Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova, Svetlana Vetrova/Original Female Character(s), Zane Boodram & Ilya Rozanov, Grigori Rozanov & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, Zane Boodram, Original Female Character(s), Grigori Rozanov, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

Suicidal Ideation, Depression, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Book 2: Heated Rivalry (Game Changers), Whump, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Past Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, this is a bunch of ilya being a sad boy, and shane being canonically distant bc you know he lives in montreal, but they love each other v much etc etc

Language:

English

Series:

Part 11 of my anonymous heated rivalry fic

Collections:

anonymous

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-07 Words: 14,171 Chapters: 1/1

the weather of your youth

Summary

"Sveta," he says, before she can greet him. "I think I'm about to do something very stupid."

"You're always doing something stupid," she laughs, her voice tinny over the speakerphone. "What is it this time?"

"I am in a staring contest with a bottle of pills," Ilya says. "And I think the pills might win."

-

Or: An alternate take on Ilya's mental health after moving to Ottawa, featuring the reality of long distance relationships, Ilya learning to captain a new team, and a series of game tapes made by Ilya's dead father.

Notes

This fic contains graphic discussions of suicidal ideation, including discussions of different suicide methods. Please take care when reading.

He finds the tapes as he’s packing up his house for the move to Ottawa. They’re in a drawer in his office, next to a bunch of legal papers from his rookie year that he couldn’t understand when he first got them, still doesn’t really understand now. Words like mutual assent and indemnification and force majeure. The tapes, on the other hand, are labeled in familiar, effortless Russian. The name of a game, and a date. All of them on VHS.

Ilya should probably pitch them. He doesn’t have a VCR anymore, hasn’t since he moved to the States, and even if he did, there’s nothing more he can glean from these recordings. They’re uneventful games, featuring the underdeveloped and bland player of Ilya’s teenage self and Ilya’s father’s voice from behind the camera, outlining every mistake Ilya makes and what he needs to do to be better next time.

Ilya should throw them out. He should.

Instead he packs them in a box alongside the few photos he has left of his mother. He labels them in his still-childish English hand: CAREFUL—DO NOT BREAK.

—

In Ottawa, Shane offers to help Ilya unpack, but Ilya has seen the schedule Shane has already sketched out for their fall, the color-coded blocks of time-off where they can fuck, and there are depressingly few of them. Ilya isn’t willing to give that up to do something as dumb as unpack shower gel into his bathroom cabinets.

Of course, Ilya has no particular interest in unpacking shower gel by himself, either, so in the end the boxes mostly just sit around his apartment like very large, very ugly child’s play blocks. 

It helps that he doesn’t have to worry about clothes: a whole new wardrobe at the Centaurs, and new clothes for his personal time, too. Adidas dropped him after the trade was announced—well, bought out the contract, but it’s the same thing, as far as Ilya is concerned. Tightening our belts and want to focus on high-profile athletes, they had said. 

In other words, we don’t want to associate with a terrible team based in Bumfuck, Nowhere, Canada. Good luck.

It’s fine. Ilya’s agent had told him to expect it. He hadn’t quite believed her, but at least he got the warning. And it’s not like he needs the money. $11 million per year, he’ll be making in Ottawa. It’s the most money he’s ever made. For once, he’ll even get to keep it all for himself.

The one box Ilya does unpack right away, or at least cracks open and leaves out for easy access, is the tapes. He intends only to fetch the photos of his mother, but once he’s got the box open, the figures he might as well organize the tapes, too.

He sorts them chronologically. The most recent dates to 2010; the earliest is from October 2003, right before his mother died. Ilya thumbs the label and tries to remember if she was at that particular game. 

She almost never went to see him play—towards the end, she rarely had enough energy to leave her room, let alone the apartment, and Ilya’s father never liked it, her pressing into the bleachers with dozens of other people, dozens of other men, who could lean over her and breathe on her and look at her. Even if she was perfectly covered up. Even if she ignored them.

Still. There’s a chance she was there, and if she was there, there’s a chance she was caught on the videotape. Her voice, murmuring something to Ilya’s father; the corner of her fur jacket fluttering in and out of the frame. He imagines a twisted, blurred shot of her face, or the low raspy tones of her calling, Go, Ilyusha! and a lump rises to his throat so quick he almost chokes on it.

He doesn’t think about it too much: he goes on eBay and orders the first VCR he sees.

An hour later, he realizes he plugged in his old address in Boston on the order form, so he orders another one. This time he makes sure he types in the right address. He even double-checks the zip code on Google Maps, to be safe. 

It still feels weird to him, that this is his home. This strange alphabet; these strange numbers. I live here now, he tells himself, and clicks through to pay.

—

The Centaurs aren’t bad players. They’re just not disciplined. Why would they be? They’ve been the shittiest team in the league for almost a decade. If they win, it’s a pleasant surprise. If they lose, well, it’s no worse than anyone expected.

They’re nice guys, though, which is why it’s especially shitty when Ilya has to crack the whip. His first practice with the team is a fucking mess: the coach starts the hour introducing him to everyone, who look shocked when Ilya manages to remember their names, and then he has them do a fifteen minute scrimmage so Ilya can get a sense of how they play. 

It’s horrendous. Bad passes leading to constant icing penalties, sloppy bench changes leaving huge gaps in the defense. Offensive players who can’t recognize these gaps well enough to take advantage of them. Even the goalie is shit—his stretches are half as deep as they should be, which means he’s missing twice as many saves.

After practice, the players line up in front of him, red-faced and panting, grinning like they expect to be praised.

Ilya assigns them a bag skate.

“How was your first practice?” Shane asks him, that evening, on the phone as they both cook dinner. Ilya’s making ramen, because his stomach is still off from the bag skate. He was the last on the ice by a good ten minutes, but he kept making himself keep going until he keeled over, because it’s only fair that everyone works equally hard. The rest of his teammates had sat on the bench and watched him. In the locker room, everyone was quiet.

“Fine,” Ilya says, because Shane is his competition, and doesn’t need to hear about the flaws in Ilya’s team, and anyway, if he complains about any of this, Shane will probably just remind him that they’d expected as much, which isn’t exactly what Ilya wants to hear right now. Right now he wants to hear I miss your cock or I need you in my mouth yesterday or maybe even I love you.

“All right, keep your secrets,” Shane says. “What are you cooking? Does it have vegetables in it?”

Ilya looks down at his beige bowl of noodles. “Yes,” he lies.

Shane sighs. “Ilya.”

“Shane.”

“Add some vegetables so you don’t die of scurvy.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “So dramatic,” but he dumps a bunch of frozen peas in the pot, something warm curling in his stomach, cutting through his unease.

—

When Ilya gets home from his third practice with the Centaurs, he finds the newly-delivered VCR sitting on his doorstep. He unpacks it gingerly, wary of loose pieces that might have come off during transit, but he shouldn’t have worried: this American model is sleek, small, hearty. Much nicer than any he ever had. 

It takes him fifteen minutes to figure out where the fuck to plug it in to his minimalistic TV, then another fifteen to figure out which HDMI channel it’s hooked up to. Finally, he sticks in the videotape from 2003 and presses play.

It’s not a good game, Ilya can tell right away. Of course it isn’t—his team is full of twelve  year olds—but it’s especially bad, even for that. They’re playing against a traveling team from St. Petersburg with a vicious set of defenders who are definitely too big to be playing in this age bracket, and Ilya’s team can’t get a shot in edgewise without getting slammed into the ice. 

Twice, Ilya sees himself go down hard, smacking his head with the sort of force that would now warrant a concussion check. In the video, he just wobbles back up to his feet and keeps skating, though now with the addition of his father screaming behind the camera about Ilya shaking it off and not being a pussy.

That’s actually Ilya’s biggest impression from the video: not himself, but his father. His voice is so close it almost feels like he’s standing next to Ilya, breath heavy in Ilya’s ear.

You missed a good window for a pass, he says; if you were two seconds slower you would have fucked your defense. And that was a sloppy hit for someone who’s supposed to be good at stick-handling. And fucking disgusting goal. The usual stuff. 

What’s more of a surprise are the compliments. In Ilya’s memory, these tapes feature only critiques. But now, Ilya sees himself outstate his own team’s defensemen in time to block an opposing forward’s shot and his father says, nice, quick feet. Ilya nets a long hit into the upper right corner of the net, the puck skating just over the goalie’s glove, and his father says good work, that’s a clean goal.

The praise hits him the same way praise from his father always did, the same way a cigarette does after too long without: a buzzing in his veins, a warm fog in his chest.

Ilya is almost surprised when the whistle blows and the game—and video—end. It feels like the whole thing took a lot less than an hour. The way that time seems to pass quickly when he plays, his forty-second shifts going by so fast sometimes he wonders if there’s been a timing mistake.

Ilya bends over the cardboard box. There are no more videos from before his mother died, but he’s curious now. He picks up the next-oldest tape—March 2004—and slides it into the VCR.

—

Ilya and Shane aren’t due to meet up for a game until nearly Halloween, but by the second week of October, Ilya is scratching his skin off with longing. One afternoon, he gets out early from practice and realizes that if he drives straight to Montreal without stopping at home, he can spend three whole hours with Shane before he has to turn around and drive back.

Ilya’s waiting outside the Metros’ practice rink when Shane emerges, his hair wet from a shower, duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He startles all over when he sees Ilya’s car—bright orange and conspicuous—and when Ilya lowers his window to wave hello, Shane hisses, “Shit, put that up!” 

“Drive, right now, before someone sees us,” Shane says, as soon as he’s in the car. He waits until they’re a few blocks away to say, “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Please, Hollander. Relax. Nobody knows what my car looks like.”

“How many people do you think have fucking Corvettes?” Shane says. “People who I'm associated with?”

“So what!” Ilya says. “We are associated. We are friends. Friends can drive together in a car.”

“Friends drive two hours after practice to see their friend for one night?”

“Friends who run charities together might drive two hours to meet up for charity business, yes,” Ilya snaps.

Shane takes a deep breath. He releases it slowly, through his teeth, a hissing sound like air let out of a pierced tire. “Okay,” he says, finally. “You’re right. Sorry. I just—I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know,” Ilya says, taking the turn off into Shane’s neighborhood. “It was a surprise.”

“Maybe no more surprises,” Shane says. Ilya tries not to let on how much that hurts, but his poker face must falter because then Shane is reaching over to cup Ilya’s face in one of his big, callused hands. It’s the first time they’ve touched in three weeks; Ilya wants to rub his face into it like a cat. He resists.

“Hey,” Shane says. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s a good surprise. Just—I don’t do really well with surprises. That’s all.”

Ilya nods. “Okay,” he says. “Next time I warn you.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, clearly relieved. “And it’s—I really am happy to see you. I’ve missed you a lot.”

Ilya pulls into Shane’s driveway and throws the car into park. “You did?” he asks, blatantly fishing and too weak to care.

Shane smiles at him. He’s beautiful all the time, but especially when he’s smiling. “Yeah,” he says. “A lot.”

“Well, this is embarrassing for you,” Ilya says. “I did not miss you at all.”

Shane rolls his eyes, dropping his hand from Ilya’s face. “Yes, you clearly didn’t miss me at all. You were just, what, in the neighborhood?”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “I was out getting bagels and then I remembered, oh, right, my boyfriend lives around this area somewhere, yes?”

“You hate Montreal bagels,” Shane says as he climbs out of the car.

“The holes are too big, Shane!” Ilya says, following him to the front door. “I like my holes tight and wet and—“

“You are such a fucking ass,” Shane says, but he’s smiling—smiling and yanking Ilya through the doorway and pushing him against the door and Ilya doesn’t have a chance to say anything else.

—

Ilya starts working through the tapes in chronological order.

There’s an interesting intellectual exercise in it, comparing his memories with the real thing. For the most part, his recollection of these games is hazy, but it crystallizes as he watches: halfway through the first period, he’ll suddenly remember that he stopped a puck with his knee in this game, just a few seconds before the defender smacks said puck towards his younger self. Or he’ll watch a full game, and that night, as he’s trying to fall asleep, he’ll remember snatches of memory from the day of the game itself: that a teammate had asked him afterwards to help him practice his slapshot, or that a coach had squeezed his ass during second intermission.

Other times, he thinks he does remember games, only to be proven wrong by the tapes. It’s hard to tell whether his memories are just misplaced—things that really happened, just in a different rink, on a different day—or made up entirely. 

He finds a tape of one particularly formative game from when he was fifteen. He remembers it because it was in Beijing, a city he’d never been to before and hasn’t been to since. Before the game, his coach had taken all the boys out to eat and accidentally ordered plates of chicken feet instead of chicken legs. None of the boys wanted to eat them, but the coach had slapped the table so hard the teacups rattled in their saucers, and the boys had done it, in the end. Ilya remembers the salty, fatty taste of the skin of the chicken foot, the way the claws scratched at the outside of his cheek as he chewed.

He remembers scoring a hat trick in the game afterwards, his first hat trick at that level of competition. He remembers the way the other boys had surrounded him, the jealousy they hid beneath their cheers. He remembers the way his coach had clapped him on the shoulders, enthusiastically, with both hands. The power of chicken feet, his coach had laughed.

Except when he watches the tape, he only scores two goals. Two goals and two assists, which in itself is a very good outcome, but it’s not the hat trick he thought it was. When did he get a hat trick? Had the coach actually said that about chicken feet, or did he make it up entirely?

There’s a moment, at the end of the third period, where Ilya almost scores a third goal. It’s a breakaway goal, and the goalie dives to the left. The puck bounces off the edge of the goalie’s foot. So close, but so far.

Lacking confidence, Ilya’s father said in the recording. You have to choose left or right in these moments, you can’t pussyfoot. If you had committed you would have scored. You’d have a hat trick.

—

The Centaurs’ season starts out with four losses in a row. Then they win a game against Calgary, with a single goal margin: a desperate breakaway Ilya made in OT. Then the Centaurs lose five more games.

It’s not exactly an auspicious beginning.

By the beginning of November, they’ve still only won that single game. The sports commentators are having a field day with it. Looks like the gamble they took with Rozanov is not paying off, and Rozanov is proving to be an overpriced acquisition who can’t bring this team together and maybe Rozanov can’t actually succeed outside the bubble of the Boston Raiders.

Never mind that it’s been all of one month. Never mind that Ilya is just one man, one man who can only do so much on the ice. Never mind that the Ottawa goalie lets in more shots than he saves, never mind that Ilya is scoring fully half of the Centaurs’ goals, never mind that Ilya’s driving the boys as hard in practice as he can without breaking them.

More often than not, after games, Ilya finds himself in the conference room. Of course he does: he’s the captain, and even if he wasn’t, he’s by far and away the most recognizable face on the team. At the beginning, there are a lot of questions about Ilya’s aspirations with the team, his plans to bring them into shape. But within a few weeks, they’re already starting to sour.

“Mr. Rozanov,” one reporter asks, after the Centaurs’ tenth loss of the season: 5-2 at home against Philadelphia. “Obviously, this season is not panning out as fans had hoped. Can you tell me, how are you changing up your strategy to try to improve the situation?”

Ilya hates reciting prepared answers to the press, but he doesn’t have much choice, lately. “We are looking at every aspect of our play to see where we can be better,” he says dutifully. Shane had helped him with these soundbites when they were writing statements about the Foundation, months ago, because they had known Ottawa would suck. They were prepared for it.

The reality still feels hard to swallow.

“And does that include your performance?” the reporter asks, before the PR manager can call on someone else.

“One question per person,” the PR manager says, but Ilya waves a hand in the air. He has an answer ready for this, too.

“I am not above criticism,” he says. “If there are ways I can perform better for my team, I will do that.”

When he finally makes it back into the locker room, everyone’s gone except for Bood. He’s sitting in front of his stall, changed out of his game clothes with his shoes already laced, scrolling on his phone. He looks up when Ilya enters and smiles.

“The press as fun as always?” he asks.

Ilya had expected a cold shoulder from Bood, when he joined the team. Bood had been with the Centaurs for so many years, and a captain to boot. Then they threw him over for Ilya without a second thought. It’s part of the game, of course, to be expected, but still, Ilya thinks it has to sting.

But Bood has been nothing but welcoming. Quiet, yes, but quiet in the way that means he’s stepping back and letting Ilya do things his way. Sometimes, younger players don’t like the instructions Ilya gives them, but when they see Bood following the rules without complaint, they invariably fall in line, too.

“Ah, you know how it is,” Ilya says. “Are you waiting here for something?”

Bood’s smile flickers, but then it’s back as though nothing has happened. “Thought I’d wait for you,” he says. “Show of solidarity, you know.”

He’s a good man, Bood. A better man than Ilya; maybe a better captain. It’s not a thought Ilya has had for many years. He was a good captain to the Raiders, and he knew it, but he’s been wondering lately if maybe it was more a result of circumstance than skill. He had known those guys well, before he was given the C. They were friends. More than that, they were similar. His playing style fit Boston well, the aggression, the chirping, the desire to skirt the edge of the rules. It was why they picked him over Hollander in the draft, when by all objective measures the two of them were more or less equals on the ice.

Ottawa isn’t as well suited to Ilya. It’s a quiet team; they prefer to fly under the radar. They don’t chirp much, and they don’t fight. It's a team of misfits that Ilya would never have chosen to be a part of if it weren’t for the team’s geographic location. Maybe he’s just not capable of leading a team like this. Maybe he’s a step down, despite his hefty paycheck.

“We should talk sometime about the guys,” Ilya says, as they head towards the parking lot, their polished shoes clicking on the polished tile. “I have been meaning to get your ideas.”

“If my ideas had worked, we would have been winning years ago,” Bood says.

Ilya tilts his head. “Maybe. But you know the team better than I do. You know what these boys need.” He shrugs. “I just know the mechanics of it. Much more important, to know the people.”

Bood looks at him for a long moment. “You could know the people, too,” he says, then amends, “You will. It just takes time.”

Ilya smiles at him—his media smile, flashing his teeth. “Of course,” he says. “In the meantime, though, I’ll rely on your expertise.

—

Ilya still follows all the Boston Raiders on social media, so he sees their wins all the time: clips of perfect shots, glorious saves, teammates cheering after they trounce New York, Tampa, Montreal. Usually, someone shares videos from the afterparty, too, almost always at some dark club with too-loud music and too many rounds of shots. Ilya watches the stories but very carefully doesn’t rewatch them. Doesn’t reply. Doesn’t send any of them a message. They hadn’t understood, when he said he was leaving; they’d felt betrayed. And why shouldn’t they? Ilya had given up all loyalty to them. Flouted it, even, so drunk with love that it felt easy. It was easy. And a friend that gives you up easily, that’s not a real friend, Ilya thinks. Not a good one, anyway.

—

Ilya makes it a new habit to watch at least one tape every day.

It’s good—reminds him of where he came from, how shitty he used to be, and how he got better. It gives him ideas for how to make the Centaurs better. It humbles him, too. It’s easy to become cocky, on a team like this where you’re clearly the best. Just because nobody else can keep up with Ilya doesn’t give him an excuse to be lazy. He runs on the treadmill and hears his father’s voice in his head, demanding he push harder; he does laps around the rink and chants to himself don’t be fucking lazy until his legs ache.

By the end of November, Ilya has watched every tape in the box, so he starts them over again. He doesn’t stick too strictly to chronology this time, just lets the fates pick what he’ll be watching on a given night. Sometimes, he sticks his hand in and shuffles around, and when he pulls a tape out, there’s a photo of his mother stuck to it. Photographs that had slid around, during the move.

It’s probably not good for the photos, but he likes seeing them. The snippets of his mother flashing through, like she’s saying hello. She told him, once, that she would always be with him. This was not long before she died, and in hindsight, Ilya can see it for what it was—her trying to prepare him for her departure. But in the moment, it just seemed like that sort of cliche thing that all mothers said. I will always be with you, she said, tapping his chest. Right here in your heart. Your big, big heart.

She’d always said his heart was too big for him. When he cried and his father got upset; when he saw homeless people on the streets and got sad. Your heart is too big for you, Ilyusha. You will have to grow into it.

—

Later, looking back on it, he’ll recognize this as the period where things started to get bad. Of course, he didn’t recognize it at the time. At the time, he dragged himself out of bed, and dragged himself to practice, and dragged himself into the kitchen to shovel down brown rice. At the time, he laid awake at night staring at the ceiling, and looked at his phone constantly for messages from Shane, and felt like a slimy rock at the bottom of a lake when there were none. At the time, he told himself that this was all normal. This is how things are supposed to feel. It'll all be fine, really, it will be, if he can just make it until spring.

—

Shane has always been the one who likes to be told he’s good during sex, but lately Ilya finds himself wanting it, too. Fucking Shane bent over the couch, blowing him on his knees in the shower, pressed so close behind him in bed that there’s no space for air: Ilya sees that beautiful, sweat-damp skin, smells Shane and sex all around him, and thinks tell me I’m good. Tell me I’m good for you.

Eventually he can’t bite it back anymore. Fucking Shane from behind on clean bedsheets, his forehead pressed against Shane’s spine, Ilya says, “Tell me you like it.”

“What?” Shane is distracted, twisting his fingers in the sheets, his skin pink as a sunset.

“Tell me how you feel,” Ilya repeats, because it’s too late now to stop himself. “Is good for you? Tell me it’s good for you.”

“It’s so fucking good,” Shane says. “You’re so good to me, so perfect, Ilya, Ilya, Ilya—“

Afterwards, Ilya lays with his head on Shane’s chest and wonders if Shane had meant it. He would have probably said anything in that moment, to make Ilya happy. To get Ilya to keep fucking him. Of course Ilya isn’t perfect. There are things he can be better at. Ways he can be better. He’ll just have to figure them out himself.

“Lots of thoughts in that big head,” Shane teases, twisting his fingers in Ilya’s hair, and Ilya smiles and kisses Shane’s chest, because this is one of them: don’t bother Shane with his worries. Don’t make him stress.

“Just thinking about your perfect ass,” he says, and Shane laughs and gets up to shower, his fingers lingering for a moment on Ilya’s chin as he goes.

—

Svetlana’s father dies just before Christmas, and Ilya flies out to Boston for the American funeral. He misses two practices and a game for it, but it feels like the least he can do, after what she did for him when his dad died.

Of course, it’s not quite the same. Ilya should have expected that. When he arrives at Svetlana’s house, Svetlana’s new girlfriend Megan is already there, folding pelmeni on a flour-dusted countertop. She smiles at Ilya, her red hair bouncing around her red cheeks. She really is beautiful. She even has freckles, though hers are more obvious than Shane’s. She and Svetlana look good together, Ilya can see it already. They had met at a club, not long after Ilya left Boston. Svetlana had spilled her drink on Megan’s feet and bought her a new pair of Jimmy Choos to make up for it.

“Ilya,” she says. “It’s so good to finally meet you. Even under the circumstances.”

Ilya offers her his best smile. “The famous Megan,” he says. “I should have known I would ruin Svetlana for all men.”

Svetlana rolls her eyes and shoves his shoulder, but Megan doesn’t laugh or even smile. Misstep. Ilya amends, “Svetlana has told me very much about you. You are Irish, yes?” If nothing else, all foreigners like to commiserate over the fact they are foreigners.

“My grandmother is from Ireland,” Megan says. “I’m American.”

Misstep number two.

Ilya should probably try some other conversation starter, but sue him, he’s had a long week of hockey games and a three hour flight two rows up from a screaming baby; he turns to Svetlana instead. “How are you doing?” he asks her in Russian.

“I’m okay,” she replies in English. Ilya’s gaze darts over to Megan. She’s not looking at them, but there’s a particular set of her shoulders, a twist to her hips, that means she’s listening. 

“Do you need me to call your brother?” he asks. “Or talk to anyone about the service—“

“It’s fine,” Svetlana interrupts. “Megan and I handled it. Why don’t you go put your stuff in the guest room? The one by the laundry room has clean sheets.”

Ilya’s never slept in one of Svetlana’s guest rooms before. He gets the wrong door at first, has to backtrack out of a sterile little white bathroom with a bowl of potpourri over the toilet.

He drops his suitcase by the foot of the bed and bounces on the mattress. It’s firm. Shane will like this, Ilya thinks, automatically, and then he remembers. Out of Svetlana’s kitchen comes the murmuring of soft, warm voices, the light clatter of pots and pans. There’s something salty and warm cooking on the stove, something that reminds him of home.

—

At the funeral dinner, Megan sits next to Svetlana, Ilya next to Megan. There are long speeches in Russian, vodka glasses held aloft in the air until even Ilya’s muscular arms start to hurt. He waits for small breaks to bend his head and whisper quick translations in Megan’s ear, he just told a story about when Sergei broke his jaw during practice or he is quoting a long and sad Russian poem about a dying bear. 

Afterwards, they go back to the penthouse where Svetlana’s father lived, which already has the markings of greedy relatives’ fingers. An empty space on the mantlepiece, a mostly-vacant coat closet. 

Half the people in attendance are relatives; the other half are retired hockey players, pot-bellied from laziness with cigars dangling out of their fingers. “You’re playing like shit lately,” one tells Ilya, and Ilya has to squint at him for several long moments before he realizes that it’s Stephan Vinogradov, who played for the Raiders for three years during Sergei’s reign. He was always too slow to pivot and had a tendency to draw icing penalties. A mid-tier defenseman at best.

“If you’d like to play against me, you’re welcome to try,” Ilya says, scanning the crowd for Svetlana.

Vinogradov huffs, taking a sip of his vodka. “It’s not just your team,” he says. “I mean, it’s a shit team. Completely shit decision to leave Boston. But you’re getting worse, too. You play like a faggot, afraid of the puck.”

“The only thing I’m afraid of is that one day I’ll be as old and ugly as you,” Ilya says. “Excuse me.”

Svetlana is on the balcony, looking out over the skyline, an empty glass in her hand. Ilya takes it from her, replacing it with his own half-full cup. “Thanks,” she says, without turning to look at him. 

“Two more days, and then they’ll all be gone,” he says. She nudges him, lightly, with her shoulder.

“Yeah,” she says. “Gone.” It takes Ilya a moment to realize her voice is thick, and when he looks at her, he sees she’s crying.

“Sveta," he starts, “What—“

“Lana?"

Ilya turns his head and there’s Megan in the doorway, her confusion flipping to sympathy even as he watches. “Oh, Lana,” she sighs, and comes to wrap her arms around her girlfriend. He was right: they do look good together. Svetlana’s slender hips, Megan’s generous shoulders, the shine of the city over them. Svetlana tucks her face into Megan’s neck, one hand tight on Megan’s waist, the other clinging to her vodka, like she can’t bear to let go, even now.

—

Ilya has started having recurring dreams about holding Shane, or being held by him. Nothing more—it never turns sexual, and in the dreams, if they speak, it is about stupid things that Ilya doesn’t process, or remember. The focus of the dreams is always the way that they’re touching. Shane’s soft hair under Ilya’s palm, Shane’s fingers on the nape of Ilya’s neck, their chests pressed together, bare and warm. In the dreams, Ilya always feels very settled. Here we are, he thinks, with satisfaction. So many months of missing you, and finally, I am where I am meant to be.

He has this dream at Svetlana’s house, the night after the funeral. He wakes up and for a second doesn’t know where he is. Then he remembers. He sneaks out to the back deck. There are two new chairs there that Ilya has never seen before: wicker, with weatherproof cushions. Ilya ignores them, bending over the railing like he always does, cigarette in one hand, lighter in the other. He watches the clouds drift over the moon like waves washing over a boulder at the beach.

—

When Ilya gets back to his apartment—his apartment, with all it’s neat brown boxes—he caves. He calls the first number he finds on Google for professional movers, and within a week, his things have all been unpacked for him. It’s fine. It clears away the boxes, at least. But for weeks afterwards, he keeps finding his things stored away in strange places, or not finding them at all. The tapes, at least, are easy to find. Lined up neatly on the shelf below his TV, labeled spines on display, so Ilya will remember to watch them, when he forgets.

Sloppy pass, Ilya’s father says one night. Disgusting shot, the next. You skate like a faggot. You skate like a deer that has never seen ice. You skate like an American. You skate in a way that makes me ashamed of you. More rarely: Good job. Nice goal.

It’s almost like being a child again: for the first time in many years, Ilya’s father’s voice is the last thing he hears each night before he goes to sleep.

—

The holidays in Ottawa are interesting. Shane and Ilya get to spend the American Christmas together, for the first time ever, and it’s so lovely: three full days with Shane and the people Shane loves, eating food, cuddling together under a warm blanket, a fire in the background.

They have to split up for New Year’s, and it’s fine. Ilya has spent much less time with Shane this year than he imagined he would when he moved to Ottawa, but it’s fine. He should have expected it. Shane calls Ilya an hour after midnight on the first day of the year, and Ilya kisses his phone screen in lieu of Shane’s face because it makes Shane laugh. On Russian Christmas, they don’t even have time for a phone call, but Shane sends Ilya a long text telling him how much he loves him. Svetlana is home in Russia; she sends Ilya a picture of her Russian feast. Ilya has talked to her a lot less year than he expected, too, but then she has the new girlfriend. Of course she’s busy.

The Centaurs improve marginally over the holidays, maybe by chance or maybe because of Bood’s advice, but they’re still losing more than they win. Ilya’s preoccupied enough with it—planning, and training, and scheming—that he almost doesn’t remember Valentine’s Day. Stupid American holiday. Normally he’s reminded by all the pink and red splashed over everything, but it’s been a while since he’s gone out anywhere other than the ice rink or the airport. He wonders if Shane would accept a gift from him. Nothing ostentatious and nothing with Ilya’s name on it—too obvious—but maybe he can get away with something small.

Ilya checks the schedule and Shane’s in New York for an away game on Valentine’s Day, so Ilya keeps it simple. A bouquet of roses which he coordinates with Yuna to get sent to Shane’s room at the hotel. He leaves the card blank.

Shane calls Ilya from the hotel that night, pink-cheeked and smiling. “You didn’t have to do this,” he says, and Ilya relishes the bashful flutter of his eyelashes.

“I wanted to,” Ilya says. “Is first real Valentine’s Day, yes? Is special.”

But Shane frowns. “I didn’t get you anything, though.”

Ilya shrugs. “Is okay. I already know I am better boyfriend.”

Shane’s eye roll is powerful enough to cow world leaders, Ilya is sure, even if he’s never tested it. “You are such an asshole. How did I fall in love with such an asshole?”

“I ask myself every day,” Ilya says, his tone light and teasing, and it works: Shane has no idea that Ilya is serious.

“Douche,” Shane declares, and Ilya puckers his lips in a distant kiss.

—

“Are you okay?” Shane asks him one night over FaceTime.

It’s a fair question. They’ve been on the phone for half an hour and Ilya hasn’t said more than a few words, mostly letting Shane fill the silence with a rant about stupid rookies skipping curfew before games. Ilya sits on his couch and listens to Shane speak, picking half-heartedly at a takeout grain bowl. He’s got a tape queued up in the VCR, just waiting for him to press play. 

“Am fine,” Ilya says. “Just tired.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Shane is so sweet. So earnest. And Ilya knows, if he told Shane he’s been struggling lately, Shane would be eager to help. He’d make a spreadsheet of therapists in the Ottawa area who have experience with celebrity clients. He’d change his morning text to a morning phone call, to make sure Ilya gets out of bed. He’d send his parents over, more, and order random flower deliveries, and carve out a few hours on a Sunday afternoon to come blow Ilya in the foyer.

But Ilya also knows that Shane has his limits. Because what will happen when Ilya needs something and Shane has practice? When Shane is on the road and there’s no way to call Ilya without raising suspicions? When the team wants to take Shane out drinking after a win and Shane has no good excuse to slip away and instead of visiting Ilya he ends up in a bar, at a house party, anywhere but in Ilya’s arms?

Ilya knows that Shane loves him. But he’s pretty sure Shane fears coming out more. If it came down to it—well. Ilya knows which way it would go.

And it’s fine. It’s not a problem. It’s normal, even, that Shane’s top priority in life isn’t Ilya. But it also means that Ilya can’t let himself rely on Shane, not really. It would be too hard, to expect help and not get it. Too dangerous. Like diving into a lake when you can’t see the bottom: Ilya isn’t certain that the ground won’t rise up and hit him, so he doesn’t dive at all.

“No,” Ilya tells Shane now. He’s got his glasses on, his brow just slightly furrowed. He’s so beautiful Ilya's chest hurts. “Thank you. I just need to sleep.”

—

David and Yuna make a habit of inviting themselves over to Ilya’s house for Friday dinners. Friday family dinners, they call them, because they miss Shane, too. Sometimes, they order in, but usually, David helps himself to Ilya’s kitchen and makes them something obscenely time-intensive and delicious, Ilya carefully whisking vinaigrettes and unevenly chopping carrots.

One day at the end of March, Ilya forgets that they’re coming over. It’s stupid; he should remember. He’s just been feeling foggy, lately. End-of-season fatigue, probably, which makes him think it’s a good thing the Centaurs have no chance in the playoffs. He’d just end up embarrassing himself on the ice.

He gets home from practice, and as has become his habit lately, he sticks a tape into the VCR at random and presses play. It’s one of the last tapes he has from his father, featuring one of Ilya’s first games with the Raiders. His father’s voice is hoarser in this tape than in most, and he stutters more than he used to, tripping over the pronunciation of basic verbs.

Ilya falls asleep on the couch not long into the game, with the tape still playing in the background. That’s probably what does it. Ilya’s still half-asleep when he hears the shuffling of feet through the house, and his father’s voice is saying you were sloppy here, your classic laziness passing instead of shooting, and when a big hand lands on his shoulder he doesn’t have time to process that his father is dead, that he’d never shake Ilya awake gently, that Ilya would never let himself fall asleep on a couch in his father’s home in Moscow; he feels the hand on him, and he flinches back so hard that he falls off the couch.

He lands straight on his face, and right away feels something in his nose pop. His face is wet; he licks his lips and tastes blood.

“Jesus, Ilya,” a voice says above him. Voice soft and low, mispronouncing his name in that characteristic Canadian way. “I’m sorry, kid, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Is fine,” Ilya croaks, pushing himself up. David’s face goes through a complicated range of expressions when he sees the blood.

“Let me get you a towel,” he says, and disappears.

Gently, Ilya probes at the nose. Not broken; he knows what that feels like, by now. Just a nosebleed. When David returns with a kitchen towel, Ilya doesn’t even comment on the fact that it’s Shane’s favorite plaid pattern, just presses it to his face to try to staunch the bleeding.

“I just got here,” David says. “I was just going to wake you up so we could start on dinner.”

Ilya nods. “Yes, yes, is my fault. Forgot you were coming. Fell asleep. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay, jeez,” David says. He hovers over Ilya’s shoulder, like he’s worried the nosebleed is going to turn into a fountaining arterial hemorrhage at any moment. Ilya presses hard on his nose and tips his head back, focused on stemming the flow—focused enough he doesn’t think to pause the TV, which is still running in the background. “Is that—is that an old game of yours?”

Fuck. “Yes,” Ilya says, voice clogged and muffled by the towel. 

He hopes, stupidly, that that’ll be enough, but of course it’s not. It’s David. He perches on the arm of the couch, gaze still fixed to the TV. “And is this—a commentator, or something?”

“My father,” Ilya says shortly. “He liked to—give feedback, on my games.”

“Ah.” They watch together for a few moments, Ilya maintaining pressure. Ilya is on the ice, playing right-wing. They had tried him at it, a few times, his rookie year. Ilya gets the puck and slips by a defender and it’s a breakaway. Ilya’s gearing up to shoot when a defenseman slams into him from behind, slashing hard with his stick. On the screen, Ilya doubles over in pain.

You need to learn to deal with the pain, Ilya’s father chides. You are so spoiled, Ilya, you can not fall over anytime it hurts. If you had not been so weak, you could have scored.

“What, no penalty?” David demands next to him. It takes Ilya a moment to realize he’s talking about the same move as Ilya’s father. “Those refs are blind, that was clearly slashing.”

Ilya’s eyes prick and burn. It must be the throbbing pain in his nose. 

He lowers the towel from his nose cautiously, but the blood doesn’t start flowing again. “Okay,” he says. “I think I am good now. You need help in kitchen?”

“Hmm? Oh, no.” Almost reluctantly, David turns away from the TV. “I can handle it. You just sit here and relax, yeah? Tell me if your nose starts bleeding again.”

He reaches out as if to clap Ilya on the shoulder, but then he stops himself, his hand hovering in the air like a lost bird. “I’ll, just, uh, go start on that, then,” David says, and Ilya sits there with his stupid nose and hates himself, hates this, hates everything.

—

Dinner is fine. Quiet, but fine. Yuna, when she arrives, coos over Ilya’s face and gives a long lecture on appropriate icing and how to tape his nose to breathe around the inflammation in next week’s games. David puts an extra bowl of basil by Ilya’s plate because he knows he likes it on his curry.

Afterwards, Ilya showers and gets ready for bed and calls Shane. He expects David to have already told Shane about what happened: Shane’s parents are always so eager to report Ilya’s injuries to their son.

It’s a pleasant surprise when he discovers that he didn’t; a pleasant surprise, but a surprise nonetheless. Maybe that’s why he’s so unprepared to answer Shane when the FaceTime connects and Shane takes one look at him before demanding, “What happened to your face?”

It’s a shame. Shane is wearing his sexy reading glasses; Ilya would rather talk about them, and his dick, and Shane’s tight hole, than a stupid bruise.

“I lost a fight with Bood,” Ilya decides, because he figures a joking brush-off will be the easiest way to change the subject.

He figures wrong. Shane just rolls his eyes at Ilya, and what is it about Ilya now, what is it about this thing that’s constantly curdling in his gut, that that eye roll no longer makes him go warm and pleased all over but instead makes his stomach twist.

“Seriously, what was it?”

“I am serious,” Ilya insists. In for a penny. “He has very strong jab. He is secretly a ninja.”

“Mmhm. And what did you say to get the ninja upset at you, in this imaginary world?”

“Ah, I say nothing. I am innocent. But his mama finally told him about our affair, and…”

“Asshole,” Shane rolls his eyes. “Don’t even joke about that.”

And Ilya just can’t resist pushing Shane’s buttons, not when he’s making that face, not when there’s this thing settling in his stomach that he can’t seem to exorcise by any other means. “What? Is not joke. I fuck  Bood’s mother very well, very often.”

“Ilya, seriously,” Shane snaps.

“What? Does this bother you, Hollander?”

“Does it bother me that my boyfriend insists on making jokes about fucking other people? Yeah, a little bit.”

“So you think I would cheat on you.”

“No,” Shane starts. “No, that’s—don’t fucking turn this around on me, this isn’t about what I think you would do.”

“No, it’s just about whether I can make joke or not,” Ilya says. “What is next? You decide when I can speak Russian? Who I can talk to? Is it okay if I have fun lunch date with friends or only okay if it is serious?”

“I’m not fucking doing this,” Shane says, and hangs up the phone.

Ilya’s anger lasts for about two minutes before the horrible sinking feeling in his stomach overwhelms the fire in his chest, and it sets in that he’s fucked this up.

Immediately, he tries to call Shane back. But Shane doesn’t answer the phone. Not after a second call, either. After the third Ilya’s phone pings and his heart leaps in his throat before he reads the text.

Jane

I need a breather. I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk.

Ilya’s been trying to drink less, lately. Protect his liver, his longevity. It would be pretty shitty if you survived all this hockey to die of cirrhosis at 45, Shane had said to him, once. Cigarettes, Boston, any chance of winning anything for the next fucking decade: Ilya has given up a lot for Shane. What’s one more?

Now fishes a bottle out of the freezer and resolves to get fucking smashed.

—

There’s one tape from the box that wasn’t labeled. Ilya remembers what it is, anyway: U17 4Nations Tournament, 2007, Piešťany, Slovakia. Russia played the Czech Republic, and lost 4-3 in a major upset. Ilya made two of Russia’s three goals in that game, but he had two big misses, too: a backhand tap that skirted just wide of the net, and an attempted slapshot in which he, humiliatingly, missed the puck altogether.

Ilya’s father had given him the tape just like every other, a few days after the game with a clear white label. Ilya had watched the tape just like he did any other, or tried to, anyway. He got to the beginning of third period, and the misstep with the slapshot, when Ilya’s father had said, See, this is just sloppy, this is just a complete lack of dedication and skill. God, you’re lucky your mother isn’t here to see this, she’d be so ashamed of you.

Ilya had ripped the tape out of the VCR, then, and chucked it at the wall, but those stupid tapes were resilient; it didn’t break. Eventually, he scraped the label off with his bitten-short nails and hid it under the rest of his collection, but he’d never stuck it back in the VCR to finish, and he’d never watched it again.

Now he plugs it into his thrifted machine, turns the volume up. Sees himself in poor resolution on his massive TV. Those skinny hips, the way he stumbles whenever anyone checks him, no body weight to back him up. The way his gaze keeps flicking to the bench, to his coach, to his teammates. The sloppy C sewn onto his uniform.

He has everything he could ever want, now. The mansion he dreamed about, dozens of girls willing to fuck him at any moment, a big bottle of good Russian vodka that’s steadily emptying in his hand. A Stanley Cup in the trophy room. A Conn Smythe. A Hart. A league full of guys who would kiss his feet every day if they thought it would earn them even a little bit of his talent.

“God, you’re lucky your mother isn’t here to see this,” Ilya’s father says, as little skinny Ilya skates back to the bench for line change, his head dipped low. “She’d be so ashamed of you.”

Ilya rewinds, replays, rewinds, replays. Rewinds. Replays.

—

So many times he had told himself he would never do what his mother had done. Twelve and furious and sobbing over her grave, fifteen and terrified and still waking up to nightmares of her arm hanging limply over the side of the bed, seventeen and being screamed at with his arm in a sling and no one at his back. He would never do something like that. He would never leave the people he loved behind.

And then seventeen turned into eighteen, into nineteen, and he understood, in a new way, what it was to be totally alone. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, the terrible wrenching feeling in his chest each time he saw Shane ducking his head to hide his blush, the same feeling as he watched Shane slip on his shoes to leave Ilya’s hotel room. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, handshakes with his team mates, bump-and-grinds with girls in clubs and everything he says sounds so empty, feels so empty, he can barely stand it. Twenty-six and Shane is with Rose Landry and Ilya thinks about it, maybe for the first real time. Would anyone really mind? Would anyone really notice?

He’s got Shane, now. Svetlana, still, even if a little less of her than he’s used to. Shane’s parents, to a lower degree, and of course all the Centaurs, but none of them—none of it feels very permanent. None of it feels un-erasable. Shane would be sad for a while, he thinks, feel guilty for the way things splintered and faded before the end, but he would move on. Find someone nicer, maybe. Find someone kinder and more considerate and harder working. Someone he doesn’t have to sacrifice so much for. Maybe he’ll meet them in one of his yoga classes or buying buckwheat at the stupidly expensive grocery store he goes to in downtown Montreal.

Ilya can picture it so clearly. They’d have a lot in common, Shane and this new boyfriend. He’d be a physiotherapist or a nutritionist, maybe a nurse, someone with the drive to pursue a difficult field and a basic understanding of what Shane puts his body through every day. 

They’d exchange tips on energy-saving dryer settings and low-calorie breads and discuss hockey in the evenings over glasses of ginger ale, and when Shane said something like I can’t eat refined carbs so I can’t eat sandwiches for the rest of the season or I have my watch programmed to buzz me when I’ve been sitting for more than 55 minutes so I never spend an entire hour sedentary, the guy would nod along and encourage him instead of pushing back, because he would understand better, in a way Ilya can’t. Why work has to come before everything. 

Shane would love that about him. Shane would love him, and they would be happy, and if they wanted to, they could come out, the way that Hunter came out, because there would be no risk of anyone getting deported or sent to a gulag, and no risk of anyone hating Shane for his association with Ilya. It would be simpler. Shane would be happier.

It’s bad reasoning, he knows that. He knows that. But he can’t stop thinking it.

—

Eventually, Ilya finds himself in the bathroom, the half-empty vodka bottle still in his hand, staring into his medicine cabinet. There’s ibuprofen, paracetamol, allergy medications, nasal decongestant, Tums. 

And then the prescription-strength stuff. A half bottle of antibiotics that Ilya never finished after a dental procedure. Three or four Oxy from the last time he got his bell rung in a game. And—ah, there it is—half a bottle of sleeping pills, a year out of date now but surely still good for this, surely still good enough.

Ilya googles the prescription name and the lethal dose. He does the math. He has enough.

He thinks for a while, watching the bottle like it’s going to disappear on him. Sips his vodka.

Thinks of his mother’s white arm hanging over the side of her bed. 

Then he calls Svetlana.

Immediately, Ilya can tell she’s out somewhere: there’s music in the background, loud enough that it’s hard to hear her.

"Sveta," he says, before she can even greet him. "I think I'm about to do something very stupid."

He can practically hear her eye roll, he can imagine it so clearly. The thudding base, the red pulsing lights, and her off to the side of it all, in a corner in a backless white dress, heels that highlight the curve of her ass, cupping her hand around her phone to hear him better.

"You're always doing something stupid," she laughs. "What is it this time?"

"I am in a staring contest with a bottle of pills," Ilya says. "And I think the pills might win."

Sveta goes very quiet. Ilya entertains himself by trying to identify which club she’s at by the background music. Not Necto, they only play songs released before the fall of the USSR. It could be Club Clementine, but there’s something in the music that’s a little too aggressive for their girly, flirty vibe. Iconique, then. It must be. 

The mental image in Ilya’s mind’s eye crystalizes: now he sees Svetlana tucked away behind the old disused payphone that Iconique has in the corner, hovering under the massive ugly caricature of some long-dead Boston weatherman. He and Sveta used to make up stories about that man, when they were very drunk and too tired to try and pull.

“I’m coming to Ottawa."

Ilya closes his eyes. “You don’t have to,” he says, but why else did he call her? What else was he expecting? For her to laugh at him and hang up? Maybe that would have been easier. Maybe then Ilya could have choked to death on pills and not felt bad about it. But Sveta has never been easy on him.

“Hold on,” Sveta says. There’s footsteps, voices, a big metal door clanging. The music cuts off abruptly. “Switch to FaceTime.”

Ilya accepts her call. She’s in the alley behind the bar; he recognizes it, from one too many smoke breaks. She looks beautiful. Glittering white eyeshadow that she’s clearly gone to pains to apply appropriately. Her hair twisted into elaborate braids.

“Show me the pills.”

He holds up the bottle.

“Dump them in the toilet and flush.”

“Sveta—“

“Show me when you do it.”

He feels like a child. He flips the camera around, fumbles off the lid of the pills, and films himself dumping them into the toilet.

“Flush,” she reminds him, like she seriously thinks he’s going to pick the pills up out of the toilet and shove them down his gagging, stupid throat.

Maybe he would. He flushes them.

“Good. Now show me rest of the medicine cabinet.”

She makes him zoom in on close on the labels and calls out which ones she wants him to get rid of. This one, that one, no, the half-empty bottle of paracetamol is fine. From the alley behind a hot club in Boston, she watches him in his sad little bathroom wasting Zyrtec so he won’t kill himself. 

“Okay,” Seta says, finally, when she’s decided that the weapons of mass destruction have been neutralized for now. “Ilyusha. I am going to be at your house in seven hours.”

“You shouldn’t drive drunk,” Ilya says, on automatic. Fuck, he sounds so much like Shane. How are you supposed to expunge someone from your life when they’ve twisted themselves into you like this? Like a piece of twine tied too tight around a bent tree: after a certain point, the removal hurts worse than just leaving it.

“Don’t do anything stupid until I get there,” Sveta says, ignoring him, as always. “I mean it.”

Ilya swallows hard. “I won’t,” he says.

She hums. “Seven hours, Ilyusha. Try to get some rest, please?”

After they hang up he goes into bed and lays down obediently, but he can’t fall asleep. He stares at the ceiling. Seven hours: that’s plenty of time to do something. He could go to the pharmacy and buy more pills. Fuck, he doesn’t even have to go to the pharmacy—he could go downstairs and get one of his kitchen knives. He could hang his belt from a ceiling fan. He could plug the exhaust pipe of his Corvette.

But of course if he did any of that, Svetlana would find him. She would be the one, now, dreaming about dead white skin.

Ilya doesn’t get up from his bed, and eventually, he falls asleep.

—

He wakes up to Svetlana crawling into bed with him.

“Hello, Sleeping Beauty,” she says, tucking herself under his arm, her head on his chest.

Ilya doesn’t remember his mother’s voice anymore, not really, but when he tries to imagine it, it always sounds a lot like Svetlana. Lilting; light; ragged, just a bit, on the edges. Svetlana’s hair tickles Ilya’s chin, and he closes his eyes and lets the tears slip silently down his face as Svetlana talks to him, quietly, in Russian.

—

“Where is Hollander?” she asks him, at one point.

Ilya’s heart kicks in his chest. “Pissed at me,” he says, and she hums and changes the topic.

—

Eventually, Ilya wakes up and the bed is empty. He smells cooking bacon. Downstairs, Svetlana is cracking eggs into a pan, scrambling them with a spatula.

The chef’s knives are missing, he notices. If he checks, he supposes lots of other things will be missing, now, too.

“That’s not how you make good scrambled eggs,” Ilya tells her, because he’s told her at least thirty times to mix them in a bowl with milk first and yet she refuses to do it.

“Go fuck yourself,” she suggests. “Coffee in the pot.”

The coffee, at least, is good. So is the bacon, and the toast, even though Ilya has to butter it with the back of his spoon.

“So,” Svetlana says, sliding into her seat next to him. “Do I need to commit you?”

Ilya stabs an overly-brown scrambled egg. “No,” he says.

“You sure?”

“If I was bad enough to be committed, I wouldn’t have called you,” Ilya says, and Svetlana makes a noise like she doesn’t agree, but she doesn’t argue, either.

“I assume nobody else knows about this,” she says.

“No, I called Page Six last night.” Ilya rolls his eyes. “What kind of question is that?”

“A pretty normal question, considering you have a boyfriend.”

Ilya’s fork pauses above his plate. “You can’t tell him.”

“I wont’t,” Svetlana says, and he feels relieved for about two seconds before she says, “You need to tell him.”

“That’s not happening.”

“If you won’t tell him, I will.”

Unfortunately, Ilya can tell by looking at her that she’s serious. Her eyeshadow is smeared around her eyes in a way that makes her look vaguely clown-like, but the set of her mouth, the line of her jaw—there’s no lie there.

“What am I supposed to say? Hello, Shane, just want to let you know that I almost killed myself, but Svetlana flushed our entire medicine cabinet so it’s good now, don’t worry.”

Svetlana rolls her eyes. “So dramatic,” she says. “You know there are ways to say it that don’t make you sound like a teenage girl? And even if you don’t want to tell him that, you should at least tell him the other stuff.”

“What other stuff?” 

“That you’re sad,” Svetlana says. “And you’re really fucking lonely.”

Hideously, Ilya’s eyes burn.

“The first pancake is always lumpy,” Ilya says.

“Ilyusha, I hate to break it to you, but we are pretty well past first pancake territory, here.”

Ilya gives her a sideways glance. “Second pancake?” he tries.

She looks like she is trying very hard not to smile. “I think you’re at eight now, at least.”

Ilya mock-gasps, pressing a hand to his chest. “Eight?” he demands. “By what math?”

“It’s been eight months since you moved here, hasn’t it?” Svetlana asks, and she’s right. Eight months. Jesus. It feels like Ilya has been here for eight minutes and eight years, simultaneously. 

He glances around his kitchen, at the cup of wooden spatulas he never uses, at the drawers filled with god knows what. He still can’t figure out where the movers put his ice cream scoop. He keeps bending metal spoons trying to binge-eat his sad little pints of Ben and Jerry’s.

“Six pancakes,” Ilya decides. “This is my final offer.”

“Oh, baby boy,” Svetlana says, patting his cheek as she rises to take her plate to the sink. “This is not a negotiation. This is a threat.”

—

Svetlana stays for four days. Ilya tries to talk her into going home sooner, but she’s taken to playing Russian metal music on full volume when he starts to say something she doesn’t like.  Mostly Put’. It’s so horrifically grating that she’s mostly successful. 

When she’s pleased with him—when Ilya doesn’t yell at her for taking the shower curtain out of his unused guest bath, and actually spends more than two seconds reading over the list of therapists she sends him—she rewards him by playing the Yellow Submarine album on loop. 

She and Ilya had listened to that album a lot as children. Ilya’s mother had an old record of it, bone music from when she was a teenager during the Soviet days, that she  had let them smuggle to Svetlana’s house, where they were less likely to get yelled at for playing it on repeat on the family record player.

Svetlana’s favorite song on the album had always been the titular track, but Ilya preferred Hey Bulldog. He had never seen a bulldog before in Moscow, and he liked imagining what they might look like. He liked practicing his English accent as he and Svetlana yelled hey bulldog alongside the Beatles, and he liked the lilt of the melody on the words some kind of solitude is measured out in you. Even though it was a very long time before he knew what any of those words meant.

That’s the song that’s playing when Shane finally Facetimes Ilya. Ilya is so shocked to see his caller ID, so frantic to pick up before he changes his mind, that he doesn’t mute the speakers before he answers, and the first thing Shane says to him, wrinkling his nose under his pretty thick-rimmed glasses, is, “Isn’t that, like, really old music?”

Such a hockey boy. Ilya smiles fondly before he remembers he’s probably not supposed to smile fondly at Shane right now and hastily packs the expression away. “I’m sorry,” he says, instead of answering.

Shane sighs. “No, I’m sorry. I overreacted. You can say whatever you want.”

“No, I should not have said it,” Ilya says. “It was dumb. And not true.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “Well, I know that.” He considers Ilya for a moment, and Ilya tries not to feel terribly self-conscious. He knows he looks like shit. Svetlana had to bully him into the shower yesterday, and he didn’t bother with his normal hair routine. He probably looks greasy, unwashed, tired.

“I missed you,” Shane says, instead of any of that, and Ilya melts like ice in the Moscow summer.

“I missed you, too.”

They talk for a few more minutes before Shane has to go for a team meeting, but it’s fine, because Svetlana is there, on the couch, waiting for him.

“Did you tell him?” she asks, and he doesn’t even need to answer; the look on his face is enough. She sighs, long-suffering, and mutters something rude about his cock in Russian, but she lifts up the blanket laid over her lap anyway, a silent invitation. Still there.

Svetlana is always there. It’s terribly out of character for her and Ilya knows it’s work and he wishes he knew the right words to tell her he appreciates it, even when it makes him want to kill her. He goes to practice and comes back and Svetlana has a protein shake waiting for him. He goes to the gym to run on the treadmill and halfway through Svetlana shows up to lounge around on the exercise bike like she’s doing an ad for NordicTrack. 

At night, Svetlana sleeps in bed with Ilya, because he never bothered to buy a mattress for the spare room and also because he doesn’t see any reason to turn her away. He doesn’t feel sexually towards her at all, hasn’t for a long time, and it’s nice. To wake up and hear someone breathing next to him. To feel the sheets and feel them warm from someone’s body other than his. Even if it’s not the body he wants to be there. At least it’s someone he loves.

In the end, she leaves because Ilya has a two-day road trip to Buffalo and she trusts him not to kill himself in the team hotel. She doesn't say as much to Ilya, but he knows. “You will tell Shane,” she tells him, and he hums in a carefully noncommittal way. “You will tell him, or I will.”

He hugs her at the airport, probably for too long, the two of them leaning across the console of his Corvette, slung so low to the ground it’s practically in the gutter. She kisses one cheek, then the other. He doesn’t cry because he doesn’t have anything to cry about.

Svetlana does cry, probably as a psychological tactic to try to break him down. “I love you,” she tells him. “If you feel bad again, call me. I mean really bad. Like this.”

Ilya helps her get her bags out of the trunk, like a gentleman. He waits until he sees her pass into the terminal before he pulls out. He drives very slowly on the way home, very carefully. If he gets into a car accident now, Svetlana will think it was on purpose, and he’ll never hear the end of it. Even dead, he thinks. She’d find a way to haunt him. Reverse haunt him. She’d drag her living body down to hell just to kick him in the balls.

—

Ilya goes on his road trip, and doesn’t tell Shane, and comes back from his road trip, and doesn’t tell Shane, and then has three days of practices and home games, and doesn’t tell Shane.

In the end, it takes Shane coming to visit for him to find out. Ilya blows Shane in the entryway, lets Shane blow him on the living room couch, and then reverse cowgirls him so aggressively that Shane tweaks something in his hamstring. “Fuck,” Shane says, limping around the room trying to stretch it out. “I need some ibuprofen.”

Abruptly, Ilya remembers the empty medicine cabinet, and his languid post-sex energy evaporates all at once. “Did you bring any?” he asks. “I do not have.”

Shane gives him a weird look. “You’re a professional hockey player and you don’t have ibuprofen?”

Ilya shrugs, thumbing at his nose. “I am stronger than you, maybe.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “Or dumber,” he says. “Okay, Tylenol, then. I know you have Tylenol, I saw it last month.”

Ilya can’t think of what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. Shane limps into the bathroom and Ilya hears the sound of the medicine cabinet opening, and then—nothing. Ilya twists his fingers in the sheets. Eventually, he hears the clack of the medicine cabinet closing. 

“Ilya,” Shane says from the bathroom doorway. “Why is your medicine cabinet empty?”

“Is not empty,” Ilya tells the 500-count Egyptian silk bedsheets, which he’d gotten to match the ones that Shane kept in his home. He liked the smoothness, the coolness, and more importantly, he knew Shane did, too. “There is Tums. And paracetamol.”

“Yeah, and nothing else,” Shane says. “What happened to all the rest of it?”

Ilya turns his head and looks at the dresser so he does’t have to look at Shane. “Svetlana threw them out,” he admits.

“Svetlana,” Shane says. “Svetlana was here?”

“Yes.”

“Svetlana was here and she threw out your meds,” Shane says. Ilya keeps staring at the dresser. It was a bad place to look. There’s a photo of him and Shane there, the only one Shane lets him keep up in the house, of him and Shane and a half dozen other hockey players from last summer’s Irina Foundation camp in Winnipeg. Shane and Ilya are standing on opposite sides of the frame, but they’re wearing their baseball caps backwards in the same way. They’re both smiling.

“Ilya,” Shane says, and Ilya realizes that Shane has come and sat on the side of the bed. “Why did Svetlana throw out your meds?”

Of course Shane needs it spelled out for him. Ilya has never resented this trait of Shane’s before. “Why do you think, Shane?” he asks. “She was worried what I would do with them.”

A long silence. And then: “Is that what happened to my belt?”

Of all the fucking things to worry about. Ilya huffs, suddenly irrationally furious at Shane for not making this easier, for not understanding exactly what happened without Ilya needing to explain it. “Your belt, seriously?”

“I just noticed it was gone when I was in the closet and—“

“Yes, that’s what happened to your belt,” Ilya snaps. “Is this what you want to hear? Yes, I called Svetlana when I was drunk and sad and lonely and told her I was thinking of killing myself, and so she made me get rid of the pills. And then she left her girlfriend and drove up here from Boston so she could throw out your belt, and all my belts, and the kitchen knives, and probably she would have made me get rid of our fucking ties and the fucking bedsheets if she had thought of it, because I’m pathetic enough that even with all that she didn’t trust me. Okay? Happy now?”

Outwardly, Shane’s face is very blank. Hockey robot, the commentators sometimes call him. Emotionless, data-driven, pure logic on the ice. Idiots. They’ve never seen the way Shane’s face falls open when he’s shaking apart under Ilya’s hands, the raging passion that drives each forward thrust of his skates, the way his eyes gleam when he’s really and truly upset, the way they’re gleaming right now.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Shane says, and puts his face in his hands.

Ilya pinches his nose. “Shit. That’s—I am sorry. I did not mean to—“

“What?” Shane says into his hands, half-hysterical. “You didn’t mean to kill yourself? Or you didn’t mean to ever tell me about it?”

Ilya reaches out, hesitantly, and lays a hand on Shane’s shoulder. Shane doesn’t acknowledge it, but he doesn’t flinch away, either. “I didn’t mean to tell you like this,” he says.

For several long moments, Shane’s breath stutters into his palms. “When was this,” he says finally, voice flat enough that it doesn’t sound like a question.

“Week ago,” Ilya says.

“After our fight?”

Ilya is silent.

Finally, Shane lifts his head. His eyes are red-rimmed, his face wet. Look at this, Ilya’s mind whispers. Look at what you’ve done to him. You just can’t stop hurting him, can you? Can’t stop hurting anyone.

“So we get into one argument and you decide to kill yourself?” he demands. “One stupid argument, that’s all it takes to throw all of this away?”

It’s funny: Ilya forgets, sometimes, that he and Shane are so different. Of course, they’re different in superficial ways. What they like to eat for breakfast, how they dress, the music they listen to or don’t listen to. But at the core, they have always been the same, in that, at their cores, they both thrive on competition, thrive on the push-pull of their relationship, thrive on hockey. On the ice, in the locker rooms, in their bed, Ilya can forget the ways that they’re different. And then Shane will say something like this that reminds him. Shane has never wanted to die. Shane doesn’t understand it. And Ilya is glad for that, he is. But sometimes it feels like being a new immigrant all over again: trying to learn the local language to explain the needs he developed in a foreign land.

“It wasn’t about that,” he says. “It was just bad timing. It is—I don’t know. There is idiom for this in English, I think, about camel. In Russian, we say the drop that overflowed the cup. It was—one thing, after many things. It didn’t have anything to do with you, really.”

“You never said anything to me before,” Shane says.

Ilya flaps a hand helplessly in the air. “What was I supposed to say, Shane? That I agreed to this move, that I agreed to your plan, and now that I am here I am miserable? I miss my team, I miss my friends, everyone is moving on without me? I don’t know anyone here. The Centaurs, they are work people, fellow employees, that’s it. And I can’t even like work anymore, because we are so shit. The team is so much worse than I thought they would be and there is nothing I can do to fix it. I’m just there, like a figurehead they trot out to score a point and then the other team scores fucking six and it’s fucking embarrassing. I’m fucking useless. My purpose, it is all gone, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, if there is no purpose. I am like prisoner in gulag, spending all day smashing stones with hammers and the stones aren’t needed for anything and the hammers aren’t needed for anything and it’s all fucking pointless.”

Ilya cuts himself off abruptly, sucking in a breath. Shane is crying again. Ilya has to figure out how to stop hurting him. Ilya has to figure out how to make it better.

“I didn’t know,” Shane says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Ilya is suddenly very tired. He closes his eyes. “I thought maybe I could get over it,” he says. “I thought I could fix it so you didn’t have to worry about it.”

“Maybe I want to worry about it,” Shane says.

Ilya sighs. “No you don’t, Hollander.”

Shane smacks him, hard, on the stomach. “Don’t tell me what I want.”

Ilya opens his eyes. “Oh, so you want to live in house with no knives? You want to cut your chicken with spoon? You want to monitor me like baby and comb my hair like child when I lay in bed all day? You want to be around me when I am sweaty and gross because I do not want to shower. You want to hide the pills?”

“Yes,” Shane says.

Ilya’s heart stutters, but he powers on. “And when someone finds out? What then, Shane? You have a limit. I know this. Is fine. Is good, probably. But is a limit. And I can’t—“ He swallows hard, heaves a breath. “I can’t expect it. When I know it will stop. Do you understand?”

He’s back to staring at these sheets. These stupid fucking sheets. When Shane leaves him, he’s going to burn these sheets. He’s going to burn the sheets and then go back to being too-hot and itchy every night with his bland 200 thread count cotton whatever-the-fucks.

“Ilya,” Shane says, his own eyes bright with tears. “I’m not going to stop.”

“You don’t mean that,” Ilya croaks. “You don’t want anyone to know. If someone knew—“

“If you think I care more about people thinking I’m straight than you being alive, you’re fucking crazy.”

Ilya whips his head around. “What?”

Shane sets his jaw. “You heard me,” he says. He’s got that determined look on his face, the same one he gets in the gym before a particularly hard workout or in a game before an especially tricky move. The expression that says he’s decided to do something, and therefore he is going to do it, and nobody can stop him because is Shane Fucking Hollander, best player in the NHL. 

Well. Second best.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to call me that,” Ilya says dazedly, and Shane laughs, wet. 

“I love you so much,” he says, reaching out to grasp Ilya’s face in both of his hands. “I love you so fucking much. I have no limit with you, okay? I would—-I would move to, to Burundi, if that’s what you needed. I would quit hockey. Do you understand?”

Ilya blinks hard. “Okay,” he says, voice wobbly.

Shane kisses him. Then kisses him again. Then again, like he just can’t stop. “Jesus, Ilya,” he sighs against his skin. “Fuck. Fuck. Can we—can I hold you, for a bit?”

Ilya nods. It’s nice, Shane plastered up to Ilya’s back, his hand over Ilya’s chest. Ilya hasn’t slept well in a very long time, but he feels good, here. Like it’s been a very cold day and he’s just climbed into a very warm bed. It’s no surprise, probably, that it doesn’t take him long to fall asleep.

—

When Ilya wakes up, a few hours have passed and the bed is empty. He follows the sound of low voices to the living room, where Shane is sitting in front of the TV, one of Ilya’s tapes playing on screen.

This one is from 2006, Ilya is pretty sure. It’s from before he perfected his snapshot, and he watches as he sloppily smacks the puck from a breakaway. It goes in the net, but it’s more due to shitty goaltending than anything. Terrible, Ilya’s father says on the recording. That almost made me sick to watch.

“Ilya,” Shane says. “What is this?”

Ilya shrugs, taking his place beside Shane on the couch. “Old game,” he says. He remembers this now; he had watched it a couple weeks ago. He’ll be off the ice for the next two minutes and then they’ll put him in again, this time as right winger instead of center. He’ll take two shots on goal, but neither will go in, and then he’ll be pulled again. 

“And the person talking?”

“My father,” Ilya says, watching as his team’s defender trips over his own feet and smacks onto the ice. Ilya’s father scoffs. “He made these for me to improve my game. Analysis. I know your mother used to do it, too, but you probably had DVD or something, right? Rich Westerners.”

“Ilya,” Shane says again, and when Ilya looks at him he’s startled to see he looks horrified. “What he’s saying is not normal.”

Ilya blinks at him. “You understand him?”

“I understand enough.” Shane waves the remote at the TV. “This—who the fuck says stuff like this, to their own kid?”

“Shane, is fine,” Ilya says. “He is just—how do you say—hardass? Tough love.”

“It’s not tough love if he’s just fucking insulting you,” Shane says. “Wow. Wow. I want to punch your dead father.”

Ilya smiles, but Shane isn’t joking. He glares at Ilya, mouth set in a hard line that Ilya has only seen out of him once or twice before, in replays of rare Shane Hollander on-ice fights. “You’re serious,” Ilya realizes.

“If I could, I would go punch his headstone right now,” Shane says, and Ilya can’t help it—he bursts out laughing.

“Stop it,” Shane threatens. “I’m not kidding,” but there’s a smile curling around his lips, now.

“Shane,” Ilya giggles. “Shane, that is so stupid. You would break your fingers. The headstone is marble. And he is dead.”

“Okay, then I want to jackhammer his headstone,” Shane says, which just makes Ilya laugh harder.

“Shane,” he gasps, “Shane, please do not say you want to jackhammer my father.”

“That’s—ew, Ilya, don’t be disgusting, I mean I want to break his grave into ugly pieces, not that I want to—ew, Ilya!”

Ilya cackles.

It takes a long time for him to get his laughter under control—he keeps looking at Shane at just the wrong moment, and the disgusted look on his face cracks Ilya up all over again.

Eventually, he manages to get himself under control, but his lungs feel raw and scraped-out from feeling. It’s stupidly close to how he feels when he’s trying not to cry, and as he realizes that, he realizes that there are tears in his eyes.

Jesus. Has he turned into a fucking fountain, or something? Did a witch curse him in his sleep?

Shane notices because of course Shane notices, and a moment later, Shane is there, his arm around Ilya’s shoulders, one leg thrown over Ilya’s hip. So many dreams Ilya has had, of moments like this. He has to remind himself, always, when real life happens, that he’s awake.

“Do you think it will ever stop feeling like this?” Ilya asks.

“Like what?”

“So much.”

Shane hums and is silent for a very long time, but Ilya doesn’t get offended; he knows Shane is just thinking. Thinking as he trails his fingers up and down Ilya’s ribcage, the touch light and reassuring, like when Ilya was a child and his mother used to run her hands through his hair.

“I think that you have a very big heart,” Shane says, finally. “And when you have a big heart, things feel like a lot, always.”

Shane has a very serious look on his face. Like an academic studying a historic manuscript. A child trying to figure out how to hold his new baby brother. A doctor, bent over to apply stitches to an open wound.

“So I’m fucked forever, is what you’re saying,” Ilya says.

Shane knocks their foreheads together. “Well, I love your big heart,” Shane says. “So, yeah, I kind of hope so. Sorry, baby.”

Ilya sighs, the sound whistling out of him like wind whistling between birch trees. “My lover is so cruel to me,” he says, and he knows Shane loves him because he doesn’t argue with the wording: just laughs and says, “I know,” his voice sweet as cherry jam.