talking about something else entirely. Why it would resonate with his mother was straightforward, inarguable. That his arrangement with Shane was reminding him of it was far more troubling. He couldn’t doubt Shane’s goodness, but there was something in Shane that could be corrupted, just how much of Ilya he wanted, and how much of that desire was a desire for control, for ownership. Ilya had been corrupting it himself, with all his dumb jokes and dirty talk, feeding the most dangerous parts of Shane.

He knew all this but didn’t know what to do with it; he kept answering Shane’s calls, kept asking him about his day, kept wading in deeper.

When the solution arrived it landed like a sign from God, as calamitous as a lightning strike or a flood, and, inevitably, came in the form of a screenshot from Svetlana: pap pics of Shane leaving a restaurant with a pretty blond girl it took Ilya a few moments, with the poor lighting and incongruity, to identify as Rose Landry.

He stared for five minutes and then texted Svetlana, Crazy. She responded, Ikr. He was pretty sure she’d known that Shane was the mysterious benefactor paying for his recovery since that photo of them in Boston had dropped, but they didn’t talk about it. He knew in her own way she was looking out for him, sending him these pictures.

As it happened his phone call with Shane was scheduled for that evening, and this time his recovery update was rote. As soon as it was settled Shane said, “So, um, did you see those photos?”

“Which ones?” Ilya asked, because obviously he was going to be a dick about this.

“Of me,” Shane said. “And Rose Landry?”

“Ah,” Ilya said. “Yes. You looked very nice.”

“Right,” Shane said. “Well, just – I know people are saying things online. I happened to meet her at a party and we got on, that’s all. We talked about hockey. It’s not…”

Ilya let him flail. This was maybe the worst version of this call there was, or at least the most dangerous – Shane offering Ilya an explanation. Ilya didn’t need an explanation. If Shane had the opportunity to fuck a hot movie star, he should take it.

“Why are you telling me this?” Ilya asked eventually, when Shane’s disjointed excuses wore themselves out. It was a cruel thing to ask, intended to freak Shane out, but Ilya was convinced that Shane hadn’t asked himself even once why he was doing any of the stuff he’d done with Ilya in maybe the last year. It would do him good to scramble for an explanation that wasn’t damning.

“Just—” Shane said. “I don’t know. I kind of just want to be her friend.”

It was so far from an answer Ilya almost laughed. “Why just a friend?” he asked. “You don’t think Rose Landry is hot?”

“Obviously she’s very good looking,” Shane said.

“Yes,” Ilya said. “You two would make very pretty couple.”

“Yeah, but.” Shane took a moment to gather his words. “If I start seeing her, I’ll have to stop what I’m doing with you.”

Ilya flexed his jaw. “You will still give me money?”

“Yeah,” Shane said, with a sigh. “I mean the other stuff.”

“The other stuff is…” Ilya grimaced. The other stuff was weird and fucked up. Shane deserved a normal relationship. “It would have to stop eventually, right.”

“Definitely,” Shane said, and sounded less confident when he asked, “You think it should stop now?”

“It is not about me,” Ilya said. “Rose Landry, she makes sense for you. What we are does not make sense.” That, at least, he wholeheartedly believed.

“I know,” Shane said. “Still, I…”

Ilya said nothing. He’d made his case, and he trusted Shane to realize it was the right thing to do.

“I don’t even know if she’s into me,” Shane said, eventually.

“Ask and find out,” Ilya said.

“Right,” Shane said. “And if she says yes…”

“Then you stop sucking my dick,” Ilya said. “I know it will be big challenge, but I believe in you.”

“Rozanov,” Shane said, and then sighed again. “It will be hard. To not… To stop doing this.”

Ilya decided he could give him that at least. “Yes,” he said. “For me too.”

“Okay,” Shane said, and they hung up.

It was harder even than Ilya would have guessed. Part of that was his own fault; he re-downloaded social media, and social media didn’t want to talk about anything other than Shane and Rose. He went out with the Raiders imagining it would be a reprieve and discovered that the Raiders also didn’t want to talk about anything other than Shane and Rose.

Ilya got it. He hadn’t been lying when he said they made a pretty couple. It made him a little sick how pretty, and not just out of resentment. Rose was objectively beautiful and Ilya knew plenty of red blooded heterosexual men who had her as their hall pass, but she didn’t really fit into Ilya’s concept of eroticism, a concept he’d thought he’d shared with Shane. She was so wholesome and secure, she had no edge, no fragility. Even if Shane was attracted to women it hurt to imagine he was attracted to women like Rose specifically, who seemed the embodiment of everything Ilya and Shane, together, hadn’t been.

Though he had little experience with the emotion, he knew part of what he was feeling was jealousy. That was new to him, wanting something just for himself. That Shane Hollander would be what finally provoked it was a joke. Ilya should have started smaller, with something more manageable, something he was actually capable of possessing. Then again, he’d always been defined by extremes.

Maybe the jealousy wouldn’t be so pronounced if it was a struggle between him and Rose, but he had forfeited his claim as soon as she’d entered the fray. He hadn’t realized how entirely he’d lose Shane. He still believed it was the right thing to do, Rose the emergency parachute as they’d hurtled to the ground, but he had only thought about not getting to fuck Shane anymore. Obviously that was a significant loss in itself, but Shane also stopped calling every week. Ilya hadn’t been prepared for that. It felt, among other things, like a confession, Shane finally acknowledging that those calls had been loaded, had been messy, had not been purely administrative. The deposits kept arriving, and Ilya got half hard when he learned that Shane was still getting updates from his doctors. He was still present in Shane’s life, if only secondhand.

Ilya had thought he was handling it fine, over all, and then he realized that he was seeing Svetlana nearly every day, which usually happened when he was on the brink of something. He hadn’t noticed. It happened the next day, at the Liberty Clinic, where Svetlana couldn’t keep him on the tracks. Usually the staff would, but, well. He hooked up with Dr. Renier.

Renier had gone through a breakup last month; Ilya knew that because his team had figured out how receptive he was to gossip. That was also how Ilya had learned Renier was gay, which he’d previously only suspected. Renier was in his late thirties, had a nice smile and a nice laugh but wasn’t really all that good looking; something about his normalcy was deeply appealing to Ilya. Ilya hadn’t consciously decided to seduce him, but he had been finding himself alone with him more often than was the norm, and then Renier was saying, “I’m really not supposed to be doing this,” as he got on his knees in his office. Ilya had considered letting Renier fuck him, for the desire to do something he’d never done with Shane, but he’d flinched at the last moment and anyway, they weren’t working with that kind of time. He got his hands in Renier’s hair and said things like, “Like that,” and “Fuck, that’s good.”

It was good. It occurred to Ilya that Renier was probably the most experienced man he’d ever been with. The thought got him closer to the edge, and Renier’s finger pressing into his hole pushed him over.

Ilya laughed as he pulled out of Renier’s mouth. “You are really fucking good.”

“Thanks,” Renier said, but he looked almost confused, like he didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there. He stood up slowly.

“You are okay?” Ilya asked, putting a hand on his arm. “You want?”

Renier took a few seconds to look at him, and then nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Please.”

“Okay,” Ilya said, and kissed him quickly before returning the favor.

Ilya really hadn’t put much thought into it. It seemed like it just kind of happened, except that he knew he was usually the one pushing things along in situations like that. He’d been working with Renier and his team for two years now, and he was attached to them, and most of his attachment turned sexual. The experience had had a weight to it that random hook ups didn’t, a layer of reassurance and security Ilya couldn’t entirely parse but which carried him through the next twenty four hours quite smoothly. For the first time since Shane and Rose had started seeing each other, over a month ago now, Ilya didn’t spend every free moment checking social media.

When he arrived at the center two days later, his sessions whittling down, he could immediately tell something was wrong. Marissa, the clinical coordinator, was waiting for him, and she didn’t respond to his small talk with more than smiles as she guided him into her office.

“Am I in trouble?” he asked, joking.

“No,” she said. “No, Ilya, of course not.” She leaned forward as she said it, like she really wanted to reassure him of that, and it made him shift, uncomfortable.

“This is difficult to talk about,” she said. “I know it’s sensitive, but I’m just going to ask. What’s the nature of your relationship with Dr. Renier?”

Ilya feigned confusion. “He is nice guy,” he said. “We work together with my hand sometimes.”

“Right,” she said. “Ilya, has it ever been… other than professional?”

She knew him too well for pretending the English was beyond him to work. “No,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t want to put you in an awkward position,” she said. “We’ve all really enjoyed working with you. We want to do everything we can to support your recovery, and you’ve made such strides. If you say there’s nothing with you and Renier, then I accept that. But I just want to also say, as you may or may not know, that our staff are expressly forbidden from engaging in sexual or romantic relationships with clients, and I want to assure you of our professionalism going forward.”

“Okay,” Ilya said. “You have all been very professional. Dr. Renier too. Whatever you heard—”

“Thank you, Ilya,” she said. “I’ve kept you too long already. If you’re happy to continue working here, and I understand if you’re not, you can go get started on your session.”

“Of course I am,” Ilya said. “Thank you.”

He excused himself, chest burning with fear and confusion. He chewed over the interaction in his head. She hadn’t spoken to him like he’d done something wrong, but rather like he’d been mistreated. If people knew what happened, it wouldn’t be Ilya in trouble. He needed to talk to Renier, but Renier didn’t seem to be around, and Ilya couldn’t be too obvious about seeking him out.

He was sick with anxiety all day, all night, to the point that photos of Rose and Shane would have been if anything a welcome distraction, but there hadn’t been anything new in maybe a week. He pulled at his lip until it bled, and the next day went back to the clinic and was told that Renier had resigned. Ilya excused himself to the bathroom and sat in a cubicle for ten minutes trying and failing to cry. He needed some kind of release but none came, the feeling just gnawing away at his insides. He remembered that article about him, about him and his mother and his brother, as though they’d all infected each other with their different versions of pain, as though they were contagious. This was another life ruined, or at least derailed.

And through sex. That was what hurt worst. Sex was supposed to be safe, it was supposed to be what Ilya could do to make people happy, to make their lives better, brighter, fuller. And now some guy who’d always seemed nice had lost his job because he’d sucked Ilya off. Ilya really didn’t know what he was supposed to do with himself if fucking people could hurt them this bad.

He went through his treatment. To the extent that other staff treated him different it seemed to be more because he couldn’t string a sentence together than because they’d discovered he was some kind of incubus. When he should have been on his way out, he knocked on Marissa’s door. At her bidding he entered, but he remained standing, too nervous to sit.

“I heard Renier quit,” he said.

“Yes,” Marissa said, and looked at him for a moment. “We got a report about the two of you, Mr. Rozanov, but you both denied it. It could have become a whole charade, but Renier agreed to handle it more quietly. I think he’s taking a career break. He’s been struggling for a while.”

Ilya nodded, unsure what to say. He’d known Renier was struggling, but he hadn’t thought he was taking advantage. He’d thought he was giving him some comfort, just as he was taking it for himself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Those things shouldn’t happen.”

“It was me,” Ilya said. “I mean, nothing happened, but it was me.”

She nodded, but he couldn’t tell what she really made of that.

“Who reported it?” he asked.

“I can’t answer that,” she said.

“How many people know?”

“Ah,” she said. “As few as possible. And I promise you it won’t leave these walls. We have a lot of high-end clientele, we know the value of discretion.”

It was a sales pitch, but Ilya nodded anyway.

“There is something else, Mr. Rozanov,” she said. “The arrangement you have, for covering the costs of your treatment.”

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s quite unusual,” she said. “We’re expected to provide updates. Regular, but also if anything notable happens, like a change in personnel.”

“Ah,” he said.

“He wants to know why,” she said. “I’ve told him I can’t get into it, but that’s made him quite persistent.”

“Yes, he is like that,” Ilya said, almost smiling despite himself. It felt, in its own weird way, like proximity to Shane.

“So I just want you to know,” she said. “That this seems to be important to him. I imagine you want to keep him happy.”

“If you tell him will you keep it…” he faded off.

“It’ll have to be vague,” she said. “I know very little.”

“Okay,” he said, and then felt he had to add: “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “I think the best thing is if we put this behind us.”

Ilya would do so gladly, or would at least gladly try.

The feeling didn’t go away, and he found himself actively wishing for more photos or even just reports of Shane and Rose, but they remained quiet. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to see them as punishment or something else, reassurance that Shane had gotten away, that he was safe from Ilya. He got some satisfaction out of the fact that Shane didn’t call or text, even though he undoubtedly by now had some idea of why one of Ilya’s doctors had quit.

He hated how dramatic he was being; he really wanted to put it behind him. He went out with the Raiders and then with Svetlana and got close to breaking the no risky behavior clause of his arrangement with Shane. He supposed he already had – fucking his doctor probably counted. Maybe Shane would stop covering his costs.

He woke up one morning to what he thought at first was a fire alarm and then belatedly realized was his doorbell. He groaned, assuming it was Svetlana, here to either complain or brag about the person she’d gone home with last night.

He ran a hand through his tangled, greasy hair and chugged water as he walked to the door. He would have been able to see it was Shane through the side window if he’d looked, but he didn’t, so Shane got to see his dumb look of shock when the door opened. Ilya glanced down at himself with bleary eyes – boxers and a tank, stinking of sweat and alcohol. He honestly wasn’t sure what else he’d have chosen. He stepped aside, saying nothing. Shane walked in and also said nothing. Ilya managed to think of a joke. “You have more meetings in New York?”

“No,” Shane said.

Ilya had lost track of the Montreal schedule with everything going on, didn’t know where Shane had flown in from or where he’d be flying out to. He nodded and went to the kitchen to refill his water. Shane followed.

“Why are you here, Hollander?” Ilya asked, as the silence persisted. “I am very hungover, I cannot handle this.”

“Have you been going out a lot?” Shane asked, and when Ilya turned around he found him frowning.

“Yes,” Ilya said. “I know this is not allowed with your rules, but neither is fucking my doctor, so.” He shrugged.

“It’s true?” Shane sounded shocked, like he hadn’t believed it. Ilya had no idea how he couldn’t have believed it.

“Yes,” he said.

“That’s so fucked up,” Shane said.

“I wasn’t thinking,” Ilya said. “Did not know he would have to quit. Obviously.”

“He should lose his fucking license,” Shane said.

Ilya couldn’t get into it. “Why are you here?” he asked. “If you didn’t think it’s true.”

“I don’t know,” Shane said, still looking at Ilya. “I guess it felt weird, for something like that to be going down with you and for me not to know anything about it. To be completely separate from your life like that.”

“We have always had completely separate lives,” Ilya said.

“Not recently,” Shane said, which presumably meant not since he’d started getting reports from Ilya’s chef and physical therapists.

“How’s Rose?” Ilya asked.

“Good,” Shane said. “She’s doing good. We, um, broke up.”

Ilya picked up his glass and walked to the living room. Again, Shane trailed him.

“Why?” Ilya asked, as he sat down. “She was good for you.”

“You can’t know that,” Shane said. “She figured out I was gay, so. Pretty embarrassing.”

“Being gay?” Ilya asked, to buy time and be a dick.

“No,” Shane said, albeit not especially convincing. “That she could tell.”

Ilya nodded. “So you are fully gay?” he asked. “Not into women at all?”

“No,” Shane said, jutting his jaw out like Ilya was about to argue with him about it.

“Well, I know hot doctor with a lot of free time, if you’re interested.”

“Fuck you,” Shane said. “And he’s not hot.”

Ilya couldn’t help laughing a little, and shrugged.

“You look a mess,” Shane said, softly, but it sounded almost awed.

“Yes,” Ilya said.

“What do you usually do on mornings like this?”

“This,” Ilya said, gesturing around him. “Lie on couch. Watch bad TV.”

Shane nodded. “Can we do that?” he asked. “Can we watch bad TV?”

Ilya turned to him, frowning, a little more alert than he’d been all morning. “Why are you here, Hollander? What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Shane said. “I just know I don’t want to not talk to you. Is that okay?”

Ilya stared at him. In stark contrast with himself, Shane looked lovely, fresh, comfortable. “Yes,” he said. “It’s okay.”

Shane nodded and pulled himself closer to Ilya as Ilya reached for the remote and resumed the true crime documentary Svetlana would get mad at him for continuing without her. A problem for another day. Once it was playing he grabbed his phone and texted her not to come over. He wondered if she’d be able to guess why. He could feel the heat off Shane’s body beside him.

“I should shower,” Ilya said. “Or brush teeth.”

“Gross,” Shane said. “Yeah. But later.”

Ilya wasn’t sure he was the gross one, but he said nothing. Shane lay his head on Ilya’s shoulder, and Ilya pulled him closer. It felt better than anything he’d felt in months. “How long can you stay here?” he asked, his cheek against Shane’s hair.

“Like, an hour,” Shane said. Ilya laughed.

“Stop,” Shane said, but he was laughing too.

“No, I’m sorry,” Ilya said, still laughing a little. “I am glad you came.”

Shane pulled away slightly to look at him. “Yeah?”

Ilya swallowed, realized how much he meant it. “Yes,” he said. Shane smiled and settled back and they watched the rest of the episode in relative peace. Shane, having not seen the earlier episodes, had many questions, and Ilya surprised himself by being happy to answer them. Maybe Shane’s questions were easier to deal with when Ilya himself wasn’t the subject matter. He could be charmed by them, even.

Things kept getting better. Ilya’s hand was still slightly weak and stiff but functional enough to wield a hockey stick; his occupational therapy had pared back even further, and he was spending more time with his hockey trainer. His former agency had been in touch to say that teams had started feeling him out, that apparently there was buzz around a possible return.

Shane called every week and seemed easier, more confident, like something had clicked for him, like Ilya wasn’t as big a mystery to him as he’d been before. Ilya’s own desire had been distilled, had grown less ambiguous, since that hour on his couch watching true crime. For weeks preceding that Ilya had been feeling awful, and he’d been especially fucked up since he’d cost someone their job, and Shane had somehow swept that away. His presence had been cleansing, fortifying. He’d made Ilya into a person again, as opposed to a storm cloud or a curse. For a long time Ilya’s hang up about their arrangement was not the money but the monitoring, all the knowledge Shane was accruing. Suddenly that stopped hurting. Shane knowing him was Ilya’s route to absolution.

Ilya mauled him, when Shane came by after playing Boston. He had gotten most of his bulk back and wanted to put it to use. He pushed Shane against the hallway wall, stripping his clothes off, Shane’s breathing getting unsteady. He dragged him to his room and pushed him onto the bed, flipped him over and opened him up, fucked into him. It was only when he was thrusting, knee on the bed, hand on the back of Shane’s neck, that he realized what little resistance he had met. Shane hadn’t mauled him back.

Ilya taking the lead between them wasn’t unusual, but it wasn’t usually so total. Shane had just given himself to Ilya. It was heady and disorienting and Ilya didn’t have a hope in hell of understanding why it was happening. Still, he should at least check in. “You are good?” he asked. “You like this?”

“Yes, yes,” Shane said, gasping.

“This is what you want?” Ilya asked.

Shane didn’t respond straight away, his eyes clenched closed, trying to catch his breath. “I want you to have what you want,” he said, and Ilya lost reason.

Of course when Ilya was feeling this good he was braced for disaster, but fate did some sleight of hand, had him looking in the wrong direction. He was expecting what he and Shane were carefully and quietly constructing to get blown apart, and then his brother called to tell him his father was dead.

His father died at the start of the month, so Ilya still had money in his account intended for his father’s carers but which he would instead use to book a flight to Russia. He’d have to look after funeral expenses too. He wasn’t sure what the norm was with carers, if you stopped paying them as soon as the person they were caring for died or if you gave them a couple weeks extra pay as they looked for a new job. He’d figure it out on the plane.

His brother was not so horrible that day, seemed in a state of shock, and answered Ilya’s questions straightforwardly. By the time Ilya landed in Moscow he had most things looked after. It had been a while since he was the person expected to do the looking after. He wondered how his family would feel to know that for the past two years all their indulgences had been enabled not by Ilya but by Ilya’s gay lover.

The next day, expected, Ilya got a text from Shane. It came in the evening for him, just back to his apartment from dealing with his family, and would have been morning for Shane. You missed your appointment? Ilya felt warm with the lack of accusation, like Shane expected there to be a reasonable explanation. Ilya called him.

“Hey,” Shane said, tentative. “Is something wrong, are you okay?”

“I am okay,” Ilya said. “My father died. I am in Moscow.”

“Oh my God,” Shane said. “Ilya, I’m so sorry.”

Ilya closed his eyes at the sound of his name. “Yes, well,” he said. “He was sick, so. No big surprise.”

“He’s been sick?” Shane asked.

“Yes, he was old and not well,” Ilya said. Because he couldn’t avoid it, he said: “Technically you are paying for the funeral, you know. So thank you.”

It seemed to render Shane speechless. Ilya didn’t feel much like talking either, and waited him out. “I’m glad I could help,” Shane said eventually. “I—do you need anything more?”

“No,” Ilya said. “Actually you can give me less money now. I need less now.”

“Why?”

Suddenly it seemed shocking that Ilya had managed to keep this secret so long. “I was sending money home to Russia for his care,” he said. “It was expensive, it was what most of the money was for. Thank you for that also.”

“Oh my God,” Shane said, quietly, as if to himself. “I wish I’d known.”

It was so frank. Ilya appreciated that he wasn’t asking why Ilya hadn’t told him, just stating his own feelings. Somehow he’d known what Shane would be like at times like this, so steadfast, a life raft for Ilya to lay his body out on. He was always steadfast, even if Ilya sometimes read it as unrelenting. He made a non-committal noise. “I would not have wanted that,” he said, although that part of him felt distant.

“I know,” Shane said. “But, I mean. You mustn’t have had a lot of money left over for yourself. If I’d known I’d have given you more.”

The ease at which he said it made Ilya feel weak. “If I had a lot of money I would have been a lot worse at following your rules,” he said. “I had to get other people to buy me drinks, and they only want to do that so many times.”

Shane laughed softly. “You must’ve been very responsible with your money all these months,” he said. “I don’t know how you wound up broke in the first place.

“You have too much faith,” Ilya said. “I had psychic like. On retainer.”

“Wow,” Shane said. “No way you believe in that.”

Ilya smiled a little. He wasn’t sure he’d heard Shane speak about him so authoritatively before. He liked it. “It was to fuck with superstitious rookies. It was funny at the time.”

“I’m sure,” Shane said. There were a couple beats of silence, and then he said, “Are you really doing okay? It must be hard.”

Ilya pulled at his ear. “Being in Russia is hard,” he said. “A little, always. My father… we were not close. We had never been close. And we all knew it was coming, him dying, so. I feel weird how little I feel about it.”

“Yeah,” Shane said, like he understood a lot more than he had any right to. “I want you to—to talk to me. When you can. You know? Reach out. I want to be there for you. And I’ll check in on you.”

“Yes, you are good at that,” Ilya said, meant as a joke.

“Right,” Shane said, and sighed. “God, I can’t help but feel… In a way it feels like this whole deal has kept us apart.”

“Oh?”

“I know it’s made us closer too, but. Like, I wonder if maybe you would have told me about your dad, of your own volition, if I wasn’t the one paying for his care. If it would have been easier for you to tell me about it.”

“Maybe,” Ilya said. He didn’t know about his dad, but he knew the fear of losing the money had stopped him taking risks with Shane he might otherwise have taken. Maybe those risks would have brought them closer together, maybe not.

“It’s late in Moscow, right?” Shane asked.

“Yes,” Ilya said, smiling a little. He wondered if Shane had looked up the time during the call or if he just knew the difference. Either idea pleased Ilya.

“You should sleep,” Shane said. “Thanks for answering my call.”

It was surprisingly heartfelt. Ilya thought about the times he hadn’t – after Sochi, after the crash, after the article. “Yes, well,” he said. “I like talking to you.”

“I’ll call again tomorrow, then,” Shane said, almost tentative.

“Please,” Ilya said.

Shane called every night, to make idle small talk about his day or to jerk off with Ilya over video or to let Ilya rant about his family in Russian. The jerking off was the most confusing part, Shane acting how he’d been at their last hook up, entirely compliant, giving Ilya everything he wanted. Maybe it was a concession to Ilya’s grief. Ilya still didn’t know what to make of it, and found it too hot to worry too much about.

It was strange, arriving back in Boston and Shane not being there. It felt like Shane was what he was returning to – going home to – but it could be months before they saw each other again. The playoffs were approaching, and Shane was convinced he’d be able to win a third cup in a row. Ilya refrained from making a joke about it being Shane’s last chance before he was back, because it seemed like that might actually be true.

Given that it could prove to be the last season that Ilya watched entirely from the sidelines, he made the most of it. Every evening that Montreal played he was fixed in place on his couch, watching every frame, sometimes with Svetlana and sometimes alone. Gradually, over the course of his injury, the way he watched Shane had changed, become purely appreciative rather than assessing. He couldn’t help but wonder how much his return to the league would change things with Shane, how much of this bond they would allow themselves if they were to resume competition. The last two and a half years hadn’t felt unreal, exactly, but they had felt like their own reality, with rules made up by the two of them, quite separate from the rest of the world. Losing it would hurt, especially when Ilya didn’t know what they could replace it with. The money was, along with many other things, a tether.

He was running the problem in his head over and over while he watched Boston play Montreal, frustration building at his inability to just accept the price of returning to play. Hockey had always demanded sacrifices, and he’d always made them willingly. Shane too, he thought, Shane was willing to sacrifice too. And then an example of that played out on screen, Shane giving everything he had to the game he was built for, including his body, including blood. Ilya’s stomach clenched at the sight of the collision, at first unable to process it, at first assuming he’d lost track of Shane and it was somebody else hurt and not moving. But the commentators were saying it was Shane, too, and then medics were transferring him to a stretcher and carrying him off the ice. The broadcast cut and Ilya felt dazed, dizzy. He pulled out his phone and texted Shane, tell me you’re okay, and that was the only thing he could think to do. There was no one he could talk to, nobody he could ask, no way of learning where Shane was or how he’d been hurt. This was, maybe, how Shane had felt when Ilya had been injured, but he killed that comparison quick, because this wouldn’t be so serious. Cliff Marlow was strong, but he wasn’t the same as a car going thirty above the limit. Ilya navigated to his chat with Marly and sent, that looked fucking gruesome how bad did you fuck up Hollander?

Then he just stayed sitting. The game played on and he didn’t turn it off, half because he was too out of it and half because the part of him that was still online hoped the broadcast might share some updates on Shane’s condition. It didn’t, except a quick confirmation that Shane wouldn’t be returning to the game, which had been obvious.

The one thing Ilya would later be grateful for was that only about five minutes past between the Raiders leaving the ice at the end of the game and Marlow texting him back. Bro it was crazy idk if I’ll get out of Montreal alive. If I was gonna fuck up one of their players on purpose I would’ve chosen one of the assholes.

Ilya wanted to call, but Marlow was likely still in the locker room and anyway, Ilya wasn’t sure if he’d be able to keep his voice in check. He replied, Do you know how bad it is?

No but I was told he’s in the nearest hospital do you think it would be weird if I visit?

Hospital, Jesus Christ. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, but Ilya still went cold all over. Don’t visit just send a gift basket. He felt a little bad dissuading someone from doing something nice for Shane, but he intended to visit himself, and he didn’t want Marly seeing him there.

With Shane’s money he booked himself a first class flight to Montreal that would arrive at three am, and a room at a hotel whose sole redeeming feature was that it let guests check in that late. It was, relative to other cross-country trips, a quick flight, which he reminded himself as every second stretched on. He spent the time studying google maps to find the hospital closest to the arena, and two more that were also close that he could check if the first one didn’t work out, and then reading reviews people had left online of being treated at the first hospital.

He didn’t turn the lights on in the hotel room when he arrived, the bed dimly illuminated by streetlights outside the window. He just pulled off his clothes and collapsed, an alarm already set for seven am to get to the hospital in time for visiting hours.

He made his way to Shane’s room without seeing any of Shane’s friends or family, although he had an excuse prepared – reciprocating the kindness Shane had demonstrated when Ilya had been hurt himself. He just had to hope they didn’t do the math of him arriving in Montreal the morning after the injury.

It was unbelievable how beautiful Shane looked when Ilya found him, even with the red bruising across his face and under the fluorescent light, laid up in bed with his hair flat against his head. More beautiful still when he registered Ilya’s presence and his face lit up with a smile. His right arm was in a cast but his other limbs looked intact. He didn’t look like someone who’d had major surgery, or who’d just lost their career.

Ilya gathered himself enough to approach Shane when Shane gestured for him, let Shane take his hand, only teared up a little. “How bad is it?” he asked, choking back are you okay, which would just sound stupid.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Shane said, still smiling, vowels drawn out. Doped to the gills, obviously, and Ilya didn’t know how ethical it was to nevertheless demand he explain what his doctors had told him.

“I was talking to Marlow, he feels awful,” Ilya said. “He wanted to visit.”

Shane wrinkled his nose. “Would rather see you,” he said.

Ilya smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I thought you might.” He ran his thumb along the side of Shane’s face, and Shane leaned into it like a cat. It seemed bad to enjoy any element of Shane’s injury.

“So glad you came, Ilya,” Shane said. “Always like to see you.”

“Yeah?” Ilya said, prompting him for more.

“Uhuh,” Shane said. “I want to invite you to my cottage, you know.”

“Oh,” Ilya said.

“It’s so beautiful, and peaceful,” Shane said. “And it could just be the two of us, nobody else, for weeks.”

Ilya swallowed. “Sounds nice,” he said.

“Yeah,” Shane said, and then sighed. “But I can’t ask for things like that. I want things from you I can’t ask for.”

“Why not?” Ilya asked. Shane was still leaning into his hand. Ilya didn’t have the heart to take it away.

“Because I give you money,” Shane said. “And you’re in my debt, and I have all this power. So I can’t want too much. It’s unfair.”

Ilya’s knees felt a little weak. “But you have said we can keep these things separate.”

“I lied,” Shane said. “They’re not separate. I like it. I like getting to know things about you, I like being important in your life. I like taking care of you. I just want…” Shane broke off, and Ilya almost told him to relax, to stop talking, but he wasn’t so selfless. “I want to know what you want. I want you not to owe me. I miss when we were equals.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, although he hadn’t really thought about that before. “Me too.”

Probably mercifully, a nurse walked in. Ilya withdrew his hand and turned to her and could tell immediately that she recognized him.

“Mr Rozanov,” she said, cheerfully, if surprised. “I thought the friendship between you guys was just a rumor.”

“Ha, no,” Ilya said. “We are buddies.”

He stepped away from Shane as the nurse approached the bed.

“He is okay?” Ilya asked. “He could not really tell me.”

“A concussion and a fractured collarbone,” the nurse said. “It’s tough but he’ll survive.”

Ilya nodded, the muscles that had been clamped tight for twelve hours finally relaxing. Shane was tough. Shane could survive a lot. He’d proven it, over and over, just how much he’d put up with, how much he could absorb without crumbling.

Ilya returned to Boston and called his new agent. The teams that had expressed interest in him would want to see him themselves, get him checked out by their own medical staff, and Ilya had to fly out to them. He was thinking about Boston, still, but he was thinking about Canada too, and he wanted to give a chance to anyone willing to give him one. His agent had other items on the agenda, including public appearances and interviews. Ilya refused the former, accepted one of the latter, an in depth profile, his family off limits and almost everything else on the table. He didn’t outright reject the suggestion of taking up sponsorships, either. He still found them distasteful, but he knew his next contract wouldn’t be as sizable as what he’d expected from Boston before the injury, so he should shore up his finances through other means. Shane would be proud.

In the month or so of getting his future back on track, his contact with Shane was sparse. At first it was because of Shane’s screen ban, but even when they resumed calls Ilya couldn’t manage more than meaningless banter. He was busy and wired and didn’t want Shane asking questions about what he was up to.

Then, buying the ticket with an advance from a sponsorship, he flew out to Montreal and got an uber to Shane’s apartment, a stack of papers in a satchel on his lap. By coincidence he’d received messages from Shane on the flight, querying why his most recent transfer to Ilya’s account had been returned. Ilya rang Shane’s buzzer and got no response, so pulled out his phone and called Shane directly.

“Where are you?” Ilya asked. Shane was still recovering from his injury, so Ilya had felt safe assuming he’d be home. It kind of felt like Shane had done something wrong by not being there.

“What do you mean?” Shane asked, as though the question suffered from ambiguity.

“I’m outside your apartment,” Ilya said. “Where are you?”

“Oh my God, Ilya,” Shane said. “I’m at my parents’.”

“What the fuck,” Ilya said. “Why are you with your parents? What age are you?”

“Because I’m recovering from a concussion,” Shane said. “Also, there’s no way that hasn’t come up already when we’ve talked. You should definitely know I’m with my parents.”

“No, you have not mentioned it once,” Ilya said. “Okay, your parents are in Ottawa? Can we meet?”

“Are we—why do you want to?” Shane asked. “Is something going on?”

“Hollander,” Ilya said. “Where can we meet?”

“Well,” Shane said. “I’m not allowed to drive yet. You could… You could come over.”

Immediately Ilya stopped feeling like the one holding the cards. “Are your parents there?”

“Yes, but they’ve—I’ve been telling them we’re friends,” Shane said. “Since that picture. And they know you came to see me in the hospital. They’d like to meet you.”

Ilya’s adrenaline threatened to crash. That seemed like a lot. But, fuck it, he’d come this far. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, I will go to your parents’ house. In Ottawa, yes?”

“Well, actually, no,” Shane said. “We’re at the lake house. It’s kind of far, I’m not sure if—”

“Just send me pin,” Ilya said, glancing at the sky. Nothing was ever simple between them.

“Yeah, okay,” Shane said. “You’re really gonna come?”

“Yes,” Ilya said, feeling like he’d just confessed to something huge, and hung up.

It took a lot of negotiation to get his uber driver to agree to take him out of the city to a remote lake, if bribery could be described as negotiation. According to the map it was a three hour drive, and Ilya’s agitation didn’t subside even slightly for its entirety, but nor did his determination.

Still, when they pulled in at the house Shane had indicated, big windows shining in the sun like beacons, he felt momentarily discombobulated. He would have felt a lot surer of himself in Shane’s apartment, familiar ground. It would certainly be a lot worse for this to go wrong in Shane’s parents’ lake house.

Shane was already opening the door while Ilya climbed out of the car, staring at Ilya as he approached like he couldn’t quite believe he was there. “Hey,” Shane said.

“Hi,” Ilya said. “I wanted to show you some things.”

“Okay,” Shane said, still wide eyed. “Can we go into my dad’s office?”

“It seems like your call,” Ilya said, unsure what opinion he could possibly have on that.

“Right,” Shane said. “If we go into my dad’s office I won’t have to introduce you to my parents until after. They agreed to stay in the living room and let me bring you into them. My dad’s office is right there.” He gestured over his shoulder to the door just inside the hallway.

“Sounds good,” Ilya said. He followed Shane into a room with a large tidy desk, which suited Ilya’s purposes. He upturned his satchel over it just as Shane said, “I can’t believe you have a bag like that.”

Ilya gestured at the copious documents now sprawled atop the dark wood, stepping aside. Shane approached cautiously, like he thought it might be a prank. “What am I looking at?” he asked.

“Contract offers, from three teams,” Ilya said. “There are maybe more on the way, but I didn’t want to wait. And then sponsorship deal proposals. One I took, for a watch brand, because then we can be rivals in watches too. All the others I don’t know yet. Sponsorships are annoying, but. Good money, I guess.”

“Oh my God,” Shane said. “Seriously?”

Ilya nodded.

Shane glanced back at him, wide eyed and smiling. “Look at you, all financially responsible.”

“I spent five hundred dollars on uber to get here,” Ilya said. “And I gave the driver my new watch. And I had to buy this bag to carry papers in and that was four hundred dollars. American.”

Shane was smiling when he said, "You could have used any bag."

"No, I was picturing bag like this," Ilya said. "For papers."

Shane laughed, opened his mouth, but instead of saying anything grabbed Ilya’s hand and dragged him closer. Ilya knocked his head against Shane’s as Shane continued scanning the documents, his fingers tracing over them in a way that made Ilya’s skin prickle. One of the documents was not like the others, glossy and colorful, but Shane was not easily distracted by shiny, pretty things, with one notable exception. He came around to it slowly. “What’s this?”

“Advanced copy of an interview I did,” Ilya said. “It’s a tell all about my recovery, it comes out tomorrow. I signed it for you. My biggest fan.”

“Fuck off,” Shane said, even as he opened the magazine, flicking to Ilya’s interview. Ilya didn’t mind him looking, because the photos were hot, but then Shane just stood there staring down at it like he was going to read the whole thing.

“No,” Ilya said, and flipped forward to the second page of the interview, tapping at the section of interest. “Read that.”

Shane obliged. The interviewer had asked Ilya about Shane, about that photo of them from Shane’s first visit to Boston. Ilya had been as honest as he could afford. Shane Hollander has been very good to me since I got hurt. He has believed I will get better the whole time, even when I didn’t. People think us liking each other is weird because we’re so different from each other, but in lots of ways we’re similar, and the ways we’re different are good. I really want to play against Shane again, but I think these last few years have shown that him and me work well together no matter what else is going on in our lives. Ilya always found it a little goofy having something he'd said rendered in text, but he hoped it was worth it this time.

“I loved that picture of us,” Shane said, finally. “I couldn’t believe how you were looking at me, how we looked together. I’d just stare at it.”

“Me too,” Ilya said. He thought maybe they both should have known, maybe both had known, since seeing that photo, what they really were.

Shane turned around to face him. “Why are you showing me all this, Ilya?”

“In hospital you told me you don’t know what I want,” Ilya said. “I want to sign with hockey team, and not worry about money, and I want you to help me decide which team and how to get money, because I trust you, and I like getting to share things with you. And you feel bad because this whole thing has been kind of fucked up, but I don’t mind things being fucked up if it’s with you. And if it’s really important to you we can find a way to make it not fucked up anymore.”

Shane was staring at him, and Ilya took a step back, suddenly terrified he’d overplayed his hand. “Or I can fuck off and we can have ten minute phone call next week to check in. That’s okay too.”

“I love you,” Shane said, quick and urgent. “I’ve wanted to say that since you asked for the pin for my parents’ lake house. I love you so much.”

Ilya’s planning had been scattered and manic, and had not at all accounted for this as a possible outcome. He hadn't really contemplated any outcome, beyond Shane being reassured that Ilya's life was in sufficient order that fucking him wasn't a moral dilemma. He felt his eyes go wide and his knees go weak, but before he could completely fall apart he was in Shane’s arms. Ilya was saying it too, was saying it back, but in Russian, so he pulled Shane’s head away from his shoulder and looked him in the eyes and said, “I love you too.”

Shane tearing up was what made Ilya realize he was already crying, tears warm on his cheeks, and then Shane was kissing him, and Ilya was backing him up against his dad’s desk. For the first time in a long time Ilya could properly use both hands on Shane, snaking up his shirt and pushing through his hair and gripping his jaw, all the things his hands were always supposed to do. He imagined Shane intended to introduce him to his parents as a friend, but there was no way they were leaving this room looking like they’d just had a friendly interaction.

Their kisses slowed, Ilya still kind of choked up. Shane was holding him so tightly it was hard to catch his breath. Against his jaw, Shane said, “So we can work on your contract options and your sponsorships? Maybe tonight? We can put you up in the guest room.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, a little too enthusiastically. Being invited to stay in the Hollanders’ lake house guest room was possibly the most surreal part of this day. Shane would always find ways to take care of him. “And we can talk about system for paying you back.”

“What?”

“You know, like timeline, and stuff. If you charge interest.” He squeezed Shane's arms as punctuation. 

“I don’t charge anything,” Shane said, pulling back, his dazed expression sharpening into an attempt at a frown. “It wasn’t a loan, it was an investment.”

“You get pay back on investment or it’s a bad investment,” Ilya said.

“The pay back is you playing hockey,” Shane said, like Ilya was being stupid. “I’ve never expected you to actually pay it back, that’s crazy.”

“I have always meant to pay you back,” Ilya said. “There is no way you just gave me all that money for free. Shane, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m not accepting any money from you,” Shane said, pretty firmly. “You probably just fucked up your sponsorship by giving away your watch and I can’t imagine teams are willing to pay that much when you’re still sort of untested.”

Ilya made a skeptical noise, leaned in for another kiss. “We can figure it out tonight, in the guest room.”

“I’m too happy for you to piss me off,” Shane said, and kissed him again.

Later that night Shane made his way to the guest room with exaggerated stealth. Ilya wasn't sure who the charade was for; Yuna and David had been giving each other significant glances all through dinner. Given that Shane didn't want Ilya to turn on the light, he assumed this visit wouldn't involve reviewing the contract proposals, and given that Shane kept shushing him, he assumed it wouldn't involve sex, either. He didn't mind. Shane curled up beside him on the bed. He took Ilya's healed hand between his, played with his fingers.

The serenity of this setting was of a kind entirely new to Ilya, and it was giving new form to his feelings for Shane. Quiet, still, in the dark, on a soft mattress under an old blanket. He hadn't known he could live this way, and Shane had offered it up so easily, as though it was the only sensible course of action. The same way he'd offered his money, really. When Ilya had invited him over that evening he'd had no idea what he was getting into, and apparently he'd had no idea what he was getting into when he'd gotten on the flight to Montreal this morning. Shane had a knack for upping the ante.

“You were right about me playing again, but we don’t know I'll be good,” Ilya said, quiet. “I am still slower, and my hand can be tricky.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Shane said. “It’s like you said, right? We work together no matter what.”

Ilya held back his smile, tugged at Shane’s hair. Too sweet.

“Anyway,” Shane said, sounding entirely relaxed. “You’re going to be just as good as before. If not better.”