Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories:

F/F, M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Rose Landry/Svetlana Vetrova, Rose Landry & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Rose Landry, Svetlana Vetrova, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, canon divergent from s01e04, Body Swap, some angst but mostly of the wallowing and woe is me variety, Happy Ending, References to prior drug use, canon typical homophobia and use of slurs, POV Alternating, Oral Sex, Vaginal Sex, Anal Sex, things of that nature, dubious consent due to body swap reasons, infidelity but the tagged pairings do not cheat on each other, Texting, Identity Porn, You don't need to be an ABBA fan to read this but it certainly won't hurt, The Ilya Rozanov-Rose Landry begrudging friendship agenda, author only learned the rules of hockey like ummm quite recently and is doing her best, please feel free to recommend tags I may have missed!

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-01 Completed: 2026-08-29 Words: 170,964 Chapters: 19/19

Muscle Memory

Summary

“I’m trying to figure out,” Rose wonders aloud. “Are you always a complete prick? Just with women? Or just when you lose a game?”

Ilya barks a laugh, shocked and almost delighted, and his smile spreads wide enough that Rose can see all those pearly whites of his that are so much nicer than she expected any hockey player’s to be. “All the time,” he grins, “all the time. However much of an asshole Hollander has told you I am, double it.”

She answers truthfully, shrugs her shoulders in her tiny silver dress. “He hasn’t mentioned you at all.”

After a shitshow of an evening in a Montreal nightclub, Ilya wakes up the next morning in Shane’s bed. Only, he’s not in Shane’s bed — Rose Landry is, and he’s in Rose Landry’s body, and she’s in his. Well, what the fuck are they supposed to do with that?

Notes

Hi hi! So excited to be sharing a story in this fandom; I love these characters and consider it a privilege to put them into Situations and share it with you. A few quick notes:

- Russian translations provided almost entirely by the amazing L3200 for which I have massive amounts of gratitude
- I have a substantial amount of this fic written already, so updates should happen weekly, but please bear with me if I'm a teeny bit behind schedule
- massive massive thanks to @narivaaaal on twitter for the encouragement to run wild with this concept which was originally their 140 character tweet that I thought deserved to be 140k words <3

Chapter 1: Rose

The bass is throbbing so she can feel it in her bones, and that feels good, and then, a few more drinks in, Rose can feel it in her bladder, and that’s not so good. The bathrooms at Ciel are single stalls — it’s not a gay club really, but gay enough that all three bathrooms have signs on them which just say “toilet” rather than men or women. Mostly it seems like people are using them to snort lines or to hook up or both, because there’s several songs of standing in place, shifting her weight from one uncomfortable heel to the other, before the queue even begins to move.

Rose sees him then. He’s curled around his phone in a dark alcove of the hall, and the way the screen illuminates his face, his features are familiar enough for her to think, I know him. We’ve worked together. Which is wrong, actually. She’s been drinking, and for a moment had forgotten that there were famous people in the world that weren’t her sort of famous. He’s not an actor, no, he doesn’t work with her. He works with Shane.

“Rozanov,” she says, because that’s what the other players call him, and then, pulling something sober enough out of her ass to remember the first name she’s seen on a Jumbotron before, “Ilya, I mean.”

When he looks up and sees her, his eyes bulging and face blanching, twisting, it occurs to Rose that maybe he’s been waiting here outside the bathrooms because he’s about to be sick. “This side’s the line, actually,” she gestures, “but I’m sure someone will let you cut in if you really need it.”

His face, as she speaks, schools itself into an expression that seems much more suited to what little she knows of him. Disinterest, disdain, all of it very cheekbone forward. “I do not need the toilet.”

“Okay,” Rose says, feeling sort of dumb for assuming and then sort of irritated for feeling dumb. He’s already gone back to his phone anyway. “Well, this is the hallway for the bathrooms. So you can see why I thought that.”

“Sure,” he says, flicking through instagram stories too quickly to possibly be seeing them. “And I thought it was free fucking country.”

“Good game tonight. By the way.” It’s a rude thing to say, because his team’s lost in a brutal fashion, which is exactly why she says it. Sometime during or prior to the two and a half minutes they’ve been interacting, Rozanov has for some inscrutable reason decided not to like her. He’s the one being rude. But then she comes to her senses, remembers that this is Shane’s co-worker, sort of, and also that she is, at least in public persona, a Nice Girl. “I’m Rose — I’m Shane Hollander’s girlfriend.”

He swipes, swipes, swipes at instagram. Doesn’t look up. “I know who you are, Rose Landry.”

Knows who she is and doesn’t seem to care. So, fine then. “Alright,” she says, and nods along to something thumping on a blown out speaker nearby, unsticks a heel from the beer-soaked floor, and for a moment, almost forgets she ever met Ilya Rozanov.

A girl comes out of a stall down the line, and Rose shuffles forward. Closer now to Ilya, closer also to this blondish sort of girl in her dress that’s very small — but then again, who’s Rose to talk — who stumbles from the bathroom wiping her nose without the sense to know she’s smearing her fresh lipstick, then smears that lipstick further all along Rozanov’s neck and the clean collar of his ridiculously gaudy shirt. “You ready?” she half slurs, half shouts into his ear, and as Rose watches, he shrugs her off.

“I’m good,” he says, accent clipped.

“You said you’re at the Four Seasons?” the girl asks louder, leaning in, not getting it. She makes a phlegmy, unappealing noise, a coke drip reflex, and Rose feels a little sad to see how thoroughly she’s embarrassing herself without even knowing it.

“I am,” Rozanov says, unaffected. “You’re not.”

The girl reels back, cheeks pinking like she’s genuinely been slapped. “You’re an asshole,” she says, and all he gives her in return is a level stare and a nod of agreement.

Rose steps aside to let the girl shove past. She waits until she’s out of earshot to speak; not that she should speak on it at all, not that it’s any of her business, but for such a Nice Girl, Rose has an awfully bad habit of saying what’s on her mind. “That was kind of fucked up.”

Finally, she’s cracked him. He locks his phone with an audible click and stares straight at her, eyes hard and dark and unforgiving. “I didn’t like her. What do you want me to do? Take her back and fuck her anyway?”

Well. What does one say to that, exactly? “You could have been nicer about it, is what I meant.” She crosses her arms over her chest, the frankness of the conversation suddenly making her feel exposed. “You can turn someone down without going out of your way to make them feel like shit.”

“Makes for a better story this way.” This all is mildly amusing to him. “People love to tell their friends that they met famous so-and-so who was a complete asshole. You know this, maybe.” A bouncer in a tight black polo slides between them pushing a mop and bucket, and Rozanov pauses momentarily to let him pass, never taking his eyes off Rose, contemplating. “Or maybe not. Maybe you are like a Miss America type of girl. And everybody loves to meet you.”

There’s a joke in there at her expense, something sneering beneath the surface, and still she can’t figure out why. Rivalries exist, sure, but how guilty can she be by association? Furthermore, she knows enough about sports, about the business of entertaining the masses, to have thought all that heel stuff was kayfabe. Rose wishes she had never caught his attention, because now that his gaze is turned on her, it’s flaying.

“And where is your nice hockey player boyfriend, Rose Landry?” His glass is propped on a divot in the wall where a payphone might have existed twenty years ago, and he picks it up and drains what’s left of the clear liquid. “Miss America and Mister Canada. Did he leave you too?”

They must not know each other well, if Rozanov thinks that Shane would ever treat a girl the way he just did. About the only thing they have in common is that neither of them seem to give a shit about getting laid tonight, Rose thinks, then feels guilty for thinking it. “He stepped outside for some air. It’s hot in here.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is.”

She cocks her head, squints at him and for the first time tries to really take him in. Not her type, but beautiful. Too beautiful, almost. He’d be cool to the touch, she imagines, cold like chiseled marble. He cocks his own head in return, the twelfth or so of a dozen little mockeries she’s trying to figure out just what exactly she did to earn.

“You want to say something,” he observes. “Go ahead.”

Rose shakes her head. “I want to know something.”

“Then ask,” he says. Like everything that’s happening is simple, easy. “I am an open book.”

“I’m trying to figure out,” Rose wonders aloud. “Are you always a complete prick? Just with women? Or just when you lose a game?”

He barks a laugh, shocked and almost delighted, and his smile spreads wide enough that Rose can see all those pearly whites of his that are so much nicer than she expected any hockey player’s to be. “All the time,” he grins, “all the time. However much of an asshole Hollander has told you I am, double it.”

She answers truthfully, shrugs her shoulders in her tiny silver dress. “He hasn’t mentioned you at all.”

His mouth draws small and tight in fury; Rose can’t help noticing he’s somehow even more beautiful when he’s angry. And even if she can’t quite fathom why it’s so, she knows whatever she’s said is past a tête-à-tête, past friendly banter, knows that she’s crossed the line and in so doing stepped directly on some landmine, so when she hears the bathroom door beside her thunk open, she ducks around the drunken, spit-swapping couple in front of her to cut them for it. At the same time, Rozanov makes to storm off through the throbbing vein of a hallway, back into the beating heart of the club. When they collide — neither of them mean to crash into each other, but neither of them move out of the way — it’s like a check against the boards with zero padding, and the pain in her shoulder where it smashes into one of any multitude of his hard muscles is instantaneous. “Asshole,” she gasps, at the same time he swears loudly in Russian.

“Enjoy your perfect life, Rose Landry,” Ilya Rozanov says, pressing through the crowd now turning towards the shiny, intoxicating lure of a deuxmoi-worthy disturbance happening within their midst.

“I fucking will,” Rose laughs, hysteria bubbling like champagne fizz. “I really, really will.”

When she slams the bathroom door shut behind her, she knows for certain that she’s had too much to drink. Sober Rose, even tipsy Rose, would never let hot tears well up in her eyes over a rude fucking stranger, would never even consider the opinion of a person who knows so little about her. She hovers at the sink, cold water running weakly over her wrists, until she feels herself calm. Lots of men hate her. Faceless Redditors who say she’s way too fat to play their favorite superhero, then jerk off to her pictures anyway; critics who pan everything she does and then fall over themselves to charm her in press junkets. Every day goes something like this: the sun rises in the east, a man finds a reason to hate a woman, and the sun sets in the west.

She turns to leave and only remembers as she grabs for the door handle that she still has to pee. Peeing calms her too; she tells herself the alcohol is leaving her body, even if that’s not quite how it works.

She means to find Shane and tell him everything. In the minutes since it’s happened, it’s all become some juicy story to her, just like Ilya said it would. Before she can, a group of girls by the bar ask her for a picture, and she indulges, and then Miles has to drag her away. When they get to VIP, Shane is waiting, his silly, totally unstylish white t-shirt sweated through, and his cheeks look hot, all of him looks hot. He whispers in Rose’s ear and asks if she’s ready to get out of here. Maybe she would have told him about the whole drama in the cab back to his place, but her dress, her hair, her body, all of her is silver liquid tonight like mercury, oozing and dripping all over him. In the backseat, he lets her kiss him the way he never seems to mind her doing until they’re home in bed. Except, for once, they get home and he actually does fuck her — it’s not the best sex she’s ever had, not close, he doesn’t make her come, but after he finishes he buries his face in her neck, kissing softly, while she gets herself off, and at least he doesn’t ego trip about it the way some guys would. Laying there, thighs still sticky, and the rest of her sticky as she sweats out the last of the champagne, Ilya Rozanov couldn’t be further from her mind.

They clean up, taking turns in the bathroom, her first and then him because Shane’s a gentleman. By the time he crawls into bed, Rose is already mostly asleep.

“Remind me in the morning,” she mumbles. “I have a story to tell you from tonight.”

“A story about what?” he asks. His voice is small and far away in darkness.

“I don’t remember,” she says. “Too tired. I’ll remember in the morning.”

Rose rolls towards him and falls asleep in his arms.

Chapter 2: Ilya

Ilya wakes to the grumble of his phone vibrating. He ignores it, obviously, but when he does, it buzzes again and again and again. Someone is calling him repeatedly, very fucking early in the morning, which means that someone in his life needs something, and this stresses him out. He turns in the sheets. fumbling blindly for the phone on the nightstand, and as he does he hears the gentle, confused murmur of another person in the bed beside him half roused. Ilya could swear he came home by himself last night, knows he drank, knows he didn’t drink so much he wouldn’t remember — and yet, he evidently did, because here now is a person curled beside him who he hadn’t expected to be there. This stresses him further. He opens his eyes then, ignoring the phone a moment longer, long enough to peek at the face pressed drooling on the pillow beside his. Freckled, familiar, soft with sleep, pretty, so pretty. The person in bed next to him is Shane Hollander, and when Ilya sees him, he thinks he could not possibly be more stressed out than he is in this moment. Later, the memory of this thought will be very funny to him.

He snatches up his phone as a fourth call comes through, before the noise can wake Hollander without Ilya first having a moment to process what the fuck is happening, figure out whether he should be elated or whether he’s completely fucked.

“Алло.” His voice is garbled by sleep and hangover, barely recognizable as his own. “Алло,” again more insistently when there’s silence on the line.

“Hi,” a man’s voice says, accented but speaking inexplicably in English.

“Can I help you?” Ilya hisses, quietly as he can.

“Fuck,” the stranger says, “fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” And from the way he’s breathing through the phone it’s unclear to Ilya if he’s jerking off on the other end of the line or having some sort of panic attack.

In any case, he hangs up. Hollander, beside him, has pulled the covers up to his chin like a little boy, duvet bunched up in his hands, so precious. His brows are creased in troubled sleep like wrinkled sheets; Ilya would smooth that furrowed brow if it would soothe his troubles, but it won’t, so he doesn’t. He keeps his hands and all of him on the far side of the bed and watches, still and silent. Trying to remember.

Nothing comes. Nothing that helps. Because the problem is, he does remember how last night ended — alone and angry and sad in his own bed, one foot on the floor to stop the spins, Connors snoring in the next bed like a sawmill — and none of what he’s woken up to makes sense. There were no drunken, messy, desperate kisses. Nothing furtive beyond a glance, if you could even call it furtive, the way Hollander had stared at him across the club, pink and blue lights dancing in the whites of his eyes, glimmering damp. Nothing from last night, not a single clear or even foggy memory, points to anything like reconciliation, and Ilya knows that there’s nothing he could drink or take that would have made him forget Hollander coming back to him and wanting him again. So how he ended up here, in Hollander’s too plush bed, he doesn’t have a fucking clue. But he knows that Hollander won’t wake up happy that he’s here. And so before he sneaks out, Ilya lets him sleep a little longer. Lets himself watch a little longer.

He tries, at least. But whoever’s calling — bleary eyed, Ilya lifts the phone and manages to make out an unsaved number with a 617 area code — won’t let up. The phone buzzes in the sheets beside him without interruption; each time it rings out to voicemail, the caller redials, and redials, and redials. Ilya rejects the call, and the stranger dials again. He feels so taut already that whatever pervert telemarketer is throttling his line has him close to snapping, and so, tearing his eyes from Hollander, he finally picks up one last time to hiss “Stop calling this fucking number.”

“Don’t hang up,” the man says all in a rush. It’s the same voice, Slavic, speaking English, and familiar enough that Ilya realizes this time that the caller is actually someone he knows. One of Svetlana’s friends or boy-toys maybe, because how many other Russians does he know in Boston? “Is this Ilya Rozanov I’m speaking to?”

Ilya shoots up now, worried, then slides from the bed and quietly pads towards the bathroom, out of earshot. “ Да. Yes. What’s going on?” With a sudden icy fear that makes him feel 12 years old again, he imagines Svetlana hurt or unconscious — could be worse, he doesn’t know, maybe she crashed one of those fast cars she loves to drive — and Ilya’s certain he’d be the first one they called.

But Svetlana’s not in trouble. Ilya is. Because the next thing the voice says is, “Are you at Shane’s right now?”

His knees buckle and he catches himself just before he hits the cold marble, squatting with his head in his hands and his heart dropped somewhere towards his asshole. He doesn’t know how they know. They can’t know. Can’t like there’s no possible way of them knowing, and can’t like he is so, so fucked if they do, can’t like this can’t be happening. But they do, they do know, and Ilya might not know how they know, but he also doesn’t know how he ended up here in the first place. He’s terrified like yellow bile rising in his throat, furious like blood raging in his veins. “Кто это, блять?”

“I’m sorry,” says the man, sounding helpless and nearly just as lost and terrified as Ilya. “I don’t speak — I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Who is this,” Ilya repeats, whispered shouting, garbled high pitched noises coming from his throat as he tries to keep his voice down when what he wants is to scream. “Who are you, who is this, who the fuck is asking?”

“Are you near a mirror?” the person asks. They sound so choked up when they ask that Ilya might spare them some sympathy if it wasn’t this fucking guy playing some sick joke on Ilya and not the other way around. “Go into the bathroom if you’re not — just look into the mirror, please.”

He doesn’t. He hangs up. He tries to breathe, tries to think. He slaps the ground (stupid, pointless) and his palm, too tender against the tile, hurts after he does it. Eventually he pulls himself up by the counter, turns the tap to splash cold water on his face, and when he catches his eye in the mirror — not because the man on the phone told him to, only that the mirror takes up half the bathroom wall, can’t be avoided — he realizes he’s not alone.

Rose Landry is in the bathroom.

Ilya whips around, and no one’s there. Towels on a heated rail. A piece of art that Hollander hired someone else to pick out for him. A Japanese toilet off to the side, a shower Ilya’s gotten on his knees in on more than one occasion. No one there. No Rose Landry.

It takes all of his willpower to turn and face whatever the fuck is happening. He does. He isn’t as weak willed as people like his father have always said.

Rose Landry is there in the mirror. In the room. Ilya isn’t.

He stares for too long completely immobile before realizing that that won’t tell him anything. It takes tilting his own head, Ilya’s head, and seeing copper curls fall in the same direction, lifting his arm and drawing it in a circle, seeing the slim arm in the mirror follow the motion, catching sight of that arm where it connects to himself, where it extends from the sleeve of a white cotton t-shirt he knows is Hollander’s and stretches down to a delicate hand, manicured in pastel pink.

The phone is buzzing on the ground. He stoops to pick it up, noting with an almost calm detachment that it’s not his phone, and noting also that the unsaved Boston number that’s been calling is his own. “Am I on drugs?” he asks when the call connects.

“Do you feel like you’re on drugs?” the man’s voice asks, and Ilya laughs. It’s his voice, obviously, and has been the whole time.

“I feel like I’m going crazy, is what I feel like.”

It has to be that, or something like… a concussion during the game last night. A fucked up injury on the ice. And all of this has been one big long medically induced coma. Once he considers it that way, it becomes much easier to accept.

“You’re not crazy,” the person says. “You’re not dreaming. Can you meet me? We need to talk.”

“You are Rose Landry?” Ilya asks, a last ditch effort to deny the insane reality which is becoming increasingly undeniable. I hate Rose Landry, he thinks absently. Like that has anything to do with it.

“Yeah,” she says, then sucks her teeth. His teeth, really. “Sorry. I know it’s like — this is fucked up, obviously.”

“Obviously.” He draws his thumb up to his mouth and bites the skin against his nail. Her nail. Whatever. “Okay. You have a genius plan or something?”

She bristles at his tone. Which makes sense, because his tone is rude. “Why do you say it like that?”

“Because you have been calling me for the last forty minutes. You are calling and you have no plan?”

She sighs, and Ilya hears his own exasperation mirrored back at him with bizarre accuracy. “I think we need to talk. And come up with a game plan together.”

“Where are you?” Ilya asks. “What time is it?” He pulls the phone away from his face to answer his own question. “7:15. Jesus.”

“I’m in the bathroom of your hotel room. There’s another man out there sleeping.”

“Connors,” he says, stretching out his collar and glancing down the front of his shirt as he does so. Good looking. Nothing special. “He will sleep through most things. Sometimes I pour water on him to wake him up, if we will miss our flight.”

“Shit,” Rose says. “What time are you supposed to be flying out today?”

“Afternoon. 2:50 or something.” And because Rose is, as much as he hates to admit it, correct, and because Ilya is soothed by the idea of a game plan — he’s a team captain for fuck’s sake — he asks, “Where should we meet?”

She laughs bitterly. “Actually, I’m staying in the same hotel you are. Small fucking world.”

“Weird,” Ilya observes.

“Yeah, well,” she sighs. “Evidently, weirder things have happened. Wanna meet me in my room in like — however long it takes you to get over here?”

No, he doesn’t want to, but he doesn’t seem to have a choice. “Text me your room number.”

“You can call an uber from my phone. Presumably the Face ID will work, but if you need the password, it’s 1111.”

“Very secure.”

“It’s stupid,” she replies. “Who cares. If I need yours?”

Ilya clears his throat. “1410.”

“Cool.” He hears her typing something and then feels the buzz of a text coming in against his cheek, looks and sees she’s sent her room number. “Got it?”

“Yes.”

“In the corner by the dresser is a cream weekender bag. There’s a change of clothes and toiletry stuff in there. Tell Shane I have an early call time and that I’ll text him later.”

“An early call time,” Ilya repeats in a daze. “Got it.” For months now, nothing has felt bigger than this feeling, this — not heartbreak, he won’t call it that, because it can’t be heartbreak over something that’s so casual, but whatever word exists for this wrenched raw, torn open thing that lives inside him and bubbles like acid and aches like bruised bones. Now suddenly, he’s stumbled on the exact thing he’s seeking: a distraction. Something bigger. So big that he managed to forget for two minutes that Hollander is lying in the other room, blissful and unaware.

“You need to be nice about it,” Rose urges. “I’m so, so serious. I know you hate each other, but if you come in acting like an asshole, he’ll know something’s up. You need to act like you’re me.”

“I said I got it,” he snaps. She has no way of knowing, fair enough, but still it chafes Ilya to be told. Like he needs to be taught how to act one way around Hollander and feel another. He’s been doing this for years. Rose Landry thinks she is some great actress, but she doesn’t know Ilya Rozanov.

“Okay, well, good.” There’s a pause, like she’s waiting for him to say something, which he doesn’t. “Text me if you need to, I guess. And I’ll see you soon.”

“See you,” Ilya echoes, and he ends the call.

He doesn’t leave the bathroom yet. He takes stock of himself in the mirror. Of her. Rose is so much more expressive than he is. Or maybe he hasn’t yet figured out how to hold his thoughts from showing on her face, the way he does with his own. She looks so terrified, the girl in the mirror, and he hates that, hates seeing how scared he is. Scared and small. The way Hollander’s shirt seems to swallow him, hang past his hips, makes him dizzy.

On the counter, her phone seizes in a short burst. A text from his number: I run cold water over my wrists when I’m freaking out and usually it helps. Another text: It regulates my nervous system. Figured I’d share since you have my nervous system right now.

Begrudgingly, he turns the sink back on. Not that he’ll respond and admit it to her, but yes — it does help. His heart stops rattling around; his head stops spinning at quite the velocity it has been. He doesn’t feel better, or fixed, but he at least feels in control of something again.

Hollander is sitting up when Ilya reenters the bedroom, staring into space and fidgeting with his phone in his hands. He straightens against the pillow, correcting his posture when he sees Ilya — sees Rose, Ilya reminds himself. “I heard you talking,” Hollander says, then flushes and amends, “I mean, I wasn’t listening. I heard — it sounded like you were on the phone, so I… woke up.”

“Movie star emergency. Didn’t mean to wake you.” Ilya offers an apologetic half smile, and Hollander smiles back. For a moment, in the face of that, Ilya thinks that all of this was worth it. It’s been almost two months since Hollander last smiled at him, and seeing it now is like cool water to the wrists, like a steady hand stroking his curls, like warmth and reassurance and more. But as quickly as it came on, the feeling passes. Hollander isn’t smiling at him; he’s smiling at his girlfriend.

Ilya clears his throat and heads towards the big bag in the corner by the dresser, right where Rose said it would be. “I have an early call time,” he says. “I’ll text you later.”

“Oh,” Hollander says. “Right, yeah.”

There’s silence, a deeply, deeply awkward silence, as Ilya digs through Rose’s bag and finds clean underwear, which he doesn’t bother with, plus jeans and t-shirt with a stupid smiling bagel on it that makes Ilya grit his teeth. From the corner of his eye, he watches Hollander as he changes. He’s typing something on his phone, then seems to delete it. Locks it and starts fidgeting again. Doesn’t watch Rose change, but doesn’t look away, either.

“Listen, um.” He sounds uncomfortable when he says it, but then again, Hollander often sounds that way. “About last night, I—”

Ilya, halfway through pulling this abomination of a shirt on, pops his head up through the collar. “Last night?”

“I think this season is... stressing me out more than usual,” Hollander continues. There’s no further explanation, no context clues for what could have happened last night to warrant an apology.

But then again, if it had been serious, some blow out argument or massive breakdown, Rose would have mentioned it. “It’s fine,” Ilya says, feeling somehow certain that it’s true. The curiosity will have to burn a hole in his chest for now until he can get the full story later.

Hollander nods, looking unconvinced, thumbs percussive against his darkened phone screen.

Begrudgingly, Ilya recalls the instructions he’s been given. Be nice. Act like Rose Landry. Behave like Miss America. He crosses to the bed and sits beside Hollander, lays a hand on his bare chest and rests it there until he feels his racing heart begin to slow. “You have nothing to worry about. We are all good.”

Hollander nods again, this time with more conviction. “Good. Yeah, I — it’s good for me too.”

Whatever the fuck that means. Ilya stands and finishes dressing, folds the shirt she had been sleeping in because he knows that Hollander is the type to fold even his dirty clothes. It isn’t clear — does Rose leave her belongings here all the time? Are things that serious? He doubts it, so he packs the bag back up and takes it.

“Goodbye,” he says, hovering in the doorway.

“Bye,” Hollander responds. They both stare at each other.

You need to act like you’re me, she’d said. Ilya knows it’s true; he doesn’t understand a single fucking thing that’s happening right now, but the only certainty in his gut, in Rose’s gut, is that whatever or whyever this is happening, Hollander can’t know about it. As far as he’s concerned, this morning is completely normal. It has to be. And as far as he’s concerned, his girlfriend of six weeks or so, who’s spent the night with him, who probably only hours ago had him inside of her, is leaving. The normal thing to do in these circumstances — the only logical thing, really — would be to kiss him.

Ilya sets her ugly bag down and moves back toward the bed. Yes, he thinks, I’m being very normal. He cards his fingers through the soft, short hair on the back of Hollander’s head, pulls him close, and kisses him.

Surreal. How different must Rose’s lips be to Ilya’s own, to make this kiss so foreign? It shocks him nearly senseless, how utterly unfamiliar the experience is. Hollander’s lips are tense against his, not insistent though; he doesn’t part them, but he presses them firmly and releases with a satisfaction Ilya has never known him to have. Maybe this is why he likes her. Maybe he can get enough of her.

“I’ll text you,” Ilya promises again, the words brushed close to Hollander’s skin as he pulls away.

When he leaves the apartment, he does so on autopilot; he’s halfway down the back stairs of the building when it occurs to him he could’ve left out the front for once. The ride back to the hotel doesn’t take long. Thoughts pass through his mind at such incredible volume and pace that he’s unable to agonize over any individual concern and instead finds himself drifting unmoored as wave after wave of anxiety crashes over him. He’d broken the habit of biting his nails in adolescence — his father had broken it for him — but his teeth are gnawing at his cuticles without him realizing until the tang of blood fills his mouth.

Rose has a nicer room than he does. She’s in a penthouse; it makes sense, he thinks, because she’s a movie star, and besides that, she’s staying in Montreal much longer than he is. Still, it annoys him to think of her waking up in his room six floors down and only realizing something was amiss because the room was smaller than it should be.

They both know what to expect when Rose opens the door, and yet, it is disarming. Of course it is. Ilya sees himself, sort of — a funhouse mirror version of himself, an Ilya completely lacking in the posture or presence he recognizes from glimpses caught in his periphery across a lifetime of passing by reflective surfaces. It must be similarly eerie for Rose to see Ilya operate her body. He brushes past her into the room and she observes him in silence.

“You know how to fix this, or you don’t?” Ilya asks bluntly. It doesn’t serve either of them to sit and gawk and goggle at each other, and surely they’re past the point of pleasantries. And there’s another itching thing beneath his skin: Rose seems to have had the upper hand, the quicker uptake on this whole thing. Ilya doesn’t like that.

“I don’t,” she says levelly, shutting the door. She strides towards the airy sitting area beyond the entryway. “I thought we could brainstorm together.”

She flops onto the couch, limbs falling in an artfully feminine arrangement which once again has the effect of making her look both everything and nothing like Ilya. It’s clear that she’s decided, prior to his arrival, that she’ll refuse to be intimidated by him. That firm line in her mouth, the steel set of her jaw — this is the only way in which she truly resembles him. He likes this part of her.

“We could fuck,” he drawls, dropping into an armchair opposite her. An empty magnum of Veuve Clicquot on the table functions as a makeshift vase and blooms with hydrangeas so massive it blocks most of her from his view. Good.

She rolls her eyes. He can see that much. “And what would that accomplish, exactly?”

Ilya shrugs. “Maybe we switch back. If not, at least we have some fun and a screw.”

“Pass,” she says curtly. “We need to figure out why we switched in the first place. Retrace our steps.”

“So we go back to the club tonight,” he suggests. It’s not a bad idea. He’s supposed to be flying home to Boston today, but he could change his flight if he needed to. “We can meet next to the bathrooms again, and you can be rude and nosy again.”

Rose shakes her head, his curls following; she ignores the latter of his remarks. “I mean the actual why. Obviously there’s some — something going on. Some cosmic reason. I think we talk it out.”

Ilya frowns. He dislikes most of what she’s saying. Particularly the cosmic bits. “Very American response. Talk about our feelings.”

“It could at least give us some leads,” she says, sounding like an American TV detective. He wonders if she’s ever done an episode of the Law & Order program and makes a mental note to google it later.

“Fine. You talk about your feelings and I will let you know if anything seems relevant.”

“I think it would help if we both talked about our feelings,” Rose says.

“Okay, and I think it would be stupid, and a waste of time.”

Her nostrils flare just the way that Ilya’s do when he’s mad. “There are no bad ideas in brainstorming, you know.”

“There were when I said that we should fuck,” Ilya points out.

“Fine,” Rose snaps. She stands up quickly, knees knocking the table’s edge when her legs are longer than she expects them to be. “We’ll try it your way. Get up.”

Ilya, who was bluffing, clearly, and who has almost zero interest in fucking Rose Landry (the “almost” accounted for by the obviously enticing prospect of getting to have sex with himself, in a way) stays frozen in his chair. “I think I am not your type.”

She laughs, and Ilya gets the fleeting bittersweet experience of seeing how his face looks when it crinkles with amusement. “You’ve got that right. Come on. Up.” There’s an open space between the sitting area and the bedroom of this massive fuck off suite, and Rose crosses to one side of it, gesturing him towards the other side. “You’re a brute force kind of guy, right? I’ve watched you play. So let’s use brute force.”

“You have watched me play?” Ilya smirks, heaving himself up. “Maybe I am your type after all. Handsome, violent, brute force guy.”

“I don’t like you,” she corrects. “I like hockey.”

Great. Not only has Hollander found perfect movie star he can introduce to his parents, she is also hockey nerd like he is. Fucking great. “What do you suggest,” Ilya asks brusquely.

“Last night,” she says. “We hit each other.”

“Hey!” His outrage is instantaneous. “I would never hit a woman. That did not—”

“Not hit each other,” Rose sighs. “I mean, we ran into each other. Physically, like, our bodies collided. When I went into the bathroom.”

“Yes,” Ilya concedes, sniffing haughtily. “Collided. Not hit. Your English is imprecise.”

Rose rolls her eyes, ignores him otherwise. “So we try it again.”

Insofar as any of what’s happened since he woke up this morning could possibly make sense to Ilya, this plan makes sense. “Okay.” He squares his shoulders, locks his eyes on her. “You count to three.”

Rose nods. She closes her eyes, loosens her arms a moment, wriggling them like tentacles at her sides, then opens her eyes again looking focused. “One. Two. Three.”

They barrel towards each other, shoulders checking like they did last night, smaller body bouncing from the force of the collision as the larger body presses on.

“ Блять, больно!” Ilya shouts, clutching at his right shoulder as it radiates pain. “You fucking hurt me!”

“No shit!” Rose says, frustrated. She’s massaging her bicep (Ilya’s bicep) and looking venomous. “What do you think happened last night? Some giant dude mowed me over, of course it hurt.”

“Well, I’m sorry!” Ilya shouts. He feels like an asshole for shouting, for having hurt her in the first place, and so he lowers his voice when he asks, “Should we try again?”

“No,” says Rose firmly. She trudges back to the sitting area and slumps on the couch again. “I told you. It’s not that. We need to talk.”

“You are so certain about everything,” Ilya observes, joining her. He doesn’t mean it as a criticism, although he’s sure it comes out that way. There is a conviction that Rose Landry has in whatever she says or does that can’t help reminding him of himself, and that’s — interesting. Not good or bad, really. Just interesting. Interesting to try and make a pattern out of two things. To see the things he would have assumed made Hollander like him slightly less, here as proof they had maybe made him like him more.

“Because this has happened to me before.” She takes in Ilya’s gobsmacked face and amends her statement quickly. “Not — no, I mean, it hasn’t happened to me for real, in real life. It was in a movie I did.”

“A movie you did,” Ilya repeats.

“A TV movie. It was a Disney Channel original. Like, for teenage girls. You know. I was 15.”

“Okay…” Ilya gestures for her to go on.

“So, the main characters are twins.” She pulls her legs up tight on the couch, turns to Ilya curled up like the letter б. “I played them both. Sunny and Selene. And they’re twin sisters, right, so they grew up like best friends, inseparable, but by the time the movie starts, they’re totally different, different styles and hobbies and stuff, and they completely hate each other. So they make a wish — it’s their birthday, it’s a full moon, et cetera — they blow out the candles, and the next morning when they wake up, they’ve switched bodies.”

Ilya frowns. “What does it matter? They’re twins. They have the same body, no?”

“Sort of. Sunny has a beauty mark on her right cheek, and Selene has it on her left, and they have different hair.” She flutters her hands, sweeps his concerns aside. “That’s not the point. The point is, they have to learn about each other. Sunny has to go to space camp, and she loves it, even though she’s always made fun of Selene for being nerdy. And Selene has to do Sunny’s beauty pageant thing—”

“Miss America,” Ilya inserts.

“Miss Teen Oklahoma,” Rose corrects. “And she kisses a boy for the first time — actually, it’s Sunny’s boyfriend, and when he kisses Selene he thinks he’s really kissing Sunny, so it’s sort of scandalous, but then he develops this thing for Selene while they’re swapped? It’s messy, ignore that part. I don’t know why that was in a kids’ movie.”

Ilya’s cheeks burn. He says nothing.

“At the beginning, they try a bunch of different things to swap back with each other, but nothing works. They only swap back when they’re friends again, and when they’ve learned their lessons.”

Ilya thinks he’s followed most of what she’s saying. “You think we are in a Mickey Mouse swap movie?”

“What?” Rose looks bewildered. “There was no Mickey Mouse. Where did you get that?”

“You said was Disney movie.”

“Disney Channel. Never mind, forget about that.” She looks at him intently, willing him to understand. “Do you understand the point I’m making?”

Ilya rubs his shoulder where it still throbs. “I understand you want to brag about starring in big famous Mickey Mouse movie.”

“You know,” Rose says, irritated, not attempting to mask it, “Maybe part of the reason we swapped is so you’d have the chance to work out your issues with women.”

Ilya chuckles, spreading out to take up more of the couch. “Trust me, Rose Landry. I have no issues with women.”

“Oh yeah? When’s the last time you called your mom?”

Ilya sets his jaw, feels himself grinding down on Rose’s Hollywood teeth that probably cost a fortune.

“That’s what I thought,” she says, smug, totally misreading his silent fury and thinking she’s won something.

“My mother is dead, actually,” he says. It never gets easier saying it; it never gets easier remembering, because somehow by the grace of god, there are days where he manages to forget. Ilya tells himself the shame washing over Rose is some consolation right now, wiping the smugness off her face like something cleansing for his ego, but it’s not. It hurts. It will never stop hurting. “You should probably know that, if you’re me now.”

Rose is silent for a moment. Too mortified to speak, no doubt. “Well, now I feel like a bitch,” she says eventually, and Ilya has to laugh.

“Your words, Rose Landry. Not mine.”

They sit together in the longest silence they’ve yet shared, and somehow the most amiable. Enough hostility has volleyed back and forth now that the shrapnel seems to have broken some of their guards down. “Look,” she says eventually. There’s a cashmere throw draped just so on the back of the sofa, and she picks at the corner with unmanicured nails. “Neither of us did this to each other. It’s happening to us. To both of us. I know you don’t like me — I don’t know why you don’t, but — anyway.”

“We are in this together,” Ilya finishes for her, interrupting not unkindly. “I agree.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She draws the blanket into her lap, holds it there and fights with it almost like a cat kneading. “As far as why this happened, or how we fix it… I don’t know. I think it’s probably not a coincidence I’m dating someone that you work with. Well, maybe it is, but… Shane is the only thing I can think of that connects us. Whatever your issues with him, I don’t know if it’s hockey or it’s personal or what, but I think that it must have something to do with whatever this is.”

Ilya chews the inside of his lip. Doesn’t say anything.

“Are you — you hate each other, right? Or is that just for show?”

“Some of it is show.” He chooses his words carefully. It will not help to lie to Rose, and he senses that she’ll know if he does, but even if he felt like spilling his guts to her (not that he does) they aren’t only his guts to spill. “Not all of it. We are rivals. There is history. Some of it is off the ice.”

“Okay.” She’s nodding like he’s said something helpful. Perhaps she feels she has found one of her detective leads. “Do you think that you could fix it? Or me, as you? I mean, I don’t know how, in these circumstances, but — is that anything?”

Ilya scratches his eyebrow with a thumbnail. He feels sick. He feels sad. He wants this to be over. “I think no.”

“No you don’t think we can? Or no you don’t want to?”

The AC unit clicks, whirrs, hums. They pump something through the vents here, neroli and musk, a clean and soft scent that will probably make Ilya sick to smell forevermore.

“I do not think that Hollander would want to fix it,” he says finally. “He does not want to like me any more than he does.”

Whatever Rose sees in Ilya’s face must ring of truth to her; perhaps she recognizes the look she’s seen in the mirror or on the screen when she’s in her most honest, vulnerable moments. She doesn’t press it further. “So what do we do next?” is all she says.

“You go to my space camp and I go to the beauty pageant,” he shrugs. “I stay here in Montreal and you go back to Boston.”

Her brows raise, curious, intrigued. “You think there’s even the slightest chance that we can get away with that?”

“You are this movie star actress, aren’t you? Act like me.” He sits up on the couch, adopts the posture he would hold himself in were his life not in a shambles. “Do not sit curled up like cocktail prawn. Sit like me. Try it.”

She studies him a second, then lets herself be directed. Sits up with her legs spread wide enough that they knock knees, only grumbles a bit — “Your balls do not need this much room” — but even in her grumbling, she begins to look like him. It’s not a perfect imitation, but close enough.

“Can you skate, girl who likes hockey?”

“I can,” she frowns, deep in thought. “My brothers played. And we had a pond out back.”

“Good enough to not fuck me or my team over?”

She doesn’t answer at first, nor does she seem to even hear him. “I have a theory,” she says. “But I don’t know how to test it.”

Her theory has to do with muscle memory. She takes a long time to explain it, and it begins to get scientific at some point, and Ilya gets bored, and he pretends to yawn to show he’s getting bored, and then Rose gets cross with him. In any case, Ilya is the one to think of a test.

“Listen to this,” he says. “Шла Саша по шоссе и сосала сушку.”

“Is this some sort of spell that’s supposed to make us swap back?” She walks to the mini fridge tucked in the entertainment console, grabs a Perrier for herself and then, when Ilya nods, one for him.

“Is Russian tongue twister,” Ilya explains. “Something children recite over and over for fun. It sounded horrible just then, coming from your mouth.”

“Well, yes,” she concedes. “Because I don’t speak Russian.”

“Exactly. You are the typical ignorant American, only speaking one language. I speak two.” He spells it out for her, since she’s too busy being offended to take his meaning. “I’m saying you are right. Muscle memory. The different shapes the mouth makes, that sort of thing. You say it now, with my mouth, and it will sound correct.”

He pulls the text up on his phone. She focuses on the translation first. “Sasha walks along the highway sucking on a… what’s a sushka?”

“Like a little biscuit. Shaped like bagel. For dipping in coffee or tea.”

“Is this supposed to make any sense?”

“Would you rather have your Sally selling sushka at the seashore?”

“Ugh,” she frowns. “Fair enough.”

She’s looking at transliterated text and at first, she’s focusing too hard on guessing what she thinks it should sound like. But then they pull up a video clip and he tells her to repeat the words back thoughtlessly, mind as blank as possible. It works. At Rose’s urging, from Ilya’s mouth, the words are fluent, smooth and natural. “Шла Саша по шоссе и сосала сушку. Was that right?”

“ Да. Very good.”

“Which means that I can probably skate as well as you can, if I practice letting go and… doing it.”

“ Да,” he says again in her Miss America accent. But still, he’s worried. It’s not enough to move his body as he moves it, like some puppeteer. There will be texts and calls in Russian at all hours, should she have his phone; there will be strategies to make as captain. There is a whole life he’ll be sending her off to live without him there to coach or supervise. He makes a snap decision, and as soon as he does so, he knows it’s the right one. “There is a girl in Boston who will help. Svetlana.”

“Svetlana,” Rose repeats, making a mental note. “She’s your girlfriend?”

“No, nothing like that.” His phone, his real phone, has been sitting on the table next to Rose since they came in. He grabs it now and begins drafting a text, explaining aloud as he does so: “She is childhood friend from Russia. Her father was goaltender of famous Russian team. She knows everything about hockey. Everything about me. She will help you.”

flight gets into Logan at 4:35pm, he taps out with the Cyrillic keyboard. can you meet me at my place? I need to talk to someone

Of course, she replies immediately. Is everything okay?

Decidedly not, but of course he won’t say that and send her into premature panic. There will be plenty of time to panic later. just need help with something, he types. Lies, nothing serious.

I get off at 5, can probably be to yours at 5:15-5:30, she replies. And she knows he’s lying when he says he’s okay, because just as he told Rose, Svetlana knows everything about him. But she doesn’t press it. Sends a ❤️ and Ilya puts a heart tapback on it, and that’s it.

Rose is studying him the whole time he’s texting with open, unabashed scrutiny. It’s part of her acting process, maybe. “Are we set?”

“We are set,” Ilya says, laying back against the couch and breathing the first sigh of relief he’s allowed himself all morning. This, at least, is taken care of. Can be trusted in. “She’s meeting you at my place when you’re back in Boston. If she beats you to the house, she’ll let herself in.”

“Not your girlfriend, but she knows everything about you and lets herself into your place,” Rose says dryly. “Got it.”

“Good. I’m glad is not too difficult for you to follow.”

“And will she believe you?” Rose asks. “Me, as you? I mean — I have friends too, obviously, but I think if I told any of them about this, they’d have me medicated.”

It’s a fair question and a valid concern. They spend a short while rehearsing how Rose might approach the conversation without Svetlana immediately assuming Ilya’s been afflicted with severe CTE. The monologue they craft is as plausible as can be considering how implausible the entire situation is. Still, he knows that there is no one Svetlana will trust the way she’ll trust Ilya, not even someone else in Ilya’s body.

He grabs the phone again from where he’s tossed it on the table. “As soon as you can, play this video for her.” Drumming his fingers against the back of the case, he deliberates a moment, then opens up the camera and presses record.

“My accent is shit now,” he begins, “but I will say this all in Russian anyway because I want you to know that it’s me, and also I don’t want the nosy girl inside my body to understand what I’m saying.” He glances at Rose, who’s sitting patiently but watching him intently. “Svetlana. Whatever she tells you — I don’t know if she’s told you already or if you’re watching this first, but whatever she tells you is true.

“When you and I were ten, playing in your father’s study when we shouldn’t have been in there, we were swordfighting with letter openers and I feinted and you missed me and gouged a huge scar all across the top of his desk. You knew you’d get in trouble, and so you lied and told him that the housekeeper did it. Then he fired her, naturally — I don’t know why we didn’t think he’d do that, of course he would. And you felt so guilty, you cried until you were puking in the garden where we used to hide out there. I’ve only ever seen you cry like that again one other time. I thought I could get her job back and make you feel better, make you stop crying, so I went to your father and told him I had scratched his desk and lied to shift the blame. And he told my father, and my father beat me with a belt, and the housekeeper never did get her job back. But neither of us ever told anyone the truth. You and me, we are the only ones that know. So now that I’m telling you that story, now you know that this is me.”

There’s a tickle in his throat that starts before he knows quite what it means, a prickling behind his eyelids before he comprehends that this is how it feels to hold back tears in Rose’s body.

“I don’t even know what I’m asking for. We used to help each other, though, and you still would, you’d drop everything for me if I asked, but one day I stopped asking. My tough guy shit, that’s what you call it, and you’re not wrong. I must seem ungrateful to you all the time these days. But I am grateful. Of course I need you. I’m just an asshole, and I don’t know how to—” he scrubs a hand over his face. “Not the point. Whatever. I need your help. I’m asking you, I love you, and I am grateful. I am. I don’t know how to do this without you, and I don’t want to.”

“Call me when you watch this,” he ends the video. “We can talk.”

Rose grants him a minute of peace, sitting with his head in his hands, before she speaks up. “That was quite the speech.”

“Shut up,” replies Ilya politely, all things considered.

“Are you going to loop me in on any of that, or…”

“No, Rose Landry, I will not loop you in, we will not circle back.” He sits up straight and shakes his head, shakes some sense into himself. “It was a personal message. Whole point is that it is something only I could tell her. You do not need to worry.”

“Alright.” She makes to cross her legs, then corrects the instinct. “Meet up with Svetlana at your place, and then what? What else is there to know?”

“There is nothing else. Svetlana will give you instructions from there.”

Rose looks amused, if doubtful. “There’s literally nothing else you need to tell me? She really knows everything?”

Almost everything, Ilya thinks. “Everything you need to know, she knows. She will tell you.”

“Fine.” She sighs, downs the last of her sparkling water. “I suppose if it’s not enough, it’s your life I’m screwing up, not mine.”

Rose’s life is not so easy to sort out. She has friends and confidantes here in Montreal, back home in Michigan and LA, but each of them fits neatly into a single delineated segment of her life. A work friend; a girl she went to school with; a makeup artist from an old movie who she grabs lunch with on the first Tuesday of any month they’re both in town. More than half of her relationships are too superficial to be trusted with anything more than idle gossip — she admits this with a twisted scowl that makes her look impressively like Ilya — and the closest ones, the few she really trusts, have drifted too far to reach out to now. Ilya will have to go it on his own.

She logs into her email on his phone so she’ll be able to manage most of her professional concerns without him having to worry about it. He’ll still go to set on her behalf, he’ll shoot the scenes she’s contractually obligated to shoot. She expresses concern about his acting abilities and he waves this off quickly. “Is superhero movie. They will green screen me in.” Half-heartedly, she attempts to explain that that’s not actually how it works, but after a brief argument she acquiesces and admits that yeah, basically it is.

Outside of the few minutes a day cameras are rolling, Ilya is to talk to no one. Rose concocts a cover story that she’s putting herself on vocal rest, a hint that she might be in talks for a musical biopic of a certain Swedish mega group, and a wink and shh motion. Otherwise, he is to be as silent as the grave and as unfailingly polite as a funeral home director.

“My family we can brush off, work stuff is whatever. My agent and my manager, they can keep each other busy. But Ilya... I know what you said about Shane—”

“Good listener,” he says, open mouth chewing through the room service cheeseburger he’s ordered on Rose’s dime.

“I know what you said about Shane,” she repeats in a chiding tone, sliding the plate away from him. “But you need to keep seeing him. And honestly, if we want out of this sooner rather than later, I think you need to be seeing as much of him as possible.”

Ilya raises an eyebrow, pulls the plate back to himself. “As much of him as possible? Your plan now is for me to service your boyfriend sexually until we get our bodies back?”

She snorts a laugh, steals a fry, and says, clearly without thinking before she does, “Yeah, I don’t think that will be a problem.” Only when she notices Ilya’s brows have both leapt as high on her forehead as the baby botox will allow does she hurry to backtrack. “I didn’t mean it like that—”

“You didn’t mean it like what?” Ilya needles. “Hollander is saving himself for marriage?”

“I meant it like—” she’s flushed, embarrassed. The fry has fallen in her lap. “Shane is a gentleman. He’s a nice guy, genuinely. If you tell him you’re not in the mood, you know, he’s not gonna push it.”

Fascinating. There’s a truth laid bare between all of Rose’s lamely acted protestations which is of obvious interest to him. Ilya did not expect Hollander and Rose to be having bed-breaking sex. Duh. Ilya is well aware that Hollander is a very closeted, very gay man. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that perhaps a part of Rose is also aware of that fact.

No need to needle further. He’ll be conducting his own independent investigations into this soon enough. “Me, I do not mind if you use my body to sleep with women. Could be a good idea, in fact.” He picks the fry from her lap and tosses it in his mouth. “You may learn something.”

She rolls her eyes and, with the recalcitrance he’s coming to realize has always hidden behind her good girl-sweetheart image, storms away holding the tray of his half finished lunch and leaves it in the hall.

He will have to keep seeing Hollander. Rose is adamant about it. Ilya puts up a fight, a convincing enough one, but he knows. He’s known this whole time they’ve been talking. Known since he woke up this morning with the man he’s been aching for for months in his arms and felt in his stomach, his bones, his heart that it was too good to be true. Whatever sick and twisted god exists — he hasn’t been to church in long enough to know if this sort of thing is covered there — that god has altered fate because of this. Because of what Ilya feels for Hollander. A karmic punishment that he will have to bear, to endure, until such time as penance has been paid. This makes sense more than any Mickey Mouse movie. That god is real, and is Russian, and thinks that suffering builds character.

It takes all morning, hammering out logistics until they’re molded into something like a playbook. A little before noon, they’re as ready as they can be, and it’s time for Rose to head back to Ilya’s room, praying Connors has his pants on, and fly home. To whatever home is like for now, at least.

Ilya takes his phone from her one last time, saves her number as a contact, and tosses it back, then does the same in his own.

“Selene?” The corner of her mouth quirks up when she sees the name at the top of their text thread. “So that makes me Sunny?”

“You are good at following these things.”

She stuffs herself into his Raiders hoodie, dressing with girlish mannerisms she’ll have to work to break. “Are code names really necessary?

“Unless you want Hollander to look over to the other end of the couch and see his girlfriend Rose Landry texting another Rose Landry.”

“Fair.”

“Scroll through my camera roll and you will find dick pics. I know you are nosy girl. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He walks her to the door and he still hates her. Sort of. Not as much. He isn’t sure how — twelve hours ago, her hands were in places it made him sick to see. Twelve hours ago he thought about paying off the bartender to spit into her champagne. Twelve hours ago he met her drunk in a restroom hallway and she was so arrogant and brash it was like looking in a mirror, and it made him choke with anger to admit to himself, Now I see why he likes her.

After this morning, things are different. She is not a bad girl, he decides, for a boyfriend stealer. And really, it is not her fault that the gay guy Ilya has decided to have stupid, reckless feelings for has tricked her into being his Miss America perfect future wife.

They shake hands before they part ways, reaching tentatively towards each other and then clasping firmly. Anti-climactic. They both laugh shakily as they pull apart; it’s evident they’d each privately hoped there would be some miraculous reversal of circumstance upon the contact. No such luck.

She leaves, and Ilya’s here. With Rose’s big life. Full for her, most likely. Empty for him. Emptier even than his own.

He toddles around the suite for ages, with more free time available to him than good sense. To begin, he takes a steaming hot shower and then ensconces his freshly clean body in a plush hotel robe. He sniffs the creams in little bottles on her bathroom counter; he goes through her mini fridge and nibbles on a Twix. Obviously, he finds a hand mirror and holds it between his legs, a natural curiosity which must inevitably be sated. He finds it nice enough, though not particularly moving. Two hours have passed and he’s reading through the fragmented pages of her X-Squad script on the couch when she texts.

Sunny 🌞: at the airport and about to board

Sunny 🌞: a couple of the guys have talked to me but no one seems to think you’re being weird

Sunny 🌞: either I’m actually a great actress or the bar for men’s social skills really is that low

He taps a haha react on the latter of her messages and types a quick response.

Selene 🌚: very good merle streep

Ilya tosses her phone aside and gets back to the business of memorizing all this clunky dialogue — perhaps the director would be happy for suggestions? Or improv? — when he feels the buzz of another text.

Sunny 🌞: oh btw I meant to tell you in person but we had a million ACTUAL problems to discuss

Sunny 🌞: that girl from last night texted you this morning

Ilya’s mouth falls open, mouths a silent Who? as he texts back ??

Selene 🌚: ? girl from last night?

Sunny 🌞: Blonde girl from the bathroom

Selene 🌚: ???

Sunny 🌞: possibly coked out, had her mouth on your neck and possibly inserted her tongue in your ear?

Sunny 🌞: how is this not ringing any bells?

He knows who she’s talking about. Tate or Taylor or something. Laura, maybe. That doesn’t explain a text.

Selene 🌚: I didn’t give her my number

Sunny 🌞: okay so then some OTHER girl from last night I guess

Ilya’s racking his brains to try and think of who it could be when her next message comes through and his train of thought grinds to a sudden crashing halt.

Sunny 🌞: actually sorry I guess you knew her before last night because you guys have earlier texts

Sunny 🌞: whoever Jane is messaged you this morning, is I guess what I should have said

His heart feels stopped and started, feels hot and cold like putting your hand under scalding water and it feels, at first, icy to the touch. And then it burns. Ilya reaches out of habit for the cross he wears around a chain on his neck and is halfway to nervous fiddling before he remembers that it’s gone.

Selene 🌚: send screenshot

Selene 🌚: please

She does, and it feels just like suffering, exactly what the Russian Orthodox god ordered, to see that “Jane” has sent an almost paragraph long text:

Last night was weird for both of us, and I’m sorry. I know we weren’t exactly friends before, so I won’t say “let’s stay friends,” but we see each other enough that I hope we can both keep things cordial and professional. You don’t have to respond to this, if you don’t want to. I just wanted to say that I don’t want this to be any harder than it has to be and from now on I’ll try to make it easier.

Selene 🌚: send thumbs up tapback please

Sunny 🌞: anything else?

Selene 🌚: no that’s it

Sunny 🌞: sent. I’ll let you know if she texts again

Sunny 🌞: happy to return to my “you have major issues with women” theory whenever you’re ready btw

He rolls his eyes.

Selene 🌚: have safe flight

Selene 🌚: it is my body on that plane. No funny business in the cockpit

Sunny 🌞: I’ll do my best

Ilya throws the phone across the room where it lands on a generic boucle ottoman he hadn’t noticed before. His dignity lasts all of 28 seconds before he’s fetching it, opening the screenshot of Jane’s text and rereading, rereading, rereading.

“ Блять.” he swears toward the ceiling. It’s a penthouse, no one above to hear him. And then, because the Russian is so mangled in her mouth, he repeats it in English. “Fuck.”

Chapter 3: Rose

Rose makes the flight back to Boston. At Ilya’s recommendation, she grunts a brief “Hungover” to Connors as she stalks back into their hotel room; by the time they board the team bus to Montréal–Trudeau, he’s passed the information along discreetly and efficiently. The other guys don’t question that Rose is surly and withdrawn. She supposes Ilya must act that way often enough that it’s not worth remarking upon. A man she recognizes from last night’s game (how can it be, that that was only last night?) as Cliff Marleau saunters up to the gate right at boarding with a beverage in each hand, delivering one to Rose with little fanfare other than, “Hair of the dog that bit ya,” and a feigned clink of their spiked coffee cups.

She pulls her hood up on the flight and angles herself in the seat so that her iPad won’t be visible unless some creature sitting on the wing of the plane decides to spy over her shoulder. For the next hour and a half, and then another forty minutes in the uber home through rush hour traffic, she studies interviews and YouTube clips of Ilya Rozanov.

It’s like preparing for a role, if the role was, frankly, a hell of a lot more interesting than most of the parts she gets. The cool and cocky press snippets she watches now are at odds with the crassly irritable and deeply vulnerable man with whom she spent her morning; it’s a juicy sort of juxtaposition to play with. There’s accent work — she has a leg up on that, with his vocal cords and facial muscles and what have you, but also a cadence to master, the rhythm and precision of a fluent but non-native speaker. And there’s such a defined physicality to inhabit. The way he moves his body is expressive, expansive, slouching, sprawled, standing straight and tall, slicing across ice with a savage drive and fearlessness. Cramped in this window seat, there’s not much she can do to practice, but already she’s calling back to exercises from old stunt coordinators she’s worked with that might come in handy.

She’s never gone full method before, neither in the sense that Stanislavski intended nor in the sense that the more ill-mannered of her male co-stars like to sometimes weaponize for attention. Her career highlights over the last decade and a half include six X-Squad installments, a film in which she played the President’s daughter kidnapped by some nebulously Middle Eastern “terrorists” and had to be rescued by Gerard Butler, a film in which she and Jodie Foster were stuck for eight days at the bottom of a well, and two indie movies she actually gave a shit about but for which she was paid scale and which nobody, not even her parents, actually saw. Most days on set, at least for the sort of movies Rose makes, showing up with your pages memorized and saying them without messing up is good enough to cut and print.

The character of Ilya Rozanov has dimensionality. Furthermore, the playing of the character of Ilya Rozanov has stakes. The performance is a living, breathing thing; she can’t just ask the director for another take if she fucks up. Rose got her start as a child actor, television mostly, but this work reminds her of her actor friends (real actors, she thinks of them, which her therapist calls imposter syndrome and Rose calls objective fact) who came up in the theater.

In the uber, she googles “Strasberg vs Adler vs Meisner” and skims a brief synopsis of each approach. “The first exercise of the Stella Adler technique is the only exercise that exists in the actor’s daily life,” Rose reads. “The actor must go out and see something in nature, come back to class and describe it.”

She looks around her at the uber black car, imagining Ilya’s impressions. The car is an Audi, she thinks. Black interior, black exterior, obviously. Ersatz luxury, she observes, and then because she’s not sure if Ilya would employ or even know the word ersatz, she changes it to “bogus” in her mind. Bogus because the leather seats are torn on the rear driver’s side and patched in black duct tape. Not really luxurious at all, actually, because there’s a little trash bag hanging off the headrest of the passenger seat and she can see the used and wadded up tissues of ten dozen passengers before her. The smell in here — she sniffs the air, gets whiffs of stale smoke and strawberry air freshener — has her in desperate need of a cigarette. As Rose has never smoked before, this surprises her. But it’s not her who needs the cigarette, she remembers. It’s the character.

Amidst the challenging but rewarding work of Acting, Rose is also juggling Ilya’s real life through his phone. Using google translate, she’d managed to text Svetlana hours ago sitting on the tarmac something that she hopes says flight delayed 30 min without making her sound too illiterate. When she’s landed and is out of airplane mode, her pocket vibrates with a text back. “No problem,” the phone translates with a few clicks. “I’ll be drinking your beer while I wait.”

When they’re ten minutes out from Ilya’s place, Rose realizes she hasn’t spared much of a thought for what could await her with this Svetlana character, the one who he assures her is not a love interest. She supposes Ilya thought that they’d be fast friends, owing to the commonality of them both being women. But the concept of a woman who is sincerely best friends with a heterosexual man unnerves her slightly, and the concept of a woman who is best friends with Ilya Rozanov is at best incomprehensible, at worst sociopathic. Rose vows to keep her guard up when she meets her, and has the strangely validating thought that were the roles reversed, that’s what Ilya would do too.

A cursory Trulia search of his address somewhat sets Rose’s expectations regarding Ilya’s home before she arrives. Three bed, three bath, slick design and sleek finishes, last closed in 2012 for a cool 6.2 mil. She doesn’t know Boston very well though, and she supposes she thought it would be more urban here; it’s accessible to what she’d call the downtown area, but Ilya’s house is set at a reserved distance. It’s quiet in these parts, and wooded. Serene. She wonders if he likes the privacy or the peace or both.

There’s a code for the front door; she goes to shoot Ilya a text requesting it and sees that sometime in the last hour he’s sent her a link to a shared note titled STUFF YOU’LL NEED. A brief glance tells her that he’s allergic to coconut, that he uses the same password for literally every account he has, and that the code for the front door is 1525*. She keys it in to success.

As she’s dropping his bags in the entryway (where do they usually go? She’ll find out later.) she hears the melody of a voice calling out from down the hall. The woman’s speaking Russian of course, as anticipated, so Rose doesn’t know what it is she’s saying. Only that she sounds warm and welcoming. She moves towards the voice.

The first thing Rose notices when she enters the kitchen is that it has a fireplace. Few kitchens do, so it’s natural that this should stand out to her — in particular, because it’s lit and crackling. She’s grateful for the heat; the Boston cold is unforgiving this time of year, even for someone who grew up with harsh winters. Svetlana must have started the fire, Rose thinks, and decides based on this information that she can’t possibly be a sociopath as previously feared.

Svetlana is the second thing Rose notices. She’s spinning slowly on a stool at the kitchen counter, smiling at Rose as she enters the room, and when she turns to face Rose fully it’s as warm and blindingly bright as the sun coming out from behind clouds. “Привет, моряк” she says, and Rose doesn’t know what that means, but she says it so beautifully and so sweetly that Rose thinks If Ilya really isn’t dating this girl, he’s even dumber than I thought.

“Hi,” Rose says, and for the first time in a long time, forgets all of her lines. Completely unprofessional.

Should Rose hug her? Do the two of them, Ilya and Svetlana, do that? Are they huggers? Not as a general rule, that seems difficult to imagine, but with each other? Are they affectionate? But no, the point now isn’t to convince Svetlana that she’s Ilya, the point is to convince her that she’s not. Which she isn’t. And for all of Rose’s sudden stage fright, she must be doing something convincing to get her point across, because whatever Svetlana’s saying now seems concerned. Her facial expression, which requires no translation, seems to indicate that she feels something isn’t quite right.

“Sorry,” Rose says — interrupts, maybe. She can’t tell where one sentence ends and the next begins. “Can we— is it alright if we speak in English?”

“If you like,” Svetlana frowns, tone still light and friendly. “Shall we sit and talk?”

“Yes,” Rose says, “thank you.” And yet, she can’t bring herself to sit. The stools are all so claustrophobically close together, and she doesn’t know where the living room is to find a couch, and suddenly all of this seems insane, insane and fucking impossible to somehow convince this stranger of something that Rose is having so much trouble believing herself.

However strange her behavior must seem — strange for any given day, for Rose to be acting like this, but even stranger, she assumes, for Ilya to be behaving this way around his friend of supposedly so many years — Svetlana doesn’t take the tack of pushing. She flips her phone face down on the counter, to signal that Rose has her full attention, and asks simply, “What’s up?”

Rose takes a breath. She wants a drink. “I need to tell you something that will be difficult to believe and very, very difficult to understand. I’m under the impression that you’re someone I can trust, and someone who knows me well enough to know when I’m being myself or when I’m… not.”

“Of course,” Svetlana says, her shapely brows drawing in close together.

“I know I look like Ilya,” Rose says, and because there’s nothing else but to just come out with it, continues, “but I’m not. Something happened to me last night and the person that is in this body right now is not Ilya Rozanov; Ilya’s in Montreal in my body, actually. Jesus, fuck, I must sound crazy.”

Already, Svetlana’s swept towards Rose in a fluid, distressed movement. Her hands reach towards Rose’s head, hovering as though too scared to touch. “Что случилось? Ты ранен?”

“I’m really sorry,” Rose apologizes, “I don’t speak Russian. I don’t understand what you’re saying.” She’s cursing herself for cheating her way through two years of French tutoring even as she reminds herself it obviously wouldn’t do her any good.

“Have you been injured?” Svetlana asks, obviously terrified but with as much business-like calm as she can manage. “Were you hurt? During the game, or after?” She’s reaching for her phone behind her, probably to call for a doctor, and Rose, who can’t let her do that, reaches further past to slide the phone away down the marble island. Distantly, she registers how handy it is to have long arms now.

“I’m not injured. My head is fine.” She needs to stay calm. Focus on the narrative, which in this case is the truth. “Last night, I went out after the game. I had a few drinks and ran into someone I know — well, technically we didn’t know each other yet, but we knew of each other — we know some of the same people. Same person. Anyway, we got into an argument, which I guess must have something to do with it. I went home, he went home, and this morning, we woke up in each others’ bodies.”

Svetlana laughs a bit hysterically, and Rose, watching, thinks Less than a day as a man and already I’m calling women hysterical. “You’re switched into each others’ bodies? Кто это? Who is it in there?”

“Rose Landry.”

Lots of people are surprised to see Rose, like a celebrity could never do anything so mundane as go to watch the Tigers lose to the Dodgers or buy flowers for herself at Trader Joes. Celebrities: they’re just like us! Svetlana is on another level of disbelief. “Rose Landry as in—” She breaks off, drawing her hands in a quick, bold, palms-out X across her face, the way they do in the X-Squad movies. “That Rose Landry?”

“Yes,” Rose says, and then, to be polite, “Hi.”

“Rose Landry,” Svetlana repeats, and comprehension’s dawning on her face now, which Rose thinks is promising if unexpected. “As in dating a certain handsome hockey player Rose Landry.”

The worst is out of the way, it seems. A part of her had even worried — how Russian was this Svetlana? Was there a possibility she’d have no clue who Rose was? Would that make things harder? Easier? Etc. But no. Relieved, Rose suggests, “Should we — is there somewhere we can sit?”

“Ilya.” Svetlana grabs Rose by the hand, pressing a thumb into the palm and holding it, holding her still, eyes locked on hers as she asks, “Can we talk about Jane, please? Пожалуйста?”

Rose is wondering if Svetlana can feel her palms sweating; a millisecond later, relieved, she realizes that Ilya’s hands don’t do that nervous sweating thing hers do. It takes a moment for her to hear what’s just been said. “The girl from last night?”

Svetlana’s eyes pop. “He was there last night?”

“Ilya?” Rose asks, confused now. “That’s what I said.”

“Shane Hollander,” Svetlana corrects.

“He was there with me,” Rose nods. “But not when I met Ilya. I don’t know when he saw Jane.”

“You’re Ilya,” Svetlana argues. “He’s Jane.”

“No, he’s not,” Rose argues back, “I’m Rose. He’s me.”

Svetlana swears. Rose doesn’t know which word, exactly, as she doesn’t speak the language. It’s definitely a swear. She stalks around Rose to the fridge, opens it with such force that the condiments in the door seem to scurry from her gaze. Finding nothing in there which helps remedy any of… this, she slams the door shut.

Rose has something that can help. Ilya’s phone is in her hoodie pocket with 18% battery left. She grabs it now and quickly unlocks it, muscle memory guiding her thumb to click just where the camera roll will be so she can pull up Ilya’s video. “Watch this,” she instructs, offering the phone to Svetlana.

She’s reticent to take it, but when she sees Rose’s face (her real face) in the thumbnail, curiosity seems to get the better of her. Sinking onto the barstool, she presses play on the video, turns the volume up.

“Мой акцент теперь — полное дерьмо,” Rose hears her own voice say, and watches Svetlana take a sharp breath. This is her second time hearing this monologue, and like the first time, she isn’t able to glean much other than a deep fondness between the two of them. Acting is reacting, she reminds herself, and studies Svetlana’s response to the video instead. Her full lips part in disbelief; her green eyes well with emotion; her smooth skin wrinkles in confusion, in concentration. She watches the video twice, then locks the phone and hands it back to Rose.

“Does that… help?” Rose asks. She isn’t sure what Ilya’s said; she prays he has enough self-preservation to have said something useful.

Svetlana’s chewing the gloss off her bottom lip, eyes unfocused as though deliberating something that’s simultaneously far, far away and somehow right in front of her. She must reach a conclusion, because after a moment, her neck snaps up sharply. “Look at me,” she instructs.

Rose, already doing so, stares back at her unmoving.

Svetlana’s eyes narrow. “Твоя мать была шлюхой, и она заслужила смерть.”

Rose waits for a translation, but none is offered. “I’m sorry,” she apologizes for what seems like the dozenth time. “I only speak English. I’m not sure what that means.”

“Something very cruel about Ilya’s mother,” Svetlana murmurs, staring at Rose now with open amazement. “I did not like to say it.”

A test. And Rose has passed. “What would he have done if he’d heard you say it?”

Svetlana laughs, not much humor in it. “Thank god we will never know.”

“I told him I thought he had mommy issues,” Rose admits. “Then I felt like a complete asshole, obviously.”

“You’re not wrong,” Svetlana snorts. “The daddy issues are much worse.”

They get a good look at each other now. Rather, Rose lets Svetlana get a good look at her and wonders what it is she’s seeing. She imagines it’s something akin reading the word Pepsi in the Coca-Cola font, the surreal disambiguation of the long familiar, and thinks, Jesus, how American am I to think of Coca-Cola at a time like this.

“I believe you,” Svetlana says eventually. “It’s very crazy.”

“It is,” Rose agrees. “Very.”

Thoughtfully, Svetlana sighs. She grabs her phone. “I need to speak to Ilya for a moment, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Of course.” Rose dithers a moment. “Did you want me to step out, or…”

“You are fine.” She gestures to the fridge with one hand, dials on her phone with the other. “Help yourself to anything. Вот дерьмо.” She’s called Ilya’s phone out of habit; it rings beside her on the kitchen island.

“He has mine. Sorry.” Rose dictates her number as she scoots to the refrigerator, looks inside for bottled water and can’t suppress the urge to laugh at what she finds. “What the hell is up with hockey players and ginger ale?” she asks to no one in particular.

The call has gone to voicemail, apparently. Svetlana’s redialing and doesn’t look up. “Hm?”

“Shane’s the same way. My boyfriend.” Rose gestures to the row of Canada Dry lined up in the fridge. “It’s all he drinks. Is that like a sponsorship thing?”

Svetlana pops out of her seat, leans over to look in the fridge and laughs, shaking her head. “Of fucking course.” Ilya must pick up then. “Я смотрю на пять банок имбирного эля в твоём холодильнике. Поговорим начистоту?”

They talk for a long time. A long, long time. Rose wanders the kitchen, sipping a beer because she can, because she isn’t counting calories anymore. Silver lining. She opens and closes drawers, inspects the logic of Ilya’s dishwasher loading methodology. She’d rather wait to tour the rest of the house with Svetlana, so once she’s done peeking and poking (nosy, Ilya had called her. Curious, she might phrase that. Inquisitive.) she pulls out the stool beside Svetlana and decides it could be helpful character building to see if Ilya has games on his phone.

“Те, что с Джейн?” Svetlana says, and at the mention of that name again, Jane, Rose closes Two Dots and perks up. “Конкретные сообщения?” Her own phone pinned between her ear and shoulder, Svetlana mouths Can I borrow? and reaches for Ilya’s phone. “Или всю переписку?”

The phone is prodded at outside of Rose’s line of sight and returned before she has time to wonder what exactly Svetlana was doing on there. Forwarding his email, realistically, or something else that’s far less interesting than the juicy gossip she imagines it to be.

Svetlana, on this call, speaks in mostly interrogatives — not that Rose knows what she’s asking, but the lilting tone is self-evident. Long stretches will pass with Ilya expounding on something or other, Svetlana listening, patiently engaged, occasionally offering what seem like gentle reassurances.

Eventually, Rose grabs the iPad from Ilya’s backpack in the hall and returns to her research, studying Raiders highlight reels she finds online. She uses Ilya’s saved credit card info to subscribe to YouTube premium so she can skip the ads; it occurs to her that she could use Ilya’s credit card to buy anything she wanted, really, although she has no doubt that she makes more than he does.

The phone call has dragged on for long enough that Rose has cycled between polite disinterest, open curiosity, and back around to nothing on earth could be interesting enough to warrant this much conversation. It’s dark, the sun long set, and whatever electrician rigged this place seems to have exclusively wired it for mood lighting. It should be somewhat calming, this amber sort of glow enveloping them, the musical murmuring of Svetlana soothing Ilya on the phone — it’s not. Rose finds herself uncharacteristically impatient. Impatient for what, exactly, she’s not sure, but she’s itching, crawling out of her skin for whatever it is, about to grab the phone and hang it up right now if one of these two doesn’t soon.

“She’s being very good,” Svetlana says in English, eyes dancing towards Rose’s. “Very polite. Much better manners than you.”

“Low bar,” Rose whispers, kicking a petulant sneaker out to scuff the side of the kitchen counter.

“Mm,” Svetlana laughs — giggles, really. Some girls are so good at being girls, Rose thinks. “We will see. I may keep her.” She catches sight of Rose’s expression then — cunty, fed up, probably looking an awful lot like the Ilya she’s used to, and quickly signs off. “I’ll call again before bed, okay? Я знаю. Я рада, что ты мне сказал. Я люблю тебя, ладно? У нас всё получится.”

“Oh, are you two done catching up?” Rose asks the moment she hangs up, her tone so sour and sarcastic that she thinks Svetlana may pick the phone back up and rescind everything nice she’s just said.

“You need a cigarette,” Svetlana determines. Not a question, so much as a decree.

“I don’t smoke,” Rose replies irritably.

“He does.”

Right.

Together, they dig through his backpack and retrieve a half-smoked pack; Svetlana shows Rose where to find a lighter, for the next time she needs one. They step outside together.

“Do you want one?” Rose offers. It seems the chivalrous thing to do, especially as Svetlana’s joined her out here on the deck in a silk blouse which seems not exactly appropriate for the cold.

“Thanks.” She grabs one from the pack and Rose — where are these urges coming from, is it that muscle memory thing that’s making her feel so compelled to act like some sort of gentleman? — leans close to light it for her.

Svetlana laughs, a soft breezy sound like wind through birch trees. “It is easier to do myself.” She takes the lighter, uses it, then passes it back.

“I’ve never smoked before,” Rose admits. It feels embarrassing to say, dweebish, like she’s been pulled beneath the bleachers by some much cooler girl in a made-for-TV movie.

“That’s good.” Svetlana tucks the cigarette between her lips, takes a drag and exhales blue into the night. “Pretty girls shouldn’t smoke.”

Rose feels her face heat. She’s certain she’ll fumble with the lighter or cough upon her first inhale, something deeply mortifying like that, but she doesn’t. Distracted, feeling Svetlana’s gaze burning into her like embers touching skin, her body does the work without her knowing. Before she’s even asked herself, how does this work again, how do I hold it?, the filter’s settled casually between her fingers, her lungs are filling, her head is clearing.

“When I was twelve,” she says, “a makeup artist for some project I was working on told me if I smoked, I’d get lines around my mouth. And getting makeup to sit smoothly on skin with fine lines was harder, and so nobody would want to hire me.”

“Ugh,” Svetlana says. “She’s right, though.” She pats her cheeks, the skin around her mouth as she does so. Svetlana has perfect skin; it’s asinine that she does this.

“Well, sure,” Rose says. “But imagine saying to a twelve year old that nobody will want to work with her if she gets wrinkles. I mean, it is true, but it’s fucked.”

Svetlana laughs. “Very fucked.”

Rose feels present in her own mind again; the thoughts which have been battering and ramming into each other like bumper cars now travel in a single file line. One which has been waiting its turn for a while finally inches to the front of the queue. “So. What’s the deal with Jane?”

Svetlana moves to the patio table, snags an ashtray so they won’t keep leaving sooty trails all over the cement. At first Rose thinks it’s possible she’s doing this to play for time, to dodge the question, but then she answers without mincing words. “Someone Ilya used to see. On and off for several years. Mostly sex, not too serious, but… I think it was serious for him. For Ilya.”

“Shit.” Every relationship has one of each, and god knows Rose has been on either end of things, but it’s hard to imagine Ilya ever being the one who cares more rather than the one who cares less. “And they broke up?”

“Broke up, yes. But maybe it isn’t the right words.” Svetlana frowns, contemplative, searching for a more precise expression. “She ended things. I didn’t realize, until today. It helps me understand a lot.”

“Same, I guess.” Rose thinks of Ilya’s glass so close to empty, when she’d met him in that hallway, the way he’d swallowed down the last of it and cracked the ice between his teeth; she recalls the way he seemed to look through that blond girl without seeing. “Jane was there last night, at the club. I saw her text this morning. No wonder he was in such a shitty mood when we met. I thought— to be honest, I figured he was just an asshole.”

Svetlana laughs, ashes her cigarette. “That too. I am not surprised he didn’t tell you more. I do not think that he would like to talk about her. But Rose?”

It’s the first time she’s said Rose’s name. Or maybe that’s not true. Did she say it on the phone to Ilya? What’s the word for rose in Russian? Suddenly she wants to know. Wants to hear it said. How American, to find something romantic in the foreign.

“Ilya thinks that things are over for good. Me, I am not so sure.” Svetlana continues. “If Jane texts again, or calls, tell me, okay?”

“Okay, yeah.” Rose shivers, then. It’s got to be below freezing out here. She’s in layers, a t-shirt and a hoodie and a coat she’d pulled on before they came outside; Svetlana, in her skirt and stockings and that silk blouse, still dressed how she came from work, can only be miserable. “Here—” Rose clamps the cigarette between her lips and begins fumbling her wool coat off. “You must be cold — do you—”

“It’s fine.” She stubs her cigarette out in the ashtray and takes a deep, appreciative breath of the brittle cold air. “I’ll head in anyway. Take your time. Are you hungry?”

Rose nods. She thinks she managed most of a shitty $18 chicken sandwich at the airport, but that feels like a lifetime ago, and it seems like this body may need more frequent fueling than her own does.

After Svetlana leaves, Rose lights a second cigarette off the cinders of the first because it’s what her body tells her to do. It’s quiet. In her mind, and here outside. The trees are empty this time of year, no birds to chirp, nothing scurrying through the brush. Everything has migrated or hibernated or gone wherever warm blooded creatures go when the cold becomes too much for their tiny beating hearts.

She wonders what she’ll miss about her life, if this condition should persist. Certain people come to mind: Sunday morning phone calls with her father; long lunches of big salads with Miles; Lou and Mel’s house where they drink wine in the yard and their kids are always wearing Halloween costumes, even in the middle of summer. She’ll miss them the way she misses browsing at Jet Rag on La Brea when she’s bored on a filming break in Atlanta, or the way she misses fresh shucked oysters when she’s too far inland to trust they’re really fresh.

Her life has always been this. Hellos and goodbyes. Only ever being able to be in one city at a time, which is never enough. Having to leave people, places, things she loves all scattered around and hope and trust and pray they’ll be there when she comes back for them. They aren’t always. Sometimes she goes back to Rome and the gelato shop she’s been craving for the last two years has closed down. Sometimes she falls in love with a man and comes home to him after months of shooting somewhere, and him away touring or whatever, and he’s not the same, and there’s no fixing it. Her passport and her watch, her wallet, keys on a tarnished purple keychain shaped like a fish whose mouth works as a bottle opener — these are the only things she can keep with her all the time. And herself. She’s done this for so long now that she’s figured out that that can be enough; if she packs herself up tightly, all the things she misses rolled like memories stuffed into packing cubes in the nooks and crannies of her mind, then wherever she goes, love goes with her.

She’s stuck like this however long. In this strange man’s body. Well, okay. This is fucked. Obviously. But she’s been in fucked up, really miserably just totally fucked up situations before, and when they’re over, she’s glad to leave them, sure. And yet, inside each of those moments is someone or something she finds herself thinking of fondly when it’s over. This will be that too. She doesn’t know how yet, but she will. She’ll be herself someday, she’ll have her own life again, and there will be something from this life she can’t help missing.

Svetlana’s bent double over the pullout freezer drawer when Rose returns inside. She’s frowning. “Big fucking kitchen, tiny little fridge. Full of ingredients and none of them go together.”

“He doesn’t strike me as much of a cook,” Rose muses, settling back in at the counter and wriggling out of her coat now that it’s nice and warm.

“So many frozen pizzas,” Svetlana says, sounding unenthused. She straightens up to look at Rose. “It is frozen pizza for dinner or a jar of pickles and a jar of jam and some eggs. And protein shake for dessert, of course.”

“Of course,” Rose smiles. “Frozen pizza’s fine. I can help, if you—”

“I think frozen pizza is probably a one woman job.”

In the time that Rose was chain-smoking and brooding, Svetlana’s changed from her little leather business skirt into a pair of what must be Ilya’s sweatpants. They’re emblazoned with the Raiders logo and team name down the leg; they’re big enough to hang loose and low on Svetlana’s hips, exposing surplus skin if not for the tails of her blouse hanging down. The notion that this beautiful woman can walk through Ilya’s life with ease, half-dressed in his clothes, making all his worn-in cotton smell exactly as nice as she does, all while remaining perfectly platonic, seems so at odds with the character she’s built of him.

“I have to say, Ilya didn’t give me the vibe that he was capable of maintaining a long term relationship with a woman he’s not sleeping with,” she says frankly. “Sorry if that’s rude, but — you know what I mean, right?”

Svetlana plops the pizza straight onto the rack, slams the oven door shut even though it absolutely 100% is not preheated. “We do sleep together sometimes,” she says easily.

“Oh,” Rose stammers, blushing like a virgin for some fucking reason, deeply embarrassed to have overstepped or to have even implied she knows what sex is at all. What the fuck. “Sure. He just made it seem— I didn’t realize that.”

“It’s only a bit of fun,” she shrugs. “And not as often anymore. Nothing ever serious.”

Rose has identified a pattern: Ilya has a debilitating aversion to seriousness. That his recent departure from that norm seems to have blown up in his face and somehow led to him getting dumped by his situationship is not likely to help matters. “That makes sense.”

“What?” Svetlana asks, amused. She’s an expert at reading Ilya’s body language, Rose remembers, and can plainly see a tension now which suggests Rose is out of her element. “Don’t you ever go to bed with your friends?”

“All my friends are women or gay men,” Rose answers truthfully. “I guess I haven’t really had the chance.”

A smile tugs at the corner of Svetlana’s mouth. “Don’t rule it out. That’s all I am saying.”

This is the sort of girl talk Rose typically excels at. Hair and makeup trailer gossip, Wait, what’s his sign again? Oh, well that explains things. Crass and giggly, digging, squirming questions, elated squeaks at the answers, He asked to come on your WHAT? Alright, so yes, Ilya was spot on. Rose is nosy, because she likes to get to know people, and the best way to do that is just to ask. She likes people to get to know her too, when they’re real people and not tabloids, so if someone asks her something, usually she’s all too happy to answer. That she’s felt so guarded and off-kilter all night is not a reflection of the Real Rose at all; more likely, it’s a side effect of the Ilya Infection.

“Never knock it til you try it, I guess.” The broader situation is bizarre, but this can be familiar. Two girls in a kitchen, burning frozen pizza, talking about their sex lives. This can be the usual that lives in the unusual. “Honestly though? I might be too boring for that. I’m sort of a serial monogamist.”

“You fall in love quite often?” Svetlana asks. She’s sitting on the counter by the sink, legs swinging out and gently kicking back at the cabinets below.

“All the time,” Rose admits. “It’s not their fault. It’s this horrible habit of mine.”

Svetlana quirks an eyebrow, makes an inquisitive, Russian sort of noise.

“The work I do — I mean, my movies aren’t great, don’t get me wrong. But it’s storytelling, right?” She can admit this about herself easily. It’s the sort of bad choice that’s shown up so many times in her adult life, it’s begun to feel like an inside joke. “I can’t turn it off. I meet a guy and it only takes knowing three things about him to come up with thirty more in my mind. The relationship becomes a narrative, and every shitty thing that happens, well, that makes sense, right, because all stories have conflict. And then we’ll get stuck, because there’s some poor guy — some of them are assholes, mind you, but some of them are decent guys who aren’t the right fit for me — anyway, we end up stuck together, miserable, while I pretend it’s character development.”

Svetlana taps her heels against the cabinet, tap tap. “You’re waiting to find a happy ending.”

“Who isn’t?”

She sips her bottled water, eyes on Rose, mischievous like they’re playing truth or dare. “And do you believe Shane Hollander is happily ever after?”

Rose chews her lip, deliberates. Not on the answer — on how much to give away. “Shane is one of the good ones.” True.

“Not exactly what I asked,” Svetlana grins. “Is he good for you?”

They stare at each other greedily now, with open hunger. God, Rose loves when meeting someone feels like this. When one of them is ravenous for more, more conversation, more secrets, and the other one is desperate to divulge, giddy at the chance to speak what’s remained unspoken. The thrill of not quite knowing yet who can be trusted to tell the truth, trusted to keep the truth — and here’s this extra layer that’s been making Rose so tentative all night, so eager now to indulge in something probably reckless. When Ilya told her that Svetlana could be trusted, he meant by himself, not by her. And yet.

“You can’t tell him any of this,” Rose says pointlessly, because of course, Svetlana could just lie. For all Rose knows, Svetlana could have a recording device planted that’s transmitting all of this to Ilya on a live feed, or to Shane, even, or to US Weekly.

“Of course,” Svetlana promises. She’s either a great actress or she means it. “We tell each other many things. Not everything.”

The terms are set, then. “Shane is a great guy,” Rose confesses. “He’s just not… the guy.”

Svetlana gasps a little, scandalized and enthralled. As though she would have asked the question if she hadn’t somewhat sensed the answer. “And the sex?”

Rose spills herself across the island, body going loose and head buried in her arms. “He fucks me like he’s filing taxes.” She hears Svetlana cackle, and she loves it. She loves storytelling, and all the better when the story is a good one, and the truth. “Like an obligation. It’s like he’s ticking boxes and trying to get it over with as fast as possible.”

“Every woman’s dream.” The oven beeps and Svetlana hops down from the counter to check on the pizza.

“I’ve tried things, obviously. I’m not shy about initiating and I’m certainly not scared of sucking dick.” Rose thinks back to the previous night, a million years ago, when Shane was there on top of her and somehow wasn’t in the room at all. “He’s very… detached. There’s zero chemistry. I know he likes me, but I get the sense I’m not at all his type.”

Turning her attention away from the poorly cooked pizza, Svetlana looks back at Rose over her shoulder. “I think you’d be anyone’s type.”

“Trust me,” Rose argues, even as she feels the praise warming her from the inside. “No woman is every man’s type.”

Molten cheese has dripped through the soggy center of the pizza, adhered itself into a blacked crisp on the bottom of the oven. The slices are mushy towards the center, the crust is charred, and none of it is very good at all. “I’m an even worse cook than Ilyusha,” Svetlana admits. Tomorrow, they decide, they’ll order in.

They pick apart the more edible bits, supplementing greasy pepperoni with spears of kosher pickles which Ilya seems to stock in bulk. While they eat, they come up with a plan for the next couple days. Svetlana makes the plan, really, and Rose mostly nods and agrees, because this isn’t her world, and it’s become increasingly apparent why she’s been assigned this specific handler.

They set a time to get Rose on the ice early enough in the morning that she’ll have some level of confidence going into the Raiders’ afternoon practice, and a block of time in the evening for Svetlana to call and smooth things over with Ilya’s family. Rose tries to ask more about that — there’s a dad she knows about, an older brother, a flurry of missed calls and an avalanche of text messages.

“I can give you the basics tomorrow,” Svetlana says, dashing out a response to one of the unanswered texts. “But this will be mostly a me problem, not a you problem.”

Rose expresses concern about Svetlana taking time off of work. It isn’t ideal, Svetlana tells her, but it isn’t the end of the world. Her commission check will take a hit, but she’s built up a loyal enough book of customers that she’ll survive.

“Besides,” she mentions casually. “My family’s very wealthy. I do not really need the money.”

They clean up from dinner, if it can even be called that. Rose gets a full tour of the house. It’s all very modern, very open. A nice enough place to live for the indeterminate future.

“Three bedrooms,” Svetlana lists as they climb the stairs. “The guest room, the Svetlana room, and the Ilya room. Last one will be yours, of course, unless you prefer the guest room. But his is nicer, I would choose that one.”

“You’re staying here?” She hadn’t caught much after that. It’s been a lot of information for one day.

“I’ll have to go home and get some things in the morning, but yes. Makes more sense than having you stay at my place, I think.”

So, okay. That does make sense, she guesses. It’ll be like a slumber party, Rose tells herself. For who knows how many nights. And I’ll sleep down the hall in a man’s bed.

Svetlana points towards the larger of the two guest rooms as they pass. “This one is me.” Rose pokes in, nods her head like, oh, very good. “And this one is you. The view is nicer in the daytime, of course.”

Rose isn’t sure what she imagined — something opulent or ostentatious — but the primary bedroom is very much in line with the rest of the house. Minimal bordering on sparse, massive windows for walls, a bed, a piece of art, and about $30k worth of lamps for some reason.

“Clothes are in the closet, toilet’s in the bathroom, et cetera,” Svetlana rattles off. She looks almost as tired as Rose feels, and suddenly Rose is reminded that this has been a big fucking day for her, too. “If you need anything, I’m down the hall.”

“Thanks,” Rose says, and means it. “I’m pretty nosy, so if I can’t find something, I’ll probably just start rooting through his drawers.”

Svetlana smiles. “Oh, I’d encourage that.” She flips a switch and the darkness around them gets a little warmer, a little brighter. “See you in the morning.”

“See ya.”

Rose doesn’t have a chance to snoop around. She manages to find a charger, plug Ilya’s phone in and undress down to boxers and a tank top before she finds herself slouching on the edge of the bed, eyelids slumping shut even as she tries to keep them open.

Although she knows they’ve spoken, are probably back on the phone and speaking again down the hall right now, Rose sends Ilya a quick too-honest text.

Sunny 🌞: Svetlana’s nice

Sunny 🌞: Zero clue how I’d be handling this on my own tbh, so thanks for setting that up

Selene 🌚: Don’t get any ideas Rose Landry

Selene 🌚: This is a borrowing situation

Selene 🌚: You do not keep her when we swap back.

Sunny 🌞: lol

Sunny 🌞: I have enough friends, thank you though. I will leave you your one good one

Selene 🌚: go to bed now

Selene 🌚: for my beauty sleep

Selene 🌚: You will need lots of energy for hockey playing tomorrow

By the time his text comes through, she’s already asleep.

Chapter 4: Ilya

He spends an hour on the phone with Svetlana in the early evening and another two hours in the middle of the night when she calls again after Rose has gone to bed. Ilya tells her everything. Everything, every detail, every thrilling rendezvous and every private agony. It turns out she’d already suspected much more than he realized. “But I was so careful,” he protests, and then admits to himself, no I wasn’t. Like a part of him had always wanted her to know. It feels good, now that she does. It hurts more too, and for the same reason. Telling Svetlana makes it real.

They’re on the phone until 2:30, and Ilya’s awake almost another hour after rehashing the conversation in his head, bracing himself for what’s to come. Still, as exhausted as his mind and body feel, he’s already awake when Hollander’s text comes through at 8:45. I’ll pick you up at noon if that works? Their lunch plans, arranged last night when Ilya had forced himself to text Hollander as promised.

I’ll be ready, Ilya types, then adds an exclamation point before sending so it reads a little less like a death row inmate heading for his execution. 


Shane: Can’t wait :)


Ilya can. Ilya would cancel, if he could. Of course he’s fucking fantasized about sharing a meal with Hollander in public, of course he’s craved that small and shameful luxury. He can’t have that. He still won’t have it now. It won’t be him, as far as Hollander’s concerned. When they’re at some shitty French Canadian bistro slurping French Canadian onion soups or suckling on opposite ends of some long whole-grain spaghetti noodle and smooching when they meet in the middle like in that cartoon dog kissing movie, it will be Rose’s lips that Hollander is kissing. This afternoon will function as an elaborately designed torture sequence, a highly specific sort of hell that even Ilya Rozanov, a man who is no stranger to self-destruction, would rather avoid if possible.

It’s not possible. Svetlana’s already communicated this multiple times and with varying levels of forcefulness. “You and I can both pretend to Rose all we want that we don’t know why this is happening, but Ilyusha, be serious. It’s him.”

“You don’t know that,” Ilya had protested weakly. “What are you, a witch?”

“Don’t be stupid. Don’t make us pretend you’re stupid.”

Why not, when pretending had gotten him this far already? She’s adamant that getting close to Hollander is the way out of this thing, and Ilya barely argues with her for the same reason he hasn’t played chess against her since they were fifteen: Svetlana’s always been better at thinking ahead, and Ilya hates playing games he knows he can’t win.

Which is why he’s showered, made presentable, and dressed by 9:30 for a 12:00 date. Then undressed, redressed, undressed and redressed again. Rose Landry’s wardrobe is impossible. Things are either too tomboyish for a proper date (how did she get a boyfriend in the first place?) or too nightlife for daytime wear. She favors high collars and baggy trousers and owns several frumpy things that Ilya would donate to a women’s shelter if he didn’t think those poor women had already been through enough. Eventually, he settles on a more flattering pair of jeans (why does every pair of women’s jeans seem to fit differently? How is it possible her shape can transform so unrecognizably from pair to pair?) and what he thinks is an acceptable top. He snaps a mirror selfie of the final look and texts it to Svetlana. Good for a lunch date?

Svetlana 🦊: he’s gay, is he not?

Svetlana 🦊: what exactly does the cleavage accomplish

“Вот же сучка.” He finds a boring grey t-shirt and changes. Hollander will love it probably. He is a big fan of boring fashion and owns many such t-shirts.

He kills the hours waiting for his date by poring over the incredibly thorough and shockingly lengthy document Rose has sent over detailing the minutiae of her life from birth to present. It’s a character sheet she’d explained in her email, and Ilya had replied simply what the fuck is a character sheet. It would be mind numbingly dull if not for the fact that Ilya has been fixated on Rose Landry for six weeks now, wondering and wondering what sort of person she might be, what sort of person Shane would rather be with than him, and being emailed this document with facts like “scar on elbow is from falling off the stage at Camp Newaygo talent show in fourth grade” is sort of like being willingly handed over the other team’s entire playbook.

She grew up in Lansing, Michigan, about ninety minutes northwest of Detroit. Ilya’s been to Detroit. So that helps. He hated it. She has three brothers, and Ilya has one brother, and he hates his brother, so maybe somehow that helps too. She’s been nominated for two Saturn awards, three MTV movie awards, and a Razzie, and somehow she’s won none of these. Ilya often wins awards, so in this regard, he can not relate.

In addition to this unwelcome but necessary dossier, Ilya has received strict instructions via both text and email to CALL SHANE BY HIS FIRST NAME PLEASE!!

I tried that, Ilya thinks, how do you think we ended up in this mess?

He forces himself to practice anyway, because the only thing worse than the situation he’s already in would be fucking up the situation he’s in in such a way that Hollander walks out on him a second time.

Shane. Fucking up in such a way that Shane leaves him a second time.

He lets his teeth click and tongue flatten and lips curl around the shape of the word, Shane Shane Shane. He says it out loud, gets embarrassed — who talks to themselves? — and says it again softer, like a whisper. Shane Shane Shane Shane Shane.

In texts to Rose, Shane calls her babe; sometimes she calls him baby. Ilya’s mouth reaches for the shape, raises his voice shamelessly now, Shane Shane Shane baby baby baby hey baby can you grab my coat what time was the reservation baby? His mind scales walls he’s built up for a reason and suddenly he can’t stop himself from forming crude shapes with Rose’s useless American mouth, Детка детка детка, боже, видел бы ты себя, ты само совершенство детка.

No. None of that, today. Today is lunch with Shane. Keep it simple, straightforward, nothing messy, nothing real. Ilya has to make it easy if he’s going to make it last.

Hollander texts— Shane texts when he’s pulled up to the valet station and Ilya hurries down to meet him. They exchange tentative smiles as Ilya jumps into the passenger seat; as he’s buckling his seatbelt, Shane leans in and kisses him. A quick, dry peck on the cheek, that’s all. Real romantic, Hollander, Ilya sneers in the privacy of his own mind, despite the fact that, also in the privacy of his own mind, the idea of being kissed however chastely in a public place in broad daylight by Shane Hollander is among the most romantic experiences he can imagine.

The place they go for lunch is only a short ways away. Shane drives in silence, no music, and god, isn’t that just like him. Some asshole cuts them off, and Ilya would honk or swear if it was him behind the wheel, maybe speed up and return the favor, but Shane’s reflexes are quick enough to dodge any vehicular crisis; he simply shakes his head in disapproval and keeps his hands at ten and two.

“You drive very well,” Ilya notes. It is normal for a girlfriend to give compliments.

“Really?” Shane flicks on his turn signal. “Last month Hayden and I were carpooling to the airport and he told me I drive like an old lady.”

“Oh yes, you drive like my grandmother. Very safe, though. She is alive at 92 years old.”

Shane laughs. He shakes his head again, this time with begrudging affection, and Ilya thinks maybe it could be this easy.

This restaurant, a bright and airy, brunchy-lunchy sort of spot, is apparently somewhere Shane frequents; the hostess tries to seat them toward the wall of windows on the right hand side and Shane says, “Actually, would it be alright to do the booth over there?” then clarifies to Ilya when they’re seated, “It just gets so sunny over there this time of day, I feel like I’m squinting the whole time I eat.” Sure as shit, when Ilya looks over, it’s sunny alright.

He’s trying to figure out — how often does Shane comes here? Will Rose have been here with him before? Does that mean he’s supposed to seem as though he’s been here before too? But then Shane says, “The lox is great here, if you like salmon,” and Ilya figures, okay, first time. There’s a first time for everything.

Shane orders an egg white frittata; Ilya orders creme brûlée French toast.

“Man, that’s like a week’s worth of carbs,” Shane muses.

So this is how I find out: Shane Hollander is a misogynist. “What, you only like small women? Is that it?” Ilya’s nostrils flare.

“No, I just—” The look on Shane’s face right now cracks the top five ranking of the most panicked Ilya has ever seen him, coming in fourth just behind the number three slot, an occasion on which Ilya had joked that Shane should top him sometime. “You said — for filming — that you were on that diet, right? Or — I think you look perfect, obviously, no matter what—”

“Hmph,” Ilya replies, not particularly hungry anymore when reminded that Shane’s idea of “perfect” is something like 5’5”, red hair, and a B cup. Ilya ticks one out of three of those boxes at best.

They eat in strained silence after that, Shane shoveling down his frittata and Ilya sipping petulantly at a black coffee.

“You have that press thing Saturday, right?” Shane ventures. “Or did you say — is it a phone call now?”

“We need to talk,” Ilya says, ignoring whatever the fuck that question was. The date is not going well, that much is evident, but not going well isn’t actually an option. The only way out is through. “You and I are not clicking.”

The look on Shane’s face now has shaken up the ratings. This is absolutely the second most panicked Ilya has ever seen him, eclipsed only by the clear frontrunner incident in which Ilya had casually referred to Shane’s mother as simply Yuna, and then, at Shane’s horrified reaction, said “What? Is no big deal. We have met.” Shane, sitting across from him now at this bright and brunchy bistro, looks almost like he did in that other moment: petrified, rigid with fear, as though something he has worked so hard to construct is seconds from crashing down in front of him.

“Oh,” he says to convey all that. “Okay, uh — sorry. I didn’t realize it was— so did you want to— not? Do this anymore?”

“The opposite,” Ilya says firmly. “I think we should spend more time together.” He sips his coffee.

Shane stares down at the sad, pale remnants of his frittata. That’s alright. Ilya knows better than to expect eye contact from him in a moment like this. It’s nothing personal. “I don’t think I understand.”

None of them, Ilya, Svetlana, or Rose, had expected him to. At various points in the last 24 hours, they’ve broken off into shuffled pairs and each discussed a strategy for this conversation. Focus on sparking chemistry, Svetlana had said. Rose had scripted something for him about emotional bonding, honesty, intimacy, blah blah. None of it will make sense; all of it will scare him, make him freeze or run or worse. The problem is, they don’t know Hollander like Ilya does.

“You play hockey, yes?”

Shane glances up at him, guard dropped enough by the question that he locks eyes to say, “Yes. Obviously.”

“Okay. So you know. Games are not won in three periods.” He spears a bite of French toast on his fork, gestures with it pointedly. “Games are won in practice, in team meetings, in the gym. They are only scored in those three periods.”

Shane nods to indicate some modicum of comprehension. “You think we need to practice?”

Ilya shrugs, swallows a bite. “I think relationships take work. Maybe we haven’t been working hard enough yet. But I do not think you are afraid of hard work, no?”

“I’m not,” Shane says, and the determination in his voice, the gritted teeth like he’s biting down on a mouthguard, are so familiar to Ilya that it makes his stomach spin inside.

“We have fun together. We have potential.” He’s read their texts, he stayed up half the night memorizing their stupid inside jokes and resisting the urge to remove haha tapbacks. “I think we want the same thing.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“A happy, normal relationship.” He says it lightly, almost breezy, like it doesn’t rip his heart out in the middle of this downtown restaurant to offer Shane the one thing he knows they can never have, never, the thing that Ilya’s never allowed himself to consider. When he asked Shane to stay over at his place, when he cooked for him, when he fucked the whole thing up because stupid fucking Hollander got so scared that Ilya wanted everything from him — of course he didn’t. He isn’t crazy. Everything has never, will never be an option. He only wanted something more than nothing. Was that too much to ask?

But Shane is with Rose for a reason. He does want everything; he only wants it with someone who’s not Ilya. “I want it to feel comfortable, and safe, and easy,” Ilya continues, the words ringing in his ears like a hit without a helmet. “Is that what you want?”

“Yeah,” Shane says, “it is.” And because Ilya knows him so well, he knows that Shane holds back from saying I want it more than anything.

“Good. Then we will practice.” Ilya slices a last bite of French toast, offers it to Shane. “Your daily dose of carbs?”

Shane laughs. He refuses it of course, because perhaps the only thing he’s more psychologically incapable of dealing with than his attraction to men is the notion of eating for pleasure. Still, there’s enough levity to the exchange that Ilya finally, finally allows himself to unclench.

They flag down the check. Shane pays. Ilya doesn’t protest, because it’s common knowledge that, thanks to Yuna Hollander, Shane’s among the best paid players in the league. He makes a mental note to check Rose’s bank account later and decide how much of her money she won’t notice missing.

“Did you want to do something now?” Shane asks as he scribbles on the tip line. “Or did you have other plans?”

“I am free,” Ilya says.

Shane looks at him expectantly, and Ilya blinks, wondering why. “I think there’s an exhibit at Pointe-à-Callière about Agatha Christie and archaeology? If you’re into it,” Shane offers, as though Ilya could possibly know what any of those words mean. “Or — I went to the aquarium a few months back. It’s pretty cool, if you’re into animals.”

It takes all of Ilya’s limited experience with Rose’s facial muscles to yank them into an expression that looks pleasantly engaged rather than entirely aghast. Yes, he is aware that Shane went to the aquarium with Hayden Pike and his ten children, because Shane had told Ilya about it at Ilya’s house, had told him that they had something called a Touch Tank and that he touched a stingray, and Ilya got alarmed, because such a thing was obviously very dangerous, and Shane had laughed and said no, no, even kids could do it, it was perfectly safe, sort of cool and slippery feeling, and Ilya had pretended to puke, had rushed toward the bathroom yelling oh my god you touched my cock with the hand you used to touch those things?! and Shane had laughed and pulled him by the wrist back to the couch, and they had smiled at each other, and it was comfortable and safe and easy for a moment, before conversation turned toward other things.

No, they will not go to the aquarium. Or to the whatever the fuck is that French Canadian history lesson. Frantically, Ilya racks his brain. What do women like? What would a girlfriend like to do on an afternoon outing?

“Maybe we can go shopping,” Ilya says all at once. “Clothes shopping. Together.”

“I’m down,” Shane says. “Is it for something specific, or you just want new stuff for everyday?”

Desperately Ilya needs new stuff for day to day. He’d like to rehaul Rose’s entire wardrobe, if possible. But that’s an undertaking for another afternoon, a focused and deliberate mission preferably with Rose’s Amex on hand.

“I was thinking clothes for you, actually.”

Shane pauses in the act of putting on his jacket, looking down at himself and then back up to Ilya. “I need new clothes?”

“Why not?” The fantasy unspools like thread in Ilya’s mind now, and he tug tug tugs at the end of it. Dressing Shane up like a little doll, posing him, putting him in anything he wants.

“Sure,” Shane says. “Okay. Yeah.”

“Where do you normally buy clothes?” Ilya asks, leading the way as they head out of the restaurant.

“Uhhh… I like Uniqlo.” Shane unlocks the car with a click, opening the door for Ilya and waiting for him to get in. “I work with Reebok, so they send me stuff to wear too.”

“Yeah, well, you work with Rolex and I’ve only ever seen you wear an Apple Watch,” Ilya points out, and Shane, because he is a brat, slams the door a little. “Where do you shop when you need something nicer?” he asks when Shane is in the driver’s seat. “Like for events, or special occasion?”

Shane blushes furiously, keeps his eyes straight ahead on the road despite the fact that they’re very much still parked on the curb. “I have someone who helps me with that.”

“A stylist?”

“Sort of.”

“Shane.” Ilya places a hand atop Shane’s where it grips the steering wheel, threads his fingers between Shane’s white knuckles. “Tell me the truth. Is your mother still buying your clothes.”

Shane’s head falls forward with a lurch, bouncing off the steering wheel when the force of impact inadvertently honks the horn. “Am I actually the lamest guy you’ve ever dated? Sometimes I feel like — do I even know how to be a person?”

“You are the best guy I’ve ever dated,” Ilya says too truthfully. “And the most handsome, or else you could not dress every day like someone playing a personal trainer in a porno film and get away with it.”

Shane huffs a laugh. “Thanks, I guess.”

They go to a department store on Saint Catherine Street not far from Ilya’s hotel. It’s upscale enough that a personal shopper appears before Shane within moments of them entering the men’s department. She has that wonderfully tactful balance of deference to the fact that Shane and Rose (as far as she’s concerned) are celebrities, tempered with a professional abstention from any bias or fannish behavior that could accompany that. She has a French name, something like Sabine or Sandrine, which Ilya forgets within seconds of her saying it.

They’re shown to a personal shopping suite; it has a changing room within, a table and a sofa, and a small pedestal surrounded by mirrors where Shane can pose for Ilya in his little outfits, request any alterations if they’re needed. Champagne is provided before Ilya can even think to ask; he does think to ask for ginger ale for Shane, but when there’s none on hand, they settle for a blue glass bottle of still water.

“Are we shopping for any specific occasion? Or looking to do more of a wardrobe refresh?” Sardine asks.

Shane turns to Ilya for an answer. Either the champagne is going to his head already, or Ilya’s feeling buzzed on the power. “Nothing too formal, nothing too casual, I think. Some things for the in between.” He makes a face at Shane along the lines of Would you agree? and Shane nods, affirmative.

“Got it. And is there a style of dress you tend to gravitate towards that we’d like to lean into?” asks Saltine. “You can give me words, colors, vibes, reference photos you may have — anything that helps provide a template. Or we can always start from a fresh jumping off point if you’re looking to diversify your style a bit.”

God it’s heady, the way Shane turns to him for reassurance. “I guess I’d say I tend to dress sort of… athletic? I mean, I’m an athlete, so—” he breaks off, rubs the back of his neck like he’s feeling completely out of his element, which he is. “Probably not anything too flashy, but… it could be sorta nice not to look like I’m always coming from the gym.”

This is enough to go off of, apparently. Sanguine or whatever her name is collects all of Shane’s sizing information, notes down fabric and fit preferences, gracefully inquires about any budgetary limits (Ilya jumps in with a quick None!) and then leaves them to go collect some options.

“One or two flashy looks could be good,” Ilya shouts after her as she goes. He kicks back with his second flute of champagne, watching Shane pace the room like a lizard nervously surveying its tank. “When she comes back, we should mention — All Stars game is in Florida this year, in a few months. Would be good to have something nice to wear for the hot weather, something festive.”

Shane shoots a look back over his shoulder at Ilya, and Ilya wonders if the date and location of MLH’s All Star weekend are something Rose would know. Almost certainly not, and almost definitely this comment would arouse some suspicion were Shane not already so consumed with other thoughts, such as his impending non-consensual fashion show. “I don’t think I need anything for that, do I?” he asks. “I mean, there’s some press stuff before and after the game itself, but the weekend’ll mostly just be me and other players.”

Any players in particular? Anyone you’d like to impress? Anyone who might appreciate seeing you in a pair of short, tight, swimming trunks, should the warm weather draw you to the beach or pool? All questions Ilya wisely does not ask. “Do the other hockey players not dress up for these sorts of things?”

“Most of them are worse dressers than me,” Shane says, flopping next to Ilya on the couch. “There’s a couple guys that are… stylish, maybe. I don’t know — I don’t really know much about fashion. Clearly.”

“Ah. This is why you model underwear, I see now,” Ilya says with great seriousness. “Not to have to bother with the clothes.”

“God, it’s so embarrassing that you’ve seen that.” Shane’s cheeks are scarlet, his ears are pink, and before Ilya can do something really ill-advised like rip off his Uniqlo and see just how much of him is blushing, Seaweed returns with a rolling garment rack and several sartorial concepts to peruse.

“He’s a model, so you know,” Ilya announces loudly to the shopper and to the assistant coming to refill their glasses. “There will be many poses when he comes out in this outfit. He is used to cameras around.”

“I’m not a model,” Shane shouts from the fitting room. “To be clear. She’s joking around. Rose, maybe switch to water?”

“He is a model,” Ilya insists in a stage whisper, and the assembled attendants giggle. “Google image search ‘Shane Hollander for Montbray 2013.’ Very handsome.”

Shane emerges from the dressing room in an outfit not dissimilar to what he wore in. Dark jeans; a t-shirt; a jacket with a little bit of personality, but not too much personality.

“I wanted to start close to home, ease us in a little bit,” explains the personal shopper, whose name, it turns out, is Sharon.

Close to home is good. Shane looks like himself, but — a nicer version of himself. Not that the original Shane wasn’t nice, but this is like an almost imperceptibly improved iteration. The fabric looks slightly more lux; there are small, unconventional details, the sorts of things that elevate a garment, make it hang a certain way or draw the eye purposefully, the sorts of things that Ilya looks for when he’s shopping. Shane looks good. And he looked good before, but now… he looks good.

“How are we feeling?” Sharon asks, we as though this is a group project or a post-game debrief.

“Um,” Shane says, evaluating himself in the mirror. “I feel fine. I sort of — it looks the same as my regular clothes? Or is that a dumb thing to say, sorry.”

Ilya scoffs. For someone so pathologically obsessed with his physique, Shane has shockingly little regard for how he looks.

Shane’s head jerks up when he hears the noise Ilya emits so he can catch his gaze in one of the many mirrors surrounding him. “What? Do I look stupid?”

“You look hot.” Ilya rolls his eyes, and the looming staff nod their agreement. “It is stupid, actually. You look stupid hot.”

“Okay,” Shane laughs, a little nervous, mostly encouraged. He sizes himself up in the mirror. Beneath his jacket, Ilya spies the flex of a pec. “I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess.”

There are plenty more compliments where that one came from. Shane, like a perfectly molded, perhaps more diverse addition to the Ken doll lineup, is paraded one by one through a series of looks for all occasions. Date night Hollander. Running errands Hollander. Warm weather Hollander, with shorts whose hemlines nearly bust open over Shane’s thighs. Cold weather Hollander, with sexy shearling coat, and also a large fuzzy hat which makes Ilya laugh so hard he throws up a tiny bit of champagne in his mouth. Sitting on airplane Hollander. Visiting Children’s Hospital Hollander. Barbecue at best friend and mediocre hockey player Hayden Pike’s house Hollander. Pants and shirts and jackets and shorts and socks and shoes even and accessories for every occasion.

Ilya has always relished in doing whatever he could to elicit a deep flush from Shane. God is it easy with an audience, gushing over him, saying exactly what comes to mind. Ilya can tell him here, out loud, that he looks handsome. Tell him that he looks like James Bond in that suit. Can say yes, that shirt pulls a little too tight in the shoulders, they should try a size up, but only because Shane is so built, takes such good care of himself. Never in his wildest dreams did Ilya imagine he’d be able to speak so freely, but then again, his wildest dreams didn’t cover much of what’s going on presently. He’ll take what he can get, if he’s got it. If there’s this wild chance to fawn over Shane in such a public place, to turn to Sharon and say casually “What a good-looking boyfriend I have” or to say whatever else comes to mind, he’ll do it.

Well, that’s not completely true. Ilya doesn’t say aloud, for instance, that the shirt that Shane is dithering about getting or not getting is in fact so sexy on him that he’d like for Shane to wear it out of the store, wear it into bed tonight, sweat through the fabric while Ilya fucks him with the not-so-secret dildo that he knows lives in the nightstand. No, of course he doesn’t say things like that out loud. For one, because poor personal shopper Salmon doesn’t deserve to be subjected to their perversions; for two, Ilya thinks that if Shane Hollander heard Rose Landry express even the slightest interest in fucking his ass open, it could result in a panic attack so severe the Montreal Metros medical staff would be dispatched to intervene.

Sharon steps away to grab a few last sizes of things, to delegate the boxing up of the “yes” pile and the eradication of the “no”s. Shane is tasked with trying on one last pair of trousers, something sort of daytime casual, but nicer than jeans.

“Do you know.” Ilya’s laid across the whole of the couch now, sprawled out in a most unladylike fashion. Well, Rose did not particularly strike him as a lady anyway. She was a modern sort of gal. “Do you know,” he repeats, because he’s already forgotten he said it. “We’ve had more than half this bottle of champagne.”

“You’ve had more than half that bottle of champagne,” Shane’s voice comes muffled from the dressing room. He speaks with a stern fondness that would go straight to Ilya’s dick, if he had one. “I think I’ve finished off maybe two-thirds of a Saratoga Springs.”

Ilya glares at the silver bucket, filled more with frigid water now than ice, and with a bottle of Bollinger inside that looks suspiciously low. “That can’t be true. I’ve had one—” what is it called, instrument, stupid name he can’t remember. “I’ve had one glass. Two glasses.”

“Well, they refill them,” Shane says simply. He’s shuffling around quite a bit in there, half-dressed. Maybe naked.

“I think we drank it,” Ilya decides. “Together. Because I did the drinking, and you gave the moral support. Very captainly of you. Good teamwork.” He punctuates this with another swig of champagne, sportsmanlike.

There’s a small, huffed laugh within the dressing room. The sound of more shuffling, of tugging and shifting.

“When will we see this pants?” Ilya furrows his brow and stares towards the changing room, wondering if switching bodies with Rose gave him any other powers, cool ones, like x-ray vision. “These pants, I mean. Do you need help? I should come in there?”

“NO,” Shane protests quickly and emphatically. “No, they’re—” he grunts a little here, like he’s struggling, and Ilya, ever helpful, thinks yes, definitely he should go be of assistance. “They’re too tight,” Shane says. “I just need to get out of them.”

“Too tight?” Ilya creeps towards the dressing room, light on his feet now that he weighs 80lbs less than he did two days ago. “How too tight? Let me take a look.”

“No, I think — Jesus, Rose!” He squeaks this last bit in response to Ilya yanking on the doorknob, which is unfortunately locked. “I’m not coming out in them.”

“Then let me come in,” replies Ilya reasonably.

Shane is silent for a minute. It takes him longer than most people to make up his mind about things, Ilya knows. That’s okay. He jiggles at the doorknob patiently, tugging at it in time to the beat of Jingle Bells, in case Shane needs some thinking music.

“Alright, can you just quit it with the—” Shane sweeps the door open all at once, causing Ilya, who’s been leaning up against it, trying to peer through the crack, to nearly tumble inside.

“My god, Holl—” The tiny sober part of Ilya’s mind manages to cut him off; he’s been instructed, thoroughly, not to call Shane by his last name. It’s difficult at the moment to think. “My god.”

Shane didn’t catch that semi-slip up. If anything, he looks concerned. “Can you stand?”

Ilya ignores the offered hand; he’s dangling off the side of the door frame on purpose. Because it’s comfortable. “Your pants.”

“I did literally tell you,” Shane says, slightly annoyed. Ilya can make him more annoyed, he bets.

These pants — slacks, Sharon had called them — are anything but. To begin with, they’re partially zipped and wholly unbuttoned. This is because, as previously stated, they don’t fit. They are too tight. So tight that Hollander’s thighs look vacuum sealed, like he’s been stuck inside a ziplock bag and all the air squeezed out for preservation purposes. His ass, who Ilya’s always thought of as a close friend, is struggling now, trapped and threatening to split the seat right open, meaning they’ll have to pay for the pants anyway, which Ilya happily would. How to get Shane out of these pants, once they’re on? What are the physics involved? Ilya sees a strategy which entails a nail file, his bicuspids, and copious amounts of lubricant. Does Rose keep lube in her purse? He’ll have to check.

“Can I finish changing now?” Shane, finger by finger, is attempting to pry Ilya from the door frame.

“This is really messed up, Shane,” Ilya states quite gravely, righting himself, still leaning too close into Shane’s space. “You know that there are starving children in Siberia? Children with no butts? And you would hoard all this butt? For yourself? When there are so many with so little?”

“Fuck off.” He’s bright red now and slams the door so Ilya can collapse against it, giggling. There are the sounds of a great struggle inside, and much panting.

“Thank you for showing me.” Ilya flops back on the couch, feeling dewy, and so happy. “I loved it. It was the best thing I’ve seen today.”

No response. There’s a massive, relieved sigh from the changing room; Shane has freed himself, presumably.

It’s quiet, for a little bit. Ilya sips contentedly at Shane’s water, imagines swallowing his backwash. Normal things like that. Sun streams in the window and he stretches like a cat warming his belly in its rays.

“I’m sorry about earlier.” Shane’s voice, coming from the dressing room, is still and very clear. Ilya thinks he’s dressed and sitting in there on the little pouf. “The way I reacted, when you tried to talk to me at lunch. And the other night, when — I know I’ve been weird, lately.”

Shane has been weird since the day in 2008 when Ilya met him. Presumably, he was weird even before that; he doesn’t have the data to back that up, but it’s a gut feeling. “I like it that you’re weird.”

“Good. Thanks.” Shane tries to laugh, maybe. “I meant it like… I know that I’m not good at this.”

You are, Ilya wants to argue despite every shred of evidence he has to the contrary. He wants to say it even though he knows it isn’t true, because maybe saying it would make Shane feel better.

“The relationships I’ve been in…” He sounds like he’s choosing his words carefully. Shane is a careful person. “None of them have really been serious, I guess. And so if things start going wrong, or not fitting, or — whatever. We end things where they are. You’re right. I’m not afraid of hard work, but I’ve never had to do the work before. Or — never had the chance.”

It occurs to Ilya that Shane is saying this all from the fitting room because it’s easier not to have to look at Rose’s face when he says it. It might be easier for Ilya, too.

“I like you, though,” Shane continues, “and I’m glad we’re doing this. I wanna make it click. I’m having a good time with you today. I hope — I hope you’re having a good time.”

“I’m having fun,” Ilya says softly; he isn’t even sure if Shane can hear him. He straightens up on the couch, sits up so his hair isn’t dangling on the floor, so some of the blood can rush away from where it’s pooling in his brain. “I think I’m maybe drunk. Only a little bit. But I’m having fun.”

“That’s okay,” Shane laughs for real this time. “I’m driving.”

Sharon returns. The champagne girl, who has now transformed from Ilya’s ally to his sworn enemy, returns as well. Shane tries on three more things: an ugly, suburban polo shirt that Ilya vetoes; the larger size of a woolen winter coat that they all agree is a yes; and a silly white blazer which Ilya loves dearly on account of the fact that he’s learned much of his English watching reruns of Miami Vice.

Sharon, whose name is actually Shannon, it turns out, rings up their haul. When he’s back in his “before” clothes, they bring a mobile terminal for Shane to swipe his card; he bats Ilya’s hand away wordlessly when he offers up Rose’s wallet to pay.

“Quite the investment, Mr. Hollander,” Ilya murmurs, peeking over his shoulder to spy at the total on the receipt.

“Worth it?” Shane asks, turning to rub an easy hand over Ilya’s shoulder, fingers dragging calmly along his spine. “Now you won’t be embarrassed to be seen with me in public anymore?”

He’s joking. He’s smiling because he’s joking, because this is the sort of joke he and Rose can share and have it not mean anything. It’s good that he can joke, maybe; it means that hopeless sort of fear no longer keeps him up at night.

Ilya still loses sleep over that sort of thing. He tries not to, but he does. And the thought — there’s a hundred reasons he’d be terrified to walk down the street hand in hand with Hollander, but he would never be embarrassed.

“You kid around.” Ilya cups Shane’s jaw because he can’t help it, the same way he can’t help smoking when he’s stressed or getting hard when he sees that one commercial where the busty woman eats the cheeseburger sloppy style. “But nobody in their right mind would be embarrassed to be seen with you, you know that? Do you know how it feels, to see the pictures that they take of us?”

Shane, his chin still resting in Ilya’s hand, shakes his head like no, he doesn’t, and maybe Ilya should explain it.

“I would tell every man on earth about us if I could,” Ilya says softly, seriously, and releases Shane from his grip.

From his dazed expression, it’s clear that Rose doesn’t have the same tendency for manhandling Shane that Ilya does. Whoops.

“But yes, we will look very stylish together,” Ilya adds, scooping up the two lightest of the many Holt Renfrew carrier bags which have materialized beside them. “Very cute couple.”

It’s a whole stupid thing to get them out of there. They’re parked in the garage under the Four Seasons, because it’s close and Rose has a little ticket thing that Ilya can just scan and they won’t have to pay, and then they figured Shane could leave when all was said and done and Ilya could go back upstairs to the penthouse. Easy peasy, as they say, which is one of Ilya’s most favorite expressions.

But then Shane stops a little in his tracks as they approach the car and says “Shit,” more to himself than to Ilya. “I forgot to bring your green bag with your work stuff. You left it on the kitchen counter, I meant to throw it in the car.”

Ilya stares at him blankly. He didn’t know about a work bag, and has no idea what could be in it. He’d forgotten Rose even had a job, what with all the fun and bubbles and fashion shows of the afternoon.

“Your laptop?” Shane reminds him. “And your script? I’m guessing you’ll need it tomorrow, right? Or are you — off book? Is that what they call it?”

“Hold please. I check something.” Ilya digs through Rose’s stupid phone-eating purse for her cell. Corrects himself, so he sounds a little less as though he’s only just learned English yesterday. “I need to check something, I mean. Hold on, please.”


Selene 🌚: is script important for tomorrow?

Selene 🌚: for movie filming day?

Selene 🌚: I need it?


Rose, who, off the top of his head, should be at fucking practice, replies almost instantly.


Sunny 🌞: Yes? Obviously??

Sunny 🌞: Do you not have it already?

Sunny 🌞: Ilya have you not been memorizing my fucking lines????


“Am texting director,” Ilya says to Shane, not looking up from where he’s furiously tapping at the screen. “I am texting the director, is what I mean to say. Who is very rude and bossy.”


Selene 🌚: I have been reading the script I found in hotel room

Selene 🌚: lines are easy and I have of course memorized them because they are simple

Selene 🌚: explaining lots of things to audience which are already happening on the screen, if they pay attention

Sunny 🌞: Okay so you’re haranguing me for what reason


He puts the word haranguing into google. “Very rude, very, very unprofessional director.”


Selene 🌚: I have script from hotel room

Selene 🌚: Shane says bag in his apartment has other script

Sunny 🌞: What color is the script you’ve been reading from?

Sunny 🌞: Buff or salmon?

Selene 🌚: ????????

Sunny 🌞: light brown or orangey pink

Selene 🌚: light brown

Sunny 🌞: You need orangey pink

Sunny 🌞: They change the colors when they do a script revision. The salmon one is different from the previous one, it’ll be in my work bag which is what I’m guessing you left at Shane’s

Sunny 🌞: ugh I’m sorry 😭 this is my bad. I should have put it in the email.


Shane has the shopping bags loaded into the trunk of his clean and boring car. He’s waiting patiently, watching Ilya for signs of their next move. 


Selene 🌚: it’s fine

Selene 🌚: you focus on hockey

Selene 🌚: I will get salmon and memorize tonight 👍

Sunny 🌞: Thank youuuuuu x a million

Sunny 🌞: Let me know if you need help with anything!


Ilya sends a thumbs up back. He won’t need help with anything, because he has no intention of studying the script tonight. Homework can wait until the morning; right now, a strong and advisable course of action is laid out clearly in front of him. Go to Shane’s apartment, find green work bag, drunken two hour makeout on the couch, nap of same duration, wake up, dinner, and then possibly float the idea of a hand job, because Shane is gay and strange about sex with women, but surely he can close his eyes and think some manly thoughts while Ilya jerks him off just a little.

To Ilya’s dismay, none of that is on the table. “There’s no point in both of us sitting in traffic,” Shane points out in his most reasonable of voices. “You may as well go upstairs, and I’ll drive to my place to get it and swing back to drop it off for you.”

Ilya pouts. Girls can be very cute when they pout, in his experience, and often get their way. “But I want to go with you.”

“You want to sit in the car for forty five minutes in rush hour traffic?” Shane looks at him bemused. Which either means the same thing as amused or as confused, Ilya doesn’t remember, but they both apply here.

“I’m having fun with you,” Ilya whines, jutting his bottom lip out. “Just a little longer?”

Shane can’t argue with that, nor does he seem to want to. He looks pleased, in fact. “Well, okay. Sure.”

“And I can pick the music?” Ilya asks as they slide in the car. He bats his new girlish eyelashes.

“Actually,” Shane says, turning the key in the ignition, “I read an article recently with some statistics on distracted driving—”

“Oh my god, never mind.”

They pull up towards the exit, where a uniformed parking attendant waits to verify their validation. He scrambles from his little stool as they pull up alongside him, hasty to get to the driver’s side window.

“I’m sorry about this Mr. Hollander, Ms. Landry,” he says as soon as Shane’s rolled the window down. He’s panting for some reason, as though he’s played a period straight through rather than been sitting mostly sedentary all day scanning tickets and pressing buttons. “This lever’s on the fritz again. I’ll have to go call maintenance for a manual override, if you’ll just give me a minute.”

Without waiting for a response, he scampers off into the bowels of the garage, leaving them stranded.

“That’s annoying,” Ilya says offhandedly. “Maybe we just drive through arm bar thingy if he takes too long? Say fuck it?”

Shane doesn’t respond. He’s squinting at a group of men, all middle aged and clustered together smoking where the ramp out from the garage breaks away into daylight. One of them glances at his phone, then down the ramp to Shane and Ilya, and then, to Ilya’s surprise, they all start running.

They all have cameras, Ilya realizes, as he’s blinded by four flashes at once, and they all seem to have been waiting. An eager swarm of paparazzi who’ve now descended greedily upon them, buzzing around the vehicle like flies on shit.

“You were totally right,” Shane remarks without elaborating further. His expression is neutral, perhaps with irritation beneath the surface, and, notably, he doesn’t seem at all surprised that this is happening.

Right about what? Ilya would like to ask, and for obvious reasons, can not. He takes a more roundabout route. “You think so?”

“For sure.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, steely faced as the photographers shout provocations at him to roll down the window. “It was that same parking guy last Thursday. Have you had this issue with the ‘technical problems’ when anyone else is working? I bet he saw us coming down and loading up the car and called them.”

Ilya’s flabbergasted. “Wow. I wonder what he gets paid.”

“No idea. You should tell the hotel management, though. I bet they’d be pissed.”

Three of the photographers are hanging back, content to point their long (somewhat phallic, in Ilya’s opinion) telescopic lenses towards them from a respectable distance. The fourth comes front and center, hops the automatic barrier holding them hostage, and drapes himself across the hood of the car as he shouts out commands and poses.

“Fuck, man.” Shane’s making a concerted effort not to give anything away with his face, but there’s a desperate tension to the way he holds himself, the way he grips the wheel that Ilya instantly recognizes from years of sharing a spotlight that Shane has never particularly wanted. “I can’t believe you deal with this all the time.”

Neither can Ilya. Because Ilya Rozanov is famous. There are kids in America, in Russia, in Canada and Bulgaria and Switzerland and maybe even Mongolia who behave well all year purely in the hopes that Santa will stuff their stocking with a jersey that has Ilya’s name on it. He’s had his picture in the paper and his name up in big lights; he sees his own face on television at least 82 days out of the year. Ilya’s a celebrity, there’s no argument about that.

But “sports star” and “movie star,” he’s learning, are different kinds of famous. Ilya’s kind of star is twinkling in a distant galaxy, a tiny white flicker in the night sky; Rose’s is the blazing sun, bright enough to blind, and the whole world, the whole solar system seems to revolve around it. It’s the kind of thing he’d text her something snotty about if he wasn’t finding out firsthand how sort of miserable it was.

“This is stressful,” he says out loud and matter of fact. “I hate this.”

“Mm.” The bolder paparazzo knocks his lens against the windshield and Shane sighs, pensive. “Makes me think of how Princess Diana died.”

Very good Hollander, Ilya thinks. Bring up Princess Diana on date with woman. That will make you seem like a real heterosexual.

“Give him a kiss for us, Rose!” the asshole splayed and dragging his dick across the hood shouts, “quick peck and we’re out of your hair, okay?”

As the other photogs pipe up in agreement, Shane, rolling his eyes, lays on the horn.

“SMART,” Ilya shouts to be heard over the blare now echoing from every corner of the garage.

“THANKS,” Shane yells back.

The douchebag on the hood has leapt back in surprise; the others scrunch their shoulders up around their ears, struggling to shoot photos and drown out the noise. Ilya leans across the center console and reaches for the horn; Shane relents and there’s a brief reprieve in which time the photographers reapproach with caution before Ilya slams back on it. Quick, percussive, he taps out a beat. BEEP BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP BEEEEEP BEEPBEEP.

“IS JINGLE BELLS THE ONLY SONG YOU KNOW?” Shane shouts, laughing, as Ilya honks and honks, merry and bright.

“Sorry!” The attendant jogs up to them, a hand clapped over one ear, the other reaching for the button to raise the lever. “Sorry about that Ms. Landry! Have a lovely day!”

Despite the fucked up, grossly inappropriate violation of their privacy, Shane and Ilya peel out of the parking lot giddy and giggling; Shane adds a quick and final honk, like a triumphant whoop, as they crest the ramp and pull out onto the street. Ilya’s not surprised when Shane reaches over the gear stick to squeeze his leg, a half second burst of affection. Ilya plays hockey professionally. He plays for Boston, and he plays like an asshole, a really talented asshole, and so he knows from watching fans of other teams just how effective the hatred of a mutual enemy can be at bonding people together. He snatches Shane’s hand before he can pull it back and threads their fingers together.

Ilya’s not allowed to come up when they get to Shane’s. He tries out several of his new tricks — pouty lips, big eyes with fluttering lashes, even tries gently pressing his upper arms in towards his boobs to push them up and together, because that’s always worked on him — but Shane doesn’t budge. He’s strict. Ilya loves it when he’s strict. Rose has a pickup from her hotel at 5:45 tomorrow morning, Shane reminds him, and the Metros fly out to San Francisco at 8:30am. It’s crucial that they both get their full eight hours.

“My flight gets back on Wednesday pretty late, but Thursday I should be free? If you wanted to do something in the evening? After work?”

They’re back in front of the Four Seasons and Ilya’s in the front seat fidgeting the clasp on Rose’s green bag. This is the longest he and Shane have ever spent together without playing hockey or having sex — pucking or fucking comes to mind and he smothers a laugh — in god knows how long. This morning, he’d imagined it to be excruciatingly painful. Now he doesn’t want it to end.

“Thursday I can be free,” he replies. Whether that’s actually true, he obviously has no idea. He hasn’t looked that far ahead in Rose’s schedule. Whatever. He can make it work.

“Cool. I’ll text you when I’m back in town, we can figure something out.”

“Okay.” He flips and flips the clasp around, clicks it in a circle and plays with it like the branded Raiders fidget spinners they’d sold as merch a season back and had to remove from the locker room after Connors managed to launch one into Hammersmith’s head. “San Francisco sounds fun.”

“It should be.” Shane cracks his neck, probably visualizing the game tape he’ll go home and take notes on until his old man bedtime. “San Francisco’s playing well this season. We don’t always get that on the West coast. Nice to have a challenge.”

“I could come for an away game with you sometime, maybe.” Ilya guesses this will come across as forward, though he’s not sure how forward, exactly. Rose likes hockey. WAGs don’t often travel, but for one game, it wouldn’t be unheard of.

“Yeah, maybe.” Shane looks caught off guard, but not offended necessarily, or panicked as Ilya thought he might be. “We’re playing Seattle at the end of the month. That could be fun.”

Ilya snorts. It will be pissing down rain in Seattle this time of year, so no, it doesn’t sound fun. More importantly, they’re thirty games into the season and so far the Kraken have managed to win something like two and a half. “You go to Boston next month, right? Maybe I could join for that one.”

Shane’s Adam’s apple bobs like he’s choking on something. God, he’s so transparent. “Yeah, for sure. Maybe.”

Ilya grins. “Or are you nervous to lose in front of me?”

“No.” The laugh is choked too, and sudden, like it’s caught Shane by surprise. “No, not nervous about that.”

Because he can, Ilya kisses him. And he doesn’t think about the way Shane’s face looked two months ago when he walked out of Ilya’s house, how he’d fumbled and fumbled with Ilya’s shirt as he stammered his goodbye. He doesn’t think about returning to the bedroom hours later to drag himself back into their still damp and dirty sheets and seeing the shirt folded neatly on the dresser. Or about the way that Shane had said, and truly meant it, “I can’t do this anymore.”

He doesn’t think at all. Shane’s lips are pressing against his, too, like maybe he didn’t initiate this, but he’s happy to continue it. It’s nothing like that cold and nervous kiss they shared yesterday morning, nor does it much resemble the desperation with which Shane has entered Ilya’s bed so many times, or the tenderness afterwards that tells them it’s time for one of them to leave. This is natural, not quite easy yet, but hopeful. Lips slightly parted, lingering long enough to say I’d like more. If not now, soon, let’s meet again. And Ilya doesn’t think about any of the things that have made him feel like such a fool over the last two months, because nothing could be further from his mind when he’s as happy as he is.

Upstairs, back in Rose’s suite, Ilya kicks his shoes off in the entry, peels off his jeans, and splays out on the bed. The dull grey fade of afternoon gives way to a peachy blush sky that paints the ceiling something salmon, like the script he knows he should be reading, but he can’t, yet. Just a moment longer. He doesn’t know how long this will last, this feeling he has now or any of it, this situation they’ve found themselves in which has shifted like sunset on a ceiling from what he had first seen as a predicament and now, like one thing fading and another illuminating, has come to think of as an opportunity.

He pats the bed beside him blindly, searching for Rose’s phone. He texts her in English the same message he texts Svetlana in Russian. Everything good today? Rose replies first.


Sunny 🌞: It’s a lot all at once, but I think I did okay.

Sunny 🌞: I can tell it will get easier when I know where everything is, who everyone is, etc. and can just focus on the hockey

Sunny 🌞: But Svetlana gave me a lot of good feedback and pointers!

Selene 🌚: very good

Selene 🌚: focus on hockey yes and don’t worry so much about the rest

Selene 🌚: okay if you call someone by the wrong name. I barely speak english they’re used to it

Sunny 🌞: lol


He taps her nails against the screen, wondering if he should offer information up about his day, or if it’s strange for her to hear about it. She beats him to the punch.


Sunny 🌞: Guessing you’re back at the hotel? How’d things go with Shane today?


I’m crazy about him, he wants to type. I never let myself be crazy over anyone before, mostly because I never wanted to and then because I couldn’t. I didn’t know what it would feel like.


Selene 🌚: went pretty good I guess

Selene 🌚: men are easy. We had nice time

Sunny 🌞: ha!

Sunny 🌞: I told you he was a good guy.

Sunny 🌞: Glad you didn’t throw your gloves off and start punching each other

Selene 🌚: Good hockey talk Rose Landry, I see you are learning fast how to play like me. lots of chirping lots of fighting lots of scoring.

Selene 🌚: no brawling today. We had little talk as planned and he was good listener

Selene 🌚: should be okay

Sunny 🌞: That’s great!!!

Sunny 🌞: We’re on our way to dinner now but catch me up tomorrow when you leave set?

Selene 🌚: okay 👍


In the time he’s been talking with Rose, three messages have come in from Svetlana with actual useful information. 


Svetlana 🦊: A weak start and a stressful day, but she’s getting the hang of it.

Svetlana 🦊: You will be fucked for this Pittsburgh game Thursday. No avoiding it. But it will be good exposure for her and they will run Marleau’s line plenty so you don’t get completely humiliated. By next week she’ll get into the swing of it.

Svetlana 🦊: How were things for you 👀


He scrubs a hand over his face. Pittsburgh loves to come show off in Boston, all the pretty boys on their roster skating figure eights around the rink like fucking ice capades. It’s not an easy loss to swallow. He thinks of calling in a Tonya Harding on their center, or perhaps on himself — Rose is a nice girl, but it’s his leg to break, if it really comes down to it.

It’s early in the season. They’re in good standings, for now. He’ll live. Went good with me, Ilya sends back, because there’s no point dodging the question. Svetlana is the only person he can talk to honestly about this, even if he’s scared to talk about whatever fragile feeling’s filling him up right now. Weak start too but got better. Long story.


Svetlana 🦊: That’s good.

Svetlana 🦊: Just got to dinner, shouldn’t be out late.

Svetlana 🦊: Call me in a couple hours and give me the long version?


He texts back in the affirmative. Feeling preemptively guilty, as he knows he’ll end up on the phone with Svetlana probably far too late, he manages to pull himself up from the bed and go track down this orangey pink script from where he’s tossed her bag onto the coffee table. Rose may not be totally succeeding, but at least she’s trying. He owes her the same.

Luckily, the changes between this version of the script and the previous one are minor enough. The mystical orb they’re supposed to be tracking down has been swapped out for a mysterious cube, and the villainous, terrorist nation who had previously been a not so subtle stand-in for a specific Middle Eastern country has been doctored to be slightly more subtle. REHEARSE THE LINES OUT LOUD, Rose had insisted in her VBD (Very Bossy Document). ACTING IS A PROCESS OF MAKING CHOICES — DON’T JUST READ THE LINES. DO SOMETHING WITH THEM!

“Senator Lawrence,” Ilya reads aloud, chin tucked to his chest, aiming for an air of gravitas. “You’re putting yourself and everyone else in grave danger. I need you to give me the cube.”

Not for quite some time has Ilya felt so aware that English is not his first language. Even reading from the page, the words feel foreign to him, like he isn’t sure which syllables take what emphasis. He’s not very good at this, he thinks. He might be bad, in fact. This should be cause for concern, he supposes, but then again, he’s watched a couple superhero movies, and he feels he isn’t too far off of what he’s seen in some of them.

His phone buzzes on the table, Svetlana likely home from dinner by now. “I need you to give me the orb,” he tries again. No, not the orb. “I need you to give me the cube. The cube. Senator Lawrence, I need you to give me the cube. You’re putting everyone in grave danger.” Pacing, he grabs his phone, eyes glued to the page as though some hidden meaning will appear, and only looks at the screen when it vibrates again in his hand.

It’s not Sveta. It’s Shane. A picture taken from the doorway of his closet, angled to show his anally retentive, no doubt professionally organized clothes hanging and shelving system, including the newly purchased garments which have been slotted into their designated homes.


Shane: Shannon texted that the alterations on the other stuff should done and ready for pickup by the weekend :)


It’s such an unnecessary update, delivered with such earnest enthusiasm, that Ilya feels like he might combust. He types out a response, imagines the messages popping up on Shane’s end labeled under Rose now, rather than Lily. 


Rose: perfect

Rose: now you can send proof of ratty brown fleece going in incinerator 😍


Shane responds in seconds. Maybe he’s looking at his phone like Ilya is, grinning in the privacy of his own home.


Shane: omg lol

Shane: How do you even know about that??

Rose: I have seen you in it on TV, when they show you for away games


Not the most convincing lie he’s ever told. He bites the edge of his thumb nail, waiting nervously for a response. Apparently, it’s convincing enough.


Shane: Yeah well I wear it for away games because it helps me win 😄

Shane: and it’s ratty because I’ve had it since I was 15

Rose: yes and it is too small for you now. and makes you look like lumpy teddy bear

Shane: hahaha

Shane: well it’s lucky, so I’m keeping it 😜

Rose: you hockey players are so superstitious 🙄


Minutes pass without a response. Dots appear to indicate that Shane is typing and deleting, typing and deleting. This is a long standing habit of his, and Ilya’s always wondered if Shane knows that he can see him doing it. Just as he’s picking up the script to get back to work, the long labored over message comes through.


Shane: Thanks again for today btw. Maybe it sounds corny but that was probably the best day I’ve had in a while


How can Ilya be expected to think straight? Who could possibly expect him to act right, or make good choices, when there is a beautiful man messaging his phone, who’s gorgeous and funny and strict and anal retentive and possibly thinks that women don’t deserve carbs but is also so sweet, and who’s telling Ilya that Ilya makes him happy?


Rose: better than playing hockey?!

Shane: best day off the ice ;)

Rose: :(

Rose: I see where I stand…


He’s chipped through the pale pink polish on his thumb, chewing and chewing at the nail.


Rose: I had a good day too

Rose: get some rest and have good game tomorrow ❤️


He edits the message right after it’s sent, changes have good game to have a good game and waits for Shane to add a heart tapback before he locks his phone.

Somehow, he’s found himself sitting on the floor, cross legged. He pulls the salmon script from the couch and tries the line again. “Senator Lawrence,” he recites, “you’re putting yourself and everyone else in grave danger.” This time, he can sort of believe it.

Chapter 5: Rose

Rose wakes on her second day in Ilya’s body nearly as disoriented as she felt on the first. Crystalline light bounces in through floor to ceiling windows, refracting off of snow-tipped trees just beyond the yard. There’s an acrid odor emanating from below her; downstairs, coffee’s either brewing or burning. The diegetic soundtrack to this scene: intermittent bursts of buzzsaw alternated by paroxysms of shouting, a one-sided argument in a language that, even after wiping the sleep from her eyes, she still can’t understand. All of this is filtered through a sensory input system which has only recently become acquainted with the mind she uses to process such things, so there seems to be a bit of a delay in understanding just what the fuck exactly is going on around here.

She finds a pair of sweatpants in a drawer, opens three further drawers to eventually find one filled with shirts, then shuts it, remembering that she’s currently unburdened by the societal pressure to cover her tits in mixed company. The only toothbrush in the bathroom is Ilya’s, obviously. It’s not the first time she’s brushed her teeth since they’ve swapped, but it still takes a moment to wrap her mind around the fact that it’s not really technically disgusting to put this random guy’s toothbrush into her mouth, considering her mouth is also his.

Svetlana’s in the kitchen when Rose makes her way downstairs. She appears to be the cause of the lion’s share of overstimulation Rose woke up to this morning — there’s something chunky and half-integrated in the blender, which explains the buzzsaw punctuating her dreams, and she’s screaming into Ilya’s phone while violently dispersing creatine into a shaker water bottle.

“Ты можешь с этим разобраться, или ты бесполезнее осла, пытающегося высрать тостер?” Svetlana shouts, agitating the creatine like she might at any point chuck the whole damn bottle right through the glass wall. She notices Rose and mouths, apologetic, Did I wake you? before returning to her tirade.

Coffee, yes, there’s coffee. And a half carton of eggs sitting next to a frying pan atop a burner which hasn’t yet been lit, so Rose slides in behind Svetlana and lights it herself, then begins searching for a spatula.

“Ну так разберись с этим. Нет – ты разберись, чтоб тебя. Придумай что-нибудь сам, Алексей! Боже, ну ты и мудила.” She ends the calls and tosses the phone — Ilya’s phone — too carelessly across the countertop, dropping her face down onto her folded arms and letting out a brief cry of frustration. “Будь он собакой, этого тупицу бы даже в космос не отправили.”

“Sorry, what was that?” Rose asks. It wasn’t meant for her, clearly. It’s more that she’d like to remind Svetlana of her presence and reestablish some sort of… rapport.

“Nothing.” Correcting her posture, Svetlana taps her fingertips in quick successive movements on her forehead, then drags her knuckles along her brow bone and down through her jaw like she’s ridding herself of tension via lymphatic drainage. “An Ilya problem. And you have enough Ilya problems for today, I think. This one can be mine.”

All the same, Rose would like to be looped in. What can she do, though, when she’s asked already and been rebuffed? Her entire life now exists on a need to know basis, and apparently Svetlana has unilaterally decided that this is one of many things Rose doesn’t need to know.

“Eggs?” Rose offers, because None of this is fair! feels not necessarily productive.

“Yes. No! You sit down, I will take care of breakfast. Am taking care of it, already.” It’s like she’s remembered herself all at once, that she’s in a kitchen with half a protein shake atrophying on the countertop and a slightly uncomfortable Rose Landry unsure of exactly how to make herself at home.

“I don’t mind helping,” Rose says, even as she slides onto a stool. She may not mind helping, but she senses that, at least in this case, Svetlana will mind being helped.

So they sit in awkward silence while Svetlana oils the pan, burns the oil, swears in Russian, wipes the pan, oils it again, and cracks four eggs in quick succession. All while Rose… sits there. Whatever camaraderie they’d established last night over pale ales seems to have evaporated like foam, from fizz to flat by morning. Neither of them had chosen this odd setup, had any context for each other, no, but there had been something Rose is sure she hadn’t imagined — a scheming excitement like they were partners in some petty crime, teenage girls sliding drugstore lipsticks up the sleeves of their boyfriend’s too big hoodies and giggling when they caught each others’ eyes. Or maybe she was imagining it. That’s the sort of friendship Rose has found herself attracted to before.

Instead, she’s become the resented ward of this beautiful stranger who she did not ask to cook her breakfast or do her favors or do anything. Rose feels churlish, suddenly. She’s never coped especially well with being disliked.

“Sorry, I know we said we’d start the day at eight,” she says in a manner that could be plausibly described as tactful but is really much more passive-aggressive. “I did mean to be up earlier, but… no alarm.”

Svetlana sighs into the eggs, poking them forlornly, and there’s a defeated slouch to her model-esque posture that makes Rose forgive her before the apology even comes. “I’m sorry. I woke up early, it was afternoon in Moscow, and so I figured—” Svetlana prods a yolk, gripping the spatula in such a manner that Rose wonders if she’s ever held one before. She laughs bitterly, probably not at the egg. “I suppose I figured I would put myself in a very bitchy mood to start the day.”

Rose imagines her sneaking into Ilya’s bedroom to remove his phone off the charger and feels her stomach wobble slightly at the thought of Svetlana seeing her sleep. Then again, Rose wouldn’t have looked anything like herself. “That’s alright,” Rose says, meaning it now that her brief tantrum has passed. “I’m a bitch most mornings.”

“And I’m sorry I’m a shit cook.” The eggs are slid from pan to plate, and Svetlana, shamefaced, sets them in front of Rose. The diet plan Ilya sent over had suggested fried eggs; charitably, these could be described as “scrambled,” but only if the charity was the Make-a-Wish foundation and Svetlana was a really sick kid whose feelings no one wanted to hurt. “There are special things I’m meant to be feeding you, but I grew up very rich and order meals in a lot, and, well — at least I shook the powder into this water bottle alright.”

The creatine is silty at the bottom of the shaker bottle, beige sediment that’s managed to evade even her best efforts. “I can cook,” Rose offers. “For future meals.”

“Fabulous.”

Rose somehow manages to choke down the supplement and protein heavy morning meal that Svetlana’s prepared; Svetlana, in the meantime, stands out on the deck alternating sips of coffee and puffs of cigarette. She takes several phone calls in that time from her own phone, a couple in English that seem work related and one in Russian that must be to Ilya or someone else she likes. By the time she comes back inside, she’s as buoyant and indefatigable as the night before. Her hair is clipped up, curls high and bouncy like she aims to get something done today, with tendrils loose at the front as an aesthetic concession.

“Right!” She claps her hands together, down to business, the morning’s stroppiness forgotten by all parties now. “I’ve been by my place, picked things up. You’ve been fed. I’m dressed. You’ll get dressed, presumably. And we’ll get you on the ice, yes? Have you skating like a pro. Are you excited, or what?”

Or what. In the last 24 hours, Rose has impressed even herself with the way she’s been able to inhabit the role of Ilya — brash, sullen, volatile, manspreading to a degree that’s anatomically improbable. But this whole “professional hockey player” aspect of the character suddenly reminds her of callbacks she’s gotten for parts that require her to actually play the trombone in front of casting directors like her resume claimed she could. Unprepared, and generally fucked.

“I’m actually feeling kind of nervous,” she admits, since in this case there’s really no use in lying. Yes there is, she thinks right afterwards. She’ll think you’re much cooler if you seem confident.

“You’ll be great,” Svetlana reassures her. “And if you’re not, there’s always time to tear your ACL before the game on Thursday. That’ll buy you at least a couple months.”

“Yes,” Rose says, not reassured at all, actually. “There’s always that.”


Ilya’s house has a large and well lit garage with room for several sports cars; Rose knows this, because she’s perused his social media and already familiarized herself with the instagram story highlight labeled “🏎️ THE WHIPS 👅” which is a mere 53 slides long.

He has a Lamborghini Huracan that’s blacked out down to the rims, windows tinted way too dark to be street legal. Beside it, his Ferrari 458 Speciale is a virulent shade of yellow, jaundice on wheels, and the windows on this one aren’t tinted because presumably, Ilya finds this vehicle of his so sexy that he can’t bear not to be seen in it. Standing there in person, looking at them side by side, it clicks that he’s coordinated these cars to match the colors of the Boston Raiders, and when she realizes this Rose says aloud, in his voice, “What a complete douche.”

There’s a third vehicle: a Porsche that’s low and curvy, sleek, painted super clean milky white, the color that some of the sluttier girls she knows will paint their toenails in the summertime. This is Svetlana’s car. Rose takes the scenic route around it, strolling with her hands jammed in her pockets and whistling with admiration. She’s not a car person, but in adult life she’s become a rich person who associates with other rich people, many of whom it is her professional obligation to flatter, and therefore is well practiced in the art of revving a car person’s engine, so to speak.

“Hot piece,” she says, and Svetlana, loading bags into the back of the Lambo, glows.

“She’s new,” Svetlana says with the sort of pride a mother might reserve for her newborn if said newborn was an extremely sexy sports car. She slams the trunk of the Lamborghini and goes to open the passenger door, holding it ajar until Rose cottons on that she’s meant to get in. “Today though, we will borrow one of Ilya’s toys. I don’t think he will mind sharing with his friends, do you?”

Why not? Ilya’s probably laying in her suite right now, eating the expensive fair trade bonbons she’d picked up as swag from some event or other recently and smearing his chocolatey fingers in her sheets. She sinks back into the black leather void and lets the shitty Russian rap bass boosted in the speakers chime through her like a sound bath. If she was on set getting ready to play Ilya, she’d be in her trailer doing the same thing — disassociating, meditating, whatever you wanted to call it. Leaving her own body and mind as far away as possible and only returning when there was a character in place to inhabit.

And it should seem silly, to put on his whole uniform, jersey and pads and everything, simply to skate around this big empty rink for just Svetlana. But this, too, is acting. Costuming is characterization, the act of donning the garments that separate an actor from his or her lived experience or time or place and force them bodily into that of another. It is a type of transformation akin, in Rose’s mind, to alchemy. She’d caught the acting bug from that, in fact. In an elementary school multipurpose room, up on stage only seven years old and barely wise enough to read the script she’d been given, suddenly the ratty little dress and bonnet her mother had pricked her fingers sewing had transformed Rose into a proper English ragamuffin, complete with a strikingly accurate (for East Lansing) cockney accent.

She muses to Svetlana about all this, geared up mostly, save for lacing her skates. Remarks that it was clever for Svetlana to insist Rose do it full out, like a dress rehearsal.

Svetlana grins, full lips twisting fondly. “This is a good point. Mostly the pads are very heavy though, and I do not want you to tip over your first time skating on TV.”

Okay, well, that’s fair too.

“You can skate already, Ilya tells me.” The answer is self evident. While Svetlana sits elegantly on the players’ bench, legs crossed and eyes narrowed with focus, Rose is carving sloppy figure eights into the ice, trying to find her balance.

“I’m more comfortable on figure skates.” In fact, Rose had done almost all her own skating in A Salchow for Santa a handful of years ago, but she doesn’t mention this. The thought of having to explain the preponderance of Hallmark holiday romcoms on her IMDb feels like more mortification than she can handle right now. “I learned in hockey skates, though. Hand-me-downs from when my brothers grew out of them.”

“Good, yes.” Svetlana’s gaze is cool and keen, eyes on Rose’s feet and flicking up to evaluate her stance, her expression. “Skate as you would, then. Let us get a baseline.”

Cones have been produced from somewhere Rose knows not — she doesn’t even know if she and Svetlana are supposed to be here, but here they are. She’s directed in a sort of traffic course which requires demonstration of most basic skating skills and a few advanced ones. Rose does well, in her own humble opinion. Svetlana’s plush and painted lips, pulled into a pessimistic moue, seem to indicate less confidence.

“Very nice as you,” she says. “Now skate again as Ilya, this time.”

Rose thinks about Rozanov, the hulking swagger with which he’d entered her hotel suite and the controlled dominance in game footage she’s pored over in ESPN highlight reels. She channels this, expanding her stance and propelling herself through the cones with greater power than before, moving as him, moving until—

“Start again please.” Svetlana’s tone is neutral, and it takes her repeating herself for Rose to understand she’s being told to stop. “Again, from the beginning. As Ilya, please.”

She’s never found it useful for a director to ask her to take it from the top without some sort of guidance as to what she can amend, and it holds true now. Slight irritation bristles, tickling the duck’s tail curling at the nape of her neck, and she thinks, use this.

It’s not useful. “Нет, не так. No, come back please.” This before her back foot’s even left the ground.

Rose glides towards the bench, pulls up fast along the boards and lets her weight slam into them. “Is there something you’d like me to do differently?”

Svetlana’s arms are folded in her puffer coat, and it’s almost maddening how she manages to look so circular and so chic simultaneously. “I was told that you had tested this with Ilya. Your muscle memory theory. I need help to understand if this theory is bullshit, or if you are doing it incorrectly. I think I know the answer, but it will require much more effort on both our parts if I am wrong.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Rose says, defensive and not caring if it sounds that way. There’s something about Svetlana, how quickly she can switch between ebullient charm and calm control, that Rose finds destabilizing. Annoyingly, she finds it makes her that much more desperate to impress her, and to win back the effusive praise that seems so hard to earn.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” In the shower this morning, Rose had managed to adjust the knob to the ideal temperature on her first try, and after minutes standing in the steaming water, muscles loosening, when it had occurred to wonder How did I know to do that? she understood that it had been that involuntary act of letting Ilya’s body take control.

“Good. Then we agree.” It’s cold in here, big and open in the arena with just the two of them, and her curt, quiet words seem to shiver, echoing tight and frigid. “So what I would like differently is for you to do your muscle memory tactic correctly this time.”

Rose feels her jaw clench in frustration, molars working back and forth. “Well, that’s what I’ve been trying. If it wasn’t clear. So maybe some more specific feedback could be helpful.”

“Why are you chewing that?” Svetlana asks abruptly.

Rose doesn’t know the answer; at first, she doesn’t understand the question. Chewing what? she’s about to say, and realizes as her lips move to form the words that Ilya’s mouthguard is dangling out the side of her mouth from her back teeth and that, without realizing, she’s been gnawing at it for some time. “I have no idea,” she admits. “I didn’t even know I was doing it.”

Svetlana gives her a significant look.

“Right. Okay.” Rose backs up towards the blue line designated as her starting point. She clears her mind of the misstep, of feeling slow on the uptake, of anything that feels like her, like thought at all. “Again?”

“Please and thank you.”

“Don’t play it like a scene,” Rose remembers Jodie Foster telling her when they were at the bottom of that well together and a producer watching the monitors had moments earlier stormed off, screaming that Rose would be replaced the minute they could find another 12 year old around here with a SAG card. “Don’t act, don’t think about acting. It’s happening, okay? Just let it happen.”

This advice had sounded pretty stupid to Rose, at the time. What were her parents spending all this money on acting lessons for if she wasn’t going to use them? But on the other hand, Jodie Foster was the only person Rose had ever met who’d had an Oscar nomination when she was her age. So she tried it. And it worked.

She tries it here. Just lets it happen. She’s on the blue line, and she needs to get through these cones, past the other blue line, pivot, sail backwards easy, around their goal and back. She does it.

No, not even that — it’s not as though it’s something she’s controlling, it’s something happening to her. Like driving home from a long day at work and suddenly finding herself parked in her driveway and trying to remember how she’d gotten there, like, had she even stopped at any lights? She’s a passenger and Ilya is the vehicle. As long as Rose knows the destination, she’ll somehow manage to arrive.

“Very, very nice,” Svetlana says, standing now and leaning over the sideline, waiting to pull Rose close as she returns, to rub an encouraging hand over one of these stupid massive shoulder pads. “This is a relief, Rose. I’m very impressed. Would you like to play some hockey now?”

For two hours, barring occasional breaks so Rose doesn’t pass out from exertion, she does exactly that. Svetlana has her running drill after drill, simple things at first to ensure she can handle the puck, and more complicated maneuvers once she decides that Rose can handle them. Rose has good instincts, it turns out, though frequently Svetlana has to remind her to use them less.

It won’t be like this Thursday night. It’s not like she’ll be skating a solo exhibition; she’ll be leading a team whose plays she’s only memorized in the last 24 hours and without ever having passed a puck to any of them.

“There’s only so much we can do,” Svetlana agrees. “The point is to practice letting his body take over. It will be the same against Pittsburgh. Ilya knows how to play against them. You let him do all the work.”

Rose is sweating; she pulls her helmet off and feels curls sticking damp against her forehead. Even Svetlana’s removed her jacket, overheating no doubt from the taxing work of telling Rose what to do and stalking up and down the sidelines. Beneath her coat she’s wearing a clinging black top, high in the neck and long sleeved but so tight to her frame that Rose is blindsided by adrenaline, by a sudden, unexpected greed to wrap hands around Svetlana’s slim ribcage, to grip her waist, to pull her close and drag nails down her back. Jesus fuck, she needs to get out of Ilya’s brain for a minute.

She rinses off in the showers, turns the water icy cold when these intrusive thoughts don’t seem to want to leave her brain or body for that matter. The makeshift cold plunge helps; by the time they’re ready to head out , she’s shaken off whatever urges had been infecting her subconscious, nibbling like some tiny Ilya-shaped parasite.

“This went well.” Svetlana’s taking her to lunch somewhere with large portions, perhaps to make up for the lack of sustenance Rose has been presented with so far in their time together. “I’m feeling confident, after this morning.”

“Are you?”

“Aren’t you?”

Rose stares out into traffic, musing. The windows are tinted so severely that she’s treated mostly to Ilya’s reflection, beyond which lies a dim, near imperceptible view of State Street. “If you’re feeling confident, then I guess I’m feeling confident. You’re the expert.”

“I’m feeling confident,” Svetlana repeats, waiting patiently to be let over so she can turn left, jutting the nose of Ilya’s car in when this asshole in the next lane pretends not to see them. “To tell you the truth, it’s very spooky. You do not resemble him very much when we talk like this — your mannerisms are quite different, you know, and you choose your words differently. Of course. You’re different people, different thoughts. But on the ice, you’re looking close now. Very, very spooky.”

They go somewhere Italian-ish. A waiter comes and makes them caesar salad tableside, which is the genre of unnecessary theatricality for a Wednesday lunch service that Rose is kind of a sucker for. She orders carbonara; she never eats that heavy midday, especially when she’s working, but two workouts in one day seems like a solid excuse to indulge in something forbidden and starchy.

“You’ve watched Montreal play, I’m guessing?”

Svetlana makes an affirmative noise, puts a polite hand in front of her lips to cover her chewing as she says, “Of course.” Swallows, takes a sip of water. “Your Hollander is very good. I watch when they play Boston, obviously, or when they make playoffs. Other games, only occasionally. I watch the Admirals often too. The other teams, sporadically.”

Rose tears a piece of bread from the loaf that’s been placed between them; Svetlana slides the basket closer so Rose can carboload with greater ease. “Their styles of play are… different. Shane and Ilya. I’m sure that’s obvious to you. It’s hard to put into words — I watched a stream of their game the other night, and then today when I was on the ice, it was like — I mean, do you know what I mean?”

“Completely.” She speaks in a tone which implies they have equal knowledge on the subject, which Rose thinks is generous. After the morning they’ve spent together, Rose is fairly certain she’s never met any woman, at least a non-professional, who knows the sport like Svetlana does. “It’s to do with focus. Hollander sees everything on the ice, he’s like — what’s the word I’m looking for? Vigilant sounds not quite right, but — hyperaware? He’s thoughtful, deliberate. Executes consistently. Good skating, good handling. Great handling, as a matter of fact.”

This all strikes Rose as true, and despite the strange distance between she and Shane on so many levels right now, she feels herself fill with pride. That’s her boyfriend, after all.

“Ilya is focused, obviously, but much more narrow.” Deftly, fork in one hand and spoon in the other, Svetlana twirls strands of cacio e pepe in a neat spiral. “He is a quicker thinker than Hollander; I’m biased, but I would say he is one of the most decisive players I have watched. Every shot, every pass, good or bad, right or wrong, the decision is quick. And he is less logical than Hollander, but this makes him more unpredictable as well, which can be a good thing.”

Rose shovels down her food and tries to consider this. She tries to think about Ilya, generally, to understand him better, but she’s sitting here across from this woman who appears at least in Rose’s estimation to be the most interesting thing in Ilya’s life, and it’s difficult not to find herself distracted.

“So the family situation,” she tries, grasping for anything compelling enough to pull her back on track.

“Mm. Yes.” Svetlana dabs the corner of her mouth with a cloth napkin, her lipstick still so intact, and Rose wants to ask what are you wearing, my god, look how it didn’t feather around the edges or anything even with all that oil on your pasta. “Well, his mother is dead, this you know. Suicide. We were young, and they were very close. He never talks about this, so it won’t come up — I only tell you so you understand him better.”

“Jesus. Okay.” It’s the classic genre trope of tragic origin story that enriches any anti-hero’s journey, and it does indeed help her understand the character, but still — it makes Rose sort of guilty to think of Ilya’s life in those terms, given that he’s very much a real person.

“His father has Alzheimer’s now, for a few years. You know… it’s hard to pinpoint when these things start. But it’s at an advanced stage.”

“Hence the cover story, then.”

“Yes. Hence the cover story.” Svetlana is so matter of fact as she reports on these conditions, it might come across as though she has no dog in this race, no stake in any of it. But Rose is coming to understand that this placid, analytical framework is how Svetlana dissects most of the things she gives a shit about. “It is a lot of responsibility, especially when he’s home in the summers. Phone calls can be challenging. Some days are better, some are worse. You can imagine. The dementia is very difficult for Ilya, but… it was difficult for Ilya with his father before, too. I think it is just a different kind of difficult now.”

Rose has never lived through anything like that, and prays she never has to. She shifts uncomfortably in her chair, knowing that should something happen to one of her parents, it will be her brothers who live 18 minutes towards the other side of town who bear the brunt of the caretaking labor, not her. Ilya in Boston, his father in Moscow — she imagines there’s a similar guilt that settles like cement in the gut.

“He has an older brother, Alexei—”

“That’s who you were on the phone with this morning?”

“Yes.” Svetlana takes a prim sip of her Sea Breeze, like she’s steeling herself to even discuss him. It’s a physical act imbued with so much character and mood that Rose mentally files it away to steal for a role someday. “He’s four years older than Ilya. Alexei is also afflicted by a condition, one that in his case simply causes him to be a useless piece of shit to those around him and which he treats by consuming more cocaine than he knows what to do with. He and Ilya only got along when Ilya was too young to realize Alexei was picking on him. Not much has changed. He is a bully.”

It’s compelling, yes, but mostly all this exposition leaves Rose feeling sad and uncomfortable. She has the urge to text Ilya a hug emoji, or something she might send a girlfriend going through a rough patch, like You’re a bad bitch and you’ve got this!! Always in your corner and here for you whenever you need to vent 💞💞💞. Obviously, she doesn’t. Instead, she smiles encouragingly. “Sounds like you’re one of the rare good people in his life. He’s lucky to have you.”

Svetlana smiles in return, looks at Rose like she sees right through that comment, though Rose herself doesn’t think there was any double meaning to be found. “We do what we can for each other.”

There comes a lull in the conversation, and again, Rose finds herself yearning to stray off topic. It seems rude not to, really, with Svetlana sitting here, lit up by the frozen winter sunlight of the early afternoon, gazing at Rose with that sort of faint glow she has, and isn’t it rude to talk and talk about someone who isn’t even here? To not even bother trying to make conversation? Shouldn’t they at least attempt to pass the Bechdel test?

“And do you have any siblings?” Rose looks down into her empty bowl as she says it, scraping at the fast congealing sauce still clinging to the sides. I’m asking because I want to know more about you. I’m curious because I’ve never met someone with eyes that shade of green, and I’m wondering if there’s anyone on earth that’s quite like you.

“A half brother. We aren’t close in age, so we didn’t grow up together. It’s more like having a cousin, maybe.” Svetlana has pasta left uneaten, and she, too, is playing with her food, swirling strands around her fork and staring at the plate as though it’s far away. “I suppose Ilya was like a brother to me, growing up.”

Rose raises an eyebrow. “A brother that you fuck?” she says, and is gratified that Svetlana laughs.

“It does sound strange. You’re right. Brother is maybe not accurate.” She pulls her phone from her bag and taps and scrolls at the screen as she continues. “I think we have been different things to each other at different times.”

She offers her phone across the table. The image on the screen is a scanned photograph of the two of them as children on a warm summer’s day in a field of sunflowers, made even warmer by virtue of being captured on an old film stock that no longer exists. Two mops of curls, Ilya’s even blonder then, hair pale enough for sunlight to stream through, and Svetlana’s much darker, shorter, frizzing around her face and illuminated like a halo. Her nose is scrunched, tongue stuck out, and Ilya’s got crossed-eyes atop a stretched-wide, shit-eating grin, and they’re both in shorts and t-shirts, and the sunflowers’ stalks are taller than they are, growing up so high into the sky.

“A day trip for my tenth birthday,” Svetlana says, taking the phone back once Rose has had a chance to zoom in on their faces. She looks at it herself one more time, affectionate, before tucking the phone back in her purse. “Sveta and Ilyushka.”

They order another round; Svetlana’s drinking a cocktail of vodka, grapefruit, and cranberry, and it’s probably unwise for Rose to have a midday tipple when the day in question involves six hours of exercise and an afternoon tantamount to espionage, but they both agree one drink won’t kill her. Svetlana asks about Rose’s brothers, and Rose tells the truth, that she grew up close with them, but they’re all closer with each other than they are with her, and Svetlana gives her hand a quick and sympathetic squeeze across the table. They discuss hockey, briefly, as it pertains to them, and Rose giggles guiltily at the thought that her brother Peter, whiling away the best years of his career in the AHL, would surely combust to know that Rose will be playing on the starting line at TD Garden in two days time.

Svetlana’s father is a known quantity, former hockey star and nebulously significant politician, at least to Rose who has no frame of reference for Russian politics. Apparently her mother is a long retired model, which makes so many things click into place, and an American, a New Yorker, which Rose finds fascinating.

“She only lived in Russia for the brief period of her marriage to my father. I think that it was never home for her like New York was — although, to say that, she’s lived in Paris for three years now.”

“They met in Russia? Or in America?” A waiter’s hovering, maybe trying to offer their bill, and Rose ignores him.

“In Monaco, actually.” Svetlana, seeing the waiter, mistakes his intent and flags him down for another drink. “They were there for the Grand Prix. What? What’s funny?”

She directs those comments at the rosy, bubbling laugh Rose can’t suppress. “Nothing! Nothing. It makes complete sense.”

“What makes complete sense? Stop! You’re laughing at me.” But it’s made Svetlana laugh too, and Rose is charmed to see her lipstick has smeared now, just a little.

“You strike me as exactly the sort of person whose parents would have met in Monaco,” Rose says. “At the Grand Prix.” She delivers this last bit in a French accent, which Svetlana of course does not have.

“And what sort of person is that?” Svetlana’s eyes are wide and shining, tantalized.

“Not any sort of type! The you type!” It’s not her fault everything she says sounds slightly stupid right now — her words are coming out of a man’s mouth, it can’t be helped. “I mean it like, I look at you, and that’s exactly what I see. And I look at me, and I look exactly like the sort of girl whose parents met in gym class at East Lansing High and will have been together 37 years in March.”

A freshened drink is manifested in Svetlana’s hand, the empty glass vanished. She sips the new one delicately, eying Rose as she does so. “Maybe the look of a woman whose parents met in gym class is a desirable look.”

There’s that, too. Svetlana has made these innocuous but indisputably flirtatious comments several times now — outside while smoking last night, in the car to practice this morning — and Rose can’t work out if they’re all a harmless joke, like girlish banter, or if some part of Svetlana can’t quite turn off seeing her as Ilya, and Rose is only getting caught in the crossfire.

“I guess I do okay for myself,” Rose says back, keeping the tone vague enough that maybe she’s in on this flirting joke or maybe she’s being the correct amount of confident, the correct amount of modest that any well-mannered woman should be on receiving a compliment. It doesn’t bother her that Svetlana said it. It was nice of her, obviously. She’s a nice person. And so is Rose. And they’re having a nice time.

The fun can’t last forever. With 30 minutes left until practice, Svetlana waves the waiter down for the check, then prompts Rose to brandish Ilya’s credit card. “Business expense,” she winks.

Rose feels the ticking clock encroaching, the second hand poking at her lower back, prodding her along. Panicked, she begins a rapid fire assault of questions it hadn’t yet occurred to her to ask about Ilya, about the Raiders, about major league hockey, like she’s cramming for a test. What sort of music does he listen to when he works out? Are there any hockey superstitions, like the way you’d call Macbeth “the Scottish play” in theater, or things like that that she should know about? Do guys in locker rooms really snap their towels at each others’ asses after they shower, or is that just from movies?

Svetlana’s lips curl up at this last question and she glances towards Rose in the passenger seat. “What kinds of movies are you watching?”

When they arrive back at the practice facility, they dawdle in the car a moment, waiting for another player to pull up. Rose has a general sense of where to go, but she knows that coasting on a buddy system until she gets the hang of things is preferable to looking for the bathroom and ending up locked in a janitor’s closet.

A Dodge Charger cruises into the lot, revving like a douche, stupid-ass loud motor farting all the way to a spot right by where Rose and Svetlana are parked. The windows are down, and Rose can hear Tool blasting until the engine’s cut. The driver’s side door opens, and out pops a man with the eerily familiar appearance of Rose’s brother’s Superman action figure which she’d microwaved in 1998 while in a fit of rage.

“Marleau,” Svetlana reminds her.

“Yup.” Rose rolls her shoulders out, cracks her neck from side to side. Nothing to it but to do it, as a second AD once told her Tom Cruise always said before doing his own stunts. She’d checked his IMDb later in the day, and the guy had never worked with Tom Cruise. Still.

She pops the door and unfolds herself from the car with the lazy bravado that’s Ilya’s default pose, in her mind. Bored. Built. Blasé. She doesn’t bother catching Marleau’s attention; she knows he’ll turn, knows he’ll greet Ilya himself.

Which he does, with brows raised in surprise at seeing Rose — Ilya, in his mind — climbing out the passenger side of the vehicle rather than the driver’s door. “Shit, brother. You got a fuckin’ chauffeur now?”

Rose raps a knuckle on the window and Svetlana rolls it down. “Hey handsome,” she calls from inside the car. “Ready for Pittsburgh?”

“Is that my favorite girl in there?” Marleau, pleased as punch, leans in the open window. “You know, I keep giving Roz my jerseys to pass along to you, but I never see you wearing them.”

“I’m flattered,” Svetlana giggles, and Rose thinks God, men are simple. “But you know 81 will always be my favorite number.”

She winks at Rose, and Rose, who had forgotten Ilya’s number altogether, finds herself blushing.

“Play nice with the other boys at practice, Ilyusha,” Svetlana coos, reaching for the gear stick. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

They stand and watch her drive off; Marleau, shifting his bag on his shoulder, shakes his head, solemn. “Hottest chick in the Northern hemisphere. Goddamn, are you a lucky bastard.”

“Only the Northern hemisphere?” Rose asks, following Cliff’s lead as they make their way into the facility.

He turns back with a wounded look. “You know how I feel about Brazilian girls, Roz. Come on.”

Locker room talk and they haven’t even hit the locker room. Rose snorts. They saunter down the hallway towards the changing rooms, and while Marleau waxes poetic about tanned skin and bleached blonde body hair, Rose keeps her head on a swivel. There are offices along the corridor that correspond to various staff positions, most of them pencil pushers. But somewhere, according to Ilya, is an office where she’ll find at least two out of the three coaches. Bald, Balder, and Upchuck, he’d listed them in his notes — Bald is the assistant coach, Balder the head coach, and Upchuck the goaltending coach she won’t have much contact with.

Do they have real names?! Rose had texted him. How am I supposed to know which one is Bald and which is Balder if I meet them at different times?????

Upchuck is named Charles something. How would I know I am not goalie. Not my problem, Ilya had texted, and then several eyeroll emojis. Head coach is named Rick Balder. He is a pretty big deal I am honestly surprised you haven’t heard of him. You are supposed to be big hockey fan.

And the assistant coach? Rose had asked.

Oh his name is Jim, Ilya replied. We only call him that because he is bald 🤣

Jim and Rick are in an office with the door ajar, stood on either side of a glossy, cherrywood conference table, poring over a calendar. Jim is in fact fairly bald; Rick’s slightly balder. Fucking Ilya, Rose thinks. She knocks on the open door, clears phlegm from her throat in what she hopes is a masculine way.

“Ol’ blue eyes!” Rick smiles when he sees Rose in the doorway. “What can I do you for today?”

Rose steps in, shoulders square, leading with her dick. Ilya’s dick. Whatever. “Is alright to—” she glances back to the doorway, reaches for the handle.

“Sure, sure.” Jim steps behind her, closes it himself. It’s obvious that Ilya rarely comes to them like this; she has their full attention instantly, and before she’s even spoken, there’s a gravity that seems to tug the air down around them.

Rose coughs. “My father is not well,” she says, as she’s been instructed to.

She doesn’t elaborate immediately, leaves space for their sympathetic Mmms and Sorry to hear that, kid.

“Yes, well. Is not ideal.” She sets her jaw. Ilya wouldn’t avoid eye contact often, she thinks, but he might now. Might feel uncomfortable having to ask for things, might feel small in a room with authority figures, based on what Svetlana’s told her. She stares at the carpet, a dizzying pattern of black and yellow cannons. “Right now is difficult to say much more. But it may be I need to go back to Russia soon. I do not know yet. Or how long I would need to be away.”

This is their contingency, the plan B she and Ilya and Svetlana have agreed upon. They want her to at least try playing, but Ilya’s pathologically averse to being embarrassed on the ice, and they all know faking injury or illness is out of the question — the medical staff are thorough, and she’d be found out the instant they subjected her to a checkup. Rose won’t actually go to Russia, obviously, but if she’s really fucking the team over, if she really can’t hack it, it’s a good enough cover story that she can lay low at Ilya’s until this all blows over and get some modicum of sympathy from the front office.

Not that they want to use it, if they don’t have to. But you can’t fake sick in fourth period Spanish when there’s a chem test in fifth; you need to lay the groundwork days ahead of time with a tickle in the throat on Tuesday.

“Let’s get Marleau on the ice today with Hammersmith and Leclerc, work him like a center, run some drills,” Rick says more to Jim than to Rose. Then he turns his full attention to Rose, and from just his expression, Rose feels certain he’s a kind man. “Fucking sorry to hear that, Rozanov. We’d always rather have you out there all 82 games, but family comes first.”

“Thank you,” Rose says, shuffling her weight.

They tell her to text either of them, day or night, if something should happen. They’re covering their own asses, of course, but it’s not a callous conversation. She wonders if it will come as any sort of relief to Ilya to hear how well this chat’s gone, considering the reality that this actual scenario may soon come to pass.

They wave her off to the gym to get a workout in and tell her to send in Marleau. Marleau, halfway into loose bike shorts when she walks into the changing room, fixes her with a curious expression when she notifies him that he’s being summoned.

The gym’s half full of other players, all of them milling about in branded gear, working out and chatting. This, at least, is familiar to Rose. Normally her routine’s more oriented towards getting toned than bulking up, but she’s had trainers for years and done enough ensemble action films that she’s even come to enjoy the communal workout vibe. All those famous people, huffing and puffing over reps — sweat is a great equalizer.

She starts with cardio. Ilya’s AirPods are charged, but she pops them in her ears and doesn’t bother playing music. This, too, is part of the plan. Good old fashioned eavesdropping.

Per Ilya’s recommendation, she sticks close to Connors, hopping on the stationary bike beside his and hoping, as she pedals, to be able to absorb intel about the other players and the state of the team through gossipy osmosis. It backfires. Today, the subject of his animated chit-chat to anyone in earshot is his sister’s upcoming nuptials in Napa, at which he’s expected to both read a poem he’s having one hell of a time memorizing, and make a toast he hasn’t yet written.

Rose hears the poem. Several times, in fact. It’s not a very good poem, and it’s not recited well. Connors has an intense fear of public speaking.

“You are speaking right now,” Rose grunts, adjusting the incline as she pedals harder, like she can possibly bike away from the conversation. “Speaking very much. In front of people. Does not seem too difficult for you.”

Actually, she has several tips she could offer, but she knows that Ilya wouldn’t do that. In here, around these people, she tries to stay as much within his headspace as possible. It’s convenient that Ilya seems to talk shit both to the people he can’t stand as well as those he’s very fond of; it gives her a safe baseline from which to operate.

Connors tries the poem again. He tries to improvise a toast, including several anecdotes that feel deeply inappropriate to recount in front of either set of grandparents, in Rose’s opinion. He deviates from the topic of this wedding only to pepper in a few reactions to some celebrity rag he’s subscribed to on instagram. At one particularly alarming moment, he turns his phone towards Rose to show her a photograph of she and Shane leaving Ciel two nights ago. Seeing this, Rose simultaneously loses footing on the bike, topples off, and nearly shits herself; strangely, Connors doesn’t seem particularly surprised by this reaction.

“I think they’re kind of cute together,” he shrugs. Rose stalks away to go do a pull-up or something.

She works out. She showers. It isn’t nearly as fraught as she’d anticipated. Mostly everyone keeps their eyes to themselves in there (of course they do — what had she expected? Intense penile eye contact?) and gets in and gets out without much fuss. Nobody whips her ass with a towel. Several players attempt genial conversation with her, but it’s all so surface level, hockey or weather or simple shit like that, that she passes through the gauntlet unscathed.

Ready to go in five, she texts Svetlana as she laces up her sneakers. When she’s outside, brisk Boston breeze whipping at her cheeks, she’s notified that Svetlana’s shared her location, on the road and less than ten minutes away.

She lights a cigarette, cupping her hand around the flame to protect it from the wind like she’s seen characters do in movies, and is delighted to see that it’s a real thing that really works.

“Bum me one?” Marleau slouches up beside her.

“Freeloader,” Rose mumbles, extending the pack and lighter towards him.

They smoke in silence a minute, wave to Carmichael as he passes them and heads toward his truck. Finally, Marleau breaks the ice, so to speak. “You wanna talk about it?”

Rose taps her thumb against the filter, ashes over a planter full of dead scrub. Muscle memory. “What is there to talk about?”

“You tell me, man.” Marleau shrugs. “Balder told me you’ve got family shit going on. He didn’t say what.”

“Good,” Rose says. She knows, because Ilya’s told her, that Marleau is his closest friend on the Raiders — maybe the only man he’d call a friend before he’d call him a teammate. She also knows, from spending the last day with Svetlana, that Ilya opening up even to his closest friends is enough of a rarity that the safest bet in imitating him is keeping her mouth shut on all personal matters.

“I know you’re having a shitty couple months.” Marleau holds his hands up. “I don’t press you on shit. I’m just saying, if you did want to get anything off your chest…”

“Thank you Marly, but no.” She sees the Svetlana dot on her phone turn onto the road. “Your mother is a very good listener. We talk in bed late into the night. I do not need any more than that.”

“And fuck you too, Rozy. My mom is a great listener, actually.”

Svetlana pulls up in her own car this time, white and slick and fast and sexy. Rose bounces on her toes before she can stop herself; she feels like Sloane outside the high school with Mr. Rooney, and Ferris Bueller’s pulled up to whisk her away for a day playing hooky.

She honks the horn twice in quick succession, beepbeep! and rolls the window down. “Any of you boys lookin’ for a ride?”

Rose stamps the cigarette out in the planter, leaves the butt behind and feels only a little bad for littering.

“Man, I know you’ve been in your feelings about your Montreal chick,” Marleau comments, staring wistfully down the steps at Svetlana. “But there is no fuckin’ way she’s this hot. You gotta tie this one down before someone else does.”

“But Marleau,” Rose chirps over her shoulder, skipping down the stairs with more excitement than befits the character, “I could not possibly. What your mother and I have is so, so special.”

She comes around to the driver’s side of the car and waits for Svetlana to roll down the window. “Can I drive?” Rose grins. She’s giddy all at once, maybe from the nicotine, maybe from the fact that she’s made it through her first real day and hasn’t fucked it up yet.

“I don’t know…” Svetlana bites her lip, teasing. “How are you at handling stick?”

Rose raises an eyebrow. “I’ve had a lot more practice lately.”

Svetlana laughs, unbuckles her seatbelt. “Fuck it. Hop in.”

Chapter 6: Ilya

Ilya makes it through the gates and onto set without much difficulty at all. Rose has a handler, apparently all these big shot actors do, and hers is a petite man so reserved that he initiates maybe a sentence and a half of conversation max. This early in the morning, forgoing small talk is typically preferred, but Ilya’s disappointed not to even get the chance to practice the convoluted rigamarole he and Rose have devised. He’s taken straight to hair and makeup, dropped off with only his phone and script while the handler whizzes away on a golf cart to deposit the rest of Rose’s belongings into her personal trailer.

Twenty minutes into hair and makeup, there’s a crisis.


Selene 🌚: NEED HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunny 🌞: what’s up??

Selene 🌚: IN MAKEUP TRAILER NOW

Selene 🌚: THEY ARE PAINTING ME BLUE


He snaps a discreet selfie as the makeup artist, a 40-something year old gal who smells like Black & Milds and marshmallows, sponges body paint along his jaw in quick pats, blending cobalt and cerulean. 


Sunny 🌞: are you fucking with me right now

Selene 🌚: DRIVER ACCIDENTALLY HAS TAKEN ME TO WRONG SET?

Selene 🌚: I THINK I AM IN SMOOFS MOVIE

Sunny 🌞: sorry what the fuck is smoofs?

Selene 🌚: BLUE CHARACTERS!!!!!!!

Sunny 🌞: It’s actually laughable how seriously I’m taking your life and you’re just apparently not reciprocating in the slightest.

Sunny 🌞: What exactly did you think would be happening when I warned you that you’d be in hair and makeup for six hours?

Selene 🌚: I don’t know how long girly makeup takes

Selene 🌚: I thought this was normal!

Sunny 🌞: My character is blue.

Sunny 🌞: In X-Squad.

Sunny 🌞: Which I assumed you would know by this point, since I sent you dropbox links with files to watch the previous films prior to today.


Another actor comes into the trailer, an actor Ilya vaguely recognizes, sipping coffee and looking bleary eyed. He nods at Ilya, a good morning, fellow thespian sort of nod, and Ilya nods back. A different makeup artist begins attaching gills to the man’s neck.


Selene 🌚: actor from a famous American sitcom is here

Selene 🌚: I do not know his name

Selene 🌚: do you think I can get autograph? Or is too weird to ask

Sunny 🌞: Ilya did you really not watch a single one of the movies??

Selene 🌚: there were five of them and I was very busy

Selene 🌚: is not my kind of movies anyway

Sunny 🌞: I spent four hours yesterday on skates and three in the gym so you have to forgive me if I don’t ask you for your fucking criterion closet picks right now

Selene 🌚: I like fast & furious movies

Sunny 🌞: why does that not surprise me

Selene 🌚: finding Nemo

Selene 🌚: full metal jacket

Sunny 🌞: this is my CAREER Ilya please

Sunny 🌞: I’m like actually begging you to put in effort


He thinks, somewhat guiltily, of Svetlana telling him on the phone last night how Rose had pushed herself morning and afternoon, drill after drill while Sveta shouted from the sidelines. “Rose is like you,” she’d told him, thoughtfully. “Failure will piss her off, I can tell already. She likes to do things well, if she’s going to do them. Especially when people are relying on her.”


Selene 🌚: you are right Rose Landry I am sorry

Selene 🌚: today I will use context clues

Selene 🌚: then I will watch movies when I get home

Sunny 🌞: Thank you Ilya. I appreciate that.


He shoots a quick text to Shane; they both have all of Sunday wide open. Perhaps a lazy day on the couch, spooned cozy beneath a blanket with their eyes glazing over in the direction of the same tv — possibly dry humping could occur, but who’s to say?


Selene 🌚: you are welcome

Selene 🌚: I have invited hollander for movie date. So we will watch together.

Selene 🌚: two birds one stone

Sunny 🌞: oh my god??

Sunny 🌞: please DON’T do that???

Selene 🌚: chill. I know his taste

Selene 🌚: he is simple man and movies like this will interest him

Sunny 🌞: this is so humiliating like I’m actually in hell

Sunny 🌞: he’s going to think I’m a total narcissist freak

Selene 🌚: no no no hollander is super supportive type


He takes a brief sojourn from texting to have his eyelids blued. Hilary the makeup lady is very good at these gentle patpatpatpat motions, and Ilya finds it almost as soothing as when the Raiders’ massage therapist Geoffrey bends his arms back behind his body.

When he opens his eyes again, Rose has sent him 18 new messages, castigations peppered with unladylike swears and a few curse words she’s clearly used google translate to eke out in Russian. The messages are very repetitive. He scrolls past and ignores them.


Selene 🌚: Do not worry Rose Landry

Selene 🌚: I have Stanley cup already to my name

Selene 🌚: next stop, you and me together will win you the Oscar! 💪💙🏆🎭🍆🎉


He thinks to add another string of blue emojis to really drive home his point, emphasize what a team player he is, but the iMessage delivers in a green bubble, indicating Rose has blocked him for the time being. No matter. She is a stubborn girl, just like he is a stubborn boy, and she will cool down in a few hours.

In the meantime, Ilya fiddles around with this script of hers, trying to fend off any possible performance anxiety that might arise when the cameras start rolling. He can’t say the words out loud or even mouth them silently, because Hilary is contouring shades of navy and aqua onto his face in order to create optical illusions like sharp cheekbones and a slim, perky nose. Fascinating.

Instead, he attempts a visualization tactic Shane once described to him. Ilya had asked — in a manner so lascivious it was honestly embarrassing, but it had been their one and only attempt at phone sex, and Shane was in a hotel room in Denver, and Ilya in a hotel bathroom in Winnipeg, and his dick was painfully hard, and honestly, he was surprised that Hollander had even picked up the phone, probably he only did it because he’d assumed it was an emergency, like Ilya was dying or something, which he was, dying of being really fucking horny and trapped in fucking Winnipeg with Cliff Marleau snoring in the other room — anyway, he’d called Shane and asked what he was doing, and Shane had said he was in bed in his hotel room, and Hayden was out with the other guys, why?

So Ilya had asked, his voice dripping with desire, which in this case was code for pre-cum, “Tell me then — what do you think about, Hollander, when you’re in bed all alone, lying awake at night?”

And Hollander, because he was Hollander, had said “If it’s before a game, I do my visualizations.” Which made Ilya’s balls sort of freeze up like they’d been run over by a Zamboni. The visualizations were apparently a meditation thing, but sports oriented, because of course they were. Of course Hollander fell asleep thinking about hockey; he probably dreamt in slo-mo replays. The technique, which Ilya did not ask him to elaborate on, and which he did anyway, involved imagining oneself within a future moment and walking through it minute by minute, second by second, running the game through its paces to account for each variable, and seeing with one’s inner eye exactly how each obstacle could be overcome.

Ilya, who was still absently fondling himself throughout this tedious monologue, attempted to pull them back on track. “And when you are visualizing these hockey games, all alone in your big bed late at night, am I ever in these fantasies of yours?”

“Well, sometimes,” Hollander admitted. “Depends on whether or not we’re playing Boston soon.”

“Oh yeah?” Ilya purred, stroking himself in earnest now. “And what am I wearing, when you picture me?”

“Your uniform, Rozanov, jesus. Do you think about anything other than sex?”

Occasionally. Yes. But sure, it tended to be true that Ilya thought about sex more than he thought about most things. That was because sex was novel, and exciting, and could be thought of and considered and visualized in so many different ways. And that’s why, for instance, as they affix blue latex scales along his brow bone and his temples, rather than imagining himself acting in some cheesy superhero movie, he finds his mind wandering back to the moans and sighs that Hollander had made on the phone that night, the way he’d panted, begged, Rozanov, I wanna come, please just keep talking, please, I’m so close. As he reminisces, Ilya is delighted to discover an underrated perk of this new body of his: he can get as unabashedly turned on as he wants without worrying about popping an untimely public boner. How handy!

An hour or so in, another discovery. It becomes apparent that it’s not just Ilya’s face they expect to paint blue. The sum total of Rose’s costume appears to be comprised of little more than body paint and more of these itty bits of scaly latex. Frantically, he texts her; when the message returns green yet again, he seeks attention elsewhere.


Ilya (Rose’s phone): are you aware that I am being prostituted here?

Svetlana 🦊: As opposed to how you typically sell your body? On the ice for the MLH?

Ilya (Rose’s phone): very fucking funny

Ilya (Rose’s phone): have you seen these movies?

Ilya (Rose’s phone): I’ve just looked through the script. The character is basically completely naked almost every time I’m on screen

Svetlana 🦊: omg I know I saw the first one

Svetlana 🦊: isn’t she hot?


Ilya scrunches up his face in irritation; a scale pops off of his cheek and Hilary sighs. 


Ilya (Rose’s phone): what the fuck

Ilya (Rose’s phone): keep it in your pants, Vetrova. Whose side are you on?

Svetlana 🦊: I don’t mean it like that you pervert

Svetlana 🦊: OBJECTIVELY, she looks good mostly naked. 


Ilya rolls his eyes, the limited display of exasperation he’s allowed by the adhesive setting freshly on his face.


Ilya (Rose’s phone): she’s fine

Ilya (Rose’s phone): I’ve seen hotter

Svetlana 🦊: 😂

Svetlana 🦊: don’t be jealous ilyusha

Ilya (Rose’s phone): I’m not jealous

Ilya (Rose’s phone): I’m being EXPLOITED

Svetlana 🦊: you and four billion other women on earth

Svetlana 🦊: think of it as an opportunity to gain some perspective 😇 this could be your feminist awakening


Ilya is very good to women already. He’s well aware of where the clitoris is; he doesn’t need pointers. He needs pants, are what he needs.

Around 11am, he’s delivered a burrito bowl and an iced coffee and instructed to eat very carefully. By noon, they’re fitting his wig, and by 12:40, six hours and forty five minutes after arriving on set, his butt cheeks are sufficiently powdered that it’s finally time to film his scene.

Ilya, who’s been focused on pretending to be Rose Landry for two days now, reorients his mindset to become Allure, a seductive, shapeshifting mutant who, he’s pleased to note, at least gets some of the more badass plot lines.

Allure, the sitcom actor with the gills, and a 30 year old who’s inexplicably playing a teenager and who’s outfitted with massive, jet black wings, are all positioned on some styrofoam rocks in front of a sprawling green screen. It’s hot in here, because there are a lot of lights, and it smells a little like warm cheese and donuts off the craft services table. People are shouting and adjusting things, and there’s a director in a tall chair wearing a baseball cap and headphones and a puffy vest. It’s not like Ilya’s never been on camera before, but a real movie set, wow. It’s a bit exciting, even he has to admit. Very Hollywood, if Montreal could be accused of such a thing.

Filming will begin any moment now.

Or at least, it should.

Any moment now.

They all just kind of twiddle their dicks a while, uselessly. The villain in this movie — an actor even Ilya knows the name of, an award winner who’s done proper movies and must need this paycheck for a beach house or alimony or something — is still in his trailer. Eating lunch. The fucking prick.

They wait and wait for him. The crew fiddles with the lights. A PA brings a danish to the DP. It’s not the right flavor of danish. Also, Ilya makes a mental note to google later what is DP short for film making movie set job because there’s no way it means what he thinks it means. The other actors discuss some business story in the news, about a merger Ilya can’t imagine giving a flying fuck about. Why are they all standing around? How has Ilya been on set for eight hours now, a full day’s work for the average person, and frankly longer than any of the days Ilya’s worked in his MLH career, eight fucking hours, and the cameras still haven’t started rolling?

Finally, this famous actor, the prick who’s been in proper films, deigns to grace them with his presence. And Ilya is confused. Because the villain, if he’s understood the script correctly, is a warmongering Republican senator who’s bitten by a radioactive scarab and imbued with ancient mutant powers of the Egyptian god of death. Ilya doesn’t know what the character’s supposed to look like, hadn’t seen the other actor in the hair and makeup trailer this morning, but he’d expected something — different.

He’s a sort of polka dot man. His costume is like something one would use to amuse a puppy, a bodysuit covered in tiny tennis balls, and his face looks like he’s broken out in extremely symmetrical chicken pox. Ilya hasn’t spoken aloud to any of the other cast or crew today, in accordance with his and Rose’s plan, but he turns to the sitcom actor now and asks, bewildered, “Is he not even dressed yet?”

The sitcom actor, whose name Ilya thinks is something like Kellen Grammercy, and whose famous show was called something like Fleischer, laughs a booming, jocular laugh. “James L. Beckett in a full face? Oh no, his contract wouldn’t allow for such a thing. They’ll do him up in post, my darling. The modern miracle of CGI. Costumes and makeup are only for we mere mortals.”

Right, so, immediately Ilya dislikes being called darling. Far more offensive than that, the thing that really grinds his goat, is the absolute hypocrisy. In hockey, even the fattest and the oldest of the coaches lace up with their boys for practice. This Mr. Beckett actor with the Oscars and the proper films thinks he is too good to have his face painted up like a clown, like the other actors have? He doesn’t seem to mind the paycheck that the clowns are paid, or else he wouldn’t be here. So it’s quite the double standard, Ilya thinks, clenching his fists. Even more so when he’s standing here with tits flopping and cheeks flapping in the artificial wind, and apparently, fucking polka dots were an option.

He’s worked up close to fuming, jaw set in a way that he knows is very him and not very Rose at all — it may or may not match the character of Allure, but Ilya doesn’t know, because he is a stupid and unhelpful bastard who went out gallivanting on a date yesterday instead of studying. The character is angry in this scene though, like the way that Ilya’s mad as hell in real life. She’s feisty, too. And Ilya knows how to act like a woman who’s pissed off, because perhaps, alright, perhaps once or twice, he’s pissed a woman off before.

The cameras roll.

“Senator Lawrence.” His gaze is narrowed, eyes sharp and hard like topaz in these horrible yellow contact lenses, and though his posture is stock still, an energy vibrates around him, like ripples on the surface of a calm lake that warn a storm is coming. “You’re putting yourself and everyone else in grave danger. I need you to give me the—”

“Cut!” the director interrupts. “Rose, honey, I’m sorry, we had a boom in the shot. Can we try that again?”

He doesn’t like being called honey, either, even if it is by a lady director. Shouldn’t a lady director know better? What happened to sisterhood, and solidarity? He kicks a styrofoam pebble with his toe. “Can we not CGI out this boom in post?” Ilya mutters under his breath — idiotic and pointless. He might as well have said it at full volume, there’s so many mics in the vicinity.

Talking shit and acting out won’t get him far, in this world at least. He can scream and swear as much as he wants in the Raiders’ locker room, cuss them out when they underperform and demand more from them rather than asking nicely. It only earns him more respect from his men. The guys who get Cs on their chest are almost always the ones who have chips on their shoulders.

As Rose, though, things are different. Expectations. One small, snide comment, delivered quietly and to himself, and he sees the crew meeting eyes with each other, like Isn’t this one a diva? Well, that’s not fair. Nobody is calling Ilya Rozanov a diva when he throws a tantrum. Nobody is calling James L. Beckett a diva, and they fucking should, because he is. But god forbid a woman so much as express mild dissatisfaction, and she’s seen as Difficult, suddenly and then forever.

Svetlana was right. Women have a shit time of things, and it occurs to him that that’s maybe been going on a while. Has maybe even been going on before it affected him personally. Ilya makes a rash decision. He is going to become a feminist.

If it were his own reputation on the line, he likes to think he might begin from a place of radical action. Telling several brutish men to fuck themselves, maybe. Important ones. Because he is an ally to Rose, because it is her reputation on the line in this corrupt, misogynistic, and vapid industry, instead he nods and smiles, bites his tongue. And when he does so, he tells himself he’s acting ever so un-Ilya-ish in his fit of altruism and solidarity. Right. Like he hasn’t done the same exact thing in every locker room for every team he’s ever played on, keeping his head down and his mouth shut whenever guys call each other faggots or заднеприводной. He’d like to think he has an easier time of it than Rose does, though. He’s sure it’s true.

It takes nearly three hours to film what will likely amount to four minutes of screen time. That’s in addition to the seven hours getting into makeup and another thirty minutes afterwards showering in his trailer, lathering the blue off. All those hours on set plus travel time means he gets back to the hotel nearly 12 hours after leaving this morning. 12 hours for this fucking X-Squad. Whatever Rose is getting paid for this, it’s not enough.

He barely has the energy to call down for room service, but somehow, bravely, he manages. It’s lucky Montreal is playing on the west coast tonight; he has time before the puck drops to curl up in the bed, pantless in some big, soft t-shirt he’s found in Rose’s closet, and put the game on on her laptop while he nibbles at a Margherita pizza.

That wrist shot babe 🤩, he texts. And then, although Ilya can’t imagine Shane will check his phone until after the game, Miitka favors his left side too obviously. Too easy to read. You should talk to him, you are a very good captain and I’m sure he will listen to you ❤️. Rose is a hockey fan. It’s normal she would watch games, hold opinions. This is not suspicious, he decides, but he does delete the observation that Pike’s edges are the equivalent of a toddler scribbling with crayons. He’ll find a tactful way of mentioning it in person.

He also texts Rose, like a truce. The messages go through this time.


Selene 🌚: hello my Miss America. r u still mad at me 🥺

Sunny 🌞: My agent hasn’t emailed yet to let me know I’ve lost my job.

Sunny 🌞: I’m assuming that means you managed to hold it together today.

Sunny 🌞: In which case, we’re good.

Selene 🌚: I was very professional. I remembered lines, stayed on marks, and MADE CHOICES with the character just like you said

Sunny 🌞: wow look at you actually giving a shit

Sunny 🌞: thanks I guess

Selene 🌚: no rose landry thank YOU

Selene 🌚: every man on this earth is born from a woman

Selene 🌚: and yet I see now the way we treat our beautiful queens

Selene 🌚: I am honored to share this feminine journey w/ you

Sunny 🌞: have you had a stroke?

Selene 🌚: a stroke of inspiration. And of wisdom

Sunny 🌞: Be normal please.

Sunny 🌞: I’m still figuring out your first personality. You can’t spring a new one on me yet.


The third period starts with Miitka immediately letting one in on the right side of the net. Typical. They’re tied up 2-2, and Ilya types with one eye on the phone, one eye on the game.


Selene 🌚: tomorrow plz make time to practice dropping gloves before game

Sunny 🌞: Are you under the impression I’ll be out there starting fights?

Selene 🌚: if you are chirping like me, fights will come to you

Sunny 🌞: fuck me. Good to know

Selene 🌚: you will be fine

Selene 🌚: hide behind marly if you get scared. he is big and dumb and loves to fight

Selene 🌚: I will text you locker room pep talk in the morning. Should be good and dramatic monologue for future Oscar winner like you

Sunny 🌞: lol thanks

Sunny 🌞: honestly I know I should be worried about the hockey itself but it’s the little stuff that’s stressing me out


Ilya knows exactly what she means. He’d held his piss in for the first five hours on set today, too paranoid he wouldn’t be able to find a bathroom without giving himself away. It really hits him now how strange and specific their situation is, and how bizarre — how utterly incomprehensible to the Ilya of a few days ago — to think that right now, Rose Landry is the only person on earth who truly understands what he’s going through.


Selene 🌚: what are you nervous about? maybe I can help

Sunny 🌞: literally the stupidest stuff. I’ve been going over the roster for like an hour and a half because I’m great with faces but I’m terrified I’ll forget a name and it’ll be someone you’ve known for like six years or something

Sunny 🌞: Svetlana said it’s easy, because everyone has their names on their jerseys but I’m like ??? Okay well what if they’re facing me and I can’t see their back???

Selene 🌚: if you don’t know someone’s name you say hey asshole or hey dickhead or you throw a balled up sock at them to get their attention

Selene 🌚: hockey players are easy

Selene 🌚: you will be fine I promise

Sunny 🌞: let’s hope so


Montreal wins 3-2, thanks to Shane, obviously, who is the best player in any game he’s playing not against Boston. Ilya sends him a string of celebratory emojis with several kisses thrown into the mix, his heart pounding with the thrill of it. He has no idea how long he’ll be in Rose’s body, but however long it is, it can’t be long enough to get used to this.

While he waits for Shane to text back, he tackles Rose’s overly complicated nighttime skincare routine. Cleanser, fine. Makes sense. Moisturizer, sure. Toner? And these serums, each of which looks more like cum than the last? She’s left instructions like pat into undereyes with ring finger and he thinks if I use a different finger and she can tell the difference I’ll give her ten grand in cash. Because there is no fucking way.

Ilya’s dozing by the time Shane finishes his press obligations and finally responds. He’s flattered Ilya watched the game, impressed and wildly aroused that Ilya managed to make such an astute observation about Mitty’s shitty lopsided goaltending.

Alright, he doesn’t say he’s wildly aroused. But Ilya knows him. He knows what Hollander likes.

He falls asleep with his phone in his hand. Like Shane a couple thousand miles away, he slips from consciousness while doing visualization exercises. He can pretend, maybe, they’re visualizing the same things.


On day two of his major movie star career, Ilya figures out that people are less likely to expect conversation of him if he’s wearing headphones. He makes a deal with Hilary that he’ll sit very still and well behaved, no sudden moves, if he can leave his AirPods in all morning and save the bluing of his earholes for last.

Rose’s music library leaves something to be desired, not bad bad but not to Ilya’s taste. A lot of eurotrash 90s throwbacks like Aqua and Vengaboys, stuff that makes white women shriek in nightclubs and sprint out to the dance floor while he’s in the middle of trying to chat them up. And this reminds him — in case he’s called out on their cover story, quizzed or something, he thinks to put on a greatest hits playlist of that Swedish disco-pop group whose songs he only vaguely knows. Not that he likes this sort of music. It’s for research.

Three hours and two iced Americanos later, he’s granted a brief reprieve to relieve himself in the privacy of Rose’s trailer. He’d never seen the inside of one of these until yesterday; it’s bigger than he thought it would be, but otherwise underwhelming. Grey couch, a kitchenette with a basket of various crackers and chips, 500 water bottles, and a decent sized bathroom. It’s like a glamping caravan devoid of any personality, though Ilya hasn’t really had much of a chance to paw through any of the drawers or cabinets for the good stuff yet.

When he’s deposited back in hair and makeup, there’s a familiar face to contend with. Miles Allen, half in costume, X-Squad uniform top with an artful gash across the midsection to expose abs that the makeup artist who isn’t Hilary is contouring on him.

“Hey bitch,” Miles greets him. “Look who finally decided to show her pretty blue face around here.”

When they’d strategized in her hotel suite, Rose had warned him this would happen. “Miles is a good friend,” she’d said, a but appended before she’d even had space to breathe. “But — he’s a lot. He’s a gossip — which might be helpful, come to think of it, because then at least you’ll be getting info on who’s who and what’s up, but also, like maybe 40% of it is legit? He does a lot of… speculation.”

“We have a gossip on the Raiders too,” Ilya nodded. “Connors. The guy you’re rooming with right now. He is very reputable though. Always knows latest stuff.”

She’d jotted that down in her phone. “Good to know. The problem with Miles is — well, it’s not a problem for me. I like to gab. But in your case, he’ll expect something back, if you know what I mean.”

“Nosy girl has a nosy friend. Got it.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Anyway. The only way to get him off of you will be to get him onto something else. I’ll try to come up with some topics you can blab about to distract him and text them over with the rest of… everything.”

Everything being their arduous plot to get Ilya through Rose’s day-to-day largely unscathed. The centerpiece of their strategy is utilized now, in fact, as Ilya grabs his phone and pulls up a pinned note he’s been showing around for the last two days:

Hey there! Sorry for the inconvenience, but in order to prepare for an upcoming role which requires intensive musical training, I’ll be on vocal rest for the foreseeable future with the exceptions of my scenes while filming. Thanks for understanding!

“Bitch!” Miles somehow seems to whisper and scream at once. Before Ilya has time to seethe over the sensation of being called a bitch twice in two minutes, Miles is murmur-squealing in his ear. “Did you get fucking Agnetha?!”

Ilya pulls back with a maybe-so winky shrug-shimmy, settling back into the makeup chair so Hilary can return to changing his hue.

Miles, unsurprisingly, isn’t done. “That is fucking huge girl. God, I’m so happy for you. I mean, jealous as fuck, obviously, but happy for you.”

Ilya offers a magnanimous Miss America smile. Anything for his adoring fans.

“And see, you pulled this little vocal rest stunt and for a second there I was thinking you were really done talking to me,” Miles continues. There’s something leading and salacious in his tone; Ilya feels like a tiny field mouse convinced he’s learned to fly, only to realize in midair that he’s trapped in the talon of a hawk. “Three days left on read, not a single response even when I humiliate myself by double-texting? Girl.”

Ilya pulls a sorry! tee hee! faux apologetic face in the mirror, hand in front of mouth, smile hidden.

“You leave me at the club, take your sexy little wasian Gretzky with you, and I don’t hear a word from you since?” He says it like it’s all so funny, all just having a laugh, but his eyes don’t unstick from Ilya’s in the mirror. They barely blink. “You had me thinking either A, this man finally learned how to fuck you and you haven’t left his bed since then, or B, he had his big awakening as I have prophesied, and you’ve been sitting dumped and alone in your hotel room in heterosexual crisis.”

Ilya opens up a blank note, types furiously and hands the phone to Miles. Option A. He ate my pussy for several hours and then he fucked me for a day and a half straight.

“You are lying, bitch, I fucking can’t!”

Ilya takes the phone, types again, hands it back. Is true. Had to change the bedding twice from all the squirting.

“Okay, love you down, but ew.” Miles shoves the phone back into Ilya’s hands. “I’m too gay to read all that.” He sighs, an affectation of a thing, and pretends to look forlorn. “Well, shit. I guess I owe you $50, then. Fair’s fair.”

In the mirror, Ilya tugs his expression into something smug. He flips his phone face up in his lap, angles it away from Miles and waits until he’s occupied with his ab contouring to text away from prying eyes.


Selene 🌚: I have just won you $50

Sunny 🌞: ? Won?

Selene 🌚: perverted bet with miles perhaps? Maybe you can explain better


A long, long pause after the text shows as read, then typing, typing, typing. Whatever excuse she’s concocting to explain this wager on what he can only assume has to do with Shane’s sexuality, Ilya’s dying to read it.


Sunny 🌞: Ohhhh that! Haha that’s an inside joke. Miles is such a kidder. Don’t listen to him. He just likes to mess around. You don’t have to take him too seriously.

Sunny 🌞: In fact, feel free to ignore anything he says. You really should be focused on the role! And again THANK YOU!!

Selene 🌚: I think I am inside the inside joke now, yes? You are lucky if I even give you half of your $50. But I will, because I am famously generous

Sunny 🌞: Keep it 🙄


Later, while Ilya’s getting his wig glued on, Rose texts again.


Sunny 🌞: What exactly did you say to win this $50 anyway? Out of curiosity.

Selene 🌚: he asked why you did not respond to many desperate texts from him these last few days

Selene 🌚: I gave him this answer

Selene 🌚: [screenshot of notes app]

Sunny 🌞: jesus fucking christ ilya like are you actually serious

Selene 🌚: we were talking about Shane

Sunny 🌞: yeah I gathered that thanks!

Sunny 🌞: STAY IN CHARACTER AND NO MORE TALKING TO PEOPLE


Not too many people want to talk to him anyways. Originally he hadn’t seen the use of this vocal rest scheme of hers — why? He was in her body. His voice sounded just like hers. But in practice, the tedium of having to wait for “Rose” to type out a response is such an impediment to the flow of conversation that most people’s enthusiasm for chatting wanes quickly, and Ilya’s left mostly to himself save for logistical demands. And it’s a relief, not to be called upon to entertain anyone unless professionalism demands it. There’s a dizzying amount of industry small talk which swirls around the set at all times, and he’s realizes early that he’d have exhausted himself trying to keep up.

Today’s shoot requires very, very little of him, thank god. It’s all hands on deck for an arial shot of the whole X-Squad together, a bloated crew of something like 17 superheroes and superantiheroes now that they’re this far into the franchise, and they all have marks taped on the ground to teach them how to stand in a circle (immensely challenging for some, completely worthy of a multi-million dollar paycheck). They’re back to back to back to back times 17, all of them encircled by the green expanse, and a camera circles on a track as they smolder into the distance.

“This is the hero shot, okay people?” the first AD is shouting, like they haven’t run it twenty times already. “Soundtrack swelling, okay, yes, and you’re looking out at rubble, good — Evan, love that, give me a roar, maybe? That’s great. And Rose, sweetheart, that’s good, but remember that the children’s hospital we’ve marked off to your left will be exploding now, so maybe when you’re gazing, give it a look like, oh god, an explosion! Thaaaat’s it, that’s the money shot.”

The teamsters call for a twenty minute break (Ilya doesn’t know what teamsters are, but they appear to be various men on set who wear grey jeans and carry heavy things from place to place), and while they wait, Ilya digs his phone out from the pocket of his modesty robe.

Shane’s made it back to Montreal as of only an hour or so ago; he’ll be drained from travel all evening, anti-social, so they’d made plans for tomorrow. Only, Boston’s playing tonight. Boston’s playing Pittsburgh, and Ilya won’t be there. Instead, he’ll have a possibly inept avatar playing in his absence, maybe missing every shot she takes, maybe skidding on his skates and flailing on the ice, maybe trying her very, very best and still somehow ruining his entire career. Ilya had planned to race home from set and get the game on asap, glue his eyeballs to the screen and pray for a miracle. Now, the thought of watching and not being able to do anything makes him want to crawl out of his blue skin.

Hey handsome, he types. Any way I can talk you into dinner tonight? My treat.

Shane, to no one’s surprise, begins his usual dithering. Typing and deleting, three dots flickering, always unsure of himself, never allowing himself permission to say what’s on his mind.

Before Shane can untuck his balls for long enough to actually say no to someone, god forbid he disappoint them, Ilya sends another quick text. I understand if you can’t. I know it’s hard work to make time for me — you may not be up to it.

Shane, abruptly, stops typing. Seconds later, a response. I can make a reservation.

Easy.

Ilya’s back at the Four Seasons by six o’clock, with enough time to spare to figure out how to make himself presentable and to leave several impassioned voice notes for both Rose and Svetlana explaining, in a reasonable manner, that if Rose fucks up badly enough tonight he’ll probably be deported back to Russia, not even present day Russia, like, Soviet Russia, where he’ll be thrown in the Gulag and never seen or heard from again, and it’ll be all their faults.

Nevertheless.

Rose likes to wear a lot of breezy, baggy trousers, for some fucking reason. Like she has long and arduous testicles she needs help making room for. He finds a pair of linen ones and a buttoned vest top, tries them on together with a cap to cover up her greasy hair. The resulting aesthetic is like a lesbian porn parody of the Peaky Blinders. The cap is probably a joke anyway, maybe from a halloween costume or a YouTube prank video, so he throws it in the trash. The vest he swaps out for a lacy black tank top which makes him look moderately attractive, he thinks.

In the early afternoon, Rose had texted him a screenshot of the paparazzi photos from the parking garage, along with a linked video from the account of a British woman named Lisa Eldridge who has a mole on her cheek just like Ilya does. The video is 15 minutes long and is entitled “The ‘No Makeup’ Makeup Look.” Watch this tutorial before you leave the house next time please! Rose urges. PLEASE!! Once Ilya has saved the photos of he and Shane, he does.

It comes out looking alright. Very normal, like a human face. A pretty one. A bit like Rose has woken up and rolled out of bed 15% better looking than she usually does, not that she’s ugly or anything. Personally, Ilya doesn’t mind girls who have a bit of fun with it, smudging darker colors around on their lips and eyelids, vampy and dramatic and obvious. But Shane — not that Shane is into women, but if he was, this is the look Ilya thinks he’d like. The “natural” look.

Shane picks him up from the hotel at 7:40; for late fall/early winter in Montreal, it’s blissfully, unseasonably warm, so they decide to walk. Ilya’s in a strangely shapen but sort of chic woolen coat and Shane is semi-coordinated, as Ilya suspected he might be, in the Date Night outfit they’d picked out for him. They hold hands as they walk.

Ilya wants to ask him more about the game; he’s arranged this whole outing to keep his mind off their shared career, but he’s also aware that hockey is foremost among the few topics that can keep Shane talking animatedly and indefinitely. Despite the success of their date a couple days ago, Ilya’s still keenly aware that the two of them don’t have much practice just sitting and talking, no distractions or hand jobs or what have you, and he’s vaguely anxious they’ll run out of things to discuss.

“You can’t even give me a tiny spoiler?” Shane asks. They’re on the topic of this X-Squad film, which Ilya’s learned today is the sixth in the franchise, not the fifth.

“Even if I wanted to.” Ilya walks close and off balance, finding knobby bits of cobblestone to trip over that will tumble him into Hollander’s strong arms. “The script makes no sense, and they only give me pages with my own lines, to protect from leaks, so I have no idea what’s going on when other x-squads are on screen.”

“Other mutants, you mean.”

“Mm, yes. Is what I said.”

They’re walking down a pedestrian street. It’s tree lined, and the bare bones branches have already been swathed in twinkle lights to get shoppers into the spirit of capitalist festivities to come. It’s that late November discord, the anticipation as the seasons change, where the world begins to sparkle and winter seems appealing, the grey sludge of January a problem for some far-off future self. And yet, it’s balmy enough out (again, balmy only insofar as a Canadian could conceive of such a thing, or someone born and raised in Moscow) that they pass an ice cream shop with a line overflowing out the door and the caramel-coated scent of waffle cones oozing out before them.

“God, I’m starving suddenly.” Ilya clutches with his free hand at Shane’s arm, like he might just eat him. “How can any woman be expected to survive on lettuce and chicken and green goddess dressing alone?”

“You said you’re good with sushi, right? We can always go somewhere else, if you—” Shane and his sentence are yanked to a halt as Ilya stops abruptly.

“Look at this place. Have you been here before?” The lights and colors inside put the twinkle trees to shame; through the windows, Ilya sees a cacophony of flashing, blaring neon, cabinets painted violent hues of violet and outrageous shades of orange, text blinking on retro screens ordering players to INSERT COINS TO START.

“Oh, it’s like an arcade? That’s cool.” Shane makes to walk away and Ilya, still attached to him like a tether, exerts the necessary guiding force to pull him back.

“We should go in here.”

Shane’s lips curl up at the side, amused. “I thought you were starving. Remember?”

The door opens and out of the establishment, along with strains of 80s throwback rock, comes a group of two girls and a guy, chatting loudly.

“Hello! Quick question,” Ilya says, ever so friendly, leaping out in front of their group and dragging Shane along. “Do they serve food in this place? Or it’s only playing video games?”

“Oh shit,” the guy says, jumping back a little, somewhat surprised at this small woman who’s hurtled herself towards them in the night. Small and familiar. “Wait — are you Rose Landry?”

“I can see how you would think that, but no,” Ilya says. “I look very, very like her. But Rose Landry is an American film star. Whereas I am just an average person. And not at all famous.”

Behind him, unhelpfully, Shane coughs.

The guy who asked the question nods, not quite believing. “Oh. Okay.” Casually, he tilts his phone in his hand, like he might be texting, and a shutter sound goes off.

“They serve drinks,” his friend or girlfriend or both answers. “I think they had food, right? I saw a menu. It’s like, bar food.”

“Wonderful,” says Ilya. “Thank you for your help. Goodnight. And please delete that picture of my chin.”

He turns back to Shane as the other three scamper into the night, squealing amongst themselves. Shane, who appears mildly amused, is glancing at his watch. When he looks back up at Ilya, he’s met with a pouty, pleading expression. “What? You want to go in?”

Ilya nods, a bit too eager, like a dog who’s been asked if he’d like to go for a W-A-L-K. “Don’t you think we’ll have fun?”

“I think we’ll miss our reservation,” Shane says, looking at his watch again like more than 24 seconds may have passed since he checked it 24 seconds ago. “Given that it’s 7:58 and they have us down for 8:00.”

“Forget the reservation.” Ilya finally unclamps the vice grip he’s had on Shane’s arm; he slides his hand gently into the open V of his coat, fingers drifting on his chest until he feels the warmth of skin under cotton, signs of life in a racing heartbeat. “It doesn’t matter what we do. We could go dancing. We could go walking. As long as we’re together, that’s the point, right?”

Shane looks at Rose’s eyes more than he’s ever looked at Ilya’s. Maybe because he’s studying, looking for information or recognition. Maybe because he’s always been too busy staring at Ilya’s lips and thinking it goes unnoticed. Nevertheless, after a moment of eye contact, he steps back and opens the door of the barcade, gesturing Ilya inside.

There are high tables dotted around, more towards the bar; it’s decently crowded for a weeknight, and between the music and the game machines and the sound of mirth and laughter, Shane has to lean in close to Ilya’s ear to say, “Should I go get us drinks and find a menu?”

Ilya nods. He wants to get a beer, but fears it’s not suitably feminine. “Cider, if they have it. Whatever’s on tap if they don’t.” There. A concession.

He posts up near the Ms. Pac Man (for feminism) at a relatively unsticky table with two relatively unwobbly stools. In case he’s smudged his no makeup-makeup, he pulls his phone out to check his face in the camera. Half a dozen push notifications from the MLH app confront him on the lock screen — a penalty for Boston, a goal for Pittsburgh, another goal for Pittsburgh, a failed attempt for Boston, another penalty for Boston, Boston shitting on the ice and skating around through it, carving large, steaming, festering piles of hot brown fragrant SHIT all over the ice, etc etc etc. He locks his phone and shoves it to the bottom of his bag, piling tubes of Burts Bees lip balm on top of it in case it should try to escape.

Shane returns with two glasses of amber liquid in hand, cider for Ilya and ginger ale for him, and a laminated menu. “They warned me that the kitchen’s backed up, so it might be a minute, if we want get our orders in now.”

“And we can play something while we wait?”

“Sure,” Shane grins. “I don’t know why, but — I didn’t realize you’d be into this. Three older brothers though, right?”

Ilya huffs, steals the menu from Shane’s hand. “What, a woman can not like these things without a man teaching her to?” He points to the cabinet adjacent, gestures emphatically to his own head. “She has a bow, if you did not notice.”

“Fair, fair.” Shane raises his palms in a show of contrition. “I think I meant it more — well, like, I played video games when I was a kid, when I had free time. Not that I had a lot. But I never had siblings so, you know. It seemed like it would be more fun to have someone my own age to play with, that’s all. Siblings would have been cool.”

Ilya has a vision of Yuna Hollander cross-legged on the floor beside a small and even more vividly freckled childhood Shane, absolutely rocking his shit at Mario Kart. “Well, you have me to play with now. But do not expect me to go easy on you just because you’re cute.”

“Oh, you think I’ll need you to go easy on me?”

“Believe me, I’d much rather you go as hard on me as possible.”

Shane flushes, like a nearby space invader has exploded into red light reflecting across his cheeks. He fumbles with the menu. “Do you like wings? I was thinking wings, if you like wings.”

Yes, Ilya likes wings. They also order nachos, and, so Shane will have something to eat that doesn’t send him onto the stairmaster until three in the morning, a plate of sweet potato fries. The food will take at least a half hour to come out, so Shane, ever chivalrous, changes out some bills for coins and allows Ilya to carry the jangling plastic cup, jamming loonies into any slot that seems particularly appealing.

There’s a line of pinball machines along the far wall, and though Shane views this as a solo gaming experience, Ilya begs to disagree. This is further evidence he is the more sportsmanlike of the two of them, if any MLH awards committee members were here to see such a thing. Ilya stands behind Shane while he pulls the trigger back, volleys the silver ball and shoots it, spinning, over green and yellow and white lights illuminating, down a dark red staircase and past a tiny plastic electric chair.

“Don’t you think it’s easier if we each stand to one side?” Shane asks, slamming the button to flick the right side flipper while Ilya bangs the button for the left.

“This is better, I think.” Ilya bends Shane ever slightly further over the game table, leans over his shoulder. “Easier to see this way. You’re not used to playing with other people, that’s all.”

Once they’ve lost enough balls into the gaping maw of this creepy old bald man trapped inside the game, and when Ilya’s had enough fun with his pelvis pressed against Shane’s bubble butt, rocking him ever so casually against the machine, they abandon cooperative play for a bit of competition.

Shane accuses him of tactics, while they’re playing, that frankly, Ilya finds offensive. Dirty pool, Shane calls it, and Ilya says We are not playing pool Shane we are playing Streetfighter II, and the fact that you do not know that is probably why you are losing. And Hollander contends that no, he’s losing more so because Rose you’re covering my fucking eyes again and Press YOUR buttons, not mine. But Shane is welcome to cover Ilya’s eyes if he likes, or put his hand any place he wants, even grab Ilya’s proverbial joystick — it’s only that he’s too scrupulous to do so. There is a referee who lives inside his mind and prevents him from having fun and taking advantage of all the creative strategies life has to offer, that’s all.

They eat, they drink more. Ilya learns too late, after snagging a nacho piled high with jalapeños, that Rose’s tolerance for spicy food is far lower than his own. Shane nibbles at wings with more grace than any other jock Ilya knows, sucking meat off the bone almost delicately, and flags down a waiter for an extra side of celery, if that’s okay, which he munches like a cartoon rabbit.

Easy, easy, all of it so easy. Ilya’s never seen Shane this relaxed in a social situation. And sure, it takes him a minute to settle in, and the barrage of innuendo Ilya can’t seem to keep tucked behind his teeth does fluster him, yes. But when they’re talking, playing, goofing off, Shane’s so comfortable around Rose that it seems almost impossible.

Ilya wonders why that is. He’d like to flatter himself that it’s him making it all so easy breezy, like he knows Shane’s eccentricities enough to work around them, make him comfortable. Given the way Ilya crashed and burned the second he tried to turn their fuckuationship into something like friends with benefits, that seems unlikely. In fact, Ilya’s starting to believe that it’s the opposite.

The thing Shane feels for Ilya, whatever it may be, is among the worst things in his life. That much has been made clear. He’s uncontrollably attracted to him, and he hates that, because the mere fact of that could ruin everything in his life — and like, fucking obviously, Ilya gets that, empathizes, but still, it doesn’t change the fact of the matter. And then there is the issue that at one point, years ago, Hollander was naive enough to have wanted something more than simply attraction. He never said as much, but Ilya knew. It’s painful to want something and not be able to have it. For Shane, it’s painful just to want.

Shane doesn’t want Rose. Ilya’s figuring that out. Shane likes her, but he doesn’t feel the pain of want or need, desire or desperation. Without the burden of attraction, romance becomes something lighter, easier for him. Small and simple enough to hold and turn over in his hands, to play with like a puck balanced on the end of a stick, bouncing, tossed and caught. Easy.

Ilya’s on his way back from the bathroom (the women’s room, which he’d entered correctly on only his second try) when he sees it. He doesn’t return to their table. Instead, he stands beside the game, halfway across the barcade, and repeats Shane’s name, “Shane. Shane. Shane. SHANE,” at increasing volume until Shane lifts his attention from his phone and catches his eye.

Carrying their drinks, Shane crosses the room toward him, sauntering more slowly when he realizes why he’s being summoned. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I am sure.” Ilya flutters a hand up to his chest, genteel Miss America. “If you are a little bit intimidated—”

“I’m not intimidated, to be clear.”

“If you feel like — oh, I’m Shane Hollander, captain of the Montreal Metros, and anyone could be here, sports fans, ESPN journalist, and they might see me lose—”

“Grab a mallet, Landry, let’s go.” He plops their drinks unceremoniously on the wide edge of the air hockey table, walks around to the other side and inserts a coin into the slot. Featherlight, the puck begins to hover over the surface.

Ilya has only played air hockey once, on a tiny table for a video the Raiders’ social media girl had assured them would go “totally viral.” It had indeed, even after they’d edited out most of the dialogue, comprised of such good natured barbs as “cocksucker” and “motherfucker” that were “not in line with the family friendly branding that we’re trying to convey for the team.” Also, Marleau had managed to somehow high stick Hammersmith during a fucking tabletop game, and he’d been cut from the video entirely.

Ilya stretches out his arms now, and his back, pushes his chest forward. “This is exciting,” he says. “I look forward to seeing how well you play without the rest of the Metros slowing you down.”

Shane smiles at the floor, bites as much of it back as he can. “I have tremendous respect for all my teammates, and I won’t hear anything to the contrary.”

“But you will guard the entire goal, yes? Or should I call in Miitka to cover you on just the left side?”

Right off the bat, goaltending isn’t a concern on that side of the table. Shane scores the first two goals. Easily. Ilya doesn’t even manage possession of the puck. And this is not a testament in any way to Hollander’s athletic prowess, and certainly is not indicative of anything related to who may or may not, within the confines of this sweaty, sticky, neon Montreal barcade, be the more elite hockey player. That honor would of course go to Ilya Rozanov, without question. It’s only that Ilya Rozanov is playing with the somewhat limiting handicap of having his entire body shrunken down by, like, 20%. And now his arms don’t reach as far, and without the opportunity to simply skate over there to the other side where the puck is and fucking take it, he’s at somewhat of a disadvantage.

The third puck drop, Ilya is faster. He lunges to take control, succeeds, lunges again, practically launching himself across the table as he swipes towards Shane’s undefended goal, and Shane — lifts his mallet and snatches the puck up with his bare hand.

“Offside.”

“Hollander, what the fuck?!” For a minute, the smell of cool ice and industrial arena is so much stronger than the yeasty, cloying scent of dive bar, and Ilya forgets where or who he is — no, he only knows who he is, he forgets who he’s supposed to be. He stomps around the table, attempts to wrest control of the puck from Hollander’s hand by any means necessary, and is equal parts infuriated and aroused when Shane simply holds it high above his head, out of Ilya’s reach.

“Offside,” Shane repeats, like a maddeningly sexy robot programmed only to know the rules of hockey and be a smug asshole about them. “Your elbow crossed the blue line before the puck did. Hence the stoppage.”

“On this shopping trip we took, did I pick out a shirt for you with ugly black and white stripes? You are a referee now, too? You have a fucking whistle tucked away somewhere I should dig around for?” He’d like to swear more, but in the moment, the only curses that come to mind are filthy and in Russian, and he at least has the wherewithal to keep those to himself.

“You told me not to go easy on you.” Shane’s freckles, when he smiles, are so cute that Ilya thinks of doing something extremely mental, like biting him on the cheek.

“Fine. We face off.” Ilya stomps back towards his side of the table, pausing only to drink the watered down remains of Shane’s ginger ale in one long, pointed gulp. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, probably smears his no-lipstick lipstick. He feels, in every atom of Rose’s body and his brain, aflame. “Drop the puck, Mr. Referee.”

The thing is, Ilya is not the best strategist in the league. He does alright. He’s not the most nimble skater, or even the best at handling, although he’s probably up there. His rookie season, he’d barely spoken enough English to understand half the plays his coaches taught him, maybe less. But there’s one thing Ilya does better than anyone else playing hockey today, does well enough to make up for any of his other shortcomings, and it’s playing hard. No one has the aggression he has on the ice, no one batters the puck with quite the — what had Rose called it? She was right. Brute force. He doesn’t need longer arms or a bigger body to do that. Ilya simply needs to hit the fuck out of this stupid plastic disc.

“Jesus!” Shane yips, hopping back as Ilya knocks one into his goal. “Rose, you nearly took my fingers off!”

“Now we are tied up, I believe,” Ilya says cooly, ignoring this.

Shane fishes the puck from the slot beneath his goal. “It’s 2-1.”

“Same difference.” Ilya tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. “Let’s go. I would like to earn my other three goals now.”

The puck is cracking back and forth, neither of them dominating the other, both of them jockeying for control. Another couple pauses by the table, chatting, friendly banter, until the match is tied at 3-3 for the game point and the tension in the air is thick enough to cause them to drift off, slightly uncomfortable.

“I thought you were supposed to be some big impressive hockey player,” Ilya pants, darting to the side as Shane attempts to work around his defense. “They give those cups away to anyone? Or just the pretty boys?”

“I am some impressive hockey player.” Shane says this through gritted teeth, slicing the puck so that it ricochets and almost takes the skin off Ilya’s knuckles. “Best active player in the fucking MLH.”

Иди ты нахуй, Ilya thinks. “Wrong,” he says aloud. He drives the puck back with an arching attack, and Shane doubles over the table to knock it back, but it’s too late, yes, fuck yes, it slides into his goal zone with a neat shhck! and Shane falls into a crouch now as Ilya crows and spins and leaps in celebration.

“I can’t believe this,” Shane whispers, more to himself than Ilya. He’s staring off into the darkness beneath the hockey table, still balanced in a hunch with weight all on his tiptoes. “I actually can’t.”

“You are not hockey player now, Shane Hollander.” Ilya, standing over him now, drags his fingers through Shane’s hair, scratches nails along his scalp and waits until he turns his doleful eyes to look up at him. “You are Napoleon. Facing your Waterloo.”

Hollander’s face crinkles in confusion. “So that makes you what? The Duke of Wellington?”

“The who of what?”

Shane stands up, frowns at Ilya. “What are you talking about?”

Ilya draws himself up to his full height, 5’5”, maybe an inch more in the kitten heels. “It means it’s time for you to surrender.”

Shane wipes his brow, reaches for a sip of Ilya’s cider and pulls a face. “There’s several common misconceptions about that battle. Oversimplifications. First and foremost, it was actually fought a few kilometers south of Waterloo. Second of all, Napoleon didn’t personally surrender, he—”

Ilya, flabbergasted, interrupts. “How do you know this?”

“I read a lot of biographies.” Shane shrugs. He waves a waitress down, gestures for one more round. “It’s good to learn about different leadership styles, you know? As team captain.”

“You drive me wild,” Ilya confesses. He can’t see any reason not to, except maybe that for so long, he wouldn’t even admit such a thing to himself, and yet, now, it’s impossible not to. “I’ve never in my life met anyone like you, and every minute we spend together I like you more and more.”

“Um, thanks.” He doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. Unsurprisingly. “I can lend you the book, if you’re interested.”

“I’m not,” Ilya clarifies. “I’m really not.”

The waitress appears, hands them each another drink. They mumble thanks, and Ilya stares at Shane, and Shane stares at Ilya.

“Best two out of three?” Shane asks.

“Best three out of five.”

Chapter 7: Rose

Boston squeezes a 2-1 win past Pittsburgh three minutes into overtime. It’s almost worse than if they’d lost — Rose plays so horribly as Ilya that watching from the bench while the rest of the Raiders pick up the slack falls somewhere between humbling and humiliating.

She plays so poorly, in fact, that in the intermission between the second and third periods, she’s swarmed by trainers. They shove a thermometer in her mouth, flash lights into her eyes and ears and ask her stupid questions, make her count their fingers while they tug her base layers up and expose her bare chest without a thought, pressing a refreshingly cool stethoscope against her hot skin. The entitlement over Ilya’s body is shocking, almost slightly upsetting if Rose lets herself think about it too long. She feels barely like a person — best case, she’s a car with the hood lifted while they bang around the engine with their wrenches, but really, she thinks, the players are like livestock used for milk or meat, only tended to this well so that they can produce, produce, produce.

The contingency plan for this situation was for Rose to claim a sudden migraine had come on, something temporary, non-threatening, and impossible to prove. Rose doesn’t want to. She wants to get back on the ice and actually get this right.

She manages a single assist, barely intentional. No goals.

Marleau is a lech, but a decent friend. He can see both on the ice and in the sullen set of Rose’s shoulders as she plows through the gauntlet of press obligations and throws enough belongings in a bag to be able to get the hell out of there, that some shit is off. He pleads with her to come grab a drink, get the night out of her system and just forget about it; his phone buzzes and he remembers that there’s a girl already waiting at his place, but even then, he’s undeterred. “Trina’s cool as fuck, man. Honest to god, she’ll probably suck your dick too if I tell her you had a rough ass night.”

As flattered as she is by the absolutely obscene offer, Rose declines. She can’t get out of TD Garden fast enough, around to the back where Svetlana’s waiting in the Porsche. Rose wants to be in bed, unconscious, like, now. Like, three hours ago, actually. But after only a cursory look at Rose’s face, Svetlana shifts the car into drive and decides on both of their behalves, “We’re getting you drunk.”

Boston’s a sports town, and the thought of going out into a public place fills Rose with dread — some drunken asshole will recognize her, heckle her, ask her how she likes them apples or something. Instead, Svetlana enfolds her in the plush anonymity of a lobby bar in a boutique hotel she knows, because she seems to know everywhere and everything, doesn’t she? They order shots to start, and $19 cocktails; it’s dim, and there are a few other well dressed patrons there, but it’s quiet enough in their corner that they lower their voices to talk. They drink and drink until the bar closes, then they go home and open up a bottle of something from Ilya’s freezer and chain smoke in the living room, talking late into the night until one or both of them starts nodding off.

They barely discuss hockey. Svetlana had been watching from the stands while Rose was out on the ice flailing, so what is there to discuss, if they were both there to bear witness? They talk instead about Boston and Los Angeles and Michigan and Moscow, about acting and selling cars, about a band they’ve both seen play live who they agree sounded better on the album. They talk about men they’ve fucked and men they haven’t, men that have been unkind to them and men they feel a softness for and men who have held power over their heads. They talk about their childhoods, which were as different as can be. Rose confesses how it strained her to be 14 years old and paying her parents’ mortgage and her brother’s college tuition; she also admits that sometimes, now that her brothers are grown and all the bills are paid, she almost misses when they needed her, and when she says that, something on her face and in her words makes Svetlana say Вы с ним во многом похожи, though obviously Rose doesn’t know what that means. Svetlana tells her about winter holidays and summer months she spent in New York growing up, how she didn’t know any other young people and her mother didn’t have any friends with children, so mostly she was left to her own devices with a nanny or an Amex. She talks about walking through the city feeling buzzed on freedom, how she’d sit in the park with a book closed in her lap just waiting for something thrilling to happen to her, certain that it would. She’d promised Ilya that America was the most exciting place on the planet and they’d made a pact to live there someday, and she tells Rose through a pinched frown that she wonders now if either of them will ever truly leave Russia behind.

Morning comes on brash. It batters her. Rose wakes in Ilya’s bed, though she doesn’t remember getting herself there. She is excruciatingly hungover. Using what scant consciousness she has, she fumbles through the nightstand for a remote that controls the blinds and shuts the sunlight out so that her eyeballs feel slightly less like she’s on a rapidly depressurizing submarine. Svetlana must be in a similar condition; it’s the first morning the house has been quiet, no phone calls or blenders or slammed drawers and strains of “Вот дерьмо.”

Rose undertakes an epic sort of journey, physical and psychological, to make it to the bathroom and shove her head under the faucet for water. At some point, slouching against the wall to catch her breath, she thinks I’ll die here in this body, although she doesn’t.

The problem is that Rose herself, meaning Rose Ann Landry the person inside of Rose Ann Landry’s real actual body, is something of a lightweight. She can drink, and does so regularly, socially, but she sticks to wine or bubbles most nights because it only takes her three gimlets before she’s crying over a commercial she saw on TV or sliding across a booth in a short skirt and forgetting there are people who can see her panties. Ilya has no such intolerance. It had fascinated her, several shots and cocktails in, how coherent she felt, how in control. And in the spirit of scientific discovery, she’d thought, well, how will I know where the line is if I don’t go find it?

She’d found it and she’d crossed it. Rose lifts the toilet seat to take a (standing!) leak and finds a bowl of last night’s vomit waiting, and she gags until she nearly produces an encore performance.

She finds her phone where she’s hidden it from herself beneath a pile of pillows, and it takes summoning a tremendous amount of bravery to confront it. Since the game last night, she hasn’t opened any of the messages she knows will be waiting. The one on top of the stack of notifications is the least terrifying among them, a text from Svetlana, sent 20 minutes ago, which simply reads Awake?

Unfortunately, Rose replies, and only has to wait a moment to hear movement down the hall, shuffling on carpet.

It’s infuriating, that Svetlana is still so fucking gorgeous in these circumstances. Ridiculous that it takes so many dozens of Hollywood glam squads to cobble together even a fraction of the natural beauty Svetlana has here now, standing in the bedroom doorway and looking about as close to death as Rose feels. She’s dressed, sort of, if one could call sweatpants, sunglasses, a fur coat, and Adidas slides three sizes too big an outfit. It’s possible, based on her general disposition, that Svetlana is the one who had availed herself of Ilya’s toilet the night prior.

“I will go and get McGriddles,” she says, then nods without waiting for an answer — not that she’s asked a question — and turns away.

“Uh, I don’t think McDonalds is serving breakfast right now,” Rose calls weakly. Also, a McGriddle to her system seems possibly like actual poison.

“Stopped why?” Svetlana whips around. “Says who?”

“Well, it’s—” Rose fumbles in the sheets until she finds her phone again, checks the time. “12:15pm.”

Svetlana shakes her head emphatically and immediately seems to regret doing so. “I will get McGriddles.”

A minute or two later, she hears the front door slam. Rose is left alone now, just her and her phone and the 48 dreaded messages from “Selene” that have her stomach bubbling with bile. Sent between the hours of 11:30pm and 1:30am, they’re like a descent into madness and ire, like being tugged barefoot through every layer of hell with jagged rocks tearing gashes into her soles. I can see you’re trying, Rose Landry, but you must do more he’d texted minutes into the first period; by the end of the game, It’s better that you fall down. Hard. I’d rather wake up with my head bashed in against the ice than watch another second of you skating for my fucking team.

She bears all this with fortitude. Yeah, she did a shitty job last night, and she’d expected as much from Ilya. He’s a drama queen — of course his response is completely over the top. It’s the final message that stings the most. Time stamped 2:28am and nearly a page long, like he’d lain awake seething, drafting it word perfect in his mind before he hit send. 


Selene 🌚: Do you know what hockey is Rose? It is a team sport. Embarrass me if you choose and walk through Boston Commons with my dick painted purple and a funny hat on, I don’t care. 20 other Raiders depend on me, and coaches and front office and lots of other people. You think I am mad because you let me down, no. I am mad because you let them down. You made me think that you and me are a team too and now I do not know if that is true. Please at earliest convenience would you let me know if we are in this together or are not. If not, I will make arrangements with Svetlana and you can use this time as you would like.


She’s queasier from the guilt than the hangover. Of course Rose had tried last night. She had. Sweating, shaking in his skates from nerves, trying so hard to even follow the puck that the rest felt like a blur. And at a certain point she’d known it wasn’t working, but — in acting, there was always another take. You could run it again from the top, or they could cobble something together in the edit, if it wasn’t clicking. They could fix it in post. And then last night, the final buzzer had gone, and that was it. It hit her that some part of her had still been blocking the scene without ever truly grasping they’d been broadcasting live.


Sunny 🌞: We’re in this together. I know we’re both disappointed about last night and you especially have every right to be. The only way to get through this thing is if we both commit, and I’m going to hold up my end of the bargain.


Thank u RL, he texts back. Some of last night’s fury has dissipated, clearly. I went out for three little ciders last night and watched the replay when I got in bed and I was really pissed off because I do not like to lose. No, more like, I do not mind if we do not win, but I don’t like to be the REASON we lose, if you understand. Anyway sorry for what I said about you and threats I made and no I didn’t cut off all your hair in the night. We girls have got to stick together 👭

Before she can summon the mental acuity to respond, Ilya has changed the subject, sending a picture of Rose’s bare left foot and the question Do you not like girly things like pedicures? Toenails are sharp and scary. I think I will book for some pampering if that is okay.

She responds a brief of course that’s fine, just put it on the amex before she heads downstairs. Svetlana’s draped across two or three of the chairs at the kitchen table, eating a syrupy Belgian waffle with her bare hands. She’s still wearing sunglasses.

“McDonald’s is not serving breakfast. It is afternoon.” She announces this with the gravitas and slightly reeking leftover intoxication of a late in life Orson Welles. “I have brought us chicken and waffles. From a diner that I took a taxi to. Because I do not remember where I left my car.”

Never mind that they have several cars. Rose accepts the to-go box that’s slid unceremoniously down the table toward her. The thought of anything this greasy has her stomach turning once again, but she’s lived enough life to know that the only way out is through. She pairs it with a Powerade and slowly, as the sodium and electrolytes course through her body, begins to feel something like a human again.

She stands up when she’s finished, collecting hers and Svetlana’s containers and tossing them in the trash. “I’m gonna take a quick shower. If we go pick up your car, do you think you can take me to the rink after?”

Svetlana doesn’t answer. It’s possible she’s nodded off behind her sunglasses. When Rose repeats herself and calls Svetlana’s name, she sits up with a start. “You’re talking to me?”

In any other circumstance, Rose would reply with her best De Niro impression. “Can you take me to go practice?” she reiterates instead.

Svetlana’s brows pull together, as if conferring to make sure they’ve heard Rose correctly. “Take you as in today?”

“As in in twenty, twenty five minutes?” Then, remembering she’s asking for a favor, she rephrases to sound slightly less like she considers Svetlana an employee. “Or whenever works for you, like, obviously I’m flexible. Or I could call an uber or — take one of Ilya’s cars, I guess.”

Svetlana pushes her sunglasses up until they sit on the crest of her head like a headband, turning her sleep-frizzed hair into a radiant lion’s mane. Eyes unshielded now, she looks at Rose almost as though it’s her first time seeing her today, or maybe ever. She frowns. “What did he say to you?”

“Nothing that wasn’t true.”

“It was your first game. Ilya’s only feeling stuck. None of this is your fault. There’s no need for him to take it out on you. He’s lashing out because he’s angry at himself — this is a problem before you too, trust me.”

Rose opens up the cabinet and starts assembling the complex regimen of pre-workout supplements she probably should have put into her body before fried food. “To tell you the truth, Ilya’s feelings are the least of my concerns.” She glances back to catch Svetlana’s reaction, trying to gauge how bitchy that must have sounded. Her expression, unsurprisingly, is neutral. “Think about the flip side. It’s not like I trust him to give a fuck about this stupid X-Squad franchise for my benefit. Right? The only reason he cares is that he showed up the first day and saw 200 people on set who were relying on me for a paycheck.”

This last part does elicit a reaction from Svetlana: surprise. “He told you that?”

“I’m extrapolating.”

Rose has been consistent-ish with Ilya’s routine, at least regular enough to no longer have to consult her notes app. She still gags at the taste and viscosity of fish oil, still grits her teeth at the silt that gathers at the bottom of his shaker bottles and finds excuses not to finish them. Yet another way she’s been half-assing this. Five grams of creatine dissolved as best she can into water — she drinks most of it, saves the last to use as a chaser after swallowing magnesium glycinate and vitamin D3 with a shot of fish oil that she wills herself to keep down. While she’s at it, she stirs a packet of Liquid IV into a glass of water and sets it on the table before Svetlana, who’s been watching silently the entire time.

“Спасибо,” she says in Russian.

Because it’s one of the only phrases Rose has managed to pick up, she’s able to reply with an appropriate response in English. “You’re welcome.”

Svetlana tilts her head back and gulps the drink down in long, smooth, steady sips. Her throat is also long and smooth — not that that bears any relevance to anything, only that it’s something Rose notices.

“We will leave in forty minutes. I’ll need a chance to shower.” Svetlana stands and joins her at the kitchen counter, rinses the grit from her glass and sets it in the sink. “Let’s take the Huracan. We can pick up my car afterwards and drive home separately, if you think you’ll be able to handle that. Otherwise I will use uber now and drive us home together.”

“I didn’t mean you had to stay while I run drills, if you have plans—”

“That is my plan,” Svetlana says simply. “Listen, Rose. We are on the same page. You have people that rely on you. Ilya has people that rely on him. And I have you and Ilya who rely on me. This is the system. Okay?”

“Okay,” Rose says.

Maybe Svetlana is still a little drunk. Or maybe Svetlana feels as sorry for Rose as Rose does for her, to have become tangled up in this whole thing like necklaces in a jewelry box, so suddenly and impossibly enmeshed, feels frustrated by the way they try to calmly sort this whole thing out and end up knotted even tighter. Anyway, Svetlana hugs her, either because she pities Rose or because she’s drunk, but the reason isn’t particularly important. The cheek that’s resting on her shoulder is important, as is the hand that’s stroking at the top of her spine, the spot that Rose is always insecure is too knobbly, like she’ll go hunchbacked one day, but now she’s in this other body and it’s a smooth curve when she leans into the embrace and lets her face fall gently on top of Svetlana’s head. She doesn’t let Svetlana bear her full weight, but neither does she rush to pull away.

Rose throws up later. Not that much later. Probably a half hour into practicing her footwork, roiling nausea that she’d assumed was merely psychological becomes painfully physiological and she has to throw herself over the boards by the visitor’s bench to avoid puking directly on the ice. Svetlana rubs her back again, a little soothing, a little brusque, and gives her a ten minute break to rehydrate before they get back to it.

That night, Rose cooks a boring, basic, healthy dinner. They eat it on the couch with the New York game on, muted, Svetlana running commentary between bites while Rose asks question after question. The Admirals lose in quite an instructive way, in fact, which gives them plenty to discuss. The conversation sticks to hockey. They go to sleep at a reasonable hour.


Rose has been a gainfully employed, tax paying member of society since she was 11 years old, and in all that time, she’s never once lost a job. She doesn’t plan to start now. True to her word, she commits to hockey with a degree of fixation she’s never had for anything other than acting. Acting is easier to care about though, to suffer and to agonize over, because she wants it. She forces herself to want this.

She eats well enough to sustain herself through grueling workouts; in the evenings, she sits on the couch propped between ice packs and heating pads and watches hours and hours of gameplay until her eyelids droop too low to make out anything at all. She even tries to cut back on smoking, but Svetlana says, “Okay, don’t go too crazy,” so she allows herself this one indulgence.

Svetlana’s presence makes everything easier. Not only that she knows things and can explain, when Rose is puzzled why a ref has made a certain call or why a clip has been replayed from four different angles, exactly what’s going on. They are a team beyond that, and often she’s buoyant enough to keep them both afloat. When Rose’s energy is lagging or her motivation waning, Svetlana seems to know exactly how hard to push without letting her fall.

Their whole endeavor has taken on a certain gravity since that morning after the first game, and Svetlana is serious much of the time. But also, the more she spends time with Rose and begins to understand her, the more Svetlana seems to allocate little jokes like treats for good behavior, dangling her sweetness and her levity like a carrot on a stick so that Rose will chase her for it. It should maybe be mortifying to be seen so completely, but oh well. Rose has more pressing things to worry about. Instead, she lets it happen, lets Svetlana charm her into improving little by little, and allows herself the second, secret indulgence of being known.

They lose to Carolina. This comes as no surprise; Carolina’s on a hot streak right now that makes 2-3 feel like a small mercy compared to Rose’s stress dreams of a 0-10 shutout. More importantly, the 2 up on the board is made possible by Rose’s one goal and one assist; even with the loss, she walks off the ice and into the changing room with a smile on her face. Ilya’s the captain, it should be her job to cheer the team up after a defeat, but spirits aren’t necessarily low. Rose finds herself on the receiving end of sufficient backslaps and encouragement that she knows she must have played well enough to pass as him, at least for tonight. Indeed, Marleau strikes her with a thunderclap to the shoulder and leans in before the media scrum can descend upon her with their dozen mics. “Nice to have you back, man.”

“Nice to be back,” Rose responds. Not that she’s really back, per se, but she means it. It’s nice to be here.

Ilya’s media obligations are, unsurprisingly, the easiest part of this whole exchange of duties. Rose would wager she has more media training than all the captains in the league combined. She knows how to speak in soundbites, how to keep the conversation moving when an interviewer wants to poke or prod a sore subject. There’s also plenty of material to study when it comes to mimicking his presence with the press, YouTube playlists and edits on twitter from thirsty female fans who manage to clip and romanticize every microexpression of Ilya’s, from a thumb drawn against the brow to a tongue held thoughtfully between the front teeth. Rose has consumed enough of these as research to have completely fucked up her algorithm. Now, they come in handy. All she has to do, really, is stay in character and remix some of Ilya’s old pat answers when she runs out of things to say.

There are a few dozen texts from Ilya waiting when she checks her phone on the ride home. Most are airing his frustrations, nitpicking her handling, indecision, followthrough, etc. and swearing in all caps when she hits the post on a particularly open goal. Peppered in between the overzealous emoji usage and the general animosity he’s expressing towards “those assholes from Carolina” which she takes to mean every single player on their team from 2010 to present, there are messages of encouragement. He sends a video screaming and cheering at the hotel room TV when she scores and offers sympathetic support when she’s tripped late in the first period and goes down hard. The last text, from an hour ago, reads simply Good game RL 🤜

Grinning, she sends a fist bump back. 


Sunny 🌞: thank you for the constructive criticism

Sunny 🌞: you’re aware that my phone isn’t in my hand during the game though, right?

Sunny 🌞: and that it’s difficult for me to implement your feedback when I don’t see your texts until hours later, such as the suggestion that I “SHOOT RIGHT NOW THERE’S A LANE WIDE OPEN”

Selene 🌚: we are in each other’s bodies right now

Selene 🌚: I do not think time travel is out of the equation


The takeaway from all this is that, for as demanding as the last week has been, Rose’s hard work is paying off. And her hard work paying off means that she needs to keep it up, which is why she’s slumped on the couch beside Svetlana at nearly 11pm the night before she leaves for her first away game, watching hockey once again.

Rose is going alone. She’s nervous, obviously. They discussed the possibility of Svetlana joining her in Toronto, and she’s pretty sure Svetlana’s talked it over with Ilya too, but ultimately, they’ve decided against it. Rose will be too wrapped up with team stuff to have much one on one time with her anyway, and besides, more than the game itself, it’s the social dynamics that Rose is anxious about, and having a babysitter won’t exactly help.

The concept of a roadtrip with the team feels like showing up to her first day at a new set but 100 times worse — more like the time she was added for a multi-episode arc 8 seasons into a network medical drama and everyone on set seemed right at home except for her. All the Raiders, players and staff, are so at ease around each other already, and Rose knows that even if she could force herself to relax and let go, she can’t afford to. The best she can do is keep her guard up, blend in, and hope that Connors doesn’t snore.

At least Toronto sucks this year. Their star player, if he could even be called that, retired at the end of last season, their coach is old enough that he’s been running the same plays since the 90s, and the center on their first line has been out on injury for half the season. Rose is watching the replay of their game against Anaheim from earlier in the week, and she gets the sense that merely showing up and managing to get her skates laced properly would be enough to clinch a victory.

Even Svetlana looks bored now, vaguely offended to have to devote her time to analyzing their shitty play. She’s sprawled out on the couch with her feet occasionally brushing against Rose’s thigh as she shifts around, a bag of baby carrots balanced on her chest alongside the remote. Typically she runs the clicker like it’s the editing bay of a televised pro game, bouncing to and fro along the stream and replaying various clips for Rose while she runs a detailed and instructive commentary over them. Apparently, there isn’t much Toronto’s doing that’s worth commenting on. “You see that?” She crunches around a carrot, gestures at the screen where Blankenship has just managed to drop his stick on a breakaway. “Don’t do that.”

“You don’t have to stay up,” Rose offers during the first intermission. It’s getting late, and she can tell Svetlana’s getting increasingly listless from the way she’s tap-tap-tapping at her phone screen and sighing loudly. Rose tries to remind herself that Svetlana’s probably at least as exhausted from the last week and a half as she is, maybe more since she’s still been finding time to pop into the dealership. “I’ll probably finish watching and then go to bed anyway. I might try to get in a quick workout before the flight tomorrow.”

“I’m fine,” Svetlana says, but she shifts again like she can’t get comfortable and glances over apologetically when she kicks Rose in the leg. “Sorry.”

The pundits fill the time between periods speculating on playoff chances — they’re only two months into the season, and this feels premature, in Rose’s opinion.

“When you were a little girl, what did you think you’d be when you grew up?” Svetlana asks. Clearly, she agrees with Rose that the conversation happening on ESPN is less than scintillating.

“Well — an actress.” It’s not a very exciting answer. “What about you?”

Svetlana stares up at the ceiling like she’s watching years go by on replay. “Maybe that I’d be a cosmonaut — what you would call an astronaut. I had watched a documentary in school. It seemed very exciting, very difficult. And I loved animals also, so I thought I might be a leopard trainer at the zoo. I don’t think I knew what that meant at all. I probably thought I’d get to lay down with them and cuddle, you know.”

“Mm.” The second period’s started with a penalty over something dumb and avoidable. Rose is only half paying attention to the game.

“I think most of the adults in my life thought that I would be a model or something, like my mother. Or that I would marry someone in our social circle and just—” She cuts herself off, finishing the sentence with a fluttering wave of her hand to indicate something insubstantial.

“Are you happy with where you ended up?” Rose asks, pretty sure she knows the answer by now.

“There are good days and bad days. I think that’s always true in sales. But yes, I like what I do.” Svetlana jabs a toe at Rose’s thigh, this time on purpose. “And you? Happy to be living the dream?”

Good days and bad days, or maybe good things and bad things. Before she answers, Rose thinks it over more than she often gives herself the chance to, outside of therapy. “I still love acting. I don’t know if I would have chosen it, if I’d known about all the other stuff — the parts of being an actor that aren’t acting. If that makes sense. But sometimes I think it’s better not to know how difficult something will be before you throw yourself into it. Or else, how would anyone get up the courage to do anything?”

Several minutes pass of Toronto struggling to fight for possession, icing, fumbling, and generally displaying immense ineptitude. When Svetlana speaks up again, it’s as though she’s been carrying on the conversation in her head through multiple digressions.

“I’d like to get a pet,” she says thoughtfully.

“Yeah?” Rose holds her hand out for a carrot and Svetlana sits up close into her space to pass over the whole bag. “What kind?”

“A kitten, maybe. A little cat, with white fur. Dogs are too much…” she trails off, like she’s searching for the word in English. “They’re too much.”

Svetlana hasn’t laid back down; instead, she seems content to settle in pressed close alongside Rose. Her legs are tucked up underneath her, knees pressing in a little at Rose’s side, against her hip, and the arm she used to pull herself up stays stretched out along the back of the couch. Not touching Rose, but resting arched behind her shoulders. She and Ilya have a strange friendship, with amorphous boundaries Rose still hasn’t quite managed to make sense of — it’s possible they do much more than this, cuddling loosely when they watch television, entwining themselves in a perfectly platonic puzzle of limbs.

Or maybe, more likely, Svetlana’s sitting close because they’re sharing a snack, and that’s a normal thing to do. Eyes on the TV screen, she reaches into the bag sitting in the dip of Rose’s lap and searches with her hand, rustling and feeling her way around until she finds a carrot at the very bottom.

Rose coughs. She sets the bag of carrots on the table. “I really shouldn’t have any more.”

There’s an unskippable ad that pops up in the stream, a promo for Jersey Mike’s that seems to stretch on forever. They sit in silence, watching Danny DeVito drizzling various sauces over a long, meat laden sub until it’s absolutely soaking. Svetlana’s impatience is a palpable thing.

More palpable when she reaches closer and pinches Rose on the thigh. Rose jumps a little, although it really didn’t hurt. “What was that for?”

“I’m bored,” Svetlana pouts.

Only boring people are bored, Rose’s mother had often said, though she seemed to resent Rose and her brothers’ attempts to stave off said boredom by doing things like suplexing each other onto the dining room table. “I told you you don’t have to watch with me,” she reminds her. “You’re welcome to find some way to entertain yourself.”

“Late night on a Tuesday in Boston?” Svetlana replies doubtfully. “Right. Come on — aren’t you tired of hockey, hockey, hockey? Turning your brain into mush?”

Of course she is. “Not at all,” Rose says. “In fact, the more I watch, the more I’m enjoying it.”

“Hm.”

A two minute ad spot comes on for Subway, thick globs of mayonnaise squirted over a foot long. Svetlana picks at a loose thread in the stitching of the leather sofa, fingers occasionally catching in Rose’s hair.

“Gossip with me,” she suggests. “Tell me something interesting about your life.”

Rose, who has for some inexplicable reason been trying very hard not to look over at Svetlana this whole time, laughs and turns directly to her now. “The most interesting thing that’s ever happened in my life was 10 days ago, and you’ve spent every moment with me since then. I have nothing else to tell.”

“Hm,” Svetlana says again.

A commercial comes on now for Quiznos. What the fuck kind of sponsorships is this league running?

“I have a question.” Svetlana sits up suddenly, thrumming with energy Rose can practically feel.

A moment passes. Rose’s mouth twists up at the side, a little smile because she can’t help playing along with this game, even if she doesn’t understand the rules. “And are you going to ask me? Or am I supposed to guess?”

The light from so many sandwich commercials dances in Svetlana’s eyes, dazzling as they glance down to Rose’s lap and back. “What’s it like?”

“What’s what like,” Rose laughs, although she obviously takes Svetlana’s deeply unsubtle meaning.

“Having a cock, obviously.” She over-enunciates the word to shock and titillate Rose, which works, flattening her accent to sound American.

“What about having a cock?” Rose says back, with as much of an American accent as she can muster in Ilya’s mouth.

“You know.” Svetlana shifts again, eager and interested, kneeling on the couch so she’s facing Rose completely.

“I guess it feels — in the way, sometimes? Also, peeing standing up is definitely not as groundbreaking as they make it seem,” Rose answers truthfully. Sitting down is far superior. Who doesn’t like a nice break in the day to sit down?

Svetlana sighs, exasperated, and a lock of loose hair in the front of her face flutters as she does so. “I mean the good stuff. Like, come on, you know what I mean. What’s it like to get hard?”

A laugh bursts out of Rose.

“We’re all girls here!” Svetlana wheedles her.

“Well, what do you want me to say?”

“I want you to answer,” she pleads. “I’m curious.”

“It feels like — I don’t know, I don’t know how to explain it!” Rose has gotten sort of hard a couple times in the last week without really meaning to, or woken up that way. It was odd, was what it was like. In truth, she found it incredibly vulnerable to have an expression of lust suddenly so externalized after a lifetime on the other end of things. “I mean, it’s sort of like — you know, when you’re turned on, and you can feel your—” Even for Rose, who isn’t overly shy about discussing sex, it feels outrageous to say this, but she doesn’t know how else to phrase it. “Like when the blood is rushing to your clit, and it feels like — pressure? Throbbing? But now imagine it’s longer and sticking 7 or 8 inches out of you.”

Svetlana is certainly not bored any more. Not in the slightest. She’s enraptured, nodding attentively. “And what about when you come? Is it better than with a pussy, or worse? I would think easier, but not as good.”

Rose laughs again. “How the fuck would I know?”

“What do you mean?” Svetlana furrows her brows.

“What do you mean what do I mean? I just told you, we’ve been together nonstop for the last ten days. When do you think I’m out here having orgasms? When you drop me off at practice, do you think Marly and I are sneaking off to the equipment room and making passionate love?”

Svetlana purses her lips, raises a brow. “Maybe not the equipment room.”

Rose rolls her eyes.

“We sleep in separate bedrooms,” Svetlana points out. “You shower twice a day. You never jerk off?”

Do YOU? Rose doesn’t say aloud, but she certainly thinks it. “No? I don’t know. Would that not be weird, or something?”

Svetlana snorts. “If you’re feeling precious about it, I can assure you, Ilyusha will not mind.”

Rose doesn’t say anything. She’s not sure where this conversation’s going now, or how to get out of it, or whether she even wants to.

“You could go out clubbing in Toronto,” Svetlana suggests amiably. “It would not be difficult to pick someone up.” Perhaps in response to the reticence she sees on Rose’s face, she says, “Are you really not curious at all? We are very different women, I think. I’d be curious. I’d love to have one for a few days, just to try it and see.”

“I mean, yeah I’m curious,” Rose admits. But who would she pick up? A guy feels out of the question, because the prospect of Ilya Rozanov spotted pulling a man from a bar has unthinkable consequences for his reputation and maybe even career. And she can’t imagine taking home the type of girls he hooks up with, the blonde girl at Ciel or the Maggie who texted him a picture in a tight t-shirt the other day, hardened nipples protruding through the Raiders logo printed on the front and the caption let me know when you’re in Dallas again 😘. And then there’s the other, much more problematic thing — “Doesn’t that seem… unethical? Or messy, at the very least? I meet someone and they think they’re hooking up with Ilya, but they’re really hooking up with me? It feels grimy, I don’t know. Maybe I’m a prude.”

“No, I see what you mean.” Svetlana makes one of her unreadable faces — a cool, composed expression. Strategic. “But I know who you are.”

“Sure.” Rose swallows, feeling her Adam’s apple bobbing in her throat, a masculine physical sensation that Svetlana doesn’t seem nearly as curious about interrogating.

“So none of your messy ethics.” They could be discussing flight arrangements for tomorrow, or techniques to improve Rose’s wrist shot, for how calmly she’s approaching it.

Rose doesn’t know exactly what Svetlana’s offering; she doesn’t think there’s anything she’d say no to right now, and maybe that’s a problem. She tries to say something, to ask something, but nothing comes to her in English or in Russian.

“We do not have to, if you’re not interested, but — I think you are.” Politely, Svetlana glances down to where Rose is embarrassingly, visibly hard through Ilya’s stupid Rick Owens sweatpants.

The third period has started. Anaheim has possession, and Toronto’s D is once again flailing. The commentators’ voices are like white noise or like blood rushing in Rose’s ears, the flickering screen the only light in the dark room.

“I think it’s like — a muscle memory thing,” Rose offers weakly. She doesn’t know enough about the fucked up anatomy or physiology of any of this whole arrangement to know if that’s true or not; she only knows she’s been at least half hard since Svetlana stuck her hand in that fucking bag of carrots and brushed innocent fingertips against her dick.

“Muscle memory for me too.” Slowly, giving Rose enough time to protest or to push her hand away, Svetlana dips a finger beneath the waistband of Rose’s sweatpants; softly, she murmurs, “Sit up for me.”

Rose lifts up from the seat enough to pull her pants down to mid-thigh. “Is that—”

“That’s good.” Svetlana’s hand is on her bare skin, brushing through the fair hair on her upper thighs as tenderly as petting a nervous animal. “Tell me if it isn’t nice for you, and we can stop.”

There’s no way that will be a problem. Svetlana drags her fingers up Rose’s length and, maybe sensing that Rose is far more keyed up than she has the courage to admit, wraps a hand around her without teasing or drawing out the game. Immediately, it’s a sensation of overwhelming relief.

Ilya is big. Not scary, health hazard big, not Guinness book of World Records or anything close to that. But big enough that all his cockiness, no pun intended, feels irritatingly justified. Uncut, well-proportioned — Rose can admit, begrudgingly, that Ilya’s dick would probably feel amazing to be fucked by if he has even the slightest notion of how to use it, which he probably does. But truthfully, it hasn’t consumed much of her attention in the last ten days. Knowing that Rozanov has a pretty dick doesn’t make the idea of sex with him any more appealing, and so she’s managed to walk around with this large, dumb appendage dangling in the front of her pants without once being driven to distraction.

Until now, when she sees Svetlana playing with it. Not that Rose would choose to switch her places or has the desire to interact with it herself, necessarily. Only that suddenly, seeing his cock in this new context is the thing that finally makes it sexy to her. Svetlana’s movements are deft and effortless, stroking with an easy rhythm, reaching her thumb up to draw lazy circles around the head until precum beads and oozes from the tip. Her other arm is still stretched on the back of the couch, and when she brings her fingers up to tangle loosely in the curls at the back of Rose’s neck, Rose can’t stop herself from shivering.

Minutes pass, maybe. Svetlana dips her head down, hovers inches away and spits softly, silently, coating Rose in saliva so that her hand is gliding smoother, silkier. Rose’s head falls back against the couch; she groans without meaning to.

Svetlana raises her head up only far enough to catch Rose’s eye. “A blow job is more interesting to experience, I think. For comparison. Okay?”

“Okay,” Rose breathes. Anything, anything Svetlana offers right now, she’ll take. She doesn’t even know if she can last the length of time it will take for Svetlana to get her mouth on her. “Is that — okay with you? You don’t have to, if — I’m fine however.”

Svetlana looks amused. “I know that this is new for you, Rose. It isn’t new for me.”

Right. She and Ilya have been fucking since they were teenagers — for Svetlana, this will be indistinguishable from the dozens of other blowjobs she’s given him, no doubt. Rose nods, because Svetlana seems to be awaiting confirmation before she ducks her head down further to wrap plush lips around her.

It’s like an incandescent, white hot feeling, tight where her cheeks suck in and even tighter where the tip of Rose’s cock nudges into her throat. Rose’s hand finds its way to Svetlana’s back where it’s hunched over, rubbing steadily between her shoulder blades as Svetlana’s head works up and down. Ilya must do that; that’s why Rose has found herself touching Svetlana carefully, affectionately. Like a force of habit. The wet heat of Svetlana’s mouth makes it impossible for Rose to consider anything else, or to catch her breath or hold back the noises she’s making or to think a single thing other than God, she’s incredible.

Svetlana pauses only to slide off the couch and down to her knees, folding herself between Rose’s legs and looking up at her with shining eyes and spit-slick mouth only briefly before she swallows her down again in earnest, deep and slow. It’s unbearably sexy from more angles than Rose can even begin to process. It’s hot that Svetlana’s sucking her off because Svetlana’s hot, objectively, and because she’s talented at it; it’s hot for Rose to know how achingly good she feels right now and to finally understand that she’s made men ache in exactly that same way.

Rose has typically enjoyed giving head in the way she enjoys most sexual encounters: with giddy enthusiasm and occasional bouts of passion. The way Svetlana does it is different. The same maneuvers, maybe, but a different attitude. She’s as serious as she ever is, as methodical and deliberate, as artfully, powerfully seductive. She must take some pleasure in doing it, because she’s leisurely in her approach. Whenever Rose’s breathing quickens, whenever she feels herself get close, Svetlana slows, staves her off, changes pace so that Rose is chasing it and chasing it.

Rose has also given enough blowjobs to understand the etiquette, and she focuses on being a polite recipient. She keeps her hips still, even as Svetlana languorously teases now and the urge to buck up and fuck faster, harder into her mouth feels overwhelming. The fingers of Svetlana’s right hand are wrapped around the base of Rose’s cock, palm pressing slightly but intentionally against her balls, and her other hand is holding much of her own hair up and away. Rose touches her wrist there, waits until Svetlana makes an affirmative sort of noise that vibrates around her, and she threads her fingers into Svetlana’s hair, tightening her grip only just enough that Svetlana can let go without the hair falling back into her face.

All the slowness is gone now, the little licks and light touches. Svetlana’s taking her deep, steady and quick, probably doing exactly what she’s done a hundred times when she has Ilya begging to come and thinks he finally deserves it. It’s hard to imagine Ilya begging, and right now, he’s a distant thought Rose doesn’t want to entertain, but Rose can’t imagine any man who’s been with Svetlana not begging and pleading the way she finds herself on the verge of doing now. A desperate whimper escapes that she can’t even be embarrassed over.

Svetlana’s eyes flick up to meet hers. She pulls off only long enough to ask, “Close?” and smile, licking a stripe up Rose’s shaft with the flat of her tongue when Rose nods eagerly. Tighter, wetter, faster now, like she wants Rose teetering close, wants to push her over the edge.

Rose’s free hand stretches down to find the back of Svetlana’s neck — not pushing or forcing her down, but resting there, gripping as she finds herself inching closer to the precipice and feels the dizzy urge for something to cling on to. Svetlana moans into the firm touch, a low, gratified hum that sizzles through every one of Rose’s borrowed nerve endings, and then she’s coming, hunching over as it wracks her body, holding on tightly and swearing as Svetlana works her through it, swallowing until there’s nothing left.

Rose feels spent in an instant. There’s the trembling tremor of an aftershock; she feels so weak and boneless afterwards she might collapse forward if she wouldn’t completely squash Svetlana beneath her weight.

Svetlana reaches back to find a LaCroix that’s been sitting open on the coffee table for four hours and is probably flat. She takes a small sip, makes a face, and climbs back up onto the couch. “Well?” she asks after something like 30 seconds of patiently waiting for Rose to catch her breath.

“It was good,” Rose manages, feeble, not sure if she can feel her toes. She should probably put her dick away.

“Good and what else?” Svetlana demands. She watches, eyes narrowed, as Rose struggles to tug her sweatpants back on, looking like at any moment she may flick Rose in the rapidly softening dick if she doesn’t answer quickly and thoroughly enough.

“It was really good. Really great,” Rose offers, and is impressed to manage even that degree of articulation. “You’re really good at that.”

Svetlana rolls her eyes. “Yes. Obviously. I mean, what did it feel like?”

Um. “It felt like — I don’t know. Like getting my dick sucked, I guess. Like really good.”

Svetlana makes a loud and sudden noise, a Slavic utterance of disapproval which reminds Rose of a Polish driving instructor she’d had years ago who’d told her after three lessons, Maybe is better you take taxi.

“You’re useless,” Svetlana decides. Her tone is as dismissive as when Rose had managed to get herself tangled in the net while running drills on Wednesday and needed to be rescued. But when she reaches toward the bag of carrots on the table, her hand shoots out to squeeze twice, fast, at Rose’s knee, and Rose understands that it’s all in good fun.

They’re only halfway through the period; Toronto seems to have just flubbed a penalty kill. Svetlana says something derisive about their assistant coach, and Rose pretends to listen.

Not that Rose has never had casual sex before, she has and she’s enjoyed it, but this is breezy beyond anything she’s experienced. Tonight could be any other night. It’s like they’re hanging out, as usual, embedding themselves deeper into this routine they’ve built, and the sex part was just — incidental. A blip that technically breached no real boundaries, and yet, felt so completely new, so exhilarating and so revelatory to Rose that it seems like lunacy to move on as though it was nothing. Maybe it meant nothing, but it wasn’t nothing. Was it?

Svetlana sits beside her perfectly at ease. She doesn’t need to process any of this the way that Rose does. Does she need anything at all? She stretches back along the couch in just the pose she’d been in not even an hour ago — limbs long and loose, legs spreading, stretching so that her toes tap against the side of Rose’s leg. If this had been real and not some ditzy joke of an experiment, what would Rose do right now? She wasn’t raised in a barn; she has manners. She’d offer to reciprocate in some way, attempt to make Svetlana feel even a fraction as good as Svetlana had made her feel.

Except, that would imply that Svetlana would even want anything from her, which presumably, she doesn’t. Yes, Rose is in Ilya’s body, planes and curves well worn by Svetlana’s hands after so many years, and if Svetlana really wanted to get off, it would be easy for her to use his hands or mouth or cock and take whatever she needed, however she liked it best, and of course Rose would let her, because that would be only fair. But Rose can’t imagine that Svetlana wants that. It wasn’t like actual foreplay with a partner, where giving makes one eager to receive. She can’t have been turned on by doing that to Rose. Svetlana was the one who’d pointed out before they started that she knew exactly what she was doing and who she was doing it to.

As Rose watches from the corner of her eye, Svetlana seems to settle back into a lazy, dozy boredom. Her arms reach high above her head as she stretches, body taut, humming sleepily. She watches the game with glazed eyes. There’s nothing for Rose to worry about, like what exactly Svetlana might ask her to do to her if she wanted something in return, or whether Rose would even be able to take care of her or make her come. Svetlana has no desire for that, and Rose has no obligation.

With three minutes left in the period, Svetlana stands and stretches again, then announces that she’s going to bed. She kisses Rose once on each cheek before she goes, easy, a small European gesture that Rose has gotten used to over the last week or so. They’ll see each other in the morning when Svetlana takes her to the airport; Rose reminds her that they’ll have to stop for gas, so they’ll have to leave a few extra minutes earlier.

Rose stays in the living room until the game is over. She tidies up the cans of seltzer and the remnants of their snacks and other debris. She collects the coasters where they’re strewn and stacks them up again. It doesn’t take long to get the house in order at nighttime, because the two of them do a good job keeping it neat during the day.

It doesn’t take long to get ready for bed, either. Her bag’s already packed for tomorrow, so she washes her face, undresses, and climbs into bed.

An hour or two later, when she still can’t sleep, she jerks off for the first time. She’s hoping it will help her fall asleep. And sure, she’s curious. It does feel good, obviously, so much more straightforward than when she does it to her own body, but the orgasm is like that too. Simpler, maybe. It could be that she’s come already tonight and there’s an anatomical limitation as far as pleasure is concerned, but she finds it deeply underwhelming in comparison to earlier, downstairs. At least there’s the relief of that — this sensation she’d discovered hours ago which had seemed, in the moment, almost dangerously addictive, turns out to have been exciting almost entirely due to novelty. Thank fuck for that. She falls asleep easily, then. She can move on.


They win in Toronto. It might have been a forgone conclusion, because Toronto really, really sucks, but Rose is on the ice for more minutes of gameplay than Ilya’s been since the first few weeks of the season, and thanks to her, it’s less of a victory and more of a bloodbath. They come up 6-1, and spirits couldn’t be higher.

Balder catches her as she’s leaving the ice behind the rest of the team, grips her by the shoulder pads and shakes her with unbridled joy. “I know you’re not superstitious like the other guys, Rozanov, but god damn do I need you playing like that every night. Whatever you’re doing—” he shakes her shoulders again. “Keep doing it.”

Chapter 8: Ilya

Chapter Notes

Things are going well for Ilya, famous actress-wise. Outside of X-Squad, Rose’s current professional obligations seem easily managed via email. He checks her inbox once daily and reads along to stay in the loop, but Rose and her team are always on top of things quickly. She texts him on a Saturday morning, Did you see the thing from my manager about YSL Beauty? I can try to reschedule, but the product launch is in two months so there’s not a ton of wiggle room. Yes, Ilya saw that, and no, he doesn’t mind. He takes an afternoon to go play model, the experience markedly different from promo shoots he’s done before. They clip heavy bundles of extra hair onto his head and slather him in just as much makeup as he wears for X-Squad, misting him and misting him between takes to achieve a dewy, luminous complexion. Ilya smolders at the camera, something he’s quite comfortable doing, although he doesn’t understand why they need three hours worth of shots when he’s been making the same few facial expressions in every one. He can’t believe Rose does this sort of thing regularly; he can’t believe Shane does this sort of thing regularly.

In superhero mutant land, there’s been a recent dispute between one of the leads and a higher up producer. It starts with a blowout fight which leads to an early end of day; when they arrive to set the next morning, new scripts are distributed, cherry red pages this time, reflecting the amendment that the character of said actor will now be devoured by rabid pigeons in the first act. This means adjustments that will extend the principal photography window by another month, but Ilya doesn’t mind. For one, since getting around to watching the previous X-Squad installments, he’s been feeling much more in tune with the character of Allure, and he’s glad for the opportunity to revisit some of the earlier scenes where he was phoning it in. For another — when the shoot wraps, then what? Does he find a reason to stay in Montreal? Go back to LA in Rose’s body, do whatever the fuck she does out there? They’re not any closer to finding a way back into themselves, so in the meantime, he’s happy to kick that puck down the ice a little longer.

Things are mostly going well with Shane, too. It’s blissful 90% of the time, and the sweetness and laughter more than compensate for the occasional bouts of psychological torture. In the two weeks Ilya’s been in Rose’s body, he and Shane have gone out five times. They text throughout the day, sending pictures of their lunches and of dogs they see and petty work grievances they want to bitch about. It’s the longest Ilya’s dated anyone without fucking them, and though he wishes with every fiber of his being that they were fucking, morning, noon, and night, he’s pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to fill the time without sex.

They go to dinners and lunches and breakfasts. They shoot pool in a bar and Ilya gets them into trouble when he baits Shane into clashing pool cues like they’re light sabers. Shane has a cousin with a kid he rarely sees, but the kid is turning eleven, so they spend an afternoon picking out all manner of gifts a preteen boy might like, including, obviously, some hockey gear.

Against his will and better judgement, Ilya even agrees to a double date. Shane’s apologetic in advance — Hayden and Jackie are big fans of Rose’s movies and they definitely, definitely will say something weird, Shane warns him, especially because he basically never brings girls around. It’s that last bit, the fact that Ilya’s managed to eclipse so many of Shane’s half-assed relationships and earned a seat at the dinner table, that flatters him into accepting the invitation.

The Pikes acquire a babysitter on a Friday evening, or they leave their kids at home alone to burn the house down — Ilya doesn’t care to ask — anyway, they all meet up for bowling. Stressful. Ilya has been bowling maybe one time ever. Either that, or he played croquet while very drunk. Luckily, when he mentions his concerns about the evening to Rose, she texts back right away. 


Sunny 🌞: I grew up in the midwest, of course I can bowl

Sunny 🌞: I’m insanely good at it

Sunny 🌞: You’ll probably have to actively try not to humiliate them


Ilya does nothing of the sort. He turns his mind off when he’s facing down the lane, lets her body do all the hard work, and bowls a 190 on his first game. Hayden Pike, whose only skill seems to be inseminating his wife, is equal parts impressed and appalled.

“We got hustled, man. She beat you by 37 points,” he bitches to Shane. Never mind that Pike bowled a 72. “Are you gonna sit there and take that?”

Shane catches Ilya’s eye, grinning. “I guess we’ll have to go another round and see.”

“Some men are secure enough to be with women who beat them at things,” Jackie leans in close to Ilya and remarks under her breath. She’s so pregnant she looks like she has a bowling ball tucked under her shirt; Ilya likes her much more than her useless husband. “A little competition can be a turn on.”

You have no idea. Afterwards, Ilya kisses Shane breathless in the car and Shane lets him, even seems to like it, hands winding up through Ilya’s long hair which he wears down on all their dates now, hoping Shane will take the chance to pull it. They’re making out for long enough that a valet attendant knocks politely on the window of the car to ask Shane if he needs assistance parking. Shane’s panting, startled by the interruption, discombobulated in a sweet and horny sort of way.

But then when Ilya whispers into his neck, “Let him park the car. Come up for a while,” it seems to jolt Shane back to life.

“My sleep schedule’s been messed up lately,” he lies, frantically refastening the top few buttons of his shirt that Ilya had managed to get undone. “These away games have me jet lagged, so, you know, my internal clock is really… yeah.”

“You’re jet lagged from flying to Chicago?” It’s an hour time difference. Shane was there for one night. Ilya doesn’t try to hide his irritation.

“Thank you again for tonight, with Hayden and Jackie and… yeah. Everything. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” He stretches over the center console, places a paltry little peck of a parting kiss to Ilya’s lips, and opens the passenger door. It’s a dismissal.

Ilya slams the car door when he gets out, turns back and makes a whoopsie! teehee! face as though it was an accident. He’s seething mad, pulsing hot with arousal in his now uncomfortably moist skinny jeans and feeling cockblocked and resentful.

This beard shit is for the birds. How unfair, how selfish and how cruel, for Shane to lead him on this way. He’ll happily introduce him to his friends and parade him around like they have something real, expect Ilya to play the role of the dutiful WAG, arm candy and moral support and stability and public decency. What does Ilya get out of it? There’s no chance of an actual future, no hope of satisfaction. He feels used, and not in the sexy way.

But then he gets upstairs back to the suite and strips, lays down on his stomach and shoves a pillow between his thighs and reminds himself that it’s Rose who’s been rejected, not him. It’s not that Shane doesn’t want Ilya — quite the opposite. He’s probably on his way home feeling pent up, frustrated, confused. Shane’s had sex since he and Ilya were last together, but he hasn’t been fucked right, hasn’t been handled in the way he craves. He’ll get home soon and he’ll be so on edge, he won’t be able to stop himself from getting off to the thought of Ilya the way that Ilya’s getting off to the thought of him right now. Shane will stroke himself, maybe try to crook two of his fingers inside and find the angle Ilya’s so much better at reaching. He might dig into his nightstand for one of the toys Ilya found while snooping that time that Shane was in the shower, might ride it until he’s whimpering, and the whole time he’ll be feeling pathetic and ashamed; Ilya’s vindicated by that, the fantasy of Shane knowing how fucked up this all is, punishing himself, a little rougher than he should be, so desperate with longing that he disgusts himself.

By morning, all is sunshine and roses again. Birds would be atwitter just outside the window with their lovey dovey songs if the penthouse wasn’t up so high. Ilya wakes up to a good morning text from Shane as usual, and his curiosity gets the better of him.


Rose: 🫴 my reviews please

Shane ❤️: reviews? 


Not that Ilya cares in the slightest what Shane’s friends think of him. Well, he knows what they think of him — they hate him. During Boston’s last game against Montreal, Ilya had skated up while the refs were conferring and let Pike know that the penalty box was for players, not for fans, and that Ilya was going to have to ask security to escort him from the venue for trespassing. Pike had banged his tiny fists against the glass like an angry lemur caged in a zoo and called Ilya many pathetic and derogatory names that were not suitable for broadcast.

But Ilya as Rose — he thinks he made a good impression. He’d tried, at least. And even if they didn’t approve, it’s not as though it would change things. Shane wouldn’t stop dating someone just because his friends didn’t like them. Right?


Rose: seal of approval from mr. and mrs. #35?

Shane ❤️: lol

Shane ❤️: definitely yes


Oh, thank fuck.


Shane ❤️: they like that you’re feisty

Shane ❤️: and they said that I seemed really happy, which I guess is nice to hear haha

Rose: nice for me to hear that too ❤️ I want to make you happy


Has Shane ever struck Ilya as a happy person? He’s never thought about it, and if he did, he might describe Shane as fulfilled or motivated, maybe purposeful — qualities he knows so many people lack in their lives — but happy, overall? He doesn’t think Shane’s unhappy, but in the years he’s known him, he wouldn’t call him happy, either. It’s too sad to linger over the thought that this might be something they have in common.

There are good days and bad days, but Ilya thinks, or at least allows himself to hope, that together they’re happy for the time being.

Only one facet of Rose’s life feels impossible to navigate, and naturally, it corresponds to the aspect of his own life that he’s been the most fucked up about.

He knows Svetlana’s fending off Alexei, and he trusts she’s doing so deftly. It isn’t easy; she tries to shield him from the worst of it, but Ilya knows what goes unspoken in their conversations. Between updates on his father’s health and financial negotiations, she never tells him, by the way, Alexei called me a cunt today and told me to have you call him for once rather than letting your whore play receptionist or I thought I should mention, your father’s nurse said he cries out for you at odd hours and can’t be soothed without your voice on the phone, and while I have you I’m starting to worry that he may die before you get the chance to speak to him again. What is there to be gained from such conversation? The situation is shit, but it was always shit, and this is just another complex flavor in the shit sandwich.

Rose also has a family. They’re alive and well, and they try to talk to her. It’s challenging, but Ilya responds the best he can. When he has the free time, he turns on AHL games to catch her brother playing for Grand Rapids. Often, he finds the minor leagues play scrappier and hungrier, which makes them fun to watch. Peter’s a solid defenseman, good at taking direction but bad at taking initiative. Ilya texts him in the family group chat with congratulations after a particularly shambolic victory against Manitoba. He takes care to point out the improvement in their rate of turnovers and mention Peter’s strong work on a power play in the first period so it will come across as sincere. Another brother, the one that sells life insurance and has a very unfortunate looking set of twins, responds first.


Greg: 🤣 did u have your boyfriend type that for you? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Ilya thinks that Rose should maybe kill him. And also that his ugly twins may not be getting much for Christmas from their Auntie Rose this year. As he’s midway through drafting a strongly worded response, Rose’s father jumps in.


Dad: Don’t be an ass to your sister. Nothing wrong with taking an interest.

Peter: thanks for watching rose. i’m sure it’s lame compared to the mlh but I appreciate it 


The next morning, there’s a voicemail already waiting from Rose’s dad by the time Ilya wakes up. Immediately he feels a wave of acid splashing and scorching up his esophagus; he treats this medically by ingesting two Americanos on an empty stomach. So now he’s jittery on top of sick with shame. Wow. Cool.

Rose and her father are supposed to have phone calls every Saturday, but for obvious reasons, Ilya’s texted excuses to bail for the last two weeks. The guilt trip sitting on her answering machine is an inevitable punishment. He dawdles all morning, rationalizing to himself that he shouldn’t have to listen to it, because he already knows exactly what it will say. The same script he’s heard a thousand times, translated into a new language and a broader accent. Eventually, he caves. There’s very little in Rose’s life he’d been prepared to do when they first traded places, but offering contrition to a disappointed father is the only duty he’s been assigned so far where he feels more equipped to handle it than she is.

Hey there Pebbles, the message starts. Rose’s dad sounds — not mad? Jolly, almost? The man speaking on the other end of the line strongly resembles American Santa Claus in Ilya’s imagination. Just checkin’ in on my busy bee. Your mom and I are missing ya. Hope work’s been good. I’m sure this will be a big one, you know we can’t wait to see it. I don’t know what the holidays are looking like for you yet, but if you’re coming home and you can sweet-talk the new beau into joining you, we’d love to meet him too. I promise we’ll all be on our best behavior. What else? I have a stack of To Kill a Mockingbird essays on my desk I should be grading today. Might just go down the line and give everyone a B+ to free up the weekend. Kidding. Aunt Andrea’s been trying to talk your mom into an Alaskan cruise in late spring, so we’ll see about that. Okay kiddo, I’m gonna let you go. Gimme a buzz if you get a minute, no pressure. Love you lots.

Ilya doesn’t know exactly when he started crying. He doesn’t know who Aunt Andrea is, or why anyone would kill a mockingbird. He listens back from the beginning where Rose’s dad calls her Pebbles, and the origin of that nickname is a mystery too. So much of it is incomprehensible, none of it meant for him to understand. But Ilya knows his own father has never, never ever spoken to him with that kind of easy affection in his voice, like he has so much love and patience that he couldn’t possibly run out of it. And it’s not meant for Ilya, but that doesn’t stop him from listening one more time and pretending, for a moment, that it could be.

It’s a sticky thing, like bubblegum — sweet at first, but aching in his jaw the longer Ilya works it over between his teeth. Ilya knows now that he could get away with fobbing her father off indefinitely and would receive nothing but forgiveness, grace, and understanding. That only makes him feel worse.

The next day on set, there’s some down time when the IMAX camera has a technical malfunction that’s above Rose’s pay grade. Ilya tries to lay down for a nap in her trailer, but even with the shades down, there’s too much light coming in, and before he can lull himself into a doze, Ilya finds himself scrolling aimlessly through her notifications.

There are a couple low maintenance friendships with texts he offers haha tapbacks or memes to. Shane’s sent a selfie from after morning skate looking deliciously sweaty; Ilya saves it instantly to the camera roll. And there’s a video in the family group chat of Greg’s unsightly twins singing off-key in a school recital, which all assembled Landrys jump in to ooh and ahh over.

It gives Ilya an idea; before he can overthink it, he opens up the camera and switches over to video mode, hits record. “Hello father,” he begins, serious and respectful, and immediately stops and deletes the recording. Seeing Rose’s face delivering the words into the front facing camera had felt incongruously formal, stilted.

It reminds him of his first days on set, reciting lines and yet completely disconnected from the character. Ilya takes a moment to scroll through Rose’s texts with her father, to find the tone and mood. He opens up the camera again, takes a deep breath and hits record.

“Hey dad!” he tries this time. Chipper, confidant and comfortable. “I’m sorry life has been so crazy lately. Too crazy to catch up. Um, I am in my trailer now, on the set of X-Squad movie — it is a nice trailer, very big. I will give you the grand tour. Oh, and I am painted blue right now, but you know this. Haha.”

This is nerve wracking. It’s a relief to flip the camera around, to not have to look at her face as he speaks. “Okay, this is my trailer. Bedroom here, where I rest between takes. Sometimes I hide for a little nap, but a PA or someone will always come find me.” He walks out towards the main living space, narrating as he goes. “Bathroom in there, so I can shower before leaving set and no one looks at me like I’m a crazy lady running all blue around Montreal. And this is couch where I sit and read my script and eat my lunch break. Say hi, couch.” Ilya puts his hand up in between the couch and camera to wave. The couch does not wave back. “Sorry. Couch is feeling shy I think. Okay, and this is snack pantry — I think these air pop crisps are sponsors of the movie or something. I don’t know. They are disgusting. Like salty packing peanuts. I can’t stop eating them. And here is desk drawer where I keep my — lots of papers, it seems. Okay, that’s it for the tour.”

He flips the camera back around to show his face one last time. “I hope you are doing good, dad, and killing lots of birds on the weekend. I will try to speak to you sometime soon. Say hello to mom.” Ilya needs to wrap it up; it’s becoming difficult to squeeze words past the lump in his throat. “Well, bye bye for now. I love you, dad.”

Ilya sends the video to Rose’s father right away. He putters around the trailer in aimless loops, willing himself not to feel any of what he’s feeling. It would be so shitty of him to start Rose smoking, but god, he bets a cigarette would take the edge off now. The drawer of miscellaneous documents is still open, and Ilya flicks through it quickly, mildly inquisitive and hoping for a distraction. It’s all scripts, though — boring. Six different versions of X-Squad in various colors like a rainbow of clunky dialogue and action tropes.

Somewhere in the middle of the pile is a script that catches his eye. It’s printed on white paper, a little thinner than the screenplay for XS6 with its 18 main characters and bloated run time. He pulls it from the drawer, curious at first, and then concerned. 


Selene 🌚: what is Chiaroscuro?

Sunny 🌞: Why do you ask? Did someone reach out?

Sunny 🌞: I just checked and I’m not seeing any emails?

Selene 🌚: found script in drawer of trailer

Sunny 🌞: oh, perfect, just going through my belongings. That’s fine.

Selene 🌚: yes sometimes I act nosy to get into Rose Landry character state of mind

Sunny 🌞: 🖕

Selene 🌚: Rose

Selene 🌚: I am supposed to be learning this script or what?

Sunny 🌞: oh wait you’re actually trying to be helpful

Sunny 🌞: no, but thank you

Sunny 🌞: It’s a screenplay that a friend of mine wrote, a staff writer from a show I worked on a thousand years ago

Sunny 🌞: She offered it to me but there’s zero chance it gets funded and tbh I’m not right for the character anyway


There’s a sticky note attached to the first page with a note from a Casey Goldwin, who must be the writer. Rose, I wrote Maura with you in mind. I hope you love her as much as I do. — CG


Selene 🌚: why not right for it?

Sunny 🌞: Well for starters, it’s like an actually GOOD script lol


Before Ilya can respond and ask what the fuck that’s supposed to mean, there’s a knock at the door of his trailer. A nervous looking production assistant has arrived to inform him that there’s been some technological kerfuffle (none of Ilya’s business what that is, so he tunes this part out) which means they’re wrapping for the day.

Ilya should be happy for the afternoon off, but instead, he’s irritated. He sat in hair and makeup for no fewer than six hours and eleven minutes this morning, and he didn’t step in front of a camera the entire day. What a complete waste of fucking time. On top of which, he has plans to go to Shane’s for dinner, but it’s not as though he can show up at 3:30 and say he got off work early without looking like a complete psycho.

When he’s showered and ready to leave set, on a whim, he grabs the screenplay still sitting out and tosses it in her bag. Rose told him that he didn’t have to learn the lines or anything, but after weeks of working on this superhero shitshow, he’s intrigued by the notion of a script that’s “actually good.” There’s an awkward gap waiting to be filled in his afternoon, so he figures he’ll skim through it.

Three hours later, he texts Rose again.


Selene 🌚: you have to do this movie

Sunny 🌞: Actually I’m contracted for eight of them. So technically I have to do two more after this as well 🙂

Selene 🌚: no

Selene 🌚: art thief movie

Selene 🌚: Chiaroscuro

Sunny 🌞: ???

Selene 🌚: I just read it

Sunny 🌞: the screenplay?

Selene 🌚: RL this is beautiful. Probably most beautiful movie I have ever seen and I have not even seen it. Why would you not make this film?

Sunny 🌞: Scroll up like eight texts to where I’ve already answered that

Selene 🌚: okay so your friend has no money. How much does it cost? I will give you loan.

Sunny 🌞: We’ve seen each others’ bank accounts.

Selene 🌚: good point. You pay for it yourself and I will not need to sell Betty

Selene 🌚: Betty is my Bugatti

Sunny 🌞: I know who she is. Your Lock Screen is a picture of you kissing her side mirror.

Selene 🌚: She lives in a garage in Moscow. Feel bad ☹️ she’s so lonely and cold this time of year. I think maybe she is missing me.

Sunny 🌞: I’m on my way to team dinner. Can we discuss your vehicular fetish at a more appropriate time?

Selene 🌚: You have the money. So what is stopping you? How much could one independent film cost, Rose? $10mil? Just give it to her. You will make back big at box office

Sunny 🌞: Financing a movie isn’t what an actress does. That would make me a producer.

Selene 🌚: Yes I understand this. I go to movie set every day now. Producer is only person with easier job than actor. I believe you have ability to do both.

Selene 🌚: I have lots of faith in you, if you had not noticed. This is why I am always giving rousing speeches in voicemails. Captain has to encourage his team.


His phone vibrates in his hand, but not with a response from Rose. 


Shane ❤️: had to run to the store for a couple ingredients I was missing, so dinner might be a little behind schedule 😬 


“Блять,” Ilya says aloud, jumping from the couch and tripping towards the bathroom. “Блять, блять, блять, блять.” He’s supposed to be to Shane’s in — he taps his phone screen and swears again — 19 fucking minutes, and at present he’s shirtless in the ugly cargo pants he’d worn to work, with no makeup on and hair in a hapless half-bun situation. Running maybe 15 behind, he sends with one hand while frantically ripping something off a hanger and hoping it’s not pjs or a ball gown. can’t wait to see you xoxxoxoxoxoxoxixooooooxoxoxooxo.

Rose has texted him back as well, a terse Can we discuss this later, please? which Ilya humors with a thumbs up, letting her think she’s won. He dabs his undereye circles with the unreleased concealer pen he’d modeled at the YSL shoot last week, hoping it makes him look bright and fresh, feminine and fuckable, whatever. His hair is passably wavy in the spots where it’s not tangled. He pulls it up into a clip and loosens a couple pieces around his face; in his old life, he’d assumed that this was something that just happened to girls. But no — they cultivate this “effortless” beauty with intent. Every day there are new discoveries, a million little illuminations and enlightenments.

For simplicity’s sake, he garbs himself in all black. It’s the safest, chicest option with the limited wardrobe at his disposal. Black jeans, black top, black coat, black boots — black little lacy underthings, even though it probably won’t come to that, but suppose it did?

Ilya’s downstairs in an uber in record time. He’s flustered and a little sweaty from his rushed departure, but now that he’s stretched out in the back of a black car with an ETA that’s only 17 minutes behind schedule, he has the time and space to worry over what tonight may hold.

Dinner, ostensibly, because Shane had said “Come over and I can cook.” Light conversation, the kind they seem to generate in infinite amounts, especially if there’s wine provided for Ilya. They eat meals together regularly, they talk all the time now, and so tonight shouldn’t be anything different, except that the change of venue feels so charged. It hasn’t escaped Ilya’s attention that in the couple weeks since their big talk, Shane has made concerted efforts to take him out, with “out” being the operative word. They eat at restaurants all across town and find ways to amuse and entertain themselves exclusively in public places with plenty of prying eyes.

It could be that Shane wants to be seen. He’s dating Rose in part to fuel the perception of himself as a straight man, as a “normal” man, so maybe he needs the world to see that, but Ilya isn’t sure. Shane is a painfully private person — not as private as he was with Ilya, obviously, but still. Private enough that he rankles, defensive and discomfited, when paparazzi bulbs flash or when gossip blogs speculate. Ilya’s coming to suspect that this relationship is less of a performance for the public and more an act of private desperation. Shane’s trying to convince himself.

The reason they’ve been out on all their dates, Ilya suspects, is that the outside world is safe. He could be incorrect — it wouldn’t be the first time he’d thought he had Shane all figured out and found himself proven horribly wrong. But he’s understanding more these days. Millimeter by millimeter, as they’ve spent time together, Shane’s guard has lowered enough for Ilya to stretch up on tiptoes and peer in through the crack.

When they go out together, out-out, there are no expectations of intimacy. It’s as simple as that. Ilya can let a hand drift to Shane’s thigh in a movie theater and Shane can whisper Rose, we’re in public, and it doesn’t have to be a rejection, only an acknowledgment of circumstances beyond his control.

The last time Rose had been at Shane’s house, she’d spent the night, and when Ilya woke up in her body, it was to a strained apology. Ilya had texted Svetlana about it the moment the dust had settled from the whole — everything. Btw, Shane was saying sorry to Rose about something this morning, making excuses over I don’t know what. Can you dig around with her and figure out what it would have been about?

He expects this espionage mission to require complex maneuvering, possibly several trust building exercises. Actually, Sveta replies within 40 seconds. He’s bad in bed.

Hollander? Bad in bed? Sure, maybe sex is different with Rose, but lousy enough to warrant a post-coital apology? Ilya is too polite to mention to his dearest, oldest friend that Shane is in fact the best lay he’s ever had, and instead says simply, Interesting, to which Svetlana replies, lol. Isn’t it.

And so Ilya thinks it’s interesting that Shane has invited him over tonight, that’s all. Bad in bed or not, the Shane that Ilya intimately knows is, to put it frankly, insatiable, and, to put it more frankly, a total slut. It’s possible that desperation has overtaken him. Just in case, Ilya’s made the effort to get in with a lady razor and shave in all of Rose’s nooks and crannies — it only occurs to him after the fact that Shane is already petrified of vulva, and perhaps a bit of foliage along the terrain as camouflage could have put his mind more at ease. Too late for that, now.

“Knock knock,” Ilya calls out to the apartment after letting himself in. He unzips his ankle boots and leaves them neatly lined up on the shoe rack.

“In here,” Shane calls from the kitchen. His face, already a little pink and dewy from steam rising off a large pot on the stove, glows even more when he sees Ilya. “Hi,” he mumbles into the kiss that Ilya leans in to deliver, wrapping arms around his waist.

“Pasta,” Ilya observes, going up on pointed toes to peer over Shane’s shoulder. Ugh. He misses them being the same height. Ilya presses another small and easy kiss against his neck. “Yum.”

“Zucchini,” Shane corrects, stirring at the noodles and then extricating himself from Ilya’s tightening grip to go tend to a rather despondent looking pan of spinach. “You’ll like it. It’s just like pasta.”

“Hmm,” says Ilya, who doubts this very much. There’s a freshly poured glass of chilled white wine on the island, and Ilya flits toward it like a hummingbird to nectar. “Is this for me?”

Shane nods in the affirmative, spooning the spinach into fluffy orzo, topping it with a splash of chicken stock that hisses as it hits the too-hot pan. Shane’s so sexy when he’s concentrating, Ilya thinks, sucking wine back and forth between his teeth. And it can’t be that he’s misread the invitation for tonight, because otherwise, why would Shane have the sleeves of his loose button-down rolled up so wantonly around his elbows, flexing his forearms this way and that? It’s possible this isn’t intentionally slutty — rather, that Ilya is projecting — but that seems about as likely as zucchini alchemizing into angel hair.

“Shoot run late?” Shane asks when it seems like nothing is in immediate danger of burning. He leans across the island and takes a sip of Ilya’s wine, which Ilya of course finds thrilling.

“We got out early, actually.” To be a helpful sous chef, he bounces to the fridge and pulls out a ginger ale for Shane. “With ice?”

Shane shakes his head, has another tiny sip of Pinot Grigio. “Pour me a glass of this, if you want. Small pour.”

Interesting! Ilya thinks, wiggling his shoulders in a happy little dance as he scoots past Shane to the cabinet where wine glasses sit, mostly collecting dust. Interesting, interesting.

“I just figured—” Shane’s interrupted as Ilya tries to tip the wine glass up to his lips, feed the liquid draught of horniness to him like medicine, and he laughs, taking the glass in hand. “I can hold it myself, thank you. You’ve been helpful enough.”

He doesn’t have to finish his thought; Ilya knows that what Shane “just figured” is that Ilya must have run over shooting because in any other instance, he’s punctual and communicative. This is not because Ilya has good manners; it’s because he rarely has anything more interesting to be doing than spending time with Shane. It’s shocking even to him that his interest today was diverted. “I got distracted. An old friend sent me a script. I was reading, thinking about it.”

“Something you would act in?”

“Maybe,” Ilya says, even though Rose’s answer was a pretty definitive no. These things are malleable. “Maybe act in it, maybe produce it, maybe both.”

“Produce it?” Shane looks up from where he’s plating, eyebrows high with surprise, but not necessarily disapproval. “Man, that’d be cool. I didn’t know you did that stuff.”

“I haven’t, but… this friend of mine, she said in email to me that ‘We’d love to have you involved in this in whatever way possible.’ So I am considering it.”

“I bet you’d be great at that,” Shane says for no reason other than that he’s a supportive person. Ilya’s certain that Shane has no clue what a producer is or does.

“I think so too,” Ilya agrees, and that counts for something more, because he has learned things about the film business these last weeks. He’s also learned things about Rose, like how she’s bossy, very organized and big picture thinking, how she speaks her mind more often than her reputation would lead people to believe. Also, he’s learned that there are a lot of assholes in what they call The Industry like it’s the only business that exists, and he theorizes that a set filled with people hand-picked even in part by Rose Landry has the potential to be a refreshingly asshole-free zone.

Over strings of zucchini that taste exactly like zucchini and in no way like they’ve ever been introduced to the concept of pasta or approached even a bordering nation to Italy, Ilya finds himself talking more and more about this movie that isn’t getting made.

“The main character is a painter. A lady painter,” he says, slurping at his squash. “And she’s an up and comer, so she gets a painting in a small gallery of big museum. Oh, it’s in New York. And it takes place in the past. Anyway, she has many paintings, and one special one is selected for gallery in a big important museum.”

“You would play the painter?” Shane clarifies.

“Yes. I think it would be better if she was a little older than me, but — acting.”

“I guess they can do makeup for that sort of thing, right? To make you look older?”

“Yes, of course.” That part isn’t so important to Ilya. “Anyway. The museum is robbed. There’s a heist, and the thief steals, like, Rembrandt, some Caravaggios, Manets. And he steals her painting too, which is odd, because she isn’t famous yet, and it isn’t worth anything.”

“Okay, interesting.”

Their legs are knocking under the table where Ilya’s knee is bouncing with pent up energy. “She’s so curious. Everyone is curious, right, why would the robber take this painting, and she can’t stop wondering, why my painting, why me? She’s obsessed about it, so she finds a way to hunt down who the thief is.”

Shane sips a dainty sip. “What’s the painting of?”

“A goose,” Ilya tells him. “A dead goose.”

Shane laughs, chokes on his thimble of wine. “They stole a dead goose?”

Ilya rolls his eyes. Shane is intelligent, but simple about some things, arts and culture. “It’s a beautiful dead goose. And it’s hanging in a butcher shop window, and in the reflection you can see she’s painted a cityscape in winter, bare trees and crowds of people, like this dead goose and dead world and all this life between them.” Maybe Shane is too Canadian to get it; for Russians, themes of life and death are much easier to understand.

“So does she find the guy who stole it?”

Ilya nods, scoots his chair closer to Shane’s corner of the table. “She finds him, and at first he doesn’t know who she is. She isn’t famous, like I told you. Nobody knows what she looks like — it’s a different time, you know, you can’t just google. He thinks she’s any regular woman, but she gets to know him, because she thinks maybe if she gets close to him, seduces him or something, she can get her painting back.”

Shane raises an eyebrow. “Seduces him, huh?”

“But that’s not what happens,” Ilya says. “They fall in love. He is a thief with the spirit of a poet, always leaving somewhere and going somewhere, stealing art because he loves it. He doesn’t know who she is, but he falls in love with her anyways, because he sees something in her like in the painting, you know, very deep and very creative, and she falls for him too even though she knows she shouldn’t.”

“Shit,” Shane says, ever lyrical.

“Shit, exactly. Because then he finds her in her studio, and there is big confrontation, now that he sees her for who she really is and he’s angry that she lied, but how could he have any right to be angry? He is the one who stole from her, and many others, so he has been lying too. And they scream at each other, very passionately — it’s so romantic — and then she’s crying, and she takes a knife and starts tearing up all of her canvases, and he tries to stop her, but she won’t stop.”

Shane, this sweet and simple man who always has to try so hard to understand the way that others think and feel, frowns in confusion, and Ilya wants to kiss him. “Why would she do that?”

Ilya chooses his words carefully, wishing he could explain it in Russian, or even in English if only as himself. He’s exhausted by these endless translations. “He cared about her art. It hurt him too, when he saw her do it. When someone hurts you, you want to hurt them back, even sometimes when you love them. But I think—” He looks across the table at Shane, Shane with eyes like umber, freckles like flecks of russet oil paint flicked from the end of a dry brush and dotted artfully across a canvas. Shane who’s never skated savage on the ice and started a fight simply to feel something, who’d probably never taunted someone just to see if they cared enough to bite back until he’d met Ilya and learned how. “When there is so much pain and hurt, sometimes you think — if I can put it outside, if I can see it, touch it, push it away, it will leave me. I won’t feel it inside anymore.”

“It makes it feel like something she can control,” Shane says quietly, and the response doesn’t surprise Ilya in the slightest. Control is one of the only things Shane truly knows, needing to have it and needing to release it. “Okay, so then what happens after that?”

“She sees him ten years later. In Paris. She’s teaching a drawing class. He brings her to the place he’s staying, and he has her painting there, and he wants her to have it back. They spend the night together, and when she wakes up in the morning, the painting remains, and he is gone.”

There’s a silence. Ilya swallows the last of his second glass of wine and Shane finishes his first. “That’s the end?” he asks.

“You sound disappointed.” Ilya’s mouth twists in a smile.

“I thought it would have a happier ending, I guess.”

Ilya doesn’t think it’s happy or unhappy, necessarily. He thinks it simply is, the way life simply is sometimes. “It’s supposed to be romantic.”

“Well yeah, I got that, but — wouldn’t it be more romantic if they ended up together? Happy?”

I ask myself that question every day. Is it a confession, to acknowledge such a fundamental human truth? Would Shane, who understands so little of what’s spoken to him directly, even comprehend that this universal thing applies in their circumstance? “You can be without someone. It does not mean you love them any less.”

After Shane had walked out that afternoon and left Ilya on the couch all alone, breath still short, stomach still covered in their spend, Ilya had sat in the same place until the sun went down. He thought about Shane ceaselessly, as was to be expected, first through the blurred lens of anger and frustration and scorn, as was natural for any jilted lover, and then, like the lens had been drawn into focus, he saw Shane Hollander with clarity. It wasn’t an inability to understand his feelings for Ilya; it was a refusal.

Right now, in this discussion they’re having about being loved or happy, together or apart, he wonders if Shane’s allowing himself to think of Ilya. They aren’t in love, either of them, but maybe they’ve felt things like it, or at least near it. And it’s fucked up, but Ilya feels closer to it every day, and meanwhile Shane is dating Rose and telling himself he could love her the same way he’s eating zucchini and pretending that it’s fettuccine.

“Read it with me,” Ilya says suddenly. He’d thrown the screenplay in his bag on his way out the door, not really thinking why he’d need it with him, although it seems obvious now that he’d wanted to share it with Shane.

“Sure. That’d be cool. Send me a copy — I mean, if you’re allowed to do that — and I’ll read it on the plane back from Calgary.”

“No, no. Right now. We’ll read it together. Better to read out loud.”

Shane watches, amused, as Ilya dashes to retrieve the script from his purse. He stands from the table too, begins stacking cutlery on plates. “Shouldn’t we at least clean up from dinner first?”

“Leave it. We will read now and clean later.” He searches Rose’s inbox for Goldwin’s email with the script attached so they’ll both have a copy to read from. When he looks up, he sees Shane scuttling to the sink with an oily pair of tongs. “Jesus, Hollander. I will buy you new plates. Leave it.”

Shane shoots a quelling look over his shoulder. “I’m soaking one pan, Rose. I think you can be patient.”

An admirable showing of faith; Ilya can’t think of a single time he’s demonstrated patience with regards to Shane that could have possibly given him this impression. He flops onto the couch and huffs and puffs and sighs, makes a big show of checking the time on his watch, and then his phone, and then saying out loud Siri, what time is it? Is it very late? Is a lot of time passing very slowly, Siri? until finally Shane gives up on the dishes and stalks in front of him, holding his hand out for the script.

He peers at the title, squints as he flicks through a few pages. “Gimme a sec.”

Before Ilya can complain (which is a testament to how fast Shane moves, because it never takes Ilya long to generate his bitchy comments), Shane is bounding up the stairs and then back down.

“Alright,” he says, flipping through the script again as he settles on the opposite end of the couch. “How does it work? We just, like, read out loud? Who does which characters?”

Ilya’s mouth has filled with an excess of saliva; his clitoris feels like it may pop off of his body and whizz around the room at any moment. “Are those your glasses?” he asks in a very casual, non-horny way.

Shane looks at him over the top of the frames. “No. I robbed an old man in the park. Yes, Rose, they’re my glasses.”

“I’ve never seen you wear them,” Ilya points out. He’s also never needed his dick sucked so badly as he does in this moment, but of course, he has no dick right now. One of life’s cruel ironies.

“I wear them for reading,” Shane sighs. “And I mostly listen to audiobooks anyway. Are you going to make fun of me, or are we going to read this movie?”

“I am not making fun of you. I think you look very handsome. Sexy nerd type of handsome.”

Shane rolls his eyes, but then when it becomes apparent Ilya’s being serious, he clears his throat. “Oh. Um, thanks, I guess.”

“Enough flirting,” Ilya decides. No point getting himself distracted and riled up by something he can’t have. He files away the masturbatory fodder for private use at a later date and moves on. “I will read Maura and… stage directions, I think. You read everyone else. Good?”

Shane looks a little nervous. “Maybe I should have warned you. I’m not exactly a good actor.”

In fact, Hollander is a horrible actor. Two years ago, several of the more popular players had been tasked with filming skits for an MLH Christmas charity thing. The one that Shane and a couple of the other Canadians had starred in was so bad, the MLH ended up not using it, concerned that it might “diminish generosity from donors.”

“That’s okay,” Ilya reassures him. “Don’t think about the acting. Just focus on the story and how the characters are feeling. It’s only for fun, okay?”

“Okay,” Shane replies, unsure, but at least game to give it a go.

Ilya starts from the top.

INT. GALLERY - LATE AFTERNOON

A small contemporary gallery off of a prestigious museum, think The Met. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. A few small, gilded frames, larger modern canvases, and sculptural objects on pedestals, along with MUSEUM PATRONS of all ages. One PAINTING in particular of a goose hanging in a butcher’s shop catches our attention; when the CAMERA STOPS it lands on MAURA, about 30, plain brown hair and dressed attractively, though not expensively, and not in a particularly feminine way. She is looking towards the painting, rather than at it. JULIAN, an assistant curator, approaches.


“Should I be — sorry, I know that’s not the line,” Shane apologizes. “Should I be standing up?”

He asks this because Ilya’s standing on the other side of the coffee table, had stood up when the script introduced Maura. “You’re okay,” he assures him. “I like to move around a little bit. It’s part of my process.” And it’s strange to think that Ilya has a process, but he does.

“Alright,” Shane says, a little daunted. He sits forward, elbows on his knees, and continues as Julian. “I love the way it looks in this light.”

Ilya’s only known Maura for a couple hours, but already he feels he understands her well. “Van Gogh never saw his work in a museum. He never sold a painting. It’s strange, to be luckier. I’d like to enjoy it while I can. A crowd of uniformed SCHOOLCHILDREN gawks at the painting, shrieking in delighted disgust; an OLDER WOMAN walks past and issues a cursory glance, barely pausing to look longer than a second.”

Shane chuckles, reciting the next line. “Maybe Van Gogh wasn’t missing much.”

They read on, Shane getting more comfortable all the time, shifting in his seat to occasionally gesture when the characters do, or to convey an attitude. On page 22, the lovers meet for the first time in a cafe; Maura chooses a table beside Diego’s, and Ilya alights on the couch cushion beside Shane.

“That’s an interesting title,” Ilya says as Rose as Maura.

Shane holds the screenplay up like a book, to represent FRANK O’HARA’S MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY as specified in the script. “Do you like poetry?”

Ilya, acting as Rose who’s acting as Maura who is acting as any random woman, not the artist whose painting Diego has stolen, admits “I don’t know much of it.”

Diego is more roguish than Shane can get away with, more effortless in his charm and smooth, fluid, in everything he does. Still, he channels as much casual confidence as he can muster when he looks at Ilya and says “You don’t have to know poetry. You only have to feel it.”

It’s cute, the way Shane gets into it. On page 37, Maura and Diego press close together in a jazz club, dancing through a whispered conversation; Ilya sways in front of Shane as he delivers the dialogue, and Shane doesn’t get up to dance, but he rocks a little, back and forth where he sits. On page 44, the lovers kiss, desperate, hungry, and Shane and Ilya don’t do that, but they exchange a small kiss, a sweet peck like they’re blocking the scene, and they giggle.

By page 102, Shane is completely engaged in the narrative. There’s the confrontation in Maura’s studio, and when Ilya hurls Maura’s accusations at him, Shane raises his voice, gets angry on behalf of the character — it’s not great acting, but it’s a feeling, at least. Ilya snatches up throw pillow after throw pillow, pantomimes slashing them like canvases, and Shane pretends to struggle and tug them from his grasp.

Eventually, they find themselves INT — a sparsely furnished Parisian apartment. A bed, a rug, a small table, and the sense that its inhabitant will not stay long. The only object of note in the small apartment is a painting Maura hasn’t seen in ten years. Ilya feels raw before the scene has even started. That he already knows how this story will end doesn’t make it any easier; it’s painful, exquisitely so, to speak the words aloud with no ability to change their fated course.

“You didn’t sell it,” he breathes, reaching out as though the painting is in front of him, like he can scarcely believe it.

“I tried,” Shane admits. “I couldn’t.”

Ilya looks up, Maura’s shock written plainly on his face. The painting’s value has only increased since it was stolen, intrigue ever swirling surrounding the heist that was never solved; surely there would have been an interested buyer. “Nobody wanted it?”

Shane looks up from the script, eyes on Ilya. “Nobody wanted it as much as I do.”

There is a pause, a frisson. It’s Ilya’s turn. There are directions, instructions, descriptions as the characters move towards each other now. “Maura crosses the room towards Diego for what she knows may be the last time. He sits at the edge of the bed waiting, feeling just as she does, and when she reaches him, he pulls her into his lap, and she goes willingly.”

Eyes on his phone, tracing the words on the page, Ilya lowers himself to straddle Shane’s lap. Shane allows it, willingly.

“Maura kisses him as though she knows exactly what it’s like to have lost him, and like she’s bracing herself to do it again.”

Ilya looks to Shane and finds he’s already searching Ilya’s face, gaze darting back and forth between his eyes and lips. He doesn’t think the phone slips from his grasp, but in a moment, his hands are cupping Shane’s face, and so it must have.

This isn’t like the actorly pecks from before, staging a scene. Shane kisses Ilya like he knows what it’s like to lose someone, and Ilya kisses back like he’s bracing himself to do it again. Their hands find and feel each other, fingers combing through hair and nails scratching sensitive along scalps. It’s the first time Ilya’s kissed Shane in Rose’s body that it’s felt the way it used to, and he doesn’t know if that makes him happy or sad, or if it just is.

Shane tries to say something maybe, but when his lips part, Ilya’s all too eager to slip his tongue in, more eager still, greedy even, when Shane moans around it. It takes a hot and breathy moment before Shane can find the words, pant them close to Ilya’s cheek. “What happens next? In the script?”

“They make love,” Ilya says, pressing the words against Shane’s neck; if he prayed to god still, years past the age of believing, he’d pray right now that Shane not pull away.

“Yeah,” Shane says, and he doesn’t back away. Instead, his hands grip Ilya’s back, digging into soft muscle there, script crumpling between them as they’re pulled flush together. “Alright.”

So now it’s open mouthed and sloppy, because Ilya’s desperate, needy, the way he often teased Shane for being and the way he’s always been himself since that first night in the hotel room. Maybe even before. Maybe he was desperate for Shane the first time he laid eyes on him.

Shane’s hands rove between Ilya’s lower back, the nape of his neck, his shoulders, his jaw. Firm, comfortable, perhaps too tentative to progress further. Ilya doesn’t mind. He’s missed taking the lead. This shirt of Shane’s is so soft; Ilya picked it out for him. He palms Shane’s chest through the fabric, grazes a thumb over his nipple again and again, and Shane breaks away from Ilya’s mouth to let out a deep, satisfied groan. Nothing could be more gratifying. It’s not only that Shane likes it, or that Ilya knows how to give Shane what he likes, although that part is good. It’s that everything Shane craves is something Ilya first taught him how to want.

And yet — Shane isn’t hard. Which is fine, but Shane’s never not hard. Not when they’re making out, at least, and certainly not in a prelude to fucking, which it seems like this is. Ilya grinds against his lap, rolling his hips back and forth. It’s working for Ilya, soaking wet and sensitive even through his jeans. It’s crazy and it makes him feel fifteen again, but he thinks he could get off from just the friction of denim on denim if he had something to really grind down against.

He doesn’t. Shane’s dick is there, obviously, but it’s soft, and Ilya’s too dazed with lust to figure out the obvious reason why. “Touch me,” he instructs, because Shane likes to please, and to listen and be told, and maybe that’s what’s missing. He’s like an actor with no direction.

“Yeah, okay,” Shane agrees, but his hands make their way to Ilya’s hips and stay there, helping Ilya as he rocks against his lap, still kissing, otherwise immobile.

It’s okay. They can fix this, they can work with this. “Let me help,” Ilya murmurs, kissing the words just below Shane’s ear. He makes enough space with his body to shove his hands between them. His fingers scramble at a belt, a button, a zipper, and then suddenly, they’re stopped.

Shane deflects him like an unconscious act. In fact, he looks as surprised as Ilya to have Ilya’s wrists trapped in his hands. “Sorry,” he says, and lets go quickly. His face is red; he reaches up towards his eyelid, picks at it a little, that tic of his he probably doesn’t even know about.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I think it’s just — I don’t drink a lot, and the wine—” The wine he’d had a single glass of over a full meal and finished hours ago. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry this keeps happening. I feel like an asshole.”

“You’re not an asshole.”

“I can — do stuff to you, though. If you want.”

Shane’s face is burning fiercely; Ilya feels heat radiating when he strokes a thumb against his cheek. In all the time that Ilya’s known Shane, he’s never felt so sad or so sorry for him.

There aren’t any words. He draws Shane close again, slow, in case he wants to pull away or put distance between them. “Hold me like this. Okay?” he says, the words muffled into Shane’s hair, and Shane nods against his chest. They sit like that for what feels like the space of pages in a script, clasped safe in one another’s arms, and Ilya tries to think of something to say, but what?

“Finish reading this with me?” Ilya offers after long minutes have passed. He leans back to pick the crumpled and discarded script from the floor, pretending not to notice Shane wiping at his face as he turns away. “Only a few pages left.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Ilya retreats far enough to leave a buffer, stays close enough to keep some contact. He skips the next few lines of stage directions and picks up from sunlight streaming into the Parisian apartment, Maura waking up alone.

Maybe Shane was right. Maybe the ending is sad. Aren’t all endings sad, though? Even circumstances that should come to a conclusion, when they do, leave Ilya with a sense of loss he works hard not to feel. He’d learned too early in life that some things really do go all the way away, leaving only impressions in their wake, and that those impressions, even the deepest of craters among them, are subject to erosion.

“This is a great story, Rose,” Shane says. He looks drained and desolate, but Ilya knows he means it. “Not like I’m an expert, but — I can’t wait to see you in it. I know you’ll be amazing.”

“I’ll try.”

They’ve only slept together once (slept together as in fallen asleep beside each other, not slept together as in fucking), but Ilya has the strongest yen to take Shane upstairs right now and pass out curled up tight, all their clothes still on. It’s too much pressure to even suggest. Instead, Ilya helps out with the dishes like he’d promised he would, even though Shane insists he doesn’t have to.

He does completely inane shit in the process, holding the wine glasses in front of his chest like they’re long pointy tits, draping a tea towel on Shane’s head, splashing and sudsy and blowing bubbles all around the kitchen with the Dawn dish soap, telling Shane he’s an oily ducky who needs a good scrubbing. Ilya doesn’t let up until Shane cracks a smile, observing, “You know, you’re pretty annoying when you want to be,” and Ilya beams back. Yes, yes he is. He’s fantastic at it.

They kiss a little before Ilya goes, lips pressed together softly as Ilya struggles for balance with only one ankle bootie on. There’s no discussion of Ilya spending the night. He feels a little stupid for having packed a pair of clean underwear for the morning just in case, but it’s fine.

“Send me recipe for those zucchini shoelaces,” Ilya chirps on his way out the door. “Handy if I ever need a noose to hang myself.”

“Fuck off,” Shane replies affably, offering a last light kiss.

It’s something. They can’t have everything, but they can have this. For Ilya, there is at least a small romance.

Chapter End Notes

Hi all! I can't tell you how much your enthusiasm for this fic means to me; I may be slow to reply to comments, but I read them all and they absolutely make my day. I know I've missed this week's update (I'm currently on a work trip and juggling commitments for a short story competition I help judge!), but next Friday I'll be back with Chapter 9 and from there on out there will hopefully be consistent weekly updates until we wrap! Thanks for your patience :)

Chapter 9: Rose

“What on earth are you wearing?” Svetlana asks, and that’s rich, Rose thinks, coming from someone currently outfitted in a Versace bathrobe and possibly naught else.

“I think I’m bulking too much,” Rose sighs. As Svetlana looks on appraisingly, Rose offers a half-turn to demonstrate. The tuxedo pants she’s pulled on are too tight over the ass to zip or button, and the sweater’s polyester grip on her biceps is stifling, her pecs swollen so aggressively beneath the fabric as to distort the image on the front, a knitted illustration of Santa shredding powder on an outdoor pond and text which reads HO-HO-HOCKEY! “I’m trying to find something in here that still fits.”

“Mmm.”

They survey the closet in silence. It’s a spacious walk-in, because Ilya Rozanov is what’s correctly termed a clotheshorse and sometimes misspoken as clotheswhore; Rose thinks either label is fitting. It’s neat in here, swanky and professionally designed like the rest of the house is. There are mostly shirts and pants (duh), lots of black and neutrals, but also pops of color and prints that leap at her like jump-scares. Several coats and miscellaneous hats, a ceiling-height shelf of shoes, a pull out rack of ties and belts, and a display of watches and jewelry, though most days Rose only wears the gold chain she was instructed Ilya never takes off. There’s a decent chunk of formalwear in a corner, and enough athletic gear that Rose thinks probably an entire sweatshop in Malaysia subsists off of just his orders.

“What’s the deal with Slavs and Adidas?” Rose asks. Ilya’s wardrobe has more stripes in it than a military general’s.

“Old story. Has to do with the Olympics,” Svetlana answers, blasé. “Everything is sports.”

These days, it feels that way. Rose had paused her hockey recap podcast when Svetlana walked in only moments ago to find her sitting on the floor, staring off into space while score bugs buzzed in her mind’s eye.

“There should be things in here that work,” Svetlana says. She flicks absently at the sleeve of a button down. “You’re big right now, but I’ve seen him bigger before. During playoffs. Or else there’s nothing that will fit, in which case you’ll just have to be naked all the time.” She winks, and Rose knows it’s a joke. Obviously. What the fuck else would it be.

“What we should really do is donate half of this stuff,” Rose muses, because it’s easier than responding directly. She opens what she’s come to think of as the junk drawer of Ilya’s closet, the receptacle for bleach-stained crewnecks with the collars overstretched, novelty t-shirts won in food eating contests, and garments so small he can’t have possibly worn them since childhood. “Or maybe burn it,” she says, considering a pair of boxer briefs collaged in images of Cartman from South Park.

Svetlana, with a tender-fond expression, brushes fingers against Rose’s as she reaches into the drawer and pulls something out. She holds it aloft for Rose to see, shoulder seams pinched between her fingertips. Cyrillic text across the front says the name of some team, presumably, and it’s teeny-tiny enough that it must have been his jersey back when Ilya played pee-wee. But then Svetlana flips it so that Rose can see the verso, and the player number is 15, not 81.

“My Papa’s number, when he played in Superleague.”

“Cute.” Rose has seen a couple pictures of their old days back in Moscow, enough to imagine the two of them as children in matching kits, screaming themselves hoarse watching her father’s games. When Svetlana talks about childhood Ilya, it’s always with an affection that should be grating, but really sort of has the opposite effect; it makes Rose want to be nicer to adult him.

“Take a picture of me,” Svetlana says, stripping her robe unselfconsciously. “I want to send to them.”

There’s no time to turn away, and going out of her way not to look would be more incriminating anyway. Svetlana has underwear on, the sort of lacy things that Rose assumed women only wore for show; weren’t other girls wearing seamless cotton panties on the average Tuesday? Or was Rose particularly drab and sexless, and Svetlana was the normal one?

Besides the underwear, she’s nude, completely, and standing close enough that Rose can’t help but see her. Well, so what. Rose is an actress, and lots of people have seen her naked. Probably Svetlana has, if she has shitty taste in movies. So really, this just makes them even.

It’s only a fraction of a second anyway, and then Svetlana’s shrugging the jersey on. The shirt is small, but she’s willowy enough to fit into the arms; it stops short around her belly button like a crop top, exceedingly flattering.

Rose takes some pictures for her — from the waist up, obviously. First, Svetlana smiles big and toothy for her father, pointing at the jersey as if he might miss it otherwise. Then, for Ilya, several poses: winking with her tongue out; peeking over her shoulder so the number on the back is showing; and one that she insists on taking as a selfie, she and Rose both dressed up in these ridiculous garments of his, puckering kisses towards the camera.

Rose texts the pictures to Svetlana right away so they can be disseminated; while Svetlana takes the jersey off and wraps herself back in the robe, Rose finds reasons to tap and tap at her phone screen a little longer.

“Are you about to take a shower?” Rose asks.

“Is that okay?”

“Of course.” The showers in the guest suites are fine, better than fine, but Ilya’s bathroom is nicer than many of the day spas Rose has been to. On wash days, or when Svetlana takes an everything shower, she’ll use Ilya’s. What does Rose care? “I’ll be in here. Don’t drown.”

Rose turns the podcast back on when Svetlana leaves, clicking the volume up enough notches so she can hear it over her own thoughts. She works up a sweat extricating herself from this Christmas sweater — is it possible it’s gotten even tighter, somehow, since she put it on? — and dons what she thinks will be a standard dress shirt of Ilya’s. Not so. It only fastens starting around the navel, because the buttons above it appear to have been surgically removed, leaving his chest in a state of permanent exposure.

Svetlana is naked in the other room, obviously. It shouldn’t be different from every other shower that she takes; nothing changes whether it’s one wall that’s between them or two or three like when she’s down the hall. Rose can’t see her. It’s not like she has mutant powers that allow her vision to pass through solid objects.

And yet, she can’t stop seeing her. Eyes unfocused, Rose stares into the corners of the closet while the image undulates between her and the real world. It had only been a fraction of a second that she’d glimpsed Svetlana changing, but that was all it took for it to imprint, the way that looking straight into the sun for even a moment could burn a glowing circle in her vision that remained after she’d closed her eyes.

It’s normal for women to notice each others’ bodies, even to admire them. Rose knows better than most people how society commodifies female beauty, makes it into a good so universally traded that it becomes impossible not to take stock of the shares of others. The first thing anyone notices about anyone else is the way they look, and the first thing anyone notices about a woman is whether she looks good enough. Rose is a feminist, or at least she tries to be, but she knows she’s not immune to this sort of thinking.

Except that since last week, since the thing that happened that wasn’t sex, but wasn’t not sex, and was almost certainly a massive fuckup on their parts, because maybe Svetlana hasn’t been acting weird since, but Rose definitely has — since then, Rose knows the way she looks has shifted. The appraisals of Svetlana’s body have become less evaluation and more appreciation. It’s something she’s dealing with.

Rose hears Ilya’s name on the podcast she hasn’t been paying much attention to, and now she does, because the Ilya they’re talking about is her. “We’ve seen it in his power play, we’ve seen the face off win percentage increase, but now we’re finally seeing the physicality this guy is known for. I mean, is this the first fight he’s started since October? Could it be that Ilya Rozanov is really back?”

It had been after the whistle, earned her a minor for roughing, and set off a chain reaction of a brawl that ended with three of Boston’s players and two of Minnesota’s stuffed into the penalty box like sardines. Maybe it was the testosterone coursing through her that made throwing a punch seem like a good idea; more likely, it was a natural reaction, regardless of gender. When someone deliberately hooked you under the jaw with a hockey stick, it sort of made you want to beat the living shit out of them.

Ilya had of course been extremely proud, overflowing with a joy most men reserved for things like the birth of their first child. He’d sent a voice note whooping, hollering, and a video of himself taking a celebratory shot from a tiny mini fridge bottle. This was followed by links to a dozen thirst tweets once the clip made its way online post-broadcast. Rose knows, because his phone is logged into his own twitter, that he follows something like two hundred fan accounts manned by frighteningly horny women in their early 20s who track his every move, his every bead of sweat, and, amusingly, every time he and Marleau so much as make eye contact.

@ilyasbipple had shared a gif of Rose post-altercation, sweating in the penalty box, grinning at the replay on the Jumbotron and yes, a little cocky. blushing and kicking my feet cause why does rozy know he earned tf out of his two minutes? she’d captioned it, and another fan, @marlylacefronttruther, had replied. batting my lashes and twirling my pubes when he pulled Elfström’s helmet off like omgggg hehe u got it like that zaddy?


Sunny 🌞: Jesus Christ your fans are more perverted than mine

Selene 🌚: aww thank you RL 🥹 I know right? I am lucky. They are sweet girls.

Sunny 🌞: they really aren’t

Sunny 🌞: and what is @ilyasbipple a reference to? Is that a hockey thing I don’t know or a you thing?

Sunny 🌞: what the fuck is a bipple?

Selene 🌚: boy nipple

Selene 🌚: duh


Incorrigible. She texts him now anyway with a link to the Man in the Crease episode and a timestamp for the section discussing her recent game. You’ll be happy to know my performance is getting rave reviews, she messages, although he does know, just like she knows he’s grateful for all her hard work.

Rose hears the shower turn off. She concentrates on her non-essential project of playing dress-up in Ilya’s wardrobe, tugging on a pair of Issey Miyake pleated trousers with the tags still on and remaining steadfastly in the closet as Svetlana shuffles past, hair dripping, wrapped only in a towel. She shuffles off to her room (for some clothes, perhaps) and returns to Ilya’s bathroom only a moment later, phone balanced in her hand on speakerphone like she’s a Kardashian.

It’s Ilya she’s talking to, of course. Rose has overheard enough of their conversations that she should be accustomed to the sound of her own voice speaking fluent Russian, but apparently it’s one of those things that never gets less weird. Obviously, she has no idea what they’re chatting so merrily about — she has no idea how Ilya can even hear Svetlana over the jet-engine whoosh of the diffuser blowing her curls dry — and it’s strange to feel a part of a conversation she really isn’t involved in.

The thing is, this fixation that Rose has with Svetlana is not entirely unprecedented. In the course of girlhood, even later into womanhood, Rose has had several of these all-consuming friendships. The confusing, breathless sort where she’d find a piece of her soul in another girl’s heart or at least try to lodge it in there any way she could. Every time it happens, Rose feels completely nonsensical, the same way she does with Svetlana. She’s never sure whether she wants to be her friend or be her or be with her, can’t decide if she wants to touch her skin or wear it, and she’s dizzy, dizzy, dizzy all the time.

A little codependence is to be expected. One day this woman was a stranger, and the next, the most important person in Rose’s life, someone she couldn’t manage without. And yet, with each day that passes, Rose is more comfortable and adept at navigating Ilya’s life on her own — so why is it that she feels she needs Svetlana near her more and more? It’s dangerous. These types of friendships never seem to last; they burn out fast, faster than she can cool them down, and it always hurts worse than a real breakup.

Svetlana strides into the closet still chatting amiably on the phone. Her robe hangs loose and open enough that Rose can see she does, in fact, own cotton panties; as she gabs, like Rose isn’t even there, she discards the robe into a laundry basket and pulls the undersized jersey back over her head.

Well, she does notice Rose is there, probably because Rose is staring at her openly. She doesn’t seem to mind; Svetlana’s only reaction is a scrunch-nosed grimace as she pinches the elbow of the peeling snakeskin jacket Rose is trying on and whispers, turned away from the phone, “Maybe we burn this one.”

“What was that?!” Ilya interjects quickly and in English. “Are you talking to Rose? Is Rosie there? Hand her the phone, I want to speak to her.”

Rose shakes her head and draws a line across her throat in a slashing motion, tell him I’m not here, because outside of the text she just sent, she’s been ducking and dodging his calls all day.

“She’s not here,” Svetlana lies. “I was talking to the several sexy, muscled men I’ve invited over so they can take it in turns fucking me in your bed. They all have lots and lots of chest hair, unlike some people I know.”

She winks at Rose, like it’s an inside joke they share. Rose sort of laughs in return — actually, she says the words “Ha ha!” out loud and then thinks of taking Ilya’s passport and fleeing the country.

The conversation switches back to Russian, and Rose can’t follow it, but she can tell they’re talking about her. One, because she knows her own name in Russian now; it’s a cognate, and therefore doesn’t take a polyglot or a fucking genius to translate. Two, because Svetlana’s giving Rose that complicated, calculated look she sometimes has as though she’s trying to mathematically estimate how many M&Ms are in a fishbowl.

Rose is used to being a topic of conversation. It doesn’t mean she likes it. She turns up the volume on the podcast until it’s nearly blowing out the tinny speakers on Ilya’s phone, and Svetlana rolls her eyes and retreats into the bathroom to presumably continue discussing Rose in peace.

Twenty minutes later, she returns. “Ilya says hi,” she says, tossing her phone onto the dresser.

“I’m sure he does.” He’s also sent her fourteen texts today. Rose is avoiding those right now. “You know, they literally just said on this podcast that Tampa will try to trade Dufresne before the start of the year. It’s insane that you called that.”

“It’s not insane. It’s a basic observation.” Svetlana leans back against the dresser, arms folded across her chest so that the already short shirt rides up even higher on her flat stomach. “They have a great D, but it’s overloaded. They don’t really need him, so they probably want to trade him for a forward, like a right wing that can get along with Gillis on the second line. And Dufresne will look appealing to Nashville; they shored up on young talent at the beginning of the season, but now there’s no one in the locker room with any experience. They could use an older face.”

Rose shakes her head. “You know everything.”

“Not everything. Only most things.” This is true. Svetlana knows everything about hockey, about cars, geopolitics and culture. She’s fluent in two languages and conversational in three more. But this only makes it all the more endearing when there’s a glaringly apparent or absurd gap in her knowledge, as with yesterday when they’d seen an ad for a nature documentary about marine wildlife and Svetlana had reacted to the narwhal onscreen like it was a mythical creature of some sort. She’d called it a “made up Harry Potter animal,” which indicated to Rose that she also didn’t quite know what Harry Potter was. And Rose had wanted to kiss her when she said that, which obviously was not an option.

“Speaking of business,” Svetlana continues when Rose says nothing, because her mind is busy wandering down dark and lewd and inappropriate alleys, “what’s this movie of yours Ilya tells me about?”

Chiaroscuro. The subject of three lengthy voicemails, and fourteen text messages, and one rambling email into which Ilya had managed to insert a gif of a puppy dog with pleading eyes beneath the signature line. The title would have to change, for starters, because no one in Duluth or Boise was going to their local megaplex and asking for one ticket to a movie they couldn’t even pronounce the name of, and that’s who Rose makes movies for — average Americans, the Regal or the AMC on Main Street USA, not just LA and New York. But the title of a film is a decision a producer would make, and as Rose has explained to Ilya many, many times in the last week, she isn’t a producer.

“I get offered about sixty scripts a year,” she sighs. Svetlana knows a lot about a lot of things, but Hollywood is a machine whose parts Rose is much more familiar with lubricating. “This one only landed on my desk because it’s written by a friend.”

Svetlana hmms. “So why is Ilya excited about it?”

“Because he’s a dumb jock, and it’s probably the only thing he’s read from start to finish in his adult life?” It’s mean to say that, but probably true. The only non-picture book she’s seen in Ilya’s house is a copy of The 48 Laws of Power sitting on the back of the toilet tank; from the look of the shiny, uncracked spine, she doubts he’s made it to Law 2.

“But you think he’s wrong?” Svetlana asks. And it’s a genuine question, like she trusts Rose’s judgement. “It’s not a good script?”

“It’s a great script,” Rose admits. “But a great script can be a shitty movie. Or it can be a slog, like months and months of working your asses off to get it made, and then it’s done and it’s perfection but it sits in limbo for two years without a distributor and no one ever sees it. Or — like, there’s a million things that need to happen to get something made. That’s not the type of work I do. I make movies for people to eat popcorn to.”

Then Svetlana does something so disarming that she must do it on purpose, to catch Rose off guard. She steps a little closer and slides her hands under this peeling, shiny, ridiculous snakeskin jacket, and she starts to take it off of Rose. That means her words are close and warm when she asks, “But is it something that you’d want, though? If you could have it?”

It’s the only thing she wants, these days. Rose wants them to undress each other, not just shimmy down sweatpants far enough to get the job done, but really to be naked and to be close, skin to skin to skin to skin until she can’t tell where she ends and Svetlana begins. The fantasy is so — she doesn’t even know. She doesn’t know what they would do together, could do together, and it’s like discovering herself all over again.

“Would you?” she asks, breath halting, heart probably racing under Svetlana’s hand if only she wasn’t already pulling away.

Svetlana looks confused, balls the jacket up and tosses it into the corner. “Would I want to make a movie?” she asks, and Rose thinks, oh, right.

“Sorry,” Rose says. “I forgot what we were talking about.”

Svetlana frowns. “You forgot? About the conversation we were in the middle of having?”

“No, I know. The movie.” Rose has to step back; Svetlana clearly thinks that something must be wrong with her, because she’s moving her hand up to rest against her forehead, to check her temperature, and she’s standing there in that little jersey and those cotton panties and nothing else, and Rose has always found it to be bullshit when men claim to have no self control. She does. She can control herself. Rose retreats further into the closet, back to where the coats are, and lets them brush against her like when she was a girl and would hide in the clothing racks at Sears and hope her mother would leave her overnight in the store. “Of course, if I could, I’d like to make it. And I’ve thought about producing before, like — of course I have. But people can think about things, and it doesn’t mean they need to do anything about it. It’s a fantasy.”

“You’re acting strangely,” Svetlana observes, matter of fact.

“Yeah,” Rose admits, because what’s the alternative? “I’m aware.”

A tense silence stretches between them, uncomfortably intimate in Rose’s estimation.

“Alright,” Svetlana says slowly. “Would you like to—”

“I’ve been acting weird for a week,” Rose interrupts, because she has this problem. The urge to run her mouth when she’s nervous, to speak her mind, and it’s the thing that made grown-ups say my, my! Isn’t she a performer! when she was little all because she wasn’t too scared to stand up in front of a crowd and say something. Really, it was only that sometimes Rose felt it was more nerve-wracking to say nothing at all. “Since before I left for Toronto. On the couch. I think I’ve been acting weird since then. Or — I mean, I’ve been feeling weird, at least.”

“I see.”

Does she, though? How much can she really understand? Svetlana doesn’t move. She doesn’t cover herself or put on pants or excuse herself from the room; she doesn’t slap Rose, outraged, but she doesn’t drop to her knees and start sucking again either. She doesn’t do any of the things that Rose would have her do if she were writing this scene, although maybe that’s why Rose is an actress and not a writer. Svetlana only watches her and waits.

“I know that you and Ilya do that kind of thing together.” Rose tries to make sure that it comes out like an explanation, rather than an excuse. “Which is fine, totally, and none of my business, like, at all. But for me it’s been — confusing? I guess? Like, you have to remember that we don’t know how this works, right, and so at first we thought that the physical and mental stuff were separated, and now I’m like, okay, so maybe they’re not. Because there’s obviously some overlap happening, psychologically, that’s not entirely a reflection of me.”

Svetlana, who’s maybe not a native English speaker but is pretty damn close, still seems to struggle unraveling this tangled exposition. “You’re having psychological distress?”

“I’m having—” Rose takes a deep breath, in through her nose, out through her mouth. “No. I’m not distressed. It’s just, before when things were… physical. That was Ilya, right? And my thoughts, those were me. Completely separate. After — the other night — it’s like the physical responses that he would have to you aren’t separate anymore, like they’re mixed in with my thoughts. Which is a weird thing to experience, as you can imagine, and it’s making me act weird.”

Svetlana’s eyebrows are high, high up on her forehead. “You’re attracted to me.”

“I think I’m not explaining this right,” Rose says. “Imagine a radio, okay, and you have a dial that switches between the stations—”

But Svetlana isn’t interested in Rose’s helpful analogy. “You’ve thought about fucking me? And it’s making you uncomfortable?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Rose is only partly lying, because it’s not that Svetlana’s making her uncomfortable, it’s that she’s making herself uncomfortable. The whole situation is. “I’m having a difficult time setting boundaries, mentally. And it’s something that I’m working on. But I figured I should loop you in, since, y’know, we’re working through all this other stuff together.”

Svetlana nods as though she understands perfectly the point Rose is making, and yet — “Have you ever been with a woman?” she asks plainly.

“I mean — I’ve kissed a girl.” Rose rolls her eyes. “Like, as a joke.”

Svetlana frowns. She moves a little closer. “What was the joke?”

“I — I don’t know.”

Svetlana isn’t touching Rose at all, but she could be. She’s close enough now that she could reach for a hanger behind Rose and pull down one of the big, wool coats onto the ground for them if she wanted to, spread it wide like a blanket so they could lay down together, explore each other in the softness of its lining.

“Have you?” Rose asks. It’s only fair. “Ever kissed another woman?”

They’re close enough for Rose to smell her, clean skin and curl cream and Kiehl’s, pretty, soft, and feminine. “Not yet.”

She thinks Svetlana will kiss her then. It’s a funny feeling, for Rose to ready herself to be kissed not by tilting her chin up and balancing on tiptoe, but bending down, dipping in. Not that it feels wrong or right — just different.

Svetlana doesn’t lean in closer, though, nor does she kiss her. She steps back to give Rose a good, firm look up and down, the same way she does when they’re running drills and she’s evaluating her form. Chewing her lip, chewing something over in her mind, maybe. She glances towards the main part of the bedroom. “Come out here with me, will you?”

Rose follows. Svetlana gestures to a chair by the TV unit, murmurs Sit, please, and Rose does. She would have done it if Svetlana hadn’t said please; she would have done it if she hadn’t said anything at all but pointed and given Rose a look.

It’s grey and dusky outside; sunset happens early in the winter, and even though it’s not all the way dark out, Svetlana turns on several lamps until the room is warmly lit. She sits down on the bed and scoots right to the middle, propped up against the headboard so they’re facing each other, albeit with a room of distance between them.

“When you skate as Ilya,” Svetlana says, calm and rational, “or when you drive his car, or what have you. Talk to me about the way you do that.”

They’ve discussed it at length already; this entire strategy took endless, meditative practice to hone and doing so has been the key to Rose having any semblance of success at playing professional hockey. She answers, nonetheless. “I try to zone out. Not all the way out, not so that I’m daydreaming. I try not to think of anything at all. Like — silencing my brain.” In an awards show swag bag a few years back, she’d been gifted a membership to this quasi-medspa sensory deprivation pod, where she’d float in a dark chamber of warm salt water and let her thoughts ebb from her body until she could barely brush them with her fingertips. It feels a bit like that; floating without trying, thinking only that she’s thinking nothing.

“So maybe do the opposite,” Svetlana suggests. Her legs aren’t exactly spread wide, but they’re parted enough. She pulls her knees up just a touch, eyes on Rose as she runs fingers along the inside of her thigh so aimlessly that the gesture could be completely thoughtless, but Rose knows it’s not. “Stay close in your mind. Stay present. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

And then, like maybe she’s giving Rose something to think about, Svetlana runs her palm along the flat of her stomach. Her head lolls back slightly on the pillows, probably flattening the back of those freshly styled curls, but she doesn’t seem to care; she drags her hand up further on her chest, and the jersey bunches up as her thumb slides up beneath the fabric.

“Rose,” she says, and Rose’s head jerks up.

“Yeah.”

“You’re supposed to be talking,” Svetlana reminds her. Under the left side of her shirt, her thumb is moving, wrinkling the fabric as she fondles herself.

“I’m — sorry, I’m not sure what to say.” There’s never a script supervisor on hand when she needs one, like right now when she wishes she could call for her line. When her dick is hard, it’s difficult to think straight.

“How does it make you feel, watching me?” Watching as her left hand keeps moving beneath her shirt, shifting sides to attend to her other nipple; watching as her right hand draws further up her thigh, stroking close, not close enough to where Rose badly wants to touch.

The first exercise of the Stella Adler technique is the only exercise that exists in the actor’s daily life, Rose recalls. The actor must go out and see something in nature, come back to class and describe it.

“I feel aroused,” Rose says, almost clinically neutral. “You’re — you have amazing skin. You’re very sensual.”

Her shirt is pulled up far enough now that Rose can see the gentle swell of her small breasts and the way the hem of the jersey catches on her nipples. “Yes? What else? What would you like me to do to myself next?”

The question catches Rose by surprise. “Whatever you think is best?”

And the answer must catch Svetlana by surprise, too, because she laughs.

“Was that a stupid thing to say?”

“Not stupid.” Svetlana scooches further down, opens her legs wider. “Not at all the response I’d get from Ilya, if it helps you to know.”

Rose’s face flushes with some combination of embarrassment and exhilaration. She’s completely out of her depth, adrift in this pool of arousal and left to her own devices. Ilya isn’t here to help her or control her, to guide the way she moves or talks, not to teach her how to please Svetlana or be pleased by her. He isn’t part of this at all. Good. For all of her excuses, that’s exactly how Rose has wanted it. She and Svetlana, alone, wanting no one present but each other.

“More skin,” Svetlana suggests, “if you like it.” She tugs the jersey all the way off, arms stretching over her head as she removes it, her stomach and her chest and shoulders and all of her one smooth, tawny expanse.

It would be dumb to ask Do you like your nipples touched? because obviously Svetlana does; she was only just playing with them. “You could keep—” Rose starts, but Svetlana wasn’t waiting for permission. She grips her chest tight with an arm clasped across herself, middle finger drawing in tight circles around a nipple the way Rose would play with her own clit right now if she had it.

“The things you wear around the house,” Rose says, trying to find something to do with her mouth that doesn’t involve crawling on the bed and lapping at Svetlana with her tongue. “I do like seeing your skin. I’m always looking at you.”

An oversized Raiders hoodie and boy-shorts that barely peek down from beneath the sweatshirt’s hem, so that she looks completely pantsless. A pair of Ilya’s boxers and a silky work blouse with the bra snaked out from one sleeve the second she walks in the door; later, when Svetlana leans across the coffee table, Rose can see straight down her shirt. Once, Rose had discarded a tank top in the general direction of the laundry hamper after a workout, and a few hours later had found Svetlana idling on the living room couch, wearing what Rose could have sworn was the same top. Rose wouldn’t say that her clothing leaves “little to the imagination,” as the adage goes. Quite the opposite; she sees Svetlana in these outfits and it sends her imagination spinning off in all directions.

“You can look at me all you want,” Svetlana breathes. Her back bows slightly as fingers finally reach for the center between her thighs. Her underwear are a light heather grey; she caresses herself through them, and as she does, Rose sees a dark, wet spot begin to bloom in the fabric.

Without her thinking about it or giving herself permission necessarily, Rose’s hand has drifted to her own lap, barely stroking through her track pants, cupping herself, squeezing. Svetlana’s brows furrow, not with pleasure, but with discontent. “Don’t,” she says firmly, and it’s clear what she means by it.

Rose jerks her hand away, grips the armrest of the chair. “Sorry,” she says. “I thought—”

“Not yet,” Svetlana says. “Later. Stay with me, okay?” She brings the hand up from her chest and taps at her temple. “Stay up here.”

Rose nods. She tries to remain present in her own mind, but striding alongside her racing thoughts feels like keeping pace with wild horses.

“Have you thought about me like this?” Svetlana asks, maybe because she knows it will keep Rose mentally attuned to keep talking, or maybe because she really wants to know the answer.

“I’ve thought about you every way,” Rose admits. “The other night on the couch, you asked me if I touch myself, when we go to our rooms at night, and—”

She breaks off as Svetlana’s fingers slide inside her panties, heels digging into the black duvet. “And?”

“And I wondered if you ever do.” Rose isn’t a Catholic, but she’s played one on TV; the whole scene now takes on an air of confession. “And I laid there so quiet every night after that, thinking maybe I could hear you if you did. It’s so stupid. I even left my light on late in case — like, maybe you’d come down the hall and climb into bed with me and let me try to help you.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Svetlana sounds almost frustrated. “You could have come and knocked.”

Even if she had, then what? Her reasoning at the time, though now she’s not sure how sound it really was, was that Rose had never met a man who could touch her the way she could touch herself, make her come as consistently or satisfactorily. Why insert herself into the situation when Svetlana, so sexy and so confident and so skilled, was presumably perfectly capable of handling it herself? “I wasn’t sure you’d want me.”

“Блять,” Svetlana swears, knuckles twitching in her underwear. It’s one of the only words Rose knows, and she tries it now, says fuck in that foreign language and feels it roll off her tongue.

“Have you ever—” Rose asks, but there’s too much she wants to know. Have you ever imagined that sort of thing? Have you ever pressed your face into the pillow to keep from moaning? Have you ever, in your wildest dreams, thought of me, the real me, when you came?

“I was so wet.” Svetlana’s eyes are closed, face turned up to the ceiling, fingers moving faster and faster beneath the soaked-through cotton. “The other night. God, I wanted to climb into your lap and—”

It isn’t that Rose moves subconsciously. The total opposite. She thinks to herself that she can’t bear another moment of not touching her, not if that’s something that Svetlana would want, and so Rose in her most conscious brain chooses to stand up and walk towards her, one knee at the foot of the bed between her ankles. “Can I?”

Svetlana nods, pulls her hand away from herself and looks at Rose like she’s amazed. “Show me.”

Her legs are miles long, and Rose has always found the journey to be so much of the destination. She only means to run her hands along the skin, demonstrate to Svetlana how gentle she intends to be, but in the course of doing so she finds a tiny patch of left-behind stubble on her calf no more than a half inch wide. Probably it will seem bizarre, but she kisses it, and then once that’s been done it only makes sense to kiss her way higher and higher.

Svetlana nods again when Rose kisses at her through her underwear and pulls back to ask, “Is it okay if I take these off?”

Rose pulls the panties down over Svetlana’s slim hips, marveling at the glossy sheen that’s collected inside; a shining wet string of slickness stretches between Svetlana’s skin and the fabric before they’re rucked down far enough. Maybe she’s impatient — Svetlana lets Rose pull them down the first few inches, but when they’re just above her knees, she reaches to yank them down herself, kicking her legs until they’re free and somewhere halfway across the room.

Rose traces her thumb along the softness of Svetlana’s outer lips, shoulders in close between her legs and watches as she’s spread wider, open and waiting. At once, Rose is both painfully turned on and paralyzed by fear. She’s struck by a sudden and immense guilt for every ex-boyfriend she trash-talked over brunch simply for the crime of not being able to lick his way out of a paper bag.

Rose knows just how she likes it, though, and that’s as good a jumping off point as any. She kisses, opened mouthed, doesn’t quite lick yet but lets her tongue press up against Svetlana’s skin until she feels hands cupping the back of her head, encouraging her closer. With her thumbs, she holds Svetlana apart, licking flat tongued over and over again. She doesn’t go particularly slow or fast, simply concentrates on moving rhythmically, curling her tongue up as she pulls towards the top, then focusing just there.

“Rose,” Svetlana sighs, and isn’t that unbelievable? That it’s Rose’s name she’s saying? Moaning, even? So Rose does speed up now, because she’s greedy for approval, for yesyesohmygodyes, and Svetlana had been touching herself long enough already that surely she’s chasing it too. “Rose, fuck, Rose.”

Rose is desperately hard. She’s trying not to think about it, to be selfish or to focus on herself at all, but with her cock pressed tight against the bed it’s hard not to let herself lean into it, rut into the mattress at the same pace as she laps and sucks at Svetlana. She rocks against the bed, and Svetlana rocks against her mouth, both of them in time together, the same rising tempo.

“So fucking good,” Svetlana moans. She pulls her knees up tight against her chest, grips the back of her own thighs. “So fucking good,” she repeats in Russian, or maybe she says something else, or maybe she’s mewling sounds that don’t make any sense at all.

“Do you want my fingers?” Rose pants. Her middle finger hovers at Svetlana’s entrance, stroking over her dripping hole and waiting for permission.

Svetlana shakes her head. “Next time. Right now, just — I’m so close, don’t stop.”

So she doesn’t. Hot breath against hot skin, Rose flicks again and again over the hardening nub of her clit until Svetlana’s trembling around her, shaking under her, pulsing against her tongue and gushing down her chin.

Rose slows, like a cool down lap or possibly round two, if Svetlana wants that. But she doesn’t; her legs twitch with overstimulation and she pries Rose away. When Rose looks up at her, her face is flushed. “Come up here,” she murmurs through bitten lips, and before Rose gets a chance, she’s hauled up by Svetlana. Impressive, considering she has about 90lbs on her, but of course Rose lets herself be taken.

If Svetlana minds tasting herself on Rose’s lips, it doesn’t show. She kisses her open and unabashed. On the few occasions Rose had let herself imagine this, she’d known that kissing Svetlana would be plush and sensuous, which it is, and she’d been certain it would be passionate, intense, which it is as well. Rose had never guessed it would be this easy. Perhaps she’s used up all her stage fright, but their lips together, tongues just brushing, feels so simple and so natural that she thinks it must be right.

Svetlana rolls her hips up slightly, pressing with her pelvis to where Rose is hard against her and so unbearably close. “Are you going to put on a show for me, too?”

Rose would ask Do you want me to? except that Svetlana is a woman who knows exactly what she wants, and she wouldn’t have said so otherwise. “Okay,” Rose mutters instead, sitting up enough to push her pants and boxers down, kicking them to the floor.

“This too.” Svetlana fiddles with the hem of Rose’s tank top. “Looking like Donald Duck with shirt and no pants.”

It should not be sexy in the slightest to discuss Donald Duck or Winnie the Pooh or any of their half-dressed cartoon contemporaries. Being given any direct instruction by Svetlana seems to turn Rose on though, and that’s something she’ll dig into later, or perhaps they can investigate together. Not now, when she could be ripping off her shirt for the look of appreciation on Svetlana’s still glowing face.

Propped up on one arm, leaning low over Svetlana, Rose strokes herself. They don’t talk — Rose is all talked out, can’t form sentences or even words, can only pull gasping breaths. Svetlana’s eyes are on her hand, on her cock, enraptured, and Rose’s eyes are on Svetlana.

It’s good, but too dry, and so she pauses only long enough to swipe her palm and fingers through the wet mess between Svetlana’s legs, dragging enough moisture up to slick her cock. Svetlana’s breath hitches. “Еба-а-ать.”

“Can I come on you?” Rose asks, jaw clenched and muscles tensing. Right now, even the image is enough to send her over the edge.

“Of course,” Svetlana says. “You should.”

Rose has never really understood the fascination with it until now, as she fists her cock and watches herself come across the expanse of Svetlana’s skin, her flat and supple stomach, small, pert breasts, ribs and nipples and goosebumps and freckles all spattered in the evidence of her desire. Until this moment, Rose has felt nothing but resentment for how brash and obvious and external the experience of having this appendage has been, but this part — this, she gets. Pearly white against tan skin, impossible to ignore. Look how good you made me feel.

She lets herself collapse on Svetlana, even though it means come sticking in the hairs of her stomach, bodily fluids suddenly a lot less sexy than they were a minute ago. Svetlana presses lips against her temple, kissing the sweat along her hairline. “So nice,” she says, her accent soft and soothing.

For chivalry’s sake, Rose is the one to go to the bathroom for a damp washcloth. Well, first she’d grabbed the nearest thing she could find, a shirt that had been tossed to the side of the bed, and had been on the verge of wiping the jizz from Svetlana’s stomach when she realized it was probably fucked up and deranged to do so with her father’s Superleague jersey.

“Stay with me,” Rose says when they’re passably clean and curled up in each others’ arms. Being brave has worked out for her so far today.

“Stay here in bed?”

“Mmhmm.” The noise gets lost somewhere in Svetlana’s armpit as Rose burrows closer.

“It’s 6:30. A little early for bedtime, don’t you think?” Svetlana sounds amused. “We haven’t even had our dinner yet.”

“Who cares?” The words are muffled into the side of Svetlana’s boob. “You’re a horrible cook.”

Svetlana grabs her by the curls and shakes her head in playful outrage. “As I recall, the last thing of mine you ate you seemed to enjoy.”

“We’re talking dinner,” Rose grins. “That’s dessert.”

They order takeout, because in reality, neither of them are great cooks. Rose goes downstairs to get it from the door, and to grab two water bottles and a Powerade. Aside from that, they don’t leave the bedroom until morning.

Chapter 10: Ilya

Selene 🌚: pass to Marleau

Selene 🌚: pass the puck

Selene 🌚: DO NOT AIM FOR GOAL IF YOU WILL MISS GOAL

Selene 🌚: PASS TO ANY PLAYER IN YELLOW AND BLACK JERSEY

Selene 🌚: START A FIGHT NOW AND GO IN PENALTY BOX OR SOMETHING

Selene 🌚: CROSS-CHECK ANYONE

Selene 🌚: GET OFF THE FUCKING ICE OR PASS THE PUCK

Sunny 🌞: as we have discussed on maybe five separate occasions, there is no point in texting me DURING the game

Sunny 🌞: you know I can’t see the messages!

Selene 🌚: THERE IS A LOT YOU CANNOT SEE

Selene 🌚: BIG NET WHERE PUCK GOES

Sunny 🌞: Svetlana says one loss this early in the season isn’t the end of the world

Sunny 🌞: Okay I can see what you’ve just texted her

Sunny 🌞: That was really rude Ilya

Selene 🌚: Next game you PASS THE PUCK or I go on Jimmy Miller and leak the end of new X-Squad movie.

Sunny 🌞: ??

Sunny 🌞: who the fuck is Jimmy Miller?

Selene 🌚: Jimmy Mailer talk show

Selene 🌚: Jamie Morgan

Selene 🌚: late night chat

Sunny 🌞: jesus christ

Sunny 🌞: I’ll pass the puck

Selene 🌚: THANK YOU


Selene 🌚: Should we get tattoos?

Sunny 🌞: we as in you and I?

Selene 🌚: oui, as in we

Sunny 🌞: on our own bodies or on each others’ or what’s the proposition here?

Selene 🌚: matching

Selene 🌚: does not matter

Sunny 🌞: Right. Well, no, obviously.

Selene 🌚: we can not eliminate any swapping magic possibilities

Sunny 🌞: like

Sunny 🌞: I guess you’re right

Sunny 🌞: okay so we get matching tattoos. And we swap back. Somehow

Sunny 🌞: Are we stuck with matching tattoos for life?

Sunny 🌞: And if so, what do we get that we won’t hate forever? And where?

Selene 🌚: Boston raiders logo

Sunny 🌞: I know that you know that that’s not a serious suggestion

Selene 🌚: I would say tramp stamp but you already have there.

Sunny 🌞: there’s so much English you “don’t know” and yet tramp stamp is in your vocabulary

Selene 🌚: I am conversationally fluent.

Sunny 🌞: and I’m busy

Sunny 🌞: message me with REAL IDEAS please

Selene 🌚: matching belly button piercings

Selene 🌚: matching nippy piercings

Sunny 🌞 has messages silenced


Selene 🌚: good morning Miss Landry 💐☺️🌈

Sunny 🌞: 2pm, but thank you

Selene 🌚: Sveta is having a nice day?

Sunny 🌞: I assume so?

Sunny 🌞: She had a customer coming into the dealership so I’m running some quick errands by myself

Selene 🌚: wonderful

Sunny 🌞: Isn’t it. Whole Foods on a Thursday afternoon. What could be better.

Selene 🌚: she seems very happy lately

Selene 🌚: Svetlana

Sunny 🌞: good to hear

Selene 🌚: verrrrrrry happy

Selene 🌚: we talk a lot you know

Sunny 🌞: I’m aware

Selene 🌚: tell each other everything

Sunny 🌞: do we have to do this?

Selene 🌚: have to do what?

Selene 🌚: I am happy for you both and so supportive

Selene 🌚: really it is all thanks to me, if you think about it

Sunny 🌞: and I try very hard not to

Selene 🌚: All I ask is that you use protection.

Selene 🌚: there are condoms in the nightstand. And in the drawer next to the coffee table. And also in the pouch that says CONDOMS in my hockey bag

Sunny 🌞: Got it thanks! I’m 26 years old so we absolutely don’t need to be having this discussion!

Selene 🌚: and I am in the prime of my career. Not ready to be a papa yet

Selene 🌚: please be safe

Sunny 🌞: GOT IT

Selene 🌚: and when it comes to safe sex do not listen to anything marly says. He is typical nasty stupid man and doesn’t understand pussy science.

Selene 🌚: listen to me instead

Selene 🌚: 1. Girl can still get pregnant if you pull out

Selene 🌚: 2. Girl can still get pregnant underwater

Selene 🌚: 3. Girl can still get pregnant in helicopter

Sunny 🌞: and this is useful to share because you’re under the impression I’m going to be doing a lot of raw helicopter fucking

Selene 🌚: happened to defenseman from San Francisco and his wife had triplets

Selene 🌚: I think because of altitude

Sunny 🌞: you think WHAT because of altitude??

Selene 🌚: sperm go crazy

Selene 🌚: flying around

Sunny 🌞: Jesus fucking christ

Sunny 🌞: thank you Dr. Rozanov 


Shane ❤️: Thought the weekend was open but it looks like I have to meet with the people from Gatorade on Saturday morning :(

Shane ❤️: We can still do Saturday night? Or Sunday after my workout?

Rose: If we hang out on Sunday we can watch Real Housewives

Shane ❤️: oh god

Rose: take a break from watching boring old hockey

Rose: I mean the amazing sport of hockey ;)


[more than an hour later]

Rose: babe I was kidding

Shane ❤️: I know baby


Selene 🌚: What is girly thing to do in free time?

Sunny 🌞: Do you have me confused with google?

Selene 🌚: I have the day off sitting at Hollander’s apartment and now he is called away for boring meetings

Sunny 🌞: I’m sure you’ll find a way to entertain yourself

Selene 🌚: Exactly what I am trying to do.

Selene 🌚: What is girly thing to do in free time?

Sunny 🌞: what do you mean by GIRLY THING?

Selene 🌚: I don’t KNOW

Selene 🌚: that is why I’m asking

Selene 🌚: what do girls do for fun?

Sunny 🌞: normal things????

Selene 🌚: Are you with Sveta right now?

Sunny 🌞: yes

Selene 🌚: hold up phone to her and show her this

Selene 🌚: Подскажи какое-нибудь девчачье занятие для развлечения?

Sunny 🌞: right so you do have her number and next time you can just go ahead and text her directly

Sunny 🌞: well, what do you normally do for fun?

Selene 🌚: it is nine inches and you have custody today

Sunny 🌞: A. you’re gross

Sunny 🌞: B. it’s MAYBE eight

Selene 🌚: you Americans don’t know how to measure things correctly

Sunny 🌞: I’m going to practice

Sunny 🌞: some of us have jobs

Selene 🌚: YES

Selene 🌚: ME

Selene 🌚: YOU ARE GOING TO MY JOB


[four hours later]

Selene 🌚: [picture of something beige on a plate]

Sunny 🌞: what exactly am I looking at

Selene 🌚: I baked a cake

Selene 🌚: I took your advice and googled for fun girly hobbies

Sunny 🌞: oh okay I love that!

Sunny 🌞: so that’s it baked?

Selene 🌚: and what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

Sunny 🌞: just like

Sunny 🌞: wait sorry I should have put this in the notes app thing but the oven there will be in celsius

Selene 🌚: understood

Selene 🌚: you think my cake looks like shit

Sunny 🌞: I didn’t say that

Sunny 🌞: did you have fun?

Sunny 🌞: the point was to have fun

Selene 🌚: cake is shit on purpose

Selene 🌚: Shane Hollander style cake

Selene 🌚: mostly protein powder and bird seed

Sunny 🌞: 😭

Sunny 🌞: I’m sure he’ll love it 


[two hours later]

Selene 🌚: he told me he hated it

Sunny 🌞: Shane?

Sunny 🌞: said he hated the cake?

Selene 🌚: in his way

Sunny 🌞: okay so immediately I understand that he did not in fact say that

Sunny 🌞: what did he say

Selene 🌚: he asked me did I have fun making it

Selene 🌚: and said important thing is to have fun

Sunny 🌞: he’s right!!!

Selene 🌚: I hate being a girl


Sunny 🌞: is Schopenhauer always like this about St. Louis

Selene 🌚: lol

Selene 🌚: yes

Selene 🌚: what makes you say this

Sunny 🌞: we’re flying out tomorrow and he’s been making little fucking comments all week

Sunny 🌞: I can tell he’s angling to sit out. When I asked him point blank he said he was fine

Sunny 🌞: But then I watched gameplay of the last two away games in St. Louis and noticed that he didn’t play

Selene 🌚: Scooper is a fucking baby.

Selene 🌚: He played his first three years in St. Louis. Did mid-season trade to Raiders before we clinched the playoffs and they lost without him.

Selene 🌚: and we won cup

Selene 🌚: teehee

Sunny 🌞: messy

Selene 🌚: So yes, first time we played against them there after the trade, fans boo all night, and many of their players try to hit pucks at his face. True.

Selene 🌚: But you are goalie. Pucks are flying at you all the time! This is what you have special mask for.

Sunny 🌞: lmfao

Selene 🌚: What is his big excuse this time?

Selene 🌚: game last spring he actually gave himself food poisoning

Selene 🌚: on purpose

Selene 🌚: for real

Selene 🌚: not lying I was impressed

Sunny 🌞: his “glutes” are really “tight” 🙄

Selene 🌚: mamma mia

Selene 🌚: here we go again

Sunny 🌞: he’s also frankly just doing wayyy too much now that that trainer Allison is back from maternity leave

Sunny 🌞: lots of “tight” hamstrings and “tight” quads and “tight” glutes to be addressed

Sunny 🌞: spends as much time on the massage table as the rest of the team combined

Sunny 🌞: and asked marly the other day if he thinks she pumps at work and keeps the milk in a fridge somewhere???

Selene 🌚: men are pigs

Sunny 🌞: not ALL men

Selene 🌚: don’t you start with me Landry 


Sunny 🌞: I guess I’m happy you’re really selling it with Shane

Sunny 🌞: but are there things you guys can do for dates that don’t involve gaining so much weight that I lose out on 90% of potential roles Hollywood has to offer women?

Selene 🌚: ?

Sunny 🌞: [screenshot of a paparazzi photo, Shane and “Rose” at a sidewalk cafe sharing a milkshake out of two straws]

Sunny 🌞: [screenshot of a fan’s sneaked picture, “Rose” in the lobby of a movie theater with Twizzlers protruding from her upper lip like a walrus while Shane laughs]

Sunny 🌞: [clip of a paparazzi video, Shane and “Rose” cozied up in the booth of an ice cream shop, “Rose” eating a seven scoop sundae from a tureen while Shane enjoys a plain frozen yogurt topped with cacao nibs]

Selene 🌚: you have a sweet tooth

Selene 🌚: not my fault

Selene 🌚: I am more like a salty guy usually

Sunny 🌞: yes I’m aware I have a sweet tooth

Sunny 🌞: I also have a job that requires me to be half-naked in imax

Sunny 🌞: hence the diet you assured me you were sticking to, the way that I’m sticking to yours

Selene 🌚: I wish I had your self control 😔

Sunny 🌞: YOU LITERALLY DO

Selene 🌚: you’ve heard me say that smoking was my only vice

Selene 🌚: well

Selene 🌚: now that isn’t true!


Selene 🌚: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_hockey

Selene 🌚: since you seem confused

Selene 🌚: point of game is to get puck (small black circle) into net (like for fishing) of other team (guys in different color shirts)

Sunny 🌞: fuck off Ilya

Selene 🌚: difficult to score points with only 15 shots on goal in 3 periods. But what do I know

Sunny 🌞: I really don’t need to fucking hear it right now okay

Sunny 🌞: I know we fucking lost. I’m aware. I was there.

Selene 🌚: you’re mad :(

Sunny 🌞: of course I’m fucking mad

Sunny 🌞: Like genuinely why the fuck is every single Philly player like that

Selene 🌚: They are assholes. So is Boston. Makes it fun to play them.

Sunny 🌞: Fun maybe if the refs weren’t outrageously biased?

Sunny 🌞: Then I have to do media afterwards where they’re shoving a microphone in my face and asking why we’re not scoring on the power play

Sunny 🌞: like sorry but ??? WHAT FUCKING POWER PLAY?

Sunny 🌞: their penalties aren’t getting fucking called!!!!!!

Selene 🌚: It’s one game RL.

Selene 🌚: Losing is a part of playing

Sunny 🌞: It still sucks.

Selene 🌚: Rose Landry. You and I know how the heartaches come and they go and the scars they’re leaving. You’ll be skating once again and the pain will end. You will have no time for grieving. The sun is still in the sky and shining above you. Try once more like you did before.

Sunny 🌞: Wow

Sunny 🌞: That was kind of beautiful, Ilya

Sunny 🌞: Thanks.

Selene 🌚: No problem. I am a natural at pep talks.


[one hour later]

Sunny 🌞: Wait

Sunny 🌞: Sorry

Sunny 🌞: Was your little speech there just the words to fucking Chiquitita?


[twenty minutes later]

Sunny 🌞: I’ve scrolled up through our texts.

Sunny 🌞: You’ve been sending me ABBA lyrics for weeks.

Sunny 🌞: Genuinely what is wrong with you

Selene 🌚: Research for my role

Sunny 🌞: For the role in the biopic I don’t actually have?!

Selene 🌚: Not with that attitude Rose Landry

Selene 🌚: I have a dream.

Selene 🌚: A song to sing.

Sunny 🌞 has messages silenced


Selene 🌚: I know you are trying to be well behaved on the ice but it is too well behaved I think.

Selene 🌚: You need to be spending more time in the naughty box.

Sunny 🌞: it’s 5:40 in the morning btw. In case you care

Selene 🌚: I am on the way to set. Some of us have places to be and no time for snoozing

Sunny 🌞: I’m going back to sleep. And my phone is going on do not disturb. Goodnight Ilya.

Selene 🌚: okay great I can keep messaging then and it will not disturb you

Sunny 🌞 has messages silenced

Selene 🌚: anyways

Selene 🌚: there are many nerdy types on the internet as you know

Selene 🌚: One of them is Shane Hollander it turns out. He is major lurker in many hockey forums and even has fake name to argue with other online hockey nerds.

Selene 🌚: his fake name is @averagehockeyfan if you are wondering

Selene 🌚: I think he thinks it is very clever like an undercover superspy.

Selene 🌚: I did not tell him it is not.

Selene 🌚: okay back to story

Selene 🌚: I see him typing on forums on his phone. I say oh babe what is that babe, and cuddle up to him being nosy (to seem more like you) and he showed me all about it

Selene 🌚: so later on I make an account to start a fight with him of course

Selene 🌚: little prank

Selene 🌚: For example I start threads I know he will have major opinions about and say things to get him riled up

Selene 🌚: for a bit of fun. On film set you must make your own entertainment haha

Selene 🌚: My name on the hockey nerd forum is @powerplayboy

Selene 🌚: which is obviously much more cool and clever than his

Selene 🌚: okay back to story again

Selene 🌚: on these forums they talk about me all the time. Calling me an asshole and whatnot. Greatest center to ever play the game, future olympic gold medalist and future three time cup winner, things like that, etc etc.

Selene 🌚: and so I searched my name to read all of the things they say

Selene 🌚: I find one of the nerds has made boring data analysis

Selene 🌚: about penalties

Selene 🌚: and he is noticing that my time in the naughty box has been way way low lately

Selene 🌚: several people in thread are discussing that maybe I am soft now. Or body is getting weak old and frail

Selene 🌚: which as we know is not true

Selene 🌚: so it is possible your good behavior could be arousing suspicion

Selene 🌚: I am thinking we need you roughing more, tripping, high-sticking, etc, whatever

Selene 🌚: getting higher PIM

Selene 🌚: for verisimilitude 


[three hours later]

Sunny 🌞: you somehow know the word verisimilitude suddenly?

Selene 🌚: I have word of the day app

Selene 🌚: was my word last Thursday

Selene 🌚: the word today is loquacious

Sunny 🌞: Very apt. Thanks for sharing.

Selene 🌚: Send dick pic

Sunny 🌞: Absolutely not?

Selene 🌚: But I miss him :(((((

Selene 🌚: My little hockey stick :((((((((((((((((((((((

Sunny 🌞: You’re seriously deranged and I’m losing brain cells the longer I’m trapped in your body


Sunny 🌞: why is Cliff the only guy who gets his own room on road trips?

Sunny 🌞: shouldn’t that be me, if I’m the captain?

Selene 🌚: He has night terrors. Very scary for the other men. He wakes up screaming and kicking

Sunny 🌞: hmmm

Sunny 🌞: do we think that’s real. Like have you witnessed it firsthand

Sunny 🌞: because I’m pretty sure it’s just an excuse to be able to bring girls back to his room

Selene 🌚: lol

Selene 🌚: the night terrors are real, yes, we shared together for two seasons

Selene 🌚: and having a roommate has never stopped him from bringing home nice young lady

Selene 🌚: he is a quick lover and I would hang out in the lobby fifteen minutes or so or use my noise canceling headphones if I needed to get rest and it was taking any longer

Sunny 🌞: absolutely disgusting and I hate hearing it thanks

Sunny 🌞: I wonder if I can fake bedwetting or sleep apnea or something and get you your own room

Selene 🌚: Connors is a nice enough guy

Sunny 🌞: he won’t stop talking to me through the door when I’m on the toilet

Sunny 🌞: or when he is

Sunny 🌞: it’s driving me insane

Selene 🌚: he is very friendly

Sunny 🌞: no I know

Sunny 🌞: he’s sweet

Sunny 🌞: it’s just a LOT

Selene 🌚: ah the glamorous lifestyle of professional hockey superstar

Selene 🌚: remember RL that you are the one who signed up for this

Sunny 🌞: I quite literally did not

Selene 🌚: mmm that’s not how I remember it


Shane ❤️: Do you have plans next Thursday evening or would you be available?

Rose: I can be free

Rose: Available for what?

Shane ❤️: I have to go to a thing, I was wondering if you’d want to come with me.

Rose: oh, a thing

Rose: Yes obviously. How can I say no when you make it sound so exciting as that?

Shane ❤️: LOL

Shane ❤️: it’s a charity dinner gala thing

Shane ❤️: raising money to stop asian hate, I guess.

Shane ❤️: not really sure how that works but my mom is making me go and I have a plus one

Shane ❤️: totally understand if you’re not into it

Rose: I would love to go!

Rose: dinner gala meaning fancy?

Rose: like I should wear gown?

Shane ❤️: I was going to say probably wear a dress but I guess I don’t know the difference between a dress and a gown

Shane ❤️: hold on


[fifteen minutes later]

Shane ❤️: okay my mom said I’m in a suit, not a tux

Shane ❤️: if that’s helpful information

Rose: helpful to know that Mrs. Hollander is still picking out your clothes, yes

Shane ❤️: shut up haha

Rose: after all the hard work I’ve put in…

Shane ❤️: I’ll pick you up at 6

Shane ❤️: and I’ll see you this weekend :)

Rose: see you 😘


Selene 🌚: [screenshots of conversation with Shane]

Selene 🌚: what is appropriate to wear to this?

Selene 🌚: everything in the closet is ugly :( I will have to go shopping

Sunny 🌞: I lovvve how polite you are when you ask for help.

Sunny 🌞: figure out which suit he’s wearing and what color tie

Sunny 🌞: then depending on his answer do the light blue dress that’s in the closet in the front hall or the burgundy which I believe will be next to it in a dry cleaning bag

Selene 🌚: hold on I will look

Selene 🌚: found them

Selene 🌚: dark red one is nice. I will send to him and tell him to match

Selene 🌚: thank you

Selene 🌚: (said politely)

Sunny 🌞: If you wanna keep it simple I can set you an appointment at Drybar in the afternoon for hair and you can do your own makeup, but I’m not sure what your confidence level is with that.

Selene 🌚: Shane says he prefers girls who don’t wear too much makeup

Sunny 🌞: well that’s because Shane is a man and doesn’t know what makeup looks like

Sunny 🌞: Alternatively, if you guys are leaving at 6, I can have someone to the hotel at 4:30 for hair and makeup. They’ll text you for confirmation the morning of.

Sunny 🌞: Just show them what you’re wearing and they can go from there.

Selene 🌚: THANK U ROSY POSY 🙏🙌😍🤩👅

Sunny 🌞: you’re so welcome and please god don’t call me that

Selene 🌚: :(

Selene 🌚: is what marly calls me

Sunny 🌞: yeah I am fully aware

Sunny 🌞: I also know about your other little nickname for him

Sunny 🌞: you guys are fucking foul

Selene 🌚: THANK YOU ROSY POSY LOVVVVE YOU!!!!!!


[one week later]

Shane ❤️: [a set of eight pictures watermarked from Getty images, five from a step and repeat with a charity branded backdrop and three candids from the gala]

Shane ❤️: my mom just sent these over

Shane ❤️: :)

Rose: YOU LOOK SO HANDSOME 😍🤤🔥🌶️😍😍😍

Shane ❤️: we both look great ☺️

Shane ❤️: thanks again for coming

Shane ❤️: normally those things are so awkward

Shane ❤️: it was actually pretty fun with you there

Rose: I had a lovely evening

Rose: you make me feel like a princess

Shane ❤️: wow

Shane ❤️: that’s good, right?

Shane ❤️: you deserve it


Selene 🌚: sometimes I just wish I could tell him

Selene 🌚: would make life so much easier

Sunny 🌞: I know hon

Sunny 🌞: But we can’t

Selene 🌚: yeah

Sunny 🌞: Who knows why this is happening or how it works, but like

Sunny 🌞: I genuinely feel like I couldn’t tell him if I tried.

Sunny 🌞: Ugh that sounds crazy but do you know what I mean? It’s like a weird gut feeling idk how to express it.

Selene 🌚: like if I opened my mouth to tell him no words would come out

Sunny 🌞: Exactly.

Selene 🌚: I know.

Selene 🌚: but later maybe

Selene 🌚: after this is over. Like in ten years I could tell him

Sunny 🌞: You think you’ll still be talking to him in 10 years?

Sunny 🌞: That sounded bitchy. Sorry.

Sunny 🌞: I just meant that you guys just didn’t really talk much before, right? Outside of hockey?

Selene 🌚: no obviously not

Selene 🌚: but I could write him a letter

Sunny 🌞: A letter saying hey this crazy thing happened which you will absolutely not believe? And now you’ll probably try to get me committed?

Selene 🌚: a letter saying

Selene 🌚: Dear Shane Hollander, Remember when you and Rose were playing Fifa on the couch and she farted? Was not actually Rose. Was me Ilya Rozanov in Rose Landry’s body. Also helps explain why you lost so bad at Fifa. Because I, Ilya, am very good.

Sunny 🌞: tell me you’re fucking lying?????

Selene 🌚: no it’s true I’m really good at it. At all video games really

Sunny 🌞: DID YOU FART IN FRONT OF HIM????????

Selene 🌚: oh sure

Sunny 🌞: ILYA!!!!!!

Selene 🌚: is no big deal

Selene 🌚: even Shane said so

Selene 🌚: he said it is nothing to be embarrassed about. I said yeah I know I am not embarrassed

Sunny 🌞: the only way to get your body back will be to collect it from the bottom of the harbor where I will have tied several bricks to it

Selene 🌚: 🙄 you actresses are so dramatic sometimes. Was one little toot


Selene 🌚: fierce skating tonight, this is what I like to see

Selene 🌚: it’s only first period, do not get discouraged. One zero score means nothing. Is basically same as zero zero

Selene 🌚: very good assist

Selene 🌚: see I told you. Easy to tie up game

Selene 🌚: are you really hurt?? Are you okay??

Selene 🌚: it did not look like too hard a hit on the replay but you are on the ground rolling around :( makes me worry

Selene 🌚: rosy posy be careful for embellishment penalty okay

Selene 🌚: see here like right now, they send you to the naughty box.

Selene 🌚: is only for two minutes but just be careful next time 🫶

Selene 🌚: and if you are really hurt you go to trainers and have the coaches argue it okay?

Selene 🌚: I really really worry to see that

Selene 🌚: EMBELLISHMENT

Selene 🌚: AGAIN

Selene 🌚: ROSE ARE YOU KIDDING ME

Selene 🌚: HIS STICK BARELY FUCKING TOUCHED YOU

Selene 🌚: ARE YOU CRYING???????

Selene 🌚: YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY BE HURT TO ACT LIKE THAT OR ELSE YOU GO BACK IN THE BOX AND YOU MAKE ME LOOK LIKE A HUMUNGOUS ASSHOLE

Selene 🌚: omg.

Selene 🌚: this is for the fart.

Selene 🌚: you are punishing me

Selene 🌚: Терпеть тебя не могу

Selene 🌚: a vindictive girl lives inside my body and she punishes me for basic biology functions I can not control

Selene 🌚: rosy posy please I will not fart again

Selene 🌚: ever in my life

Selene 🌚: please when you come back from two minute time out no more drama please please please please please


Sunny 🌞: Hey Ilya glad you caught the game! Some rough play there and a tight score but I’m glad we were all able to work together and pull through in the end 😊

Selene 🌚: you are a nasty spirited girl I hope you know

Sunny 🌞: 😊😊😊


Sunny 🌞: hey

Sunny 🌞: sorry to bug you, do you have a minute?

Selene 🌚: What’s up?

Selene 🌚: All is good?

Sunny 🌞: not sure

Sunny 🌞: your brother has texted like… a lot, today

Sunny 🌞: and called probably five times in the last few hours and left several long messages

Sunny 🌞: obviously Svetlana would take care of this normally but she had a mandatory training at the dealership about some new car I guess and now I’m stressing

Sunny 🌞: I’m probably panicked over nothing but I just know your father hasn’t been doing well lately and I’m terrified that something happened and they need to get a hold of you and I’ll be sitting here useless and fuck things up for you and your entire family

Selene 🌚: Breathe, Rose.

Selene 🌚: Send me screenshots of the messages, okay? We don’t panic yet.

Selene 🌚: Can panic later if we need to

Sunny 🌞: [screenshots of several pages of text messages]

Sunny 🌞: I put them into google translate but most of it is just him calling you shitty names and telling you to pick up the phone or listen to his voicemails

Selene 🌚: yes he does that

Selene 🌚: okay hmm

Selene 🌚: do you have the iPad nearby?

Sunny 🌞: just grabbed it

Selene 🌚: pain in the ass but I think this would work best

Selene 🌚: play the voicemails on speakerphone, use the iPad to take voice memos, then send them to me. Then I can give you text in Russian to copy paste back to him

Sunny 🌞: genius ugh thank you

Sunny 🌞: gimme 5 min

Selene 🌚: Genius yes. I have been saying this for a long time. Now you agree.

Sunny 🌞: [voice memo]

Selene 🌚: fucking asshole

Sunny 🌞: is everything okay?

Selene 🌚: no, my brother is a huge asshole, which is not okay

Selene 🌚: but otherwise everything is fine

Sunny 🌞: He was calling because everything is fine?

Selene 🌚: He was calling because he wants money.

Selene 🌚: like fucking always

Sunny 🌞: uff da

Sunny 🌞: What should I say back?

Selene 🌚: ignore him

Selene 🌚: I have banking app logged in over here. I will take care of it

Sunny 🌞: sounds good

Sunny 🌞: sorry to bug you mid-day and stress you out over nothing

Selene 🌚: no it is okay

Selene 🌚: I’m sorry YOU had to stress

Sunny 🌞: literally don’t even apologize omg

Sunny 🌞: not your fault AT ALL and I don’t ever mind

Sunny 🌞: and I know you’d do the same for me

Selene 🌚: Thanks RL 💝

Sunny 🌞: 💖💖💖


Selene 🌚: and btw

Selene 🌚: wtf is “uff da”


Selene 🌚: https://youtu.be/1TEOaMX7uL8?si=7U2nUYwdaHeoLegx

Selene 🌚: Gene showed me this helpful exercise today for building strength in laterals. Plz add to routine

Sunny 🌞: gotcha

Sunny 🌞: Who’s gene?

Selene 🌚: Gene Hackman?

Sunny 🌞: The actor?!?!

Selene 🌚: Yes? Is there another gene hackman?

Sunny 🌞: Where did you meet him????

Selene 🌚: On set?

Sunny 🌞: Gene hackman came to visit the x-squad set?????????

Selene 🌚: rose

Selene 🌚: are you okay

Selene 🌚: are you hit in the head

Sunny 🌞: sorry.

Sunny 🌞: Ilya.

Sunny 🌞: Describe to me right now who you think Gene Hackman is.

Selene 🌚: the one who plays the wolfman in x-squad movies

Selene 🌚: sideburns and metal pointy claws

Sunny 🌞: right.

Sunny 🌞: and have you been calling him gene to his face

Selene 🌚: gene or genie weenie

Selene 🌚: little nickname 😂

Selene 🌚: we are good friends

Sunny 🌞: Cool. Very cool. Thank you Ilya so so much.

Selene 🌚: remember the lateral exercises please

Sunny 🌞: will do thanks SO much


Shane ❤️: Finally made it to the hotel.

Rose: thank god

Rose: long fucking day huh?

Shane ❤️: I’m just grateful they didn’t cancel the flight. I really thought we wouldn’t make it out here.

Rose: I bet you’re exhausted

Rose: need to get good rest before tomorrow. Colorado is not fucking around

Shane ❤️: lol. You sound like my coach.

Shane ❤️: What about you? How was your day? What are you up to?

Rose: day was fine, work was easy

Rose: in bed now eating sushi and watching the Celtics crush the Lakers so I can’t complain 💃

Shane ❤️: I didn’t know you were a basketball fan

Rose: I don’t watch every game, but yes I like it

Rose: fast paced, like hockey

Rose: sexy players… like hockey

Rose: ;)

Shane ❤️: sure I guess

Rose: are you jealous?

Shane ❤️: no haha just interested

Rose: What about you?

Rose: You like other sports?

Shane ❤️: I really only follow hockey. Probably a boring answer

Rose: you are so single minded

Shane ❤️: not the first time I’ve heard that

Rose: It’s a good thing. Two cups. Focus works for you.

Shane ❤️: thanks

Shane ❤️: and thanks for being so understanding about everything. Travel and stuff. I know my schedule is really crazy

Rose: Of course. Mine too. It’s your job though and you get to do what you love. Most people are not so lucky

Shane ❤️: That’s how I feel too.

Rose: I still miss you when you are away

Shane ❤️: I miss you too.

Rose: when you come back we can eat sushi and watch basketball together

Shane ❤️: eat sushi and watch hockey, maybe

Rose: 🤣


Selene 🌚: received email from Triple 5 Motors in Quincy that my Ferrari is ready for pickup??

Selene 🌚: ??????

Sunny 🌞: yup, just got off the phone with them, on my way to pick it up now

Selene 🌚: Fanny is in hospital with sickness and this is the first I hear about it?!

Sunny 🌞: The car is fine lol you’re so dramatic

Sunny 🌞: Svetlana told me to take it in to get serviced. I think you can assume that she would alert you if there was some major issue.

Selene 🌚: you are right

Selene 🌚: I just worry about my girls when I’m away

Sunny 🌞: Svetlana and I are fine

Selene 🌚: I don’t mean you girls I mean Fanny and Lulu

Sunny 🌞: of course you fucking do

Sunny 🌞: I barely drive “her” anyways because the color is absolutely ridiculous

Sunny 🌞: I pretty much exclusively take the lambo

Selene 🌚: you fucking what

Sunny 🌞: sorry, I take “““Lulu”””

Selene 🌚: Have you been driving my cars????????????????????????????

Sunny 🌞: are you under the impression I’ve been hitchhiking my way around Boston? Walking? Scootering? What?

Selene 🌚: TAKING TAXI CABS I THOUGHT

Selene 🌚: HAVING SVETLANA DRIVE YOU

Sunny 🌞: lame

Sunny 🌞: I kinda love it tbh

Sunny 🌞: such a fun ride and the all black has grown on me

Sunny 🌞: makes me feel like I’m driving the Batmobile 😎

Selene 🌚: YES I KNOW THAT IS WHY I BOUGHT IT

Selene 🌚: rose

Selene 🌚: please be careful

Selene 🌚: please be sooo gentle with her

Sunny 🌞: vroom vroom

Selene 🌚: DON’T SAY VROOM VROOM I SAY VROOM VROOM


Selene 🌚: you cannot tell them how you know, but please let slip to Raiders that Andropov will be out probably next 2-3 weeks on lower body IR

Sunny 🌞: damn, poor guy :( hope he’s okay

Selene 🌚: he’ll be fine

Selene 🌚: just a sprain

Selene 🌚: accidents happen

Sunny 🌞: Svetlana’s asking followups. She says he seemed fine when we watched the Montreal game last night

Sunny 🌞: mind you. she has your number and could have texted you herself

Sunny 🌞: but now I’m curious too

Selene 🌚: Hurt himself today. Was fine last night.

Sunny 🌞: wait

Sunny 🌞: at the baby shower??

Selene 🌚: Well as I said Rose, accidents can happen at any time.

Sunny 🌞: I do understand that yes

Sunny 🌞: how did he get hurt?

Sunny 🌞: was Jamie freaking out?

Selene 🌚: Jackie

Sunny 🌞: Jackie, sorry

Sunny 🌞: you know Shane’s friends way better than I do 🙃

Selene 🌚: she was not mad at me no

Sunny 🌞: why would she be mad at you??

Selene 🌚: do you know what a flour baby is RL?

Sunny 🌞: uhhh I don’t know, do I?

Selene 🌚: It is a sack of flour from the grocery store and you dress it in pampers and a onesie and pretend it is a real baby.

Sunny 🌞: To what end?

Selene 🌚: My question too. I had never been to North American baby shower before.

Selene 🌚: Jackie Pike and lady friends (including me) set up a special game for all the HABs

Sunny 🌞: HABs?

Selene 🌚: husbands and boyfriends

Sunny 🌞: lol got you

Selene 🌚: The game was like obstacle course but carrying flour baby to safety at the end as fast as possible.

Sunny 🌞: better than melting candy bars into diapers I guess

Selene 🌚: what?

Sunny 🌞: nvm

Sunny 🌞: continue

Selene 🌚: Shane is very competitive

Selene 🌚: and a sore loser

Selene 🌚: so I try to be supportive girlfriend, like you told me to

Selene 🌚: hoping he will not be pouty in the car home

Sunny 🌞: supportive like cheering him on?

Selene 🌚: supportive like

Selene 🌚: maybe they have to jump in and out of circle shaped pool floaties on the ground as they run through obstacle course

Selene 🌚: and maybe Andropov is moving very fast with his hopping and jumping and protecting his flour baby very nicely

Selene 🌚: and I am rooting for Shane and Daisy

Sunny 🌞: daisy being

Selene 🌚: daisy is the flour baby

Sunny 🌞: of course it is

Selene 🌚: I tap my toe a little bit against the pool floatie donut on the ground as Andropov is hopping past

Selene 🌚: and now it’s something something ACL blah blah blah

Sunny 🌞: oh my god Ilya

Selene 🌚: very lovely baby shower otherwise

Selene 🌚: but now we are on the drive home and Shane is being weird anyway :(

Sunny 🌞: weird after you deliberately injured his teammate?

Sunny 🌞: gee I wonder why

Selene 🌚: no actually I think he kind of liked that

Selene 🌚: Mr Sportsmanship himself I know I know. But he likes a bit of dirty play now and again.

Sunny 🌞: ignoring the unintentional innuendo there

Sunny 🌞: Weird in what way?

Sunny 🌞: He does get quiet sometimes after big social events. I feel like that’s maybe his normal

Selene 🌚: actually he was fine when we got into the car

Selene 🌚: we had a bit of chitchat

Selene 🌚: and now he is doing a silent freakout

Sunny 🌞: Ilya you DO actually have social skills

Sunny 🌞: so what the fuck did you say

Selene 🌚: asked him if he wants kids

Selene 🌚: and if so when?

Sunny 🌞: WE’VE BEEN DATING FOR LIKE THREE MONTHS

Selene 🌚: yes but it was topical

Selene 🌚: because of the baby shower

Sunny 🌞: what did he say??

Selene 🌚: tried to turn left on a red light and almost got us t-boned

Selene 🌚: I told him I want children

Selene 🌚: in the future, obviously. Not right away

Sunny 🌞: why would you say that?!

Sunny 🌞: I literally don’t want kids!

Selene 🌚: really?

Selene 🌚: I love kids

Sunny 🌞: SO HAVE YOUR OWN

Selene 🌚: that’s what baby daisy is for


Selene 🌚: o m g

Selene 🌚: saltwater taffy is SO YUM

Sunny 🌞: fuck that sounds good right now. I’d probably rip out half your fake teeth if I ate some though 😭

Sunny 🌞: Where did you even get saltwater taffy in the middle of December? Are you at a pier somewhere??

Selene 🌚: your mama send a care package

Sunny 🌞: you’re joking.

Sunny 🌞: lmfao

Selene 🌚: not joking

Selene 🌚: [picture of a cardboard box half full of saltwater taffy, wrappers strewn in the background]

Sunny 🌞: she’s so passive aggressive oh my GOD

Sunny 🌞: taffy is like… a thing, in my family. It’s not worth explaining

Sunny 🌞: she’s pissed I’m not coming home for Christmas

Sunny 🌞: guarantee in a week she’s gonna leave some long dramatic weepy voicemail about how much work it is to make lefse for the whole church congregation all by herself even though my sister in law and cousins spend six full hours helping her EVERY year

Selene 🌚: wow

Selene 🌚: mama drama

Sunny 🌞: I love her. I do. I know I should feel lucky to have a family who actually wants to spend time with me.

Sunny 🌞: I would be a little more inclined to enjoy her company if she wasn’t criticizing me the whole time, that’s all.

Sunny 🌞: but I’m glad you’re enjoying the taffy

Selene 🌚: yes, I think you should piss her off more and see what else she sends

Sunny 🌞: lol

Sunny 🌞: what sort of sweets did you grow up with?

Selene 🌚: in Russia we only eat complex carbohydrates, what do you mean?

Selene 🌚: joking.

Sunny 🌞: ha

Selene 🌚: most popular classic Russian candy is called mishka kosolapy, clumsy bear. Very yummy wafers dipped in chocolate

Selene 🌚: Russians have many good chocolate treats

Selene 🌚: my mama loved anything with marzipan but I think they look better than they taste lol

Sunny 🌞: totally agreed

Selene 🌚: what Russian foods do you like best so far Rose Landry?

Sunny 🌞: idk how much russian food I’ve had before tbh

Sunny 🌞: does caviar count? lolll

Selene 🌚: 😳

Selene 🌚: Svetlana has not been cooking you authentic Russian meals??

Sunny 🌞: Ilya. What are you talking about. That woman could set off the smoke alarm pouring an iced tea.

Selene 🌚: 😂 true

Sunny 🌞: I’ve been eating, like, chicken and brown rice

Sunny 🌞: or we order Thai food

Selene 🌚: I will fix this

Sunny 🌞: don’t know what that means or entails

Sunny 🌞: also, frankly, I’m not sure how much russian food YOU are actually eating on a regular basis when you’re not in Moscow. Every fucking team dinner is at a steakhouse and your freezer is overflowing with Marie Callender’s chicken pot pies

Selene 🌚: I will fix this


Selene has created the group 🥕 Carrot Tops 🥕

Svetlana 🦊: what fresh hell is this

Selene 🌚: hello girls

Sunny 🌞: the name of the chat. be serious.

Selene 🌚: Yes I have put it together so I can discuss important topics with my two favorite redheads

Selene 🌚: for example.

Selene 🌚: Светлана Сергеевна

Selene 🌚: до меня дошла информация, что вы пренебрегаете культурным образованием нашей дорогой Розы

Svetlana 🦊: ?? Каким образом??

Sunny 🌞: what exactly is the point of a group chat where I can’t read anything you guys are saying

Selene 🌚: с её слов, единственное настоящее русское блюдо, которое она попробовала за этот месяц, это твоя киска

Sunny 🌞: i do have google translate

Sunny 🌞: asshole

Selene 🌚: своди её поужинать в тот ресторан в Ньютоне, за мой счёт

Svetlana 🦊: боже, это звучит так заманчиво

Sunny 🌞: you’re both ignoring me. I hate this

Svetlana 🦊: Теперь мне хочется пельменей на работе, аааааa

Selene 🌚: ЖИЗА

Sunny 🌞: okay BYE!

Sunny 🌞 has left the chat

Selene 🌚: она вернётся

Selene 🌚: после пельменей

Svetlana 🦊: и киски

Selene 🌚: LOL


Sunny 🌞: How do you not weigh 400lbs

Selene 🌚: She returns to me.

Selene 🌚: Hello Rosy Posy who left my special groupchat and then blocked me for several hours.

Selene 🌚: How was dinner?

Sunny 🌞: fucking delicious

Sunny 🌞: I feel actually sick from how much I ate

Selene 🌚: makes me happy to hear that

Selene 🌚: proud countryman

Sunny 🌞: why aren’t more people talking about borscht

Selene 🌚: we live in very different worlds Rosy Posy

Selene 🌚: technically borscht is from Ukraine originally but still, popular Russian dish

Selene 🌚: and trust me

Selene 🌚: people talk about borscht

Sunny 🌞: LA needs a hot girl borscht era

Sunny 🌞: badly

Sunny 🌞: I’m going to partner with erewhon on a limited edition $18 borscht smoothie

Selene 🌚: xaxaxaxaxa 😂

Selene 🌚: now I’m hungry

Sunny 🌞: we should get russian food together sometime

Selene 🌚: well I am currently in Montreal if you forget

Selene 🌚: because of this little situation where we switch bodies

Sunny 🌞: I mean after we switch back

Sunny 🌞: we should hang out

Sunny 🌞: and eat borscht together

Sunny 🌞: or whatever else

Selene 🌚: you think you will not be sick of me by then?

Sunny 🌞: I’m sick of you already

Sunny 🌞: that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be friends

Selene 🌚: lol

Selene 🌚: deal

Selene 🌚: borscht party when we switch back

Sunny 🌞: YAY

Sunny 🌞: BORSCHT PARTY

Chapter 11: Ilya

They’re 40km out from Ottawa, chilly afternoon sun glaring through the windshield, and Shane is beginning to irritate him.

“She’s a very… intense person,” Shane warns. “And it can be a lot.”

Ostensibly, a relationship should be a place for two people to unburden themselves of the outside world into a shared safe space of acceptance. Ilya doesn’t have much experience in serious romance, but he knows this. And yet, the truth is, these moments when Shane vents about his mother are the rare occasions on which Ilya finds him deeply unattractive. Неблагодарный; an ingrate. Bitching and moaning as though he’d even have a roof over his head if not for Yuna drumming up so many deals for him, lacing his skates when he was a toddler and dragging him out onto the ice for the first time, making him the sole focus of her life’s work and sacrificing… well, sacrificing what, Ilya doesn’t know, but surely the woman had had some dreams of her own before baby Shaney had come along.

This is a Western, mostly North American attitude he’s observed: the belief that a child hadn’t asked to be brought into this world and therefore doesn’t owe anything to the ones who’ve weaned and cleaned him. Ilya disagrees. He believes that sometimes, you do owe people something, and that duty and responsibility are not things a man can simply opt out of. A good man, anyway.

“Intense,” Ilya repeats. “I understand. She is the pot, and you are the kettle.”

Shane’s eyes slide over to him, slicing sharp like daggers. “Funny. You know what I mean.”

“Of course I don’t, I haven’t met her.” Which isn’t true, but it’s true that Ilya doesn’t know Yuna. Not really.

“I mean that it’s like…” Shane searches for the words, which won’t come, probably because he’s wrong and making a very stupid point. “She cares a lot, and I’m grateful for it, obviously, but it’s too much sometimes. Like, zero boundaries.”

Ilya breathes deep, tries very hard not to find Shane spoiled, obnoxious, and repulsive right now. Cares “too much” — too much? What is too much, in the context of a mother’s love? The very notion is anathema to Ilya, who can only conceive of not enough, never enough. He never lets himself think of what his life might be like if his own mother were still alive, how different it might be, because she isn’t. Painful and pointless, a futile exercise in self harm to even imagine being able to pick up the phone after a long day and have someone waiting on the other end of the line who cared, god forbid cared too much.

In the awkward silence that passes between he and Shane now, he imagines, though, what life would be like if Yuna Hollander was his mother. He’d probably have a seven figure contract with Adidas, that’s for starters. And someone to watch him from the stands who’d love him even when he lost.

Outside the car, it’s clear, bright white. Today it isn’t snowing, but it snowed yesterday and the day before; drifts of it blanket either side of the highway, crooked trees stretching skyward with a groaning, achy yawn. Being here in Canada in the wintertime has soothed him, strangely. It reminds him very much of Russia. Something familiar in this unfamiliar life he’s had to make his own.

He reaches across the center console without looking and finds Shane’s hand, taking it in his. Shane isn’t an ingrate, Ilya reminds himself; he’s naïve. He has no idea how lucky he is to have the things he does, to have this one specific thing, and thank goodness. Ilya wouldn’t wish the pain on him that it would take for Shane to truly understand.

“Later tonight,” Ilya says, squeezing Shane’s hand. “She will cut your food into little pieces for you? Or I am the girlfriend now, so this is my duty?”

Shane squeezes back, takes his hand away and wraps it around the steering wheel as they turn off the highway. “Of course not. She chews the food up first and then she spits it into my mouth. I thought you knew that.”

“Ah, yes. Her baby bird.”

“Exactly.” Shane smiles.

He drops Ilya at a coffee shop in The Glebe that Ilya had found by googling coffee shops in ottawa good coffee. From the outside looking it in, it seems promising. Cozy and warm, not empty, but not so full Ilya will have trouble finding a table.

“You have my mom’s number? And my dad’s?” Shane asks. He sounds concerned enough that Ilya wonders if he should be more worried than he is about tonight. “You can text me if you have any problems getting in or anything like — anything. But once I’m on the ice, I won’t be able to see my phone, so—”

“Shane. I will be fine,” Ilya says, though obviously he has no way of knowing if this is true. (Technically this is the case on any given day — for all Ilya knows, he could be hit by a mail truck crossing the street or choke on a cocktail onion or a deadly communicable disease could be discovered which disproportionately affects good looking Russian men. The world is full of such dangers.)

“I’ll meet up with you guys afterwards,” Shane reminds him. He seems to still himself, then shakes his head. “I promise they mean well. They really are nice people.”

“Of course they are. They’re Canadian.” Ilya unbuckles his seatbelt, reaches into the backseat and grabs his bag and coat. “Give me kiss for luck before you go.”

Shane sighs. “Luck for which one of us?” But he kisses Ilya, lingering long enough to relax into it. “I’ll see you later.”

It’s a few degrees below freezing, but Ilya doesn’t bother putting his coat on to trot from the car into the coffee shop. It’s humid the moment he steps inside, heat cranked way up and the air heavy and bitter just the way he likes it. He orders a cold brew with sweet cream and a toffee cookie that the barista warms up for him, then tucks himself at a rickety table in the corner by the wide front window.

It would have made no sense for them to go together; Shane gets to the arena three hours before a game, and what was Ilya supposed to do with himself in that time? He’s much more content to entertain himself for an afternoon, to putter around an only semi-familiar city and enjoy his own company.

He connects to their wifi network using the password scrawled in chalk on the menu board. Clicking and clacking away at the keys of his laptop, Ilya catches up on his correspondence. Mostly this involves prank emails to Sveta’s dealership, but it’s punctuated by occasional real work for his actual job, like confirming travel arrangements and promo obligations for the fast-approaching All Stars weekend. He also responds to a thread he’s had going for the last few weeks with Casey Goldwin, Rose’s genius writer friend whose film Ilya feels on the cusp of bringing to life. He opens up an unread response to his suggestion that perhaps Maura being a Russian immigrant could add dimension to the story, could maybe feel true to the character. “Omg I actually love that,” Casey’s replied enthusiastically. “Can you do a Russian accent though lol???”

Yes, of course Rose can do a Russian accent, Ilya assures her, and would even be willing to work with a private dialect coach whose rates are very reasonable and wouldn’t eat into the budget of the film at all. He taps his plate so that a cookie crumb sticks to his fingertip, then nibbles it away. Check email thread with Casey, Ilya texts Rose. She is very receptive on this Maura stuff.

Who is this? Rose replies. I don’t have this number saved. I can only assume you’re some crazed, deluded stalker. Please provide your address and I’ll have my team reach out with signed merch.

When his coffee’s drunk and his plate scattered only with crumbs not even big enough for a mouse, Ilya steps out into the cold. He misses smoking; he doesn’t feel the need for one on any physical level, but psychologically, he longs for those brief moments of grace. Fresh air is a poor substitute — less appealing, yet no less addictive.

He ambles for a while, exhaling warm breaths just to watch them puff up in the chill air, hands thrust in his coat pockets as he strolls the neighborhood without any urgency or particular destination. Ottawa is… fine. It’s Ottawa. It’s nice enough, full with sufficient storefronts and students and skyscrapers and mothers pushing strollers and dogs hunched, pooping outside their apartment buildings while their owners clutch little plastic doody bags that all in all, it feels like it should count as a city. For a city, though, it’s a small and snug one, none of the thrum or bustle of Moscow or even Boston or Montreal.

He calls a cab, chews his thumbnail while he waits. Can he imagine Shane growing up here? Sort of. It will probably be easier to picture after tonight. Ilya wonders, too — will Shane come back here someday? He’ll play in Montreal until he retires if he has it his way, or else he won’t and he’ll live wherever trades take him, but after hockey, then what? Forty year old Shane won’t want to settle down in a high rise, Ilya thinks. He’ll want peace and quiet, maybe in the suburbs with a family and a white picket fence, or maybe by a lake, somewhere green, just Shane and trees and books, bran muffins and solitude. If Shane wanted to move back to Ottawa some day though, could Ilya see himself here? See them here together?

It’s lucky the cab ride’s brief enough to ponder questions without the time to delve too deep and face their answers. Before he’s forced to remind himself that the future Shane wants has absolutely nothing to do with the life Ilya will live, they’re pulling up to the arena.

Ilya’s been here maybe a dozen times, always shuttled on the team bus to a separate entrance than the main one he arrives at now. The anxiety he’d thought himself immune to comes on swift as he’s shown up to his box, and he walks and texts at the same time, messaging Svetlana a panicked What if they hate me?

They won’t, she responds immediately. You have excellent manners when you choose to utilize them. Be on your best behavior and let them see how happy you make their son.

“Rose?” Yuna says, because Ilya is standing just inside the doorway of the suite, not really coming in or greeting her or doing anything but looming like a small and inefficient sentinel. “I’m Yuna. It’s great to finally meet you.”

Manners. Yes. Ilya has them. He takes the hand that’s offered, shakes it perhaps more firmly than a woman is supposed to, but then again, Yuna has the same sort of grip. “Mrs. Hollander. It is a pleasure to meet you as well.”

“Oh, please — Yuna’s good. ‘Mrs. Hollander’ always makes me think of David’s mother,” she says in a low, conspiratorial sort of voice, “and the less I think of her, the better.”

“Ha, yes,” Ilya says, because it’s apparent he’s supposed to find this funny. “Shane’s father…?”

“Is in the washroom. He’ll be right back.”

“Yes. Good.”

They offer polite thanks to a member of the arena staff setting silver chafing dishes onto warmers along the countertop; when he leaves, they are alone. These private boxes fill up during playoffs, but for a mid-season game that the home team’s lost before they’ve even made it to the rink, Ilya’s not surprised they have the whole suite to themselves. Plush seats, food and drink, and a prime view of the ice. Yuna Hollander and the person she believes is dating her son, which Ilya supposes is true.

“There’s a space to hang your coat,” Yuna offers, because Ilya is still bundled from the cold.

“Thank you,” Ilya says, instead of I remember you were drunk at the MLH awards in 2015 and standing at a table nearby, and you said that if they made an award for biggest asshole in the league then they’d have something I deserved to win, and Shane was hissing at you to be quiet, that I would overhear, and you said “Oh, so what? He knows he’s an asshole,” and I laughed a little because I agreed with you, and I thought that it was a very funny thing that you had said. Award for biggest asshole. I loved that.

He hangs his outerwear, taking care afterwards to adjust his top where it’s twisted around his midriff slightly. Rose wears this jersey hanging big and baggy, but Ilya has tied up the loose fabric with a hair thingy like he’s seen other WAGs do, to accentuate his waist a little more. A nice body should be shown off, in Ilya’s opinion. Rose’s body isn’t as nice as his, but it’s shapely enough to be worth putting on display, not hiding in some sack like she seems to prefer.

“Blue and red’s a good look on you,” Yuna says approvingly.

She seems almost as struck by the sight of that 24 on Ilya’s sleeve as Ilya himself had been the first time he put it on, another twisting inversion of the self, another iteration of an Ilya who is not himself but not not himself. It had spun his head (and turned him on, but what the fuck ever) to see himself as a Metro, to see himself as Shane, to see himself as Shane’s fan, proudly, openly.

“I like yours.” Ilya nods toward Yuna’s jacket, a vintage satin bomber embroidered with the old school Metros logo. “Very cool.”

“Oh, you’re sweet!” She looks down at it herself, as though only just remembering she’s wearing it. “I’ve had it for about 100 years. Thank god Shane was drafted to Montreal — I would have been a horrible mother wearing this to his games if he’d ended up in Anaheim.”

“If I remember right, you were wearing that jacket the night he was conceived,” David says, entering the room, and Ilya laughs because he finds this very amusing, and more amusing still to know how mortified Shane would be to hear his father say it.

The two of them are introduced, “Rose” and Mr. Hollander, David and Ilya, and although he knows enough about David Hollander to know he’s basically harmless, Ilya nevertheless finds himself on edge, polite and prim as can be.

Both teams take the ice for warmups, putting pucks around and stretching like toddlers having tummy time. “I don’t see Nummelin out there,” Yuna mutters as she scans Ottawa’s side of the ice, presumably talking to herself considering David’s on eBay bidding on what looks like an old ship’s compass.

“He should have retired in Edmonton when he had the chance,” Ilya comments. “Instead they pass him now from team to team like an old donkey who cannot carry luggage anymore.”

Yuna throws her hands up. “That’s what I’ve been saying! Don’t get me wrong, he was a great player, but—”

“But the last time he scored a goal is probably also the night Shane was conceived,” Ilya grins.

It’s not polite or well-mannered, like Sveta told him to be, but Yuna busts out laughing, squeezes his arm, and says, like she really means it, “Oh, I like you.”

David uncorks a chilled bottle of white, pouring small but effective doses all around. It’s not especially good wine and not a very appropriate drink for a hockey game, in Ilya’s opinion, but it lubricates the conversation nicely. For someone who hates his guts, Yuna Hollander, it turns out, is very, very easy to talk to. Her primary interests appear to be, in no particular order, hockey, business, and Shane, and as Ilya himself has a strong interest in all three of those things, that gives them plenty to discuss.

The first period is light and breezy for the Metros; for Ottawa, it seems akin to scaling the steep and rocky walls of the underworld, hands bleeding and ankles dragged by demons. It’s astonishing. There’s a complete lack of leadership from their bench and no semblance of cohesion or continuity within the offensive lines; they skate in circles, blind as bats, tapping their sticks upon the ice like they might summon the puck towards them through some combination of echolocation and wishful thinking. Montreal seems almost to take pity on them. They treat it like an exhibition game, or maybe even like a practice, running the same plays back to back and scoring twice in a row when it doesn’t occur to Ottawa that perhaps they’re capable of blocking the pass they just witnessed minutes ago.

It’s lopsided and almost painful to watch in its brutality; it’s all the more painful because god does Ilya wish he could be out there. In any way he could, on the fourth line or in the crease or however they’d take him, Ilya wants so badly to play hockey again. He’d rather skate for Ottawa than skate for no one, and that’s saying something, because Ottawa is a clown show, and not even one of the more well-respected clowns in the circus.

He’s only been to a few of Shane’s games since this whole swap debacle. It’s joyful, watching Shane play and getting to sit back and enjoy it, not having to worry about winning or losing. But it hurts a little more each time, too. It’s pathetic to admit how little he misses about his old life and how much he’s been enjoying Rose’s. But then there’s this one thing that’s more like losing a limb than losing his actual limbs. He sits in the arena, breathes in the cold of the ice like ozone, the metallic fresh zing of the Zamboni circling, smelling salts and stick wax and sweaty fans, sweaty players, sweaty, filthy gear, and it’s more like home to him than any place or any body or any life has ever felt.

Shane scores in the second period, a crisp, clean shot that sails over the goalie’s shoulder; all the poor fool can do is turn his head and watch it clear. The replay on the Jumbotron shows a tighter angle, right on Shane, and Ilya sees the grin that breaks across his face before the puck even hits the back of the net. He chuckles as his wingers crowd him in celebration, like hockey is easy and fun for him, and maybe it’s not always like that, but tonight it is. Ilya loves that for Shane, loves seeing him in his element, but he wants it for himself, too.

He and Yuna are elbows on knees the whole game, locked in and chatting shit; David putters behind them, locked in with a hands-on-hips paternal stance and watching when there’s action, plating snacks and tapping at his phone when there are stoppages. Yuna’s analysis is strong and clear-headed, Ilya thinks, with the exception of an obliterating bias towards Shane. She boos the ref who makes a tripping call against him, despite the fact that Shane very much did do just that.

“Horseshit,” Yuna decrees, even as a replays shows Shane sweeping his stick behind him, flicking when he catches the defenseman’s ankles, and yanking him down to his knees. “Complete horseshit. He could have jumped over it, you know. It’s called situational awareness. You’re playing in the goddamn MLH and you’re gonna fall down any time you get brushed by a measly stick?”

It’s so bitchy, so irrationally unjust and untrue, that Ilya can’t help growing fond of her. She’s equally impressed with Ilya’s hockey know-how, presumably because she didn’t expect a Hollywood starlet to have the equivalent knowledge of a life-long player and three time Art Ross winner.

In the intermission between the second and third periods, a camera operator spies them in their box and projects them on the big screen while the crowd cheers for Shane Hollander’s kind-faced parents and his girlfriend, American star-of-screen Rose Landry. They’re guests of the visiting team and still the crowd shrieks with excitement when Ilya waves, presumably because nobody this famous has come to watch Ottawa play since the mid-90s.

“I have to admit.” Yuna’s finger draws underneath a bracelet she twirls thoughtfully around her wrist. It looks expensive. “We were both pretty surprised when Shane told us that he was dating the Rose Landry. I mean — good surprised! Obviously! But—”

“Shane’s never been the most comfortable in the spotlight,” David finishes, and Yuna nods like that’s exactly what she meant. “The cameras, the attention — it can be hard for him.”

“Can be hard for me too,” Ilya admits. He handles it better than many of his peers, cocky enough that he doesn’t mind when reporters want him to to take credit for his hard work, not overly bothered by a camera shoved in his face when he’s halfway undressed to hit the showers. But in the early years, the work of translating himself in interviews was agony, and even now that his anxiety over fluency has mostly curbed, he still has lots of days he finds it draining and invasive to be asked for more, more, more, more soundbites, more footage, just one more minute on the record. He knows, from living as Rose for the last month, that she has it even worse — even walking out the front door seems to send some fucked up signal to the world that she’s open for media availability. “Shane is very patient with the cameras. Paparazzi. Very supportive. I appreciate it.”

“Well, historically, he’s put up with a lot of the scrutiny because it means he gets to do this,” Yuna says, gesturing down to where the teams are filing back onto their benches. “Shane loves hockey, and he’s willing to put himself through just about anything to be able to play. I’m guessing if he’s getting extra attention since the two of you have been together, that means he thinks you’re worth it too.”

From the way she says it, the warmth in her expression and the way she pats Ilya’s shoulder before leaning forward to focus on the face off, he can tell she means this like Ilya should be honored. Yuna knows her son and understands, as Ilya has come to over the years, that to Shane, sacrifice is part and parcel of love. If he cares about something, really wants it, wants to make it work, he’ll suffer for it.

It’s only that Ilya wasn’t worth it, and Rose is.

Lately, though — it doesn’t make sense, but lately Ilya isn’t as bothered by those distinctions as he should be. It should matter that Shane thinks he’s in a relationship with someone that he’s not; it should matter that Ilya is trapped in a body that’s not his own. The body, Ilya is adjusting to, and Shane’s adjusting too, it seems. Because the truth is evident. Shane’s happier now, more comfortable and more himself around the person he thinks is Rose than he ever was before they swapped. He’s falling harder and harder, and the person he’s falling for is Ilya. Surely that counts for something.

Shane’s parents like him as well. They cheer together through the third period, crow when the Metros pull further ahead and grouse when Miitka lets one in, even though they can certainly afford it. When the final buzzer goes, 6-1 in favor of Montreal, Yuna pulls Ilya into a celebratory hug. They gather jackets, bags and things before they head out, and like a gentleman, David holds up Ilya’s coat and helps him into it.

They have a home that’s north of Montreal, Yuna explains in the car, close to where Shane’s cottage is. Ilya knows about this cottage; he’s seen it in a YouTube video. But the place they’re going now is the house the Hollanders shared for most of their married life, the house that Shane grew up in. It’s unclear to Ilya whether they really spend much time here now, or if they’re so well off from Shane’s success that they have fuck you money to throw at houses they barely set foot in.

It’s a modest property, suburban and safe but nothing much to look at from the outside. Ilya guesses that they lived comfortably, but he also knows from experience that skates and gear and hockey camps and all those things don’t come cheap, and the only boys who grow up playing are the ones rich enough to afford it or with parents who give enough of a shit to make some sacrifices; the Hollanders seem to fall into the latter category.

Just wrapped interviews, Shane texts as they’re pulling into the garage. Showering and heading over, should be 30-40 min? How’s everything going? Are they being normal? Are you guys back at the house yet?

Having lots of fun, don’t worry, Ilya responds, unbuckling his seatbelt. We are all sitting together in your old bedroom and about to lift the mattress to look for teen Shane Hollander’s nudie mags.

Ha ha, Shane replies quite instantly. Very funny Rose. Don’t go in my room, okay?

“Shall we give you the grand tour now?” David asks, holding the door so Ilya can pass by into the house. “Or should we wait until Shane gets home for that?”

“Oh, now please,” says Ilya sweetly.

Their house is like — well, Ilya’s never seen anything quite like it. Semi-sweet, slightly terrifying. It’s like a shrine, perhaps an altar to a little dead boy, one who passed away quite young and beautiful. A Shane Hollander museum, or a mausoleum, or the hideout of a very devoted and meticulous stalker. Shane, Shane, everywhere he looks. Timbits Shane whose stick is taller than he is; teenage Shane with braces strapped over a missing front tooth, holding a French flag and wearing a beret; Shane at maybe 12 years old getting an autograph from Scott fucking Hunter. The sheer volume of framed photographs on the wall threatens the very structural integrity of the building. God forbid there was an earthquake.

Squeezed into the cracks of their Shane-filled lives, there are mementos of David and Yuna’s marriage before him, without him. Ilya finds a photo on the mantel from their wedding day and is pleased to note they both look very fuckable. (Marly has always told him, never marry a chick whose mom you wouldn’t fuck, because she’s gonna end up looking just like her someday, and not that Ilya is going to marry Shane, but it’s reassuring that both his parents are suitably attractive, for older people.)

There’s a living room, a kitchen, a powder room and a small backyard too dark to get a good look at. Upstairs, bedrooms Ilya’s too polite to ask to see, and presumably another bathroom or two. All the rooms a house should have, in short.

Ilya’s house had rooms, growing up, obviously it did, but it never felt so cozy or so lived in as this. Maybe it’s because there’s not much space here for belongings to spread out that they seem piled on every surface. It’s also possible that their place in Lanaudière is chicly sparse and that this home has been retained as a storage facility, and that’s why there are so many things everywhere. Ilya likes it. It’s not to his taste at all, but he likes the mismatched knitted blankets on the sofa, the fruit bowl in the kitchen that’s inexplicably full of baseballs. He likes to picture Shane here.

“Can I help?” Ilya asks. David has pulled from the fridge a number of ingredients including a mound of kneaded dough and sack of fruit which he now begins assembling into what looks to be dessert. Ilya thinks a well-mannered young woman would probably offer assistance; besides which, it seems an easy and a pleasant enough task.

“You go with Yuna to the living room, sit, sit.” He slings a dish towel over his shoulder like he’s done it a zillion times before. “Guests don’t have to work for meals here.”

“I thought you were doing tarte tatin.” Yuna frowns from the doorway.

“Well, I was, but it’s pear season. So now we’re having pear tarte tatin instead of regular old tarte tatin.”

Yuna frowns further, looking eerily the way her son does when he doesn’t get his way. “I mean, I like pears. But you know Shane’s gonna throw a shit fit if you do pears instead of apples, right?”

Ilya expects David to say so fucking what? or the polite Canadian equivalent of the Russian tongue-lashings Ilya would have received as a child for daring to throw a fit over what he’d been served. David only matches Yuna’s concerned expression. “Should I go out and get apples, do you think? I could always do two.”

“It’s a little late for that.” Yuna glances at the clock above the stove; it’s like they’re defusing a bomb or something equally urgent and important.

“Well, what do we do?”

It’s fascinating, observing the effort they exert to manage Shane’s emotions. Ilya had been trepidatious about the amount of time he’d been expected to spend alone with Yuna and David tonight, but now that he’s in the thick of it, the insights it’s providing feel invaluable. Logically, Ilya has always known Shane Hollander to be the only child of two devoted, doting parents; it just hadn’t occurred to him until now that the bratty, petulant thing wasn’t just an act to spice up foreplay.

“I like pears,” Ilya offers, and this seems to satisfy David. He fixes Yuna with a validated sort of See? look and returns to halving them, knife to thumb, and shoos them from his kitchen.

Those who have been dismissed from culinary duties — Ilya and Yuna, who Ilya has the sense doesn’t often spend much time in the kitchen — are allowed to take up places on the sofa. The TV’s already tuned to a local sports network when they flick it on, and so the two of them watch the post-game recap and see what the rest of the league has accomplished tonight, talking shit about the other teams and comparing notes on which of the pundits around the semi-circle desk they hate and which they love.

“Oh, he’s a complete contrarian,” Yuna says of the man in the too-tight suit and purple tie seated at the left hand of the desk. “He only says these things to get a rise out of fans so he can argue with them on twitter.”

Said commentator, Pete Boscoe, also played two seasons in New Jersey, and played in precisely the way he talks on TV — always hoping to get a rise out of someone. He’s responsible for two out of Ilya’s three fake teeth. “Even Sportsnet needs a heel,” Ilya grins.

Buffalo and Winnipeg had played an uninspiring nil-nil game that culminated in a tepid overtime. The highlights are bland enough that Yuna can talk over them, asking Ilya all the sorts of getting-to-know-you questions Ilya has prepared for. Remind me, you grew up in Michigan? And do you ever see yourself moving back? Shane tells me you grew up with brothers? Wow, three, your mother must have had her hands full — is a big family something you’d want, do you think? She’s about as inquisitive and meddlesome as he’d anticipated, and he’s able to provide the straightforward facts about Rose’s life with ease, deftly dodging faux-innocent inquiries which really boil down to What are your intentions with our son? Neither Rose, nor Ilya, nor Ilya as Rose has a satisfactory answer to that.

Throughout the night, Ilya had been surreptitiously checking the Boston-Chicago score; he knows that they won 4-1 and that Rose had netted two of those goals, one of them unassisted. He’s texted his congratulations via several gifs of DJ Khaled popping champagne bottles, but beyond that, he hasn’t had a chance to catch up on the game itself until now, sitting here beside the woman who is apparently his biggest critic. “David,” she calls sing-song to the kitchen when she sees the Raiders’ logo stamped onto the center of the ice, an 81 on the back of the jersey hovering over a face-off. “I’m gonna need more wine for this.”

“We’ve seen more depth from the Raiders this season, we know that that’s a good thing, but wow was tonight Rozanov’s night on the ice.” Boscoe’s crooked nose slants slightly more sideways as he smiles, the crazy fucking asshole. “Take a look at this goal from the second period. They’re battling it out in the corner, and it looks like Clayton’s got a handle on it — see the way he’s shouldering Rozanov out? — but Rozanov is stubborn. He makes it out with the puck, sends it straight over for the assist where we already have Marleau posted up right in front of the net—”

“That’s these two in a nutshell,” the bald and bowtied commentator in the middle agrees. “Seven seasons together. Marleau knew to wait it out; he knew that Rozanov was getting him that puck.”

“Marleau goes to put it in, and it just glances off of Kováč’s blocker. Now, before he can cover it, in the split second that he’s scrambling, Rozanov’s already made it back around behind the net all the way to the front, waiting for the rebound, just in case Marleau doesn’t make it, and when it bounces out he’s ready and waiting to tip it back in.”

Yuna scoffs; Ilya, who is Russian and a fan of things like irony, struggles not to laugh.

“Beautiful,” Bowtie says in voiceover as they replay it from a different angle, one which shows the way that Rose’s face which looks so much like Ilya’s lights up as she sees the goal netted and is swiftly descended upon by Marly in a bone-crushing hug. “And this is what we mean when we say Rozanov’s stubborn. You need to be stubborn, in a game like this. Look at him there, watch this angle where he’s coming around the back, and it’s like you see it in his face, ‘This play’s not over until I say it’s over.’”

“Like he needs the ego boost,” Yuna grumbles. “If his head gets any bigger, he won’t be able to skate without tipping over.”

“You do not think the play was good?” Ilya asks, wry and leading.

“Alright, the play was good,” Yuna concedes. “As a matter of fact, he’s a great fucking player when he wants to be. I can admit that. But the arrogance? Come on, woman to woman — don’t you get the sense he’s overcompensating for something?”

Ilya bites back a smile, then lets it spread across his face, break into a real, unabashed laugh. “I suppose most men are.”

“Amen to that, sister.” Yuna finds Ilya’s glass on the coffee table and clinks it against her own.

“And Rusty, when we talk about his physicality as a player, we’re not just talking force, right? There certainly is force behind it, but here we get a chance to see the elegance too.” They’re playing his — Rose’s — second goal of the night, an empty netter with a minute and a half left on the clock, shot from deep enough into the neutral zone to be worth remarking upon. “Look at the line, look at the easy motion there. That’s a smooth, smooth shot.”

There’s the rough jangle of a key in the door, and then Shane’s calling out “I’m here!” as he toes his shoes off in the entry.

“In the living room!” Yuna calls back, though the house is small enough that clarification isn’t really necessary.

“Hi.” He looks a little flushed, harried like he hurried home, and his hair is still wet from the showers, that clean, familiar scent of the shampoo they use at every rink in North America. “Mom.” He kisses Yuna on the cheek, wraps an arm around her in a half-assed hug. “Rose.”

Ilya gets a peck on the lips, close-mouthed and barely PG-13, but he’s still pleased as anything about it. “Good game, baby.”

“Thanks.” He stands beside the couch, rubbing Ilya’s shoulder like he’s antsy and needs something to fidget with. In a low voice — “Has it been weird?”

“No,” Ilya lies, because of course it has been, but not in the way Shane means. “Are you feeling weird?”

“A little,” he admits, letting out a shaky breath. “It’s just — yeah. Weird, seeing you here. In my family’s house. Not bad weird. Surreal, I guess.”

“Because you used to jerk off upstairs?” Ilya whispers, and Shane shoots him a warning look as Yuna reappears with David in tow, drying his hands on a dish rag.

Shane greets his father — they hug each other, which is a concept so foreign as to be untranslatable and makes Ilya think of what Tolstoy said about happy and unhappy families. While Ilya gawps at this presumably typical exchange of affection, Yuna grabs the remote and rewinds the broadcast several minutes back.

“Shane, you have to watch this. From the game that just finished. I mean, we hate him, but—”

The goal replays, the one from the second period. Shane’s hand drops from Ilya’s shoulder and he gestures for the remote from his mother, steps closer to the screen and rewinds so he can watch it again. “Shit.”

“Shit is right.” Yuna rolls her eyes. “They’ll be running that footage for a week.”

How strange, to watch Shane admire his gameplay; surreal is the word indeed. It’s exciting and it’s gratifying — it makes Ilya feel 17 again, standing in an alley in some freezing cold country he doesn’t know and having a beautiful boy walk up and tell him that he’s noticed him, liked what he’s seen. It makes his heart flutter, then falter when Ilya reminds himself he didn’t even shoot the fucking goal they’re replaying.

They watch it from the other angles, watch the empty netter again, and Shane is so transfixed that when Ilya puts a hand on his lower back he seems to startle, like he’d forgotten Ilya was even there. “Sorry,” Shane says. “You’re probably sick of hockey by now. My mom and dad are nuts like I am. We go a little overboard with it.”

“I don’t mind,” says Ilya truthfully. “Was a good goal.”

“Yeah, well, I bet at least your friend is happy about their game tonight.”

“What friend?” Yuna asks. She asks a lot of things. She likes to keep abreast of situations.

“Rose has a girlfriend who lives in Boston,” Shane explains on his behalf, repeating the white lie he’d been fed after he’d caught Ilya sending a post-game interview clip to “Sunny” and Ilya had had to think fast. “She’s a Raiders fan.”

“If your friend lives in Boston and she’s as pretty as you, you tell her to watch out,” David says, emerging once again from the kitchen with dessert plates lined on his arms like a waiter. “That Ilya Rozanov is a menace. He’s what we called a poon hound, back in my day—”

“Jesus, Dad!”

“Oh, David, come on.”

“What? Am I wrong?” His face is pure innocence; he gestures to himself with the plates like who, me?

“Can we just drop it?” Shane pleads, looking between Ilya and his parents plaintively. “And can you maybe, like, never use that phrase again?”

“What phrase? Poon hound?” David glances from Shane to Ilya — for the record, Ilya is delighted by the vocabulary lesson and shares none of Shane’s umbrage, but David softens. “Okay, you’re right. You’re right! I’ll keep it family friendly.”

“Thank you,” Shane says, accepting the plate and dainty fork to match, then scowling at it suddenly. “What’s this?”

“Tarte tatin,” David says. He and Yuna exchange looks.

Shane sniffs at the confection with distaste. “What is it? It’s pear?”

“That it is.”

“But I like it with apple,” Shane says flatly, as though this should have presented a singular and inarguable course of action. “You always make it with apple.”

“And this time I made it with pear,” David says. “Thought we’d try something different.”

“But we can get you something else, if you want.” Yuna caves immediately. “We should still have some Halo Top in the freezer, or I could run out—”

“It’s fine,” Shane sighs, like a martyr at the stake who’s just been told they’ve run out of matches to burn him to death and will have to kill him with stones instead. “I shouldn’t be having sweet stuff during the season anyway.”

His parents don’t push back on this; they dig into their portions and Shane sighs a lot and pokes at the dessert and pushes it around, never so much as taking a bite. Ilya wants to burst out laughing, the whole thing is so ridiculous, but he also wants to shake him and shout at him to have some fucking manners and respect his elders.

“Aren’t you going to try it?” he asks instead, voice as syrupy sweet as the pear-pastry pierced on the tines of his fork. “Little bite?”

Ilya waggles the fork in front of Shane’s mouth, bobs it in what could maybe be an appetizing way. Shane, who is used to Ilya teasing and annoying him by now, remains unmoved. “No, thank you. I’m on a special diet anyway.”

“A special apple tarte only diet?” Ilya asks, to which Shane mutters Fuck off beneath his breath.

“How are you liking Canada, Rose?” Yuna jumps in, though she’d asked this question earlier. “I mean — I know you’ve been in Canada a while now, but was today your first time in Ottawa?”

“I have been to Ottawa before,” Ilya answers, swallowing a bite of his delicious pear tarte tatin. “For work. It is nice, I would say. But when I travel, usually it is like… plane, work, interviews, hotel, plane, next place, no sleep… not much time to see the city, you know?”

“Sounds familiar, huh?” David nudges Shane.

“Rose and I have a lot in common, actually,” Shane replies. “It’s — I mean, I could never do what she does, you know. Obviously. But I think we — we get each other.”

Yuna smiles, fond and a little sad. In the photographs that practically wallpaper the house, Shane is pictured uniformed with teammates, but never posed with friends. Ilya wonders if it’s rare that Shane finds someone who understands him; from the tenderness on Yuna’s face, he thinks he’s right.

“Well, it sounds like you’ve at least gotten to enjoy plenty of Montreal,” Yuna says brightly, turning back to Ilya. “Do you think you could ever see yourself living permanently in Canada?”

“Jesus, Mom, can you not—”

“What? I’m just making conversation! They film a lot of movies up here, don’t they Rose?”

“Yes,” Ilya answers agreeably. “Tax evasion purposes, I think.”

“Can we just—” Shane’s sinking low into the corner of the couch, looking slightly tantrum adjacent. “Can we talk about anything else? Dad, how’s work?”

It’s going well, at the most boring job in the world. Ilya likes boring in a man, but even he’s astounded by how hole-puckeringly dry the conversation goes, and how fascinated David thinks they all find the minutiae of it. But Ilya has been raised to be seen and not heard, and not to fidget or sigh too much when grown-ups have their stuffy, stodgy conversations, so he manages to keep his mouth shut and look passably engaged.

When they’ve finished their desserts and had their coffees, and the boring work stories have been exhausted and the Metros game that they’d all been present for earlier tonight has been rehashed sufficiently, Shane claps his hands over his knees. “We should probably get going,” he announces. “It’s a long drive back to Montreal, and Rose has a work thing tomorrow.”

“ADR,” Ilya says, and doesn’t explain what that means because Yuna and David seem plenty impressed by just the acronym, and also because, admittedly, he doesn’t really know exactly what it stands for. “But wait — I can see your room, before we go?”

Shane looks surprised. “Oh. Did you actually want to?”

“Of course.” Ilya looks up at him where he’s stood already, bats his lashes. “Please. For the full tour.”

Shane checks the time on his phone, perhaps hoping it’ll provide him some excuse. “Fine. A quick look and then we’ll go.”

Shane takes the stairs two at a time and Ilya trots up happily behind him. His room is at the end of the hall, door frame scuffed and a nameplate on the door which says SHANE in red and blue, Metros colors from years before they’d drafted him. So much of Shane Hollander’s life plays like a dream come true; years ago, the thought might have made Ilya resentful, but now, stepping inside the sanctum of the younger version of Shane, seeing his hopes plastered like posters on the wall, Ilya swells with pride to know how many of them he’s accomplished.

“Wow.” Ilya measures himself against the height chart on the inside of the door, a poster of Sidney Crosby inexplicably seven feet tall with hash marks ticked against the side that go up nearly to Shane’s current 5’11”. “Do you ever wonder how many little boys all over Canada have your picture up above their bed?”

“My mom says that all the time.” He lowers himself into a teen-sized desk chair, digs his big toe into the carpet. “I hope tonight didn’t suck.”

“I had a good time,” Ilya says, which is true. He lays himself on the twin bed, rolls face down and buries his face into the flannel sheets; they’ve been washed too recently to smell anything like Shane, but still, the fabric’s pilled, soft and worn. This is the bed you slept in when I met you, he thinks. We were so fascinated by each other then, and I never could have thought the more I learned about you, the more interesting you’d become. I want my sheets to smell like you, and yours to smell like me.

“Comfy?” Shane asks, amused.

“Very,” Ilya mumbles into a pillow, indecipherable. He sits up properly. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You know what I learned tonight?” There’s a snow globe on the windowsill, a miniature Bell Centre inside with the Metros logo plastered on the roof; Ilya shakes it and snow blankets the arena.

“That my family’s crazy?”

“I like your family,” Ilya says.

“Okay.” Shane takes the snow globe to agitate it for himself, like maybe he’s possessive, seeing someone else playing with his toys. “Then what?”

“I learned that you are a very spoiled boy,” Ilya says plainly. “Your parents are indulgent of you. It makes you act like a brat.”

Shane flushes. “That’s not true.”

“Yes it is. I saw it.”

“Yeah, well.” Shane shakes the snow globe hard enough to give it a concussion. “I’m an only child. And they couldn’t have any more. So I guess they want to make me happy.”

“Mmm. Yes. Only child, doesn’t know how to share, doesn’t like it when he doesn’t get his way.”

“Because I wouldn’t eat dessert?” Shane has his little angry face on, pinched up in the middle, mouth wrinkled up like a sphincter; Ilya’s always been a sucker for this look. “That’s not about me being spoiled. I’m just… particular, about some things—”

“Picky,” Ilya corrects.

“Particular. And my parents know that.” Shane sighs, sets the snow globe down and leaves the roaring crowd of Bell Centre in peace. “I get that I want things a certain way sometimes. I don’t try to make it anyone else’s problem. I don’t want to be difficult. I just… am.”

Ilya rubs his socked feet together, toes spreading and wiggling. He digs his heels into the comforter. “I don’t mind,” he says eventually. “You’re picky because you know what you like. And you like me… so. It is a good feeling.”

Ilya thinks he’s said a nice thing; he meant it to be nice. He meant to tell Shane how special he feels to be here, to be chosen, to be worth sharing so much of his life with. And Shane doesn’t look upset, but maybe he doesn’t understand what it is Ilya’s trying to convey, in his backwards, shitty way he has of saying things, because he doesn’t exactly look touched either.

“I’m glad,” he says, though. “But we really do have to go soon.”

Ilya uses the restroom before they go, pees and zones out staring at the incongruously beach-themed hand towels in the powder room. When he comes out, hands still damp because the towels are more decorative than functional, Shane is waiting with his shoes already on. He looks up from his phone. “You ready?”

“Ready.”

Shane finishes whatever he’s doing on his phone (presumably analyzing routes they can take to best avoid this 11:20pm traffic he’s concerned they’ll hit) and Yuna and David come to say their goodbyes. Hugs are swapped, and promises to grab lunch in Montreal at some near but nebulous date.

“It’s been lovely to meet you, young lady,” David says, clapping Ilya on the back before pulling him into a quick, paternal embrace. Low enough to not be overheard, he murmurs in Ilya’s ear. “You are exactly what he’s been missing.”

Ilya pulls back, too choked up to know what to say. “Me too.”

He’d been so angry when he’d first seen Shane and Rose together, felt scalding hot with jilted rage. Ilya had thought — what a coward, was Shane Hollander. Not that Ilya wasn’t a coward too, in his own way, for his own much more justifiable reasons, but still. Imagine throwing away something good, something real, merely for the chance at something safe? Was it worth it, to have someone he could bring home to his parents?

It had never occurred to Ilya that he’d wanted that too. Probably he hadn’t, back then, but now it feels like the best thing in the world to hug Yuna goodbye and promise to text her the name and address of that cupcake shop, to get into the car with his boyfriend and hear him sigh in relief, as his head thunks against the headrest, “They really like you.”

Ilya likes them too. He likes David’s dry stories and moist cakes; he likes that Yuna swears like a sailor and wears chic leather boots. He likes dating their son and he likes that they like him doing it. Shane is so fussy and funny, talented and sexy and fastidious; his life is every dream he’s ever had come true. And Ilya, miraculously, fits into it. Things are more complete with him there.

Ilya knows it’s only possible because he’s in this body, but so what? It doesn’t make it any less real. It might not even be temporary. They don’t know how or when they’ll switch back, and lately it seems like he and Rose have given up on trying. Forever could be an option, and sure Ilya misses hockey, but look at what he has now, in exchange. He could stay like this and he could be everything Shane needs him to be, could make him happy in a way the real Ilya never could, and maybe that would be worth trading the occasional Sportsnet highlight reel.

“Your parents tell me you were conceived the night of the Metros season opener,” Ilya says, because it will be like a little torture for Shane to discuss such a thing. “This is very romantic. Your mother says they made it to the second round of the playoffs that year.”

“Yeah, and they got eliminated by Boston like, a week before I was born. She was nine months pregnant and completely pissed.” Shane grips the wheel like the pain is generational. “She brought it up in my interview, during the combine. So embarrassing. I’m pretty sure that’s why they drafted me.”

For the remainder of the ride home, Ilya strokes the back of Shane’s neck, fiddles with the lobe of his ear, and ranks, from memory, his top ten favorite childhood photos of Shane Hollander. He likes the ones in summertime the best, like Shane in a paddling pool with a slice of watermelon bigger than his smile, because in summertime, so especially tan, his freckles spread like seeds across his skin. But then in winter he’s all bundled up — there are pictures of Ilyushka like this too, cheeks and eyes and nothing else but scarves and mittens, more snowsuit than human boy.

He doesn’t mention the photograph of Shane elated, hoisting the trophy at the International Prospect Cup, or the one on the mantel of an awkward pose and a discomfited smile, Metros jersey tugged over his dress shirt and tie on draft day. Ilya doesn’t tell Shane how affected he is by seeing his own memories framed in that house, images that live in his mind cropped so that Ilya is on the peripheries. It’s easy now, and not even too guilty a pleasure, to imagine a future where there’s a framed photo of the two of them together placed on a mantel somewhere, cherished proudly like all happy families do.

They stop for gas an hour out of Montreal. Shane, ever chivalrous, steps out to pump in the freezing cold while Ilya burrows against the toasty warmth of the heated leather seat.

It’s late enough that he’s surprised that Sveta’s texted until he realizes her message came through over an hour ago. Are you alone? she asks. Tell me when you are.

He waves to Shane, points to the convenience store attached to the gas station. Shane nods to indicate yes, I didn’t forget.


Ilya (Rose’s phone): Alone for two to three minutes, maybe. Or I can call you in an hour when I get home. Why?


Immediately, he gets a call, though the contact that appears on his screen says Sunny 🌞 rather than Svetlana, and this makes his stomach clench with shapeless fear. “Hello?” he answers in English, palm sweating against the phone the way that Rose’s always do when he gets nervous.

“Ilya,” Svetlana replies, and asks in Russian, “Is Shane with you?”

“He’s stepped away for a minute.” Ilya watches him through the store window, skin slightly sallow under the fluorescent lights, beautiful anyways. “Is everything—”

“I had Rose’s phone to respond to something from Alexei,” she interrupts, speaking so rapidly that Ilya has trouble keeping pace. “I haven’t given it back to her; I lied about why. I’m going to send you a screenshot right now and I need you to tell me — quickly, from the sounds of it — what you’d like me to do.”

While he’s still parsing what she’s said, his phone vibrates against his ear with a message sent from Sunny, from Ilya’s phone. A screenshot of a different conversation, two brief texts intended for him.


Jane: I caught the post-game highlights. That was an amazing goal in the second.

Jane: You’re still my favorite player to watch.


Never in his life, even when he’d just moved to a foreign country with maybe four sentences worth of fluency, has Ilya felt so stupid or naive. There are universes beyond what he could have imagined existed, magical realms and possibilities, minds and bodies traded and worlds he can’t believe, and still, in not a single one of them, is there a version of Ilya that can give Shane Hollander everything he needs. Not in his old life, where Shane left him; not in this new life, where Shane’s evidently still stuck on someone he won’t let himself have. Not in any future and not in any magnitude of fantastical outcomes.

Ilya Rozanov will never, ever be enough.

“Delete them,” Ilya says. “Don’t respond.”

“Are you sure?” He hears her concern through the phone, echoing like she’s holed up in his bathroom, probably hiding so Shane’s real girlfriend won’t overhear. What a fucked up situation. “Ilya, is he — are you okay? Have things gone wrong between you, or—”

“He’s coming back, I have to go,” Ilya lies. Shane is still dithering in front of the refrigerators, probably assessing the alkaline levels of different brands of bottled water. Ilya has time to spare, but he needs this conversation to be over.

“Ilya,” Sveta repeats, then cuts off whatever thought she’d meant to voice. “Call me,” she says, and the line goes dead.

Ilya punches the button for the seat heater, turns it off. His ass-cheeks feel scorched, his crack uncomfortably sweaty. He thinks about calling a cab, but Shane is jogging back to the car, so he doesn’t.

“I didn’t know what ‘fun drink’ meant,” he says, depositing a plastic sack into Ilya’s lap, “so I got Vitamin Water and chocolate milk. And Skittles, in case — I don’t know, I thought you might not like the drinks, but everyone likes Skittles.”

“Chocolate milk is good. Thank you.” He unscrews the lid and takes a dainty sip, barely tasting it.

Something must show on his face; Shane has never been the best at picking up on vibes, and even he senses that something is amiss. “I can go back in and get you something else, if you want. I think they have, um. Snapple.”

“No, no, I like the milk.” Ilya offers Shane as much of a smile as he can muster, lets Rose’s muscles do the work and tries to be somewhere far, far away from here. “Just tired.”

Shane cups a gentle hand to his cheek, tender, easy, and Ilya thinks that maybe it’s true that he could never give Shane everything he needs, and maybe Shane would never be able to give Ilya everything he wants, but god, would Ilya take what he could get. “You can sleep, if you want. I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

Ilya nods. He tilts the seat all the way back so that he’s close to laying down, and he can feel it on the tip of Shane’s tongue to lecture him about road safety, but he keeps the remarks tucked behind his teeth.

Ilya rolls onto his side, turned away; he feels Shane’s fingers thread through his hair, then adjust the height of the seatbelt to keep him as safe and sound as possible. “It was a long day. Um. It meant a lot, having you there.”

“Thank you for inviting me.”

They don’t talk the rest of the way home — not home, but back to Montreal. Ilya doesn’t sleep. He keeps his eyes closed, though, and it’s peaceful that way.

Chapter 12: Rose

Chapter Notes

“Hope you packed your fuck me heels and your skankiest dress.” A shadow looms above Rose, the impression of a tall, dark man with hair shaped like a LEGO figurine’s, and she doesn’t bother looking up. “We’re going out tonight.”

“We will see,” Rose says easily. She fishes through her gear bag for one of a dozen rolls of half-used tape, the one she likes the best, and peels the edge up with her teeth.

“None of this ‘we will see’ shit,” Marleau answers back, aiming for a mockery of a Russian accent but landing somewhere closer to Transylvanian. “It’s ‘we will see’ every fuckin’ night and then after the game you make some excuse to puss out.”

Rose doesn’t dignify this with a response. She props her stick up and begins rolling the tape over the blade, steady and even. For some reason, she finds this soothing.

“C’mon though, seriously. Ever since you and Svetlana started humping on the regular, it’s like you don’t give a shit about us anymore.” Marleau sounds hurt, genuinely, and Rose feels ill-equipped to handle that. “Connors has been crying himself to sleep, haven’t you Connors?”

Connors, caught sniffing deep into one of his gloves, freezes. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I doubt this,” Rose sighs. “You are always saying something.”

“My gloves stink bad,” he adds, and Rose clicks her tongue.

“We are aware. We all can smell your gloves. We know they stink. When you sit on bench, I smell you from the ice.”

“Forget about Connie’s foul-ass gloves a minute, okay?” Marleau crowds in closer, steps over Rose’s stick and props an arm atop her stall so he can lean in. “I never see you these days, Roz. Not unless we’re playing or practicing or on some obligatory shit. I miss hanging out with you, man.”

Before all this, the swapping lives thing, Rose had had her reservations about male friendship. She found it difficult to imagine what boys talked about when left to their own devices, other than girls, and impossible to believe that their relationships had anywhere near the depth or complexity that women’s did. A month in, she still thinks this. Maybe that makes her sexist, she doesn’t know. It could be that even in this body, she never truly feels like a man, and so her insight into masculinity is limited. Or that the only guy-on-guy friendships she’s been privy to are those of professional meatheads and the sample size is simply too limited to draw conclusions. But it seems to her, having been on both sides of things, that the gulf between sisterhood and male camaraderie is so vast as to be impassably different.

That doesn’t mean men can’t be friends, though. It just means that friendship takes a different form. From the pleading way that Marly’s looking at her now and the nervous looks that Connors is shooting over, it’s evident that however shallow their affection is, it’s significant.

“Where will we go out?” she asks, forcing herself to entertain the possibility. “To a club, or to a bar?” These road trips are draining enough, like being in blue makeup from morning to night but worse. She’s permanently shapeshifted, can’t ever take off the mask, and once upon a time, she might have found that sort of immersion to be a rich challenge. She’s come to understand herself more as an actress; putting on a character has meaning most when she has the opportunity to take it off.

In short, she’d rather play 60 regulation minutes of hockey, score some fucking goals, go back to the hotel and order room service, smoke a cigarette or two and pace the parking lot while talking on the phone to Svetlana.

But — “Any-fucking-where you wanna go,” Marleau assures her. “It’s D.C., it’s a Friday night. There’s shit going on.”

“The club we went to last spring was good,” Connors chimes in, and Marly rolls his eyes.

“For the last time, bro, she was black ops or some shit. Special forces. Honeypot. She was grinding on you for state secrets.”

“So?” Connors says. “It’s not like I have state secrets to give. She’s really shitty at her job, if she’s CIA or whatever.”

“We will see,” Rose repeats. “One drink. Maybe. If we win.”

“Hell yes, hell fucking yes.” It’s enough of a promise to feel triumphant over, apparently. Marleau pushes himself off the changing stall, strides to his own spot two stalls away. “We’re winning, and we’re getting fucking plastered.”

Rose rolls her eyes. “Not what I said.” She trims the tape where the roll is still dangling from the toe of her stick, runs her thumb over it. “And you had better fucking keep these shitheads out of our zone tonight, Connors. Straight to bed with curfew if we lose.”

Connors salutes with his stinky glove, but Marleau, tugging on his base layers over his head, pops up from the neck hole of his underarmor looking perturbed and something more than that that Rose has difficulty reading.

“‘If we lose, we get fucked up to commiserate. If we win, we get fucked up to celebrate,’” Marly quotes, dark eyes piercing beneath his caveman’s brow. “You know who said that?”

“Mark Twain?” Rose guesses, digging in her bag for a clean pair of socks.

Marleau stares her down. “Ilya fucking Rozanov.”

Rose swallows, nods, and gets back to digging in her bag. A minute later, when Marleau and Connors have been sufficiently engulfed by the energy of the locker room, attention dispersed amongst the general shittalkery and horseplay, she grabs her phone and slides back as far as her ass will take her into the stall for some privacy.

Her thread with Svetlana sits close to the top of her messages; opening it, she sees Good luck tonight, beautiful sent an hour ago. Above it, their exchange from earlier: a photo of Svetlana’s body, dressed business casual in the dealership single stall bathroom mirror, skirt rucked up to display the elastic bands of stockings digging into the flesh of her thighs, a tease of lace where her panties peek out from below the yanked up hemline. Rose zooms in on the image again, and just like in the photo she’d sent back from the airplane bathroom, hand cupped around the bulge in her pants, she feels herself start to harden.

Not the point. Marleau and Connors are bugging me to go out and get shitfaced with them tonight, she types. Kinda the last thing I wanna do lol.

Team dinners at steakhouses across the USA and Canada, card games on the plane which she rarely wins, even when she does her best to cheat — Rose can handle socializing. Actually, she enjoys it most of the time, because Rose is a very social person and accustomed to a workplace where she’s meeting new people constantly, killing time with small talk and banter. The Raiders, or at least the ones that Ilya chooses to spend time with off the ice, are easygoing and affable people, good enough for a laugh.

It’s just — it’s been over a month now, in Ilya’s body. And it’s all the fucking time.

By the time she’s pulled on her base layers and her pads, Svetlana’s responded.


Sveta: Not a bad idea. You should go have fun, gorgeous. Get drunk and blow off steam. Tonight will be a tough game, you will have earned it.

Sveta: Ilya would be going out with them much more than you do. The boys go get drinks often, after games away from home.

Sveta: They probably think that you are pussy-whipped.


Rose chews the inside of her lip the same way she sometimes finds herself teething on her mouthguard.


Ilya: maybe I am

Ilya: I like talking to you at the end of the day. I’d rather hear your voice on the phone than be out getting drunk with a bunch of hockey players.


Svetlana, who will have just gotten home from work and probably be ordering food and settling in on the couch to watch the game, types back instantly.


Sveta: Play well tonight, in that case.

Sveta: Then call me after you’ve had your fun and you can hear as much of me as you want.


Rose does play well tonight — not specifically because of the insinuation of any sort of reward, although it doesn’t hurt to know Svetlana’s watching. She plays the best she can in all of their games, because she owes it to the Raiders and to their captain, and also because winning feels so fucking good, once you know how to do it. Feels a hell of a lot better than losing.

Washington has a mouthy Russian on their team; what’s worse, he’s good. A decent chunk of the NHL is comprised of foreign players, though the Finns and Swedes don’t seem to talk nearly as much shit as the Russians do, although, how would Rose know? It’s not like she speaks Finnish. Nor does she speak Russian, but they don’t know that, and at what feels like half the games she plays she finds herself checked by some loud motherfucker of a winger or a defenseman banging his helmet against hers like a concussion could help either of them play better and saying something or other that seems pretty vulgar judging by the way they all seem to spit when they’re through talking.

Honestly, Rose had anticipated that her lack of fluency would be much more of a barrier. It’s not. Svetlana’s coached her through the perfect pronunciation of several phrases, things like руки из жопы растут and Если тебе слабо удержаться на ногах, я уверен, что ты сможешь заработать, стоя на коленях. These expressions seem to pass her off quite convincingly as Ilya and require no further conversation, though the latter does get her the first black eye of her life when she says it to a center named Kryzhevski in Columbus.

Boston plays well, but so does Washington, quick and greedy with the puck, running Rose ragged even as she pushes, pushes, pushes. Thankfully, sometime in the last week it seems to have occurred to the Raiders’ third and fourth offensive lines that they’re allowed to score goals too, and their support pulls out a 4-3 win, the third straight victory in what Rose can feel will be a lengthy hot streak.

“Shots,” Marly bellows, and it echoes off the shower tiles, creating a self-fulfilling chant he’s happy to continue, urging on their two nervous, pale-assed rookies to join in. “Shots, shots, shots, shots!”

Earlier, Rose had tentatively agreed to perhaps one singular drink, like a beer somewhere dim and laid-back, but now, limbs loose from a cool down on the stationary bike, adrenaline from the hard-earned win still coursing, she thinks fuck it. “First round is on me,” she calls out. “Rest of the night, you fuckers buy your own drinks.” There are assorted hoots and hollers; Connors splashes happily like a finch in a bird bath.

They’re bussed back to the hotel, and the half dozen or so of them heading out to party agree to meet in the lobby twenty minutes later. Rose hadn’t exactly packed a going-out outfit when she left Boston, but she makes do. In the suitcase there’s a belt with that dumb interlocking GG Gucci buckle which certain men seem to think works as a status symbol, though in her experience, all it does is prevent women from sitting in their laps for fear of being impaled. She also finds enough bracelets and rings in the compartment of one of Ilya’s many packing pouches to dress up her suit pants and black button down, styled the way he would with the top few buttons undone, open and slightly louche.

She fixes her hair, adding product so Ilya’s curls sit just so. In his Dopp bag there’s a travel-sized bottle of Tom Ford’s Tuscan Leather, because he’s nothing if not predictable, and an unlabeled decant of some other fragrance in a Nordstrom branded atomizer. She sprays her wrist and sniffs curiously — it takes a while to place the notes, strongly aquatic with something peppery and sweet like frankincense buried deeper down. When she realizes where she knows it from, she laughs aloud at the irony; it’s the men’s fragrance Shane did an ad for just this summer. There’s a barely dented bottle of it on his bathroom counter in Montreal, and she wonders if Ilya’s spotted it by now and had the mortifying realization that he’s inadvertently been wearing the same scent Shane does.

Rose has only been to D.C. twice — once for a field trip in sixth grade, her last year of real school, and once while filming exterior shots of the Lincoln Memorial for the third X-Squad, the scene where Lincoln’s 20 foot statue comes to life for convoluted, later retconned reasons, and begins shooting lasers from his eyes. On neither of those trips did she get much of a sense for the city’s nightlife, so she’s content for the other boys to hustle her into a group taxi and Marleau seems all too happy to take the lead.

The club is cool. Two stories and wide open, a sort of mock-industrial theme like how a grungy, ravey warehouse might look if the Y2K bug had actually happened. Bright blue and white lights strobe across the dance floor like helicopter searchlights, and cozy, dark corners are further obfuscated by fog from smoke machines. This is the first time Rose has been out-out since November, she realizes as she winds through warm bodies writhing to Tiësto. It feels invigorating.

She snaps a selfie with Marleau while they wait to be served at the bar; the wide lapels of his shirt make him look staggeringly like Vegas’s eighth most popular Elvis impersonator. She sends the photo to Svetlana, and then to Ilya, along with a picture of the club.


Selene 🌚: have definitely lost my car keys on that dance floor at least once

Selene 🌚: marly 😭😭😭 my handsome man

Selene 🌚: not as handsome as you of course 😜

Selene 🌚: buy him big big drinks from me


As instructed, she does. A round of shots right at the bar for her and Marly, Connors and Brooksie and Scoops, plus the two rookies she can’t tell apart without the numbers on the backs and who, last time she checked, are only nineteen and not legally allowed to be here. They look so happy to be drinking with their captain, though, eyes sparkling in wonder. It’s sweet, she thinks. So she buys a bottle and a section for them all, which is how she likes to party anyway, and texts Ilya back once she’s upstairs in VIP.


Sunny 🌞: buying big big drinks for everyone, actually.

Selene 🌚: very good. Morale is important job for captain

Sunny 🌞: right. It’s basically a work expense

Sunny 🌞: I’ll keep the receipts so you can use it as a write off when you file your taxes

Selene 🌚: lol RL you crack me up

Selene 🌚: have fun tonight

Selene 🌚: don’t do anything I wouldn’t do

Selene 🌚: literally!!!!!!


She pours herself a vodka soda from the bucket on the table. Around her, the guys are doing the same, talking loudly to be heard over the music and shooting unsubtle glances at the nearby “talent,” which seems to be comprised of enticingly dressed young women eager not to pay for their own drinks. Good for them.

Marleau slings an arm around Rose, pulling her in while Rookie 1 and Rookie 2 are busy playing rock, paper, scissors to see who gets to approach a girl with long, dark braids standing by the stairwell.

“I get that I was harshing you earlier, man,” Marly says into Rose’s ear, breath warm and already boozy. “You know I fuckin’ worry about you, that’s all.”

Rose wonders what about Ilya, exactly, Marleau has cause to be concerned about. Before she can figure out how to tactfully inquire, or maybe ask point blank, he rambles on.

“You seem happy these days, with Svetlana. I love that shit for you, man, genuinely.” He shakes his head like even he can’t believe Ilya’s luck. “I just know — like, this whole season’s been one fucked up situation after another. With your dad, or your family, whatever’s going on over there in Mother Russia — and the whole thing with your girl in Montreal.” He goes really serious when he mentions the latter of these tribulations, this pseudo-breakup of Ilya’s that’s been alluded to before but which Rose had mostly forgotten about. “I’m just saying, like — you know I’m here for you, right?”

Rose has her misgivings about male friendship, sure, but the sincerity of his words softens her. Of course Marleau thinks that getting fucked up with his best friend is emotional support. And maybe it is. She’s been there before too, needing to drink or fuck or sweat a problem out. “I am doing good these days,” she assures him. It’s true at least of Rose, even if she can’t make promises for the real Ilya.“You are a good friend, Marly.”

“Fuckin’ right I am,” he says, and clinks his glass against hers.

Connors has abandoned them; the woman he met last spring is miraculously here again, sitting at the same stool, wearing the same black dress, and seems elated to see Connors, all of which lends credence to their theory that she may actually be an undercover operative. The rookies, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Fucko, have been beckoned over by the girl with braids who seems to now be trying to sweet talk them into making out with each other, judging by the way they’re spluttering in anxious, horny fear.

“Roz.” Marleau elbows Rose and leans in close again. “Are we partying-partying tonight? Should I text Amy? Pretty sure she’s still around.”

Rose laughs, gestures to the maybe twenty gorgeous girls within arm’s reach of them. It doesn’t shock her that Marleau’s phone, like Ilya’s, has a willing woman waiting in every area code; it’s more that Marly struck her as one who enjoyed the chase. “What, you are scared you can’t pull in a room of women? You would rather call in a ringer?”

Marleau laughs too, but at a very different joke that Rose doesn’t quite feel let in on. “Not for pussy, dude. The Amy who hooks me up with blow.”

Rose is caught off guard, maybe, but it’s not like she’s surprised. Ilya’s never struck her as a square, nor has anyone in his circle. And frankly, though Rose hasn’t done coke in a few years, since she got tired of the sort of friends it would attract, tonight she’s had just the right amount to drink and the speakers in here are blasting at just the right volume that she feels a little buzz at the thought of indulging.

But besides the fact that she’d feel strange and guilty putting drugs into someone else’s system, she knows without a doubt she can’t be trusted to keep her mouth shut while she’s high. One bump and she’ll be chatting animatedly, two bumps and she’ll be giving the assembled Raiders her social security number, three and she’ll be spilling all of her and Ilya’s guts, telling them everything that’s happened from the last time she stepped foot into a nightclub until she waltzed in here tonight.

“Just the drinks,” she shouts to be heard. She twitches her glass, lets the ice clink-clink and reaches for the bottle to top herself up. “I promised some fun. Not too much.”

She worries, of course, that saying no will fall under the category of anything I wouldn’t do that Ilya referenced before. Thankfully, Marleau takes it in stride. “But also, hey, fuck you man — when the fuck have we gone out and I had any trouble getting laid?” he counters, spreading himself wide against the couch and surveying his options from their high balcony.

After a minute of staring at the dance floor, sipping at her third-ish (fourth?) drink, Rose pulls her phone out from her pocket.


Sunny 🌞: So do they not drug test you guys?

Selene 🌚: ?? You are being peer pressured with steroids?

Selene 🌚: Clean gains only Rosy Posy!


Rose snorts into her glass. Ilya is a fucking idiot.


Sunny 🌞: like for real drugs

Sunny 🌞: coke, etc.

Selene 🌚: ohhhhhhh

Selene 🌚: answers:

Selene 🌚: 1. Yes they drug test 2. It is really only for doping

Selene 🌚: I have never had a problem or anyone else I know. MLH is not too bothered with what we do in our personal time unless we make a fucking scandal you know? Embarrass them.

Sunny 🌞: makes sense

Sunny 🌞: I’m not like DOING anything I was just curious

Selene 🌚: Yes yes I know. You are nosy.


Marleau briefly disappears and comes back with a beautiful blonde woman who he props up in his lap like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Ask her name,” he hisses into Rose’s ear when he can. “She told me and I already forgot it.”


Selene 🌚: Marly is offering you drugs?

Sunny 🌞: Slightly? He’s sort of offering me whatever he thinks you might want. He seems very concerned with your emotional well being.


This last text she sends after Marleau stretches the blonde woman’s legs across Rose’s lap, trying to share her in some show of generosity which Rose politely declines.


Selene 🌚: I do not really do that anymore

Selene 🌚: Can only support one drug habit on my salary and Alexei has called dibs 🙄

Selene 🌚: But used to party more when I was young

Selene 🌚: And then a couple months ago I had a hard time and went on kind of like a bender


Rose glances to make sure no one’s looking at her phone over her shoulder, invading the privacy of their conversation, although it seems like the guys she’s with already know more about it than she does.


Sunny 🌞: After you broke up with Jane?

Sunny 🌞: She’s the girl in Montreal, right?


It’s the first of her texts tonight that he hasn’t responded to instantly. Rose had thought, for some reason, that Jane hadn’t come up again since the beginning of all this because she didn’t mean that much to Ilya in the grand scheme of things. Now she suspects it’s just the opposite. Eventually, one more drink and three Benny Benassi remixes later, he responds.


Selene 🌚: Yes


He doesn’t say anything further. Rose, who’s basically as inquisitive as Ilya always accuses her of being, has the urge to ask a hundred questions, but with so little to go off of, she can’t think of many. The only concrete fact she knows about this woman Jane is that she lives in Montreal, and the obvious geographical condition of their situation is that, for the time being, Ilya lives in Montreal too. So, Have you two reconnected? Have you seen her, since you’ve been there? is on the tip of her thumbs. And then she stops herself.

If Ilya hasn’t mentioned seeing Jane, it’s either because he hasn’t yet, or because he has, and feels he has a reason to keep that information from Rose. As much as she resents the secrecy, especially coming from someone who’s certainly comfortable enough to snap pictures of the discharge in the crotch of her panties and text them midday with the caption Is this normal??, somewhere along the way, they’ve learned to trust each other. 


Sunny 🌞: I think Marleau just wants to make sure you’re doing well

Sunny 🌞: I told him that you’re happy these days

Sunny 🌞: Which hopefully is true 💛

Selene 🌚: 💛💫🍌


By now, each of the Raiders has a girl in his lap or pressed against him on the dance floor. Rose wants to dance, badly. It’s most of the reason she likes going out, other than the fun of getting tipsy and singing along to music way too loud and wearing heels that kill her feet but make her feel fucking hot. She wants to be out there, sweaty and careless and euphoric, but men don’t dance like that, it seems. Women dance for the pleasure of doing it; men dance as a mating ritual, as foreplay, only winding their hips in the hopes of grinding up against something soft and willing.

She passes through the dance floor anyway, bobbing her head and trying for a brief taste of the exhilaration that comes with letting go. It’s not the same. In the end, she steps out into the cold night air and leans against the building, pretends that she can feel the bass thumping in her chest, and smokes a cigarette that straightens her enough to go back in.

There’s a dark haired, sharp featured girl in a Hervé Léger bandage dress sitting in her spot when Rose returns to the section; the style is slightly out of fashion, but she looks chic in it. No — the old Rose would have told herself this girl looked chic. She knows herself better now, and knows that what she actually feels is that this girl looks really, mind-numbingly sexy.

“This is Bella’s friend,” Scoops says, as though Rose has any clue who Bella is. “Francesca.”

“Hello Francesca,” Rose says, and, not unkindly, but decisively, “have a good night.”

Looking the way she does, Francesca can’t be used to rejection, but she takes it diplomatically, excusing herself with her jaw set and only knocking over two of the mixers on the table.

“Sheesh,” Schopenhauer remarks, and the look on his face makes Rose think that maybe her dismissal wasn’t quite as gentle as she’d aimed for. “Since when was tall and smoking hot not your type?”

Marly, whose shoes are now covered in pineapple juice, chuckles. “Scoops, you never heard the expression? Why go out for burgers when you have filet of pussy at home?”

That’s definitely not the expression, but it conveys the sentiment. Rose pours herself another drink for something to do. Although she knows she’s teetering on the sweet spot of fun-drunk and dangerously close to tumbling towards Not Having Fun Anymore, she tosses it back expeditiously.


Sunny 🌞: I filmed a scene for TheBig Short

Sunny 🌞: explaiingin the law of diminsheing returns and looking into the camera

Sunny 🌞: but they cut me :(((((((((((((((

Selene 🌚: Well you did say in notes to never look into the camera? So maybe this is why they cut you 🙁


Rose doesn’t send a response. She doesn’t know why she’s messaged Ilya about that or has been texting him all night, except that she’s wishing right now that she was out with friends, rather than friends of friends. If he was here, she thinks they’d have a better time than last time they met up in a nightclub, or at least a better time than she’s having right now. Hell, if Ilya was here with Rose, maybe that would be the ticket — they really might find a way to switch back. It doesn’t come up much in conversation these days, but they really should be figuring out how to do that soon. It’s only that she’s been distracted, slightly.

She drifts to stand at the railing and watch the people dancing below. Rose doesn’t quite feel like a man. If anything, this whole experiment has reaffirmed that at least a part of her is innately female inside, whatever that means on the outside. But she understands men more, now. And part of that comes from walking around with a dick between her legs, being allowed entry into men’s private spaces, being perceived and treated as one and given certain privileges, allowances. Beyond that, though — the part of her she knows is totally a woman, truly feminine in mind and soul, and maybe it isn’t 100% of her, but it’s enough that she doesn’t bother crunching the exact numbers — she isn’t sure that part of her wants things so different from what any man does.

If Svetlana were here with her, how would they be dancing? Arms in the air, hips on a swivel, face to face and scream-singing in each other’s faces the way she does with all her other girlfriends? She thinks not. Slick condensation drips from her glass, an icy cool droplet running down her thumb, and Rose watches the other couples dancing hot and heavy. Girls who’ve spent an hour on their hair only to sweat it out; men whose shirts have dark, damp patches in the pits. Svetlana would be scorching just like that against her, if she was here. Rose would want to dance up close, pressed flesh, perfume heavy in the air, creamy sandalwood and blooming jasmine and a raw, natural musk. So maybe it’s true that women dance to feel the music and men dance to feel a woman, but maybe Rose wants all of that and more.


Selene 🌚: how short was short film? Maybe this is why they cut your scene. For time.

Sunny 🌞: ????? What r you TALKING nabout

Selene 🌚: big short film???


She wants to talk to people. Rose likes to be out. She likes to socialize, she likes to feel like she’s connected to something. Never has Rosy Posy been a wallflower — always, in the company of others, she is blossoming, turned in the direction of wherever she can find light.

She sits back down with the boys, but they don’t want to talk. Well, the rookies are talking, but they’re panicked, one of them on the phone with someone who Rose thinks might be his manager, and the other on a FaceTime to (and this can’t be a good idea), his mother back in Lithuania. Connors is wrapped up with his secret agent in a corner somewhere, Brooksie is long gone, and Scoops and Cliff and the girls they’ve found are all a tangle of lithe limbs and tongues down miscellaneous throats. 


Sunny 🌞: you’re life sucks btw

Selene 🌚: Oh does it?

Sunny 🌞: YUPPP

Selene 🌚: Mmm.

Selene 🌚: Your life is no bed of roses

Selene 🌚: 🤣🤣🤣

Selene 🌚: Roses

Selene 🌚: Get it?

Sunny 🌞: ANNOIYINGGGG


Rose wants another shot — she wants everyone around her to do a shot, actually, because she wants them to be having fun together, but the bottle’s somehow empty, even though it’s not their first or — is it their second bottle? It can’t be more than that, right? She’s closed the check out, but she doesn’t remember how much she paid, just remembers leaving an $810.81 tip because it seemed the sort of thing Ilya would do. She can see her phone on the table light up with a text from him on the lock screen, his tone all concerned, Are you drinking water RL? And did you eat, after game?, but why fuss? Vodka is clear, and non-caloric, and therefore basically healthy. Surely he of all people should know that.

A call comes through and Rose whips her head around, paranoid like maybe he can see her. Magic powers, body swapping and teleportation and all that. But no, Ilya isn’t here, or else why would he be calling?

“Алло,” she answers in a perfect impression of him, because that’s really funny.

“Hello, Miss Russia,” Ilya responds. He does, in fact, sound amused. “I am calling to check on you.”

The music is loud in here, and not very good. “I HATE THIS SONG,” she yells so he’ll be able to hear her.

The song she hates is too damn loud to hear if Ilya laughs, or what he says the first or second time he says it, although the words catch up with her a moment later.

“Marleau? Yeah, he’s here with me — hold on, do you wanna talk to— Cliff. Cliff Marleau. Clifford Beatrix Marlene the Fourth. Speak, boy.”

“No, no, no, no, Rosy, no.” Ilya’s talking quick and panicked, but he’s definitely laughing. “I think it is not a good idea to put Marly on the phone with Rose Landry. You agree?”

This had not occurred to Rose in the slightest. Paranoia returns. “I’m drunk,” she whispers as loud as she can, so Ilya and only Ilya will be able to hear her. He’ll know what to do. “And I think Marly is looking at me now. He can see me.”

Marleau furrows his brows. He has lipstick on his teeth and looks slightly concerned when he asks, “You good, Roz?”

Thriving, Rose mouths at him, and when he doesn’t seem to understand what the fuck she’s said, she shouts, “I’m on a phone call. Very good, thank you.”

“Rose,” Ilya says on the other end of the line enough times to get her attention. “Tell Marly that you need to take this call, and that you’re heading back to the hotel. If he asks what it’s about, tell him it’s an urgent, private family matter.”

Rose stands up and looks around for her purse, which she doesn’t have, because she’s supposedly a man, of all things, and turns back to Marleau. “Bye!” she says and waves before she leaves. As she skips away down the stairs, she sees him disentangle himself from the future Mrs. Marleau, calling out to her over the balcony before, presumably, deciding she can take care of herself. She loves that. His faith in her. She can take care of herself.

Being outside this time is even better than the last time, which feels like hours ago or maybe seconds. She’ll have a cigarette, but first, she gulps the cool air like a fish gulps water, practically glugging it down.

“You are outside now?” Ilya checks, and Rose is startled to find that she’s still on the phone.

“Yes,” she says. “Where are you?”

“In a lovely big bed in a suite at the Four Seasons, Montreal,” he answers. “It is late at night and I am a good girl. I even have on face creams. You would be proud.”

“That’s great,” she sighs with gratitude. “Thank you. It’s a whole fucking production.”

“Yes, I have been saying this.” He waits a little bit like maybe he thinks she will do or say something. “You will call a cab? Uber?”

It hits Rose now that she’s drunker than she meant to get, overheated and blood rushing to and fro all willy-nilly. It’s a good thing she left the club, or is leaving. She’s feeling strange and wild and reckless, but also very sane now that she’s speaking to Ilya, stringing together sentences like surely only a somewhat sober person could do. “I might walk. I’m only, like — twenty minutes from the hotel, I think.” What’s the point of being in a man’s body if not to do the things she could never do as a woman, like walking home drunk and alone in the middle of the night?

“Okay,” he says agreeably. He makes no move to end the call. As though he can sense her line of thought (perhaps because she spoke aloud), Ilya says, “Being a woman is much less exciting than I thought it would be.”

“Oh yeah?” She pulls the phone away from her ear to look at google maps and get a general sense of which direction she should be heading. It wouldn’t be too far out of her way to walk along the National Mall, and a picturesque route for an evening stroll, she thinks.

“I am treated like a second class citizen,” Ilya continues as Rose heads down 18th St towards the Reflecting Pool. “And playing with your own boobs isn’t as much fun as playing with someone else’s.”

Rose rolls her eyes, though he can’t see it. “Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?”

“It is 2016, Rose Landry. Women can be comedians, too.”

“Oh, shut up.” She can see the WWII Memorial from a block away, all lit up even this late at night. She remembers a thread of conversation from earlier, and though she’s not sure she agrees with herself anymore, she says, “So both of our lives suck?”

“Mmm, yours is not so bad.” Ilya makes a small, satisfied noise like he’s stretching out across the plush bed. “You are very rich.”

“You’re also rich,” she points out, because she knows the money isn’t always an easy thing for him.

“You have gorgeous, equally rich hockey player boyfriend,” Ilya counters, and Rose snorts.

“You can have him.” The memorial, which had looked so beautiful from a distance, is kind of disgusting up close. There’s a fountain which visitors have filled with oxidized copper wishes, pennies wasted on the memories of long dead soldiers. Where concrete columns stand tall and erect in a circle, the yellow lights meant to illuminate their carvings only serve to showcase hundreds of webs and a truly incalculable number of spiders.

She’s so fixated on this arachnid habitat, so repulsed and entranced, that it takes a while to realize Ilya hasn’t responded, and then remember what she’s said that he’s not responding to. That sobers her up. “That came out like — I don’t mean it like that. Shane is great.”

Ilya’s silent. She can hear him on the line still, his breathing stark against the soft flitting of mosquitos’ wings around her. He hasn’t hung up.

“It’s not him,” she insists, but doesn’t know what else to say. It’s not Shane’s fault, really and truly, that they don’t click, and that right before this changing places thing occurred, she was thinking that he might maybe be gay, and that since it’s happened she’s figured out that she might be at least a little gay too. It’s not Ilya’s fault that she’s so fucked up she’s left him to take care of a boyfriend who, probably the second she gets back into her own body, she’s going to have to let down gently. “I’m sorry. That made me sound like a… I don’t know. I’m drunk.”

“Shane is a good man. I understand what you mean.” It’s difficult to tell whether Ilya’s choosing his words carefully, or if that’s just how Russian people talk. “Maybe you are not good together.”

Rose plods through frozen grass, the lawn all crystal white, large swathes of it completely untrampled. It’s way too cold to be out here the way she is, no gloves and with a coat on that’s more fashionable than practical. She wants to ask Ilya things, but she doesn’t know how. Irrational queries pop into her mind, the foremost among them also the most humiliating, and the one she wants the answer to the least: Does he miss me?

Instead, she asks, “Can you FaceTime?”

Ilya responds by calling, and when his face comes on the screen, it’s her own, of course. She recognizes very little in the expression. “My god,” is what he says. “I’m even more good looking than I remembered.”

She laughs and says, “Stay there, okay?”

“Inside the phone, yes,” he assures her. “I am not going anywhere.”

It takes about a hundred tries to prop the phone up in the grass; the failed attempts are so multitudinous, and she learns so little from them, that by the time she manages it Rose is nearly pissing herself laughing. “Okay!” she shouts when she finally gets the angle right, gets everything in frame. “Wait, wait, wait, okay stay right there!”

She runs about eight feet away, and it is way too cold to do this, and yet, she must. She’s too drunk to figure out why, but it feels imperative that she do something to cheer Ilya up right now, even though she can’t think what he’d need cheering over. She lays down in the grass, flat on her back, squinting down to where she’s left the phone, and adjusts her position until she’s lined up perfectly. From the tinny iPhone speaker, yards away, she can hear Ilya laughing.

“See, this—” she raises her arm and gestures. In the phone’s front facing camera, she sees herself, reclined, and the Washington Monument standing proud and tall in the background so that the forced perspective shows it protruding from the perfect angle to give the impression that it’s her penis. “This is slightly closer to nine inches than you are.”

“You are a rude girl,” Ilya calls out to her, sounding incredibly proud, the way her older brother was when he taught her how to ride a bike without going over the handlebars. “Stay there, stay there. Don’t move. I will take a screenshot and you post it on my instagram.”

She walks so much of the length of the mall, past a half dozen Smithsonians, and they stay on the phone however long. Rose talks about how Hammersmith tripped going over the boards tonight while they were changing lines and how the stupid fucker hurt himself worse than when he took a stick to the nose a period later; Ilya talks about this rewrite they’ve done on the third act of XS6 which completely contradicts the canon of XS4 and how the props department fucked up today and a real glass got smashed on someone’s head. He tells her a sweet story about building gingerbread houses with Shane, and how Ilya had never done that before, and how they got frosting everywhere and somehow it became competitive, even though there’s nothing to be won or lost in gingerbread; she asks what kind of flowers Svetlana likes best, explains how hard they’ve both been working lately and says she wants to order a bouquet to the house and maybe several to her work. Ilya sings a Russian children’s song about a drunk and dizzy bird, Чижик-пыжик, где ты был, and just like she’s wanted to do all night, Rose dances.

“What time is your flight tomorrow?” he asks, although he has the schedule on his phone. “Today, I mean.”

“Fucking early,” she grumbles. Rose has sobered up a fair deal, but she’s starving now, and a quick glance at the time tells her her alarm is set to go off in only a few hours. She might as well stay up now.

Ilya sounds as tired as the hour warrants. “Give Sveta a kiss from me, when you get home.”

She takes umbrage at that. “Uh, excuse me. I’ll be giving her a kiss from me, thank you very much. And more. Who knows.” Well, maybe she’s not completely sober.

“Rose Landry,” Ilya gasps, scandalized and delighted. “Do not put these dirty lesbian visions in my head. Batteries are already dead in vibrator I found in nightstand and it is too late to go out and buy more.”

“You’re disgusting,” she laughs. “Go to bed.”

“You will get back safe?”

“Yup.” She’s been sitting on a bench, for some reason, freezing her ass off but not in the mood to go inside yet. She flips the camera so he can see. “I’m right across from the hotel now.”

“Good. Safety first.”

“Indubitably.”

She hears her own voice, fond, from the other end. “Goodnight, Rose Landry,” Ilya says.

“Goodnight, Other Rose Landry,” Rose says back.

Chapter End Notes

Thank you all for reading and engaging -- I can't tell you how pleasantly overwhelmed I've been by the reception! I've been too busy writing to keep up with responding to comments, but please know that I read every single one and that so many of them have made me more excited about this fic than I ever could have been just writing for myself.

We're 2/3 of the way through now, and I can't wait to share the remainder of this story with you all!

Chapter 13: Ilya

Chapter Notes

Heads up, I've updated the tags to reflect some of the content in this chapter! If any of those pop out at you as potentially triggering, head to the end notes before reading for spoilers/more info. Happy reading!

Ilya spends December 25th alone. It doesn’t bother him — if they aren’t going back to Russia for the holidays, he and Svetlana often find some easy way to pass the time while the Americans close their shops and celebrate Christmas in their lavish and commercial tradition. Usually Ilya will order takeout and stock his fridge with cartons of eggnog, Svetlana will complain about how disgustingly thick and viscous she finds it until Ilya tops her off with a generous splash of rum, and they’ll marathon something stupid on the television.

He orders room service this year and does the same, dozing on the couch while A Christmas Story plays on TBS three times in a row. Shane is in Lanaudière with his family and has been led to believe that Rose is in Michigan with hers. A snowy white lie made all the more convincing when Ilya scrolls up to last year’s Christmas in Rose’s camera roll and sends Shane pictures of a frightening looking casserole and one of Rose’s dad dressed up as Santa, nieces and nephews climbing over each other to sit in his lap.

It’s far, far too risky for Ilya to go to East Lansing for real. They concoct a lame excuse for Rose’s absence and the family says of course they understand, although Rose’s family, unlike Ilya’s, doesn’t seem the type to tell her directly when she’s disappointed them. They send their gifts along to Montreal, and on Christmas morning, Ilya video chats with Rose and opens them one by one on camera. She’s received, among other things, an ugly, wooly pj set he maligns at length and then wears for the rest of the day.

New Year’s Eve is much more important to Ilya, and he’s grateful for the opportunity to spend it with Shane, even if that means sharing him with half the Metros. They go to a party at the Pikes’ place. Ilya brings boxes of sparklers along and makes an excuse to sidle up to the lone Russian player on their team, a mid-season transfer who’s been having trouble fitting in. Ilya prompts him with innocent enough questions, speaking slowly and clearly and with simple words, and he jabbers back to Ilya in his clunky English about how special the holiday is where he comes from. He gets weepy over it the longer they drink, talking about Father Frost and Snegurochka like they’re distant relatives, while Ilya smiles and nods and pretends not to know anything about them. Shane thinks it’s nice of Ilya to humor the guy; Ilya obviously doesn’t correct him.

Jackie Pike takes a sweet picture of him and Shane, long exposure, with their sparklers dragged through the air to form the shape of a heart around them. Ilya begs her to share it with him right away and sends it straight to his girly group chat with something like 40 smiley faces. Svetlana responds quickly with a picture taken on the icy back deck of Rose attempting to peel a tangerine, cigarette dangling from her lips, and Ilya, warm and affectionate, sends 60 more smileys. Later, Svetlana messages him privately with another photo, a selfie taken at midnight of she and Rose kissing in front of the TV with the ball drop captured in the background. Happy New Year, Ilyusha. I love you and I miss you every minute, she says in Russian, and then in English, Thank you for all of this.

Shane kisses Ilya at midnight too, something more than a peck and less than full-on Frenching. Ilya had told Rose, in case it was helpful to know, that many Russians made a wish when the clock struck twelve; some of them, like his mother, would burn strips of paper with the wishes jotted on them, tipping the ashes into flutes of champagne and drinking them down in the first moments of the new year to ensure said wishes came true. Ilya will not do all that, of course, because he’s not ridiculous. He and Rose do agree — since they haven’t been focused on it much, and maybe they should be, and probably it won’t do anything, but what do they have to lose? — they promise that at midnight, they’ll both make a simultaneous wish to be back in their own bodies. Only, the clock strikes and the balls drop, and Shane’s tongue isn’t down his throat or anything, but his lips are parted and there’s the taste of champagne mixing with ginger ale, so soft and golden bubbly, and the only thing that Ilya can manage to hope for is more of everything he has right now.

Which is dumb. A waste of a perfectly good wish. If he wasn’t going to wish for his own body back, couldn’t he have at least wished for a version of this life that was simpler and easier? Or for Shane to feel the same way that Ilya feels for whichever Ilya exists presently? Just as he’s reassuring himself that all this wish business is hokum anyway, Shane kisses him again, and Ilya thinks to himself, half lamentation, half elation, oh god, it’s already come true. 


January passes. The cold of winter feels interminable, yes, but it always feels that way and it never is. Summer always comes, and then winter again, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

Ilya sees as much of Shane as he can, but there’s a five day, three game road trip the Metros play to kick off 2017 and aside from texts and phone calls, Ilya’s left to his own devices. It’s almost a comfort that the studio has suddenly decided they’re interested in finishing this movie at some fucking point, because it means long, long hours with blue skin and green screens, lines read again and again until their director is satisfied. Of course Ilya would rather be playing hockey, but acting’s not too poor a substitute. It’s something he can at least throw himself into, hard.

He’s in the makeup trailer having Kryolan Aquacolor painted into his left armpit, texting with his right hand. His pompous American sitcom star co-worker (who Ilya’s grown rather fond of, which he can’t say for most of the actors he shares a set with) is looking at him pointedly in the mirror. Ilya stares back. His co-star mouths something, and Ilya mouths back, What?

He goes back to typing, drafting a text for the Montreal WAGs group chat he’s been newly inducted into which reads something along the lines of: Hi ladies it’s me Rose Landry. Just wondering, do any of your husbands have any underlying injuries that haven’t been reported? Or things they’re insecure about that if someone were to chirp them about like another player they would maybe freak out and do something bad to get a penalty? Just asking because I am trying to learn more about hockey and of course support our Metro Men!!! Go boys go!!!!!

He might rephrase some of it. Add some emojis.

There’s a whistle like a gap-toothed bird call, and Ilya looks up to see his co-star still locking eyes with him in the mirror. The actor delivers, in complete silence, a veritable monologue mouthed at Ilya, the words frantic and over-enunciated and still completely indistinguishable. Possibly he’s preparing for the one-man show of King Lear he’ll be staging off-Broadway come spring, a production he’s assured Ilya a ticket to opening night of. What??? Ilya mouths back again, then tries I have no idea what you’re saying! If you’re practicing for your big play, good luck and break your leg!

Forty minutes later, the makeup artists step out for their union mandated smoke break, and Ilya’s co-star wheels around in his chair. “What are you getting your girl? As a wrap gift?”

‘Your girl’ meaning Hilary, Ilya’s makeup artist. He frowns. I have no idea, he types out on his phone. He hadn’t been aware he was supposed to get her anything. Probably because he’s only been a famous professional actor for a month and a half, and there’s a lot he doesn’t know. What are you getting yours? he types, because he’s still on “vocal rest,” and hands the phone to his co-star to read from.

“After the last film, I paid for her and her beau to go to Barcelona,” he replies, lisping his way through the city’s name like he’s being paid per syllable. “I was thinking Bora Bora this go around, but I’m afraid she and said consort have split since then, and I wonder — is Bora Bora too devastatingly romantic? Am I safer with something like Fiji? Or do I forgo the whole travel voucher and go with a nice crystal swan from Swarovski?”

Ilya blinks, even though his lashes are setting and Hilary had advised him not to do so, if possible. Those are very nice gifts, he types into his notes app. No shit they’re nice — they’re fucking luxurious. When the MLH season ends, the players tip the trainers and equipment managers out in cold hard cash. He’ll obviously need to consult Rose. I have no idea what I am getting Hilary. Will need some time to think about it.

Ilya’s co-star squints at the screen — he’s far sighted — and chuckles. “Think swiftly, and gift expeditiously. Our time together runs short, as you know.”

Ilya starts to type out, What do you mean? since he followed at best maybe 40% of that, but the confusion must show on his face, because his co-star clarifies.

“We’re two days out from wrap, my dear. Can’t tarry but a wee while!”

“We’re fucking what?” Ilya doesn’t have to muddle through the intricacies of that statement to have gleaned one very, very important fact right up front.

“My god,” his co-star says, clapping the armrests of his chair and striking a pose of amazement. “She speaks.”

“What do you mean, two days?” Ilya repeats, his tone as brusque and urgent as he’s ever heard Rose’s voice leave his mouth. “Two days and the film is over?”

Hilary and the makeup artist who’s not Hilary have returned to the trailer. They seem as alarmed as Ilya’s co-star to see that not only is Ilya talking, but he’s doing so loudly and with feeling. They exchange a glance between themselves, then one with the sitcom actor, then, as though nervous they’re interrupting something (which technically they are) return to work in as unobtrusive a fashion as possible.

“But surely you knew that,” the actor tries to reason with Ilya. “You’re ever so diligent with that script of yours. Frankly, I’ll be damned glad to be done with it. I don’t turn my nose up at the paycheck, don’t begrudge the work, oh no, but it’s been a long haul, hasn’t it? A slog, as the kids would say.”

Ilya doesn’t know any kids who would say that, no, but he doesn’t care. His co-star is correct; over time Ilya has become methodical about his script, prizing it like a playbook. He knows the film inside and out, has notes he’s scribbled in English and in Russian along the margins to help him keep track of who’s what and what’s where, and he knows for certain they’re not done. There’s a monologue in Act I he’d spent an hour practicing last night in the bath, in fact.

“Two days is not enough time,” Ilya argues. Hilary sighs, peeling away the lashes that are fluttering free, detached from the inner corners of his lids, and starting from scratch. “We have not filmed scenes where Tempest saves the small fishing village from the tsunami, or scene where Professor Z and the youngsters are transported five minutes into the future, or scene where you and LaserFace and I learn about the power of friendship.”

His co-star chortles. “A long haul, as I said. Your memory is not as sharp as it once was, is it my girl?” At the blank look on Ilya’s face, he clarifies. “Rose, my dear, those are the first scenes we filmed. Way back in early autumn, some time around there. Don’t you remember? And you and he and I had to stack our hands in the middle of a circle and throw them into the air and shout ‘For X-Squad!’ and the director was ever so displeased when I suggested adding a ‘Huzzah!’ to punctuate it?”

Late September. All of October. Early into mid November. The couple months of filming that had taken place before Ilya had ever stepped on set, back when Rose was doing her own job. Ilya’s never been great at math, except to know that two minutes of five on three on the penalty kill basically equals you’re fucked, but even he should have been able to figure this out. A four month shoot, even one plagued by rewrites and ridiculousness, is enough to make a movie.

“So now what happens?” Ilya asks, half to himself and half to the room at large. “We all — go home?” It’s a testament to the eccentricity of actors that no one questions why someone who’s wrapped 33 films in the course of her life, if IMDb is to be trusted, is suddenly acting like a lost and frightened child.

“It always feels that way, doesn’t it,” his co-star sighs. “As though one’s world is ending. Well, that’s why we gainfully employed must stay that way. As for myself, I have the play, as you know, and of course my voiceovers for Lexus — I’m sure you heard all about our December to Remember sales event. I suppose you’ll return back to Los Angeles, won’t you? A brief respite, and then another blockbuster on the horizon, if I know my Rose.”

There’s blood rushing in Ilya’s blue ears so loud he can’t hear or think of anything, not even the bizarre Chicano accent his co-star had employed in pronouncing ‘Los Angeles.’

Back there. Back to LA — back, like Ilya has ever spent more time there than it takes to score a few goals, eat at Nobu, and get his dick wet. Back to LA the way he talks of going back to Boston when they’re on a roadie and plane and hotel rooms begin to feel too familiar, when he and the boys long for the place they’ve all made home.

Montreal isn’t where Rose lives. She’s on a business trip, albeit a lengthy one. She was never going to stay. She was always going to go home.

What were she and Shane thinking?

Exactly what had been their fucking plan in the first place? To boink for a couple months, share some laughs and a few dozen dinners, get their pictures in the papers and then shake hands and part ways amicably? Punctuate it with a huzzah? Was Rose such a slut as to be passing herself around in every port she played a part? Was Hollander so petrified of pussy that he’d deliberately found a woman to date who lived across the continent, in a conference his team only played twice a year? Had neither of them even considered the possibility of something real, something meaningful developing? Does anyone, outside of him, seem to notice that it has?

“Wanna take a minute?” Hilary asks quietly, tactfully; she’s dabbing at the corners of Ilya’s eyes where tears seem poised to spill. “Go get some fresh air?”

Ilya nods. “You have cigarettes? May I please—”

She digs into the other MUA’s apron and produces a pack, offers it to Ilya with the lighter tucked inside.

“Thanks,” he says.

Ilya doesn’t know exactly where he goes. The ‘fresh air’ he’s supposed to be getting is below zero in Celsius and probably in Fahrenheit; even in his modesty robe and a downy puffer coat on top, he’s freezing. He roams the set anyway, half-blue and unmoored, until he finds a gap between a trailer and a props warehouse where the wind can’t touch him.

He calls Rose. She doesn’t pick up. He calls her again, sucks in a deep gasp of tobacco and carcinogens and hopes she’ll answer soon so she can hear him hacking up one of her pretty virgin lungs. Crouched down, weight on his heels in a squat that feels unnatural in her body, he rests the phone on his knee, taps to redial and redial. He calls her something like a dozen or a hundred times before she picks up.

“Hey,” she pants into the line, like she’s struggling to catch her breath as much as he is. “Is everything okay?”

“Does everything not seem okay?” he asks, instead of How could it be? He’s feeling sick and dizzy from the cigarette, but he would have been feeling that anyway.

“Well,” she says, tone as even as it can be considering his sudden combative energy. “You called me like a billion times. Ronnie had to bring me my phone from the locker room because he heard it ringing for fifteen minutes straight and thought your dad had died or something equally fucked up. So I’m trying to figure out if this is a real emergency or an Ilya emergency.”

He rankles at being condescended to, although he can acknowledge that it’s true he plays it fast and loose with what constitutes a crisis, like his panic two days after they’d swapped places when he’d realized there were no Dunkin’ Donuts locations in the whole of Montreal and had frantically emailed his business manager to look into franchising one.

“You are at practice?” Ilya asks. He’s so far removed from his own life, he doesn’t bother checking the schedule for those sorts of things anymore. He only knows his call times now, which scenes he needs prepared. Fuck.

“Just finished,” she says. “What’s up, Ilya?”

“I wrap in two days.”

Maybe he should say We rather than I, considering that Rose has apparently filmed a third of this film before he’d even known her. The semantics don’t quite matter here, and the occasions on which they once did now seem unsalvageable.

“How can that be possible?” she asks, sounding gruff the way he always does when he’s confused or thrown off. “Do you know how long it takes to get these things made?”

“Four months, I guess,” Ilya answers listlessly. He’d called her furious, as though any of this was her fault, had had some fantasy of stubbing out his cigarette on her skin through the phone, but the concern obvious in her tone from the moment she answered has soothed that nasty line of thinking.

He can hear her tapping at the phone screen. “It says you wrap on the 11th. Today’s the ninth — fuck, I never saw this email. I’m sorry, Ilya. God, like — how has it been so long?”

He knows she doesn’t mean filming. She means the thing that he means. They’re shocked at how it’s possible so much of their lives have passed without them noticing the pages flicking off the calendar, floating to some unseen floor, and astounded that they’ve found themselves so comfortable in such an impossible situation. Then again, people can get used to anything. A person freezing to death in a Baltic drift might feel blanketed by the snow, cozy tucked inside of it.

“Okay,” she continues, and he can hear her wrapping her mind around it. “Okay. This is great. Oh my god, Ilya, you did it. You finished the movie. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe we pulled this off.” She laughs, something giddy and free, not in any way relatable. “Thank you. You have no idea how grateful I am.”

“You’re welcome,” Ilya says. He takes a drag off his cigarette, and it burns something fierce all through his chest. “So what is next?”

The phone shifts like she’s fidgeting, chewing on her lip and fucking around with his chain or something. He wonders where in the training facility she’s hidden away to hold this conversation. She probably still has her skates on, he thinks. His skates.

“The plan was to go back to LA,” she says. “Technically you could go anywhere — I have a month off before anything’s lined up, but I have to be back in LA the second week of February for a voice role in an animated film. I know that that’s a lot to ask, but the paycheck is like… stupidly huge, and I’ll need the money if I’m gonna be doing this—”

“Leave Montreal, you mean.”

“I mean…” Rose trails off, and Ilya almost feels bad, knowing that she feels bad. “Yeah.”

There’s a sour taste in his mouth like he’s smoked down too close to the filter. He can’t think of anything to say.

“You could come to Boston instead,” Rose suggests. It’s sweet, how hopeful she sounds. “Until the next project. We could hang out.”

“And Shane?” he asks bluntly. Not that Rose gives two shits about him. Well, that’s not fair to say — she asks about him, in roundabout ways. She wants the best for him, puts little heart tapbacks on selfies Ilya sends of the two of them together. But she certainly isn’t mooning over him when she’s cozied up with Svetlana, doesn’t seem perturbed to know that he’s at least kissing and holding hands and gallivanting with someone who isn’t her, and now, doesn’t seem altogether heartbroken at the idea of Rose Landry and Shane Hollander parting ways and saying their goodbyes. Ilya wonders, as he has since the beginning, if a part of Rose had already said goodbye to Shane before they’d even swapped places.

It’s not like they can read each other’s minds, that’s not one of their special powers, but they know each other well enough now that some things can pass between them unsaid.

“Maybe this is for the best.” Ilya hates the way her voice sounds when she’s small and sorry, hates ever hearing himself that way. “It was never — I liked Shane a lot, Ilya. We had fun together. But I don’t think — we both knew Montreal was temporary, and that was okay.”

“Mmm. Okay. Do you often fuck men you know you have no future with?”

Rose is a better friend than he deserves; she doesn’t dignify that with a response, though she’d be well within her rights to point out that Ilya’s being massively hypocritical and minorly overdramatic. “I know that you’ve invested a lot of your time,” Rose sighs, and he can tell she’s longing for a smoke. He wishes he could pass her one. “I am sorry. If you want me to tell you I was wrong and you were right, I will, because I know you never wanted to do this in the first place. I just — I really thought it had to be him. Even now, I literally still can’t think of why else this would have happened. But it’s been, what, six weeks? And you’ve tried, or — I mean, it seems like you’ve really tried, I obviously haven’t been there, but I trust that you have, and if it hasn’t worked by now, then maybe we just chalk it up as a loss and move on to the next strategy.”

The next strategy. Like Shane isn’t a person, but a play, a forecheck while the other team is changing lines, a wide open lane to be taken advantage of. Rose had dated him for just as long as Ilya’s dated him now, and yet, they seem to have taken completely different things from the experience.

Because whatever game plan Rose is trying to concoct, Ilya will play along only as far as he can. And this may be the limit. Having Shane walk away nearly broke him; Ilya doesn’t think he can handle it again, even if he’s the one doing the leaving.

“I have to go,” he says.

“Come to Boston,” Rose suggests again, this time more insistent. “We’ve spent a grand total of three hours in each other’s presence since we swapped. We’re fucking stupid. Maybe if we’re in the same room, putting our heads together, spending time together — that has to be it, right?”

“Maybe,” Ilya lies. Maybe she’s right, but he knows he won’t book the ticket. “They need me back. I’ll text you.”

“Ilya,” Rose presses, and he doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t hang up. “Has it been that terrible? Because from here — I know it’s been a pain in the ass, but it doesn’t seem like… it hasn’t always been torture, right?”

Maybe they can’t read each other very well after all, if she even has to ask. She could mean seeing Shane, or making a film, or living in Montreal, or living as Rose Landry, but he doesn’t ask for clarification because his answer is the same, regardless. “I have had some fun times. It has not been easy, though, even when I am having fun.”

He can tell she’s going to try and thank him again, or say something even more brutally vulnerable than this conversation’s already been, so he cuts her off at the pass.

“There’s a PA coming in a golf cart,” he fibs again. “They really need me.”

“Text me,” she says. “Have fun.”

Ilya sits out in the cold a while longer. It either isn’t that cold, or little by little, he’s gotten used to it.


Hilary had probably meant for him to take ten; Ilya returns to the makeup trailer 33 minutes later, throwing her and everyone off schedule, but she doesn’t hassle him about it one bit and even makes an excuse when an AD comes around looking to find the source of the hold up.

Because Ilya is grateful for this and for the hours and hours of patience she’s had the last few months, and for the grace and tact with which she approaches applying blue body paint to his underboob, he decides to get her something nice as a wrap gift. 


Rose Landry: Hello Yuna. I hope you are having nice Wednesday. There is a woman from work I would like to get a present for. I think you have connect at Rolex due to Shane’s deal — is this something you can help me with?


Since the Ottawa game, Ilya and Yuna have texted sporadically. Mostly they discuss hockey, whispered speculation over trade deals and effusive praise over Shane’s play any time the Metros have a game on. Occasionally Yuna will pass along a recipe of David’s that Shane likes, or Ilya will recommend a brow lady who won’t make judgmental comments about any stray mustache hairs. He doesn’t think he’s overstepping, reaching out for this sort of favor, and when she responds promptly, he’s happy to see that he’s correct.


Yuna Hollander: Absolutely can make this happen! If there’s a specific model you have in mind, I’ll see if I can have them pull that, but otherwise send me any guidance on style, size and budget and we can go from there.

Yuna Hollander: Feel free to tell me to kick rocks, but… I can easily make a steep discount happen if you’d like to purchase outright. HOWEVER… if you’re willing to be conveniently papped while leaving the store, branded bag in hand, I’m sure Rolex would be more than happy to offer the watch and some other goodies as a gift. Totally up to you! If you’re interested, talk it over with your team and send me any pertinent contact details so I can help coordinate.


For a free fucking Rolex, they can take his picture on the toilet. Ilya can play at resenting celebrity all he wants, but even he isn’t stupid enough to look a gift watch in the mouth. He sends his agent’s info along so that she and Yuna can ensure he isn’t violating any existing brand deals and lets them handle the nitty-gritty, wheel and deal of it all. The next morning before his call time, early enough that the streets of downtown Montreal are empty of shoppers, Ilya pops into Rolex and picks up the Lady-Datejust he’s chosen, white gold band, diamond-set bezel, and a deep, sapphire blue dial just the color of Allure’s skin. He exits the store to the bright pop of a flashbulb, blinding white, and walks slowly, face composed, logo out, so they can get the shot.

He doesn’t mention it to Shane. Maybe Yuna does, or maybe she doesn’t. Ilya barely talks to Shane at all the next two days, aside from sending a few variations on Sorry work’s in crazy time right now and an assortment of random emojis. He doesn’t know what else to say.

Then suddenly — maybe not as suddenly as it started, but still, it feels abrupt — it’s done. Ilya’s made a movie. They wrap on Friday, technically on Saturday at 3am, late enough on a long enough shoot that there will be union fines to be paid. Ilya isn’t even in the scene, but he watches from his tall, spindly chair in a corner and claps and rushes in to hug his co-stars, a big pile of mutant freaks all celebrating. He goes home too wired to sleep. Laying in bed, laptop propped on its side, he puts on The X-Squad, the first installment in the franchise, and lets himself get lachrymose over how far they’ve all come, these characters he met a month and a half ago.

The wrap party is Saturday night. He doesn’t invite Shane, though plus ones seem to be permitted for anyone whose name is above the title. Shane has a game that night anyway, and also, Ilya hasn’t told him that the filming’s over.

Production’s rented out a whole bar for the event; a good majority of the cast is there along with most of the department heads and miscellaneous crew. Ilya gets himself a gimlet from the open bar. He finds a stool and posts up, legs crossed beneath the flare of his little party dress. Looking around, he thinks to himself, I really know these people, and so, after finishing off his draught of liquid courage, he begins to circulate. He mingles and chit chats; he actually talks to people, not through typed missives in his notes app, but with his own voice. Rose’s voice, really, although he’s accustomed now to hearing it connected to his own thoughts and feelings.

They talk about their favorite moments from shooting and ruminate on whether the movie will be a smash, whether XS7 will go into pre-production soon after XS6’s release or whether the superhero bubble is poised to burst. Mostly Ilya nods whenever someone smart is talking and waits for a lull to insert something droll, an insight utterly useless other than to entertain those joined around him, all of them laughing and happy that he’s there. And then they talk about upcoming projects or vacations or babies or real estate rigamarole and Ilya drifts until he finds a conversation that makes him want to blow his brains out slightly less.

The MLH app buzzes with occasional updates, as does twitter where Ilya has notifications turned on for a few select Metros fangirls who can be trusted to report on the timbre of the games. It’s an even matchup between Montreal and Edmonton, but not even enough. Ilya thinks, based on the clips he watches huddled in a bathroom stall, that probably Montreal will lose.

People ask about Shane. A few of them have met him, way back before Ilya’s time, at a birthday party in October. It’s easy enough to make excuses, given that the bar staff have been kind enough to turn a TV in the corner to the final period of regulation time so that anyone who wants can watch Ilya’s boyfriend lose a perfectly respectable game of hockey. What a convenient alibi.

There’s a run in the left leg of Ilya’s stockings. He’s never worn these things before; much like Spanx, he’s convinced they’ve been designed as some sort of practical joke on the female population, or as retribution for the original sin. He tries to take them off, ball them up and dunk them in a trash can, but Hilary — Hilary is here, lovely, helpful Hilary in her beautiful new watch — stops him before he can discard them. She pulls a bottle of clear nail polish from her bag and paints it on the run, assuring Ilya that it won’t tear further as long as he doesn’t make any sudden movements. While she’s crouched down in the banquette, dithering with these silly tights of Ilya’s, she asks what half a dozen other friendly faces have been prying enough to ask already tonight. So, are you two going to do long distance? Ilya has the urge to kick her while she’s down, to pour a bowl of olive pits in her purse, and to hug her while he weeps. In reality, he only tells her that they’re still figuring things out.

Karaoke has been set up for anyone to participate. Mostly it’s monopolized by the American sitcom star that Ilya already had a fondness for, and now, bizarrely, likes even more. Ilya has never heard of Cole Porter before, or Rodgers and Hammerstein, but in between the old Broadway standards belted in his buttery baritone, his co-star educates him, explains that these men are great American heroes, even if Cole Porter was (he whispers this) “a deeply troubled homosexual.”

Wagyu sliders on brioche buns; pesto smeared on bruschetta bites as small as his thumbnail; endless charcuterie, meats and cheeses arranged into the X-Squad logo and drizzled in local honey. Ilya drinks a second gimlet and samples several of the themed mocktails, one of which is Allure blue and so tart it makes his glossed lips pucker. He hugs more people than he ever has in his life, and they all promise to stay in touch in between films, to grab lunch in Los Feliz or Silverlake, to get pastrami at Canter’s or lattes at Alfred’s or burgers at Bob’s, and Ilya nods and nods and nods. He doesn’t know what any of it means and he doesn’t want to learn.

Ilya orders another one of the drinks named for him, or his alter ego at least, technically his alter ego’s alter ego — he doesn’t keep track of those things anymore. It’s a magical drink which would probably taste better with vodka, but nevertheless, it dazzles him. Because there’s a trick to it. The bartender pours a brilliantly blue tea over ice, a mild, floral sort of brew; next, he or she adds a jigger of simple lemonade, and somehow, the drink alchemizes, shapeshifting in a way. Where the lemonade sits atop the tea (something to do with buoyancy), the hue blossoms from aquamarine to periwinkle, appearance transformed in just the way Allure’s can. Ilya thinks about that talent often. He has to, to prepare to play her. He wonders what it would be like to be able to change his appearance at will. If it was an ability he had, rather than an affliction, would he even use it, knowing what he knows now?

The night draws on, and he types a text to Shane, who should be home by now. Baby I’m sorry about the game. Losing is never easy but if you didn’t hate losing you would not be the sort of man who cares enough to win. I am always proud of you, you know that? Before he gets the chance to hit send, Ilya finds himself dragged by the arm up to the makeshift stage.

Well, after all. Since late November, word has spread between everyone from executive producers to gaffers down to janitors with swarthy brooms that Rose Landry has been deep in preparations for an ABBA biopic. He’s made his bed, and now a microphone is pressed into his sweaty palm so he can lie in it.

Ilya Rozanov does not have a good singing voice, but Rose Landry does. Maybe not Agnetha good, but for no reason other than that he enjoys it, Ilya has been rehearsing many of these songs, and over time he thinks he’s gotten better. They cue up the track of his choosing, a sad, sad ballad right in the pocket of Rose’s natural range. It’s the one that Ilya practices the most, singing in the shower where the acoustics are best and where he can get choked up over the lyrics with no one to bear witness.

The song is maybe not a party vibe. He should have gone with “Dancing Queen.” The sentimentality of the night, the crushing hugs and quasi-tearful reminiscences, have already thrown him into an unfamiliar funk. Nevertheless, the assembled cast and crew fawns over his performance like they’re hoping for a pull-quote on the poster or a bit part in a crowd scene. And Ilya sounds wonderful, he does, mellifluous and moody like the ballad calls for; when the lyrics stick in his throat and the bright lights burn his eyes so that he has to blink something stinging away, everyone applauds. What an actress. What a performance.

Ilya never quite recovers, after that. He pops another canapé, if one floats past on a tray, but mostly for something to fill his mouth that isn’t words. When he checks his phone and realizes his text to Shane has been sitting in unsent limbo, rather than pressing the blue arrow to send it on its way, he decides that some things are better said in person. He leaves the party and calls a car. Maybe he should have said goodbye to all those people, but the whole night had been goodbyes anyway, and after all, he’ll either never see them again in his life or he’ll see them again soon enough.

In the back of the Escalade, he picks at his tights until that painted run in his stocking is chased from shin to thigh. He shimmies them off (unladylike, but the driver doesn’t seem to be looking) and shoves them into his little clutch where there’s no room for them.

The front door of the building has a code which Ilya knows because Rose had left it in her care instructions. Out of curiosity, he’d googled the year the Metros first won the cup and found a familiar number: 1919. He uses it to let himself up and to the door of the unit, where he knocks and knocks and knocks until Shane, likely in bed by now, is summoned.

From inside, Ilya can hear shuffling. He thinks of covering the peephole with his fingertip so that Shane can’t see him, which would maybe be funny under any other circumstances. Instead he says, “It’s me,” in a loud, clear voice when he thinks Shane is close enough to hear him through the door.

“Rose?” Shane opens the door looking not upset at the unannounced visitation necessarily, but certainly confused.

Ilya steps inside and kicks his heels off so they flop akimbo beside the shoe rack. “I’m sorry about the game.”

“Yeah, well. It happens,” Shane says, rather than It’s okay, which Ilya loves. Seven seasons pro and a dozen years of play before that, and still, Shane can’t stomach losing.

Shane is in pajamas, just as Ilya had predicted, a soft grey cotton shirt and flannel pants that look comfy-cozy. He doesn’t seem to question that Ilya’s in a blue velvet party dress with rhinestone trim, diamonds on her wrists and neck, sparkling gems even tucked into a listing updo. He doesn’t know where Ilya’s been tonight because Ilya had lied and said he had to work, and Shane is a kind-hearted person who doesn’t question what he’s told when it comes from someone that he trusts.

“Do you wanna…” Shane trails off, moving towards the couch, but Ilya doesn’t follow.

“Not really,” says Ilya flatly.

The questions he’s been holding back for months — Tell me, does she kiss like I used to kiss you? Does it feel the same when she calls your name? — all feel irrelevant, now that he finally has the courage to ask them. He knows the answer. For all of his initial jealousy, despite any insecurities he’s harbored along the way, Ilya knows now that what he is to Shane, in any form, is so much more than Rose ever was or ever could be.

“You like me,” Ilya says. Not a question. A statement.

“Yeah, I do.” He steps back closer, because Ilya is still standing just inside the front door, and wraps an arm around him. “Hey. Rose, hey. Are you okay?”

Ilya buries his face into the cotton of his t-shirt, shakes his head against the soft muscle underneath. Shane hugs him properly and Ilya melts into it. Lets Shane stroke his back and try to work out how to pet his head without disturbing the elaborate infrastructure of bobby pins.

“We finished making the movie,” he mumbles, like a secret between he and Shane’s pecs. If he says it unintelligibly enough, the fact of it might be transformed into something different.

“Just now?”

Ilya grunts, shakes his head again. “Yesterday. Tonight is party to celebrate.”

“Oh,” Shane says. “Was the party fun?”

Yes. No. Who cares. He kisses mindlessly at Shane’s chest through the fabric, buries his face deeper and shifts until he finds a nipple, mouthing at the nub of it through the cotton of his shirt. Shane’s arms flex around him in surprise, holding Ilya still and tight against his body.

“In one month, I am supposed to be back in LA for new job playing cartoon character.” If Shane is baffled by the logistics of that, he tables his inquiries. “I do not want to go.”

“Do you have to? I mean — I guess you do. If it’s your job.” The words are tucked away into Ilya’s elaborate bouffant; Shane, above him, presses his lips to the crown of Ilya’s head.

“I could stay until then.” They’re clutched together so close now that it’s difficult to tilt his head up, but he does, bumping his skull against Shane’s chin until his head can loll back at an angle. He looks up at him. “We could have time together. For the month. I could move in here and stay with you.”

The old Shane would have frozen, would have run even out of his own apartment. And sure, he hasn’t been completely transformed in the last month and a half, but he’s a little different. Affection flows more freely, less constrained by fear, and he offers himself willingly to Ilya so often that it’s unbelievable, sharing his feelings and his afternoons and idle thoughts like a split fruit that Ilya’s welcome to slurp the juices from. There’s more of him available to Ilya. Not the whole, but a large and loving portion. Enough that Ilya feels daring but not crazy, asking Shane to make a space for him.

“Yeah.” Shane’s eyes find the ceiling, don’t meet Ilya’s, but his hands are moving over Ilya’s back like racing, eager thoughts. “You could. I think that’s a good idea.”

“You would want that?”

“Yeah. I do.”

The night is still and silent, the lights in the apartment dim like the whole house has been tucked into bed. If not for the lit windows of the cityscape beyond, tiny bright rectangles twinkling from a not too far distance, it might feel like they were the only two people in the world.

They kiss all the time. They make out, even, not infrequently, stretched out on the couch with tongues in each other’s mouths or mouths on each other’s necks until Shane inevitably pulls back with a pleased sigh and presses play on their paused movie or sits up straight to take a call he’s never in a hurry to end. Contented, that’s the word, like a long, slow bout of languorous kissing is all he needs. And when they stop, which they always do, he looks at Ilya with such fondness and gratitude that Ilya, who has his own needs, can’t bring himself to begrudge setting them aside.

Still, he’s greedy; he’ll suck the marrow out of any bone Shane throws him. If Shane wants him here for even just a month, then he’ll mark the month in seconds, making the most of each one. He kisses him and kisses him, and Shane presses him against the wall and kisses with the same hunger.

The temperature rises as they press closer, warm and febrile. Ilya feels himself trembling with it, his teeth tugging at the fullness of Shane’s bottom lip as he waits for the fever pitch to break. His hand slides beneath the fabric of Shane’s shirt to find smooth skin, craving the contact but prepared for the inevitable moment when Shane pulls away. He does, and Ilya lets his head fall back against the wall, panting, but Shane has only given himself enough space to strip his shirt off entirely.

Ilya is back on him in a rush. In the most literal sense, it is like being reacquainted with an old lover. He kisses at his shoulders, at his chest, ducks his head down at an awkward angle to drag his open mouth over Shane’s abs. To say that Shane lets him do it implies that he tolerates it; in fact, he encourages Ilya, a hand threaded through the pinned-up hairs at the back of his head and guiding him as he licks and sucks across Shane’s torso.

“You want me,” Ilya says, the words muffled. He says it the way he’d said You like me, with complete conviction, not seeking an answer but merely celebrating the fact of it. Shane’s thigh presses in, flannel soft against the sensitive skin of Ilya’s bare thighs beneath the flare of his skirt, and Ilya rocks against it.

Shane doesn’t want Rose, not like this. Perhaps there had been a brief window in which he’d managed to convince himself he might. But Ilya knows the way Shane holds desire, the way he tempers longing and the rush of joy and freedom when he allows himself to indulge. And maybe Shane doesn’t know it’s Ilya inside this body that he wants, but it is; that’s who sparked this in him, that’s who he wants to share his home and his days with, and his nights and his bed. It feels like the barest, thinnest of lies to let Shane believe he’s pressed up, hardening against Rose Landry. The person Shane’s attracted to, whose arms his hands are scrabbling at and whose mouth is so tight around his nipple that Shane’s moaning, is Ilya on the inside, and he wouldn’t be attracted to them otherwise. Maybe it can be that simple.

In the crowded space they’ve made themselves within the vastness of this place, Ilya drops down to his knees, the skirt of his dress pooling prettily around him. He runs his hands along the back of Shane’s calves, so stupidly muscular, and hides his face in the dip where Shane’s thick thighs meet. Any minute now, Shane will hoist him back up, and he’ll go willingly. Above him, Shane’s hands dither in Ilya’s hair a moment. Then they move away, and when Ilya chances a glance heavenward, he sees them shaking, unknotting the drawstring of his pajama pants.

In Russia, during Ilya’s childhood, he’d heard stories of the mistrustful decades prior, oft-exaggerated tales of KGB agents trailing citizens and surveilling them through all manner of spyware. This fascinated him. He’d stolen a compact from his mother’s vanity and he would use it to peek around corners, laying in wait to jump out and startle his friends or family. A child’s idea of a practical joke. Sometimes, using his superspy equipment (that was what it was, to him) he would spot danger lurking, and he could move fast to escape it.

Time is a funny mirror like that. One can travel through it, always facing forward and yet somehow looking back, seeing the events of the past reversed in their own reflection. Ilya uses the time mirror now to spy on their younger selves, on the Shane of so many years ago in a hotel room who had dropped down to his knees in front of Ilya in silent desperation. Ilya had thought then that he knew what it was to want, because he was horny, and his dick was hard, and yes, he wanted it sucked. Naturally.

He sees the image more clearly in the mirror than he ever had in the moment. He tugs the front of Shane’s pants down just far enough to pull him out; he’s only half-hard, but Ilya wraps a hand around the base of him, takes him into his mouth and gets him the rest of the way there. Ilya wants, wants, wants, needs, needs, needs. With little prelude, he takes Shane down as deep as he can, until the tip of his nose is pressed into soft pubic hair and his throat is full to the brim and his eyes have an excuse to well with tears.

Let me do this, he knows Shane must have thought or felt, because he understands Shane much better now, a person who’s been forced to hide a part of himself for so much longer than the paltry weeks Ilya has had to. Let me do this because I want to, because it’s sexy to me to give this to you and to be this for you. Let me be the person for you that is my real self, because you’re the only one I’d trust to see me that way.

Ilya pulls back to tease the head of Shane’s cock with his lips and tongue, kissing it and lapping up the wetness there, precum pooling in saliva; he works his hand along the shaft, grip too loose and rhythm too erratic to grant Shane any sort of release. What Ilya would like to do, really, is keep up a steady, merciless pace, make Shane come in record time down his throat or in fat drops across his tongue between his widely parted lips. But then it will be over, and what if it’s the last time? What if it’s the only time?

Shane has one arm braced against the wall above Ilya’s head, the other loose and sometimes floating down to pat tenderly at the back of Ilya’s head or grip his shoulder. Now he’s working that hand across his brow, wiping at phantom sweat and burying his face in his elbow like he can’t bear to see or be seen. “Fuck,” Shane mutters to himself again and again, like it’s the only word he knows, “fuck,” again when Ilya grabs him by the ass and yanks him forward, takes him deep again until he’s choking himself. “Fuck.” It doesn’t sound as good as Ilya’s name does from his lips — he’d settle for Shane moaning his last name, even, the way they used to, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Ilya could draw this out indefinitely, but doing so would require him to compromise his own talents, and his ego is far too massive for that. Deftly, drawing on both his natural ability and years of experience with this dick in particular, he guides Shane closer and closer to the finish. Shane’s breathing like he’s winded, knees shaking, and, perhaps less gently than intended, he tries to tug Ilya off by the hair. Ilya ignores this — Shane is one of those chivalrous types who is too much of a gentleman to nut up and come in someone’s mouth without ensuring first that they’d welcome it, but of course if he was thinking straight he’d remember that Ilya does. He loves it.

“Rose,” Shane says with urgency, and Ilya pops off quickly. He’d forgotten that— he’d forgotten. And maybe she and Shane have done this before and Rose had been too squeamish to swallow; though Ilya knows her not to be too prim of a girl, still, everyone has their preferences. Ilya thinks he’ll offer to finish Shane off with his hand or let Shane jerk himself off and come onto Ilya’s face or chest or wherever he likes, onto the shoe rack, whatever makes him satisfied. Although, it could be that Shane doesn’t want to come or want Ilya at all anymore, and that — it’s fine, if that’s the case. It wouldn’t feel good, but it would be okay. Of course it would.

“Is it okay?” Ilya asks, wiping spit from his chin and trying as hard as he ever has to read Shane’s expression. It’s impossible; his eyes are pinched shut, his whole face locked up. “Do you want to stop? Or keep going?”

Still panting, he opens his eyes to gaze down at Ilya with a glazed expression, tracing a finger along Ilya’s swollen lips. “Can we go upstairs?” Shane asks.

Ilya’s mind trips over itself as he hurries to clamber back up. “To the bedroom?” he asks, in case he’s completely head over heels delusional and Shane’s merely offering to let him use the printer in his home office.

“I have, uh — yeah. That’s where — condoms. In the bedroom. And the bed,” Shane finishes lamely. “If you want to.”

It’s not that Shane or Ilya doesn’t know it’s strange and not quite right that two adults who like sex and like each other have been dating for these past months and not doing it. They know. It’s only that they don’t talk about it. There’s an expression in English that Ilya knows, the elephant in the room, and this is the big grey elephant of not fucking, and they see the elephant, and they feel sorry for the poor creature, but still they don’t feed him or pet him or even acknowledge him. Because what would they do with an elephant? How could they tend to such a beast?

It’s more than just an elephant now. Ilya drags Shane up the stairs by the wrist, and it’s a whole zoo, or the place in Africa where all the animals live together. Inside him is a roaring, howling, stampeding thing. Ilya feels wild.

Upstairs, the plushness of the room dulls his senses somewhat, carpet and soft furnishings and millions of pillows swallowing the tentative noises the two of them make. Other senses are heightened; Shane finds Ilya’s zipper and helps him out of his party dress, and even the brush of fingertips between his shoulder blades makes Ilya jolt with sensation.

Being out of the dress is an immediate relief. Next, he pulls the pins and elastics from his hair until it tumbles down carelessly. He feels more like himself instantly, to be naked even in this body that isn’t his, freed from the trappings of an existence that has never seemed to resonate with his own, no matter how diligent he’s been at pretending. Shane also strips the rest of the way, removing his pants and his white socks, and they kiss, nude, standing at the foot of the bed until Ilya guides Shane to lay down.

They’re on their sides at first, facing each other, knees knocking sweetly. Not quite what Ilya needs. He pushes Shane a little by the shoulder and the rest of the way with his words. “Lay flat on your back. Let me make it good for you. Yes. Like that. Good.” It occurs to him that Rose would never order Shane around in bed, that she isn’t that kind of person, isn’t that kind of girl. Ilya also knows that Shane likes it, just as he knows that he’s fucked Shane better than Rose or anyone ever could, and though a part of him worries, well, but is that the point? another, more convincing part says, of course it is. That’s why he’s fucking me right now and not her.

Shane’s gone mostly soft in the time it’s taken them to come upstairs. Ilya kisses him all over, climbing over him to start so he can grind down on the muscle of Shane’s thigh and let him feel the slickness that’s been pooling there just from pleasing him. It helps; kissing helps too, breathy gasps into each other’s mouths that have Shane firmer and thicker.

Ilya drops down by his side and takes Shane in hand. Face tucked into the soft spot between Shane’s shoulder and his neck, he whispers in his ear and jerks him off. Shane doesn’t need to look at him; he only needs to hear him, to feel him and to know that Ilya’s here taking care of things. He can close his eyes if he likes — Ilya might prefer it — and picture anything he needs.

He says all of the things he likes to say to Shane, the things he knows Shane loves to hear. He tells Shane how pretty he is, how pretty his cock is, blushing just like the rest of him, tells him what a good job he’s doing for Ilya. Ilya promises he’ll let Shane come, but he tells him that he wants to get him close before he fucks him, have him aching and desperate and ready by the time Ilya slides down onto him. (He doesn’t explain that he really wants Shane close before they fuck because truthfully, Ilya isn’t sure what this will be like, or how long Shane will stay hard inside him even if he wants it and is trying his best. Ilya tries not to think about it either.)

There are condoms in the drawer, of course. Shane puts one on and Ilya rolls onto his back, watching and absently fondling between his own legs. He’s wet enough to feel it pooling on the sheets, although he wonders if he or Shane should have thought to finger him a little, maybe, the way Ilya would if he was going to fuck a girl. Shane crawls on top of him and presses in and — yes, absolutely they should have. It’s not painful exactly, but it feels like a searing impossibility that Shane could fit within him, god forbid thrust or move or bring himself to completion.

Ilya takes deep breaths and waits for his muscles to catch up to his mind, which badly, badly wants this. Shane, positioned over him, holds himself incredibly still and says with furrowed brows, “You’re so tight,” not like it’s dirty talk but like he’s concerned that something might be wrong. That’s sweet of him, Ilya thinks.

Eventually, the panicked clutch of him abates. He nods at Shane to move, which he does slowly, and once he’s adjusted to the sensation, Ilya meets his thrusts eagerly. He feels as full as he can imagine feeling; Shane is a pleasant but decidedly average size, and as he fucks him, Ilya wonders what on earth would be the point of anything bigger. Where would it even go? His own dick, back in Boston, feels cartoonish and ludicrous now. But then again, Shane has always taken it well, so maybe it’s a skill issue on behalf of the receiver.

It feels so fucking good, so achingly intense. Shane is huffing, hovering over him, and Ilya writhes and does little else but moan Shane’s name like a mantra. To do it feels like a release. Shane doesn’t call Ilya by any of the names he’s ever called him; he says things like yeah and fuck with his eyes squeezed shut until Ilya pulls him close to swallow all the words from his pretty mouth.

He likes this position where he can see how beautiful Shane is, marvel at the glow which seems to radiate from beneath his skin in low lamplight. It’s more surreal than pornographic to look down and watch Shane’s cock sliding in and out of him, although maybe it is pornographic, because he feels a touch the voyeur, like he’s watching other people. It doesn’t feel like other people, though. It feels like the two of them. More familiar than foreign. Ilya’s hands are free; they roam up to Shane’s chest, to his face and neck and to the locked muscle of his biceps and the expanse of his back, and then Ilya reaches down to his clit to rub in tight, quick circles when it becomes apparent that he won’t be able to come from this alone. It doesn’t take long after that, for him at least. A moment in the ecstasy of closeness and of sweltering sensation, and then Ilya’s pulsing against his fingertip, clenching tight around Shane.

Shane could keep pounding into him, if he wanted to. Ilya feels raw and sensitive, but he wouldn’t mind. He wants it to be good — he always does. But Shane pulls out right away, and he’s barely had a chance to flop onto his back and strip the condom off before Ilya’s hand is on him again. “Fucked me so right,” Ilya tells him, jerking him off with urgency. “Don’t want it with anyone else. You take such good care of me.” Ilya is embarrassed to hear the words come out of his mouth. He’s lost the plot, dizzy in a post-fuck bliss. Are these the things he thinks that Shane wants to hear, or the things he fantasizes about Shane confessing to him? But Shane just nods and comes over Ilya’s fist and kisses him until they fall into a pile of sated limbs.

For a euphoric moment, neither of them seem to be quite in their own bodies. Their souls and essences, these things that never leave them, hum along, curled up close and content beside each other. And then, slowly, Ilya comes back to himself, and remembers that it’s not himself he’s coming back to. The arms and legs he stretches are shorter, the blood that rushes back to his brain, pounds in his ears and chest or wherever blood goes, may not even be his blood type.

In an instant, he feels sick to his stomach. He is at a cross sea, waves coming from two directions as guilt crashes in from one side, the concern that he’s somehow taken advantage of Shane, and insecurity floods in from across to drown him, and the current tosses his stranger’s body asunder.

“Is it okay that we did that?” he asks quietly.

Shane’s breathing heavily. He nods. His eyes are closed and his face placid. “I’ve been wanting to. I just—”

It’s enough. Shane doesn’t seem to have an end to his sentence, but it’s enough for the storm of Ilya’s fears to quell somewhat. He kisses Shane on the collarbone nearest and rises from the bed.

In the bathroom, he pees, because he’s been around enough to know that ladies should always do that after sex. He turns on the bidet function on Shane’s fancy toilet and wriggles around so that it splashes in the general area of the marshy, cummy, latexy funk he’s sure he has going on down there.

He stands in front of the mirror and tries to see if he looks any different now. Any more like himself. No. But he finds some soap that can pass for face wash and even though it’s not ideal, he washes as much of the makeup from his face as he can manage and skips the rest of Rose’s nighttime routine.

Shane is dozing under the covers when he gets back to the bedroom; with a thrill, Ilya turns the lamp off and climbs into the other side of the bed to cozy up against him.

“Your tongue is blue,” Shane says, voice sleepy.

Ilya hadn’t realized. “It’s from a work thing.”

“Wow.” He shifts his arm a little to make more space for Ilya’s shoulder tucked up in his armpit, head resting on his chest. “Our jobs are so different.”

“Mmm. You’d think that.” Ilya closes his eyes. He’s had a long day — they both have, considering Shane played professional hockey — and they fall asleep without realizing. 


A tiny part of Ilya had thought maybe that would be it. The thing that worked. That he would wake up in his bed back in Boston, or wake up in Shane’s bed but in his own body. Around 5:30, though, he gets up to pee again and it’s still her body that he shuffles to the bathroom in pitch darkness. He goes back to sleep.

The next time he wakes it’s to an alarm that Shane reaches to shut off. A small measure of dawn has crept into the room with them, but for the most part, they are alone. Ilya’s slept spooning Shane, smaller body wrapped around his larger one like an octopus clinging to a ship’s hull.

Ilya thinks they’ll close their eyes and sleep in longer. He hopes they will; he’s exhausted. But Shane only rolls to face him, and when they’re pressed like that Ilya can feel that he’s hard. Sour morning breath mingling, they kiss each other, and then Ilya pushes Shane onto his back and climbs on top.

He’s surprised and relieved to find it’s nothing like the night before. The sex, when Ilya had shown up on Shane’s doorstep late at night with no invitation except the one he’d made of his own, to move into Shane’s apartment after only a few months of chaste dating, had naturally been fraught. Ilya doesn’t regret it. It had been satisfying and exhilarating, if slightly tortured.

Rarely has Ilya found more intimacy in the daylight than under the caress of darkness, but they do now. It’s slow, soft, and easy. He feels more like himself this time, and closer, much closer to Shane. Being penetrated has never appealed much to Ilya, especially now that they’ve tried it, so he doesn’t bother. He straddles Shane so that his dick is pinned flat to his stomach, hard and ready for Ilya to make use of, which he does, dragging himself up and down the underside of his cock, gliding once they’re both soaked in Ilya’s wetness. He speaks slowly but talks dirty, filthy, and he pinches Shane’s nipples and runs fingers over Shane’s lips and barely resists the urge to dip them inside and make Shane suck. Shane comes first, spilling in a pretty pattern up his own stomach and chest, and Ilya picks the pace up while he’s still hard, clit bumping against the ridge of Shane’s cockhead until the stimulation is too much and just enough and he comes, shaking, collapsing forward.

Shane suggests they shower together, and while this sounds enticingly romantic to Ilya, his legs are still trembling too badly to stand. So Shane goes ahead and does quick work of sudsing himself clean, and Ilya goes after.

He uses Shane’s soap of course; it would be extra mind-numbingly intimate if it left Ilya smelling like Shane all day, but in actuality, the body wash, like almost everything else in Shane’s home, is unscented. Ilya decides he’ll wait to wash his hair until he has his own shampoo and conditioner. He imagines the bottles of his fancy products lined up in the shower here alongside Shane’s own, and his heart swells. It feels permissible, finally, to admit it to himself. He’s known Shane for eight years now, been sucking and fucking and flirting with him for the last six without developing any feelings beyond a mostly manageable crush. Six weeks they’ve been together like this, and that’s all it’s taken for Ilya to fall in love with him.

When he comes out from the shower, the sheets have been stripped and Shane is sitting on the bare mattress in a towel still, looking at his phone with such great concentration that he doesn’t notice Ilya slide across the bed until they’re touching. When he does register Ilya’s presence, he locks his phone with an audible click.

Ilya raises an eyebrow. “Doing something interesting in there?”

“No,” Shane says, and then lies. “Just playing a game.”

Shane Hollander does not have games on his phone. Ilya has checked. He is boring, perfectly so, and the closest thing he has to “fun” app wise is Duolingo, which sends him constant and insistent notifications about his streak and which Ilya has never once seen him use.

“An email from your mother?” Ilya guesses.

“Work stuff. The away this week — I guess the baggage handler’s union might go on strike, so they’re talking about like, if we had to take the bus down instead of flying? It’s a five hour drive. I don’t know why I’m CCed on any of it. I pretty much do whatever people tell me to do.”

As he says this last part, he stands up from the bed abruptly, and Ilya, who had been leaning against him, lets himself fall to the mattress. Shane pulls a drawer open and grabs a white t-shirt, yanking it on much to Ilya’s dismay.

“Do you have anything I can wear?” Ilya asks. It’s that or back into his velvet dress and dirty panties and ripped tights.

Shane tosses him a shirt and finds the smallest pair of sweatpants he can, which fit if Ilya pulls the drawstring tight. “Sorry I don’t have any — um. Underwear.”

“It’s okay.” Ilya checks himself out in the mirror. He looks cute. Shane’s clothes are charmingly oversized on his small frame. “Soon I will have all my clothes here, yes? I will not need to steal yours.”

“Yeah,” Shane says. “For sure.”

But he’s digging in his sock drawer, which is far too organized to necessitate digging through, and he won’t look up at Ilya when he says it.

“I could go get some of my things today,” Ilya ventures. “While you’re at practice. You can leave me a key.”

“It’s probably better if you wait for me. You don’t have a car. It’ll be hard to get stuff back and forth.” He’s putting on a pair of tube socks, and it requires all of his attention. Fucking apparently.

“I could hire a car for the day,” Ilya suggests. “Or you could lend me yours.”

At this provocation, Shane does finally look up, nostrils flaring. “You’re not driving my car.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “That was go-karting. It was different. One bump and you are freaking out.”

“You could have snapped my neck, Rose.”

“Okay, then when?”

He’s said it more sharply than intended, and Shane looks shocked at first, then looks away. He puts his second sock on. “I’ll have most of Wednesday free.”

The thing that’s been in the back of Ilya’s mind the whole of the past week and all of last night and especially this morning begins to shift to the front of his brain, then takes a wrong turn and drops into the pit of his stomach. “After you get back from your game?”

“We get back early. I’ll be tired, but — I should be good.” He looks up at Ilya again and this time it’s with what is maybe supposed to be kindness. Ilya thinks it’s probably something more like pity.

Shane wants to wait, although they’re perfectly capable of moving Ilya in now if they really wanted to. Maybe not all of his things, but a pair of jeans, a charger and a toothbrush at least. A pair of clean fucking panties. But no. They’ll move Ilya into Shane’s apartment when Shane gets back into town from his game, supposedly. His game in fucking Boston.

This has happened before. Not this literal situation, but the feeling. Shane has done things to Ilya, said things to him, and Ilya has had to choose between hurt or anger. He doesn’t know which to choose right now. The only thing he knows to feel is fear. He follows Shane downstairs where Shane makes a big boring breakfast that looks like it tastes fucking disgusting, but Ilya doesn’t complain about it because he’s not hungry anyway.

Shane leaves for practice. He offers half-heartedly for Ilya to hang out at the apartment while he’s gone so they can do something together when he gets home, but Ilya says he’d probably better get back to the hotel. Says he has things he needs to take care of, doesn’t specify what things. If Shane looks disappointed by that answer, then oh fucking well. That makes two of them.


Selene 🌚: If plan is to go back to LA, you want me to dump Hollander before I go?

It takes Rose a long time typing. She tries to call him, and he declines the call.

Sunny 🌞: I didn’t want to put you in the position to have to do that

Selene 🌚: what is the alternative?

Sunny 🌞: I don’t know. I don’t know that there is one.

Sunny 🌞: I wanted to do that for myself

Selene 🌚: it’s fine. he will move on

Sunny 🌞: I mean, I would hope that eventually he does.

Selene 🌚: when he comes back from Boston I will do it

Sunny 🌞: Sounds good. Call me when you get a minute?

Selene 🌚: Busy. Later maybe.

Chapter End Notes

Spoilers for the dub con tag:

during this chapter, Shane and Ilya have sex twice while Ilya is still in Rose's body. Shane initiates a lot of it, and Ilya proceeds because he understands that Shane's attraction to Rose is only because of Ilya's personality and the connection that he's built with Shane while in her body, and that Shane is fundamentally interested in sex with him, rather than the actual Rose. While this is true, it's also true that Shane does think it's Rose he's having sex with, so I think it's fair to describe this as uninformed consent. That said, there is no point in the remaining of the chapters in which he will regret having made this decision.

Chapter 14: Rose

Chapter Notes

I've tried to adhere to timeline of the show any time it's relevant and will continue to do so as this story wraps up, but as you probably picked up from the ending of the last chapter, I'm throwing in a January Montreal-Boston game where one did not previously exist. I'm doing that because I'm the author and it's fanfiction and because I wanted to. Lol. Have funnnn!

Selene 🌚: hollander may try to chirp you on the ice tonight

Selene 🌚: like he could say something weird

Selene 🌚: you just ignore him okay?

Sunny 🌞: Wait genuinely? Why do I kind of love that lol. I never thought of Shane as a shit stirrer

Selene 🌚: oh yes he has a bratty attitude on him

Selene 🌚: and he may say strange things to get under your skin

Selene 🌚: or he may act friendly. but it is an old hockey trick

Selene 🌚: so just ignore him okay?

Sunny 🌞: Acting friendly to your rival is an old hockey trick?

Selene 🌚: yes it is like reverse psychological mindplay

Selene 🌚: so you can ignore him okay rosy posy?

Sunny 🌞: I mean… I think I absolutely won’t

Sunny 🌞: because I’m being YOU and there’s no way on earth you’re gonna let Shane Hollander chirp you and “just ignore it”

Selene 🌚: when they go low we go high

Selene 🌚: I read this in Michelle Obama book

Sunny 🌞: Ilya hon I know you’ve softened up on him since you two have been spending time together, but you have to remember — that’s Rose, in his mind.

Sunny 🌞: He’s playing against “Ilya.” And unless you’ve changed your mind and you want me to try and put this rivalry of yours to bed, I think the safest thing for me to do is act exactly like you would

Sunny 🌞: which is, presumably, like an asshole

Sunny 🌞: said with love

Selene 🌚: okay.


“I think I’m going to talk to Shane tonight,” Rose says. She’s steaming a dress shirt; there are a dozen white dress shirts in Ilya’s wardrobe completely free of wrinkles, but she’s worn this one to walk into the last two game days and subsequently put up her best numbers this season, so she isn’t taking any chances.

There’s no response. She thinks Svetlana maybe didn’t hear her. When Rose pokes her head outside the bathroom to repeat herself, she expects to find Svetlana where she left her, draped across the bed with one headphone in, tapping away at something work related on her laptop.

“Shit,” she exhales sharply, startled to find Svetlana instead standing just beyond the doorway.

“Talk to Shane about what?”

“I have no idea.” Rose shrugs. “Hockey? Not hockey? I’m open to suggestions.”

Svetlana doesn’t say anything.

“What?” Rose catches her eye in the mirror that stretches behind the sinks. “You think it’s a bad idea?”

“You said that you are open to suggestions. I am thinking of some.”

“Can you think of some while you get me my dark grey suit pants from the closet?” Rose bats her lashes and offers her most pretty please? of expressions. Svetlana rolls her eyes but turns to go, and Rose catches her by the wrist and squeezes once, gently, in gratitude.

“What has Ilya said to you about this?” she asks when she returns, handing the pants off to Rose and levering herself up onto the bathroom counter.

Trick question. Rose is really, truly fond of both Svetlana and of Ilya, but it’s like being at home with her brothers again, in a way; there isn’t a secret she can share with one of them or a plan that she can make which won’t immediately be passed off to the other. And that’s maybe fair, even though sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Their friendship with each other is far longer and deeper than the couple of months they’ve known and trusted Rose. It makes sense that they would pick each other first, even when it hurts.

Svetlana will therefore already know that Ilya has been actively dissuading Rose from any extracurricular Shane-related contact, and should Rose try to hatch a plan to do so anyway and let Svetlana in on it, she’ll likely be reported on immediately to Ilya. But Svetlana helps her see things more clearly, and even with the inevitability that she’ll be snitched on, Rose can’t help it — she likes talking things through with her.

“Ilya told me not to talk to him,” Rose admits, pumping out a test puff of steam before beginning on her trousers. “He’s been kind of up my ass about it, actually.”

Ilya has been acting like this since the shoot wrapped. Emotionally erratic. He’s clingy late at night, staying on the phone to talk to her or Svetlana until the wee hours, and then morning will come and her texts will return green like he’s turned his phone off or he’s blocked her. He’s anxious about the Montreal game as though his ego’s maybe all he has, and texts random instructions at all hours such as focus on attacking Pike and better yet leave Pike alone, pretend you do not see him and try not to look at anyone or listen to anything during face-offs, maybe even close your eyes. Over the last couple months, he and Shane seem to have developed a friendship, if you could call it that, but either due to his competitive spirit or the responsibility of the impending breakup, on the rare occasions Ilya has acknowledged him this past week, it’s with a tone nearly as callous as he’d taken when he and Rose first met.

“He knows the situation best,” Svetlana says, choosing her words as carefully. That means nothing, in itself — Svetlana always chooses her words carefully. Rose wonders if this is a byproduct of translating herself from Russian to English internally, or whether it’s because, by nature, she is a strategic and considered person. “But knowledge does not always correspond with wisdom, you know? Ilya makes many choices when he knows better than to make them.”

“So you think I should talk to Shane?”

“I think that you should talk to Ilya about talking to Shane,” Svetlana corrects.

“Right,” says Rose, although she’s sort of already tried that and failed. For not the first time, maybe the thousandth, she wonders what exactly caused the friction between the two of them in the first place. Forever ago, two or three months back, she’d thought it possible they’d slept with the same girl and had some drama over it, which felt the sort of thing men would hold a grudge about, but then she thought — it didn’t seem like Shane’s style to do that, especially with any of the girls Ilya liked, and besides, Rose herself was sleeping with a girl that Ilya once had, and they were nothing less than bosom buddies. “If I knew more about their situation — Ilya told me that they have, like, actual issues besides hockey. But that’s basically all I know. And it seems stupid not to at least try to work things out if there’s even a slight chance it’s the reason that we changed places, but I can’t exactly do that if I don’t know what there is to work out in the first place.”

“So ask him about it.”

Rose shoots Svetlana a look through the mist that’s gathered between them in the steamed up bathroom. The image is hazy, lovely. “You’re not being helpful.”

“You are wrong. I’m being an excellent listener.” Svetlana raises her eyebrows when Rose glares at that. “What? What do you want from me?”

“Information? Actual, useful suggestions?” It’s not Svetlana’s fault, she didn’t ask for it, but she’s been thrust into this part like the man in that riddle, tasked with ferrying a chicken and a fox and some grain from one side of the river to another, and Ilya and Rose keep adding things to equation, dropping new complications into the hull of her small craft, and Svetlana always manages to sail them to safety.

Svetlana sighs and hops down from the counter, turning towards the sink and washing her hands for no clear reason. When she turns the water off, she reaches for a towel and Rose steps in to offer her one. “Thank you.” She folds the towel and hangs it up. “Their issues — haven’t you ever known someone for a long time, and things change? They met when they were young, and they were put into their roles. And they grew, because of course they did, and the roles did not. So I believe they never quite know how to treat each other, and kindness feels strange and wrong. Personally, I think it shouldn’t. It would be easier for both of them if they could decide one day to get along, but then again, that’s true of all people, and easier said than done.”

Actually, Rose has been thinking something similar for a while, though not quite in the way Svetlana means it. Because, stripped of their jerseys, naked of the Cs on their chests, the two of them seem for the most part to be enjoying each other’s company decently enough.

And sometimes, from the way that Ilya texts her, Rose wonders if their budding bromance isn’t actually a one-sided crush. Relationship-wise (if you could call a phonebook’s worth of booty calls “relationships”), Ilya’s track record of hooking up exclusively with women wouldn’t suggest this, but if the last couple of months have taught Rose one thing, it’s that anyone could become bisexual at any given moment. It’s sort of twisted, but the part of her that’s so content with Svetlana and that has always had theories about Shane considers encouraging Ilya to explore it. Sure they’re nemeses or what the fuck ever, sure they seem to have some sort of baggage, but they get along. They like each other; they have things in common. Why not try, if it could maybe make them happy? Though, from the way that things had stalled out between she and Shane back in November, she gathers that the least conducive circumstances to explore this potential chemistry in would be the present ones — if Shane hadn’t wanted to fuck Rose in Rose’s body, he sure as hell won’t want to fuck Ilya in there — so she holds off on mentioning it for the time being.

“So maybe I don’t talk to Shane like — talk to him, like a full-blown conversation,” Rose decides. “Maybe I’m just friendly.” She glances to Svetlana for approval.

“I think that is a good idea.”

Rose should nap before the game, but she has all this nervous energy and nowhere to put it, so she tries to start something up with Svetlana instead. Svetlana laughs, that beautiful noise that sounds like chains and gemstones clinking, rattling together in a jewelry box, and she scolds Rose. She tells her that she needs her energy for the game, and Rose thinks energy is a sort of Russian euphemism for cum, like her testicles are the most vital amongst her organs, so Rose points out that she could do things to Svetlana and still have plenty of vim or vigor or energy, if you wanted to call it that, left for the game. It makes a tempting offer — Svetlana’s pressed against the bathroom sink and Rose’s hand is in her panties where she’s dripping like a faucet — but then Svetlana murmurs a compelling argument in Rose’s ear, nibbling as she does so, for waiting until afterwards. There are several tiers of incentive depending on Rose’s gameplay, different sexual acts according to whether Rose deserves to be rewarded for a win or comforted over a loss, certain body parts to be licked or stroked or utterly ignored in correspondence to points awarded and PIM.

Rose takes a nap after all and doesn’t even use her hand to expend any of her energy to help her fall asleep. When she wakes up, she dons her wrinkle-free suit, lucky shirt and all, and lets Svetlana drive her to the rink even though she’s capable of driving herself. Riding in the Porsche, listening to Svetlana hum off-key as she cruises through the suburbs, is all the luck she really needs.


The mood at TD Garden is ferocious; the vibe, when she enters the locker room, is nothing short of fucking feral. Rose skipped morning skate on the trainer’s recommendation that she give the aching tendons in her left knee as much reprieve as possible; she wonders if psychoactive drugs were slipped into the water bottles earlier that would account for the rabid energy amongst her teammates now. They’re grunting as they tape their sticks and check their gear, swearing in all five of their native languages — Marly drops his helmet, not even on his foot or anything, and shouts FUCK! in Finnish, which is a language she’s fairly certain he doesn’t speak. They go into the hallway to play sewerball and at one point, Connors headbutts the soccer ball with such force and such wild trajectory that he takes out an entire light fixture and glass and halogen rain down on half of their top six.

What the fuck is going on.

“What the fuck is going on?” she asks Marleau, after repeating it in her head half a dozen times. Schopenhauer has hollowed out a loaf of Wonder Bread and cracked a dozen raw eggs in, and is now attempting to bake it in the communal kitchen oven.

“It’s fucking Montreal, man,” Marleau says, then clicks his tongue and cracks his neck. “You know the kind of fuckers we’re dealing with over there. You fuckin’ know.”

She does. She understands in theory, but she’s understanding more in practice. The weight of their rivalry — of Montreal and Boston’s, of Shane and Ilya’s — is so heavy it might just make her knees buckle beneath it. Not since her first few games has Rose felt this degree of anxiety. It doesn’t help that the last time their two teams met on the ice, the game was so lackluster as to draw nearly a month of commentary. She needs to play well, play hard. There’s no other option.

Rose works her knee out on a foam roller, stretches and massages it like she’s seen the trainers do and tries to knead away some of the pressure that’s taut in every tendon of her. They check in on her and bring a stack of cold packs, setting her a timer and giving instructions to keep it icy cool until she dresses out. While she does, she checks her phone.

As expected, there are half a dozen from Ilya mothering her within an inch of her slim patience. Ice for knee, not heat, he reminds her needlessly. Focus during game. No distractions. Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. And then the last one, which makes her blink. If he speaks to you and you must say something back, remember to call him by his last name. Right. Fuck.

She’s spent the day mentally preparing to face Shane on the ice, but he won’t be Shane here. Hollander: a version of himself that Rose doesn’t really know. She’s seen him play games, watched a couple interviews, but that’s like saying anyone could truly know Rose Landry just from watching a press tour or a couple shitty superhero movies.

Rose is about to lock her phone when she sees another text, this one not from Ilya.


Jane: Would you be free after the game? I think that we should talk.


The leg she’s elevated drops suddenly, and the yoga ball it had been resting on bounces across the room, knocking over the water bottle of someone who says Hey man, what the fuck, which Rose ignores.

The Jane of it all has been a background fascination these past couple months — the femme fatale that Rose knows nothing about, except that she’s managed to break the heart of a man Rose had once upon a time naively thought was heartless. In any other time and place, this backstory would be fodder for a dozen brunches and canyon hikes worth of gossip; as it currently stands, Rose is living through the most fascinating set of circumstances that have ever happened to her, and Ilya’s love life is a long ways down the list of priorities. Still. Holy shit.

She screenshots the message and sends it to her group chat with Ilya and Svetlana, along with the message oh my god???? What do I say back???????? but doesn’t wait for an answer before she responds to Jane. Phone call or FaceTime? she says, hoping Jane will opt for the latter if only to sate Rose’s curiosity about what this girl looks like. That’s assuming Ilya even wants to hear Jane out.

Her phone heats rapidly in her hand; in the span of only a few seconds, Ilya calls, then Svetlana, and while Rose is fumbling to answer one or both of them, a text comes in from Jane.


Jane: Uhh in person? I can come to your place if that works for you. 


For a moment, Rose is baffled. Because if she knows one thing about Jane — and she does, literally, know one thing about Jane — it’s that she lives in Montreal. But then it hits her. So does every member of the Montreal Metros staff, who just so happen to be in Boston now.

This would explain a hell of a lot. The secrecy, the tumult and the torment. All around her, the Boston Raiders are riling themselves into a riot in preparation for the evening; Carmichael is ripping up a picture of the Metros’ head coach like he’s Sinead O’Connor and Desjardins is the pope. She imagines Ilya sneaking off to fuck one of the Metros’ trainers or an operations manager or something, which absolutely seems like the type of reckless shit he would do, and then imagines him being unceremoniously dumped by a woman he’d have to see, in some capacity, at least four times a season for the rest of his career. Rose’s heart aches for him a bit.

Her phone is still vibrating with calls, but Ilya’s right about Rose and always has been — she’s a deeply nosy person. She’ll answer in a moment and squeeze as much information from Svetlana as is possible, but that will be like extracting syrup from a stone, and Rose wants something. She googles Jane Montreal Metros staff and clicks the LinkedIn profile for the only result she sees. Jane Thompkins, senior manager of partner marketing, has been with the organization for 23 years and graduated high school in 1985, six years before Ilya was born. Well, okay — not her, then.

She navigates back to her messages — she really doesn’t have time for this, to be honest, especially when she could have done it months ago, but it occurs to her now that she can scroll up through Ilya and Jane’s texts, read or at least skim them from the beginning, and, ignoring the inevitability of dick and tit pics, glean some context for their relationship. She opens up the thread with Jane.

An icy chill drips down her spine like anesthesia, numb confusion, followed swiftly by adrenaline shot into the dead center of her being. Aside from the messages exchanged in the last few minutes, there are no texts. Nothing, not the message that Rose knows Jane sent the morning that they swapped, because Rose had fucking read it with her own eyes, and not anything before that, the messages Rose had been too preoccupied to pore over back when she’d had the opportunity. They’re gone into the cloud or the void or the ether, and how they got there is obvious. There’s only one person who’s had access to this phone other than her, and it’s the person calling her right now.

She declines Svetlana’s call. Rose has heard enough prepared monologues in her day, and whatever she and Ilya have rehearsed, she doesn’t want it. It feels strange that they’ve been hiding this from her, and bad, and she can’t understand why they would bother unless it was something she had every right to know.

What if I came to you instead? she texts Jane. Where are you staying? Wherever it is, she’ll go. Rose doesn’t know why this feels urgent all of a sudden, but they’re calling her and calling her the way she’s seen a trillion Hollywood PR agents do when they’re trying to get out in front of something, and Rose, who apparently can’t trust either of them, is desperate to break away and figure it out for herself.

She’ll need to take a cab to do that. A few texts to arrange a clandestine meeting, then she can duck out after the game and meet Jane face to face. Rose will figure out for herself just what it is that warrants keeping Jane a secret; she’ll wriggle her fingers into the thick of the problem and see if there isn’t some connective tissue that stretches between them.

And they are. They are connected. Only, it doesn’t take waiting until after the game to find out how.


Jane: We’re at the North Station Courtyard Marriott. I could probably get Hayden out of the room for an hour or two? But it would still be risky. Pretty much the whole team’s staying on our floor. I don’t know what excuse you’d make if one of them saw you in the hall or something.


The ice pack’s warmed to blood hot by now, condensation running down her thigh in frigid droplets. She can’t hear the timer going off, although it surely has by now. She can only hear what she thinks at first is the roar of the gathering crowd, out in the arena, and then realizes is blood rushing in her head.

The entire fucking time. And Rose is so, so stupid.

She isn’t mad yet. She’s too stunned for that. But the anger will come, and she’ll need it. In fact — Ilya’s calling again, and Rose drops her cold pack to the ground, slowly makes her way towards the bathroom, and feels the flame of anger begin to lick its way up her throat.

“Алло.” She answers the phone in a cool tone, shutting and locking the stall door behind her. Rose knows how to say fuck in Russian, but not fuck you, and anyway, hello is all she thinks she can pronounce without screaming.

“You know,” Ilya says dully.

“Yeah, well, it would have been fucking helpful to know sooner,” Rose snaps, spitting mad like a cobra lunging for an artery, and Ilya sighs.

“Maybe. Maybe not. What could we have done differently?”

“Don’t fucking do that,” Rose says, slamming her palm flat and hard against the stall door so that it shakes on its hinges. There’s the anger, finally. There’s the motivation. “Don’t act like it’s no big deal that you’ve lied to me for fucking months. Jesus Christ, Ilya. He’s my fucking boyfriend.”

Ilya laughs at that, genuine and loud enough to echo across the line and through the speaker, reverberating against the walls of the bathroom. “Yes, your boyfriend. Mmm. You seem very invested.”

And — no, Rose hasn’t been. She would admit that now, if she thought Ilya deserved her honest self. She has a fondness for Shane, but she’s been checked out for a while, and she can’t pretend even to herself that she hadn’t been relieved by the opportunity to escape the relationship without dealing with the ugly, messy truth of it. In her defense, the suspicion she’d had about Shane and their lack of chemistry, which is the whole reason she’d grown distant in the first place, seems to be confirming itself currently.

“Have you slept together?” she asks.

“Obviously.”

She hates the ease of his tone, so cavalier. She hates him. “Have you — since we swapped?”

There’s a pause, and then, less easily, “Yes.”

“Holy fuck, you are such a piece of shit.”

Ilya’s better at being angry than she is, quicker and more practiced. “Says the girl who has been fucking Svetlana in my bed with my cock for one month now!”

“Yeah, but see, the thing is—” Rose is shouting, but there are other people in the building, none of whom she can afford to have overhear this. She lowers her voice to a hiss. “The difference is, when I’m fucking Svetlana with your cock, at least she knows it’s me she’s fucking.”

“Yes,” Ilya sneers, so much meanness there. “Whereas when I’m fucking Shane with your cunt, he only wishes it was me instead.”

Rose takes a breath before she does something dumb and short sighted, like scream bloody murder or throw Ilya’s phone into the toilet. She thinks of what Balder says when she’s seething on the bench, when she’s fettering away their chances over some idiotic taunt or provocation that’s gotten her thrown into the box: when someone wants you mad, it’s for a reason.

She breathes again, four counts in through her nose, hold for seven, out through her mouth for eight. “This has really upset me. You hurt my feelings. You know that, and you’re making it worse on purpose. It’s shitty. Don’t do it.”

The line is quiet for a long time before Ilya replies. “Okay.”

“I’m not, like… heartbroken. I don’t know. I was planning to break up with him, and then we swapped before I had the chance. So.” Because it never really felt like romance or like lightning bugs or like spinning in a tea cup or all those other things that falling in love can feel like. Because it only ever felt like friendship and not much more. Because I thought that he was probably gay, she doesn’t add, because she doesn’t want to hear Ilya say oh, did you?

“Can you just—” Rose sinks down to sit on the toilet, shorts still on, which is gross, but whatever. “Help me understand this. You know I work really, really hard to see things the way you do, and right now, I can’t. Because you have about a zillion women in your phone begging to sleep with you and presumably just as many men, if you wanted that. Instead you’re choosing to hook up with the one person who’s probably the worst possible — I mean, Ilya, I don’t know. Is it that good? Is it worth it?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ilya says, his voice hollow. “I’m in love with him.”

“Ilya—” Rose breathes.

“Don’t.”

She clutches the phone like it’s his hand. “I’m not doing anything. I’m not saying anything. I’m trying to hear you.”

“There’s nothing to say. We shouldn’t be talking about this.”

She wonders where Ilya is, what he’s doing. In the hotel room, maybe packing the bags she keeps nagging him about. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to leave.

“I thought we were in this together.” The jagged edge of anger is eroding, washed smooth by somber waves. “I wish you had talked to me. I thought we trusted each other.”

“We do,” Ilya says quickly, fiercely. “I trust you. But Shane does not, and it was never just my secret to keep.”

Rose doesn’t say anything.

“I have been Rose Landry for six, seven weeks now, and still in that time he has not told me the truth,” Ilya points out. “What makes you think he would want me sharing it with you?”

She’d thought, back before, that she might attempt to talk to Shane about this sort of thing. The gay thing. She’d written herself a little script and all. The lines seem trite now, pithy affirmations offered to a total stranger who she’d hoped might at least become a friend.

The bathroom door bangs open; Rose freezes. A fist thumps at the door of her stall. “What are you, giving birth in there Roz?” Marleau. “We’ve got a fuckin’ game, man. Wipe your ass and get out here.”

Rose kicks the door as hard as she can, watches as Marleau’s feet jump back, and bellows, “Five fucking minutes!”

“Jesus,” Marly mutters, but he scuttles from the bathroom.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Ilya says, sounding so scared and so brave that it makes her fold completely on herself.

“I would never do that. I mean, to anyone, but like — Ilya, I would never do that to you.” It’s debatable whether he can even hear her. Her face is resting on her knees, the words dropping off into the toilet. “We’re friends. You’re like, my best friend.”

She knows that Ilya can, in fact, hear her, because there’s a wet snuffling from his end of the line. “Svetlana is my best friend, actually.”

“Fine. That’s fair. I’ll be number two.”

Ilya sniffs; she hears him swallow a good deal of phlegm. “What about Marly?”

“Marly can go fuck himself. Shut up.”

Ilya chuckles. Rose thinks she can almost feel him do it, like when she hugs someone taller than her and they talk or laugh and she can feel the vibrations in their chest. Actually, though, it’s another text.

“He just messaged again,” she reports grimly, not sure how Ilya will take it. Badly, once he realizes she’s gone rogue. “Hold on, I’m gonna send you a screenshot of the conversation. Don’t hate me.”

“How could I hate you? You are my second most best friend.” Then he takes a moment to read through the exchange, including the new message from Shane which reads Maybe you can pick me up and we can drive somewhere private and talk in the car? “I take that back. I definitely hate you.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose says, really meaning it. “I was curious. It’s a sickness. And I was pissed, because you lied to me—”

“I wasn’t lying, Rose,” Ilya says, sounding very tired. “I was acting.”

“You can’t see me right now, but I want you to know that I rolled my eyes.”

“I figured.”

Rose chews his bottom lip, then feels bad for it. They’ve taken so many liberties in each other’s bodies by now. They should have been more careful. “The best option is to have him come to the house, right? Going to the hotel would be really fucking stupid.”

She hears him take a sip of something, then choke and splutter in shock. He’s so fucking dramatic; there’s a non-zero chance he took a drink expressly for the purpose of a spit-take. “Meeting up is not an option.”

“So, what,” she laughs, “you’re just gonna ghost this guy who you’re supposedly in love with?”

“I have done it before,” Ilya says, blasé. “Was not a big deal. We were fine.”

“Oh, wow, yeah. The situation sounds super functional.”

“You don’t know the situation, Rose Landry,” Ilya snaps. “Exactly my point. Listen to me this time: seeing Hollander is not an option.”

“It’s not an option not to!” Rose argues. “Ilya, he one hundred percent is the reason that we swapped. If I can — I mean, what did Svetlana say? That you and Jane were… fuckbuddies? Fuckrivals, I guess? Setting that aside, because obviously it’s like — I don’t have time to process that right now — what, you wanted to get serious, and he broke your heart, right?”

Ilya sniffs again.

“What if I could fix that?” Twenty minutes ago, she was furious, feeling jilted and betrayed, but — over what, exactly? A guy she’d kind of liked and had already moved on from having something maybe much more real with someone else she cares about, albeit in a different way? Someone she’s pretty sure he’d be good with, if she knows either of them as well as she thinks she does? “You still want him, right? This whole time — like, Ilya, you’ve been dating him. For months now. You’ve been happy with him.”

“He has not been so happy with me, evidently,” Ilya says, sour, mean, and miserable.

Rose tries to sort this out in her head. She’d worked on a project once, a teenage rom-com take on a gender-swapped Cyrano de Bergerac; there’s a clunky verse in the rap battle halfway through the second act that seems to resonate here. “He wants you, Ilya. He doesn’t know how to have you.”

Ilya says something in Russian. It sounds defeated.

“If he comes over tonight, and we talk — Ilya, you could wake up in your body tomorrow morning. I could wake up in mine. And you could be with the person that I think you’re supposed to be with. Is that not what you want?”

“Ah, yes, okay, and what will you say to him, exactly?” His voice rises, and rises more. “You think you can improvise on set of sixth film when you have not seen the first five? We have eight, nine years of history. I know you are some big budget, high up on the call sheet actress, but you do not begin to know — I do not even know what you could say. If there were words, if I knew them, I would have said them myself, yes?” He’s worked himself up; it takes several deep and shaky breaths to calm himself again back to the dull melancholy of earlier. “Besides which, if he thinks he is alone with me for even a minute, he will try to fuck me. And I do not think you are equipped to manage Hollander on his knees, begging and drooling for it. No offense.”

Rose snorts. “Presumably, I would simply… not have sex with him.”

“Exactly,” Ilya sighs. “He’ll never buy it.”

The door to the restroom whips open, less violent this time but just as pointed. “Rozanov, you good in there?” Jim, the assistant coach. Fuck. “Do we need medical intervention, or are you gonna yank your nuts outta the bowl and gear the fuck up?”

“I’ll be right out,” Rose answers with a modicum of respect. “Sorry for delay. I am okay in here.” She waits until the bathroom door shuts to whisper, “Ilya—”

“I heard. You should go.”

For the rest of her life, whenever she smells urinal cakes — which admittedly won’t be often — she’ll think of the pity she felt for Ilya in this moment.

“Ilya…” she says again. She wishes they were having this conversation in another time and place. “Are you okay?”

She hears him inhale through his nose, hold the breath, then push it out through his mouth. “Not really,” he admits. “Big win against Montreal could help, a little.”

Rose promises she’ll try, because there’s nothing she can promise more than that. They say their furtive goodbyes and then Rose hauls ass to the locker room where the 20 other Raiders are already dressed out and looking at her like her dick and her nose have swapped places — curious, confused, and compelled.

She tugs her shit on, base layers and jock strap, pads and jersey, leg tape and helmet and gloves and skates, all these things she’s stopped thinking of as a costume and begun to think of as a uniform. While she changes, which she can do now without thinking, she thinks instead about these past months from Ilya’s perspective. The conclusion that she comes to is: he’s right. There’s no way for her to talk to Shane tonight. There’s too much that she doesn’t know, even when it’s been right in front of her.

And it could be that he wants to make amends with Ilya, but what if it’s the opposite? It’s possible that Ilya, in her body, has become more compatible with Shane than any other version of either of them, and that Shane’s asking to come over only to say his goodbyes once and forever so that he can commit to what he thinks he’s finally found. If that’s the case, Ilya doesn’t deserve to hear it secondhand; he doesn’t deserve to hear it at all.

She skates out for warm ups. They’re blasting Pat Benatar over the speakers, and the boys are already on the ice, hooting and hollering and fucking around. A visiting Montreal fan bangs the fuck out of the glass as she passes through the tunnel, and Rose, distracted, startles; the girl is holding up a homemade sign on which she’s written in big bubble letters, METRO-SEXUAL AND PROUD. Rose would toss her a puck if she didn’t think the girl would chuck it back and try to take her out.

A few laps around their side of the rink, head down. She’s been breaking in these skates for a week’s worth of practices, but it’s the first time she’s worn them in a game. She wants the old ones back, even with the ankles going out. She bobs and weaves between the boys crowded back behind the net, stealing a puck that Marly’s been lazily poking at and getting a stick to the ass in retaliation. Rose spanks the puck into the goal, then drifts away.

He’s over there. One among the red and blue blurs laughing, stretching, shooting, passing. Rose tosses another few pucks around, mostly towards the net, plus a slow one smack dab into Connors’ groin. Shane wouldn’t come over here and try to talk to her, would he? It seems wild and reckless, out of character for him, but then again, she evidently hasn’t had a strong read on the character. There are lots of things he does she wouldn’t have imagined.

Rose maneuvers a puck up and down the red line, peekaboo from the left side of her blade to the right, leading it along at a steady pace like she’s walking a particularly spoiled Pekingese. She chances a glance to the visitors’ side of the rink, and— when she does, Shane is already looking at her. Staring, and then, to her horror, skating closer.

It’s a truly laughable notion that Ilya thought he could keep this a secret longer than tonight. The second her eyes meet Shane’s, Ilya’s heart begins to race rabbit-quick; he skates up closer and Ilya’s tongue feels too big for his mouth. Rose feels his body flood with anxiety, anticipation, arousal. This is muscle memory. By the time Shane pulls up, dusting her with a fine powder, she’s panting like a Pavlovian dog and his voice is like a bell ringing in her ears. God, Ilya is well trained. He doesn’t have to think twice; wanting Shane is second nature to him now.

“Are you—” Shane says, and cuts himself off. He taps at his own shoulder pad to indicate the place a recording device would sit if she were mic’ed up.

Rose shakes her head, looks back down and pretends the puck is doing something particularly interesting. Sit, she prompts it. Stay. Roll over.

“Did you get my text? About tonight?” Shane asks, eyes scanning the stands with feigned interest.

Rose nods.

“Okay, cool. Yeah.” He’s squinting like he’s trying to make out the phone number on an ad for an accident attorney, barely acknowledging Rose at all. They could be talking about the weather, for all anyone watching knows. How many times have he and Ilya had these secret, loaded conversations? “Is your place good? Or did you want to—”

“We have a game to play, Hollander.” She channels the Ilya she first met: distant and disdainful; captivating and contemptible. “Unless you have decided to forfeit already. That is a shame. I was looking forward to beating you.”

She says it with the easy, vicious forcefulness she’d used to slap that puck into Connors’ dick, but Shane doesn’t reel back or really even react. Staring off into the distance, he has a stony sort of expression which he holds for so long that it begins to unnerve her. “Later, then,” he says eventually, then skates away.

Rose doesn’t know what later means, except that whatever this is obviously isn’t over. There’s a stick between her legs, a poke check to the puck she’d forgotten she was fiddling with, and then the stick comes up to tap her gooch.

“Still got the bubble guts, brother?” Marleau murmurs in her ear, sounding genuinely concerned. Rose leans back into his arms, like a trust fall, and lets him drag her around the ice in a slow semi-circle.

Shane is over there on the other side, crouched down between the hash marks with his knees spread like a frog on a lily pad. And Rose flicks her stick in the air, swats a couple pucks like flies, and she tries not to look at him, but she can’t help it.

It was short lived, but it was nice. Being together. Shane was a good boyfriend and a good guy; there’s a dozen reasons that it never would have worked between them, only one or two of which have to do with human sexuality, but god, she wants him to be happy. She really does.

Back in the locker room, she doles out her usual pre-game affirmations — crass encouragements and vague threats, helmet taps that can only exacerbate the highly transmissible CTE all hockey players seem to be carriers for. The boys are rabid; Scoops is foaming at the mouth literally, not figuratively, but she doesn’t have time to worry about that. They skate out onto the ice.

During the anthem, hand over her heart, head down, she sneaks a glance through her visor. Shane is watching her, eyes as sharp as pinpricks in the dim light of the arena. Well, he’s Canadian. What else does he have to be doing, while the Americans whoop over the rockets’ red glare? The intensity of his gaze unsettles her, though. This isn’t a side of him she knows.

They take the first face-off. The linesman, a man called Fergus Bowden (Rose remembers his name only because Ilya had once donated money on his behalf to a glaucoma foundation after a playoff game he’d called, since apparently the ref had some condition that meant he couldn’t fucking see) gives them a series of stern warnings before he drops the puck, most of which, Rose knows, Ilya would ignore.

Shane wins the face-off. Not because Rose is off her game, or isn’t locked in — actually, the chance to disassociate and allow Ilya’s body to take over is welcome, right now. The thing is, Shane’s simply a better player. And she’s watched him play so many times, but never with such a deep understanding of the game, and never so closely, so intimately.

Ilya is the faster skater, and Rose wallops the puck in just the way he always does, snatching possession and bullying her way toward the Metros’ net. But Shane is like — if Rose and Ilya have somehow magically swapped places, then maybe it could also be true that Shane has his own fantastical gift, like the ability to see five seconds into the future. It’s embarrassing how ineffective Rose’s strategies become. Shane reads her maneuvers as easily as he might read How Now Brown Cow; it’s all child’s play to him. At one point on her second shift, Rose goes to deke around him and Shane actually laughs. It’s kind of infuriating, and it also explains quite a bit of why Ilya felt so desperate to fuck him in the first place. That’s the sort of thing she can see him liking.

The Raiders aren’t fucked, per se, but they struggle to keep pace. It doesn’t help that Shane seems to be locked on to Rose like a homing missile, pursuing her up and down the ice with a frightening degree of focus. He takes a break toward the end of the first period to strip the puck from Marly and bury it in the back of the net, but even in his modest celebration, his eyes manage to find Rose. The more she shirks him, hiding behind her wingers and defensemen, the more obsessed he becomes. Rose wonders if this has always been a part of it, whatever it is between them, and if so, how long their cat and mouse has gone on undetected. The guise of competition is such an easy cover; he’s fighting for the puck, but really, Shane seems desperate for her attention.

During the second period, he does this with brute force. Rather than tracking her from a distance, he muscles up into her space, elbowing in and thrusting her against the boards, pinning her there with his breath hot in her ear as they battle for the puck trapped between the blades of their skates. Frankly, it’s more action than Rose got from him in the whole of their relationship. And yet she dodges it, she shakes him off and tries to elude, to evade, and that only seems to make him want it more. There’s a pileup in the crease — not intentional, not interference, just a couple of d-men who don’t seem to realize their goalie can’t do shit if they’re screening his whole field of vision when Hammersmith comes crashing in — and Shane is toppled onto Rose. He doesn’t get up, holds her there. “You gonna run away all night?” he pants, close enough for only her to hear. “Don’t want it bad enough?”

Rose doesn’t respond; she swats him with a glove where he’s got her pinned and pushes him back until she can get up at least to her knees. The lack of a response must rattle him, because Shane shoves her now, like he’s hoping that she’ll shove back, and when she doesn’t, he rips her helmet off and stares at her, flushed. “Give it up, Hollander,” Rose mutters guiltily. This isn’t what he deserves; this isn’t how any of this should go. But the words are lost in the scrum anyway, bodies twirling and fists flailing and whistles bleating out.

Shane’s thrown in time out. The Boston crowd is more electric than she’s ever seen it, shrieking in ecstasy. A fan tries to pour their drink into the penalty box, douse him while he’s down; they’re ejected swiftly, but not before soda splashes on Shane’s helmet and he tears it off, flicking the moisture from his hair like a mad dog shaking off.

“What’s his damage, man?” Marly butts up to Rose on the bench, ripping open a packet of electrolyte jelly and sucking it through his teeth. “Did you fuck his sister before the game or something? Jesus.”

Panting helplessly, Rose replies. “He doesn’t have a sister.”

Cowed by his internment in the penalty box, Shane revises his strategy in the third period. He skates with less frustration, less overt violence, but no less determination. The Raiders play a decent game, but it’s no use. Even the Metros seem in awe of the clinic their captain is putting on. Simply put, it’s the best hockey Rose has seen played in her twenty-something years as a fan and her nearly two months in the league; she’d like to get out of his way, if she could, sit on the bench or even in the stands and just appreciate his work.

Shane is showing off. The jeering, heckling Bostonians are so vain as to think it’s all for them, like it’s the rivalry that drives him, but they’re wrong. Some forces, evidently, are stronger than rivalry. He plays like this to show off for his — what? His boyfriend? Ex? His lover, his situationship, some guy he hate fucked for a few months or the man he’s maybe been in love with for years? Rose doesn’t have much more context after getting off the phone with Ilya than she did before, except proof that Ilya feels strongly for Shane, and now, watching him slice his way towards a fucking hat trick, proof that Shane feels at least something in return.

5-2, in favor of the Metros. The Raiders clomp back down the tunnel slightly shell shocked. No one is to blame, really. Sometimes, that’s just the game.


Sunny 🌞: I’m assuming you saw that?

Selene 🌚: yes

Sunny 🌞: The situation isn’t ideal. Clearly. I have zero clue how the fuck I’d navigate any sort of conversation with him and I think we have established that I’m not THAT good a fucking actress

Sunny 🌞: but he obviously wants you

Sunny 🌞: you’re seriously telling me to do nothing? Even if it means maybe missing out on whatever this is/could be? Even if it’s how we get our bodies back???

Selene 🌚: Hollander does not know what he wants

Sunny 🌞: maybe

Sunny 🌞: but you do

Selene 🌚 has messages silenced

Rose takes her time changing. She showers off the sweat, standing in the icy stream of water and staring blankly into space for so long that Marly says, “Hey, not that I’m shy or anything, but you wanna take a picture of my balls for posterity or just keep looking at ‘em?”

She knows Svetlana’s waiting in the car outside. Maybe patiently, maybe not. She will have spoken to Ilya by now. They probably got on the phone seconds after he and Rose hung up and have been talking about this whole thing, this whole fucked up situation, talking about Rose for hours now. Best friends, the two of them. Phone calls at all hours in Russian, texts that pop up on Svetlana’s lock screen in Cyrillic that she doesn’t bother trying to hide, because why would she? What could Rose have gleaned from that?

She knows how it will go, when she gets to the car. Toweling off so slowly that she’s effectively air drying, Rose runs lines in her head, preparing for the scene.

Rose will throw her bag in the trunk. Ilya’s bag. She’ll climb into the front passenger seat, try and fail not to slam the door shut, and Svetlana will feel the tension mounting but remain close-lipped and silent. You knew? Rose will ask, staring straight ahead into the black tar void of the parking lot. The whole time?

Next, Svetlana will choose her words carefully just like she always does. I did, she says, and they’ll sit with that for a minute. There will be foley added overtop to underscore the silence that stretches between them, a John Williams symphony consisting of street lamps buzzing and crickets chirping incongruously in the dead of winter. You’re mad? she’ll ask, like it isn’t obvious. Like it isn’t justified.

Can you blame me? Rose will snap. Now she’ll look straight at Svetlana. Mid shot will switch to close-up to show Ilya’s jaw clenched, his eyes damp with Rose’s angry tears.

Can you blame me? Svetlana will reply. Close-up on her now, poised and placid, and it will make Rose feel all the more foolish. He’s my best friend. How could I have told you? I’m doing this for him. You know that. All of this is for him.

When Rose has her lines down, she shuffles to the parking lot, nodding to the custodian she passes on the way. The Porsche is one of only a few vehicles remaining in the lot, parked close to the side door like it always is after a game. Rose comes around the back; Svetlana pops the trunk. Rose throws her bags in. Then she climbs in the front passenger seat, trying and failing not to slam the door shut behind her.

“I’m sorry,” Svetlana says the second the door closes. Her eyes are pink, and the hair around her face is frizzed like she’s been running hands through it, breaking up her curls.

Rose doesn’t mean to notice these things. She isn’t supposed to have looked over yet. But then again, that wasn’t supposed to be Svetlana’s line.

“I felt like shit,” she continues when Rose can’t summon the improvisational skills to say anything in return. “I felt fucking guilty. It wouldn’t have been fair to them for me to tell you, but it wasn’t fair to you to — I didn’t like hiding it. You told me so many things, and we—” she cuts off with a choked noise like she can’t quite catch her breath, and Rose unbuckles, stretching over the gear shift to pull Svetlana towards her, to rub the back of her neck. Svetlana shakes her head, composing herself. “I try to be a good friend. You know that sort of thing is important to me. And I was, to him, but not to you.”

“I’m not mad,” Rose says. She finds, hearing herself deliver the ad lib, that it rings true. “My feelings are hurt. I feel stupid. Really fucking stupid, obviously. But what were you supposed to do? He’s your best friend. He’s like a brother to you. You’re doing this for him. It wouldn’t have — it’s what you said. It wasn’t yours to tell.”

Svetlana’s eyes narrow like they always do when she’s trying to figure something out. “I guess.”

“You guess? I’m agreeing with you.” She buckles back in. Forget her lines escaping her, she doesn’t even know what page they’re on. First Svetlana is apologizing, unprompted, and now she seems annoyed and supercilious. Everything’s happening out of sequence. “I don’t know what the problem is with that. This conversation obviously isn’t going how I thought it would.”

There’s a role reversal, a revision from the earlier pages. It’s Svetlana who snaps on Rose, her pretty jaw clenched and angry. “Please stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Scripting all our conversations beforehand. It’s obvious when you do it. It makes me feel crazy.” Her whole demeanor is hardened. “You decide what you think I’ll say before I even have a chance to say it, and then it’s like you’re responding to a conversation I never got to be a part of.”

Therapists have mentioned this to her. Ex-boyfriends. But those ex-boyfriends were manipulating her, and the therapist — well, Rose fell off of seeing him. Her travel schedule made it difficult, and what was the point discussing things in circles when she could make just as much headway on her own? “I think before I speak,” she says, defense prepared for this sort of thing. “Maybe more people should do that.”

Svetlana’s shaking her head before the words are even out of Rose’s mouth. “No, that’s not it, come on. ‘He’s like a brother to you. You’re doing this for him.’” The words thrown back in Rose’s face are delivered in a deep grumble, some mockery of Ilya’s voice that Rose still occasionally forgets she speaks in. “You’re like a director, feeding me my motivation. Stop that, please. It’s not fair. I don’t like it.”

There’s quiet. There’s no score that swells to emphasize whatever it is they’re feeling. No foley artists just off screen so they can edit in some sort of atmosphere. The car is fairly soundproof, and inside, it’s still. It’s quiet.

“I’ll try not to,” Rose says. “I’m sorry.”

“You told me that you do that,” Svetlana says. She looks tired, as tired as Rose feels, and Rose wishes they were home, the place she’s come to think of now as home, laying in bed in blissful quietude. “You said you’ve had a problem with boyfriends, where you dream up so much in your head that they can’t possibly live up to it. Me too, okay? I can’t live up to it either. I can’t say the perfect thing all the time, I can’t even fight with you the perfect way you want me to. You have to wait and let me mess up on my own and fix it how I want to. Or else this isn’t going to work.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose repeats softly. Or else this isn’t going to work, Svetlana had said, and Rose wants to ask, Are we a this, now? Are we something that you want to make work? Could we, do you think? She doesn’t. She’s exhausted, and she’d rather talk about it over breakfast in the morning than in this fucking sports car wiped out of her mind this late at night. “Do you still want to — can we go home?”

Svetlana drums her fingers on the steering wheel, opens her mouth and closes it again. “Did he talk to you?”

“Ilya?”

“Hollander.”

They can talk about it now, now that everyone knows everything. Well, the three of them. Shane’s the real rube here, the only slowpoke who hasn’t yet caught up with all the variables of the equation. Maybe that’s why it feels like a minor violation to share it. “Briefly.”

“What did he say? And what did you say back?” The irony is, for all Rose’s attempts to predict and control the dialogue, Svetlana reads Rose better than Rose has ever read her back. “I know it may feel private. It is. But it’s privacy he’s sharing with someone else, you know that. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay. Talk to Ilya, at least.”

Rose sighs. It’s nothing worth keeping from Svetlana, really. Nothing intimate, except perhaps that tiny hopeful look on Shane’s face as he caught her eye across the rink that Rose felt so convinced she shouldn’t have had the right to see. “I was stretching before the game. He skated up to me and asked if we could talk later. I told him to focus and keep his head in the game. Later, during the whole bullshit in the second period and again when we were getting off the ice, he tried to get my attention and say something, and I ignored him.” She pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket, handing it off to Svetlana. “He texted when the game finished, I think. I didn’t open it.”

Svetlana’s thumb flies through the passcode and to Jane’s thread; she studies it, looking neither worried nor relieved. “Same thing as earlier, it seems. He asks if Ilya’s free to meet up and talk.” She takes a screenshot, copies it into the thread labeled Selene. “I’m guessing Ilya won’t want to reply.”

She switches back to her own phone, texting Ilya with a rhythmic urgency that lulls Rose into something like calm. Maybe she’s too tired to worry about any of this. After all, it isn’t hers to worry about.

Five or ten minutes pass, a response comes in from Ilya that Rose doesn’t ask to read, and finally, Svetlana turns the key in the ignition. Her slim, manicured hands flex against the steering wheel. “Kiss?” she asks, and Rose obliges, leaning once again across the seats and melting into her.

There’s not much traffic on the way home. A little in the city, rowdy revelers celebrating something that has nothing to do with Rose, a Tuesday night bachelorette party, and then woods and probably ticks carrying Lyme disease when they get further out. They cruise along the winding roads between the West End and the suburbs the way deft hands caress the curves of a familiar body, comfortable and easy.

Svetlana is not a nervous person, but she asks in a cautious fashion, as though she’s not sure what Rose’s reaction will be, “What did you think was happening between them? Did you not — did you never suspect?”

What, when they went out on dates three or four times a week and paparazzi caught Ilya doe-eyed and affectionate, curled close to Shane’s side as they strolled the snowy streets of Montreal? Or when Rose had sent a list of suggestions for what to get Shane as a Christmas gift and Ilya had texted back, it’s okay RL, I have already taken care of this, along with a photo of a mound of presents? Things like the first edition of a biography of Peter the Great, an updated model of Shane’s existing smartwatch, a massage gun and a coffee mug with a silly saying that she couldn’t make heads or tails of, which was apparently an inside joke between the two of them. Since when had Shane and Ilya started having their own jokes? Since when had Ilya learned to wrap gifts, as a matter of fact — she could see in the photograph that he was doing it himself, had paper and scissors and ribbons and tape peeking in from out of frame, and didn’t that sound any alarms?

“I thought—” Rose scrubs a hand through her hair and sighs. “I knew Ilya liked him, obviously. Or, didn’t hate him at least. I guess I figured it was like… Stockholm syndrome.”

“Mmm.”

“Or, like — Ilya was horny, and there was a hot, nice guy around all the time, and he was just having fun. I didn’t know it was a thing.” They’re close to home, but Rose rolls down a window for some fresh air which she quickly contaminates with a cigarette. “I’ve kind of been more focused on my own stuff.”

It would be nice if Ilya had a dog to come home to, or a goldfish or something. Another heartbeat in the house, something to ease the tension. Rose slouches into the kitchen and fills her empty, twisting belly while standing hunched over the kitchen counter; there’s a pound of sliced roast beef from the deli wrapped in wax paper and she eats it one sheaf of meat at a time, staring off into the distance. Svetlana moves in circles all around her, flicking on some lights and flipping off others, sucking on a fruit and yogurt popsicle and accomplishing domestic tasks like ripping up junk mail and tossing it into the recycling bin.

She wonders how this whole scene appears to Ilya, as he watches from his distant perch. Like Rose is horny, or she’s lonely, and Svetlana is this hot, kind, incredible person who’s always around, and maybe Rose is having fun, making lemonade from lemons. She’s never said anything to suggest otherwise, but then again, he’s never asked, just like she’d never asked him.

Whether or not she and Svetlana are a thing or whether they’re simply passing the time together in the most enjoyable fashion they can think of — in the wake of revelations made tonight, that conversation seems to butt up against them both, insistent. And as they putter around, too wired to go to bed, too tired to do anything else, it feels like they’re on the precipice of talking about it, but they don’t. Likely a wise decision. If Rose can’t keep her head on or think straight enough sort through the tangle of emotions that have battered her up and down the ice tonight, can’t take a fucking second to figure out what it is she needs rather than what she wants, it’s better that they wait until the morning. Cooler heads, calmer hearts.

Rose steps out on the deck to smoke one last time before she brushes her teeth for bed; Svetlana follows, but then the lighter impotently clickclickclicks, bone dry, and she turns back to the house. In a flash, she’s back, barbecue lighter in hand. “Couldn’t fucking find—” she mumbles, unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, and a crisp knock on the front door startles it from her mouth.

They look at the house, then at each other. By mutual, unspoken agreement, they wait in frozen silence, like prey do when they hear the snapping of a branch that harkens bigger game. Another knock sounds, loud and blunt like the cleared throat of one summoning the courage to speak up.

Neither of them is air-headed enough to ask, Who could that be, calling at this hour? “What do we…” Rose whispers, trailing off.

Shh, Svetlana indicates, forefinger to her mouth, eyes flicking through an invisible set of outcomes. She thinks a moment, and there’s another, feebler knock that softens Rose with pity. Maybe Svetlana, too. She holds a flat hand up to Rose, the gesture animal trainers on set use to tell dog actors Stay, and then Svetlana turns and goes back in the house.

She leaves the sliding patio door open, presumably so Rose will be able to eavesdrop. From the deck, Rose can see into the entry hall, and in the entry hall there’s a long, tall mirror propped at such an angle that when Svetlana opens the front door, blocking Rose from sight, Rose can see the reflection of Shane’s startled face.

“Is— hi,” he says, glancing over his shoulder and then back to Svetlana as though to check if he’s been dropped off at the wrong house, or like maybe Ilya’s crouched down in the bushes to jump out and surprise him. “Is Rozanov — could I talk to him?”

“He’s occupied right now,” Svetlana says, curt but cordial.

“Alright. No, yeah. Of course.” Shane peers past Svetlana, maybe considering making a mad dash and ferreting out Ilya from whatever hidey-hole he’s in. Rose shrinks further back into the shadows, just in case.

“Is there something else that I can help you with?” Svetlana asks, cool and genteel. “A message I can pass along to him?”

Maybe it’s her accent that tips him off, or her beauty, or some other reputation that precedes her. He seems to finally realize that she’s there, and at the same time, recognizes her. “You’re Svetlana, right?” There is apparently no limit to the times that Rose can find herself surprised tonight; it boggles her mind that Shane knows who Svetlana is, and she’s madly curious to find out what, exactly, he knows of her.

Svetlana, haughty in the right circumstances but mostly just well-mannered, extends a hand to shake Shane’s, which he does with visible trepidation. “Shane Hollander. Well played tonight. I am a fan of your work.”

Rose doesn’t know the exact rationale for why Shane and Ilya aren’t together, but an obvious and logical part of it clicks into place as fear seems to strike him like errant lightning. Shane isn’t out — how many athletes are? — and he’s just been recognized, the hockey version of him, the Canadian hero and the captain of the Montreal Metropolitans, standing on another man’s doorstep in the deep, dark hours of the night.

“I’m here for — it’s a hockey thing,” he flounders. “A hockey union thing. I’m — we’re the board members for our teams, in the player’s association. There’s a — an update about the 2019 expansion process. That I heard about. And the. Um. Salary cap.”

It would be funny if it wasn’t so depressing, stuck right in that sympathetic spot that pathos plays upon which makes audiences clutch their hearts and smile sadly. Rose doesn’t know much about the MLHPA, but she’s fairly certain Ilya isn’t even the Raiders’ union rep. That feels like a Connors sort of job.

“Sorry to have shown up like this,” Shane mumbles on, fiddling with his phone, maybe scurrying to pull up Lyft or Uber so he can make a hasty getaway or maybe just tapping aimlessly for an excuse to avoid eye contact. “You can tell him I was here. Or not—”

In one smooth, quick motion, Svetlana reaches forward to clasp a manicured hand to Shane’s shoulder, drawing him close. Rose can’t hear what she whispers into Shane’s ear; whatever is, it’s brief. The work of only two or three seconds, and then she’s pulling back, smoothing a hand down the wrinkles of Shane’s shirt.

His expression is inscrutable to Rose. Slightly wide eyed, graven faced, he nods at Svetlana. “Alright. Will do.”

“I will let Ilya know you stopped by,” Svetlana says, and Shane mumbles a pleasantry of some sort in return, then jogs off into the darkness where hopefully a car is waiting.

He disappears from Rose’s line of sight once he’s left the doorstep, but Svetlana stands in the open doorway for a good long minute, staring at what must be a Shane-shaped shadow until it finally melts away into the night. Then she closes the door, locks it, strides into the kitchen to grab a bottle of sparkling water, letting the fridge door slam behind her, and stalks upstairs without so much as a glance back to Rose.

When Rose gets a knot of dread in her stomach — her own stomach — it’s more like a snake, squirming and worming until she has the chance to straighten things out. For Ilya, it’s a clenching, leaden thing, heavy and almost always hopeless. She trudges up to the bedroom feeling so weighted down by it that she can barely move her feet.

“I might sleep in my room tonight,” Svetlana says, though she’s sitting half-stripped at the edge of the bed, posture perfect, eyes unfocused, and makes no effort to get up. Rose hasn’t thought of that guest room as Svetlana’s in some time; they’ve spent every night together in this bed since the first time, sweating sweetly in each other’s arms.

“It’s up to you,” Rose says, since technically it is. “What did you say to Shane?”

“Nothing,” says Svetlana, which is obviously untrue. “I feel very sorry for him. This whole…” There’s a leaking sigh of carbonation as she uncaps her water, and she swigs at it, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Everything about it.”

“Ilya and I swapping?” Rose asks. She feels stupid, stupider when Svetlana looks up at her and it’s clear that isn’t what she meant at all.

“Before that.”

“Yeah. Right.” Rose is still in the suit she wore to the rink, feeling uncomfortable, not sure whether to sit or stand or what exactly the fuck is going on, or why this situation between these two men needs to keep putting damper after damper on their evening. She can tug her tie off at the very least, tossing it in the vague direction of the closet and not giving much of a fuck where it lands. In the parking lot, Svetlana had said that it wasn’t all about Ilya, but evidently it is. “Ilya sounded pretty fucked up on the phone, earlier.”

It doesn’t seem like Svetlana’s listening, although it could just be that Rose isn’t saying anything that warrants a response. By the time she speaks again, Rose has hung up her suit jacket and stripped off her belt and pants.

“Восемь лет без единого разговора.” Svetlana takes another sip of water and then leaves the bottle on the nightstand (so she does intend to sleep here then) and heads into the bathroom. “А теперь посмотрите на них.”

Rose has had it. She follows Svetlana into the bathroom and stands behind her while she washes her face in the sink. “Are you talking to yourself? Or do you expect me to have miraculously gained Russian fluency overnight?” All evening she’s been listening to the mumbled half-admissions of other people too emotionally constipated to actually tell her the whole complete and honest truth. It’s like she’s being teased and tortured, drip fed information and expected to lap it up eagerly.

Svetlana shoots Rose a sharp look in the mirror. “They’ve been dancing around each other for eight years now, and they’ve never had an actual conversation about the way they feel. That is what I said. And now one of them wants to, and it’s possible he’s missed his chance.” She splashes water on her skin, elbows dripping onto the countertop, and pats her face dry with a towel when it’s been scrubbed pinky clean. “Does that not make you feel something?”

“Of course it does.” Rose doesn’t think she’s ever been accused of a lack of empathy; quite the opposite. There’s a reason she’s an actress. She’s never shied away from her feelings or the feelings of others. The latter of those has the tendency to move her even more than the former, as a matter of fact. “I’m the one who wanted them to — to deal with it. Before I even knew there was an it to deal with.”

Svetlana slathers her face in a collagen cream, expression pulling this way and that as she massages it into her cheekbones, into the space between her brows. “What about us?”

“What about us?” Rose asks.

“We haven’t talked about things. Our things. We just go, go. We don’t sit and discuss it. Who knows if we are on the same page?”

“I didn’t think you wanted to!” Rose says, frustrated.

“So what if I didn’t? Make me. Push me.” It’s infuriating, how casually Svetlana says it. Like it’s obvious that this is Rose’s job. “Look at the alternative.”

“Okay.” Rose rolls her eyes. She wouldn’t have rolled her eyes, wouldn’t have huffed and sighed about it, if they’d waited until morning to discuss this, but here they are. “Let’s talk. Would you like to sit down?”

“Fine,” Svetlana says, although she doesn’t wait until they’re seated on the bed to begin speaking. “When you tell me stories about your life, there is a pattern that I notice. You seem to develop intimacies in short, intense bursts, and then suddenly you both move on, even if neither of you has done anything wrong. This concerns me.”

“Okay, fuck me. Jesus. Are we talking about you and me, or am I getting psychoanalyzed?”

“Both, of course.” There’s a silence, and then Svetlana offers up a withering look. “That was a joke. You can laugh.”

Rose frowns. “Ha.” While Svetlana’s observation may be true, it hadn’t occurred to Rose to draw inferences from it, or that such a thing might be identified as a character deficit. “Okay, so you think that’s what will happen between us? Or — you’re worried about that?”

“I think about it,” Svetlana says simply. “It’s important for me to consider.”

Rose recalls girls she’d bunked with back at summer camp, pre-pubescent and chained together in bracelets woven from rainbow thread and sweat and love, feeling they’d invented the very notion of friendship and discovered the whole world together. They’d exchange addresses and phone numbers at the end of summer, but then they’d write a letter each at best, or call and run out of conversation so fast that it made her wish they hadn’t tried at all. And now Rose is a woman, and there’s friends or lovers she’ll share a month of fifteen hour days with, laughs and gripes and memories, make a film together that will last in public consciousness beyond either of their lifetimes, and then what? A squeezed wrist and a tight smile as they pass each other on the red carpet at the Golden Globes. Recognition, familiarity, maybe fondness. Nothing more substantial.

“I don’t want that to happen with you. I like you a lot,” Rose confesses. It doesn’t feel risky or especially brave to say it; they’re soft and generous with each other all the time now, and the affection is plainly mutual. “If the situation changed, like — if Ilya and I swapped back right now, in the middle of this conversation, you’d be the first person I called.”

Svetlana hums a little. Nods. She’s sitting against the headboard, head tilted back against the wall, with one leg stretched long and the other propped up. Her skin is clear and glowing, dewy from her creams. Everything about her is effortless. It looks effortless, at least. Actually, Rose has learned in the last couple months that Svetlana tries very hard at almost everything.

“I like you,” Rose says again. “Being with you — it isn’t just sex to me, or convenience, or a silver lining or whatever. It’s been—” she swallows around a lump in her throat. “Honestly, it’s made me very grateful for the situation, which is probably perverse. But if I hadn’t been stuck in this whole thing, I wouldn’t have met you, I wouldn’t have been with you and — like, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I want to live like this. I want my body back. I want my life back. But I want you in my life, after that happens.”

Svetlana cocks her head. “Do you?” Rose opens her mouth to argue that yes, she does, or else why would she have just said it, but Svetlana holds up a hand to stop her. “I know you want to be with me. In a relationship. We both want that; we’ve been doing it, really, and I think we’re very happy. What I’m asking is, do you want me in that life?”

“Yes,” Rose says immediately. She doesn’t need to think about it to know the answer.

Svetlana disagrees, apparently. She does think it bears ruminating, and she forces Rose to do so. “Are there a lot of A-List stars who are out, then? A lot of women who bring their girlfriends to premieres or big events and then they have their action figures sold in toy stores, still?”

“There are some,” Rose says defensively. “It’s not like I’m a lesbian — I mean, there are lesbians in Hollywood, and good for them, but, like, you know what I mean. There are bisexual women. Actresses. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not impossible.”

Svetlana hmms again. “And for me, in Russia, how possible do you think that is?” She says it without sarcasm or malice, but it still has the effect of making Rose feel immediately like a total asshole.

“I don’t know,” she admits. Typical ignorant American. God, how mortifying. She picks at the skin around her nails already ripped raw. “I’m not really… I mean, I know there are issues. I don’t know very much about the situation over there.”

“It’s not ideal.” Svetlana’s mouth crooks up at the corner, a small, caustic grin. “For Ilya, I think it would be worse. He is a celebrity — not famous like you, but enough, and his family is police. He could not go back, if this were something he made public. For me…” she sighs and digs her fingers into her hairline, shakes her hair with pent up frustration.

“Your dad,” Rose says quietly.

“I would not blame him, cutting me off. He is in the government. It wouldn’t be personal. He would not have much of a choice.” She shrugs. “I could return to Russia, most likely. But I could not go home.”

Rose cares about Svetlana. She wants to be with her. She also doesn’t know that there’s anyone she’s ever cared about enough to ask them to sacrifice that kind of thing, because if the roles were reversed, she doesn’t think that she’d be willing to offer the same in return.

She crawls up the bed and into Svetlana’s arms. They’re both still half dressed from the evening, Rose in her button-down shirt and her boxers and dress socks, Svetlana in a tight black turtleneck and underwear. Their bare legs rub together, and Rose fantasizes (perhaps for something else to think about, something she can handle) about shaving Ilya’s legs so that she can enjoy the smooth glide of limbs that always struck her as an appealing aspect of one girl dating another.

“I don’t expect you to fix it,” Svetlana says, kissing the words into Rose’s curls where her head is resting on the gently sloping plane of Svetlana’s chest. “It’s something I consider. That’s all. And I only thought that it would be a shame if we never discussed it, and things ended or fell apart and neither of us quite knew why, or one of us always wished we had said — something.”

“I don’t want things to end,” Rose says. A single tear leaks from the corner of her eye, mostly from exhaustion, though not entirely.

“Maybe they won’t. I feel the same way you do. But in any case, I’d like to be prepared.”

Rose hadn’t thought they’d have sex. They don’t every night, just most nights, or more nights than not. But when they brush their teeth, side by side, they can’t seem to stop grabbing at each other, little nothing touches, brushes of fingers against elbows and hips, and then from there it only seems natural. Tonight, they slip beneath the covers, lamps turned off except the fat white moon, and Rose strokes a tender, rhythmic circle against Svetlana’s clit until she comes with a shiver. Usually when they fuck (in the most heteronormative sense of the word fuck, Fuck with the capital F), Svetlana climbs on top and rides her; tonight, she curls tight in Rose’s arms, little spoon tucked against big spoon, and guides Rose to rock against her, inside her. She talks the whole time — it’s like she’s had the fear put into her that anything at all could go unsaid between the two of them, and so she pants, desperate, and speaks until she’s breathless.

That’s how Rose learns all the things that Svetlana’s been imagining doing to her, if Rose had her own body back. Shockingly detailed fantasies, blisteringly intimate, so hot her ears are burning and her fingers scalding where they grip Svetlana by her taut flesh. She’s thought of them in an apartment in Moscow, Rose clinging to an antique headboard carved and gilded into whorls and swirls as she sits on Svetlana’s face; she’s pictured them in Rose’s home in the hills, in the backyard by the pool where trees stretch too tall for photographers to peek and see Rose laid out on a chaise lounge while Svetlana grinds against her thigh, sloppy wet, pulls her bathing suit to the side and plays with herself for Rose’s eyes only.

Rose comes; it’s never difficult to get there, not like this. She stays hard long enough to hammer into Svetlana a minute more, since Svetlana seems to want that, and to listen to that clipped accent she’s always known to be so pragmatic instead wax poetic about the life they’d have together, the way they’d fuck and fuck and Svetlana would never get tired of her, never stop wanting her, wanting to be with her, to share every bed and every kiss with her, and all this talk works Svetlana up into a frenzy and she finishes again. Rose groans, overwhelmed and overstimulated as Svetlana clenches down around her. Everything tonight feels like that. Everything with her. Too much, never enough.

The next day, Rose makes coffee for them both. She pours Svetlana’s into a thermos she can carry with her to the dealership and sends her out the door with a kiss and a fond wave before she starts her morning workout. They’re playing house, and maybe they both know some part of it is pretend, but pretending has always been Rose’s favorite game.

They meet up for lunch in the city. Rose, for some reason, orders an exorbitant amount of asparagus. The restaurant plays a lot of songs like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” one hit wonders that Rose knows all the words to and Svetlana thinks are nonsensical and possibly made up.

It’s like — in a way, it’s worse than before, because before, when things between them could be anything, that meant they could be perfect, in one hypothetical outcome. But still it’s so, so good. And they understand each other better today than they did yesterday; that’s more than can be said for some people.

Chapter 15: Ilya

Chapter Notes

Here’s how Ilya Rozanov learned to speak English:

When he was 15, an MLH scout came to Moscow and sat down with Ilya, his father, his coach, and his agent. The scout told his interpreter who in turn told the four of them that Ilya was exactly the sort of athlete the MLH was interested in. That they saw the potential in the boldness and tenacity of his gameplay, that half the teams in the league would be scrambling to pick him up come draft day and that if Ilya kept up the hard work between now and then, he could be an asset to any of them. Ilya didn’t speak a word during this meeting, nodding mutely like his father preferred he do in company and only opening his mouth as handshakes and “We’ll consider it”s were offered. As they parted ways, Ilya said “Thank you” to the talent scout, one of only three phrases he knew in English, and the scout smiled, shook his hand, and said “Thank you.”

It would be a disgrace for Ilya to play hockey in America, his father said about one hundred times that summer. An affront to his homeland. But the salaries top MLH players netted weren’t so disgraceful compared to the KHL, and so somehow, despite the fact that Grigori insists Ilya won’t last a day in North America on his own, it is decided he will go.

An English tutor is hired. Ilya has sessions three to four hours a week, plus homework. But Ilya is a rising hockey star, and a teenage boy, and he has better things to do than waste his afternoons conjugating irregular verbs. He arrives in Canada conversationally fluent, if the conversation requires him to say “yes,” “no,” “okay,” “please,” “thank you,” “cigarette,” “hockey stick,” or “buttered popcorn.” He isn’t sure where he picked that last one up.

Six months later, he’s drafted, first pick, and the scout was wrong — more than half the teams would have died to have him. Ilya has enough words to be gracious, though not many more. Boston is in America, one of the first cities they made, and they definitely speak English there, but the window of time between draft day and his relocation seems too short and too hectic to do anything about that.

Ilya Rozanov, like many immigrants, learns to speak English through a combination of immersion, necessity, and desperation. The first figure of speech he learns is “knock your block off” because a player from Toronto says it to him on the ice and spits a bloody tooth at him, and Ilya has to laugh, laughs the whole time he’s sat in the penalty box. Knock your block off. That’s good. He’ll have to remember that.

He watches some English language television and listens to American rap music. Most of what he learns comes from the locker room, which is why he’s shocked, three years in, to learn that there’s a popular SUV called a Hummer — don’t they know that word means something else? He learns terms like faggot, dickweed, and cameltoe before he learns the words for railroad or pineapple because these are the sorts of phrases that come up in daily conversation for MLH players. Year after year, he lives more life, he meets more people, he has more conversations, and eventually, he can understand almost all of what he hears and say at least most of what he means.

Here is how immersion works: If you can truly understand 30% of a conversation, you can extrapolate 50% of what’s said. If you can get the gist of 50% of the conversation, you can take a stab at 70% of it. And so on, and so forth.

This is how Ilya Rozanov learns how to speak Rose Landry: a combination of immersion, necessity, and desperation. She sends a long and thorough email the first day they swap, basic terminology, and from there he knows 30% of what there is to know about her. He goes to set, he goes on dates, he goes about her life; he listens more than he speaks, he extrapolates, he gleans. A few weeks in, a month maybe, and he’s conversationally fluent. He still uses her for translations sometimes, but much like speaking English, he can muddle his way through the conversation in the moment and later, in privacy, double check his dictionary. At night, he’ll lay in bed and text her to confirm, Crafty means the table with the apples and the pretzels and things, right? And I can take one if I want? or Does Brazilian mean up the buttcrack too or do I have to ask for that separate? By January he gets the gist of at least half of her daily interactions, and he can take a stab at probably 70%.

In the days after XS6 wraps, while he kills time pretending his life isn’t falling apart around him, Ilya throws himself into complete immersion. Why not? What’s the worst that happens, really? One of Rose’s friends may think she’s acting funny, but no one on earth would leap to the conclusion that for the past two months, there’s been a random Russian hockey player inhabiting her body. They’ll think she’s tired, maybe a little off; they might ask one of those overfamiliar questions that Americans ask, inquire about his sleep schedule or his trauma, and recommend some Hollywood solution like an IV drip of green juice or something equally idiotic.

Miles facetimes from Mallorca. His ex is in Ibiza, he’s 99% positive, but he needs Rose to watch his instagram story and check; Miles would do it himself, but then the ex will know that Miles cares, and Miles doesn’t care, obviously, but if Rose could be a doll and just try to screenshot any restaurants he might have tagged, street signs he might be standing in front of, then Miles can figure out where he is and take a boat over there and accidentally on purpose run into him, and the ex will see that Miles is doing amazing now and is completely, totally over him.

While they’re on the call, Miles asks, “And how are you and boo,” and maybe two months ago this question would have terrified Ilya, but now it occurs to him — actually, he can just lie. Who cares? Who will know? Rose picks up and drops friends like hot potatoes (possibly — Ilya isn’t sure he understands hot potatoes as a metaphorical device) so anything he says now will have little consequence. It won’t be fact-checked, it won’t even be followed up on, because Miles has his own dramas to create and sustain. They’ll see each other on the next X-Squad, and by then who knows — there are rumors that the studio may be cutting back on diversity, what with the state of things politically, and it’s doubtful they’ll have room for both a woman and a black guy.

So Ilya tries to sound bored, when Shane comes up. Like the two of them have been drifting, crazy schedules, blah blah blah, this and that. Then he takes inspiration from Sunburnt Jeremee in Ibiza and says, “Actually, speaking of exes…” and concocts one of his own. Rose has reconnected with a lover from the days of yore, he decides, and it’s so passionate, so steamy, so back-crackingly orgasmic that she can’t wait to get back to LA and trip and fall into his bed and never get back up.

Ilya stops asking Rose for input on pretty much any facet of her life. Her housekeeper texts a reminder that she’s doing the weekly clean on Tuesday instead of Sunday because her niece is graduating from dental hygienist school, and Ilya takes the liberty of ordering an edible arrangement and sending a $1500 check as congratulations.

On Monday, he takes himself out to lunch and then shopping, to a movie and then to dinner. He doesn’t want to be cooped up in that cell of a hotel room any longer. The little bistro he sups at is one he’s passed a few times and mentally bookmarked for a date night, but there’s no use saving it. It’s not as though he and Shane will have many more dates, if any. He orders a pretty little salad, beet and radicchio with goat cheese and pistachios, colorful and lively against the doldrums of winter, and a big, fat, fucking lamb chop for his entrée which he eats and eats until his knife and fork have worked down to the bone. He’s looking at a dessert menu for something to do that isn’t pulling out his phone when he notices a girl across the restaurant taking his photo.

Actually, she isn’t taking his photo — her boyfriend is. She’s “posing,” meaning that she’s pretending to be photographed while really her ugly beau lines up the shot so that she’s barely in it and the focus is on Rose Landry, American movie star and property of the public domain. Ilya stares. The boyfriend looks caught out. He falters, and the girl glances over her shoulder, so Ilya looks at her instead, and the girl looks ashamed, at first, to have been so unsubtle, but then as Ilya stares and stares, unblinking and unabashed, she begins to look creeped out. Her. This stranger taking Ilya’s photograph, she’s creeped out. Ridiculous.

A part of Ilya wants to tell her to take it again. He has a wild, gamey thought (too much lamb, surely), that if they take the picture straight on, stone-faced with his eyes on the camera like a passport photo, they might check the camera roll afterwards and be able to see the real him. Nearly six foot, close enough, with dirty blond curls and a mole he’s always pretended not to hate and finally, finally thinks he’d be happy to see on his face again. He’s so tired of being in a woman’s body, being in Rose’s body, sharing all the beauty and the violence of the day-to-day the fairer sex lives. He’d give anything to shampoo and condition his hair again and not have to extract a tangle of coppery strands that have washed down and clumped up in the crack of his ass. He hates high heels, he hates the softness of his flesh. He hates looking in the mirror and seeing someone that doesn’t feel like him at all, and he absolutely despises the way he’s acclimated to it.

Ilya thinks he’d cry with joy if someone, anyone, even this rude girl, could see him. The real him. It hasn’t been an issue until now, because through this all, there had been a person by his side who he’d thought, at least — but fuck, maybe he did. Maybe that’s the problem. Shane had spent time with Ilya, finally, after all these years, had seen him, and still found him lacking.

He skips dessert and pays the check. Afterwards, he walks the three blocks back to the Four Seasons and though he’d planned to sit in the lobby or the hotel bar, they’re both too congested with travelers and patrons, and he wants to be alone. So he wanders through the hotel. Nobody will stop him. He feels like Allure when she’s on a covert mission, like even if he was caught, somehow his charm or his shapeshifting abilities or his oozing, pulsing sex appeal would get him out of it. There’s a wedding reception in a ballroom that he sort of crashes — a wedding on a Monday, how bizarre. He hovers in the shadows, bobbing his head to Bruno Mars, thinks about taking a slice of cake but ultimately decides against it. Back into the hallways. Even on a floor he’s never been to, in a city that will never be home, it’s soothingly, obliteratingly familiar. Hotel after hotel, ice machines and housekeeping carts piled high with bleach white towels. He’s spent more of his life in places like this than most people have. It’s like being itinerant. For someone with a purpose in life, he’s always amazed at his own ability to feel unmoored.

Tonight — these last few days, really — are the most unstable he’s felt in a long time. He finds an empty conference room and sits down in there, calls Svetlana and tells her as much.

She makes a sympathetic noise, not sounding especially surprised. “I don’t think there’s a way to go through something like this and not feel fucking crazy.”

“Yes, well,” Ilya says, and clicks a laser pointer he’s found on the table.

“Speaking of crazy,” Svetlana says, faux-tactful. “Rose wants to know why you’re not medicated and/or in therapy.”

“Is there a medication that makes your dick grow back and swaps you into your own body?” Ilya mumbles. “My insurance is very good. We should look into that.”

Svetlana ignores this. “She says you have severe depression. She knows about what happened with your mother, and she’s asked me several times why you’re not doing anything to seek treatment for yourself.”

Severe, she says. He has a little depression, maybe, in the way that any intelligent person does, but severe is such a… well, severe way of putting it. “Oh yes? And suddenly she is a mental health expert? Dr. Landry is qualified to make a diagnosis?”

“She says she feels it, being you.” It’s in that zone they’ve never quite been able to make out in terms of which parts of them switched places, what exactly the body controls and which parts of them are soul or mind. It makes sense, Ilya thinks with tremendous discomfort. It’s certainly genetic. Of course it’s of the body. “She says you get sad, often for no reason, and that it’s difficult to get out of bed some days even when there’s something to look forward to. She told me — I know the situation doesn’t seem like it could be this way, but Rose is very happy right now, and she told me that even when there are good things in your life, a lot of times it’s like — a disconnect.”

Like replacing a burned out incandescent lightbulb with a brand new LED one, flicking the switch again and again and remaining in the dark, because no matter what bulb you put in, something is faulty with the wiring. That’s how Ilya would describe it if he talked to people about this stuff, but he doesn’t. “It’s really none of her business.”

“Maybe not,” replies Svetlana mildly, wisely sensing that it’s not the time or place or fucked-up circumstance under which to press the subject. “But perhaps something to consider.”

The next day, he doesn’t leave the hotel room at all. For the first few hours, he doesn’t even leave the bed, but then room service comes and he has to go get the door, and once he’s up and doing that it only seems natural to pace and pace until he’s worn down circles into the carpet.

It’s the middle of January, but he finds a channel that’s still showing Christmas movies — some of the worst films he’s ever seen, saccharine, illogical romances that take place in small towns across America which surely harbor dark secrets buried beneath their many tree lots. One of the movies has Rose Landry in it, his Rose, which really throws him for a loop, and in it she ice skates, which Ilya’s truly amazed by. What’s worse, she falls in love with a former hockey player, retired by a devastating injury, who’s now a professional toymaker crafting wooden rocking horses for underprivileged children. There’s a scene where the love interest slips in a pile of reindeer poop — it’s played for laughs, but it makes his old injury act up, and Ilya’s heart catches in his throat. The movie ends at a tree lighting ceremony which takes place, for some reason, adjacent a giant frozen pond, and the townspeople look on as Rose spins in figure eights to save Christmas somehow, and then the handsome toymaker straps on his old skates one last time to glide out onto the ice and capture her lips in a passionate kiss. Ilya weeps. He cries his way through three of these dogshit holiday movies, then he orders pay-per-view porn even though it’s free on the internet and he cries while watching that too, makes himself come first with his fingers and then the vibrator and then tries to come again but is too sore and tender, and isn’t that how he feels all the time now? Weepy, sore and tender, even in his moments of ecstasy?

Then everything gets bad. Which he’d known would happen, but still. Montreal plays Boston. Rose finds out everything, and they argue on the phone, and Ilya tries to lash out at her without unbalancing himself, but he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. He argues with her and then confides in her, and then he sits in lock-boned fear when they get off the phone and he has no idea what will happen next. Rose has never carried tension in her jaw the way that Ilya has, but he teaches her body how. Svetlana calls and they discuss things briefly, and he can barely get the words out through clenched teeth. The whole truth is too bulky to escape: Ilya sort of wants it all to explode. He wants Shane to find out, maybe to do it on live television, or he wants Rose to freak out on him or for a puck to break someone, anyone’s zygomatic bone or for a skate to slash skin so that blood sprays everywhere, red spatters across the ice and enough of it to blot out the camera lens that’s broadcasting on ESPN. Ilya wants something bad to happen because he knows that something bad will happen, and at this point, he just wants to get it over with.

Shane plays like he bet his soul to the devil. It’s like a dream, to see him chasing Ilya up and down the ice like a madman — not Ilya, really, but Shane doesn’t know that, and the folks at ESPN don’t either. Ilya pulls the vibrator back out of the drawer. He writhes on the couch, unselfconscious, and watches Shane’s clever body fill the screen as he buries a puck deep into the back of the net, and it punches the air from Ilya’s lungs to see him do it. He does manage to come again. It’s not the most pathetic thing he’s ever done, but it’s not far off.

Then he gets drunk. Much drunker than he’s gotten in this other body, the one that’s not his own. He drinks what’s in the room and he calls and has these nice Four Seasons people bring him more; he shoves a crumpled twenty into the hand of the employee who brings it, takes the vodka from him and thinks how nice this hotel is. The staff is so, so kind, and if he wanted to, he could drain Rose’s bank account to stay there and he would never have to leave.

He wakes up early without any sort of alarm. Because vomiting feels inevitable, he goes into the bathroom, sticks a finger down his throat and makes himself sick. He’s tired of sitting and waiting for things to happen to him.

The Metros are flying out of Boston at 8:10; Shane had told him that. They’ll touch down in Montreal at about 9:35 then, and to get out of there and back to his place will take Shane another 30, maybe 40 minutes depending on traffic. Ilya holds off until 10:16 before he texts did you still want to come help me move stuff today?

Ilya’s experienced optimistic bouts in his life, brief periods defined by even irrational degrees of positivity, but never has he been so plagued by delusion as he has in these past two months. It’s his least favorite trauma response among the many he’s acquired from having fallen victim to an act of inexplicable magic. He knows that after what transpired yesterday, it would be completely insane to expect Shane to show up here and act like everything was sunset cruises and bouquets of roses and soft cheeses passed from mouth to mouth in open, sloppy kisses — it’s almost impossible that Shane will come here and still want him. But then again, stranger things have happened.

After Svetlana’s gone to work, Rose calls. Ilya doesn’t really want to answer, so he doesn’t. But then she calls four more times and texts what could you POSSIBLY be doing right now. Well, he could be in bed spooning a room service tray actually, with Cholula smeared onto the duvet completely by accident that he’s pretending is blood, imagining meeting some satisfyingly untimely end that he can’t quite bring himself to truly revel in because his stomach twists with nauseous guilt to think of the nice lady from housekeeping who would have to find his body.

When he finally picks up, Rose is huffing and puffing on the treadmill. “I have to tell you what happened when we got home last night,” she opens, direct in the way a gun pointed at his head might feel direct. “I’d tell you not to freak out, but I’m not sure how realistic that is.”

Actually, Ilya doesn’t freak out. He doesn’t find the news that Shane has shown up on his doorstep in the middle of the night nearly as shocking or momentous as Rose does; of course Hollander would try to have his cake and eat it too. He says as much, and Rose dithers and says she’s not sure that he’s using that expression correctly, and so Ilya asks well, what else would you call it to have a girlfriend, fuck her, sleep in the embrace of her arms, and then go to the home of your ex-lover for some torrid tryst beneath moonshadows? What is a better expression for that type of greed and infidelity, in her native tongue?

“Um, I guess—” she vacillates a little, then says, sounding cowed, “I don’t know if I’m the best person to weigh in on that.”

She has this blitheringly idiotic notion that all of this is a good thing, like these are signs that Shane wants him and Ilya should feel somehow encouraged. He can’t, though. Ilya may allow himself delusion, but it’s dangerous, far too dangerous, to allow himself real hope.

Rose only thinks there’s a happy ending on the horizon because she doesn’t know the story so far, and so as Ilya packs, he tells her mostly everything, leaving out the more salacious particulars. This makes it difficult, requires vague embellishments and skimming over certain scenes — the good majority of his and Shane’s past with each other has been salacious, but he gives her the shape of things, at least. He pulls the pants and shirts from her closet, the cozy sweaters and cocktail dresses, folds them neatly as he tells her about sneaking into hotel rooms, lamplit kisses and laughter that never lasted until daylight broke. In the bathroom, he collects her serums and her creams, stacking them neatly into toiletry bags, and tells her how it’s been these last two months to see Shane in the sunshine, to walk with him down city streets or stroll through parks and watch his skin glow in the winter sun.

Rose finds it all incredibly romantic. Even after Ilya points out how disposable she’s been, makes her understand that Shane has only used her to figure something out about himself, she simply says, “God, wouldn’t it be great if he has, though? I wish I could say that every man I’ve been with has left the relationship better for having been with me.”

The clock ticks past one pm. Shane’s been back in Montreal for hours now, and still no word. Ilya’s bags are packed, and now he knows — there’s nothing left here for him. “If I look up flights to Boston,” he sighs into the phone, “are you going to let me have my bedroom back? Or do I have to sleep in one of the shitty guest rooms?”

Rose squeals, a noise of decidedly feminine jubilation which sounds insane coming from Ilya’s throat but still manages to make him smile for the first time all day. She’s running out the door to meet Svetlana for lunch, so they hang up; a little while later, he texts her the confirmation for a flight in first class on United leaving Montréal–Trudeau at 10:49am tomorrow and landing at Boston Logan just after noon. She replies with a picture of her and Svetlana, heads together and matching ecstatic grins, and the text WE ARE SO EXCITED FOR SLUMBER PARTYYYYYYYYYYY. Later in the afternoon she sends another photo, his freezer stocked with an unconscionable quantity of ice cream. Preparing the traditional cure for heartache, Rose explains. Welcome to our culture.

In a last ditch act of desperation, he texts Shane one final time. Days that feel like years ago, Ilya had promised Rose he’d dump Shane for her in some tactful, proper way. He doubts he’ll be able to bring himself to do it. Actually, Ilya’s never really dumped anyone, and what he plans to do is more along the lines of how he’s ended all his other overgrown dalliances, which is to act like more of an asshole than usual, withdraw emotionally and/or physically, and wait until the other person gets the message. Maybe that’s what Shane is doing to him right now, as a matter of fact.

He doesn’t know what there is to say, if they should meet up. Shane doesn’t know that Ilya knows, but Ilya does know: there’s no future for them. He’s known it even when he hasn’t been able to accept it, probably for a while, back as far as the night they went to Ottawa and Ilya thought that they were building something, hand in hand, and found himself mistaken. But Rose’s voice is in his ear, her way of looking at the world that’s so romantic, so cinematic, and so is the voice of every coach he’s ever had who screams and bellows when there’s two minutes left on the clock and they’re down by enough that Ilya would rather tuck his tail and head back down the tunnel, except that then they pull the goalie and make some magic and it feels like miracles can happen. Ilya hears them and he thinks, I have to try. If there’s time left on the clock, pages left in the script, he has to see it through.

Or dinner? he texts Shane. If you’re up to it?

It takes a few hours, but as afternoon wilts into evening, he gets a response.


Shane ❤️: sorry I meant to text earlier

Shane ❤️: Took a nap and just woke up. I’ve been pretty wiped


That sucks :( Travel can be so draining, Ilya replies, which is true, and also means jack shit within this vapid, meaningless, elbow-fart of a conversation they’re having. 


Shane ❤️: What time would you be free tonight?

Rose: Whenever works for you. Seven? Sushi?


Shane types and deletes. Types and deletes. I was thinking I could come to your hotel? If that’s okay?

Rose’s hotel. The suite at the Four Seasons, Ilya’s home since late November, with its cream and blush sofa set that he spills on once a week, with its humming AC unit so that there’s never real silence, which Ilya’s come to treasure, actually. The hotel that Shane only ever stops by in passing, because he’d rather be at his place. Shane loves his home. He’s proud of it. He feels safe there. If tonight was any sort of good news — if he wanted to fuck Ilya senselessly, if he wanted to say he’d been thinking and maybe rather than moving in for just a month they should buy a house together, if he wanted to confess that secretly for the last eight years he’d held suspicions that Ilya Rozanov was the greatest player that the sport had ever seen — they’d be meeting at Shane’s.

That works for me, Ilya sends.

The only thing the hotel has that Shane’s place doesn’t is an exit strategy. They can talk, and Shane can leave. He’s going to. He’s going to end it.

Ilya goes into a suitcase and unpacks something simple to put on, a sweatshirt from Rose’s dad’s alma mater and some worn in blue jeans. He showers before he dresses, since he can’t remember when he last did, and he pulls a moisturizer from the toiletry bag to pat it into his skin, then repacks it. It’s embarrassing to do so, but he calls downstairs and asks if they can send housekeeping up, because the place looks like a sad and sweaty hovel, unkempt and too revealing for Shane to see. Ilya stands awkwardly in the hall, not knowing what to do with himself while the room is cleaned. He hands a big bill to the maid as she wheels her cart out and thanks her as politely as he can.

Shane has never been up here to the suite; that’s what Ilya thinks, at least. He waits down in the car or the lobby if he’s picking Ilya up or dropping him off or stopping by because Ilya forgot his sunglasses in Shane’s Land Rover or what have you. But he kisses Ilya on the cheek when he steps in, so quick that they’d need video review to catch it, and when he walks into the sitting area he says, “Oh good, they got rid of that creepy painting.” Ilya has a moment of heart-wrenching jealousy as he remembers that Shane and Rose had a whole relationship before he showed up, one he’ll never be privy to. Even in the very moments that relationship is drawing to a close, he envies it.

Shane sits down in the chair. Ilya sits down on the sofa. It’s all very proper, and neither of them says anything at first — Shane because he doesn’t know how to, presumably, and Ilya because he refuses to help him figure it out.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t text back earlier,” Shane says eventually. His eyes dart guiltily to the suitcases lined up against the wall, and Ilya, ashamed, wants to turn his gaze away and explain no, no, it wasn’t like that, I wasn’t waiting for you, but he was, wasn’t he?

“It’s okay,” he says instead. “You were sleeping.”

Shane clears his throat. “I wasn’t, actually.” His hands flex over the arms of the chair, fingers spreading like a gecko Ilya saw once in the Florida Keys and then retracting into clenched fists. “I think we need to talk.”

This had been a tricky one, when Ilya first learned English. The Royal We, they called it. Where the plural pronoun stood in for the singular, for reasons Ilya found frustrating always. Hollander says We need to talk, but what he means is that he needs to talk, and Ilya needs to listen.

“I shouldn’t have — it was wrong of me. To say you could move into my place. I didn’t mean it. Or I — I got swept up, I guess, and I didn’t think it through. I did want that, but I think I wanted it because — Rose, I like you. A lot. And I wanted to… I don’t know. I don’t like letting people down.”

Ilya lets out a noise his late grandmother often made, a flap of jowls and purse of lips carrying an exhalation which roughly meant, It’s rather a bit late for that. It’s universal, and requires no translation.

“You’re kind of everything that I was looking for,” Shane says, and the bubble in his throat could make Ilya sympathetic, but it doesn’t. “I promised you I’d try, and I did. You have to believe me. I tried as hard as I could. And you’re so perfect, like — literally, perfect. But. Um.” He’s blinking up at the ceiling with those wet, doleful eyes he sometimes gets that make Ilya feel like the worst version of himself. “It’s not — I don’t think we should do this anymore. I don’t think that I can.”

Ilya has his mother’s hair and his father’s eyes; he has the worst of them too, his mother’s sadness and his father’s anger. He’s spent so many hours craving a soft place to lay his head, but now, as Shane rolls over and exposes the tender meat of his underbelly, all Ilya can see through his rage is a weakness to be warned against and punished.

He speaks only when he can think of what to say that will make Hollander feel as small and shameful as he does. “Is there another woman?”

Shane’s face twitches; involuntarily, he reaches up to tug the skin of his eyelid. “No.”

“Mmm. Okay,” Ilya says, and he thinks that they might sit in this painful silence indefinitely — he hopes they will, because it feels a fitting punishment for both of them. A punishment for Shane for leading him on, and for Ilya, for allowing himself to be led.

But then Shane admits, “There’s someone else. It’s — not a woman, though.” He clears his throat. “I’m gay.”

The shock of hearing it stuns Ilya, his body and his mind held prone at a sudden halt. It is the type of thing Ilya never imagined either of them saying out loud. But it doesn’t help. It doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t fix anything, it doesn’t make it easier, it doesn’t make Shane want him any more. What the fuck, he wonders, is the point of even saying it.

“You didn’t seem very gay the other night.” Rose wears her nails manicured short and neat, but Ilya imagines himself now with long, sharp claws that can tear through flesh. “Or were you — what, swept up?”

“No, I wanted to,” Shane argues, quick and certain, but he seems more frustrated by his answer than by the question itself. “And it was — it was good. Genuinely. I get that that doesn’t make sense. I’m really fucking confused too, to be honest. This whole thing has been kind of a mindfuck. Because it’s like… I am attracted to you,” he says with vehemence, rocking forward in his chair and scrubbing a hand across his forehead. “And I know — I know that I’m confused. Not about this, though. I’m gay, and I — if I could change that, Rose, I would. I would have. But I can’t.”

Ilya rarely concerns himself with what Rose would or wouldn’t do, because he’s lazy and self-centered and he likes himself too much to do anything but, most days, be Ilya Rozanov in Rose Landry’s body. He rarely gives the performance of her more than the bare minimum in gesture or in tone to make it convincing. Except now, when he hears Shane say her name, Ilya thinks that Rose wouldn’t behave the way he is now, selfish and vindictive. She has her moments, her spats of brutal honesty, but Rose is kind. She’d show Shane kindness now.

It could be that Shane is crying, though, and nothing to do with anyone except the two of them, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. It’s not the first time he’s seen Shane cry, and it pains Ilya to know that it’s always his fault, always him doing the hurting, but this time — hasn’t he wished before that he could be the one to make it better?

He leaves the sofa, goes to Shane and kneels beside the chair. He peels Shane’s hands from where they’re covering his face, his damp, hot cheeks, and Ilya kisses his palms. One and then the other, then he hands them back. “I’m sorry,” Ilya says. He is maybe the first person Shane has come out to. It matters that he says it. “You shouldn’t want to change. It is — it is not a bad thing to be.”

“It feels like a bad thing,” Shane mumbles, staring down at the hands in his lap. He doesn’t look relieved to have gotten it off of his chest. Maybe someday.

It’s quiet but for the whirr of the air conditioner and small sniffles as Shane pulls himself back under control. Ilya shifts a little on the carpet, sits back on his knees and thinks. “Your someone else—”

“We’re not—”

“Not what?”

Shane shakes his head. “He’s someone from before — before you and I were. You know.”

“Dating?”

“Yeah.”

Two months ago, Ilya would have preened to hear himself the topic of conversation, the object of desire. “You would rather be with him? Because he is a man?”

Shane sighs. “I don’t think it’s because he’s a man. I mean — yeah, that’s a part of it, obviously. But…” He trails off, and when Ilya says “But?” in return, Shane shrugs and doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate.

So they sit in a long silence which probably lasts only ten seconds. But they’re ten of the last seconds Ilya will ever spend with Shane, and so he stretches them like saltwater taffy, drawing them out until they’re taut and brittle.

Eventually Ilya stands up. It’s easy to do, in this body whose knees rarely ache, whose bones and muscles and joints and tendons have been pushed, but never to their limits. It’s been a silver lining in the dark storm clouds descending upon him faster than he can take cover. “I hope you’re happy with him,” Ilya says, and it’s only technically a lie. He knows there is no happily ever for the two of them. But Ilya would like Shane to be happy someday anyway.

Shane hugs Ilya before he leaves, which turns out to be a trillion times more painful than watching him walk out the door without a backwards glance. Ilya misses and will always miss the way their bodies used to fit together, heads inclined to rest upon each other’s shoulders, the way the bulk of each of them seemed to slot into place so sensically, hard and soft in perfect tandem. In this form, as he’s done each and every time, Ilya takes what he can get. He presses his cheek against Shane’s chest and allows a ghost of a kiss on the crown of his head. It’s a fitting goodbye; he thinks he will be haunted by this forever.

Ilya should eat dinner, but he knows he won’t be able to stomach it. He finds a Snickers bar tucked in the mini fridge and forces it down, which only fills his stomach until he cries hard enough to find himself hunched over the toilet once more. He imagines throwing up every butterfly that’s ever fluttered in his stomach; he pretends to rid himself of anything consequential, any bacterial organism that could ever make him feel like this again.

His second year living in America, during practice, he’d scored twice on his goalie. It was funny — he’d scored in exactly the same way both times. Lined up running shootout drills, Ilya had loped towards him, lazy on his skates and leaning left and then, with an easy flick, deposited it neatly in his five hole. And then they’d circled around to the back of the line, the other boys taking their turns, and Ilya had waited patiently, skated out, then loped left, lazy to the point of insouciance, before flicking it cleanly between his goalie’s legs once more.

“Fool me once, shame on you,” the goalie had lamented, shaking his head. “Fool me twice, shame on me.” Ilya had never heard the expression before, but he knew the words, and the meaning was self-evident.

He packs the last of his belongings into Rose’s bags and thinks of Shane. Ilya is angry, hurt, discarded, but who else is there to blame for this familiar feeling? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

It’s too early to sleep, but he crawls into bed anyway. Crying has dehydrated him, and so has throwing up. He takes small sips from a glass of water. The suite is ready to be checked out of and an alarm is set to get him to the airport in time to fly to Boston.

He opens up the airline’s app. Rose and Svetlana will understand. He changes his flight; it leaves an hour earlier now, but with the time change, he’ll land at LAX in the early afternoon. Ilya doesn’t know yet what he’ll do when he gets to Los Angeles. He only knows that he needs sunshine and some warmth.

Chapter End Notes

Surprise double update this week, so be sure to click for the next chapter! :)

Chapter 16: Ilya

Chapter Notes

Ilya wakes without hearing the alarm. Sunlight streams in with the dawn, awakens him bright and early in the most literal sense, shining harsh and white and mean through the floor to ceiling windows of his bedroom.

His bedroom.

Outside, the sky and the skinny, bare birch branches are a flat, merciless grey. Familiar objects line the room, meaningless totems chosen by some decorator, a succulent on a shelf and a ceramic something or other. Even more unnerving are the objects he doesn’t recognize at all, like the expensive candle beside him on the nightstand that smells like rose petals and blackcurrant and ash, snuffed hours ago but still smothering him with fragrant smoke like incense in a cathedral until Ilya can’t catch his breath. He can’t breathe; he can’t think.

Black sheets pool around Ilya like a pit of tar he’s helpless to escape. The mattress is worn into the shape of his body. It’s used to holding his weight. A woman’s head is resting on his chest, familiar frizzing copper curls, still asleep.

“Блять,” Ilya says, and the expletive rolls off his tongue as smooth and as natural as anything.

Svetlana doesn’t stir. Then she does a little, eyes still closed, forehead frowning as Ilya sits up enough to see himself in the matte black reflection of the television screen.

Rounded, muscular shoulders; sharply drawn features and a nose that’s remarkably straight considering how many times he’s been punched in the face. Curly hair, fuzzy like it always is in the mornings, one side flattened as though he’s slept soundly without tossing or turning. His mole is on the wrong side, because he’s backwards in the reflection — everything is backwards, flipped into the place it shouldn’t be, but he reaches up to touch his cheek and finds it where it’s always been.

“Lay back down or go start breakfast,” Sveta says, words garbled by the pillow she’s smushing her face into. From beneath the covers, she reaches up a hand which flops, searching, in the general vicinity of Ilya’s face until a fingertip finds his lips; she presses, and at the same time, makes a sleepy, puckered kiss against the pillow. “Want pancakes.”

Ilya doesn’t move. His chest feels sharp and tight, like the time in childhood that Alexei had offered him 200 rubles to stick the tip of his index finger into a hill of blood-red ants. He hadn’t even paid him afterwards, because their parents had found out — Ilya tried to hide the swollen, throbbing finger, but he had failed — and their father had belted them both for betting. It feels like his heart is in the anthill now, bitten and poisoned by acid that makes it pulse, throb, seize and swell.

Svetlana sits up, and the grouchy expression on her face drops away the instant she sees Ilya’s. She reaches for his face again, this time deliberate. “Ilya?”

He closes his eyes and nods; he lets her pat his skin and see he’s real, lets her draw him into a desperate, clinging embrace. “It’s over,” he mumbles, and then in Russian, the language they’ve always shared, he repeats it again and again, it’s over, it’s over.

She kisses his cheeks, his eyelids, doesn’t mention that his face is damp. “I’m sorry, I need — fuck.” Svetlana finds his wrist and holds him tight, like he might disappear if she lets go, as she scrambles for her phone on the bedside table.

On the nightstand, his phone rings once. She huffs, then hangs up, muttering, and dials again. From a distance, Ilya hears the call ring through, then the breezy American lilt of Rose Landry’s voicemail. Svetlana punches fingers at the screen to call again, and this time, Rose picks up. “Are you okay?” Svetlana’s saying, her voice frantic and high-pitched in the way it almost never is. “Are you there? You are in Montreal? You are back?”

She’s saying other things, and Rose is answering. From the way that Svetlana’s turned to look directly at Ilya, searching his face, speaking rapidly, he knows they’re talking about him. He isn’t really listening.

He can feel Svetlana’s grasp tight on him, and it’s the only thing that feels real, so he squeezes his hand into a fist to let the tendons of his wrist flex in her grip. If he can do this one thing, control this one part of himself, then it stands to reason he can handle the others. “It’s over,” he repeats, which may or may not answer the question Svetlana’s asking him.

If he can ball his hand into a fist, then he can surely swing his legs out of the bed. He knows how; he’s done it something like ten thousand mornings in his life, give or take. He does so, and his feet find the floor. Ilya walks into the bathroom. He pisses standing up, flushes, washes his hands and splashes cold water on his face. His face, looking back at him in the mirror. He already knows what it looks like; there is no point in staring. For something to do, to begin his life again, he goes downstairs and makes them pancakes.

Chapter End Notes

Remind yourselves you love me when you read the following: heads up that next Friday will have no update 😅 I know I’m leaving you on a bit of a cliffhanger, but the chapter 17 is the longest in the fic and has so much going on that I’d really like to give both my betas and myself ample editing time to refine it so I can really do these characters and this story justice. I appreciate your patience as readers; the support and engagement I’ve gotten on this fic has been so incredible, and I’ll be back on Aug 14 with an update that I’m really looking forward to sharing, and then the Friday after that to wrap up our story!

Chapter 17: Ilya

Chapter Notes

It doesn’t surprise Ilya that Hollander looks good. The sunglasses are Ray-Bans from a brand deal, but everything else — the pants which hug him tight across the ass, the black t-shirt that Ilya had assured him barely allowed a trace of nipple definition, that goddamn Don Johnson white fucking blazer — all of these were Ilya’s doing. Really, he has no one to blame but himself.

“You look like you are guy in Miami Vice,” Ilya says when Hollander pulls up a stool beside him without first asking if the seat is taken. It’s not, but still. It would have been polite to ask.

Hollander frowns, removing his sunglasses and setting them on the bar top. “That’s a show, right? From the 80s?”

“Mhmm,” Ilya says, sort of. Idly, he wonders if Crockett and Tubbs ever explored each other’s bodies.

“I think my parents might have watched that,” Hollander says. “I’m sure it’s streaming somewhere. I’ll have to check it out.”

“You wouldn’t like it,” Ilya rules decisively. He takes a long sip of his beer and tries not to look at Hollander. It’s not that he thought— Ilya knew that he would see him again. He knew that they’d both be at All Stars, that their teams play each other four times a year. Sure, Ilya tries to hit all 82 games a season, though he’d been entertaining the possibility of a few well-timed injuries to prolong the inevitable. But he can’t say that he’s completely blindsided.

It’s not that Ilya didn’t know Hollander would be here. It’s that it’s only been a month and a week since they last saw each other, and as hard as Ilya’s worked to reassemble the pieces of himself that shattered in the process, it hasn’t been nearly enough time for the glue to dry.

A waiter does a drive by and asks if they’d like anything. Hollander orders a beer for himself and another for Ilya, since Ilya’s sipping foam from the bottom of an empty Corona bottle. He does want another one, but he doesn’t like the presumption of Hollander assuming, nor does he like the way his stomach flips with shy arousal at Hollander ordering anything on his behalf.

“A Modelo, actually, if you have it,” Ilya amends before the waiter can leave. Because he is a petty person, Ilya thinks that he will get a small degree of satisfaction when Hollander wrinkles his face into a pretty, dejected frown, but Hollander doesn’t react at all.

“So, this should be fun, huh?” Hollander says instead. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to play on the same team.”

“Have you?” Ilya says dryly, as though he hasn’t sat on benches and in tape reviews for nearly a decade fantasizing about the same thing.

“Yeah,” Hollander laughs. “I have.”

Their beers arrive. Ilya takes a healthy sip of his and doesn’t watch Hollander do the same, except out of the corner of his eye. He’s an elite athlete with exceptional peripheral vision; the peek he gets, the lip of the bottle resting against the fullness of Hollander’s bottom lip like in a kiss, is unavoidable.

“Nice that it’s in Florida this year, right?” Hollander offers, and Ilya shrugs. Actually, he loves that All Stars is in Tampa Bay; it’s a welcome change from the weekend they’d spent in frigid fucking Calgary last year. Florida is paradise by comparison. From where he sits now, Ilya can smell the salt off the sea and feel the pleasant breeze which comes to shoo away the pressing heat. Plus, he’d barely checked into the hotel when he’d been accosted for a selfie by two girls in custom bikinis they’d sewn from Raiders jerseys, cannons over the tits and ROZANOV in block letters over their asses.

Try as Ilya might to make himself the conversational equivalent of the hold music that plays when he calls his cable company, Hollander seems obstinately content to sit posted up beside him, enjoying his company. This is presumably because none of the other Metros are talented or popular enough to have earned an invitation this year. Hollander simply has no one else to hang out with. He’ll probably move on from Ilya when a better option comes along.

“Your parents are here somewhere?” Ilya asks, like a hint that Hollander is welcome to fuck off sooner rather than later and save them both this prolonged awkwardness.

Hollander shakes his head, clears his throat. “They have a trip coming up. To Mexico. In a few weeks, and — they’re great. I know I’m really lucky. I just, uh.” He looks at Ilya through the dark fan of his lashes. “I needed to do my own thing.”

“Mmm.” Ilya takes a sip of his drink and tries to figure out if Hollander’s own thing is code for drinking beer and having pointless conversations. He wonders also if Hollander has fucked anyone since the last time, since Ilya, but that’s more a passing query unrelated to anything in particular.

“I’m here alone, actually,” continues Hollander. Was his stool always so close to Ilya’s? “I didn’t bring anyone,” he clarifies, as though Ilya lacks the fluency to deduce the meaning of the word alone.

Because his plan to torture Hollander has been so far ineffective, Ilya decides to pivot and torture himself. He’s trying to do less of that these days, but old habits die hard. “Alone how come? Your movie star girlfriend dumped you?”

“It was mutual,” Hollander lies. Ilya doesn’t often feel violent off the ice, but he has the sudden urge to glass someone with his Modelo bottle. Possibly himself. “We’re still friends, though. We actually — Montreal played LA, last week, and she and I got brunch while I was out there.”

“Very mature,” Ilya says, resisting the urge to pull his phone from his pocket and text What the fuck is this I’m hearing about brunch? He and Rose talk on the phone at least twice a week and text each other every day, and yet this is the first that Ilya’s being told about their little clandestine frittata rendezvous.

“It was,” Hollander says, then laughs a little. “I mean, it was completely fucking awkward at first. And really, like — I don’t know. The vibes were different, I guess. But — good different.”

Exactly the reason Ilya won’t entertain any of this, whatever this is. Of course Hollander thinks it’s good sportsmanship to play let’s-stay-friends with everyone he’s ever fucked and left behind. If there was a Lady Byng for screwing around, he’d probably win it several years running. Ilya has no interest. He doesn’t need the pity consolation prize, and Hollander may be mature enough to keep things casual, congenial, and perfectly platonic, but Ilya isn’t.

“Cats and dogs!” An arm’s suddenly slung over Ilya’s shoulder and a matching one around Hollander’s; in the space between drops the head of Carter Vaughn, New York Admiral, slightly shitfaced. “Look at this! Fuckin’ beauties!”

“Should be a fun time,” Hollander says, although Ilya has seen Hollander pack a book of expert level sudoku puzzles in his carry on, and so his idea of a fun time is perhaps skewed.

“Yeah, be careful with this guy though.” Vaughn squeezes Ilya, then claps a massive hand to his shoulder in a boorish, amiable gesture. “You can never trust him.”

“Hear that, Hollander?” Ilya plasters on a smile, pulls it wide so that the sharpest of his teeth are showing. The seatback magazine on the plane had had an article about Floridian swamp gators which said they grew up to 3,000 teeth over the span of their lifetime, an endless cycle of fresh pearly whites replacing the dull and cracked ones once they’d exhausted them feasting on their prey. It also said that alligators, in some situations, were known to eat their own kind. “Be careful. Who knows what I am capable of?”

“Oh, spooky, Rozy! You boys play nice!” Vaughn hoots in their ears unnecessarily, says something else loud and indistinguishable, and skips off to go butt into someone else’s business. Fucking Americans.

Hollander coughs a laugh, watching him go. “I feel like we’re gonna get a lot of that sort of thing this weekend.”

Ilya takes a swig of beer and swirls it in his mouth before he swallows. “Best to keep our distance, then.”

“I don’t know about that. A lot of players mix it up at this thing, hang with guys from different teams. That’s the whole point, right?” Hollander looks him up and down; if Ilya didn’t feel so utterly at home back in his own skin, it might make him feel discomfited. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for people to see us spending time together. Would it?”

An alligator’s bite can clamp down with the brute force of 2000lbs; he remembers that from the magazine. “Oh, you want to be public?” Ilya turns and faces Hollander fully for the first time, leaning in close as he snaps. His voice is low, but loud enough that somebody could overhear if they were really listening. “Maybe I should call Vaughn back over here. What do you think he’d say if I told him you like it when I fuck you long after you’ve come? When you’re stretched out on my cock and so sensitive it makes you start to cry, and you beg me to keep going — would it be the worst thing in the world if I told him that?”

Hollander’s face twitches. Paranoia doesn’t quite overtake him, he stays calm, but it takes a discernible effort. “Well, I think he’d think that you were joking.” He forces a thin smile. “But I’d rather you didn’t say it regardless.”

On the outskirts of the room, far from the bar, two MLH interns are flitting between players like hummingbirds between hibiscus. They’re both blonds, one dirty and the other icy white, who together balance half a dozen iPhones between their fingers as they collect footage for what they call “socials,” which Ilya takes to mean the MLH’s twitter and/or instagram and/or YouTube. They’re omnipresent but fairly unobtrusive; Ilya’s lucky neither of them has wandered close enough to have snagged a snippet of his and Hollander’s conversation.

As Ilya’s deciding whether to dismiss Hollander from the bar or excuse himself, the big shots descend. The real sports news outlets have crews here too, professionals in ballcaps lugging 80lb cameras on their shoulders to capture all the candid camaraderie of the weekend and ESPN and Sportsnet anchors who wheedle the players for quips.

Before either of them can make evasive maneuvers, a network anchor spots them. “Rock-paper-scissors for the soundbite,” Hollander mutters into Ilya’s ear; hurriedly, as the camera senses them like blood in the water, they smack their fists against their hands, one two three, then shoot. Ilya wins. Naturally. He clamps the V of his fingers around the flat of Hollander’s hand, scissor slicing easily through paper, and smiles smugly as Hollander groans. “Fuck!”

The MLH has pulled out all the stops this year; in order to make it a properly star studded event, they’ve rounded up every celebrity hockey fan they can think of (the sum total of which is apparently two — a standup comedian Ilya doesn’t find particularly funny and a world famous Canadian pop star) to mingle with the players and provide color commentary.

The pop star sidles up and Hollander, for once a man of his word, turns with a handsome, camera-ready smile to greet him. The singer’s outfitted in an All Stars jersey and Toronto beanie, despite the fact that it’s 80-something degrees out, and he seems genuinely thrilled to be meeting them. The two of them, Hollander and the teen idol, make idle chit-chat for the cameras as Ilya half listens.

His thumb is rubbing in an absent motion between the slope of his index and middle finger. There’s such a thing as muscle memory, he knows that well, but somehow he’d repressed the knowledge of how perfectly he and Hollander fit together, how evenly matched their sizes are down even to their skilled hands. If they pressed their palms flat together, let their skin touch there, would their callouses align? Would one man’s fingertips extend beyond the grasp of the other, or would they mirror one another, like they’d been designed for comparison?

“Ilya?” the news anchor prompts, and a microphone is held in front of Ilya’s face like he’s expected to answer something, although he can’t for the life of him think what the question was.

“Я слышал, ты трахаешь ту милашку с канала Дисней,” Ilya says, shaking the pop star’s hand. “Мои поздравления.”

The pop star looks dazed but thrilled to have been spoken to by Ilya in any language. “Cool to meet you too, man. Huge fan.”

Hollander waits until the camera crew has drifted far enough out of earshot to ask, “What did you actually say?”

“I congratulated him. Connors showed me from celebrity gossip columns that he is fucking that girl from the Disney channel.”

Despite himself, Hollander barks a loud laugh. “You’re such an asshole. You know people will translate that when it airs, right?”

“Hollander. Nobody watches this shit.” Beneath the bar top, where his legs dangle off the edge of the stool, Ilya swings his feet. Hollander’s are swinging too. They bump each other softly, and Hollander aims a gentle kick at Ilya’s ankle, and Ilya rolls his eyes and kicks him back.

“Did you, uh — did you bring anybody? This weekend?”

Ilya shakes his head. “Nope.”

“Oh.” Hollander tries to hold back a grin, but he does a shitty job at it. “I thought you might have brought your friend Svetlana.”

It’s not a question, so Ilya’s not obligated to answer, per se. Nevertheless, he repeats himself, a “Nope” which echoes down the neck of the glass bottle as he finishes off his beer.

Hollander is sitting extremely still, and from the sun or from the single beer or from something else, he’s looking exceptionally pink. Ilya forces his attention elsewhere, to the gold foil label on his beer bottle which he begins peeling at methodically.

“I met her at your house. I guess you probably know that.”

Ilya grunts in a vaguely affirmative manner. He’s very busy with his project, too busy to form a proper response. This label isn’t going to peel itself.

“She seems nice. She’s very beautiful.”

Ilya’s head whips up; he finds Hollander already staring at him. “Oh, what, you have been dumped by Rose Landry and now you’re on the rebound?”

Hollander’s mouth quirks up at the corner. “Not exactly, no.”

“Yeah. Well. Good luck anyway,” Ilya huffs. He resumes peeling at the foil. “She is dating some girl now.”

“Oh,” Hollander says in a voice like his eyebrows might be high up his forehead, though Ilya doesn’t know because he’s not looking. “I didn’t realize.”

“Dating, sort of dating. I don’t know.” Ilya sighs. “Is complicated. Big bisexual crisis.”

He’s curious how Hollander will react. It might be that Ilya said it out loud, the real word for it, just to elicit a reaction. And Hollander doesn’t look comfortable, exactly, but when does he ever? If Yuna were to get him an ad spot for a constipation relief supplement, he’d be a natural in front of the camera, at least in the “before” segments. “I hope that works out for her,” is the only response he musters up, and that doesn’t give Ilya much to work with.

They sit in silence again. A different waiter wanders by and Hollander orders another beer for himself, glancing at Ilya to see if he should make it two. Ilya shakes his head. “I should—” he makes a vague gesture which communicates go mingle but also, in case he changes his mind, go walk into the ocean and never come back.

“One of the other Boston guys is here, right? That must be nice, to have a buddy.”

“Schopenhauer. Yes,” Ilya scoots his chair out. “I think he is with the other goalies somewhere, doing goalie things.”

Hollander chuckles. “Sounds about right.” He gives Ilya that look again, the look like he wants to see absolutely all of him. “This weekend should be fun.”

“Hockey can be fun, yes.”

Hollander’s second drink appears. He raises it to his lips in basically a really slutty way. “Just hockey?”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Yes Hollander, just hockey.”

“Guess I’ll see you on the ice, then, teammate.” Hollander smiles, and Ilya leaves before he can do anything stupid, like all the things he wants to do.

He doesn’t go find Scooper. He goes back to his room and lays face down on the bed, balcony door thrown wide so that the orange and purple sunset can cozy in and make a blanket over him.

Forty days since he’s seen Hollander last. Ilya has changed things in his life since then. He’d thought that this could change. And yet, here he is, back in this situation that’s almost as familiar as his own skin: wanting something that can never be, wanting in a way that feels like agony. He can’t imagine how much more excruciating it would be if he were dumb enough to let himself try again.

Ilya pats the bed, hand searching, until he finds his phone.


Sunny 🌞: Justin Beeber is here

Selene 🌚: Why on earth?

Selene 🌚: I met him at the Kids’ Choice Awards in I wanna say 2015? Definitely had a vibe like he was on pills but otherwise he was surprisingly very nice

Sunny 🌞: he is here as token celebrity hockey fan

Selene 🌚: What the fuck??

Selene 🌚: Why don’t I ever get asked to do these things? Brb firing my agent

Sunny 🌞: better yet they should ask you to play next year

Sunny 🌞: we can be on the same team. theme can be hotties vs notties

Selene 🌚: Oh my god PLEASE… imagine how much fun we would have

Selene 🌚: https://youtu.be/L_jWHffIx5E?si=WkyjJctl6DdN3wRB

Selene 🌚: literally us next year


Ilya hesitates with his thumbs over the screen, debates sending a string of useless emojis. 


Sunny 🌞: so you and hollander are friends now

Selene 🌚: Sort of? We’ve seen each other once and we text occasionally

Sunny 🌞: 👍

Selene 🌚: I hadn’t mentioned it as per your firm instruction that we don’t discuss him during your ~healing era. A rule I’m finding difficult to adhere to right now because the fact that you know he and I have been in contact means that he himself told you which means that you saw him and I do realistically think that if you don’t tell me every single detail about it I may actually die

Sunny 🌞: you will live

Sunny 🌞: there is nothing to tell

Selene 🌚: Sounds so true

Sunny 🌞: he wants to fuck again and also thinks he wants to be friends

Sunny 🌞: he will get over it

Selene 🌚: Right, maybe. But just spitballing here, another suggestion is that you could actually have an honest conversation with him and see how he feels rather than assuming.

Sunny 🌞: okay enough suggestions nosy rosy 🙄 thank you

Selene 🌚: Excuse me, I’m not being nosy. I’m being meddlesome. Big difference

Sunny 🌞: 🙄🙄🙄


The sun has set and made way for the contusion of the night sky, a black and blue expanse, by the time Schopenhauer knocks. Most of the Eastern Conference guys are going to a steakhouse — hockey players are always going to steakhouses — and Ilya can’t think of a good reason not to grab his wallet, keys, and phone and follow suit.

They have a back room to themselves in the restaurant, a swanky place where Ilya thoroughly abused his Amex after a playoff win in 2014 and woke up to over six grand in charges mostly off of truffled mashed potatoes and top shelf liquor. Some of the guys don’t fly in until morning, so they’re not all here, but there’s a dozen or so of them. Schopenhauer to his left exchanges rapid German with a Swiss defenseman from Columbus seated opposite. Vaughn’s beside Scott Hunter, probably sleeping at the foot of his bed tonight too, and the Reilly brothers are both here even though one of them plays in Vancouver.

Hollander is here, obviously. He’s sitting halfway down the table and across, swiping through photos on Irv Wallace’s phone and most likely boring him to tears. “I think it’ll look great if you can wrap it all the way around and match the wood on the trim.” His voice rises above the din of grunts and murmurs; Ilya can’t help overhearing. “The key is finding the right contractor, right? I’d rather pay more for someone I can trust than skimp and end up with some asshole who’s gonna cheap out on materials or bullshit me on the timelines.”

A waitress comes by. Ilya orders a few bottles of red for the table, dealer’s choice, and an Argentinian porterhouse for himself. He flirts a little with the waitress; she’s pert and pretty, and why shouldn’t he? He cracks a joke that makes her laugh, and she fans herself with her order pad like she’s blushing hot. Ilya doesn’t care if any of the guys see. He doesn’t care if Hollander sees him flirting or sees her flirting back, which he doesn’t anyway because of his stupid boring conversation about Wallace’s back deck.

Ilya’s phone buzzes where it’s flipped face down on the table beside his salad plate, and once the waitress trots off to do her waitress things, he turns it over. There are two messages from Marly. Can you believe this fucking guy? he’s texted, along with a picture from the batting cages: Connors, leaning on the butt of his bat like it’s a cane, stands amongst a group of women, flirting with a blond wearing a white dress and a sash which clearly indicates that it’s her bachelorette party.

I did not know that it was possible to strike out at batting cages, Ilya types. 


Mars Bar 😎: seriously 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Mars Bar 😎: oh fuck me bro. He just got her number.


To his right, Ilya hears the scrape of a chair. Does this mean we will be bridesmaids soon? he sends back.

“Delson wanted to sit next to Irv, so we swapped,” Hollander says, leaning in to be heard over the raucous applause as appetizers are delivered. “I hope that’s cool.”

Ilya makes a phlegmy noise in the back of his throat that counts, technically, as a response.


Mars Bar 😎: you gotta come with next time. we can introduce you to America’s pastime

BAD BOY 4 LYFE: public intoxication?


U know it brother Marly responds, along with a selfie of him deep-throating a bottle of Heineken.

“Texting?” Hollander asks, which is a stupid fucking question.

Ilya angles the phone away and smashes out a random assortment of emojis. “Many girls to respond to,” he lies, breezy and dick-swinging. “College co-eds. Twins. A natural redhead — she’s crazy about me. Won’t leave me alone, like a stalker type of girl. So hot.”

“Really?” Hollander considers a shared platter of lobster rangoon. “It looked like Marleau in the picture.”

Ilya huffs. He flips his phone back down on the table. “Where are the steaks?”

“They’re coming,” Hollander says. “Rangoon?”

Ilya ignores him. Well, he tries a rangoon, but he would have done that anyway. And a bit of spinach dip, and two Cuban sliders.

“I’ve never understood the twins thing,” Hollander remarks a minute later, frowning.

“Hngh?” Ilya says, mouth full of wagyu meatball — he means it like Why are you talking to me? and What are you talking about? and also, Hngh?

“Sex,” Hollander says. He’s been drinking today the way he rarely does, and already his face has that ruddy glow it’s had on the few occasions Ilya’s seen him drunk. He’s even brighter red now, flushed from his hairline down to the bit of chest that peeks over the collar of his t-shirt. “Like, a — you know, a threesome. With twins. I don’t know, I guess I’m an only child, but I always thought — I mean, you have a brother, right? Would you have sex with him?”

Ilya’s jaw drops. A mushed up bit of meatball falls out and into the napkin in his lap. “Don’t be disgusting, Hollander. Some of us are trying to eat.”

Hollander laughs a little, settling more comfortably in his chair. One of his wide, warm thighs presses against Ilya’s. “You’re the one who said you were — you know. With twins.”

“I mean, I fuck them.” Ilya shoves a crostini in his mouth, chews with his mouth open and bluffs around it. “Not at the same time.”

“Oh, of course.” Hollander smiles. “You see how I was confused.”

He acts like that the whole meal, the same way he did at the bar earlier in the afternoon. Like he wants to be around Ilya. Like they like each other. It’s pissing Ilya off. Of course they like each other; why should Hollander get to be the one who decides when they will and won’t do something about it?

Ilya sucks the blood from his porterhouse and savors the silty bottom of his Syrah. He doesn’t indulge Hollander other than to generously allow him to laugh at his jokes, most of which are made at the other players’ expenses. The waitress jots her number on the customer copy of Ilya’s receipt, but Ilya never keeps his receipts — what, like he’s going to use this as a tax write-off? — so he leaves it on the table when he goes. When he gets back to his room, he pulls up pornhub, searches twins hot threesome, and tries and fails to jerk off. It’s late, and he’s had four glasses of wine anyway. He falls asleep around 1AM with his dick still in his hand.

Logically, he should wake up feeling like shit. And he does a little, mentally and physically, but he gets out of bed and slips into his workout gear anyway. Lots of guys use All Star weekend as a vacation, an excuse to slack off — in the past, Ilya certainly has. But since he’s been back in his own body, Ilya’s remembered how much better he feels when he works out every day. That had come up, too, when he’d googled mental health how to fix and get rid of depression not with therapy. Google and the reddit posts he’d found had told him that that wasn’t really how depression worked, that you didn’t just get rid of it, you could only treat it, make it easier to live with, which was probably the most depressing thing Ilya had heard in his life. But they’d also said that regular exercise could help alleviate the symptoms, which at least is one treatment Ilya can self-administer.

He takes the elevator down to the fitness center, popping in his headphones and putting on his workout playlist as he goes. When he steps into the gym, he almost laughs. It’s early and the place is almost empty; two older women stretch out on the mats, and in the back corner, among the black and metal throng of machines, is Hollander on the leg press, knees practically touching his shoulders. Of fucking course.

They make eye contact, then Ilya turns and walks out of the gym. It’s too, too fucking early for whatever that would have been, and the whole point of working out is to make him feel less crazy, not more. Besides, it’s nice out, and there are other ways to exercise.

Ilya loops around the hotel until he finds his way out to the smooth, paved jogging path that runs along the beach. He turns the volume down on his headphones so he can hear the crashing waves and the ambient noise of seagulls intimidating early morning beach goers, then finds a steady pace.

It’s not like Ilya has eyes in the back of his head, although he could wake up tomorrow and that might be the case, who knows. Life is strange. In any case, he doesn’t realize Hollander is running with him until he passes Ilya by a few lengths, then slows and falls back so that they’re keeping the same pace, side by side.

Ilya shoots him a dirty look.

Hollander responds with a smile. “Great weather for it, huh?”

Ilya points to his headphones, pretends he can’t hear Hollander, and speeds up to a proper run. He pauses his music entirely, in case Hollander says something else he needs to pointedly ignore, and hears the slap of sneakers on concrete shift into an even tempo. Annoyingly, Hollander is matching his speed. So Ilya runs faster, and Hollander, always so childishly competitive, runs a little faster than Ilya does. Well, two can play at that game, so Ilya picks up the pace — he certainly doesn’t plan to spend his mental health rejuvenation hour staring at Hollander’s ass bouncing in tight shorts as they trace the long path all around Tampa Bay.

However fast Ilya runs, Hollander pushes himself to go just one percent faster. It’s like he’s goading him; he looks over his shoulder as they hit the fourth mile and smiles at Ilya like he’s flirting, and then Ilya has really had it.

Hollander can have the path all to himself. Ilya breaks off, veers left onto the beach proper, and lets his feet pound and pound as he jogs through the sand. Lactic acid burns through every fibrous muscle of his legs; it’s harder keeping pace on the sand’s sinking surface. He hears Hollander before he sees him, the familiar sound of his exertion, panting, sweating, needy gasps as he pulls in lungfuls of air. The heat is getting to Ilya, making him dizzy with it, but he forces himself to push harder, faster, until he’s in a full blown sprint. Hollander sprints beside him and then they’re racing, both of them laughing; Ilya throws an arm out to slow Hollander and he swats it away, tries to dodge it, but they tangle in each other until their tired feet stumble and they let themselves topple down into the sand.

“Fuck,” Hollander laughs. He’s flat on his back, gazing up into the clear sky, and the look on his face is one of pure satisfaction.

“Fuck,” Ilya echoes. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s so fucked.

They catch their breath a minute, panting in the same way. Hollander sits up eventually; where he’s slick with sweat, the sand has clung to his tan skin. He looks so beautiful that Ilya can’t bear it, but he stares at him anyway. It’s either that or staring right into the sun.

Hollander stands and offers a hand to help Ilya up. Ilya doesn’t take it at first — he’s trying to figure out if he can see up the hem of Hollander’s shorts, which he can, but the view is boring, compression shorts covering up all the good bits. So Ilya lets Hollander take his hand, for just a second.

They walk back to the hotel mostly in silence. Hollander comments on a boat that’s sailing past and Ilya doesn’t respond, but he takes his headphones out and stuffs them in his pocket. It’s peaceful out here. Calm. The beach is nearly empty this early and this time of year, but they see a man selling cold drinks out of a cooler and Ilya gives him a twenty in exchange for a water bottle he and Hollander pass back and forth between them, fingertips brushing.

“Do you remember the night of the draft?” Hollander asks. “In the gym?”

Ilya could lie, but what’s the point? “Of course.”

“I wanted to kiss you so bad.” He shakes his head, smiling at the memory. “Or like — lick you. I don’t know.”

Ilya doesn’t know what to say to that. He knew, of course, that Hollander had wanted him. He knew it even back then. He would never have guessed that they’d acknowledge it, especially not here in the Floridian sun, walking side by side. He takes a long swallow of water, then passes it to Hollander. “We got there eventually.”

“Yeah. We did.”

Hollander takes a swig of water and tries to return the bottle to Ilya, but Ilya waves it off. “You finish it,” he says, and Hollander does.

They part ways in the lobby. Hollander heads straight for the elevator bank while Ilya stops to indulge a family of elated Boston fans in a group selfie. They don’t seem to care that he reeks of sweat; on the contrary, it only enhances the sensation that they’re meeting a real life, in the flesh, pro athlete. Regardless, Ilya needs a shower right now. Preferably a cold one.

Ilya can’t help but wonder if some sort of tracking device was implanted in his body during his brief time away from it. It’s the only explanation he can think of for the way that everywhere he goes, Hollander seems to appear. In the gym, then on his morning run, then in line for the omelette station at the breakfast buffet. Ilya goes down to the pool and sets his things out, sunglasses and towel and various accoutrements claiming a lounge chair; after he dives in the deep end, submerging himself completely, he comes up for air only to see Hollander laying his things on the chair adjacent his own.

Fine then. Ilya paddles to the shallow end, far away. There are a bunch of kids there, children who belong to various players or non-hockey related hotel guests, and after they put it to a vote, the kids decide that Ilya can play with them. Ilya likes playing with children. The games they invent have complicated, arbitrary mechanics and ample room for cheating. Mostly he entertains these ones by splashing around and pretending at frequent intervals to drown himself.

One of the children belongs to Vinny Lemaire, the captain of the Minnesota Nomads. After a spirited game of Marco Polo, Lemaire calls her over to reapply her sunscreen, and Ilya watches with amazement as the little girl obeys without complaint, trotting over and standing completely still while Lemaire slathers her face and limbs in SPF.

Ilya finds it easier to imagine himself with a daughter when he pictures parenthood, although a son would be nice too. He wonders if his child would be well behaved like Lemaire’s little girl or wild and willful like Ilya often was at that age; he finds he likes the thought of either.

“You could probably use some sunscreen too,” Hollander observes when Ilya returns to his lounge chair. “Your shoulders look pink.”

Yes, they’re hot pink and itchy with incipient sunburn. Ilya’s aware. It’s a little late for sunblock now, and moreover, it’s typical masculine bullshit from Hollander to think he can decide what someone else can or can’t do with their body. Rather than explain that, Ilya looms over him, dripping all over Hollander’s precious kindle, and asks him outright, “Are you following me?”

“Kind of,” Hollander answers. He frowns at his kindle, wiping the screen dry against his towel.

Ilya gawps. “What, you are planning to take me out like Nancy Kerrigan? We are on the same team for this thing, if you remember.”

“You think I’m the Tonya Harding?” Hollander says, clearly affronted. “I’m so the Nancy Kerrigan.”

“So who does that make me?”

“Oksana Baiul. Obviously.”

Ilya scoffs. “She’s Ukranian, not Russian.”

“And Kerrigan’s American, not Canadian. I’m giving you the gold, here. Quit whining.”

A reporter for one of the print outlets walks by and stops to greet Hollander off the record; they chat and joke about the skills competition later in the evening, and Hollander is as personable as ever. Ilya sits on his lounger, scrubs a towel over his wet hair, and waits until they’re left alone again to say, “So. You are like weirdo stalker now. For what?”

Hollander is wearing sunglasses that make it difficult to read his expression when he says, “I think that we should talk.”

Ilya snorts. “Agree to disagree.”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to.” Hollander settles back against his chair as though he’s completely at ease. “But maybe later you’ll change your mind. And when you do, you’ll be able to find me.”

This version of Hollander, so confident and sure, is one that Ilya’s only ever encountered on the ice. It flusters Ilya, meeting him here. Is he like this all the time now? Why? How? “Your shirt is garish,” is what Ilya manages to say. It’s short-sleeved, lightweight, and covered in a bright and tropical pattern. He looks incredibly good in it.

Hollander chuckles. “I thought you’d like it, actually. You have a thing for garish shirts.”

Well, yes. That’s why Ilya picked it out for him. “They look better on me than on you.”

“Oh yeah?” Hollander speaks so casually and conversationally, a bystander might think Ilya had asked him for the time. “If you think it looks that bad, I can always take it off.”

Ilya scowls; his face feels hot and maybe sunburnt. “I preferred when you were boring.”

Hollander laughs. He opens his mouth to say something, but before he can, Ilya turns and jumps into the pool.

He can’t avoid Hollander forever; Ilya can sink down to the bottom of the pool, where the chlorine burns his eyes, and hold his breath, counting the seconds to see how long he can handle the depths, but eventually, he’ll have to surface.

That night, they dress in the same locker room, four stalls apart. Ilya pulls on his black and yellow jersey, Hollander his red and blue one, and they sport matching All Star weekend patches on the right sides of their chests. The mood around the room is especially convivial now that they’re in the swing of things; ostensibly, the players are here to have fun.

The format’s convoluted this year: six players each from East and West will compete individually in different skill categories, then as a team in a final relay run. Two huge podiums have been set up directly on the ice with room for cameras and broadcasters on top, lined by a bench of seating for the players.

A few have brought their kids along, wives hovering nearby ready to whisk them away should a tantrum occur. Ilya spots Lemaire’s daughter on the Team West bench in full gear, sporting her father’s number and looking as focused and intense as if she herself were competing tonight. Beside Ilya, Pat Reilly’s twins are less disciplined. There’s one of each, boy and girl, maybe five years old. They’re taking turns testing their pads by knocking each other flat on the ice and howling with laughter as Paddy tries and fails to engage them in any other activity.

It’s pure coincidence that Ilya and Hollander aren’t competing in the same skills tonight. If Ilya had known when he picked his events which ones Hollander was choosing, the practiced urge to go head-to-head against him would surely have dictated his selections. Really he just picked the things he thought he’d be best at, and Hollander, presumably, has done the same.

Ilya puts up a respectable showing at firing in the hardest shot, registers in the mid 90s, but there’s a Czech player from Anaheim who blasts the back of the net at 107.2mph and the other guys are too impressed to give a shit that they have no shot at topping that. Hollander kills the passing challenge, which is a good thing, not only because their team needs the points, but because he utterly humiliates himself at the accuracy contest.

His record from their rookie year still stands, mocking him as he almost triples that time today. He’s two for two on the initial targets and then, as Ilya watches in mute horror, Hollander misses the third target, then misses, then misses, then misses, then misses. He misses in the same way every time, aiming for the upper right corner and veering too far right, just off net, and it’s like he can’t correct his instinct to try the same thing again even with proof that it’s not working. Finally, when there’s only two pucks left on the ice and the looming threat of event staff having to skate a few more out to him, Hollander switches gears. He fires top left, hits the target, then switches his attention back to hit the final puck directly into the upper right hand.

They close the individual skills out with the fastest skater, timing a single lap around the rink. Three of the boys from Team East are skating and three from Team West. Since Ilya holds the fastest record of the six, they save him for last, trying to juice the crowd’s fervor. In his mind, he isn’t skating against them, not really. He’s racing the ghost of 2015 Ilya who managed to pull a full lap in at 13.159 seconds.

By the time Ilya skates up to the blue line, Mike Reilly’s leading at 13.6something. It’s Ilya’s to lose, really. He holds his stance, stick in hand, and then the whistle blows.

In an unsubtle lesson from the universe, almost all the things Ilya missed in his time away from his body were the things he had once taken totally for granted. He takes care to appreciate them now, feels himself swell with gratitude each time Russian dances on his tongue with agile fluidity, each time he reaches for something on a high shelf and is tall enough to grasp it, each time he sits on the couch, watching tv, and thoughtlessly fondles his balls just because he can. Each time he skates, it feels like flying again, the way it did when he learned as a young boy and felt like he’d acquired a superpower.

The weekend before Christmas, back in Rose’s body, Ilya had passed by a pop-up rink in a big shopping center in Montreal — one of those shitty outdoor rinks with choppy, torn-up ice and kids tripping over themselves to stay up. And Ilya had told himself, the way he seemed to do constantly throughout that period, that something was better than nothing and that he’d take what he could get. So he rented a pair of skates. They’d given him figure skates though, because he was a girl, and when he’d tried to lace them up he found his fingers clumsier than he remembered, and his stomach began to knot. He’d turn them back in and bought a watery hot chocolate instead, then sat and watched the other skaters, watched until his ass was frozen to the bench and the waterlines of his damp eyes painfully cold, and he’d decided that when he could skate again, he’d fly as fast as he could.

When he crosses the blue line in a full lap, the clock reads 13.212. It’s not his personal best, but he’s too giddy to care. The crowd is roaring and he feels like he could keep going in circles forever and ever and never tire of it.

“Jesus, Rozanov, where’s the fuckin’ fire?” Paddy crows as Ilya returns to their team’s huddle on the ice.

“Fuckin’ fast as fuck, ya fuckin’ psycho,” their backup goalie grins. He’s a veteran out of Buffalo, and he’s laying belly down on the ice looking like an arctic seal. “Come at me like that in the crease, you’ll scare the bejeezus outta me. Attaboy.”

Hollander doesn’t say anything. He watches Ilya and he listens as the other men congratulate him. “Bejeezus,” one of Reilly’s twins trills, and the other joins in. “Fuckin’ psycho! Fucking fuck!” Reilly panics, clapping his gloved hands over their mouths, and the other players laugh and egg the twins on, and Hollander’s still looking straight at Ilya. He looks proud.

The relay is far more complicated than it needs to be. Everyone has their little roles assigned, except the goalie, who basically does nothing, because they never seem to be able to come up with compelling events for them at these things. Ilya’s role is smacking in a few one timers, which surely he can handle; Hollander’s doing a puck control drill, bobbing and weaving through electronic markers so deftly that Ilya can’t help ogling from his side of the ice.

The Eastern Conference team wins the relay, and because the points allotted are so skewed, the individual results don’t really matter in the end. They won, that’s what matters, and it’s not a serious competition in the slightest, only really good for bragging rights, but the guys all cheer anyways. Reilly scoops up one twin under each arm and shakes them, and they all crowd into a group hug, Hollander’s arm slotting in under Ilya’s shoulder as easy as anything.

It’s late, around eleven by the time they’re stripped out of their uniforms and showered, but plenty of the guys are down to go out. Wallace invites Hollander, but he shakes his head, so charming when he declines. “Man, I’m beat. I’ll probably go straight to my room and crash.” He catches Ilya’s eye as he says it. “You guys have fun, though.”

They do have fun, Ilya included. They go out to a Latin dance club where Ilya has exactly two drinks, talks to exactly two girls, and then he’s done it, he’s had fun, and he can go back to the hotel.

He wonders if Hollander’s still awake. Ilya could text him and see, could ask if he wants to come over to Ilya’s room. They could fuck the way they used to, no strings attached, no feelings, or they could— from the way Hollander’s pursuing him with dogged determination, from what he said when he ended things with Rose, Ilya thinks that maybe there are feelings there. It’s not as though they have to figure out what those feelings are. They don’t have to talk about them or acknowledge them, but maybe they could fuck and could just know that there’s something, and that could feel good.

He’d text Hollander and ask him to come, except that, as an act of self-preservation, one of the very first things Ilya had done once he was back in his own body was block Jane’s number in his phone. He’s never been good at resisting temptation if it’s within arm’s reach.

So Ilya lays in bed and thinks of what he might say to the clerk at the check-in counter that could convince her to give him Hollander’s room number. Like, he could say there was a hockey emergency, maybe that he was an equipment manager who had to do an urgent inspection of Hollander’s stick. And if he had the number, he could call Hollander’s room and see if he was still up. Or he could just go knock, if he called and there was no answer. And if he knocked and Hollander opened the door disoriented, as though he’d already been sleeping, that would make sense, because of the late hour, and Ilya’s tired too, to be honest, so maybe he’d go inside and they could kiss a little and then Hollander would ask Ilya into his bed and they could sleep.

He wakes to an early alarm, alone in his own bed. It’s probably for the best.

Their team meets at the rink for practice so they can sort their shit out before the main event takes place at three in the afternoon. Team East’s coach, a really well-liked former player from Carolina, has a notebook of vague but effective concepts. He tries their lines in various configurations, seeing who’s compatible and who’s not, which star player from what team will throw a shit fit having to play on the third line when he’s used to playing first.

There’s an overabundance of centers — five of them to be split among three lines — so forty minutes in, Ilya skates up to the coach and says, “I can play right wing, if you need. You like Robbins on the second line. Try me in his spot.”

Ilya can’t even feign surprise that he and Hollander click instantly. Their bodies have always known how to move together; they’ve spent years intuiting small glances, learning to parse each other’s silent signals and read each other’s minds. They run a passing drill and it’s so easy, so smooth, tape to tape over and over, that the coach tosses his notebook onto the bench and says, “Well, thank fuck for that.”

The game itself is magic, or something close enough to what Ilya knows real magic feels like. He finds himself possessed by the truly frightening desire to have swapped places with Hayden Pike instead of Rose Landry, because playing on a line with Hollander is the most fun he’s ever had on skates.

They blaze down the ice in mental synchronicity, with total awareness of each other. Their left winger is also there, not completely superfluous, and their D-men do their duty, but the shift is theirs, Ilya’s and Hollander’s, each time they’re out there.

To have this flagrant chemistry in front of thousands is intoxicating, to have the guise to show affection in the place they’ve only ever been allowed animosity. Ilya can strip the puck off of another player and deliver it to Hollander like a neatly wrapped gift; Hollander can pocket it deep in the net and skate right into Ilya’s open, waiting arms in celebration. It feels like everything’s allowed.

They’re lightning and thunder, one crashing in behind the other. In fact, they play with such determination that the opposing players begin heckling them. “It’s a fuckin’ exhibition game!” Trip Gagnon calls from the Team West bench. “You boys can calm down, eh? It’s not the Olympics!”

Gagnon’s right. The game doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, except that the Eastern Conference team wins, and winning is a hell of a lot more fun than losing. They’re a raucous bunch in the locker room. Crazed with endorphins, Ilya winks at Hollander from across the crowded showers, and Hollander must feel flustered, because he immediately (intentionally? Unintentionally? Ilya’s not sure) rubs soap directly into his eyes.

The family men, the players who’ve brought along their wives and kids, go off to do their family things; maybe they go to a meal, maybe they drive from Tampa over to Orlando and take the little ones to Disney World. Ilya doesn’t know, and he’s never been to Disney World, although he would like to go someday.

He and the rest of the single players go out for one last dinner. It’s at a sports bar sort of place, but a private section’s been coordinated by someone’s manager or other so that they won’t be required to mingle with actual sports fans. Even so, the wait staff seems overwhelmed by the sheer volume of their order, shocked by how much professional athletes can eat post-game and flabbergasted by how much they aim to drink.

The vibes are easy. Between the ten of them, there are former teammates, current friends, but also assorted rivalries and grudges that seem to have been put aside. Roddy’s nose is barely healed from the break earlier this season, but he and Vaughn are chumming it up like Vaughn isn’t the one who smashed it in.

Ilya lets his limbs go loose, legs stretched beneath the table and one arm thrown over the back of the empty chair next to him. He’s in a good mood. A few of the boys drift off to play pool while they wait for their food, setting beers and big bills down beside the pool table and wagering what average people make in a week. At the far end of the table, Hollander’s engaged in conversation with Gagnon — in French conversation, and Ilya thinks Hollander’s French is probably perfect, because he’s so good at everything he does, so good with his mouth, but then again Ilya doesn’t speak French and so maybe he’s wrong. Hollander’s accent could be shit.

Whatever they’re talking about must be fucking fascinating. Hollander is speaking quickly, passionately, making intense eye contact with Gagnon even as he shifts salt shakers and straw wrappers around the table like a simulacrum of a military battle map. Gagnon looks engrossed, because of course he is. Even Hollander at his most boring anecdote — and he has many of those — is always the most interesting thing in the room.

There’s a dart board on the wall in the back corner. Ilya stands up from the table, letting his chair scrape the sticky floor, and saunters over to stand attractively near the dart board and wait. Surely Gagnon can find some other French-Canadian to talk to. They’re hockey players — there are always a few of those around.

Within a moment, Hollander is by his side. “Wanna play?” he asks, and Ilya passes over the blue darts he’s collected, keeping the yellow ones for himself.

Hollander gestures for him to go first, so Ilya does. He adopts an erect posture, cocking back to get some good air on it, and throws. The dart makes contact with the wall approximately two inches to the right of the board, then falls feebly to the floor. Hollander snorts.

“I think it is defective,” Ilya says, stooping quickly to retrieve the dart and assessing it thoroughly. “See? This little wing is bent. This is not my fault. I get — what is it. Milligan.”

“That’s fine.” Hollander smiles, a satisfied cat swiping the mangled canary from Ilya’s palm. “We’ll swap.”

So Hollander throws a yellow dart and it sticks in, big whoop. He lines up for another shot and Ilya stops him, one hand on his wrist.

“My turn.”

Hollander frowns. “Oh. I thought the first person threw all of theirs and then the other person went.”

“No, no,” Ilya says, although he isn’t sure, exactly. He’s definitely played darts before, right? Not that he was sober, but at the very least he remembers Connors taking a dart deep into the ear canal one night in Dallas a few seasons back. “We take turns.”

And since Hollander doesn’t seem confident in the rules either, he acquiesces. Ilya lobs his dart and it sticks in this time, into one of the beige pizza slices. Because Hollander is a bastard, he throws next and lands in the same skinny piece, further inward towards the center of the board where the slice narrows. Ilya thinks it would be great to land his even closer to the radius, or better yet, for his to land in the exact same spot, thrown with such force that his blue dart pierces directly into Hollander’s yellow one. In the course of trying to do so, he accidentally gets a bullseye.

“Such an asshole.” Hollander shakes his head, elbowing past Ilya though there’s plenty of room not to.

“An asshole why? Because I am playing the game correctly and beating you?”

“Yeah.” Hollander grins. “Exactly. You get it.”

Ilya clicks his tongue in disapproval. “No sportsmanship at all.”

The rumble of players chatting and laughing, the smell of yeast and parmesan as appetizers and more pitchers are brought to the table, all of it is cozy like flannel, a soft separation between the two of them and the room at large. They’re safe in their corner, a part of things and not, and if anyone looked over and saw them teasing each other, saw Hollander’s hand on Ilya’s chest as he pushed and bullied into his space, saw Ilya throwing his head back and smiling ear to ear, it wouldn’t look so strange. All the men here are having fun together. It’s alright for them to do this.

Ilya scribbles their totals on the wall in chalk, not picking numbers completely at random, but scoring based on vibes and intuition.

“That’s bullshit, how is the bullseye 50 points when you hit it and 30 points when I do?!” Hollander’s drinking ginger ale tonight, but his eyes are wide and bright, his face as flushed as if he were drinking something stronger.

“I hit it first,” Ilya explains calmly, exceedingly satisfied by the way Hollander’s face colors further. “I get bonus points.”

“You’re such a cheater, dude. I’m googling the rules.” He attempts to fish his phone from the pocket of his tight jeans while Ilya, who is indeed cheating, reaches to push it back in, fingers tangling up in denim. “Get the fuck—”

“You are vibrating,” Ilya notes as the phone buzzes between their scrambling fingertips. He pinches Hollander’s thigh through the lining of his pocket and Hollander smacks him.

“It’s a text.” Hollander shoulders Ilya away. “Can I answer it, please? Or are you gonna go edit the wikipedia for darts in the meantime and change the rules while I’m not looking?”

This is a great plan, actually, and one that Ilya would never have thought of; the only wikipedia page he’s edited is his own. He must have some residual nosiness left over in his body from Rose’s tenure, though. Rather than take advantage of the opportunity to con Hollander, he peers over his shoulder to peek at the text.

“Say hello from me. How is my favorite MILF, anyway?”

“I won’t, and don’t call her that,” Hollander mumbles sternly, thumbs tapping at the keyboard.

“It means ‘Momager I’d Like to—’”

“Ilya.”

“Alright, alright.” He withdraws, slides over to the chalkboard and erases half of Hollander’s scores as he waits. Ilya does want to know how Yuna’s doing, but he can’t just— he wants to know what she thinks about the rumors that Buffalo’s coach will get shitcanned before the playoffs whether they make it or not, wants to know what she thought of the ending of that audiobook that all three Hollanders had all been listening to as a family activity and which Ilya finished even after he swapped back into his own body. Ilya had found the novel’s conclusion vague but satisfying; he’s curious whether she felt the same, if she liked the ambiguity, or whether she prefers it when things are tied up neatly the way her son does.

Hollander pulls the darts from the board, returning the blues to Ilya and keeping the yellows for himself. There’s food at the table by now, surely, but he nods for Ilya to throw again.

Ilya does, and it buries itself into one of the thin, green crescents; Hollander throws and scores a 20, which is maybe more or less than what Ilya just scored, though he isn’t sure.

Hollander clears his throat. “She’s doing good,” he waits to say until Ilya is throwing, which is presumably why his dart bounces off the board and to the ground.

“Yuna?”

“My mother, yes,” Hollander says, shooting Ilya a look. It’s clear he wants to say something, because he holds fire on his next shot and instead busies himself unbending the wing on that infirm yellow dart, which only results in the plastic snapping off. He looks panicked.

“That’s nice.”

“They’ve both been good, yeah. Um, my parents.” He seems uncomfortable and glances over his shoulder to where the majority of the guys are sitting at the table now. Mike Reilly is shaking crushed red pepper directly into his open mouth while most of the others cheer him on. “I came out to them, actually. Pretty recently. And they’ve been, um. Pretty good about it.”

Hollander throws his dart while Ilya stands and watches in utter silence, completely floored. A small, envious part of him knows that Hollander has just accomplished something Ilya will never have the chance to and been received with grace that Ilya will never, ever know. The larger part of Ilya is consumed, overwhelmingly, with admiration. “Congratulations, Hollander,” he says, and hopes Hollander knows he means it.

His shoulders, up too tight around his ears, relax a little like he does know. “Thanks.” He taps Ilya on the elbow, reminds him that it’s his turn. “It’s — yeah. A relief, I guess. Not that I thought they’d be shitty about it, but, you know.”

“Sure,” says Ilya, because he does vaguely understand what Hollander means.

“If anything they’re being — my mom can be a lot, obviously, but it’s nice.” Hollander pulls his phone from his pocket again and this time Ilya doesn’t stop him. He scrolls through photos Yuna’s sent, proofs for an upcoming Speedo ad and a picture of David sleeping open-mouthed on the couch mid-afternoon. The one he’s looking for is from about a week back, of both Hollander parents posing for a selfie in front of a random board game cafe in downtown Ottawa, pointing at the rainbow pride flag in the front window as though Hollander might otherwise miss it.

“That’s great.” Ilya takes a swig of beer to dislodge the lump in his throat, turning away to scribble nonsense scores on the board. “I did not realize this was something that you wanted.”

“I mean, sure. My parents — family’s really important to me, you know? It’s not like I liked lying to them.” He shakes his head and goes to collect their darts from the board, plucking them one by one. “When I ended things with Rose—”

“Your mutual breakup, you mean,” Ilya interrupts, and Hollander ignores him.

“They were really confused, and like, taken aback. Not that I owed them an explanation, necessarily. I guess I just wanted to give them one. When Rose and I — when I broke up with her, I told her that I’m—” He glances around, and even though there’s no one in earshot, he doesn’t risk it. “I was honest with her about myself. And I feel like maybe once you do it, it gets easier. Like… you tell one person, and the world doesn’t end, and then — it felt possible, that I could tell them.” He looks at Ilya, and he’s not moving salt shakers on a table, but it’s like everything’s lined up where it should be. “It made a lot of things feel possible, actually.”

Shane isn’t breaking his heart this time; it’s Ilya breaking his own. He feels foolish to be throwing darts and crowding close in a dark corner, thinking this was something that it isn’t and that it absolutely can’t be. But it’s one night, and afterwards, he’ll be okay. And Shane will be okay too. He is okay.

“Some things are not possible, Hollander,” Ilya says gently.

His face is silent and steely; Ilya wonders, in the long moment of silence, if Shane will start crying right now, and if so, what the hell Ilya will do in response. He doesn’t, though. He shoves the fist of darts back into the board, one by one, and shakes his head.

“The game is tied,” Ilya lies. They can’t, beyond tonight. They can’t be anything to each other, but couldn’t they have this? “Play one more round. Let’s finish it.”

Shane looks at him. “I think it’s obvious by now that I don’t understand the rules at all. And if that’s the case, I don’t know why I bother playing.”

“Hollander—”

“It’s fine.” Shane angles past him, taking care to leave space between them as he squeezes through the crowd of janky barstools. “Let’s just say you won.”

Ilya follows him back to the table. There isn’t much of an alternative. He sits down beside Roddy, listens to him and Schopenhauer discuss an upcoming change to New York’s state income tax and debate the levels of realism across various films in the Transformers franchise, and Ilya doesn’t contribute to the conversation.

He tries to eat, but he’s too full of regret to get anything else down. Dread settles in his gut like deep dish pizza, like when he and Marly and Connors had stupidly gone out before a game in Chicago and wolfed down half a pie each; the cheese and sauce had congealed into something like cement in their stomachs and left them cramping up on the ice, sweating as they struggled to keep up with the other skaters.

What is it Shane wants from Ilya, really, that Ilya has denied him? They’re past the point of sucking each other off four times a season and pretending it means nothing. It’s clear that they’re aligned at least in an unwillingness to regress, even if Ilya in his weaker moments would like nothing more. Ilya, accordingly, has spent the last weeks mentally fortifying himself against such a backslide and retreating in all ways possible, physically and emotionally. Shane has done no such thing; he’s shored up for an onslaught, so focused on his tactical maneuvers that he fails to consider what it is he has to gain should such a campaign succeed.

“Tabarnak!” one of the frenchies at the far end of the table swears, and Gagnon emits a low, scandalized whistle. “Jesus, Hollzy, I know the cap’s going up, but 400 bucks for a Caesar salad and some chicken wings?”

Shane leaves the bills where he’s tossed them on the table, searching, distracted, for a jacket before seemingly remembering he doesn’t have one. “The rest can cover the tip,” he says, not glancing anywhere but towards the exit. “Early flight, gotta head out, but it was good seeing you boys.”

A couple of the players stand to shake his hand or clap masculine hugs to his back. Ilya feels panic clenching in his chest, the sense that he should do something or say something, and he’s never been the type to freeze, always been such a decisive player, but he hesitates, and then the moment’s stripped from him as Hollander walks out the door.

A relationship between them, something as joyful and affectionate and honest as Hollander’s persistently been all weekend, is totally unrealistic. Ilya knows that. But then again, since November, his concept of “realistic” had been altered pretty fucking irrevocably.

But Shane is gone. He’s walked away, and Ilya’s beer is going flat and his mozzarella sticks are so cold, the cheese barely pulls when he bites them. He thinks of all the different ways he’s lived this moment, in different circumstances and in different bodies, and the way it always seems to lead to Shane walking out the door.

Ilya doesn’t know what he could have done differently in the lead up, to save himself from this. He peels the breading from his mozzarella sticks and then his chicken tenders, dissects and pokes at them, and it occurs to him the only thing he hasn’t tried changing is what comes next. Ilya’s never tried going after him.

How fortuitous, then, that the party’s winding down now. The wait staff’s apologizing; they didn’t realize that the players wanted separate tabs, and they’re happy to split up the check, but is there anyone who knows who ordered what and could come over to the POS system in the hall and help them divvy it up? No problem. Ilya, who had one drink and maybe six bites of food, brandishes his Amex and tells the apologetic manager to throw the whole tab on his card. Anything to get them the fuck out of here.

Most of them shove into cabs back to the hotel together, and Ilya tries to think of how to ask any one of them if they know what room Shane is staying in or on which floor, but he can’t think of how.

When they get back, he checks the lobby bar, but he guesses Shane won’t be there and he’s right. Ilya drops down into one of the armchairs near the concierge desk, breathing in the upscale hotel fragrance, orange blossom and clean baby diapers and laundered linen, the smell of salt water off the bay where the lobby doors are thrown open to the sunset on the beach, and he tries to clear his head and think.

There are a few fans milling in the lobby, some of them in jerseys and dragging suitcases — fairly normal ones, if you could call Vancouver fans normal — but that gives him an idea. Shane has fans. Lots of them. Normal ones and crazy ones. He probably has a few freaky maniacs who track his every move. Ilya goes on twitter and searches Shane Hollander room number Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay.

sorry but like does anyone get 😬 seeing the players approached in public places? a user named @hollandawww has quote tweeted on a post of Shane posing for a photo with a Metros fan in the valet carport. no LITERALLY, @haydenpikeakgae has replied, especially because we know shane gets so overstimmied at these big events? Like that’s my smol bean 🥺

Not that Ilya has time for this, but he quickly switches accounts and replies from his nondescript, untraceable secret twitter. Hollander is not a bean he is a HUMAN ADULT MAN who CHOSE to pose for a photo with a fan because it is all star weekend it is FOR THE FANS and I think YOU are the 😬😬😬 for QTing to say something NASTY and you are probably JEALOUS that you can not meet him!!!!!!!!

Frustrated, he locks his phone and shoves it in his pocket. He’s almost certain Shane will have gone directly back to his room, but Ilya might as well try checking at the poolside bar on the off chance he drifted in for one last ginger ale. He wanders out, Adidas slides thwapping against the marble lobby floor and then splashing through the chlorinated puddles which surround the hotel pool.

The sky is peaches and apricots, all those soft and fuzzy fruits that Ilya doesn’t know the difference between smeared into one sunset marmalade. He’s looking at it, at the fat white sun dropping down into the ocean, watching it sink lower as he makes his way over to the bar, and that’s when he sees him.

Ilya’s shoes kick up sand and spit it out in belches as he tries to make his way down the beach, so he stops for long enough to take them off and carry them in his hands. Shane isn’t far, isn’t too close to the water where the tide could sweep in and carry him away.

“Found you,” Ilya says, dropping down to sit beside him.

Shane doesn’t respond.

Ilya isn’t sure what to say; he spent the time he could have used crafting a perfect reconciliation monologue instead arguing with 19 year old twitter stans.

I’m sorry isn’t quite right, because the things he’s done to wrong Shane are too vast and too cosmic to get into at the moment, nor do they seem pertinent in the here and now. I didn’t mean what I said isn’t true either. He’d love to have been wrong, but Ilya certainly did mean it when he told Shane that he thought a relationship between them was impossible. It’s only that he wants the impossible.

Eventually, Shane is the one to break the silence with slow, measured words. “After the game in Boston, when I went to your house and spoke to Svetlana, she told me to keep trying. Not to give up on you.” He’s looking out at the horizon, to where the last of daylight slips away. “Did she tell you she said that?”

“No,” Ilya responds truthfully.

“Okay.” Shane nods and looks down to his lap. “Was she fucking with me, or—”

“No,” Ilya interrupts. “She knows how I feel.”

Shane nods again.

The air around them presses in like a blessing, a tender breeze caressing like soft fingers through his hair. “I think it was good advice,” Ilya says.

For the first time, Shane turns to look at Ilya, to consider him. Ilya’s hands fidget in the sand, his finger drawing an involuntary shape he hurries to brush away in case it’s a heart.

Slowly, Shane pulls his wallet out, retrieving a slim card before tucking it back into his pocket. He passes the card to Ilya; the mag-stripe up the back and the Grand Hyatt logo on the front make it indistinguishable from the one already in Ilya’s pocket except for a slight variance in their function. “I’m in room 1020.” Shane stands. “I have some stuff I’d like to say, if you’re open to hearing it. If not, I’ll respect your decision.”

Ilya stays to watch the last of the sunset after Shane goes. He tells himself that by the time the crown of it has disappeared completely into the sea, he will have figured out the things he wants. It’s not an option to go up to Shane’s room without knowing; he can’t allow himself uncertainty any longer, not when it will lead to taking what he’s given rather than asking for what he needs.

What Ilya wants, what he needs, is for it to be real this time. He doesn’t need it shouted from the rooftops or splashed across the cover of a dozen tabloids. A whisper in a quiet room will do, as long as it’s spoken aloud. He wants Shane to choose him, but even if Shane says the words, yells them, spells them out in any of their languages, Ilya isn’t sure it’s worth going up to Shane’s room, because he doesn’t know if he can let himself believe them.

He goes back to his own room, thinking he might call Svetlana or Rose for advice, wishing things weren’t so strange between them right now so he could orchestrate a ménage à trois à FaceTime. Rose is too idealistic to consult one-on-one about such things, so easily swept up in a wave of romance that she’ll have Ilya hauled off by a rip tide if he listens to her; Svetlana is pragmatic, but sometimes cagey when it comes to giving actual suggestions, analyzing Ilya in circumspect ways and interrogating rather than instructing, like those shrinks he sees in television shows who ask the patients, “And how does that make you feel?” Not that it helps him in this moment, but Ilya thinks together they balance each other well.

In the end, the only person he talks to is Alexei. He calls while Ilya’s pacing the room, fucking around and acting like he has all the time in the world, which he doesn’t — no one does. Ilya answers every time Alexei calls now; it’s the misery he’s been most committed to since he got back into his own body. Nearly two months of total conviction that his father would die without Ilya ever having the chance to speak to him again have that effect on a person.

But Alexei doesn’t put their father on the phone. “He has a urinary tract infection,” Alexei reports like it’s some massive inconvenience their father developed on purpose to make their lives more difficult. “The nurse is fucking useless. We pay her too much fucking money and all she does is take phone calls from her fucking kids and cry and moan when dad yells at her.”

“How bad is the UTI?” Ilya rubs his furrowed forehead and tries to make sense of what Alexei’s telling him. “What, he needs — cranberry juice? Antibiotics? What?”

“He doesn’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t even know when he needs to piss and half the time he does it in his pants.” Ilya hears shouting in the background, maybe from off the street or on the television, maybe from the others in the house.

“Should I come home?” Ilya asks, and they both know what he really means. Is this my last chance?

Alexei’s quiet for a moment; Ilya hears the suctioned gasp of a refrigerator door opening. “Don’t bother,” he says. “He won’t remember you if you do. I’m here every day and he barely fucking remembers me.”

Despite that, Ilya will return to Moscow soon. The thought fills him with nothing but sickness and dread, but it’s inevitable. Whether it’s to sit straight-backed at his father’s bedside while he goes or to carry the casket after, Ilya knows he will be expected to say some sort of farewell. If he arrives in time, his father will see Ilya without comprehending who he really is, and this will probably feel no different to how it’s always been between them. After that, after the thing that seems like it will happen soon, Ilya may say goodbye to Russia altogether. He hasn’t yet decided.

After he hangs up, Ilya attempts to compose himself. It seems impossible to separate the stress of his life from the prospect of speaking with Shane — that’s the other thing that’s always held them back, this fucking baggage they each lug around which will have to be unpacked if they’re going to have an honest conversation. Maybe it’s better this way. Shane’s been lobotomized or romanticized into thinking this could ever be easy between them, and maybe it’s for the best he sees Ilya a torn up mess so he at least knows what it is he’s in for.

He unblocks Jane and sends a text.


Lily: coming down in two minutes

Lily: okay or no?

Jane: 👍


He has a fleeting thought in the elevator that he may use the keycard to swipe into Shane’s room and find him naked on the bed, on all fours, waiting wantonly. It’s the most manageable outcome he can think of, certainly easier than Ilya explaining to him that the relationship Shane’s angling to get into is the one he just got out of. Instead, Shane’s sitting fully clothed at the desk when Ilya arrives, looking professional if morose, as though Ilya’s here for a performance review and the company is looking to make cutbacks.

“This looks serious,” Ilya frowns, kicking off his shoes as the door slams shut behind him.

“It is, yeah,” Shane says grimly. “Wanna sit down?”

Ilya doesn’t. “What if I hadn’t come?”

Shane blinks rapidly. “I don’t know. I’d — like I said. I’d respect your wishes.”

“And then what,” Ilya pushes. “You would move on?”

Shane looks exasperated and they’ve barely begun. “Probably? I don’t know. I guess I’d be alone for a while and, I don’t know — focus on hockey.”

Ilya doesn’t think it’s possible for Shane to focus on hockey any more than he already does. Regardless. “But you would find someone else eventually, yes?”

“I’d rather not spend my entire life alone, so, yes, presumably.” He’s starting to look annoyed. Good.

“Another man?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s how being gay works, but I’m not an expert,” he snaps. “Can you please sit down?”

There’s an armchair opposite, so Ilya flops into it. This room is the same as his, but flipped: same lamp, same dresser on the left instead of on the right, same tropical printed comforter tucked neatly in by housekeeping or maybe by Hollander himself. The biggest difference between this room and his own is that Shane is here, but really, that isn’t so unfamiliar a sight. Ilya’s come to think of it as an expected amenity, one of the sorts of things that most decent hotel rooms have: tiny bottles of grapefruit-eucalyptus body wash; robes and slippers that they’ll charge you for taking home; a creaky ironing board and a steamer if you call downstairs and ask someone to bring one up; and Shane Hollander sitting where he settles now, at the foot of the bed.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have — yes. I’m gay, if that’s what you’re asking. At first I thought that I should tell you, but then I told my parents and it was kind of fucking embarrassing how they, like—” Shane swallows thickly, “had basically already figured it out. And if they knew, I guess I thought you knew. But — yeah.”

“I did know,” Ilya admits.

“Okay.” Shane chews his lip, clearly debating something. “For a long time, I felt like you were the only person who understood that part of me. And — other parts, too, obviously. So — it’s good to talk about it.”

Ilya sniffs a little, wipes at his nose. “You’re welcome.”

Shane cracks a fraction of a smile. “Thank you. Can I — there’s other stuff I wanted to, um, talk about. Not about me. More like, uh. Me and you.”

“There is no me and you,” Ilya reminds him, although that isn’t 100% true. There was, there was a me and you, and then a him and her, a her and you, a me and him, and every permutation Ilya can think of.

“I want there to be,” Shane says, and he leans forward, elbows on his knees, face wide open and eyes on Ilya’s when he says it. Total honesty. “I like you, Ilya. I have feelings for you. And those feelings aren’t going away.”

Those words might feel euphoric, exciting and so full of possibility, if it was Ilya’s first time hearing them. Two months ago, in the doorway of Shane’s home in Montreal, Ilya in a velvet party dress. You like me, Ilya had said, and Shane had answered with conviction, I do. Ilya cracks his neck. “Okay, fine. You have feelings. This is my problem why?”

Shane gets that look he sometimes does, intense annoyance, where all his facial features join together in the middle of his face to stage a revolt. “Did you come here just to be an asshole? Or is there any part of you that’s open to hearing what I have to say?”

Ilya regards him cooly. “Maybe I want to see you beg.”

“Yeah, well, I won’t.”

Ilya says nothing in return, sitting and fuming and asking himself the same thing Shane is. Why did he come here?

“I’m not gonna beg you to be with me. I’m not gonna force you. I think — I have a feeling that we care about each other, Ilya, and you’re entitled to walk away, but I’m just saying, I’ve done it, and it fucking sucks.” Shane takes a deep breath, probably the way they teach him in his special slutty yoga classes. “And I’m sorry about that, okay. I — that was shitty of me. Leaving.”

Which time? Ilya can’t ask.

“There were years — maybe more of them than you knew about — where I was attracted to you—”

“Obviously,” Ilya cuts in, and Shane gives him a stern look.

“Are you gonna let me finish?” When Ilya makes a go ahead, if you must gesture with his hands, slouching back in his chair, Shane continues. “I was attracted to you probably before I even understood what that attraction was, and I was curious about you, and I wanted — I guess I didn’t know what to want, but I wanted more. More of you. And you just — you barely gave me the time of day. Seriously, like, for a while, I thought you hated me.”

Ilya sinks down lower, hands gripping the wooden armrests of his chair and finding a scratch in the varnish to fiddle. “I never hated you.”

“Yeah, I figured that out. Eventually.” Shane speaks slowly, methodically. “I figured out — you were being practical. Like, there wasn’t anything that could have happened between us, so why act like — why get my hopes up, right?”

Because Shane seems to be waiting for an answer, Ilya nods. Not just Shane’s hopes, no, but yes. He’s more or less correct.

“Okay, so then — I’m not trying to make excuses, but you get why I was confused? I went to your house that day, and it was like — it was nice, you know, but things were different. And I know I freaked out, but Ilya, you switched up the entire fucking game plan without any warning, and I’m sorry, I panicked.”

“Oh, yes, it must have been fucking terrifying.” Ilya sits up so abruptly that Shane flinches. “The man you have been fucking for however many years makes lunch, hangs out with you a little, like — watching TV on the couch—”

“That’s not all that it was, and you know that, and you know that it was different. We were both there—”

“And suddenly you panic,” Ilya barrels on. “So panicked you go find famous girlfriend to parade around, what, one week later? Two weeks? Did that help you figure out your confusion?”

“Yeah, it did, actually!” Shane laughs bitterly and leans forward when Ilya’s nostrils flare in anger. “Sorry, I know I fucked a lot of things up, and I’m trying to take accountability, but you have some nerve giving me a fucking attitude because I dated one woman. You’ve fucked how many girls, exactly? In the time that we’ve been hooking up?”

Typical male chauvinist pig, Ilya thinks. “Oh, now you are slut shaming me?”

“I’m not calling you a slut,” Shane says, face flaming. “I’m calling you a hypocrite.”

“I didn’t have feelings for them, Shane!” Ilya shouts. “It was nothing! It was sex! Was Rose Landry nothing?”

“No!”

“Yes or no?”

“No, I just said — that’s exactly what I’m trying to say!” He’s raised his voice louder than Ilya’s, until it’s strangled and so helpless that, before he can think better of it, Ilya reaches out and grabs his hand. Shane pulls away, wriggles out from Ilya’s grasp, and shakes his head. “No, I need to — give me a minute, okay?”

Ilya does, although it kills him. He watches Shane close his eyes and pull in slow, deep breaths through his nose, then exhale out his mouth. Ilya thinks of explaining, sorry, but I think my father may be dying soon, and I switched into another person’s body and I’m not quite over it, and I’ve had my heart broken by the same guy like one hundred times in the last six months and I still can’t make myself stop wanting him. And now what’s worse, you’ve got me figured out. I think you know that I’m in love with you. In the end, he doesn’t say any of that — it might provide valuable context for why he’s acting like an asshole, but it’s not an actual excuse.

“Rose wasn’t nothing,” Shane says finally. “She meant a lot to me. And the relationship — that’s the whole reason I wanted to talk.”

“Okay,” Ilya says.

“Okay?” Shane confirms. “You’re not gonna interrupt and yell at me again?”

Ilya shrugs, scuffing his foot in the carpet. “Probably not.”

“Fine.” Shane rolls his eyes, but fondly, a tiny fissure to crack the tension between them. “So. Yeah. The relationship. I had never — I mean, I’ve dated a few girls before. Like, gone on dates and stuff. But I had never really been with someone, you know, like...”

“Boyfriend-girlfriend,” Ilya supplies, and Shane grimaces.

“That makes me sound twelve years old, but yeah. I had never been in a relationship. And honestly, being with Rose, I felt kind of dumb, because — I had no idea what I was missing out on.” He looks as wonderstruck, recounting it, as if he were learning it all for the first time. “I thought it would be hard making room for another person in my life — I mean, technically it was, because of travel and work and stuff, for both of us, but I didn’t realize how much I’d want to do it. And it was so — so comfortable. And nice.”

Ilya wants to ask when it got good for Shane, if it was comfortable from the very beginning, or whether they fell into that later, but he can’t tell if that sort of thing matters anymore.

“She would always ask me about my day, so then I started asking her about hers, and like — it was nice to have someone to talk to, and to listen to,” Shane says emphatically. “Sometimes I would cook for her. Or we would go out to eat, and she would order dessert, and I could have a bite without totally fucking up my diet. We went to the movies a lot — I guess it makes sense that she likes movies, but so do I, and during the trailers, they would show a preview for a movie coming out soon and we would look at each other afterwards and do a thumbs up or a thumbs down, depending on if it looked good. And before that I had just been watching movies on my iPad on the plane, but, like — if we both did a thumbs up, that was cool, because it meant that we could go together, and — does any of this make sense? I wish I had better examples.”

Ilya has a dozen more that come to mind, but these ones do just fine. “Sharing your life together,” he says. God, he misses it.

“Exactly,” Shane replies, seemingly encouraged by the fact that Ilya understands. “And — and, I had known I wanted something to change, because I knew what I was doing wasn’t working. It was working to make the other people in my life happy, but not me. Then when I dated Rose, it clicked.”

Ilya picks at the cuticles his poor manicurist has worked so hard to salvage. “It is good that you found that.”

“It is. And even though it ended—”

“Because you’re gay,” Ilya says dully.

“Ilya. No. I mean, yes, but — ugh.” Shane hooks his ankle around the leg of Ilya’s chair and, without warning, drags him close. Their knees are nearly touching now, the armchair butting up against the foot of the bed, and it’s a testament to how emotionally fragile Ilya’s feeling that he manages not to get violently horny about the whole thing.

“Rose is her own person, and she’s amazing. I’m not trying to — I don’t want to be shitty or, or diminish her or whatever when I say this,” Shane continues. “But — the qualities I liked the most about her were all the things that were most like you. Like, she was so blunt when she talked, and funny, and fun, and really fucking competitive.” He swallows a lump in his throat, and this close, here at the foot of this banana leaf bedspread, Ilya can see his eyes shining. “I know you think I’m boring, but sometimes — she was such an interesting person that sometimes, when we were together, it made me feel interesting too. And I feel that way when I’m with you.”

Soft like a secret, Ilya confesses, “I think you’re interesting.”

“Thank you.”

There’s a quiet pause, strangely comfortable. Ilya can’t quite bring himself to look at Shane’s face, so he looks down at their legs, at the tiny particles of sand which cling to the fine hairs on Shane’s calves. “She sounds perfect for you.”

“Not even close,” Shane murmurs.

There are voices in the hall, far away and not any louder than the pounding of Ilya’s heart.

“You fidget a lot.” Shane takes Ilya’s hand in his, pulls it away from the important task of picking at a hangnail of his own creation. “With your hands, your whole body. I don’t even know why I like it. I didn’t know I liked it until it was missing.”

Ilya’s hand is tense, sitting curled up tight in Shane’s like a nascent lotus on a lily pad, and Shane strokes his thumb against Ilya’s palm until the muscles loosen and the petals of him fall into an open bloom.

“She always smelled like perfume and hair products. Never reeked of cigarettes,” Shane says. “Kissing her was never like licking an ashtray. It never made me feel the way I do when I kiss you. No one else does.”

“I quit smoking,” Ilya admits.

“That’s probably a good thing,” Shane chuckles. He’s massaging Ilya’s hand now with firm, even pressure. With careful motions, he strokes a finger over each of the callouses one by one. “Rose was great, don’t get me wrong, but she didn’t play hockey. I mean—”

“That is dealbreaker?” Ilya asks, chewing his lip and prodding at Shane to keep massaging.

“Obviously.”

“You’re crazy. You are hockey obsessed.”

“Exactly. Which is why I need to be with someone who gets it.” Their legs have entwined now.

“She did not have perfect dick either,” Ilya points out.

“That was another dealbreaker, yeah, correct.” Shane fights a smile. “It’s a must have.”

Shane has his other hand now, and their knees are kissing, and their bare toes are tangled up. “Were you happier with her?” Ilya asks.

“Of course,” Shane replies easily, like nothing could be more obvious. Ilya scoffs and tries to scoot the chair back, but Shane beats him to it, grabs the armrests and holds fast. “Ilya, I like you, but — come on. Have we ever tried to be happy together? Did we even give it a shot?”

Ilya purses his lips.

“Maybe you did,” Shane offers. “Maybe that’s what you were doing, when — you know. At your house. But I didn’t. I didn’t know that being happy was an option.”

There are buildings illuminated out across the water, past the moonlit bay, but the sky is so black with night that Ilya can see the two of them reflected perfectly in the hotel window. Ilya, shoulders hunched, face turned away, and Shane leaning in heedless, pleading with what little reason either of them have left.

“I want to figure out how to be happy with you,” Shane says. “I want to let myself have that.”

Ilya stays silent. He lets his shoulders spread as Shane presses closer, into his space, in towards him.

“I bet you’d be good at it right away.” He leans forward, forehead pressing into Ilya’s neck, the words lost somewhere in his collarbone and then found again. “You’d probably make me so fucking happy, if I let you.”

Abruptly, Ilya shoves the chair back and away; Shane lets himself fall back against the bed before Ilya can even put him there, and when Ilya lunges towards him, he’s as ready and as wanting as Ilya’s ever known him to be.

“I will,” Ilya promises, syllables smashed into a sloppy kiss. “I will.”

He crawls on hands and knees, dragging Shane up the bed with him until he can press him into the pillows, kissing and kissing again and again, waiting for the moment where their lips go numb from it, but it never comes. It’s overwhelming sensation and it never seems to end.

“Hey,” Shane says, pulling back and petting at Ilya’s cheeks. Embarrassingly, he has begun to cry. “Hey, hey, Ilya—”

Ilya kisses him again the way he promised himself he would, if he ever had the chance again. This is how his hand should feel on Shane’s waist, broad enough to stretch from ribs to hip and feel the softness of him in between. Ilya should be strong enough to pin him down the way Shane so often needs, big enough to handle him. They should always be hard like this, tangible desire distending the crotches of their pants, both of them matching, rocking together — sex should have always been like this between them.

“You’re okay.” Shane runs hands along his back, tries soothing him, but he sounds confused and slightly worried like maybe Ilya isn’t. “It’s okay. Do you wanna — should we take a second?”

Ilya shakes his head. Even with a future promised, there still isn’t enough time ever, not a minute he can afford to waste doing anything that isn’t touching. He leans down to kiss Shane’s concerns away, but Shane evades him, wriggling out from beneath his weight.

“Come here,” Shane says, and what he means by this is for Ilya to lay flat on his back so they can change positions. He doesn’t manhandle Ilya, just guides him, pausing when Ilya makes a huffing, petulant noise and insists on taking his shirt off before he lays down. “Just take a — hey, I like this shirt,” he complains as Ilya digs a hand in and attempts to rip it off in a dramatic fashion.

“I will buy you a new one,” Ilya assures him, but Shane slaps his hands away.

He straddles Ilya, unbuttoning the shirt himself with a disturbing lack of urgency, as far as Ilya’s concerned. Only once the garment’s been neatly disposed of does he pull Ilya’s hands toward his chest, allowing them to roam and closing his eyes, exhaling softly.

“Feels good?” Ilya asks; he knows it does, but just to check.

“So good,” Shane sighs. He shakes his head a little, clearing it, and opens his eyes. “Hey.” Gently, Shane detaches Ilya’s hands from where they’re cupping his pecs and holds them still. He takes a deep breath; Ilya’s body, traitor that it is, does the same. “Um. I wanted to say. Мне очень нравишься быть с тобой, Илья.”

Ilya forgets that he’d been wrestling his way out of Shane’s grasp, trying to free himself so he could pinch his nipples. He blinks. “You like being with me?”

“Is that—” Shane’s face is violently red, but he holds eye contact with Ilya even as Ilya gawks at him. “Did I totally butcher that?”

“The Duolingo app,” Ilya whispers, realization dawning.

“Yeah.” Shane looks pleased, if mildly surprised. “Have you used it?”

“Of course not,” Ilya responds, still slightly dazed. “I already speak two languages, Hollander. I do not need app with stupid owl always hooting and chirping me.”

“I already spoke two languages,” Shane grumbles. “And it’s not a stupid app. It’s educational.”

Five or ten years from now, Ilya will explain. He’ll tell Shane exactly how and when he saw the app on his phone, back in the time where Ilya was certain Shane would never want him, before he learned that Shane had never stopped wanting. A decade from now they’ll lay together — and it’s difficult to imagine, because there are still so many things they haven’t discussed, so many impossibilities to surmount — but someday they’ll lay together in their bed, in the house that they share, and Ilya will find a way to tell him everything. Maybe Shane will be furious. Maybe they’ll fight about it; Shane might be fluent in Russian by then, and Ilya thrills at the possibility of getting to argue with him in his native tongue. Or maybe, hopefully, just as Ilya does now, Shane will look back at this strange and messy, unbelievable and incomprehensible situation and he’ll feel nothing but gratitude, because it will have gotten them to where they are.

“Let me teach you how to say it better,” Ilya offers, and Shane listens attentively. “Илья, я скучал по твоему большому, охуенному члену во мне.”

“Илья,” Shane echoes, “я скучал по твоему…”

“большому, охуенному члену во мне,” Ilya repeats.

“Илья, я скучал по твоему большому, охуенному члену во мне. Is that right?”

“Члену is more like — члену.” He enunciates slowly, breathier, lighter at the beginning. “Say it again.”

Shane’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “What am I really saying?”

“It is the same thing as you said,” Ilya lies. “But much more romantic.”

“Bullshit, you’re such an asshole. I was trying to do a nice thing, you know—”

“I know, I know,” he assures Shane, sitting up to kiss his chin. “Very nice, and you are very good student. I think that I will let you suck my dick as a reward.”

Shane rolls his eyes, though he grinds down in Ilya’s lap as he does so. “Oh, that’s a reward for me?”

“Yes. You speak so well, show off your talented mouth, and now I think you deserve to suck my большой, охуенный член.”

“Fuck you,” Shane gasps, crawling down the bed to settle in between Ilya’s legs.

“Blowjob now, fucking later,” Ilya corrects.

He shimmies his pants down just far enough; Shane takes the time to remove them the rest of the way and then his own shorts and boxer briefs so that they’re naked together. “Fuck,” he mumbles. He climbs on Ilya, laying so that they’re aligned from tip to toe, and embraces him. Moved, Ilya hugs him back, holding on tight until Shane slides away.

It’s Ilya’s turn to groan and swear; Shane’s mouth is hot around him, cheeks hollowed tight and everything about him greedy. It would shock the MLH and its adoring fans to know that there was anything Shane excelled at more than playing hockey, but he does; he’s always been so good at this. Even in his blushing, virginal days, he’d been a natural, Calder worthy, and throughout the years he’s demonstrated what in hockey terms might be framed as “high dick-sucking IQ.”

Shane bobs his head with concentration and control, patting blindly at the mattress until he finds one of Ilya’s hands and pulling it up to set it on the crown of his head. Ilya takes the hint, tightening his grip as much as possible in Shane’s short hair and guiding him up and down as though he might be lost otherwise, holding him down long enough, deep enough that he feels Shane’s moan vibrating where the head of Ilya’s cock is in his throat. Ilya lets up, lets Shane gasp for air, and has to chase him with his hand when Shane races to take him deep again.

Not that he begrudged the experiment entirely — Ilya certainly appreciated the novelty of getting to experience a completely different form of pleasure, but god did he miss having a dick. It hasn’t technically been very long since he and Shane were last together, but they make so much more sense like this. It’s obvious Shane missed it too. More than the actual appendage, Ilya thinks he missed this feeling of being wanted, needed by Shane, being able to give him the thing that seems to complete him.

“Such a good boy,” Ilya croons, and Shane, whose mouth is full, manages a gurgled moan. Ilya runs a thumb around his stretched lips, wipes away the spit that’s pooling. “You love this, don’t you?”

Eagerly, Shane nods, a quick affirmative up and down before he’s choking himself again, like he wants to swallow Ilya whole. With the hand not gripping Ilya’s thigh, Shane’s reaching up to squeeze at any part of his chest he can, kneading aimlessly as he focuses almost all of his attention on deep-throating Ilya. The sloppy, glottal noises of it are unbearably good. Ilya halts his motions and holds Shane’s head still, fucking up into his mouth just as hard as he knows Shane can take it.

He does take it. He relishes in it. But when Ilya’s barely breathing, when his hands begin to tingle numbly where they’re gripping Shane by the scalp, Shane pulls back abruptly.

“I thought you were gonna fuck me,” he rasps.

“Да,” Ilya wheezes. “I am.”

“Then save it.” Shane grips the base of Ilya’s dick tight, squeezing, and Ilya, who’s admittedly seconds away from coming, nods.

“Okay.” He lays back, trying to catch his breath. “Come kiss me.”

Shane obliges, crawling up the bed again and settling so that his dick grinds into the divot of Ilya’s hip that Ilya’s fairly sure was carved expressly for that purpose.

“You are too good at that,” Ilya says. He dips his tongue into Shane’s mouth, letting Shane suck on it just the way he sucks his cock. Ridiculous. Filthy. How on earth did Ilya get so lucky? “You have stuff?”

“In the nightstand.”

Ilya rolls towards the bedside table, opens up the drawer and finds, beside Shane’s passport and his portable charger, a bottle of lube. Across the room, Shane’s crouching down to lay his suitcase flat and unzip it. He doesn’t have to dig around long; he’s a meticulously organized person and knows exactly the packing cube to extract so he can retrieve the small box of condoms he’s looking for.

“Lube is over here for easy access,” Ilya observes, pinning the small bottle beneath his armpit in the hopes of rapidly warming it. “You have been getting yourself off?”

Shane shoots a bitchy look over his shoulder and zips the suitcase back up.

Ilya waits until Shane’s back on the bed to continue needling. “You were thinking of me when you did it?”

“Maybe,” Shane huffs. He settles on his back, legs spread wide. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Now who’s impatient?”

“I just spent twenty minutes sucking your dick, excuse me if I’m turned on.”

“Was like ten minutes, tops.” Ilya taps his hip, taps again until Shane lifts up off the bed and Ilya can tuck a pillow underneath him. “Good? Comfortable?”

“Mhmm,” Shane nods, watching as Ilya drizzles lube over his fingertips, rubbing them together.

“You were jerking off?” Ilya asks; light as air, he brushes a hand up the length of Shane’s cock. “Or fingering yourself?” His middle finger, in demonstration, creeps down to trace a circle over his hole.

“Both,” Shane chokes out, hips hitching up off the pillow towards where Ilya’s slid the tip of his finger in, grinding, teasing. “Fuck, Ilya.”

Ilya feels himself warming, every part of him heating with arousal beyond any physical stimulation. Say that again, he wants to say, but he doesn’t think he can ask without begging. “Tell me about it,” he requests instead.

“I don’t fucking know, Ilya, please—” Shane’s squirming, desperate; one finger has never been enough to make him anything other than hopelessly needy. “Can you—”

Ilya will, eventually. “You were in your hotel room this weekend,” he says calmly, “you were fucking yourself, and you were thinking about me. Correct? It is natural for me to be curious. I will tell you mine if you will tell me yours.”

“Last night,” Shane says, shifting urgently towards Ilya until he’s worked himself three knuckles deep. “After—”

A wide, wicked smile spreads across Ilya’s face. After, meaning after the skills competition. “You were impressed by my skating,” he grins, works that one lazy finger in and out. “You think it’s sexy when I’m fast. You like my edges.”

“Shut up,” Shane groans, loud enough that the whole floor can hear when Ilya presses hard and sudden against his prostate. “I thought about — fuck, right there, fuck. About, um, thought about you going out with those guys and, and if I had gone out with you and we’d— I don’t know, you looked so good.”

Ilya’s a believer in positive reinforcement; he likes giving instructions, and his cock twitches to see them followed. To encourage Shane, to reward his confidences, Ilya adds a second finger.

Shane is so beautiful writhing on his fingers. The bedsheets are tossed and turned; already their two bodies have sweated into them. Shane’s chest is dewy, firm and muscled but not so hard as to be uninviting. A body that makes good use of itself. Ilya dips his head down and sucks a nipple into his mouth.

“Have you ever jerked off watching me play?” He kisses his way up to Shane’s ear, dragging teeth and tongue, and thinks of when he himself had done just that. “Gotten so hard in your track pants during video review that you had to sneak into the bathroom and get yourself off? Watched my games at home on ESPN and fucked yourself on your dildo during intermissions?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane says, but he’s flustered, turned away, burying his face into the pillow.

With his free hand, Ilya grabs him by the chin, pulls him back face to face. “You have. When? Tell me. Fuck, that’s so hot Shane, you’re such a fucking slut, oh my god.”

“In Juniors,” Shane admits, chest heaving. “I used to watch your tapes—”

“In Juniors?” Scandalized, Ilya stills his fingers completely. “I was seventeen!”

“Jesus Christ — I was seventeen, we’re the same fucking age, can you just—” Tired of waiting, Shane fucks himself onto Ilya’s fingers in earnest, keening when he gets himself just the way he likes. “I’m — want you to fuck me.”

Instead, Ilya works a third finger in, staring down and watching as Shane’s hole stretches to accommodate him. “Want you ready for me, Hollander. Has been a long time.”

“I’m ready now,” Shane argues, but his legs are shaking and his cock is leaking like this alone is ecstasy.

“Will feel better for you if you are not too tight,” Ilya says, petting at his thigh and feeling the muscles jump underneath. “You will enjoy it more. Don’t want to rush.”

Shane looks like he wants to argue, to remind Ilya that he’s taken dick before, as though Ilya could have forgotten. To his knowledge and his perverse pleasure, he’s fairly certain his is the only one Shane’s ever taken. Not that it matters, really, or changes anything between them if Shane has or hasn’t been with other men, but Ilya can’t help this proprietary fixation of his. It gets him off to think of Shane as his and only ever his.

He keeps his fingers pumping, wraps a hand around Shane’s cock and draws his thumb in circles around the head where he always get so wet for Ilya. Shane’s feet scramble on the bedspread, his hands coming up to claw down Ilya’s back like he always does when Ilya’s giving him what he needs. If this is how well Ilya knows his body after seven years of stops and starts, he can’t imagine how good it will be after seven more years together, seven years of open desire and ceaseless devotion.

Shane’s brows draw together, furrowed in unbearable bliss, eyes closed and mouth open. Ilya feels a palm clasp around the back of his neck, pulling him close until their foreheads press together. “I can’t—”

“Yes you can,” Ilya assures him, curling his fingers inside until Shane is whining. “Shh. I’ve got you. You can.”

Shane takes a few gasping breaths, one, two, three of them, and he comes shaking, pulsing over his stomach. Ilya strokes him through it, inside and out, fingertips massaging against the bundle of nerves inside and thumb petting just below the head of his cock, dragging up the vein on the underside and squeezing out the last drops.

“Need a minute,” Shane says when he can breathe again. Slowly, Ilya pulls out, wiping his fingers on the bedsheet, then goes to get a cloth from the bathroom and a cup of water.

“Drink a little.”

“Thanks.” He tilts his head up, body too limp to sit up properly, and manages to drink several sips without spilling too much of it down his chin. Ilya takes the glass and chugs the rest. “I still want you to fuck me.”

“I will,” Ilya says, settling beside him like a big spoon around a freshly squeezed juicer.

They lay in silence, outside of Shane’s heavy breathing and Ilya’s heart beating loudly in his dick. Shane finds a particularly symmetrical ringlet near Ilya’s temple and slides his index finger in and out for no reason Ilya can discern.

“I missed you,” Shane says casually.

As though any of this could be casual; it hasn’t been for Ilya for so long. “You missed my fingers in your ass, is what you mean.”

“That too,” Shane concedes; Ilya hears the smile in his voice. “I meant — being in bed with you. Being with you. I know it’s not like — we’ve never really spent a lot of time together, but — I like you so much, Ilya.”

Ilya swallows. “Мне тоже очень нравится быть с тобой, Шейн.” He says it slowly, pronounces the words clearly. From the corner of his eye, he sees Shane’s face crinkle into a smile of recognition.

They turn into each other, on their sides, face to face with every part of them kissing. Ilya ruts against him in the laziest way. It feels like ages pass; if not for the black tide inking the dark shore, Ilya might think it had turned to morning. He wants to come, but he also wants to stay like this and let the dawn become a voyeur, the sky blushing a shy pink as it peeks in through their window and sees them here together.

Shane reaches down between them, toying with Ilya. He lets go when Ilya shivers from the sensation, feet kicking involuntarily, and then Shane only stretches away as far as it takes to grab a condom.

“You came here with a plan,” Ilya notes as Shane rips the box open neatly. Not that there aren’t condoms in Ilya’s suitcase, but those are always there; he certainly didn’t have enough confidence that he and Shane would reconcile to have packed for such an occasion.

“I don’t know about a plan.” Shane tears the foil packaging and rolls the condom onto Ilya himself. “I had a goal.”

“This?”

“You.” He throws a leg up over Ilya’s hip, scoots in close and tight. “Like this?”

Ilya nods, groaning, “Fuck, Shane,” as Shane maneuvers him to push the tip in. He presses in the rest of the way slowly, forcing himself to breathe through the overwhelming heat and pressure of Shane snug and perfect around him.

It’s been too long since he fucked Shane in his own body, and a part of Ilya is scared he will have forgotten how. That’s instantly disproven; it all comes back to him like — what is the expression? It’s like riding a bike, if the bike was 5’11”, 200lbs, and whimpered when Ilya gripped it by the handlebars.

Ilya holds him tight, the moment hushed apart from ragged breathing. The leg that’s wrapped around him tightens, Shane’s heel digging at his lower back, urging him on, and Ilya moves against him. In this position, there isn’t much that they can do but rock against each other, slow and steady and hypnotic. There isn’t much he’d change, either. The angle has him seated deep, Shane’s waist twitching as he grinds in circles, and they can kiss like this, sort of, can brush their lips together and exchange broken noises into each other’s mouths.

Ilya isn’t gay, not fully, but he likes men and he always has. He likes the hair that most of them have on their bodies, wispy on their chests and thighs, coarse and wiry around their groins. He likes the hair on their heads too, the way they often trim it close and tight at the napes of their necks so that it’s soft in Ilya’s hand when he bends them over and presses them to the bed. He likes the way, on the rare occasions he’s taken men home, they’ll grunt and groan beneath him as he fucks them, the way that Shane’s doing right now.

He likes the thought of them together too, the image and sensation of his and Shane’s bodies working side by side. Ilya’s never understood the way that some of the shittier people he’s known denigrate gay men by feminizing them, as though it’s woman’s work to take cock. On the contrary: Ilya’s never more acutely aware of the fact that he and Shane are both men than in the moments that they’re fucking, and never is he more enthralled by it. It’s not the only aspect of this that arouses him, but their shared masculinity, the sweat that lubricates the muscle of their torsos as they hold tight, the deep and needy voices as they whisper between themselves — it definitely works for him.

“You feel so fucking—” Shane can’t find the words. He shakes his head, nose bumping against Ilya’s.

Ilya lets go of his hip where he’s been squeezing bruisingly tight, trying to get the best leverage, and reaches further down. It seems incomprehensible that Shane’s ass has gotten bigger in the scant time they’ve been apart, but miraculously, it has. Ilya takes as much of a handful as possible and uses his grip to hold Shane as open as he can, thrusting into him more vigorously now.

His other hand is squished between their bodies and the bed, but he fidgets, trying to work it in between them so he can stroke Shane and help get him off. “Don’t need it,” Shane pants. The head of his cock is slick and bumping against Ilya’s stomach; apparently that’s good enough. “Just — don’t stop.”

“Never,” Ilya growls.

He doesn’t realize how close to the edge Shane is until he’s clenching, spilling, moaning Ilya’s name once, long, and then again and again, IlyaIlyaIlya. Shane hasn’t even finished coming when Ilya’s desperation overtakes him.

“Keep saying it,” he pleads; in bed, he’s used to issuing commands, but he needs this, needs it enough that he’ll beg. “Shane, say my name, please, please—”

He asks again and again even as Shane grants his request, talking over him, cooing his name just loud enough to be heard over the pleas which wrack Ilya’s body. His own voice may even be louder than Shane’s feeble one, limp and exhausted now, but the name Ilya, the tenderness therein, is the only thing that Ilya hears. It’s like a magic word. All of him goes rigid and sensation narrows to the wet, hot feeling of him finishing inside Shane and the warmth of Shane burying his name into his mouth.

He feels washed ashore. They’re sticky and cum-smeared enough that it makes sense for them both to rinse off (also, Ilya somehow has a not-insignificant amount of sand in his ear), so after a brief, pleasantly numb and tingly moment basking in the afterglow, they shower together. “Second time today,” Ilya notes as they scrub down, winking at Shane in an echo of his earlier public display.

Shane steps out from beneath the stream and turns the water icy cold as Ilya shrieks and squeals.

“Блять!” Ilya scrambles for the dial, slips and nearly cracks his head open except that there’s a rail along the tiled wall — thank god for ADA accessible hotel rooms. “Hollander, what the fuck!”

“There were other people in there with us earlier,” Shane says, scrubbing a towel over his hair. “Someone totally could have seen.”

“You think Irving fucking Wallace is watching me in the showers? If he’s staring at anyone’s big deck, it’s yours.”

Shane clicks his tongue. “Hurry up in there, you’re wasting water.”

“Such an attitude,” Ilya chides, though he does hurry to finish. There’s no point being in here if Shane is out there.

By the time Ilya’s toweled dry, Shane is fixing the sheets, folding the more lube-soaked of the blankets and setting them in a neat pile for housekeeping. Ilya surveys his options, skincare wise, and finds them woefully inadequate. There’s a basic moisturizer that will do, but no toner to speak of and certainly no serums.

Ilya could wait until he got back to his own room to do his nighttime routine, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to go back to his room at all.

“I was thinking we could have a phone call later this week,” Shane suggests when Ilya strolls back into the bedroom. He’s sitting propped up freakishly straight against the pillows — Ilya could have sworn he just checked in there, but it’s possible that Shane has a huge stick up his ass. “Or video chat. I know there’s stuff we didn’t really talk about — um, logistics. Of what things will — look like. For us.”

“Good idea,” Ilya says.

“Not that I’m trying to put pressure on it. Obviously we live in different cities, though, and I know — I mean, I think it sucks for both of us to only get to see each other a few times a season, and if we talked on the phone more, maybe, like — not just to figure stuff out. We can talk about whatever.”

“Hollander. Chillax. I said it is a good idea.” Ilya slumps into the bed. He feels boneless. So much cardio these last few days. “I think video call is better. Can see your pretty face.”

“Cool,” Shane says, exhaling a sigh of apparently deep relief. He glances to where Ilya’s tucking himself in, covers snug beneath his chin. “What time is your flight?”

“Fucking early.” The words are smushed into a pillow as he flips onto his belly.

“Mine too,” Shane says. He clears his throat.

Ilya looks up, cracks an eye to peer at Shane. Pretends his heart isn’t thumping through the mattress. “So we both have early flights. Okay. That is what alarms are for. I wake up early here or early in my room, it makes no difference.”

Shane chews his lip. “Okay.” He lifts his phone from the nightstand and taps at it, presumably ensuring they’ll wake up on time, then plugs it in and turns the lights off.

It’s quiet in the dark, and peaceful. Ilya pulls Shane close and kisses him goodnight, then kisses him again just because he can. They settle together.

Ilya hasn’t spent much time in the ocean, but he experiences the sensation now that comes after a long day at the beach; a phantom tide ebbs in and out, waves crashing against his legs even as he lies perfectly still. He’s drifting off when Shane speaks.

“Catch flights, not feelings.”

“Shane. You are talking in your sleep.”

Shane sighs. Where his head lays on Ilya’s chest, he blows a puff of air like a breeze through his sparse chest hair. “You made an instagram post once with that caption. I remembered it just now.”

Ilya vaguely recalls. 2013? 2015? Either in front of the team’s plane or the chartered jet he and Svetlana and a couple of their wealthier friends took to Turks & Caicos over Christmas once — he can’t place it exactly, though he remembers dropping his sunglasses on the tarmac and being pissed that they broke. “Oh? Do you follow me on instagram?” he asks, perking up into a slightly more wakeful state of being. “Is this from secret account? Or Shane Hollander verified official?”

“I don’t follow you,” Shane says quickly. “Obviously.” Obvious because Yuna Hollander most certainly has the login credentials.

“So you were lurking.”

“It popped up on my explore page — you know what, forget I said anything.”

He’s wriggling away, but Ilya’s been pumping his glamour muscles, and he squeezes Shane close with his biceps now, trapping him against his pecs. “I think you were looking at my posts, Hollander. I think you have a big, fat crush on me.”

“You’re an asshole. Go to bed or I’ll make you sleep on the floor.”

“It is okay, Shane.” Ilya ducks down; they’re all alone in here, no one to hear them, but Ilya whispers in his ear. “I have big crush on you too. For a long time.”

Shane stops wriggling.

“Who do you think @centerofattention is? I follow you from fake account, screenshot your posts to save in my spank bank.”

“You’re lying.”

“Acqua di Giò ad from last year. They had you posing at the beach, sitting on a pointy rock. Can see your nipples through your shirt.”

“Oh my god.”

“Black and white, though. Very tasteful.”

Shane tries to argue, but it’s a perfunctory protest. His words are slurred with exhaustion now and Ilya pets his head, settles him. Maybe one of them says something else of substance, but if they do, it’s lost to the night.

They sleep at most five hours before Shane’s alarm blares them into consciousness. He leans over and smacks it off. “Another one’s gonna go off in fifteen minutes, okay?”

“Hmm?” Ilya’s isn’t quite awake. They’re sailing very near the shore, and there’s a foghorn going, but surely the captain can take care of that.

“I said we have fifteen minutes before we have to get up,” Shane repeats. Where he’s tucked against Ilya, ass plush and insistent against the only part of Ilya’s body that’s an early riser, he shifts a little. “Do you wanna snooze? Or can you wake up?”

Ilya sure as hell can. He’s up and at ‘em, alert from the very moment Shane moves against him — maybe sooner, maybe from the instant that dulcet, bossy tone had found his ears like siren song. He reaches around to take Shane in hand and focuses on that, humping almost incidentally. The lube is on the nightstand though, and once Ilya’s grabbed it to ease the friction, he might as well rub some in the tight crease between Shane’s thighs, thick like fucking tree trunks and easy to slide his cock between and glide for only a few minutes before he’s coming. It’s a ridiculous mess. And fucking hot, the way Shane swipes the mess of Ilya’s come into his own palm and replaces Ilya’s hand with his to finish himself off. What a way to start the day.

“Hat trick,” Ilya wheezes. It didn’t take very long either. They still have six minutes left before the next alarm goes.

“In what fucking way?” Shane has slipped into the bathroom already. He’s so efficient at this time of day.

“I made you come three times in one night. Hat trick.”

The sink is running; Ilya hears the faucet cut off and then Shane appears in the doorway, backlit and brushing his teeth. “They’re my orgasms. If anything, I got a hat trick,” he argues, the words mangled and frothy, minty fresh.

Ilya stands from the bed, stretches until his joints pop pleasantly. His underwear from yesterday are on the floor somewhere. At one time in his life, he’s certain he was something of a sane person, but that window seems to have closed. He finds the dirty pair and uses them to wipe clean the mess of come on his groin, tucks them into Shane’s suitcase, and retrieves a fresh pair for himself.

Shane’s spitting in the sink when Ilya enters the bathroom. “Your hat trick,” Ilya concedes. “My assists.”

“Fair. Give me a kiss before you go.” Shane’s breath is peppermint and Ilya’s is congealed mozzarella sticks and death warmed over, but it’s sweet anyway.

Ilya gets the rest of the way dressed and dithers; so what if he misses his flight? Maybe he could go with Shane to the airport instead. Maybe he could go to Columbus. Maybe they could run Hayden Pike over with a Zamboni and place him on LTIR and Ilya could take his place on the Metros instead.

“I have to go now,” he says, idling in the doorway of the bathroom again. Shane’s patting his face dry; his skin is pink and his freckles make him look so sweet and friendly. Also, he still has no shirt on. “Wait here.”

“Ilya—”

“One second.” Ilya goes out and comes back with his phone in his hand. “Stand there. Look cute.” He sneaks into the space behind Shane, who startles but doesn’t seem to mind much. Ilya rests his chin on Shane’s shoulder, wraps an arm around him and points his phone towards the mirror. “Do good selfie with me.”

Shane is quite literally a model for several brands — he claims he isn’t, but what else could it be called to be photographed wearing clothes and get paid for it? Still, he sputters, shy, and laughs. “That’s not fair. I’m barely dressed, you have all your clothes on.”

“Too late,” Ilya says, locking his phone. “Already took it.”

“Well, take another one. At least let me comb my hair first.”

“I have to go,” Ilya says, resigned. “You look good in this one. Trust me. I will send to you, and then you will not forget what I look like.”

“And we’ll video chat,” Shane says hopefully, hands running over Ilya’s chest, tangling in his chain.

Ilya brings them to his mouth, kisses the knuckles. “Yes. Soon.”

“До скорого,” Shane repeats.

In the elevator up to his room, Ilya looks at the picture again. Shane is laughing, happy, and Ilya’s happy too — maybe he looks like that often and doesn’t have the chance to see it for himself, or maybe Shane just brings it out in him. He sends the picture to Jane, as promised, and then sends it to Rose.

It’s 3:15 in the morning where she is, so he isn’t surprised that her response doesn’t come through until his plane lands in Toronto.


Selene 🌚: BOYFRIEND STEALER

Selene 🌚: 😍😍😍😭😭😭💖💖💖

Selene 🌚: I am so happy for you I seriously am about to cry in the parking lot of this Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf


Ilya grins, unbuckling his seatbelt and shuffling from the plane as he types out a response.


Sunny 🌞: 🌈👬🏳️‍🌈❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥🍑🕳️🍆💦💦💦😘😘❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Selene 🌚: Took the words right out of my mouth

Selene 🌚: call me when you’re free and tell me every single juicy detail?

Sunny 🌞: duh

Sunny 🌞: anything for my nosy rosy

Chapter End Notes

Thank you guys for sticking with me through the break and through this monster of a chapter! I read every single comment and your support since the last update was so encouraging. Two more weeks, two more chapters, and all of our lovers will have their happy endings!

Chapter 18: Svetlana

Chapter Notes

Is it confusing that I named a completely random OC in this chapter the same name Svetlana's dad already has in canon? Perhaps yes but in real life people DO often have the same names so let's roll with that.

Sergei never knocks. Instead, he presses himself flat against the glass of Svetlana’s office door and waits, silently, for her to look up and acknowledge him. CAN I COME IN, he’ll mouth, exaggerating the syllables, and Svetlana will say out loud at a normal volume, Yes, because the whole fucking office is glass, and not exactly soundproof.

He’s been doing this the whole 10 months she’s worked here, and although she’s managed to sell as many cars in that time as he has in his two and a half years at the dealership, he’s never jealous or competitive. Quite the contrary. Because they are the only Russians, he reasons, the two of them are like a team, and the success of one reflects upon the other. They’re mostly her successes, sure, but he isn’t picky.

Privately, Svetlana likes Sergei. No doubt he’d close more often if he went back to charming suburban women into minivans at the Honda down the road, the way his wife wants him to, but Svetlana would miss him if he did. There’s something sweet about seeing his round face, strawberry-blonde chin whiskers curled like pubes on a ballsack, pressed against her door and eager for attention.

That’s how he is right now, smushed against the office door and mouthing rapidly, emphatically, forming silent mouth shapes with such gusto that he’s fogging up the glass.

“Войдите,” she says. He knocks, actually knocks, and she frowns. “Come in,” she repeats in English this time, and he does.

“There’s someone downstairs for you,” Sergei reports breathlessly. It’s possible he’s run up the stairs just to tell her this. He’s looking flushed.

“An appointment or a walk in?” She clicks over to the tab with her calendar, but the afternoon’s wide open unless she fucked up on scheduling, which doesn’t sound like her.

“A walk in,” Sergei says, then clarifies, “for you.”

“Alright.” She smoothes her trousers and collects herself and her things, the leather file folder she carries with vehicle specs and the weighty heirloom gold pen she tucks into the binding.

Sergei waits to walk her to the client, a giddy chaperone. “She asked for you by name,” he says, excited like he may burst. Unless Sofia Vergara is downstairs with one tit out, Svetlana can’t for the life of her imagine what’s gotten him in such a tizzy.

From the second story balcony which runs along the back wall of the dealership, Svetlana can see down to the showroom floor where her prospective client waits. It’s a youngish woman dressed in a stylish, slightly androgynous manner, plain brown hair hanging just below the collar of her coat. She doesn’t look much like a Porsche girl, but she must have money — she seems comfortable here, browsing lazily as she waits, dragging her fingertips along the side of a vintage guards red turbo model that’s worth more than every car Svetlana’s ever had combined. As Svetlana looks down, the girl turns to gaze up at her, and no, it’s not Sofia Vergara — it’s Rose Landry.

Rose smiles; even from this distance, Svetlana can see her front teeth are big and knock-kneed, nothing like you’d expect from a Hollywood actress. There’s nothing else to do but to smile back. Svetlana takes care to look pleased.

Beside her, Sergei is vibrating with excitement like a dog whose tail has been cropped and is instead forced to wag his whole ass. “Do you know her?” he asks for some fucking reason in English. “She seemed to know who you are. See if you can get us an autograph, Sveta, will you?”

“Make yourself scarce immediately. Go Xerox something,” Svetlana instructs in rapid Russian before switching to her smooth and honeyed English. The showroom echoes. “Thank you Sergei, I can handle it from here.”

Instead, he bounds down the stairs hot on her heels. It’s a Tuesday morning in mid-April, and there’s not enough traffic through the dealership to keep him occupied doing anything but trailing right behind her.

“It’s wonderful to see you.” She greets Rose with an air kiss to each cheek, a European habit Svetlana learned watching her mother exchange hellos with all manner of lovers and loathed acquaintances; it is a multipurpose gesture. “You look well.”

“So do you. I mean, you always look great.” Rose looks like she might say more, but Sergei, half-hidden behind a 2016 Macan, lets out a thrilled meep! that makes her think better of it.

“How can I help you today?” Svetlana asks. Friendly. Professional. She tucks her hands behind her back; this is her default stance when greeting male customers, because it makes her look open and at ease while also subtly pushing her breasts forward, towards them. In this case, it also controls the instinct she’s fighting to reach out and touch. “Is this a social call? Or a bit of retail therapy?”

Rose smiles again, close-lipped. It is a charmingly crooked thing — she must know that it’s charming. And Svetlana isn’t sure how she feels about Rose Landry here at her place of work, trying deliberately to charm her. “I’m in the market for a Porsche.”

She pronounces both the syllables carefully, rolls them off her tongue one by one just the way Svetlana taught her. “Is that so?” Svetlana asks. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

Gratifyingly, Rose’s face flushes. It’s something of a relief. Svetlana had wondered — she’d been so sure of their connection, their attraction to each other, but after everything, she had begun to doubt. Maybe things were different, back in her own body. Maybe Rose wasn’t inclined that way. But no — that electric thing still exists, even in the brightly lit showroom, and Svetlana still has some effect on her. It’s mutual.

Rose shrugs. “I figure you know what I like.”

“Mm, I think I do. Cute and curvy, yes?”

“And fast,” Rose adds, blue eyes sparkling with delight.

Svetlana inclines her head. “Follow me.”

Her heels clack on the glossed tile as she leads Rose across the show floor. She’s still not sure — is this a game they’re playing? Certainly it must be, but what are the rules, the objectives? There are at least a dozen questions more (top of mind, she wonders what the fuck Rose is doing back in Boston, and for how long) but taking precedence is the urgent matter of this interaction, how it is to be managed and how, possibly, it is to be won.

“I have a 2016 981 Cayman here,” she says, gesturing to her left, “and the 2017 718 Boxster,” gesturing to her right. “From year to year the models differ quite a bit, but between the Cayman and the Boxster, generally speaking, you will see the same performance. Think of them as fraternal twins — they are the same under the hood, but the Cayman is a hard top coupe and the Boxster a soft top convertible.” She watches as Rose nods, at least moderately engaged, and peers into the window of the Cayman. Svetlana swings the door open and lets her peek inside. “You’re welcome to get in.”

Rose does. She doesn’t look completely out of place, either, although this isn’t the model Svetlana would choose for her. She’s dressed fashionably — a thick cotton t-shirt, well-tailored jeans, and a cool, vintage-looking Japanese leather flight jacket. Not the sort of thing Svetlana would wear, but it suits Rose, as does the black calf’s skin interior of the Cayman. She grips the steering wheel, turns it like a child playing a racing game in an arcade.

“Are we looking for a daily driver? Or something just for fun?” Svetlana asks as Rose steps back out. She approaches the question — the real question, the thing they’re really talking about — from an oblique angle. “One wouldn’t have much use for the Boxster out here, of course, but the Southern California weather’s perfect for a convertible.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Rose muses. “I’ll probably keep my Audi anyway, for, like — grocery shopping, that kind of thing. So I could always drive that on days when the weather’s shitty. Plus, you know, there’s fires all the fucking time, and then at least I can go run errands without inhaling ash.”

So she does plan to stay in Los Angeles. Svetlana figured as much. She’d always seemed to like her life there. It still doesn’t explain why she’s here.

Rose circles the Boxster, poking nonsensically at the wheel with the toe of her heeled boot. Svetlana’s never seen Rose in her own body. Not in person, at least. She’s so different like this — there’s a new body language to decipher, a tone of voice and a composure which are completely novel, at least to Svetlana. The real Rose. Then again, maybe this is just another role, the character that Rose has ascribed to the self.

But no, Svetlana thinks. There is a real person there. She had known the essence of Rose, the thing that lingered when all else was stripped away. Acting is something Rose does, the way that Svetlana sells cars. It isn’t who she is.

“They do have Porsche dealerships in Los Angeles, you know,” Svetlana finally says. This serpentine approach is only agitating her. She wants to face it head on. “I’m sure it would be easier than buying here and paying to ship the car out there. I’m happy to connect you with someone that’s more local to you.”

Sergei’s face appears in the window of a Cayenne where he appears to have been laying in the backseat, eavesdropping. “Your commission!” he hisses to her in Russian, and Svetlana’s eyes flash towards him in a violent warning until he ducks away.

Rose pretends not to notice. “Yeah, but the registration’s cheaper in Massachusetts than in California, right? That’s what my business manager said. And also—” She flicks the Boxster’s windshield wipers on, then, startled, flicks them off. “I’m in town for the next few months. So it’ll give me something to drive while I’m here.”

Svetlana only grants herself half a second to process that news, but it’s long enough for Rose to whip her head around and scrutinize her reaction. “I hadn’t realized,” Svetlana says smoothly.

Not smooth enough, or maybe Rose just knows her too well; her face crumples into something frightfully anxious.

“I should have said. I’m working out here. Filming from the end of April through the beginning of July.” She looks so nervous, unsure of how Svetlana will take it, but she can’t help beaming with pride, too. “It’s the movie I was telling you about, um. The script my friend wrote, the art thief thing. Hence the—” she holds up a lock of her hair, colored soft brown like a doe’s fur. Svetlana would like to run her fingers through it. “I tried to convince the producer I could wear a wig, but she was like, no, just dye it — she’s a complete bitch.” She laughs awkwardly, then coughs. “That was a joke. I’m the one producing it. Or — co-producing, at least. So. The bitch is me, in this case.”

Svetlana feels abruptly like she’s overflowing. In life, she’s often found herself surrounded by people whose dreams seem, on the surface, to eclipse her own — politicians, models, athletes, and then, one day, a movie star. She thinks another person in her heels might feel inferior, overshadowed by the accomplishments of her friends and loved ones, but Svetlana feels the opposite. When the spotlight shines on them, it’s plenty bright enough for her to bathe in the warm edges and soak up their success; she’s never once desired the blinding brilliance at the center.

Before she can stop herself, Svetlana wraps Rose in a hug. “That’s wonderful,” she murmurs in her ear. “I’m so happy for you.” She tries to pull away, but Rose hugs back quickly, tightly, and buries her face in Svetlana’s neck like she might never let go.

Close by, a car horn beeps and startles the two women apart. The front door of the Cayenne opens and Sergei tumbles out, looking ashamed. “I am just,” he says, accent as thick as the sheen of sweat he wipes from his forehead, “testing safety features.”

“Bear with me a moment, would you?” Svetlana asks Rose sweetly, her skinny arm already wrapped around Sergei’s beefy one, wheeling him away. She switches languages so Rose, who’s clearly amused by the situation, won’t be able to understand them. “Go sit in your office like a good boy, Seryozha, and when she signs, I will let you file the paperwork. A nice, big commission, wouldn’t you like that?”

“How do you know her?” Sergei ignores her generous offer in favor of peering over her shoulder towards Rose even as Svetlana tries to block his view. “Introduce me, Sveta, please. Does she like Russian food? Tell her to come for dinner Sunday; I’ll have Masha cook a whole feast. You come too, like a double date. Oh my god, a real celebrity coming to my house.”

Svetlana shoves him through the double doors into the noisy service center. “Stay.”

Rose is hovering near the pedestal showcasing their 918 Spyder when Svetlana returns. “Same as yours, right?” she notes happily, like she’s pleased to have retained at least one thing from Svetlana’s strict training. “I like it in white better, like you have. The silver’s so… sporty.”

“It is a sports car,” Svetlana reminds her, and Rose nods seriously.

“Absolutely. Which I love.”

She can’t get over how surreal this is. So many of the strange mannerisms Svetlana had come to know finally make sense, seeing Rose like this. A fidgeting finger twitch beside her head which once seemed like a nonsense tic in Ilya’s body now resolves itself into a lock of hair tucked behind her ear, only to escape again. Svetlana can’t stop watching her.

“You’ll like Boston in the spring and summer much more than in the winter.”

Rose drifts towards an all new, redesigned 2017 Panamera, and Svetlana has little choice but to follow. “Originally the script was set in New York, but we’re on a budget, and it’s way cheaper to shoot here. For tax purposes,” she says, and glances up from beneath the long lashes which frame her downturned eyes.

Svetlana gets that familiar itchy feeling; she’s always been the person others go to when they need a band-aid ripped off and they’re too chicken shit to yank it for themselves. “And you’re happy to be here?” she digs, sliding her nail under the edge and tugging.

“I am,” Rose nods emphatically. “Obviously, like — I mean, I wanted to see you.”

Obvious would not be the word Svetlana chose. It’s been three months, and it’s not as though either of them is incapable of hopping on a plane. At least Svetlana had made the effort, even if she’d been slightly waylaid. “Two birds, one stone.”

“Yes,” Rose says, then cringes. “Well — no. Yes, I get to see you and I get to cut costs on the movie; no, that isn’t why — it’s not just because it’s convenient. I think that’s how I made it seem just now. It’s actually not convenient at all.” Somewhat awkwardly, she smiles up at Svetlana from the hole she seems to be dead set on digging herself into.

“Where are you staying?” Svetlana suddenly thinks to ask — the question appears to her around the same time that she realizes what the answer will be. “Downtown? You have a hotel, or a rental?”

Rose has the decency to look a little guilty. “It’s funny you should ask. Turns out it’s way less fun spending a film’s budget on fancy hotel suites when you’re the one putting up the money.”

“You’re staying at Ilya’s.”

“He’s traveling half the time anyway,” Rose explains quickly, though Svetlana does not require an explanation nor did she ask for one. “He’ll only even be here a few days out of the week for however long they’re still in the playoffs, and then when summer starts he’s going up to Canada, obviously — so like, I’m basically an unpaid house sitter.”

Several pieces of information organize themselves in Svetlana’s mind.

The first is that Ilya’s known that Rose would be here. He’s known, and he hasn’t mentioned it to Svetlana, presumably because Rose asked him not to, but possibly because in his new Hollander-addled state of mind, deliriously in love, he’d thought he was facilitating some grand romantic surprise. It does explain the fact that he’d cancelled their lunch and yet had felt the need to FaceTime her this morning and ensure that she was wearing something “cute” to work.

The second piece of information is a long-held theory now confirmed. Rose is interested in Svetlana, yes. She hasn’t forgotten about her or moved on. She’d like them to exist again, maybe forever, in this tiny scene of unreality, and run their lines indefinitely. It makes Svetlana sad, a little bit.

She can’t say that Rose didn’t try. They’d talked on the phone, FaceTimed, texted every day in the beginning, and Rose had put the work in. Even in the last month, after things had decidedly fallen to shit, Svetlana’s phone would still buzz with the occasional thinking of you 💛 or, late at night, miss you ❤️ hope life is treating you well. Maybe the problem was Svetlana, who had never been the type to overstay her welcome. There had been a magical moment in time and they had made the best of it and then it had passed. Such things happened every day to the luckiest of people.

“Well then, I’m not sure you need my help,” Svetlana says, offering her warmest smile. “Surely shared custody of the Ferrari is fair compensation for watering a few fake plants.”

“Actually,” Rose says, “I do need you.”

The showroom’s white and chrome, as sterile as they can keep it; Svetlana can’t believe she’s dragged in all this mess. They stand on either side of the agate gray metallic Panamera, emotions spewing heedlessly between them, and she feels embarrassed and frustrated by her own lack of restraint.

“Let’s get you into something, then.” Svetlana leads Rose back towards the Boxster; she hasn’t bothered rattling off the specs of any of the models because frankly, she’s fairly certain Rose doesn’t care. But the salesperson within her takes over and Svetlana sets herself to cruise control. “You asked for fast; the 718’s an exciting upgrade on the 981. We have a 2-liter turbo-4 with 300 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque. Zero to sixty in 4.5 seconds, and if you’re serious about beating the LA traffic, the S model can do it in 4. In terms of noise—”

“What’s this one?” A ways behind Svetlana, Rose has stopped in her tracks, glossy Malibu blue paint gleaming and reflecting in her wide eyes.

“This is the 911 Carrera S,” Sergei says, sliding out from behind a pillar and losing traction where his dress shoes slip on the tile floor. “The 911 is a quintessential Porsche.”

“A quintessential Porsche,” Rose repeats back in a dupe of his thick accent. It would be offensive if the imitation wasn’t so astoundingly spot on. “Ugh, you say that so perfectly — I’m like, insanely jealous. I’m in rehearsals for this film, and my character’s supposed to have a Russian accent, so I’ve been practicing non-stop—”

“You say it perfectly. Perfect accent, perfect,” Sergei extols, starry-eyed. Svetlana’s scared he may start applauding any minute. “Sveta, you didn’t tell me your friend had such an interest in our culture.”

“I didn’t tell you anything about her,” Svetlana reminds him in Russian. “Evidently, this was wise.”

He beams at Rose as he replies, though she can’t understand him. “Does she speak Russian, too? Svetlana, seriously, I think that you should marry her. You’re getting too old to be single anyway. This could be your last chance.”

“The 911 is a classic Porsche,” Svetlana says, turning away from Sergei to guide Rose closer to the vehicle. The body’s sleek and shapely, and in the flashier colors, like the cerulean one in front of them, it always seems especially vivacious. “This one has the 420 horsepower turbocharged 3.0-liter flat-six engine, and the handling’s divine. If you’re attached to the idea of a convertible, the Carrera also comes in a rag-top, the Cabriolet. A bit pricier, but nice for you, I think.” Svetlana can imagine it so clearly, the top rolled down as Rose cruises along the California coast, the sun baking her skin and the wind tangling her long hair.

“Can I take it for a test drive?” Rose asks, like she’s reading Svetlana’s mind. Interstate 90 is no substitute for the Pacific Coast Highway, but a ride in a Carrera is a ride in a Carrera.

“Of course. Give me a moment and I’ll grab the keys.”

Svetlana had stayed two days at Ilya’s after he’d been thrust back into his body, back in his own place. She’d hung around mostly because he was fragile and she was terribly concerned about him, partially because she’d missed him, but also — she felt at a loose end, suddenly. She knew she had a life of her own she should be getting back to, but on the third day when she left his house and drove back to her place, it was with the feeling like she’d left the oven on somewhere. Seeing Rose now proves her right; it feels like coming home and finding everything ablaze.

A round, black RFID device on her lanyard unlocks the wall safe with the keys. She pulls the set she’s looking for, locks the safe, and takes a moment, standing still, to inventory her emotions.

She isn’t over Rose, nor had she claimed to be. And things were never really over between them, only — had they ever really started? Rose had been a lover, yes, but never could Svetlana have said she had a girlfriend. She would have liked to. Svetlana finds, as she reflects on it, that even still after months where every wire between them has been crossed, she isn’t diametrically opposed to the idea of untangling them.

When she returns, Rose is alone, sitting in the open front seat of the Carrera with her legs dangling out the side. “Where’s Sergei?” Svetlana asks, frowning. There’s another customer who’s walked into the showroom, a middle aged white man with the vague appearance of an orthodontist or an ophthalmologist, aka their core demographic. Another 90 seconds unattended and he’ll be walking right back out the door and toward the BMW that’s down the block.

“He went to find a sharpie from his office so I could autograph his employee badge? I think?” Rose looks up at her. “You grabbed the keys?”

“You can still drive a stick, yes?” Svetlana asks, meaning even in this body? and Rose nods. “Good. Come with me.”

They won’t drive the one that’s in the showroom. There’s a mahogany version of the same model, same specs, out in the parking lot, and Svetlana leads her there. The weather’s crispy cold outside; Svetlana should have run upstairs and grabbed her coat, but she’ll survive. Rose walks close to her, bumping arms, a warm and welcome windbreak that helps ease the chill.

She opens the door to let Rose in, then passes her the keys. Once they’re both inside, Svetlana reviews all the features and the need-to-knows from rote while Rose nods along attentively. She adjusts her mirrors, adjusts the seat, and lets Svetlana give directions so they can pull out of the lot, cruise down the road, and merge onto the freeway.

“Are you mad at me?” Rose asks, eyes fixed on the lanes ahead.

“Mad at you for what?” Svetlana asks rather than saying no, and Rose’s eyes dart briefly towards her and then back to the mid-morning traffic.

“Showing up at your work unannounced? It seemed romantic in my head, but now I’m like — was that totally inappropriate of me?”

“Take the exit after this,” Svetlana says. They drive in silence for a moment but for the pleasurable purr of the engine. “I am not mad at you. For anything.”

Rose flicks the blinker on, a steady click-click-click like softly treading stilettos on marble floors. “Okay. Phew.”

She takes Rose out towards Sudbury, directs her down a quiet road beside a vast and mossy pond. A few swans look up with vague interest, then go back to their gliding. “You can stop here,” Svetlana instructs. It’s not a parking lot so much as a plot of dirt that indicates the entrance to a path tourists can take to see the old, quaint, red-wheeled mill, but Svetlana thinks that probably no one’s coming to see the mill at this hour.

Rose puts the car in park and sets the emergency brake as though something terrible may befall them. “Hi,” she says, and turns to face Svetlana.

Svetlana looks at her; Rose waits with her face open and patient, indulging what she must understand is a very logical curiosity. They haven’t seen each other in the flesh in three months; Svetlana’s never seen her in this flesh ever.

Rose is shorter than Svetlana is (though most women are), but she’s of an average height and a nice soft, slim build. The tip of her nose is rounder here in person than it is in photographs, and her lips are full when she bites them nervously as she does now. Rose is so beautiful.

Svetlana reaches out and touches her hair just as she’d wanted to earlier; a curtain bang hangs in her face and Svetlana tucks it back so that the light of her can stream through unobstructed.

“Did I totally fuck this up?” Rose asks, the words hushed.

“I would have come after the funeral,” Svetlana says. “The timing was shit — well, the entire situation was shit, but — for me, it didn’t change things.”

There’s a dresser drawer at Svetlana’s full of bikinis with the tags still on. Rose knows what they look like; Svetlana had sent her pictures from the dressing room. Help me pick — the white one or the blue and tan or the gold?

I do feel obligated to warn you that the ocean here is freezing, especially in March, Rose had texted back, and Svetlana tried not to feel silly and wrong-footed.

You can heat the pool, can’t you? she’d asked. And jacuzzi?

Buy all three, Rose responded immediately. And Svetlana had taken that to mean Rose was excited she was coming, in just the same way Svetlana was excited to see her.

“I know,” Rose groans. She unbuckles her seatbelt and turns her whole body towards Svetlana, feet curled up neatly on the seat. “I know, I know. And obviously it’s not your fault his dad fucking died. You’re not the problem at all. I started acting so flaky and shitty, and I know it’s because I got freaked out by the whole, like, Russia thing, but — we should have changed your flight. You should have come.” She shakes her head in disappointment, but Svetlana knows it’s aimed at herself rather than Svetlana. “Literally, when has there ever been a situation where a problem wasn’t easier to solve with you there with me?”

Ilya had flown back to the states directly after the wake and Svetlana, unsure of her place in anything, had stayed two weeks more in Moscow. Her father is a doting man, and kind, and it was good to be with him, good to get lunch with her friends at all the usual places. The trouble was, her life in Russia felt trapped in aspic: beautiful and full of wonderful things, so neatly arranged, but totally immovable.

“We’re together now,” Svetlana points out. “So what next?”

“Well, see, I have this friend,” Rose tries, twirling a strand of glossy hair around her fingertip. “He’s kind of an idiot, but he did manage to hook me up with tickets to the Raiders game tonight. And I have an extra, so I thought—”

Svetlana snorts. “Even I am sick of hockey by now, Rose. We’ll have a normal date. We’ll go to dinner.”

“Yeah, no, totally,” Rose says in a rush. “And I was planning on eating dinner anyway, so absolutely yes. I’ll make a reservation.”

“And then what?” Svetlana presses, because that’s what she was asking in the first place. “Dinner tonight, and then what comes next for us?”

Rose blows out a long breath. “I mean, I know what’s next for me. I’m here until July, like I said, then back to LA for the rest of the year while we’re in post, and then in January—” She ducks her head, almost bashful if she didn’t look so pleased to deliver the news that follows. “I’ll actually be filming something for a few months in Sweden.”

What the fuck is in Sweden, Svetlana barely has the time to think before she claps a hand over her mouth. “The fucking ABBA biopic?”

Rose laughs, and Svetlana grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her, and Rose laughs harder. “I know, it’s insane. My agent told me they had passed, I think they wanted an unknown, which is whatever, fine, but then I guess… this is so crazy, but apparently Ilya was at some party? When he was me? And he like, got up and sang a song, which is obviously psychotic, but someone who was there recorded it and posted it on their instagram story and one of the producers somehow saw it and—” She laughs again as though she can’t believe it. “I sort of owe him, like… everything, actually.”

She still has that expression on her face of utter disbelief, because Svetlana has a type: immensely talented individuals who consistently underestimate themselves. “You have so many incredible things in your life right now, Rose. That makes me happy for you. You deserve this.”

“Well, thank you for saying that.” She looks a little flustered maybe, but delightedly so. “But I want you to be one of those incredible things. So I’m trying to figure out how to make that happen.”

Out by the pond, a goose honks, and the swans, convening, turn to look affronted. Otherwise, the world is peaceful and still. Svetlana doesn’t want it to be still; she wants to make it move.

“You’re the one who said it earlier.” Rose tries to catch Svetlana’s eye. “They do have Porsche dealerships in Los Angeles. Just saying.”

It would be a huge commitment, but wouldn’t anything? Wouldn’t staying here in Boston and writing the relationship off as a loss be a commitment to a life without Rose Landry? Svetlana’s a pragmatic person; she doesn’t think she can sign on to anything without at least a test drive.

“Stay at my place while you’re here,” she offers. It’s not quite a commitment yet, but it’s something in that direction. “Ilya can hire someone to check on the house. Stay with me instead.”

Rose’s face splits into a wide, goofy grin that Svetlana’s never had the chance to see before and instantly becomes her favorite thing in the world. “Okay.”

She scrambles towards Svetlana, and Svetlana can’t help but laugh. If Rose was still in Ilya’s body, she’d have taken a gear shift to the balls, but thankfully she’s not. She’s soft and feminine; her long hair drapes around their faces when she leans in, creating a secret place for their lips to meet each other for the first time.

Kissing Rose is different now, of course. Her lips are plush against Svetlana’s, jutting forward over her front teeth; Svetlana tastes the faint flavor of Rose’s lip stain, but it’s familiar because Svetlana owns the same one. The small and private sounds Rose makes are in her own voice, pitched high in the register that Svetlana’s is, and soon Svetlana can’t tell which of them is making noise, or if it’s both of them.

“So—” Rose pulls away, her brown hair mussed from Svetlana’s fingers, and looks around the car with wild eyes. “How exactly do people have sex in these things anyway?”

Svetlana laughs and sits back in her seat. “Buy one and I’ll show you.”

“Great, let’s go.” Rose turns the key in the ignition, eager, and manages to stall it. “Whoops. Ha.”

“The Carrera also comes in an automatic,” Svetlana mentions. She leans in to examine her reflection in the rearview mirror and ensure her makeup hasn’t smudged too unsalvagably.

“Duly noted.” Rose starts the car successfully then. She backs out of the dirt lot, pausing when they get to the road. “By the way, I have zero recollection of how we got here, so you’re gonna have to give me directions back.”

Svetlana does give directions, and because Rose is an actress, she is very good at taking them. She jabbers the whole way, relief and elation mingling into a babbling thing that Svetlana’s all too content to listen to.

“I kinda like the blue. Is that crazy?” Rose wonders aloud. “It makes me feel like Malibu Barbie.”

“Matches your eyes,” Svetlana notes. Rose turns to grin at her. “Please watch the road.”

Rose giggles. “I do think I want the convertible. Is that, like — in stock? How does this work? Can I drive it off the lot today?”

“It depends on the options you decide to go with. Sergei will discuss that with you when he does your paperwork.”

“He’s sweet. He talked about you literally the entire time you were gone getting the keys. I think he kind of worships you.”

Svetlana rolls her eyes. “A little, yes.” She fits her fingers between Rose’s on the gear shift so that they’re holding hands, in a way. “I’m glad you like him. We’re going to his house for dinner on Sunday.”

“Alright.” Rose looks surprised, but exceedingly pleased. “I’ll drive.”

Chapter End Notes

To those of us who bravely dared to ask the question, "Can two beautiful bisexual women find love in this crazy world we live in?" let us celebrate the answer which is a resounding HELL YEAH.

Back next week with a final Ilya POV which is an epilogue of sorts and a decidedly loose-ends-tied-up happy ending! See you there!!!

Chapter 19: Ilya

Chapter Notes

When Ilya becomes an orphan, at age 26, Shane is downstairs getting Gatorades from the fridge.

Alexei calls when they’re in bed; they’re not in bed like in bed, like fucking, they’re in bed like laying beside each other, having just fucked, and Shane’s describing an interesting article he read online while Ilya tries to nip his Achilles tendon between his big and second toes.

Ilya’s phone vibrates on the nightstand and he sighs, a great gust of a thing. “My brother,” he explains.

“You can take it if you want to,” Shane offers, and Ilya doesn’t want to, but he should.

He presses a kiss to the scar on Shane’s shoulder. “No eavesdropping, Mr. Russian Expert Speaker.” He picks up on the third ring, feels the blankets shift as Shane climbs out of bed behind him. “Алло.”

In the doorway, Shane mimes sipping from a can, one eyebrow raised in inquiry. Ilya nods, mouths thank you, and at the same time, his brother says, from nearly 5000 miles away, “Dad is dying.”

Distantly, Ilya feels his breath catch in his throat. Of course his father’s dying. He has been for a while. In fact, they’re all dying, all people are, all living beings whose existence is by nature temporary. But the way Alexei says it, angry, bereft, repulsed, resigned, Ilya knows he means: “Today?”

“I can hold the phone up to him,” Alexei says. Ilya can hear the pouch of snus pressed between his gum and bottom lip; the words are mushed and nicotine stained. “Who knows if he can fucking hear you. He won’t say anything back.”

“Please,” Ilya implores, small voiced, though Alexei is the one who offered.

A moment passes, vague shuffling, and Alexei’s tired voice from maybe two or three feet away. “Go on, then.”

“Papa—” Ilya starts, but he doesn’t know what else to say. Hadn’t his father always liked him best when he was silent? The only things that come to mind are useless platitudes which will do neither of them any good — I’m sorry that this is happening or You lived a full and wonderful life. Things that Ilya isn’t sure he even believes. Instead, he speaks the only truth that comes to mind, something he knows his father will agree with, if by some miracle he can hear him. “I know that I have been a disappointment.”

It’s unclear if they’re in the hospital or at home. Will his father die under fluorescent lights, surrounded by machines? Or have they given him the comfort of his own bed, the dimly lit room with its heavy sheets where Ilya’s mother, Grigori’s wife, had also died?

This phone call is a privilege, Ilya knows that much. The chance to say goodbye is not a given the way that death is. He must use the opportunity, say what he can to the only parent he has left, even if it’s not the one he wants.

“I know that I am not the son you hoped for,” Ilya says, and clears his throat. “Since you are leaving now, if it is any comfort, you do not have to worry about me. I am a good man, despite everything. I am happy, and I won’t be alone. I hope you won’t either.”

For years to come, Ilya will dream of his father’s voice reaching out in this moment, calling his name. He’ll lay in bed asleep, body still in sheets but mind a world away in a magical place where his father hears him, recognizes him. In the moment, there is nothing. Ilya hears a buzzing like cicadas in the summertime, though it is March, and then Alexei takes the phone back. “Done?”

“Done,” Ilya says dully. Done having a father. Done being someone’s son. “How long—”

“Thirty more minutes, they say. Who fucking knows.”

Ilya tries to say something, to thank Alexei maybe, but his jaw clicks and nothing comes out.

“We’ll have the funeral on Friday,” his brother says brusquely. “Call me when you land.”

There’s a hand on Ilya’s back, a sudden, unexpected tenderness that for a moment he is certain is a ghost — friend or foe, he isn’t sure — but no, it’s only Shane. He holds a Gatorade in each hand, red and blue, and gestures for Ilya to choose one.

“Ilya?” his brother snaps from the other end of the line. “What, let me guess, you’re too good to come home for your own father’s funeral? Too busy with your fucking hockey—”

“I’ll book the flight tonight,” Ilya interrupts. “Goodbye, Alexei.” He hangs up.

“Everything good?” Shane sips nervously at the sports drink. His lips are even redder now than usual, and Ilya, in his mind, traces a finger along his cupid’s bow.

In life, he sinks below the covers, pulls them up around his shoulders and curls up like a beetle. “Never better.”

“Okay.” Shane frowns. “Do you want your Gatorade?”

“Let’s watch a movie,” Ilya suggests. This is a brilliant idea he’s just had. “Have you seen There Will Be Blood? I think you would enjoy it. You are like a boring history guy.”

“Ilya, I have to be downtown and back to the hotel in like—” Shane stretches over him to check the clock on the nightstand. “An hour.”

“Stay thirty minutes,” Ilya begs. He presses his face into Shane’s thigh, burying himself totally beneath the sheets and duvet. “Half an hour, and I can drive you back to your hotel. You will be there in time.”

“We have a game, I should—” Shane pulls the covers back and looks at Ilya; with the back of his hand, he takes the temperature of Ilya’s forehead like a loving parent would. He looks concerned. “Half an hour. And then I’ll call my cab.”

They watch the first thirty minutes of the film. To nobody’s surprise, Shane does in fact seem riveted. Ilya thinks, as Daniel Plainview goes from town to town buying up parcels of land, My father could be dying now, and a few scenes later, Most likely, my father is dying this second, and then, around the time that Shane pauses it and says, “Damn, I’ll have to watch the rest of that on the plane,” Ilya thinks, My father’s surely dead.

Shane calls a ride and tugs his pants and sweater on, watching Ilya out of the corner of his eye. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Ilya shrugs. “Yes. Okay.”

“Okay.” Shane hesitates. He glances toward the door — he really should be leaving — and back to Ilya. “Can I just ask — is it family stuff? Or did I mess up? I’m not trying to sound like — I know you have other shit going on, I know not everything is about me, but if it is, and there’s something I can do to fix it, then I want to. Or if not, like, if you had a fight with your brother and you’re upset about that — you know, you can vent to me, if you want to. Or not.”

“We didn’t have a fight.” Ilya sighs, scratching the back of his neck where his hair is growing overlong, tickling his skin. “My father’s dead. That’s all. Nothing you did wrong.”

“Jesus, Ilya, why didn’t you say—” Shane is on him, enveloping him. Ilya’s in the bed still naked as the day he was born, and Shane’s around him, the scent of men’s cologne and fresh laundry and warm skin, hugging him, holding him. Ilya can’t help but cry.

Shane’s called a lyft already and insists that Ilya’s in no condition to drive, but the speed limit that Ilya’s willing to go is, logically speaking, the only way they’ll get him back to the hotel in time to catch the team bus, and it’s Ilya’s fault they’re running late. He says that, and Shane looks at him with sad eyes.

“It’s not your fault, Ilya. None of this is your fault.”

They argue most of the drive anyway when Ilya makes a comment about the lineup for tonight and Shane says, matter of fact, “You’re not playing.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “What, like if I skip the game, that will make him less dead?”

“Ilya.” Shane sighs, exasperated. “If my dad died—”

“If your father died, the world would be a worse place,” Ilya says. “My situation is not the same.”

It turns out Ilya doesn’t end up playing. He gets back to his house, puts his game day suit on, and begins to hyperventilate uncontrollably while he’s tying his tie. His first call’s to his coach, and his second is to Svetlana. They book flights out that night.

He and Shane talk every night he’s in Moscow. About hockey, about nothing; they jerk off together in front of the camera, which they’ve been doing quite a bit of since Tampa Bay. When Ilya can no longer tamp down the urge to express his feelings, Shane lets him speak at length in Russian.

“How much of that did you understand?” Ilya asks afterwards. Shane’s Russian is limited to mostly things like two apples and six loaves of bread, please and can you help me find the library?

“I caught some of it. Um. You talk really fast.”

Ilya chuckles.

“I’ll practice more over the summer,” Shane promises. “I want to understand you better.”

Shane asks him about Moscow and says, “I wish that I could visit,” and even though Ilya will never come back, would never, ever bring Shane here, he still wishes he could share the best of it with him. The city is a part of Ilya in the way that home is always part of a person, whether they like it or not, and it makes him sad that there’s something so essential to him that Shane will never know.

A bouquet arrives the same day he gets back to Boston. Lilies and gladioli, with a card that says Соболезнования in careful, labored Cyrillic, signed Rose Landry. He texts her that night. Thank you for the flowers. An hour later, when his belongings are unpacked and he’s showered the international flight off his skin, he sends BTW do not be weird about this or get too excited but I am wondering, how does it work anyway if you go see a therapist? Will they ask a lot of questions? He doesn’t go right away. Six or seven months pass before he tries it just to see, and they do indeed ask a lot of questions, but eventually he finds someone to talk to.

Before that is the summer. They plan for Ilya to visit Shane at his cottage for fifteen days; he ends up staying nearly five weeks. “Cottage” is a cutesy, modest term for what it is: a custom-built lodge, stately and sleek in design, with wide glass windows and cedar beams. It’s Shane’s pride and joy. They fuck the moment they arrive, thoroughly and with great gusto. Ilya thinks they’ll have a wonderful time.

He’s right. While Ilya’s showering, soaping away the come from his belly button, Shane’s starting the grill. It’s a nice night for it.

“Why are you making so many burgers?” Ilya asks. Like, did Shane slaughter an entire cow for this? A bear?

Shane flips a patty. “The recipe was for eight, so…”

“Okay, you cut it in half,” Ilya explains patiently. “What, you can’t do math?”

Shane stares at the grill, unresponsive. Not at the grill — into it, eyes wide and unblinking like he’s transfixed by the flames. He’s retreating into a primordial state.

“Shane. I am joking. I know you can do math. Goals plus assists equals total points. There. Math.”

“No, it’s not — obviously I can do fucking math.” His gaze is freakishly focused still, like maybe he is LaserFace from X-Squad, about to sear the patties with his infrared eye beams. “My parents’ place is ten minutes from here, you know.”

Ilya thinks that Shane might give him a word problem: If my parents live ten minutes away and I want to get there in my boring, practical car, how slowly can I drive along the back road before a turtle passes me? But no, they seem to have moved on from math. “Okay,” Ilya guesses, “you want to bring them leftovers?”

“I could ask them if they want to come for dinner?” He glances nervously over his shoulder. “But only if you’re comfortable with that. I don’t want to put you in a position to have to — it’s completely up to you.”

Comfortable isn’t the word, exactly. He’s nervous and elated, honored that Shane is willing to take what might be the most significant leap of their relationship, and terrified the easy acceptance as David and Yuna’s son’s partner is something Ilya had once, as Rose, but will never have again. He tells Shane yes, though, definitely yes, and retreats into the master bath to run cool water over his wrists and try to calm himself down.

Shane’s waiting in the kitchen when he comes out, mixing a pitcher of Arnold Palmers. “They should be here in a few min—” He’s cut off by the crunching of gravel under tires as a car pulls in the drive. “Okay, or they’re here now.”

Ilya can hide somewhere, if he needs to. Under the bed. In the trees. At the bottom of the water well. He feels himself yanking anxiously at the collar of his shirt, stretching it, and then remembers that it’s Shane’s. Oh god.

Shane looks agitated watching him, but really, it’s just a shirt. Then he blurts, “I love you.”

Ilya’s eyebrows hit the roof. “Shane—”

“Don’t say anything. I just wanted you to know before they do.” A key turns in the door, and Shane rushes to greet them. “Mom. Hey. I told you not to bring anything.”

The whole thing is a mess, figuratively and literally. David drops a serving bowl of sliced up watermelon in the doorway when he sees Ilya. In a way, it buys them time. Ilya grabs a roll of paper towels while they’re standing there in shock, and by the time it’s cleaned up and their sticky fingers washed, at least they know their son’s boyfriend can be counted on in a crisis. The wood flooring is well sealed, but Shane, for the rest of the summer, is paranoid of ants.

Ilya is distinctly aware of how different the dynamics are this time around. When he’d met them as Rose, Shane’s parents had been trying to win him over; the skate is on the other foot this time. In the last few months, though, as they’ve come to terms with Shane’s sexuality and entrenched themselves even more deeply in his corner, they’ve also come to truly grasp how precarious his situation is, how heartbreakingly difficult it is to be a closeted athlete in a culture that would encourage players to hide the truth of themselves. There’s an element of sympathy they grant him, and Ilya will take it. It’s a start.

They sit outside and talk, eating their burgers and what of the watermelon could be salvaged. When the pitcher runs low, empty but for a pool of melting ice cubes, Ilya scoots back from the table. “Would you like more tea and lemonade to drink?” he asks Shane in slow, patiently enunciated Russian.

“Да, пожалуйста,” Shane replies in his cute little accent.

Ilya darts inside as Yuna whirls on Shane, her voice still audible through the sliding glass door. “You’re learning Russian for him?”

Neither of them hug him goodbye, but Yuna smiles in what seems like a genuine way, and David claps a hand on Ilya’s shoulder. “You ever play gin rummy, son?”

Ilya nods. “Yes, sir.”

“Great. Come over Tuesday. We’ll play for nickels.”

Shane walks them to the car and doesn’t make it all the way back in the door before Ilya pounces on him. “Я тебя люблю. Я тебя люблю.” They’re in a pile on the floor, and Ilya feels a sticky spot under his knee, but who cares. The ants will get it. “I love you so much, Shane.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” Shane sighs, throwing his head back with a broad grin as Ilya kisses all over his face.

I love you, I love you, Я тебя люблю, I love you. It seems like all they say that summer. They train downstairs in the gym, and Ilya spots Shane when he lifts, then later, presses him against his yoga mat and licks the sweat from every part of him. I love you. They fish on the lake (all professional hockey players spend the summer fishing or golfing, and Ilya sure as fuck doesn’t plan to hit the links) and Shane throws such a tantrum over whose catch is bigger that he takes the car, drives into town, and buys a big ass tape measurer so they can check. Я тебя люблю. They eat together, play together, sleep together, spend their days and nights together, and it’s like what Ilya remembered of dating Shane but infinitely better. I love you, I love you — once, in a Quebecois accent, je t'aime — Я тебя люблю, I love you.

Late one morning, Ilya comes in from outside (he wasn’t smoking; he was merely thinking, meditatively, of a cigarette) and finds Shane wrapping up a phone call. “No, right. Exactly. And that’s where I agree with you, because — exactly. Okay, I’ll—” he spots Ilya skulking in the doorway and rolls his eyes. “I’m gonna finish making breakfast and I’ll let you get back to set. Good luck — or, no, break a leg?” He laughs. “Whatever. Bye.”

Ilya slinks close, stealing a piece of shredded cheese from the makeshift omelette station. “How is Rhoda?”

“Rose is fine,” Shane says, coating the pan with the barest drop of oil.

“You should invite her here,” Ilya says casually. The words are difficult to make out; he’s now filled his entire mouth with cheese. “For a weekend or something. Can get to know each other.”

“Totally.” Shane snorts, then glances up. “Oh, you’re serious.”

“Why not? Any friend of Shane Hollander’s is a friend of mine.”

“Oh? Does that include Hayden?” He smirks. “That’s what I thought. Go sit down and stop eating all the cheese.”

But neither of them, Ilya or Rose, expected him to say yes the first time. It was only Ilya’s job to float the idea, lightheartedly, like as a joke. From there it’s Rose’s responsibility to nettle him and wear him down, act madly curious about this beau he’s hiding locked away in Lanaudière. By the time she wraps in Boston, they’ve been at the cottage a month, and Shane finally cracks.

“Okay, let’s say you were to come, hypothetically—” Ilya hears him say to Rose over the phone, followed by an eardrum shattering shriek.

The afternoon that Rose arrives, Shane and Ilya are in the kitchen as usual, Shane mothering a skillet of something on the stove while Ilya sits in a nearby chair jabbering and occasionally poking Shane in the asscrack with his big toe.

“Would you like to do something constructive?” Shane asks after the fourth time he’s batted Ilya’s hand away.

They don’t have ginger beer, but they have ginger ale, which is close enough. Ilya sets himself to being helpful whipping up a batch of cocktails.

“Have a sip,” he says, holding the glass up to Shane’s full bottom lip. “I think you will like.”

Shane frowns. “You’re not going to poison her, right?”

“Yes, of course. Come on, little taste. Tell me if there is enough poison or I should add more.”

Shane dutifully takes a sip — a small one, then a bigger one — then smacks his lips and makes an approving face. “I like it.”

“Of course you do. It is a Moscow Mule. Basically like me, Russian stallion. Your favorite.”

“You’re annoying.”

“You say this often.”

Ilya summons all of his acting skills, channeling everything he learned under the doting tutelage of his sitcom star colleague during those long hours spent crammed in the XS6 makeup trailer. He shape-shifts into someone who has never met Rose Landry, and frankly, Ilya gives the performance of a lifetime. He’s friendly but not too friendly, suspicious and slightly guarded; he tells his best jokes, the ones that Shane has heard before, and pours her too many measures of vodka until she’s clamping her hand over the mouth of her glass, begging for mercy. He’s overly possessive too, as though the mere presence of Shane’s female ex-paramour could send him into a sudden fit of heterosexual infidelity. Though Shane shrugs out from under Ilya’s arm the fifteenth time it’s wrapped around him, mutters will you knock it off?, he also climbs Ilya like a polecat on a tree the second they’re alone together.

Really, it goes well. Rose and Ilya let Shane steer the conversation, which means they end up talking about the native flora of Eastern Canada longer than Ilya would have thought humanly possible. They also discuss hockey, and Ilya pretends to be surprised by Rose’s acumen, as well as the recently wrapped Chiaroscuro and the grueling but rewarding months of production.

“You are in movies, then? Not just television?” Ilya asks. “Anything I would have seen?”

By the end of the evening, Shane’s relieved to see they seem to have warmed up to each other. Hours later, when Shane is soundly sleeping, Ilya creeps out to the shore to meet Rose for a cigarette under the moonlight. She greets him with a hand clutched to her chest, miming cardiac arrest before she clutches him and shakes him bodily. “How cute are you two?”

Ilya isn’t sure. He’d known, objectively, that he and Shane were a well-matched couple, but they haven’t had the chance to spend much time with other people. He doesn’t know how they appear from the outside, if the boisterous glee and overwhelming affection he feels inside are things that other people will be able to see.

Ilya doesn’t smoke, of course. He quit. It’s only that Rose wanted one, and he’s helping her with it. In the morning he wakes to Shane’s nose sniffing in his hair, and that’s quickly followed by a hand down the front of his pants. Ilya has this feeling Shane’s never really wanted him to quit at all. Shane has a thing for bad boys.

They have their blissful summer romance, locked away and tangled up in each other. Ilya fears when he returns to Boston that things will change. At least as far as Shane’s concerned, they don’t. There are petty grievances and minor, huffy tiffs between them, one or two notable blowout arguments, but they never move backwards. They never stop wanting more.

Still, the final year in Boston is the hardest. The distance brutalizes his capacity for joy. Even with phone calls and video chats, Ilya feels alone; it’s one thing to live five hours away from the love of his life, but quite another thing to do it in secret. He hangs out with his friends or with his teammates, surrounds himself with people, but it only isolates him further to know that there’s this part of him they don’t know about and can’t. It’s like being back in another person’s body sometimes. He can talk to Connors, for example, and Connors can speak back to him, but the Ilya that Connors is talking to is different from the Ilya who’s inside.

It gets worse in the fall, when Svetlana packs up and moves to Los Angeles. Ilya’s completely and genuinely happy for her, but fuck is he lonely. He tells Shane about it — not the loneliness, because he doesn’t want to worry him over something so trivial, but about Svetlana’s move, or at least the fact of it happening, if not the motivation. He says it’s for work and for a change of scenery. Ilya feels a little guilty to be lying so much, but reminds himself that really, he’s only ever told Shane one lie, albeit on numerous occasions and in many different ways. It’s just because the truth is too impossible to share.

By pure luck, Shane takes some of the work off his plate for him. Ilya, Svetlana, and Rose are busy refining a long and convoluted plan to debut their relationship to Shane without revealing its origin. And then, the day after Ilya tells Shane that she’s relocating, Ilya’s phone buzzes with a text that nearly makes him fall three stories down the stairmaster.


Jane ❤️: This is totally random but what if you gave Rose’s number to Svetlana?

Jane ❤️: or don’t if you think it’s stupid

Jane ❤️: Not like I think they’ll get along just because they’re both girls or whatever

Jane ❤️: But you said Svetlana doesn’t know anyone in LA right?

Lily ❤️: right

Jane ❤️: Rose is easy to talk to and she knows a lot of people, so I figured… worth a shot?

Jane ❤️: Plus it would be kind of cool if they became friends haha


So that solves that.

His final year in Boston is a trudge, a slog, and then, before he knows it, over. July 1st, 2018, Ilya becomes an unrestricted free agent.

The goal is to end up in Ottawa. Feasible. But Ilya’s agent is Russian and a little hapless, a friend of a friend of his father’s and one of the last remaining ties to his homeland that needs cutting. Yuna walks Ilya through the numbers, the AAVs of comparable players and the bonus structures on the table, and it’s not her job, exactly, but she seems to know what she’s talking about. So he fires the Russian and tells Yuna to take care of it instead for whatever commission is standard.

“I think their front office thought it was a prank call,” Yuna tells him after she makes contact with Ottawa to float the idea. “Needless to say, they’re deeply fucking interested.”

The GM bends over backwards to accommodate them. Ilya isn’t sure why — he’d take a pay cut to be there, a team friendly deal, but Yuna hisses a reminder into his ear as they hop onto their final conference call that “They don’t need to know that.”

The morning he goes in to sign the papers, he wakes up in Shane’s childhood bedroom in Ottawa. Shane is sitting on the edge of the bed — it’s a tight fit. “You’re sure about five years?” he asks, staring not at Ilya, but the posters on the wall.

“Why?” Ilya asks, wiping sediment from the corners of his eyes. “You think I should try for more?”

Shane pins him to the bed and they kiss, then hump a little bit. It’s possibly the first time this bed has been humped in. Ilya’s honored to be included.

He signs a deal for 5 x $10.2M. By the end of training camp, he wishes he had gone for longer. The level of play could best be described as “fairly good, for a beer league team,” but the other players seem like genuinely good guys and are excited to work with Ilya. There’s promise there.

And this close to Montreal, he and Shane can see much more of each other. Not enough — never enough, because they both have full time jobs which require significant amounts of travel, but frequently enough that over time, they learn more about each other and what it is to be together.

Shane learns that when Ilya has his headphones in, he’s listening to music at a volume that is detrimental to his long term hearing. That on days where he’s frustrated about something, he’ll say it’s fine if Shane asks once what’s wrong, but if he asks twice Ilya will tell him everything. That Ilya has a weakness for animals and small children, and that they seem to gravitate towards him in turn — strangers’ dogs will run to Ilya on the street and the owners always seem surprised, exclaiming, She never does this! Normally she hates new people!

Ilya learns that Shane is by turns willful and obedient, sometimes in the span of a single moment. He learns that he has trouble sleeping when his head is too full of concerns to make way for dreams; when Shane has a lot on his mind, it’s not uncommon for Ilya to wake up in the middle of the night to a dark room and an empty bed. Sometimes he’ll go back to sleep, but other times he’ll go find Shane where he’s running on the treadmill or standing under too-hot water in the shower or sitting at the kitchen island eating cottage cheese and carob chips with a far-off look. In those instances, Ilya will call him back to bed and wrap him too tight in his arms, then wait until Shane’s breathing evens out to join him in peaceful sleep.

They learn how to be in a relationship. How to fight without shouting; how to make up without fucking. When to make dinner at home and when to let themselves be lazy and order in. How to treat each other kindly.

Ilya has all sorts of pet names for Shane, darling, baby, sweetheart, kitten, words that roll right off his tongue and into Shane’s mouth; Shane’s Russian inevitably improves and he’s ornery when he learns that the endearment Ilya often murmurs into his ear is to call Shane his little bran muffin. Shane doesn’t call him anything but his name, Ilya. He says it with affection though, sounds it out like a word he earned the right to say, part pet name and part privilege.

A few years pass; the hockey’s good, but things between them are great, and over time they come to appreciate, in their own ways, the distinction between professional success and personal. It isn’t the end of the world when they’re knocked out of the playoffs early in 2021. On May 10th, Shane turns 30; Ilya’s birthday is a month later in mid-June. As a joint celebration, while the conference finals stretch out over seven games, Shane and Ilya spend the last week and a half of May in the rainforest of Costa Rica.

They barely even check the scores; they’re far too busy making out under waterfalls and doing other wildly romantic things in all manner of exotic locales. It isn’t perfect — it’s unbearably humid, muggy and sticky even fresh out of the shower, on top of which several large and terrifying bugs fly into their hotel room when they have the patio doors open. But they spend the better part of twelve days in sweaty bliss, eating fresh fruits and splashing in hot springs and hiking up volcanos. Shane maintains an entry in his notes app titled Costa Rica: Birds which is exactly what it sounds like, an itemized list of each bird they’ve spotted on the trip, the time and place, and any notable features about said bird’s plumage. Each time Shane pulls his phone out to log a yellow-crowned night heron or a great curassow, Ilya thinks to himself, overjoyed, I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him. He imagines years and years of this, a love which spans across decades and accumulates enough birds to fill an aviary.

They have a week in Ottawa when they get back. On Ilya’s birthday, they drive the two and a half hours to Lanaudière, to the cottage. Shane is being weird.

“You’re being weird,” Ilya says.

“Am I?” Shane asks. He appears to consider it a moment. “I think I’m being normal.”

He’s not. He’s taking his eyes off the road to glance at Ilya approximately every 45 seconds and has been the whole time they’ve been driving, looking at him and grinning like a lunatic for no reason Ilya can discern; he seems to barely be listening to this boring Radiolab episode he insisted they put on.

Thirty minutes out, he cracks. “I got you a birthday present.”

“What? Why?!” Fucking Hollander, his stupid fucking generous, perfect boyfriend. “Vacation was the present. Mutual. This is what we agreed on, is why I didn’t get you anything. Now I look like huge asshole.”

“I saw it and I wanted you to have it.” Shane smiles. “It’s okay that you didn’t get me anything. It’s not a competition.”

“Oh, yes, very fucking nice.” Ilya glowers. He wants to be mad, but also, he’s excited. There is a gift waiting for him. Maybe something big and expensive. He shifts a little in his seat, trying to look pouty, because it’s the principle of the thing. “When do I get this present, anyway?”

“It’s at the cottage already. I had my parents set it up.”

That doesn’t completely rule out sex swing as a possibility, but Yuna and David’s assistance does make it more unlikely. “Pull over.”

“No. Why? We’re on the highway.”

“You are driving too slow,” Ilya complains. “I want to get to my present faster.”

Ilya skips ahead to unlock the door when they arrive, not bothering to grab their bags from the trunk, then turns back and loads them into his arms when Shane says sternly, “I can always return it, you know.”

But he lets Ilya drop the luggage in the entryway and throw the groceries haphazardly into the fridge. Shane guides him downstairs, past the gym and towards the barely used room he calls the den (Ilya doesn’t understand what constitutes a den versus say a living room or family room or lounge, but whatever), covering Ilya’s eyes with his hands and shuffling him along until they cross the threshold.

“Okay.” Shane peels his hand from Ilya’s face, and Ilya can hear the excitement in his voice. “Open your eyes.”

It is big, and it is expensive. It’s an air hockey table sitting right in the middle of the room, glossy and new, and the puck sitting at center ice has an enormous bow on it. Before Ilya can even think of why, his stomach sinks.

“Wow,” Ilya says; at least doesn’t have to fake that he’s surprised. “Shane. I can’t believe it.”

“I know it’s totally ridiculous and, like, juvenile, but I figured… I know we’re getting older, but I thought it could be fun, right? Do you like it?” Shane asks, like he’s nervous that Ilya hates it. Ilya doesn’t hate it, it’s just — but he can’t exactly explain, can he.

“I love it,” Ilya lies instead. It isn’t lying, even, to pretend to like a gift. It’s having manners, really. “You’re so thoughtful. It’s perfect. Thank you, baby.” He hugs Shane, buries his face in his neck and forces himself to take deep breaths past this thing that’s been stuck in his throat the last three years.

Shane says that they should play a round to break it in, but Ilya hurries off to the bathroom instead — long drive — and then thinks he really should put the groceries away correctly, and then he has to make a phone call he completely forgot about, and then excuse after excuse until dinner.

Shane is a decent cook, in the sense that he’s very good at following directions, and he’s gone all out on Ilya’s birthday dinner. He even bakes them lava cakes in little ramekins for dessert and pokes a candle into Ilya’s, and the molten chocolate inside oozes forth around the intrusion like blood rushing to the surface.

They don’t have sex or do anything else after, though it seems like Shane may have had something like that planned. Ilya fakes a headache and goes to lay down in the bedroom after dinner, silent in the dark, listening to the clinking of forks and knives and pots and pans as Shane washes up from the meal. Shane, who is a kind and trusting person, a generous lover in all the ways one can be, and who Ilya has been lying to for years now.

Not that he lies often. And also, technically Shane has never asked, “Hey, in 2016, when I was dating Rose, did you trade places with her and pretend to be my girlfriend? Kiss me and fuck me and let me think you were someone that you weren’t?” It’s not like Ilya has really lied point blank and said No, of course I didn’t.

But it has been a lie of glaring, blazing omission, and one that he’s maintained through calculated subterfuge. Not every day, not frequently, but often enough. A month might pass where Ilya doesn’t think of it at all, and then Shane will tell Ilya a story that he’s heard before, and the only reason Shane’s telling it to Ilya again is because he thinks he told someone else the first time; when this happens, Ilya will listen and act surprised in all the right places. Or they might watch a movie together that Ilya pretends not to have seen, eat at a restaurant Ilya will act like he’s never been to. Shane will say that Rose and Svetlana have been together for a couple years now, and Ilya won’t say, it’s been three years, not two. Or Shane will buy him an air hockey table, and Ilya will try not to cry.

White lie after white lie, all of them compounding into a blinding void. Ilya doesn’t regret not telling Shane when it was happening, when he was in Rose’s body; he knows, in a part of him that’s connected to whatever expanding universe there is, that he couldn’t have and shouldn’t have. That was the point of all this. He knows — and Rose felt this too, because they’ve discussed it since — Ilya knows that at the time, he did things right.

It feels different now. Maybe not the rules, but the need he has to share himself with Shane completely. Those two months were perhaps the most crucial and transformative period of his life. How can they go on without Shane knowing? How is it that he doesn’t know by now, or didn’t figure it out for himself in the first place?

Ilya is thirty years old. The thought of aging into obsolescence used to terrify him; for a long stretch of the last decade, he found himself plagued by nightmares of an elderly version of himself in a senseless, sightless, vegetative state, frightened and alone, left to decay in his own filth. Lately, the dreams don’t come as frequently, and when they do he always wakes to sunshine illuminating Shane’s warm form beside him. It’s a comfort. He can see himself now growing to be 60, 70, even 80, and still having things to look forward to. But Ilya can’t keep— he needs to tell him. He’d always intended to. It’s time, or it has to be.

It’s only that Shane might leave him, once he knows.

Ilya spends the next three days imagining Shane’s reaction when he finds out. It’s been a long time since Ilya feared the disintegration or rupture of their relationship and frankly, he’s out of practice. By and large, the problems they face as a couple are things they solve together, not things they’ve done to each other.

This is different. This is worse. Not only has the man Shane loves deceived him, but two of his closest friends as well. He will be hurt. There’s no version of this where he isn’t, Ilya thinks. Perhaps there is an iteration where he’s thankful when he realizes that this cosmic, magical thing was all in service of him, but — if it were Ilya, he wouldn’t feel that way. Grateful. He and Shane are different, though. Still.

During this time he mostly lays in bed; occasionally he lays on the couch, to placate some of Shane’s obvious concern over the clear deterioration of his mental health, and once, for a brief forty minute stretch, he sits out on the lawn and stares at the lake.

Shane takes his temperature. He makes his favorite foods and asks a million prying questions which Ilya never minds, really, because he likes that Shane wants to know everything there is to know about him. Have you had caffeine today? Did you drink water when you woke up? Can I get you anything? Is it because of your birthday? Turning 30? Is it something I did? Is it something in particular, or just—? Is it something I can help with? Have you taken your meds? Have you taken a shower? Do you want me to close the door, or leave it open?

The guilt has been fermenting inside Ilya for years now without him realizing how rank it had become, how heady. Shane leaves one afternoon and drives forever to go get sandwiches from that place that Ilya loves, and when he comes back Ilya paws and claws at him, drags him into bed, so inebriated by his absence and his reappearance that he’s desperate and far gone. The sandwiches go soggy sitting on the kitchen counter. When Shane tries to get out of bed to shower afterwards or at least throw some food on a plate, Ilya latches on and won’t let go, and Shane looks alarmed.

Ilya does try. He opens his mouth a million times, but he can’t seem to make the words come out. It’s unclear whether this is a lingering effect of whatever magical malady he’d been afflicted with in the first place, or whether he can’t tell Shane for the simple reason that he’s too much of a coward. He texts the only other person who might know and asks. Have you ever tried to tell him? Since we switched back?

Uhhh no I HAVEN’T, Rose replies. Question back, while I have you: are you insane?

Yes of course, Ilya replies without much humor. What else is new.

It takes Rose quite a while to respond, though Ilya guesses that she has her phone in her hand and is choosing her words carefully. You guys are in such a good place right now. If this is something you want to do, I obviously have my own concerns or things that would maybe make me hesitate if I was in your shoes. But this time I’m not. It’s up to you babe and you know I support you both no matter what. Three hours later, when Ilya still hasn’t managed to send anything back, Rose texts again. Then again it’s like — imagine finding out that you were meant to be with someone so much that the universe LITERALLY rearranged itself. Like, how fucking romantic is that. Idk. Maybe you just go for it?

On the fourth morning they’re at the cottage, the alarm goes off on Ilya’s phone reminding him to take his antidepressants. He dutifully rolls onto his side and fishes the pill bottle from his nightstand. Ilya feels rather than sees Shane putter into the room, pretending to look for some book he’s reading but most likely supervising as Ilya dry swallows the pill, ensuring that he’s taking it.

“I can get you water,” Shane offers, though it’s a moot point now. Ilya’s already taken it. He comes to sit on the edge of the bed close to Ilya, gently cupping a cheek into his warm hand. “Is there anything you want to do today? It rained last night, so the fish should be — you know. Swimming.”

Ilya nuzzles into Shane’s hand. “Is it alright if Sveta comes up for the weekend?”

“Of course,” Shane says, sounding relieved. He thinks, probably, that Svetlana being here will be some comfort to Ilya. “Buy the ticket for whenever and I can pick her up from the airport when she lands.”

Ilya calls and tells her everything. She books a ticket out. Ilya’s still under the covers when Shane returns from picking her up early the following afternoon. The bedroom door is open; he can hear them in the living room chattering in Russian, random English phrases peppered in that neither of them seem to know how to translate, like “air fryer.”

After a while, Shane comes to get him. “Svetlana’s here,” he says gently, hovering at the side of the bed like he’s talking to an infirm person. Shane’s doing so much to accommodate this emotional maelstrom that’s entirely of Ilya’s own making; another wave of guilt crashes over Ilya and threatens to drown him entirely. “Did you want to come out to the living room? Or — I can go run some errands, if you guys want some alone time.”

“Do you like our life together?” Ilya asks. “Are you happy with me?”

It’s good that Shane doesn’t respond right away, automatic or thoughtless. Ilya wants a real answer. He cards a hand through Ilya’s curls, contemplative, and seems to really think about it. “I wish some things were easier for us. You know? Real world shit. But you and me, like — how could I be happier than this?” He looks stricken, hearing the words leave his mouth. “That sounded insensitive. Obviously I know, with depression, it’s like — it’s not always within your control. Or — I mean, are you happy?”

“Yes,” Ilya says with total surety. “There are things I want, in the future, but I am happy with you now. I am glad we got here.”

Shane rolls his eyes at things I want, a fondness to his expression. “I didn’t say no to a dog.” He strokes at Ilya’s hair, pushing back the greasy curls hanging lank against his forehead. “I just said I need time to think about it.”

At eight or nine years old, Ilya’s mother had been called in for a meeting with his teacher. She’d asked him, when she’d read the note sent home, if Ilya had any idea what this meeting could be about. And even though Ilya knew he’d had his third infraction that year for fighting, even though he knew that he’d be caught as soon as she sat down to speak to the teacher, Ilya lied and said he had been doing so well academically that they were calling her in to congratulate her. It didn’t last, but the smile on his mother’s face for the brief moment she believed him was so lovely.

It feels like that, being coaxed out to the living room to sit with Shane and Svetlana for what Shane thinks (because he has no reason not to) will be a friendly, possibly uplifting chat. Ilya sits to the left to him, the side where he can see the two perfect freckles on the lobe of Shane’s ear, and Svetlana sits on the jutted L of the sofa, turned to face them both.

“There is something Ilya has asked me here to discuss today, something he is having difficulty broaching with you,” she begins. She approaches it as she does most things: briskly, efficiently, thoughtfully. “No one is hurt or sick. No one is in danger. Ilya does not love you any less. But there is something significant he’d like to share with you, and it will be very, very difficult for you to believe what you are about to hear, and I agree it will be helpful to hear it from a more… neutral party.”

“Are you okay?” Shane turns to Ilya immediately, worry draining the color from his face despite Svetlana’s assurances. “Is it a health thing like — it’s not like your dad, right? You’re too young for that.”

“Shane,” Svetlana interrupts as Ilya sits there useless and ashamed. “When you and Rose were dating, there was a night that you went out together. After a game, when Boston was in Montreal, you met her at a nightclub. Do you remember that?”

The color comes back to Shane’s face in a sudden rush of red high on his cheeks. He looks at Ilya, probably certain that they’re thinking the same thing, and Ilya looks at his feet, because they aren’t. “Yeah. I do. Uh — Rose told you about that?”

“Yes, she did,” Svetlana says. Her voice is like cool water. “She told me the next day.”

Ilya doesn’t listen much as she explains it. He watches Shane instead, as his reaction passes from amusement to confusion, then concern to irritation. It’s not a joke, no, Svetlana tells him, and Shane leans down to look at Ilya where his head is drooping on his neck and asks him fretfully, “Do you really believe this?” and Ilya nods, and shakes it no when Shane says, losing patience, “Is this — you guys are messing with me, right? This is some inside joke? Because I don’t think it’s very funny.”

They aren’t getting anywhere productive. Shane certainly doesn’t believe her. Well, they had anticipated that of course. Ilya hadn’t believed it even when it was happening.

Svetlana’s tiny orange Jacquemus purse is sitting on the coffee table. She extracts her phone, taps a few times at the screen, then offers it to Shane. “I have others like this. And screenshots of our messages, if you’d like.”

Shane clicks the volume up a few notches and starts the video again from the beginning. It looks like footage of Ilya in his practice jersey, skating drills alone on the ice of the training facility, only, he’s skating poorly. Not falling on his face or anything, but slowly, ploddingly, the movements tentative and labored. Shane frowns.

“A little update on our project here.” Svetlana’s words from off screen are in Russian, but the conversation is simple enough for Shane to follow. “First of all, unless you can sort out this whole clusterfuck in the next week or so, you can kiss any chance at the cup goodbye this season. She’s trying very hard, as you can see—” With perfect timing, the person in Ilya’s body knocks down a weighted practice pylon and hurries back to right it, causing Svetlana to shout in English, “Rose, just leave it! Keep going, fix it when you finish the course!” She switches back to Russian. “I will say, it hasn’t all been this shitty. There are times when she’s able to do it, just like you, and other times where I can tell it’s certainly fucking not. I think it is an issue of focus, or of mindset, but it’s difficult for me to say. Do me a favor, will you, and when you’re not too busy swooning over your handsome man, find an elastic band in her bathroom and practice putting your hair up in a ponytail. I know you think you don’t know how to do that, but she does, and so I think the concept should be similar. Alright, I — oh my god, she’s probably just broken every bone in your ass, hasn’t she?” And then, as the person sitting in a sloppy heap on the ice looks up at the camera with an expression Ilya’s never worn, the video ends.

Shane watches it a second time. “You’re in a Raiders practice jersey.” The words come slowly. “When did you — how could you have filmed this?”

Svetlana reaches out to take the phone back. “I think you know that isn’t Ilya,” she says gently.

“No, I don’t know that. Because what you’re telling me is not possible. Like, physically not possible, as in—”

“Shane,” Ilya interrupts. “The gift you bought me for my birthday. Why did you buy me that?”

“Because…” Shane looks so helpless. “You like games. And we both play hockey. I thought — I thought you’d like it, but if you don’t, I can return it. I can get you a dog, if that’s what you really want.” Denial is the first stage of grief, and then a little later comes bargaining.

“Shane,” Ilya says again. The name has always felt sweet on his tongue, but now the words that follow are cloying, sticking to his throat and teeth and lips like the imitation maple syrup Shane won’t let him keep in the house. “You knew that I would like it. I do. I like it. How did you know?”

He might as well have slapped him. The memory hits him like an open palm to his face, stinging with truth. Shane looks shocked and finally, betrayed. “How long?” he asks. Ilya pushes closer into Shane’s space, tries to put a hand on his thigh and — and he doesn’t know what, he only knows he wants to be close to him, comforting him, reassuring Shane that this is him, Ilya, right here, right now. Shane snaps his wrist up and away before Ilya can touch him. “How long did it — last?”

It’s been me, Ilya wants to say. Everything together, all of that was me. I promise you. But it doesn’t answer the question.

Svetlana answers for him. “The morning after you ended things with Rose, they switched back.”

Shane looks like he’ll be sick. He stands up; Ilya thinks he might run to the bathroom and vomit, though Shane is not, as a general rule, a very vomity person. Instead he pats himself down, maybe making sure he’s all there and accounted for in case his own body has been spirited away.

He stops short at his pocket. His keys are on the coffee table next to that little handbag, traffic cone orange, and he grabs them. “I’m gonna go. I’m — I’m gonna go to my parents’. For a — a few days, probably. I don’t know.”

“Shane,” Ilya pleads.

“Svetlana, I’m sorry.” His voice is high; he’s so uncomfortable that Ilya thinks he’d crawl out of his skin and slither into the lake if he could. “I know you came all this way. I feel like a shitty host, but I…”

“I understand,” she says.

Ilya follows Shane to the front hall, watches him while he slips his shoes on. “I love you. I couldn’t tell you, but — I love you so much, Shane.”

“Yeah. I know you do.” Shane looks at him, expression unreadable even with as much practice as Ilya has. “I’ll be back. Just — give me a minute, okay?”

Ilya lets him leave; he has to trust, by now, that Shane will come home.

A minute is more like a week. The Land Rover is in the driveway the next morning and for a moment Ilya gets his hopes up, but no. The keys are on the counter and Shane is nowhere to be found; he’s only coordinated dropping off the car with his parents so that Ilya won’t be stranded here without a vehicle.

Svetlana stays the whole weekend, though Ilya’s rotten company. Under other circumstances it would be nice to sit around and do absolutely nothing, swimming in the lake and watching crappy television just the two of them, the way they used to. Mostly Ilya tries valiantly to engage her in conversation about the comings and goings in her own life as a blissful escape from the endless treadmill of dread he’s pacing in his mind.

On Tuesday, Rose texts him. He called me. Finally.

Is he okay? Ilya responds so quickly he nearly gets a cramp in his thumb.

He sounded fine/awkward/weird (Classic Shane tbh) but he called as I was getting to set, so we only talked for like, three minutes. She’s in Atlanta working on a project through the middle of next month. I told him I’d give him a call back tonight so we can talk-talk 😬

Thank you, Ilya texts. I think that will help a lot. You are a good friend.

I mean I’ve BEEN saying that, and if this is what it takes for me to get the recognition I deserve… she replies. A minute later, she sends, Okay I have to go deal with this dipshit actor who’s locked himself in his trailer and really thinks I won’t take the door off the hinges haaaaa. I will of course update you on ShaneGate later. If it goes well, Sveta and I will see you at the dacha end of July as planned. If it goes shitty and he decides he hates us both forever then I’m thinking we just head straight to Tasmania and change our names? I’m loving Patti Pendergast for me and Boris Ivanoffuck for you, but I’m open to notes.

That day, Ilya cleans the cottage from top to bottom, just in case the phone call goes well enough that Shane decides to come home. He makes a loaf of chocolate zucchini bread and he trims his pubes up neatly in the shower. Just in case.

Shane doesn’t come home that night. Rose texts at one in the morning, when Ilya’s sitting on the couch and doing nothing, really. God, he’s so ridiculously gone over you.

In a good way???? Ilya asks.

In every way.

He works out in the gym and wonders how Shane’s training at his parents’ place, if he’s going on his evening runs and using Yuna’s Pilates mat to do his morning yoga. He makes himself runny-yolked eggs for breakfast and wonders if David’s offered to fix Shane his daily smoothies, the ones that Ilya only pretends to hate. He brushes his teeth before bed and when the light burns out in the bathroom, he wonders where Shane keeps the spare bulbs; the next day, he digs through every closet he can think of until he finds the space where it would be, amongst the other spare parts of their lives. Night will fall again, and he doesn’t relish the thought of getting ready for bed alone and in the dark, so Ilya drives out to the hardware store to pick up a replacement.

He drives back to the cottage through the baby blue wash of late, late afternoon; they’re a few days past the equinox, and this far north, the sky fights off nighttime as late as it can. He takes the long way home, watching the vestiges of day flickering in dappled light through the hardy Canadian trees Shane’s taught him so much about. The scenic route takes him past David and Yuna’s, as it happens. Their little home is tucked away just down the road, and Ilya thinks, well, maybe he could just pop by. He could go in, check on them, check and see how things are going. But Shane will be home when he’s ready.

Which is now, apparently. When Ilya kicks off his Adidas in the front hall, he sees a pair of Reeboks lined up neatly by the bench. There is a malodor wafting from the kitchen that can only mean Shane’s cooking, something foul and sludgy and unquestionably nutrient dense.

“Hi,” Ilya says tentatively.

Shane glances up from the stove, then back down. “Hello.” It’s not the warmest welcome. But his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, which is sort of the Shane Hollander equivalent of a woman wearing a push-up bra, and he’s here, isn’t he?

Ilya slides into the narrow workspace behind him, wraps his arms around Shane’s torso in a loose embrace. He peeks over his shoulder at what is presumably their dinner and sees a pot of lentils being waterboarded. Hopefully Shane is angry enough at Ilya, still, that he will have only made a serving for himself.

As though reading his mind, Shane says, “You’re eating it and you’re not complaining.”

“Are you sure?” He rubs his knuckles gently over Shane’s sternum in the way he’s seen him do to ease the pressure building up inside. “I have leftover pizza in the fridge. Don’t want you to go to any trouble on my account.”

“Why, because I’m still pissed at you?”

“Are you?” Ilya asks as Shane untangles himself and moves towards the fridge.

Shane doesn’t answer right away. But when he shuts the refrigerator, he has two large carrots in his left hand and a can of Coke in his right. “Not really.” He rinses the carrots with produce wash and dries them, then uses the damp rag to wipe the lip of the soda can before passing it to Ilya. “I spoke to your best friend Rose.”

“You’re my best friend,” Ilya says, which is true. “Then Svetlana, then Rose.”

Shane rolls his eyes, like Ilya’s being childish, though he’s the one who brought it up.

“I understand how hurtful it would be to find out that I kept this from you for so long. If there is something I can do to regain your trust, I will do it.” Ilya doesn’t let himself tack on I’m sorry at the end, for fear it will be misconstrued. He’s sorry that Shane is hurt; he can’t quite bring himself to be sorry about the choices he made, in light of where it’s gotten them.

“I trust you.” Shane sighs. “I mean, for starters, what the fuck else would you be lying to me about?”

Outside of a disingenuous reaction to the experimental haircut Shane had tried out during the last off-season (too short, and gelled too spiky), Ilya can’t think of any other subject where he isn’t truthful with Shane. “Yes.” He slides onto a stool on the opposite side of the counter and sips his Coke. “This is everything.”

Shane’s slicing up the carrot with a sharp knife and doesn’t seem particularly like he’s considering stabbing Ilya. That’s promising. “Rose said you couldn’t really tell me — during. While it was happening. Right?”

“Right.”

Shane shrugs. “Okay, so. It was out of your control. And maybe if you’d told me right away, I could have figured things out faster, things with myself, but maybe not. And maybe I wasn’t supposed to figure them out faster.” Chop, chop, chop, the rounds of carrot falling to the cutting board like bronze coins. “It’s fucking crazy. I feel — weird, about the whole thing. But — I don’t know. It was supposed to happen, right?”

“I think so.” The truth is, Ilya’s spent a lot of time considering it over the past few years. In the beginning, he’d thought this must have happened because it was the only way that he and Shane could find their way to each other, to something as authentic and committed as what they share now. He isn’t sure he feels that way any longer. He sort of thinks, these days — the love they have is so irrefutable, he finds it difficult to imagine a timeline or a universe in which they didn’t find their way together. “I could have told you at All Star weekend. At the beginning. I don’t know how. I didn’t really try.”

Shane pulls a face. “Jesus, thank god you didn’t. You know I probably would have tried to get you hospitalized, right? I would have thought you’d had a fucking concussion and, like, gone insane. Even if I’d believed you somehow, honestly — it would have freaked me out.” He shakes his head. “I don’t think I would have been able to get over it. I don’t think we would have — that wouldn’t have been a good idea. Now was better.”

Ilya is massively, massively relieved. These are things he’s told himself, reasoned through with Rose and Svetlana, but they’d always felt like convenient excuses. “Good.”

The oven beeps and Shane opens it, pulls the rack out and examines something on a tray which Ilya can’t see. “Needs another minute,” he says more to himself than Ilya.

Ilya runs a hand through his hair. “The whole time I was, ah. You know. Her.”

“Rose.”

Ilya nods. “You and I spent a lot of time together. I really thought that you would figure it out. It made me nervous.” Because Shane looks utterly baffled, he explains further. “I wasn’t very good at pretending to be her, I think. And I thought that you’d be able to tell.”

Usually when Shane gives him this look like he thinks Ilya’s said something completely idiotic, it’s because they’re disagreeing over some topic like the factors that catapulted Detroit to back-to-back cups in the 90s or which of the two of them can fit more Timbits in their mouth at once.

“How on earth could I have known?” Shane looks at Ilya like maybe he really is concussed and/or insane. “Ilya, before you guys switched places — it’s not like I knew Rose that well, to be able to compare your performance against the real her. We’d been dating for two months. We’d hung out, like, I don’t know — ten times.”

“You said that she reminded you of me,” Ilya points out. “In Tampa. You did say that.”

“Yes, vaguely. Of the broader aspects of your personality. It’s not like — Ilya, you were there.” Shane laughs, because this is the sort of thing that they can look back and laugh about now. “Prior to that happening — how much time had you and I actually spent together, in each other’s presence, that wasn’t having sex or playing hockey or you acting like an asshole? It’s not like we were having deep conversations or doing, like, icebreakers. We barely knew each other. We knew about each other. That was it.”

Shane turns and dumps the carrots into the pot of slop. He stirs them in and Ilya watches the motion, the muscles in his back flexing beneath his linen shirt, and he considers this.

“We did have sex,” Ilya admits. “During. Sorry.”

“Yeah, well.” Shane turns to face him, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms over his chest. “I guess that’s kinda messed up. I don’t know. I’m not really — I mean, look, I wanted to do it. I was really, you know, I was attracted to her, or, to you, which makes a lot more fucking sense now. And I think I needed to — to try it again. Before I could — like I said. I was figuring things out.” He blows out a deep breath. “If I had known at the time that it was you, then I definitely would have wanted to do it. So.”

So that’s it then. Shane knows everything now, and he isn’t thrilled, sure, but he understands. It feels like putting to rest a huge weight which has been balanced on Ilya’s shoulders for the last three and a half years.

“You still love me?” Ilya asks, just to double check.

Shane rolls his eyes and comes around the counter, wrapping his arms around Ilya and squeezing tight. “Yeah I still fucking love you. What, you think you’re getting rid of me that easy?” Of course not. Shane Hollander is no quitter.

“I still love you,” Ilya adds perhaps unnecessarily. He arches up and bites Shane’s earlobe just because he can.

“I figured that out, yeah.” His eyes are closed, and he angles his neck so Ilya will keep kissing at his ear, and then his neck. “God, I missed you.”

Ilya missed him too. He’d like to demonstrate methodically all the ways in which he’s missed Shane, but there’s something niggling in the back of his mind. “Is something in the oven?”

“Fuck, the chicken!”

The chicken is inedibly dry. They sit together at the table and for dinner they have lentil-carrot gloop and day-old slices of meat lover’s supreme. A gentle, mauvey dusk settles, the evening sky still light enough for them to take an aimless post-meal walk around the lake.

Shane’s pieced together clues over this past week, little things that make more sense now. “I had that Metros calendar up on the side of my fridge in the old apartment, do you remember? The promotional thing they had us do? And when I got to April, I was so confused — the picture of Hayden had a stupid mustache drawn on in sharpie, and a speech bubble that said—”

“Pull my finger” Ilya grins, bashful and proud of his handiwork.

“I thought it was someone in the front office playing a joke. You’re such a dick.” Shane grins too. Ilya is a dick, but he loves it. “And by the way, I rewatched the sixth X-Squad this week. There’s a scene where you look directly into the camera.”

“We did eight takes! Is not my fault if they don’t use the other footage!”

When it gets too dark to see much, and when Ilya has worked them both up by pressing Shane against a tree and sticking his tongue down his throat, they turn back. They stumble into bed together. It might be too soon, too touchy a subject, but Ilya’s hand is wrapped around Shane’s dick and his mind is racing. “If you were in a girl’s body, would you let me fuck you?”

“You’d like me like that?” Shane asks. It could be a trick question, but his hips are lifting off the bed, snapping as he fucks up into Ilya’s hand, so probably he’s interested.

Ilya definitely would. He’s imagining Shane as a woman now, an altered, feminine version of his existing self, and that’s not exactly how the swapping thing works, but this is Ilya’s fantasy and he can do whatever he wants in it. “So pretty,” he moans, and ducks his head to suck Shane’s nipple into his mouth.

“What would you do to me?” Shane asks, and just in case Ilya’s shy in any way, he reassures him, “I’d let you do anything.”

So in excruciating, exhausting detail, Ilya describes the many things he’d do in, on, and around Shane’s pussy if he had one. He had originally intended this dirty talk as a bit of foreplay before some other main event; embarrassingly, he’s so swept up by his own monologue and Shane’s occasional enthusiastic interjections that Ilya ends up coming messily while grinding against Shane’s hip before either of them have even had the chance to touch him.

They’re in their thirties now; they’re basically old men. Post-coital bedtime is around 10pm and only once they’ve flossed side by side in the en suite bathroom. They don’t even make it until midnight to play the next day’s Wordle before Ilya’s snoring into Shane’s hair.

Ilya wakes up in pitch darkness. There’s an insistent hooting outside, an owl who doesn’t seem to care that it’s — here, Ilya blinds himself with his phone — three in the fucking morning. He would wake Shane up to complain about the interruption to his sleep, but Shane’s side of the bed is empty and cold.

He isn’t in the kitchen or the gym. As Ilya, half-asleep, searches for his boyfriend, he’s distracted by a strange and yet familiar clacking from the far side of the cottage.

Ilya hovers in the doorway of the den, silently observing. Shane is sending the puck back from his end to the wall, and then the left far corner, and then the right corner, again and again with complete concentration.

“You can come in, you know.” Shane doesn’t look up from his task; he switches the mallet to his left hand and repeats the exercise. “You don’t have to stand there watching me.”

“But I like watching you play with yourself.”

“Stupid,” Shane huffs. “I’ve been running drills.”

Of course he has. It doesn’t surprise Ilya in the slightest that Shane’s way of processing the life-altering information he received about a week ago is by chasing excellence in a game that’s of no real world significance. It’s exactly the sort of thing that made Ilya fall in love with him.

“Wanna play?” Ilya picks up the unused mallet sitting at the side of the table and his heart swells dangerously. Engraved in plastic on the side in a collegiate font is the number 81. Shane’s undoubtedly has a 24.

It’s really not a fair game in the slightest, considering Shane’s been down here for apparently the last half hour honing his craft. He takes an early lead and keeps it, even as Ilya fights valiantly to catch up.

“You know what I realized?” Shane says mildly.

Ilya’s expecting a chirp. He’s just put two pucks into Shane’s goal back to back, and Shane’s undoubtedly riled. “That I am much better at this game than you?”

“You were the first person I came out to,” Shane says.

Ilya knows. He’d suspected at the time; he wishes now he had been better about it. He tells Shane as much, and Shane shrugs.

“You were alright.” He slides the puck back, flicks his wrist and watches it glide into Ilya’s goal even as Ilya’s flailing to defend. “I think it’s kind of nice that it was you.”

Shane wins, and when Ilya pushes for a best two out of three, he takes the next game, but then Shane wins again.

“Best three out of five?” Ilya pants. He’s somehow exhausted himself.

“In the morning,” Shane yawns. “Let’s go to bed.”

By the end of summer, the table has gotten plenty of use. Friends and family play when they stop by the cottage; one day in late July, they get a tournament going. But Shane and Ilya have their own private tally. As of the second week of August, when they head back to Ottawa, Ilya’s up and Shane’s waiting for next summer to take him for best 72 out of 145.

“Rose told me something on the phone,” Shane says. For once he has let Ilya drive, which sounds fun, but isn’t. In practice it means Shane gets to sit in the passenger seat, picking all the best pieces of the trail mix for himself and feeding Ilya all the boring bits while Ilya crawls along at a snail’s pace, five miles over the speed limit.

“You spoke this morning?”

“No. I meant, when I called her from my parents’ place when I stayed with them. At the beginning of the summer. When I was freaking out and pissed off at you.”

“Mmm.” Ilya opens his mouth and waits for Shane to feed him. Stupid fucking raisin. “She said what? ‘Shane, the experience of temporarily possessing Ilya’s cock was the highlight of my life. Every day in my own body has been a disappointment since then.’”

Shane ignores him, popping a yellow peanut M&M into his own mouth and chewing. “She said she knew you were in love with me the night the Metros played in Boston.”

“Да. I told her.”

Shane shakes his head. “No. She said that when she saw me for the first time in your body, she could feel it. Apparently it’s hard to describe. She seemed very moved by it, though. Did she tell you that?”

No, Rose didn’t tell him that, but Ilya knows. It’s something he feels every day; no matter what happens to this body of his through injury and age, through the ravages of time and the interventions of any as yet unseen cosmic forces, it is a feeling that will never leave him.

“She didn’t have to.”

Chapter End Notes

There aren't enough words to express how fucking cool it's been sharing this story with you all. The engagement and enthusiasm of the readers in this fandom (and those who have followed me from other fandoms!) is absolutely wild and it's been such a joy for me to have these Friday posts to look forward to, seeing all of you reacting to the updates.

Special thanks to several people: my partner and my best friend, both of whom painstakingly removed the typos and clunkier sentences from all of these chapters and reassured me that my jokes were funny; L3200 for Russian translations that were so faithful to the intent of the characters; SD_Ryan for the podfic of this which is frankly just bonkers good; and finally, @narivaaaal on twitter whose lighthearted "what if?" tweet inspired this monster of a fic.

Thank you thank you thank you!!!

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[podfic] Muscle Memory by sillyteehee by SD_Ryan

Cover for Muscle Memory by sillyteehee by Nouveau_potatoes