Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

F/M, M/M

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, past Ilya/svetlana - Relationship

Characters:

Niko Rozanov, Original Children of Ilya Rozanov and Svetlana Vetrova, Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova, Scott Hunter (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

all the warnings that come with a 19-year-old POV, the difficult morass of adulthood, Discussions of sex, Honeymoons, scott hunter is his own warning, learning your parents are people, also just fun fuck around time, BAMF Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of old man hollanov yaoi

Collections:

anonymous

Stats:

Published: 2026-10-14 Words: 15,293 Chapters: 1/1

shane and ilya's cowabunga honeymoon (and niko rozanov!!!)

Summary

"It is hard, because I am thinking what your mama would want you to know.” Papa makes a helpless gesture. “I cannot ask her.”

Niko can’t help but be offended. Why wouldn’t his mother want him to know everything?

Notes

for anyone who did not like ilya being with svetlana may i humbly suggest this part of the story is not for you. that's okay! we are in niko's pov and the same way irina haunts ilya's narrative, svetlana is a massive chunk of niko's.

in the same way i butchered the american east coast, i apologize to the denizens of my next location. correct away (please!!!)

<3 okay the rest of you enjoy my usual bullshit!

The morning of his papa’s wedding, Niko drags himself out of his guest bed at Shane’s cottage and finds Papa in the kitchen alone. Outside, Shane is doing yoga with the sun. His papa is watching him more than the daybreak which is gross (even if he is Shane Hollander, it’s still just an old dude doing yoga), but as a gift on their wedding day, Niko lets the chirp fizzle out on his tongue.

Instead, he and Papa make small talk, logistics about Niko getting back stateside and them heading out for their honeymoon. Niko teases Papa about not crying too much and ruining his suit.

Nika, you cried when we told you about the wedding.

And Niko had, but only because he doubted they would marry after they called the first wedding off. Sue a guy for being jerked around emotionally by his parental figures.

Niko pulls out premade egg bites for breakfast and doesn’t bother heating them up. The texture is chilly, spongy, and satisfying.

Around a mass of egg, “Why Hawaii?” Niko thinks it’s a fair question. “Isn’t it cliché? You guys are so rich you could do Bora Bora or Seychelles. I dunno, Provincetown if you wanted. That’s a big gay mecca, right?”

Papa chokes a little on his coffee, eyes going slitty and suspicious even as he switches into English to address the words.

“Who teaches you these things?”

Niko shrugs.

“I have gay associates.”

Turns out making a speech supporting the queers did a lot to make you a beacon. At clubs, for sure he got hit on by gay men who were into hockey, which is a weird ‘gay by association’ thing. After Niko says, No, it’s my dad you want, the dude usually laughs and then he and Niko have a nice convo about bars and clubs and where to get pussy. Why gay men know this, Niko doesn’t know, but it’s pretty cool intel.

Niko does end up at a gay club now and then, but that’s mostly for the vibes and the music— they have the best music by far and it does impress women than he’s chill and nonthreatened being there. (And if he can also score a bump off someone infatuated with him, well, more the better.)

The only drawback is the drunk men who lean over and say, your dad is such a fucking bear! And all the things that apparently means and what they want him to do to him. He’s literally my type, this, like, 22-year-old over-muscled barista will say (entirely too close to Niko’s age!!!) I want him to rail me! And Niko will shake his head out of self-defense, like he can deny hearing the words, and the drunk gay 22-year-old fuckass barista will say it louder over the music. I WANT. YOUR DAD. TO RAIL ME!~

What the fuck is Niko supposed to say about that? There aren’t even memes for this fuck up of an interaction that has happened at least thrice. He doesn’t trust his papa around coffee shops anymore.

Well, for those reasons, Niko knows about the fat muscly dudes called bears and that his dad apparently is one.

It’s horrendous and honestly traumatizing. For real, he’s had to talk with his therapist, Linda. But whatever, this is what being an ally means sometimes.

Papa’s suspicious look doesn’t fade, even as he wipes his scruffy chin free of coffee drips, as if he knows the horridly specific details lurking in Niko’s mind. Look, it’s not like Niko wants them!!!

“Shane has family in Hawaii. Cousins and an aunt.”

“You’re going to visit the cousins on your honeymoon?” Niko says, and if disgust leaks on his tone, it’s earned. “That’s… cool.” Family on a honeymoon. Chuzzy.

“No, the cousins are, uh, too much for Shane. They are very loud. But he visited a lot growing up and he has a property there.”

Niko still feels like it’s lacking. “Well, you could go anytime. Shouldn’t you go somewhere unusual?”

Mama and Papa went to Vegas, Niko knows. Kinda fitting for them. Bright and loud, buzzing. Both of them city lovers to their bones. A trip to the wilderness is something Mama used to say was her personal nightmare.

Niko’s seen the picture of them in Vegas, ringed hand in hand, laughing. It’s still hanging in the Montreal house, not that Niko has been by other than to collect the odd item he forgot to grab. Part of Niko thought that his papa gave him the house because he was just too lazy to move everything out, but when Niko stalled in the door to their empty bedroom on his way to get his teenage journals and the USB with his first porn collection, he walked inside his parents’ room by habit.

Their bed was made, the same grey, high quality sheets. And on the wall, there was their wedding picture. It struck Niko with a beat of rage that his papa left it behind, but then… well. Niko wasn’t sure where it could go in Shane’s apartment that would look as right as it did here.

And maybe Papa knew that Niko liked to look at it, would wander in a lot after she died when his father was at work or out shopping, just to stare at the image of them. Mama’s head tossed back, so young and happy and vibrant, fingers entangled with a man who looked absolutely adoring of her. She’s always happy here, in the picture, in Vegas.

“Somewhere unusual? Like a glacier?” Papa suggests, dry.

“Like Constantinople,” Niko hazards.

Papa tilts his head and smiles.

“Niko, wouldn’t you want to see Shane Hollander surfing?”

He gestures, like that is all the answer anyone would ever need.

Niko scoffs, because it’s the kind of winking old man bullshit his dad is known for.

“Okay, whatever. Enjoy Hawaii.”

“We will,” Papa says, grinning again. Niko tosses an eggbite at him, not at all surprised to see his papa scoop it off the table and eat it.

“It will be very cowabunga,” Papa adds.

Niko groans like he’s been shot. “Stop saying that. Literally you don’t even know what it means.” Papa waggles his eyebrows.

“Means cowabunga,” he replies, just to be annoying.

Sweaty, Shane enters, his eyes immediately magnetized to Papa. He flickers to Niko almost like a concession.

“Hi Niko.”

“Yeah. Hi. Happy get married day. I’m going to shower.” He doesn’t need to be here for whatever is going to happen next.

Niko beats a retreat but not in time to miss his papa pulling Shane into his lap, all his considerable height and bulk, hands around Shane’s waist and kissing him. It’s like any time they’re in a room together there’s this countdown, a clock ticking to the moment they can touch each other.

Shane pulls away, not far at all, lips still brushing for a long moment. “Did you eat my egg bites?” Shane whispers, and far from mad, he sounds absolutely gone for Papa. They’re both batshit but Niko supposes it’s what makes them such a good match.

So anyway, Papa and Shane are in Hawaii and Niko is at the ESPYs. He’s up for MVP this year and Coach Brett thinks he has a good fucking chance of getting it. Weak showing he said, which doesn’t make Niko feel that great, though he mostly appreciates the sentiment. He’s also up for the Scott Hunter award which, wow, comeback of the century here. They’re gonna cement his name in the hall of fame literally any second for hockey skills and good personage-ness.

Niko is something of a gay magnet even outside of the clubs. There are two out players now and both of them dab Niko up, the guards behind their eyes pulled up high as they scope out the rest of the room. Yeah, it’s not been pretty, but people are learning to listen better. The pressure from the outside is a lot right now, too many eyes on the MLH which makes it easy for Shane to leverage more protections for the guys.

Shane has been scary since last year’s awards and the big come out hand kissing thing. He’s been coming to visit teams directly who have had problems with racial stuff and the gay stuff, instead of calling them to meetings in his office, despite the hell it plays on his schedule according to Papa. Addressing it as the team problem it is, Shane says, and no one who has ever played hockey can seem to make an argument for why the racism or homophobia is an I issue when the rest of the sport isn’t.

It should be less scary, being on home ice, so to speak, but apparently Shane has a buff stat in arenas that makes his intensity double. Any other admin looks goofier and increasingly overdressed the closer they get to a rink. Not Shane; he cuts through the space like a shark, eyes watching the scrimmage and practice before pulling players aside one at a time to handle the accusations, rolling up his sleeves like he’s going into surgery. It’s almost more disturbing, harder to handle, with him so at ease in their stall, with Shane breaching, invading, and owning the sacred, comfortable space of their locker room and then wrecking their shit. Like losing on home ice, there’s something messed up about it.

He sits across all tidy with his lanyard and his take-no-shit expression and practically dares them to try the usual bullshit. I used to be one of you, I know what the fuck you are. Apparently, most guys forget to even be worried he’s clocking their dicks, he has them so fucking freaked. Niko suspects most guys’ balls have literally crawled back inside their bodies, so it’s not much for anyone to want to see anyway.

Niko had seen Shane once in the Buffalo stall doing that, and Niko, who hadn’t made the accusation, but backed the Odawa dude because solidarity, had a fun time sitting across from Shane in an interview. Papa once said it was fun that Shane was boring and Niko has really come around to it the more Shane says, Can you take this seriously? And Niko says, I was thinking Thai afterward. Are you a pussy about spice? And Shane will say, Pussy is the kind of word we’re trying to clean up, and no. You fucking know I’m not weakass like your papa.

Afterwards, of course Niko got chirped to hell; needed more than daddy’s help, needed step-daddy huh? And Niko just flipped his teammates off, and said, How many cups does your family have? I’m sorry, did you say seven? No, I said seven, that is what’s fucking up.

Shane has made a difference, is what Niko knows. And Niko, as his stepson, is a difference maker, a game changer by association. It’s fucking cool. And, you know, a lot of this is because he brought Papa and Shane back together anyway, so what the fuck ever, he’ll take it.

Though he said that once to Shane. Are you going to thank me at your wedding for this? Getting you two in a room together again?

Shane stared unblinkingly cool at him. I didn’t know we circled back to being proud of saying a homophobic slur.

And yeah, that pretty much chopped Niko in half and left him to bleed on the floor. TKO. Wrecked. Devastation!!! He apologized to Shane later who patiently heard him out.

I wouldn’t try that on your dad, is what Shane said at the end. Niko shuddered. Yeah, no fucking shit.

Niko’s done his milling around, offered whatever protection being the deputy’s stepson provides the two gay players against assholery. Now Niko eyes the bar. It’s his second time at the ESPYs since he wasn’t nominated last year, and he kinda wants to see if it’s better drunk.

But Scott Hunter appears before he makes a break, grinning paternally at Niko and the two gay players. Scott definitely said some weird shit to Niko once about how it might be harder for Niko to come out because of his dad and Shane being so fucking loud, but that Scott would be there for him when he did.

Niko had only just resisted telling him to get his gaydar checked. He also resisted the urge to say no urge to suck cock yet but I’ll let you and all of my teammates know if that changes.

Instead, Niko said, “Still straight,” with a fake embarrassed look, like he was working on it hard, and Scott laughed, rubbed his neck. He was good about getting the piss taken out. Better than Shane who either played along with utterly dry and flat responses or looked pissed the fuck off but wouldn’t say anything. Which was still entertaining, of course. He and Papa had a lot of fun with that last Russian New Years, until Shane was so pissed that Papa squeezed his cheeks together and kissed him. My Love, I could not resist, with you looking like that. And Shane’s lips twitched to hide a smile as he said, one day, Rozanov-Hollander, you’ll learn better than to mess with a man’s pillows.

Kip comes behind Scott, all big chipper hellos and squares off with two gay players, apparently more involved with their social lives at some bar, Kingfisher, or whatever. Scott has apparently pre-gamed, which maybe Niko should try that for next year, because Scott smiles with slightly wet eyes, says he’s proud of Niko and leans heavily into him.

“Never woulda thought you’d be up for a sportsmanship award after that first year!”

Niko feels a little pride despite himself. “Yeah, me neither.” honestly. His papa never got one, and sportsmanship never had been Niko’s priority, because didn’t Papa just prove you didn’t need to play nice to be a fucking legend? But then Niko had earned functionally the opposite award in the form of a slur-gaff so bad he still wanted to die when he thought about it. He kinda understood this sportsmanship shtick a little better after that.

“You put in a good word with the Scott Hunter award people?” Niko suggests, grinning.

Scott laughs, big and full bellied, more than the joke merits. “They give me the scepter to choose.” He mimics waving it around like a wand.

Yeah, he’s totally drunk. His husband gives Scott a warning look, even as he looks fondly accepting. It is nice that Scott can relax a little. Every other time Niko has met Scott he’s looked tense as shit. Maybe Papa and Shane have taken some of the heat off or given him a little hope for the league.

“Where is your dad?” Scott asks, looking around as if waiting for a heckle to come wafting in.

“Hawaii. He and Shane are on their honeymoon.”

Their cowabunga honeymoon. Niko needs to find who taught his papa that word. So fucking annoying. It’s just the kind of kitschy Americana shit his dad loves and overuses for like a year before ditching.

“Right, they finally did the deed! Proud of them,” Scott says. Yada, yada, Niko knows. How many people have told him— “About time. I always knew they were fucking rookie year.”

Niko pauses for a moment. Suddenly aware of his hands in the stiff fabric of his suit pockets. His feet in his leather soled shoes, not quite broken in. A little sweat at the nape of his neck where the smallest, tightest curls sit.

Scott doesn’t seem aware of these things. He taps his nose.

“They were always together, always ragging on each other. And they thought they were so sneaky! I know they were giving each other hotel room numbers, and one time I for sure heard them fucking.” He shakes his head, disbelieving. “If more people had my gaydar they woulda been outed before the Olympics! Imagine that world, huh?”

“Hey, Scott, baby. Shhh.” Kip appears, taking Scott’s arm under his. “I think we need to get you some water, huh?”

Kip makes an apologetic expression with his face, but it’s light. Sorry my husband is so drunk. Not anything like, Sorry my husband just told you that your papa and Shane Hollander were boning long before your papa married your mama, and what does that mean exactly, what the fuck does that mean exactly???

The PA system goes off, sending everyone to their arranged seats. Niko floats there and passes the ceremony in a haze. His name gets called at one point and people are banging their hands on his shoulders in excitement. Niko goes up to the stage, pulling out a speech from his pocket, and he doesn’t remember what he says, but he’s handed a trophy and led off stage and he’s standing there in the green room for a moment. Staring at the gold bit in his hand and trying to make something make sense.

Niko does not go to the interview area, nor back to the audience, he goes to the toilet, then turns away from the men’s and pivots into the single room family toilet. He locks the door behind him, leaning against the changing station as he pulls out his phone and dials.

Niko can feel his heartbeat thudding in his chest. He’s thinking about useless things, things his teammates said that Niko always blew off. Bet they were fucking on home ice every year. And, now we know what that trip was all about when Papa stumbled and Boston missed out on the wildcard spot against Montreal.

Niko always blew it off, because he knew better. He knew that Papa loved Mama. Married Mama. Papa told Niko that he did with a desperation that cracked his voice. Niko thought he knew when and how Shane and Papa connected, had a timeline even if the rest of the world didn’t because he was one of the inner circle. He knows there was a weird first date at their Roxboro home, he realizes in retrospect he crashed, the wine bottles and the embarrassment after. Then the long retrospective, and after they started flying out, and then they got engaged— and doesn’t that make sense? Didn’t it follow? Some past chemistry finally explored and developed into a relationship late in life.

But if Papa loved Mama but Shane and he in rookie year were—

How does this make sense?

His mind is running a mile a minute, spinning and dizzy and he can feel anger baking in his bones, rising like bread and splitting, he’s barely thinking when the line finally clicks.

“Nika!” Papa says. My beautiful Nika and now an award winner just like his papa.

“Congrats, Nika,” Shane says, warm.

Niko feels his back go up, how dare you, floats around. But what he ends up saying is:

“Did you fuck my Papa, Shane Hollander?”

There’s a long pause. Really long.

“I thought… that was something we didn’t really… we didn’t have to explain to you was happening,” Shane eventually says, with so many starts and stops it’s like he’s rebooted twice in the process.

Papa laughs, but it’s not fucking funny.

“Were you fucking before you married Mama?”

Papa stops laughing and there’s another pause. Niko can hear Papa suck his cheek.

“What makes you think this?”

“Scott Hunter says he heard you fucking rookie year.”

“Scott Hunter? Scott Hunter?!” Papa rages. “That fucking fossil has been deaf for a long time. We did not fuck rookie year!”

“Ilya,” Shane says quietly. And for how steadying his tone is, the stress underneath gives something away and an awful feeling rises in his chest.

“Okay. Did you fuck your second year?”

Both of them are incredibly quiet. Incredibly, incredibly quiet.

“Oh my god. Oh my fucking god!”

“It was third year,” Papa says, eventually, as if that is at all the fuck ass point.

“Calm down, Nika,” Shane says.

“Um, no. Yeah, no. Why the fuck should I?! You two have been lying to everyone!”

“We are not lying by not talking about sex!” Papa protests. “It’s no one’s business! Definitely not yours, you’re a teenager—"

“Ilya,” Shane says, settling and collected as ever. He sounds so soothing when he says, “They didn’t need to know about before,” Shane says. “It was mostly hooking up.”

“Mostly?” Oh holy fucking shit. Holy Russian mother of Christ. They were…

“We didn’t tell anyone,” Shane tries to reason. “It would just complicate things, and, and, cast aspersions.”

“Oh, aspersions. Aspersions, are you fucking kidding me, Shane?!!”

“Nika, stop taking this out on Shane—”

“Aspersions that you fucking lied to my Mama?!”

That shuts Papa up and Niko’s pulse thuds in his ears. It’s an ugly victory that just makes his blood churn.

“We should talk about this later, maybe. When everyone has a chance to settle down,” Shane says, in that same tone he has when he’s taking meetings at his desk. So reasonable and level-headed. Like he can negotiate his way out of this.

“I don’t really think I want to talk to either of you for a long time, to be honest.”

“Nika,” Papa says. Niko is glad he didn’t video call, because he doesn’t have to see whatever expression goes along with that hurt, cracked tone.

“I mean it,” Niko says, clearly.

“No, no, no, no. You should come see us. Talk in person. Over the phone is so bad, it’s no good.”

“Ilya!” Shane hisses.

“Come to Hawaii and we talk. Will answer anything,” his papa says, and in Russian, Please, Nika. Please.

Niko is torn between his desire to punish his asshole father and the ache to know what the fuck is going on. And on a literal island, neither of them could run away or escape the questions Niko has.

“Fine.”

Shane makes several strangled noises that Niko can’t translate for anything, and he hears a few minutes of quiet, hissed conversation.

“Yeah, I’m hanging up,” Niko says, and does just that.

He goes back to his seat and spends the rest of the night muscling smiles through pictures and publicity.

“Your parents must have been a huge influence to helping you reach this point,” he’s asked at once point. “All three of them,” she adds, cheeky. And Niko smiles without teeth, looks down at the trophy in his hands. His Papa’s wedding ring tight and burning on his index finger.

“I don’t know. My dad never won one, did he?”

She laughs, uncomfortable. Niko is too, so.

When Niko gets home after a haze of numb afterparty, he has an email from Shane Hollander in his inbox. A flight booked to Oahu and a ferry ticket to Lanai. It’s a red eye taking off in three hours.

Niko thinks about not going for a long moment, that spite bubbling in his chest because Papa promised him that he loved Niko’s mama, promised him with his arms around Niko and shaking.

But here is Shane Hollander. Sitting huge in his papa’s lap, eyes on each other like they are everything to one another. And they were. Before Mama. After Mama. How could there be space for her when they feel like this about each other?

He doesn’t know shit anymore. And it’s deeply uncool.

Papa wanted to meet him at the ferry terminal, but Niko told them he’d take a taxi. He doesn’t want to see his papa at the wheel, fingers drumming the steering wheel, the anxious look in the rearview mirror. They have spent so many drives like that in the stretches of dark water where they weren’t speaking or mired in their own grief, Niko too young to sit passenger side. Besides, it’s impossible to have a conversation with him when they aren’t face to face, and he is in the literal driver’s seat.

Niko stares out. Hawaii is beautiful. He never made it here. His parents made one ill-fated trip to the Keys before scrapping the idea of nature altogether and their next vacation took the family to a snowy Amsterdam instead, where they ate and explored the city with immense pleasure. They were always mistaken as Russian tourists which pleased Papa to no end. Everyone back home says how Americanized I am. Clearly not so! Europeans know.

Papa has to be melting, Niko thinks in passing, he does so poorly in the heat. He scoffs to himself, looks ahead at the winding path the cab takes to a house tucked away on a shelf of a cliff, a small sandy beach with lapping waves.

Niko grabs his bag and exits, immediately feeling the heat sinking into his bones.

He sees the door, but he hears voices from the side of the building and walks around to a porch shaded by gauzy sun cover where Papa and Shane are having intense discussion. Niko can only wonder the topic.

“Getting your stories straight?” Niko asks, stepping onto the porch.

Papa flinches, whipping around. “Nika.”

Shane comes up next to him without a word, all but putting an arm around Papa. Shane looks trim as he always does, strong, taut lines because he knows how to actually stay in shape, the ideal of an ex-athlete. Papa is huge, as usual, big arms and chest, but a fat tummy that’s been growing since he gave up on his diet. It’s not hidden under an awful Hawaiian shirt.

They both look slack and sweaty in a way that suggests they’ve been fucking a lot. Niko doesn’t want to think about that shit ever, especially right now, but he’s not deaf or blind enough to miss the league-wide bets about who is bending who over, and he knows with mortification it’s 70 to 30 that Papa is getting rammed by Deputy Commissioner Hollander on the reg (did people decide based on cup count or ???). Look, Niko doesn’t care, but god, he hates thinking about it, but how can he not when it’s their fucking honeymoon and apparently they’ve been fucking for longer than Niko’s been alive, so!!!

The worst is how relaxed they seem, like the week of island life and sex has really done a lot to ease their exhaustion.

Fuck that shit.

“Kay. So?”

Papa opens his mouth stupidly, shoulders coming up. He doesn’t say anything.

“Come inside, put your things down. We can get you a drink,” Shane says, in that direct way he has of not asking but telling. He leads the way, hand on the small of Ilya’s back to get him to move.

Niko follows them inside to an open space, windows swung open on all ends of the house to let the breeze move through. It’s more simply furnished than any of Shane’s other properties. A couch pointed to look out the window, a few shelves with pictures that are pulled out of the wall. A kitchen behind that where Shane goes to take a water pitcher. He pours them each a glass. They sit at a small table and Niko slouches in his seat, watching Shane hand his useless Papa the glass, squeezing his hand for a moment. God but watching him comfort Papa like Niko is some fucking threat is aggravating. He’s Papa’s son. The one whose been betrayed by whatever the fuck these two have been doing for something like thirty years.

Papa only has eyes for Niko at least, and he looks guilty.

“Thanks for coming down, Nika,” Shane says, like he’s ceremoniously cutting the big red ribbon to open the conversation. His speaking is so polished it makes Niko wanna hurl. “I think it’s important to clarify off the bat that, well, all relationships are complicated in their own way. You’re young and you haven’t had that many, but we’d really appreciate you flexing that great empathy we both know you have.” Niko bristles, Shane’s handling him.

Honestly, Niko doesn’t see how relationships were complicated. You either loved someone or you didn’t. Maybe you loved someone else.

“Secondly, we never tried to hide this from you—”

“Oh, for fucking sure,” Niko drawls in total disbelief. Are they kidding?

Shane knots his hands now.

Papa says, “When Shane came out, we decided how much other people needed to know. Them knowing we were hooking up as rookies would not help them understand us now.”

“As rookies?” Are they fucking kidding, that Niko already caught them in a lie. “You said third year!”

“Not fucking, blow jobs!”

Niko can’t help the grunt of disgust. “Oh fuck my fucking god.”

“You are the one coming to Hawaii because you are asking questions about my sex life,” Papa says, outraged. “This is not my fault. Is not something a father should ever have to explain!”

“You do if you fucking cheated on my mama.”

Papa’s face goes incredibly pale and then shockingly red. Yeah, this is the kind of shit Niko had time to think about in his red eye, with his thoughts running up and down the airplane aisle with nowhere to go. He assumed that they were fucking before and after Papa’s marraige.

What if it was also during. What exactly the fuck then?

Was Shane fucking his papa while Mama was getting dressed by the morticians for her funeral? Was Shane comforting Papa through it? Niko none the wiser?! Did they really reconnect when Niko made his SNAFU on international television or is that the kind of lie parents say to make their mistakes palatable?

“I never cheated on your mother,” Papa says, quietly. “While we were married, there was no other.” The fervor in his face seems to have exsanguinated. There’s something quietly sad about him and it’s so performative. He gets so wounded all the time.

“Yeah, right,” Niko scoffs. Papa flinches, deeply unhappy.

Shane glances between them, lips pursed.

Shane says slowly, “Svetlana actually…”

“Shane.” Papa shakes his head, warning him off whatever he was going to say. The look in his eyes is sharply mad, and it’s rare for Papa to ever get mad at Shane.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Papa says, brusque. “Shane was right. You are too young to understand complex things. We shouldn’t have brought you down.”

Niko laughs, incredulous. “You’re fucking with me. I get one question and you’re literally sending me away? You can’t fucking do that!”

“Is Shane’s house.” Papa stands up, goes to set his glass in the sink. Shane watches his broad back with careful eyes.

“Last ferry already passed. You can stay the night,” Shane eventually says. “The couch folds out.”

“You guys are both assholes, do you know that?” Niko asks, throwing his bag down. He doesn’t have anywhere to go though, because apparently the living room is the only guest room he gets.

Papa goes outside. Shane gives Niko one more look before following after. Through the window, Niko sees Papa stop under the shade of the tree, Shane on his heels. He launches into something immediately, outrage in his every gesture. Shane is calm, responding levelly to it all. Papa looks fit to erupt, and then Shane reaches out and pulls Papa into his arms and Niko has to look away.

This is so fucked up. He’s the one suffering here. But since both his parent and pseudo parent are outside, there’s no one for him. Bull shit.

Niko slumps sideways on the couch, throwing his arm over his eyes because it’s too fucking hot and he can’t handle the total pile of bullshit he’s been handled. Turned away before he even got to answer anything. Only one; only that his papa says he never cheated on mama. Yeah right. How can he believe that?

He never even knew his papa was bisexual for most of his life. Maybe Niko should have guessed there were more secrets after that. The way he and Shane seemed to come together so tightly so quickly. Too tightly and too quickly. Niko just thought people fell in love like that. Especially if they were rivals, involved with each other’s lives, and gay men had different conventions or something, maybe. It made sense. He swallowed the public story hook line and sinker. Niko was Papa’s son. He deserved the unvarnished truth.

When he hears footfalls, Niko cracks his arm up a little to see Shane breezing in. Niko sits up, but Papa doesn’t follow.

“He’s gone for a swim,” Shane says. “To cool off.” He turns his back on Niko and digs through the fridge, pulling out bell peppers and half a pineapple, all golden skin, and then packs of meat. Niko watches Shane set out three cutting boards and pull out gloves. He starts expertly cutting the vegetables and setting them aside in little bowls. He changes gloves and starts on some chicken, making little cubes.

Shane’s always been a weird one because Niko’s never had a parent who doesn’t care about Niko the most. Like, Niko knows Papa will always put him before Shane, but for Shane, it’s always Papa. It gives Shane an edge that Niko really likes most of the time, because it means Shane will be honest and real with Niko. In this moment it grates on him.

“Are you two really going to spend the rest of the night ignoring what the fuck I said?” Niko asks, tone mild. Despite his prodding, there isn’t even a hitch in Shane’s knifework.

“If you’re not going to believe what we tell you, why should we try?” Shane asks, in that typical, flat tone of his. Aggravating how sensible that makes him sound.

“Yeah, well, considering how much you didn’t tell me, it’s probably legal for me to be skeptical.”

Shane shrugs. “There’s no proof we can give you. Of any of it. There’s just what we can tell you.”

Niko grapples for a moment. He supposes it would be too simple if there was something tangible as evidence that his parents’ love was real, that his papa didn’t wildly betray his mama. Niko’s thumb draws over the ring on his index, a habit he forces himself to stop. He doesn’t even know why he’s still wearing it.

“Maybe you should tell me all of it, and I can decide if I believe it or not,” Niko says. “When I have the facts.”

“Can you stop yourself from calling your dad a liar?” Shane asks, and he really is asking, Niko suspects. “This isn’t really easy for any of us.”

Niko bristles, because he’s the one who’s been betrayed. Who’s trying to get justice for his dead mother— And how the fuck could this be difficult for Shane? He’s not— he wasn’t even part of this family til recently, at least as far as Niko’s concerned. Saying that won’t win him points with either of them. He stows it, even though he suffers under how wildly unfair the whole thing is. He should have realized it would be 2v1.

Niko licks his lips. “I just want answers.”

“Okay.” Shane whisks something. “Even if you don’t like what you hear?”

Isn’t that just confirmation. Niko smiles, bitter.

“Shane. I don’t think I’m gonna like anything I hear.”

Shane is quiet. He covers the bowls with a lid and puts them in the fridge. He takes out wooden skewers and puts them in some water.

“Your father loves you more than anyone. You know that, right?”

Niko scoffs. Love. Love, love, love. That isn’t really the issue here, is it? Didn’t cheaters usually say it was a surplus of the fucking thing?

Papa comes back to the house sometime later, shirtless and sandy, sea water drying in his curls. Niko watches Shane head him off before he can enter the house. His hand wanders to Papa’s back, moves intimately up and down and Niko remembers that he’s crashing their honeymoon. God but can his life get any more gruesome?

Papa strokes the back of Shane’s neck, murmuring for a moment before kissing him.

How many times did Papa do that to Mama, cup the nape of her neck, massaging where she always got the most tense. She always smiled, even when he drove her spare, and gave Papa a kiss when he massaged her. It’s strange to see the same gestures played out on different people.

It reminds him of that night in their Montreal home, sitting on pins and needles to hopefully make a better second-impression on his papa’s new boyfriend, (freaking!!!)  Shane Hollander. And Papa dragged his thumb over Shane’s face so tenderly to collect powdered sugar the way he always had on Mama when they ate barbeque, because she never learned how to eat ribs without making a mess. The similarity made Niko stand, like a ghost was in the room, and he saw both of them startle like rabbits, so very afraid and ashamed. To have been caught, seen. And he saw a flash on his papa’s face that reminded him too much of how he looked when Niko said the slur.

That twisty feeling comes back here. The desire for Papa to be happy again, with the odd worry that Mama might be getting overwritten. Forgotten in favor of new lips to clean with a thumb, a new neck to rub. He knows it’s stupid. Still. Papa really never looked at anyone but Mama and Shane that way as far as he knows. Worries about her being overwritten are far more pleasant than the real and awful, uneasy facts that turn Niko’s stomach. That maybe the overwriting was happening while she was alive.

They have kebobs for dinner. Shane works the grill. Papa comes back after showering in a linen shirt and shorts. His knee is scarred down the front and sides. So many surgeries. He meets Niko’s eyes at the outside table and clears his throat as he sits down.

Shane must have spoken to him, because he has a different look on his face, guarded but not that dismissiveness of before.

“You are not really in the spirit, Nika. All black athletics is not really the Hawaiian mood.”

Niko scoffs. Yeah right, like he has a closet full of tropical shirts like his old man. Shane sets several plates of kebob down.

“This black is not cowabunga,” Papa bemoans.

“Yeah, there’s a lot that’s not cowabunga,” Niko lobs back and Papa shuts his mouth, lips sour and tight.

“Chicken. Beef. Lamb.”

Shane handles extinguishing the grill, and Niko takes a lamb kebob off the top. He loves lamb, all Turkish food. It’s a nice surprise—

Niko looks up at his father, who sticks to beef and chicken, and Shane who takes mostly chicken but accepts a couple pieces of beef from Niko’s papa. Papa, who knows every one of Niko’s food preferences. Right.

It’s hard to marry his stupid, worrying Papa and the sudden idea that maybe he’s been so much crueler than Niko has ever known. But what was Papa like as a teenager? A twenty year old? Could be very different from now. Niko knows he was a cutthroat player. Intense like the best of them. He’s an aggressive coach, but a softy for mentoring teenagers. Niko would know. It’s very different from who he was before, based on all people tell him, the footage, the chirps that people still include in their top, most decimating chirp rankings.

And separating them will help Niko figure it out. Papa before and who Papa became. Maybe that will give him a way to survive whatever terrible news they are about to give him. That his papa was a fucking cruel idiot but he that he learned, and Niko can relate to that but only if it was in his youth. But he thinks again that this is about Mama… Niko doesn’t know how he’ll stomach it, to be honest.

When they have a pile of skewers, Papa leans back in his chair, looking over Niko. Assessing. He rubs a hand over his face, like he can’t believe what he’s about to do.

“Shane tells me you will be less of a little jerk when I try to talk to you.”

“Oh my fucking god.”

“Ilya,” Shane says.

Papa shrugs, looks away.

“Maybe you can be less of an asshole too, if that’s even possible,” Niko scoffs.

“Many have wondered,” Papa says. He sighs again.

“Just get on with it.”

“Is hard, because I am thinking what your mama would want you to know.” He makes a helpless gesture. “I cannot ask her.”

Niko can’t help but be offended. Why wouldn’t his mother want him to know everything?

As if reading that thought, he says, “Parents protect their kids, Nika.”

“I’m almost twenty.”

“Yes, my very young baby,” Papa says, then sees to catch himself. “You are a good boy, becoming a very good man. But for all parents there are things they don’t want to be seen. When you become older and live long enough, you understand some things are meant to be private.”

As if Niko hasn’t done or said anything on international TV that might mean he relates to wanting certain mistakes hidden. Yeah, right.

“But this affects me. You know it does.”

“It really, really doesn’t,” Papa says, aggrieved. “But I will tell you anyway.” Niko bristles, but Papa jumps into it. “You know your mother and I grow up together.”

“Yeah,” Niko says. “Childhood sweethearts.” Mama followed him to Boston when he got drafted. They were thick as thieves.

“Yes,” Papa says, twisting his fingers. “We start hooking up fourteen, maybe fifteen?”

Niko feels heat flood his face. Holy shit. His mouth pops open to ask why he needs to know this, but he shuts it again. He asked for the story, and apparently he’s getting too much of it.

“We tried dating for two weeks,” Papa says. “She got bored of me, and I am happy to, um, keep exploring around. We are always friends, but we are friends who, uh…” Papa says, and this is the worst moment of Niko’s life. This is deeply not cowabunga.

“You were friends with benefits?! But she followed you to Boston?” Niko asks, agape. Why do that for someone you only hook up with?

“Yes, she gets very bored in Russia. Used me as an excuse to go to college in Boston despite her protective father. You know grandpa Sergei, He swaps into Russian. If he could hand her one of his eyes to carry with her everywhere to oversee her, he would have. Papa shrugs. “We have a lot of fun in Boston, but we are not dating. She sees men, I see women. And I also, uh, get involved with Shane.”

Niko snaps his head to Shane. Who looks a little annoyed to be counted among one of the people Niko’s papa is hooking up with. Which is fair. Wow. Niko doesn’t believe in romance romance, but this is… this is very different. His papa is a fucking slut, holy shit.

“It’s convenient because we’re both in the Eastern conference,” Shane adds, which is a logistical thing Niko has never considered. But yeah he could for sure fuck someone in Tampa on the reg, he guesses.

“So, you were stringing both of them around?” Niko cannot believe this shit. His Papa is not that good looking, no matter what those gay fucking baristas say!!!

Papa wavers. “Look. Is not stringing on. Your mama knows it’s casual. Shane also wants to be casual at this time. You probably also… have your own…”

Niko flushes. No, no, he is not talking about his hookups. Yeah, he does have a woman with a killer smile and fat fucking ass he sees every time in Toronto but that is not the same thing. Niko isn’t going to marry her; it’s just for fun—

He rubs his face. It needs saying actually, “You are such a slut.” It makes Niko feel better about himself.

Shane doesn’t say anything in defense even as Papa looks apoplectic.

“I am healthy man!” his accent is thick and embarrassing.

“Ilya,” Shane says. And for a moment Niko thinks he sees Shane mouth six hundred at his papa, making him clear his throat. What’s that about? Before he can ask, Shane tilts his head. “Maybe we can get on with the story.”

Papa humphs. “Your mama knows that there is a man I am seeing, though I call him ‘Jane.’ She knows that we are getting serious.”

“You and Shane?” Niko asks, perplexed. “So, it wasn’t just hooking up.” He was fucking right!

“We are deciding that we want to be closer. Exclusive, probably. Not out but… together. Was 2017.”

“But…”

That’s the year his parents got married. What the fuck.

Papa goes quiet for a long moment, looking at Shane who stares back. Niko glances between them.

“How did you end up married to Mama?”

Papa coughs. “I needed a green card.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Nika, calm down.”

“You had a fucking green card wedding?! You used her for that?!”

His father looks absolutely chagrinned. Shane looks mad, but at Niko, not Papa, which hardly feels fair.

“She offered!” Shane argues.

“Yeah, if he was pressuring her, I’m sure she fucking did!”

“I could not pressure your mama— God, could not pressure your mama! Your mama offered a long time ago—I know you don’t believe, but it’s true. Because we are friends for so long. She says marriage to me for card would be whatever. Like giving a kidney. Lots of paperwork, but she would do for a friend. We both used each other to get out of Russia, is how she said it.”

“I cannot believe this kidney shit. You really used her!? You took her that much for granted!!?”

Papa looks away, his eyes are wet.

“Your mother chose to do it, Nika,” Shane reasons.

“Why are you defending him? Weren’t you fucking exclusive?”

Papa clears his throat. “I fucked up. Did not talk to Shane first. I was scared we would lose our chance to be together, so I wanted the green card, but I ruined the chance because I am—”

Niko stands up, he cannot hear anymore of this actually. Not a single word. His father married his mama for her green card so he could go steady with Shane Hollander. This cannot be happening to him.

“I’m going to bed. Yeah, I’m going to bed.”

“Nika—”

He walks away, back inside and into the bathroom where his travel toothbrush and floss is. He stares for a long moment into the mirror. His papa always says how much he looks like her, affection in his every word. How had Niko fallen for it all this time? Even fallen for his grief when she was just a ticket to America in the end for him.

And maybe he is crying, but this is so fucked up.

Niko finishes getting ready for bed. He pulls on his silk sleep cap and finds the couch made flat like a futon, bedding spread over it with a pillow. He expects something lumpy and hard because it’s a futon, but Shane has good taste, because Niko doesn’t feel anything but easy support for his body. He has no excuse for how he stays awake into the early hours, mind whirring even with the soothing lap of waves outside. Niko tries to rot himself to sleep with videos and social media, but it only hazes his mind, doesn’t clear or quieten it.

His feed is full of his papa and Shane. He never noticed how much he bought into the Shane Hollander bullshit. The legend, the confident cool smile. The friendliness peeking out of power cloaked in a little awkwardness. Even now, he was athletic and spry, looked the ideal image of an ex-athlete, doing marathons, volunteering. Running the fucking MLH. All the times he helped Niko and sent him library cards and blocked Niko after sending too many memes and then emailed Niko to explain why he was blocked— all that time he had known that Niko’s life was a fucking lie.

It’s hard to stomach. Or maybe he just ate too much lamb and pineapple.

He flicks the screen off and stands, slipping his shoes on to walk around outside. It’s dark outside, though Shane has put a few lamps outside to illuminate the path. It’s the kind of thoughtful thing his mother used to think of when she made him a lantern path back to their house when he was outside too long in the summer. His papa really married some kind of guy. Niko remembers joking that Papa had a type and Shane and his mother shared it. He never realized how much.

He follows the lanterns and the sound of the waves grows. It leads to a sharp outcropping of rocks and a series of wood handrails designed around a path. He sees a figure on the beach below. Niko swallows, turns his flashlight on and walks carefully down the rocky path to a small, curved patch of beach.

“Nika.”

Shane Hollander sitting on a towel, legs pulled up and head resting on top. He has a little lamp nearby his legs and he turns up the brightness. Immediately bugs swamp the light, but Shane doesn’t seem bothered. Niko pockets his phone.

“Isn’t it supposed to be dangerous to be by the water at night?” Niko says, for lack of anything else to say, despite being the one to see Shane here and trek down.

“It’s pretty calm on this side of the island. The waves really come in the morning… Can’t sleep?”

Duh. Niko snorts, looking out at the dark ocean. It’s menacing at night, nothing like the clear blue sweetness of the day. Shane’s property is on the tip of a bay owned by some hotel guy. Shane apparently won the property from the rich asshole in his one and only sports bet in his life, after retiring but before starting the MLH. He underestimated the difference between watching and playing, Shane said, in that typical, shrugging, unassuming way badasses have. Another notch in his tall-looming legend.

He doesn’t look looming or legendary now. Shane clearly suffers from sleeplessness too, though Niko doesn’t know why. It’s not like he’s coming out any the worse.

“Bet it felt good.”

“What?” Shane asks, dry.

“Knowing you were his first pick,” Niko says, bitter. “That my mom was second round.”

Shane’s mouth falls open, total shock painting his face. “Me—”

“She was his backup plan! He used her for a green card! How the fuck could he do that?”

Shane still looks perplexed. His mouth opens, shuts, but all he says is, “Holy shit.”

Niko grunts in agreement.

“Every now and then you see a different fucking perspective.” Shane stares at the waves, unblinking. Niko scoffs, he can really relate and the perspective is awful. Still, Shane doesn’t say anything to defend himself, or to tell Niko to cut his shit out. Instead, he toys with his phone for a second. It flashes on and he types through for a moment before offering it to Niko.

“Here.”

Niko almost doesn’t take it, but whatever. He waves at the gnats that flit over the screen. Niko squints. It’s a Twitter post. Really fucking old, cause Niko has only heard of that website. The person posting is even more of an eyebrow-raising moment. That fucking President. The one who America still grapples with today. His tweets must be saved as documentation during his reign, or whatever. Either way, Niko blinks as he sees the scathing reprimand of players ruining hockey. Scott Hunter is at the top. And Ilya Rozanov is there. Niko swallows, going down to the archived comments and he flinches. The vitriol. The deport him! that flash incessantly up, gifs of his father falling on the ice or taking brutal hits, as if to show how nothing he was to the sport, how pathetic, how much they wanted him to bleed.

It makes Niko’s skin crawl, his eyes are burning.

“2017 wasn’t a good year to be foreign in the US,” Shane says, simply. Niko laughs, high and incredulous. He knows that. The amount of people cruelly deported is something he learned once in a high school textbook, the amount of POCs was spinechilling...

“He was rich, White,” Niko argues. “He wasn’t like… I mean he could have gone to Russia—”

Niko cuts himself off. Right.

“He was scared of being trapped there.”

Bisexual and visa-less, starting life over in a new league. The idea is agonizing.

Shane says, “I don’t think any action ever really got taken. But it scared the shit out of him.”

Niko swallows. It scares the shit out of him too.

“And it’s really hard, when you’re that scared to think. It all feels terminal. Life or death, I don’t know. Your dad asked your mom to protect him. She married him that very night in Vegas.”

Niko exhales hard. That image of them giddy in Vegas. The adoration on his father’s face. His mother’s playfulness. All of it takes a different tint. Victory and release. Joy that they had conned the system. Co-conspirators of the same crime. Papa adored her for saving him, and Niko stupidly mistook that for love.

“They weren’t together at the time, but she did everything she could to make sure he was safe.” Shane swallows here, his voice wavers. “We were just starting to be serious. We never even said that we…” Shane goes quiet. “That we loved each other. Too proud, maybe. Or scared. I don’t know. We always made everything so difficult for ourselves. The point is, I wasn’t out. I couldn’t help him.”

“So, he asked her.”

Shane nods. “He wanted him and I to be together afterwards, because it was just a friend marriage at the time, but it was… too difficult for me. I couldn’t trust him anymore. So, I cut things off.” Shane shrugs his shoulders. He’s not the tall lean monolith he usually is. That steady person. He looks driven small by the pinching, difficult choices in life.

“And they…”

“Yes. At some point, your dad asked her to make the marriage a real one. Because he loved her. And then they had you.”

It doesn’t feel good to know. That Papa loved her. Because she wasn’t the first pick. He doesn’t know why it stings, but it does. Like first means most important somehow.

“They wanted you, you know, you weren’t an accident.”

Niko hadn’t even had time to think about that angle, and it makes something scrape over his heart to have Shane of all people reassuring him of this.

“Why did she say yes? Why didn’t she divorce him the second his visa was cemented?”

Shane looks back at him, and the lamp makes his dark eyes glow red.

“Why does anyone stay together? She loved him too.”

Niko is stumped. It didn’t feel like a good enough reason—but then, that was why people came together at all in the first place, wasn’t it?

“But he loved you?” Niko tries. So how could she love him?

Shane tilts his head at Niko. So cautious, so careful about acknowledging how batshit in love Niko’s father is with him. It’s fucking intolerable.

“Fuck this. Fuck you for this.”

Shane should have taken his papa back, let Mama divorce him and have her own life. Should have been out sooner so he could marry Papa for the fucking green card regardless of whether Niko would exist, because at least he’d spare Niko this terrible reality he’s caught in.

Niko doesn’t know. He sniffs, and it’s gotta be the change in altitude but there is so much gunk in his sinuses.

“That’s not fair.” Shane takes a deep breath, like he’s doing yoga and Niko immediately feels a pang in his chest, the kind of clenching he knows means he’s total scum.

“I’m… sorry. I’m not trying to be an asshole to you.” It feels weird but important to say. He recognizes that Shane was misled too, hurt by Papa. Unable to trust him, Shane said. Must be an awful feeling. He knows they’re happy now, and that’s all that should matter, because Mama isn’t in the picture anymore, but it’s hard to just… let go. Still, “I’m not trying to, like, undo you, I just wish…”

“You wish she was alive,” Shane says.

Oh. Yeah, probably. God that sucks.

If she was alive, would his parents still be together? Would Shane be with someone else? Or would Shane and Papa have reconnected? He feels awful about the thought because they are good together, but so were Niko’s parents. They were. They were.

Shane stands, collecting his towel and reaching out for his phone that has long grown dim.

Niko hands it over and follows the trail of lamps back to the house. Shane hesitates a moment, but reaches out and clasps Niko’s shoulder.

Niko sees a figure by the window and his stomach clenches. Shane goes ahead of him, passing by the figure, their shadowy shapes moving together for a moment, shapeshifting and melding in the dark. Then one leaves the other. Niko forces his feet to move and he reenters and locks the door, for what little it matters on an island private as this.

He finds his papa sitting on Niko’s bed staring out the window. The stars are terribly clear. Niko doesn’t think he’s ever seen so many before. Maybe this is why people get away into nature, the grand smallness he feels.

“I still think you took her for granted,” Niko says.

Papa says nothing, just pats the pulled-out futon.

Niko sits down. He’s fucking exhausted. Redeye and then a late night here in a different timezone. His sleep is so fucked.

“I think we are doomed to do that with the people we love,” Papa says quietly. “Is only when they die that we notice.”

Niko feels a pang, because he didn’t, he never took his mother for granted—

He squeezes the wedding beneath his fingers. Except when he did. All the time. When she’d say she was going to a game or anything to support him, Niko’s only words were, “Yeah, but is Papa coming?” When she brought him to her office, he never cared a bit when she explained the work that made her so fabulously wealthy and on several lists for enterprising businesswomen. To this day, women still came up and told Niko how much of an inspiration his mother was, how special she was and defining in her field— Niko can never answer their praise with anything satisfactory, he still doesn’t know what all she did on the day-to-day. The moves she made, the deals Mama closed.

He knows the tolls it took on her. The way it weighed on her at home when she sat on the couch and Papa would steer Niko away to let her have a moment. Ask him to play outside or say they would go to the library to do homework today. That when she got migraines Papa became a monster about any noise in the house which was fucking unfair when Niko wanted to play his games and the soundtrack was the best part.

He thinks of when they went home for her papa’s funeral and Niko asked her several times why she wasn’t crying, saying she must not have been that sad if she wasn’t crying and Papa gave him one of the first stern adult conversations of his life about feelings being personal, expressing themselves differently. And when her family said things to her, Niko noticed she would squeeze Papa’s arm and he would answer, some flippant bullshit he was always good at. Afterwards, she laughed hard in the car, repeating them back, falling over the center console to squeeze Papa’s shoulders and bury a few tears there. Because if Shane and Papa touched, then Papa and Mama talked. From the moment the door opened, to the last moments at night. Rushing, buzzing words, all their thoughts, everything that happened, every kvetch and triumph and joke. They touched, of course, but even when they fought, the house was full of words more than anything else. A jungle of dialogue spilling from all corners.  

It made the silence after she died more staggering.

He took her words for granted.

He never appreciated her hockey sense, which she plied Niko with on every car ride, telling him how he can improve until he moaned and groaned and begged her to stop because the coaches and papa knew better. She stilled when he said it aloud once. Pulled the car over and turned her head to face him.

Her green eyes, like his, gleamed as she said, You spend so much time around men you forget women are people, Nika.

It was shocking, so mean. He protested immediately because he was a good person, and as she stared at him, accusatory, he burst into tears.

She turned back around and hit her turn signal to rejoin traffic. Niko sobbed all the way to practice. He was ten, he thinks, too old to sob like that.

She opened the door and he cried even louder, but she mopped up his tears, wiped his snot, and stroked and petted his face. Scratched his head gently though thick curls so like her own.

I need you to know that I take care of you because I love you, Nika, not because I am your mother.

He nodded, sobs stopping, but he didn’t know at all what she meant.

Until she died.   

And Papa became someone else. Someone both broken raw and impenetrably cold. Like Mama’s parents in Russia as they looked over Niko the first time. Strangers. Niko had to go to therapy with Linda, which only bewildered him because why couldn’t he talk to Papa?

Only Niko knew, because Papa could not talk about Mama at all, not even when Niko quietly said, I really miss her. Papa was gone, locked away somewhere else, eating lots or not eating at all. Becoming heavy and unfamiliar. Niko remembers that awful night where Niko found Papa in the kitchen, passed out with a glass vodka bottle beside him, so still Niko thought hysterically he had an aneurysm too until Papa coughed and moaned, staggered up, drank water from the faucet with sloppy lips and passed out on the couch. A nascent fear sprouted roots, thick and deep in Niko, a terrible terror, as he realized he could be alone on this fucking planet. That just like that, he could lose Papa too and be alone here in the house. Niko spent the night on the chair, watching to make sure his papa would be okay but too afraid to call anyone on the phone in case they told him Papa wasn’t. Maybe a week after that, Papa also got a therapist. And then later Papa sat Niko down, his blue eyes looked hard as usual, but it was like some dam behind them had deteriorated.

I miss your mother so much, Nika.

Niko felt his mouth pop open. He wavered between trust and distrust and reached for Russian— but he felt so much of her syllables in her mouth, and said in English, “Me too.”

Papa blinked, but hugged Niko. And it was still awful, and Niko felt both wary of his father and deeply protective of anything that could upset him when he was only starting to smile, when he had come back from that stillness on the floor to touch, and care and love Niko Rozanov. It was like Papa finally came home from a long game, and the man who loved Niko was back, was teasing, cooking food for him, squeezing his shoulder warmly. Niko finally got what he wanted, but he almost didn’t know what to do with it, was resentful of his father, even though weeks before he would have done anything to have him back. He rocked between these extremes, even as his father became kinder and more free with his care. He badgered and pressed Niko like a dog, nipping and gnawing at him until he returned the love back. And it was weird because Papa never did that with anyone else, couldn’t care less what the rest of the world thought about him. But Niko and now Shane, he was obsessive and unrelenting about. Showering in affection and driving it out of them. Niko resented it as a younger person, but maybe Papa also felt that fear, that feeling of how frightfully easy it was. It takes only an instant really, and they could be living alone in a house. He learned from his papa that it takes work to live in a full one.

And that was how Niko realized that loving someone was a choice you made. He chose to care about his papa. And Papa chose to do the same, even when he wanted to drink himself dead instead. And it didn’t have to do with being family exactly, and it definitely didn’t have to do with being a woman who cared like his Mama was.

She chose to care about him, intently and in specific ways, and he never even noticed.

So he tries to make her proud. To play the best hockey he can, like she might. And maybe he tried to hard to fit in, not to struggle, and said some careless ass things, but that was another (very tired) story.

Niko’s therapist thinks he’s grown a lot. Shows a lot of maturity.

He doesn’t feel mature right now. Grappling with all this senselessness amid his parents marriage and the Shane Hollander of it all.

Shane Hollander. He used to be a distant idol, a picture on his wall. In truth, Papa is actually Niko’s hockey idol, but he could never admit that after the age of seven for obvious reasons. And if you were vying for center, there were only two modern legends to pick from. Rozanov or Hollander. Hollander appealed to the technical and speed players. He had great stickwork and was a faster, more depthful player than almost anyone else. Papa on the other hand was a presence on the ice. He was tectonic. An unbeatable skater, an even louder personality. He owned every game so completely, for better or worse. Penalties and hat tricks and Gordie Howes. He was spectacle and cunning for using that to garner success. It made him incredible to watch. Papa is still the greatest player Niko has ever seen.

But again, nothing he can ever say. So, half to piss off his dad, Niko picked Hollander. He had to have the poster and the jersey and asked for tickets to see him for his birthday just to see his papa moan and groan about it, peeking behind his hand to see Niko’s giggles.

Looking back, Niko swears he saw both his parents looking at the poster now and then.

Niko teased his mama once. You think he’s handsomer than Papa?

She turned to him, surprised, and then laughed so hard she almost folded in half.

He is very cute, Mama said, grinning up from under the heavy splay of her hair falling over her bent head and Niko panicked because she was only supposed to think that about Papa. She laughed again, flicked his nose.

And maybe it was good to have that poster, because Hollander didn’t look like the other White players, even Papa. Niko didn’t look like Hollander at all, but he also didn’t look like the White players. So it was cool to see. To know. Yeah, it could happen, even when he didn’t really take after his White papa who everyone really did like so much.

The reality of Shane, the awkward turns mixed with a sort of smooth confidence that staggered— How could Niko know he’d be his stepdad, that Papa would pull him so close into the family, like a dog with a bone.

And in exchange, Shane seems deadest on getting Niko and Papa to get along again. It’s almost aggravating, except they suck at it a lot of the time.

Tonight is no different.

“Shane told me about that message from the US president. You didn’t mention.”

Papa goes still. He breathes quietly for a few moments. He rubs his face.

“Your Mama helped me when I was scaredest. As my friend. And we stayed together. We always love each other, but over time we learn we also love each other another way.”

He says it like, these things just happen. Love comes into your life, people come into it and leave. You wind up in places you don’t expect.

“I don’t know what else to say,” Papa says.

“And you really… you and Shane never…? While she was alive?”

Papa shakes his head.

He leans back, looks at the ceiling. He does that a lot, looking for help. His hand wanders to his chest where his cross is and Mama’s stone. He moves into Russian.

I try very hard to respect her, to protect you from things I think will hurt you. Papa shakes his head, a bitter slant to his words. We know how well that goes. I didn’t teach you that I’m a bisexual man and you don’t have a chance to understand queer people.

Niko shifts. I mean, hockey isn’t great for that.

No. But also I could have been a better parent by being honest. I’m always trying to figure out the line between honesty and protection, especially about things with your mother.

Niko blinks, because what else could he be hiding.

Nika, I couldn’t have cheated on your mother. It wasn’t possible; we had an open marriage.

What?! Niko feels his eyes pop. “Holy shit. So you and Shane—”

We did not! Papa says, and he’s so intense and frustrated that Niko believes him this time. I did not use it for more than a few kisses at clubs, and your mother was there, it was a laugh. But even if Shane and I had… Papa trails off. It wouldn’t have been cheating. His Mama would have let them.

Niko tries to grapple with this terrifying feeling growing in his chest. It feels so small and unsteady.

Didn’t you and Mama want each other? Niko asks. His eyes are wet again.

Of course we wanted each other, we loved each other. Papa runs his hands agitated through his curls and the frizz rises platinum in the moon and starlight bouncing off the waves and rocks through Shane’s wide bay window.

How can I believe that? You were gone all the time, you were never there. Niko knows how it is, girls in every city, long nights on the road, and if Papa did pressure her for an open marriage, why wouldn’t he take and take and take in every city they went to? Wasn’t that better than being at home. And back then, weren’t he and Shane still playing against each other too?

I was gone too much, I know. Papa looks helpless. The familiar, thick muscle of his shoulders sags. But I promise, I didn’t use it.

Then why even have it—

Oh fuck.

Did Mama…? Niko asks.

Shock cracks across Papa’s face, unpleasant and vulnerable and so fucking revealing. This is what he didn’t want Shane to say. This is the truth he isn’t sure Mama would want him to know. This cannot be Niko’s fucking life.

Who was he?!?

I don’t know— I don’t remember his name.

You don’t— Fuck. Fuck! How old was I?

Nika, it doesn’t matter. She talked to me about it, I said it was fine.

It’s not fine with me!

We didn’t answer to you, we answer to each other!

Are you even my father?!

Papa’s upset wobbles for a moment to utter irate disbelief. It’s a fucking joke if you think that. We are the same person! We are even the same asshole most of the time!

Papa reaches out, but Niko bats the hand away. Niko is sniffling hard, breathing harder.

I’m sorry, Papa says. I’m sorry that I’m… that all of this is hurting you, my son, my darling. Sunshine. I only… I wanted to explain our relationship more. To explain that… some people need to own each other. It’s very possessive, and lots of people like that love. Shane is that way. Other people chafe at that. Your mother wanted to be appreciated and loved and admired, but she never wanted to be owned. This love is beautiful too. This love is open and easy, and so often we had so much fun together. This love let her build her career and think about me when she wanted to without making me her whole world. Her mama, she struggled with this.

But Granpa Sergei loved her, Niko said, bewildered.

Papa grimaced. Yes, he did. But she was devoted to him. And he was… he played hockey. In the most typical sense. Your mama saw the ways her mother drove herself mad wondering about the cheating, the whos and the hows and the whens. Your mama decided a long time ago she would never be this kind of woman and she made it so. I promise Niko, the one thing your mama was never wasting time thinking about is whether I was cheating on her. Not once the entirety of our marriage, not even on the long trips. It would be stupid when all it would need is a call, and a conversation, where also she probably would make one of her mean jokes, because she enjoyed those so much. We were together because we love each other, we were building something together, our life with you which we loved. We weren’t together because we needed to possess each other.

But you want to have Shane. Do you have an open marriage with Shane?

No. I have been married to Shane for six days and I know this will be a different marriage. Papa says steadily. Loving people cannot be a competition, Nika. It is different each time. You have to roll with the waves. Make choices as each thing comes up.

Why couldn’t his parents be normal?

He says this to Papa who snorts.

I never wanted her any other way.

And more than Papa saying he loved Mama, this makes Niko’s eyes well up a little. His powerful, aggressive mother. Who had an open marriage. Her own secret sexual experiences away from Papa, secret from Niko. Her own job in a different sphere. Who loved Papa because she chose to, with intent and purpose but without ever being subservient to it.

I wish I knew her better.

Papa reaches out and pats his back, and Niko still feels young. That nineteen-not-yet-twenty feeling.

His mama wasn’t a mama. She was a woman, a person. Meeting her this way is startling, unnerving, but it makes him feel oddly closer to the reality of who she was. A complex person, not just who wiped his snot. Someone who chose to marry Papa to help him when he needed it. Who laughed at the Shane Hollander poster, instead of tearing it down.

Who said to Niko, Shane Hollander is a good person to model yourself off of.

She can’t have known what would eventually be. And yet…

Niko is trying to be better. To learn from all of his parents.

Mostly what he’s learning is that adulthood is shit. He doesn’t want to turn twenty, suddenly, if this is what it’s like.

He tells Papa who laughs, wedges himself closer, arm sneaking around to pull Niko into his side.

You will be okay. You’re going to mess it up, nothing new, but you will figure out who you are. I am already very proud of you.

Niko feels a little burning.

He turns and chooses a tiny kiss on his father’s cheek. The first time he’s ever instigated it since he was a toddler, and his Papa’s breathing is heavy and emotional. It’s so embarrassing. This is why he can’t do this too often. But every now and then it’s okay.

Worth it when Papa pulls Niko in for a squeezing side hug.

I’m going to bed, Niko says. Papa nods, letting Niko shuffle onto the couch. He scoffs when Papa hands him his water bottle and pulls the sheet up over him.

I can’t do this when you’re twenty and a sad adult like the rest of us, Papa teases, and Niko knows his comment about not wanting to turn twenty will be haunt him for a long time.

Niko still lets his annoying Papa pull the sheets up. He’s a big fucking guy, but Papa never seems to notice that and it’s not always that bad.

His fingers stroke the ring, warm under the covers. It doesn’t feel like a vow for the same marriage he thought it was, but maybe one more specifically and resolvedly loving than he ever realized.

Niko wakes up entirely too early because of clamor in the kitchen. Niko turns unhappily and sees his wincing Papa by the cupboards. He has breakfast burritos from the oven, and plates in his hands.

Niko groans. He’s fucking wrecked.

Sorry. Papa says, Shane gets very hungry after surfing.

Niko scowls for a moment. But then he wrests himself out of bed anyway because he wants a burrito, his papa always makes them best, and he does kinda wanna see Shane Hollander surf.

He throws on a hoodie and follows his papa down in the early light to the beach. The sun is striking on the water, still low to the horizon. The bay with the resort on the other side is buzzing with life. On the water of their slice, Shane is a good way out, sitting on his board and staring at the waves.

“Hey!” Papa shouts.

Shane glances around and a smile grows on his face. Niko falls on his ass in the sand, digging into the breakfast burrito. When he makes then, Niko always overstuffs them so they break and the ratio is off, but Papa somehow has the golden amount.

You’re not going out there? Niko asks, around a bite.

With my knee? Hell no.

Shane swims a touch further out, waiting patiently, and Niko doesn’t really get what is happening. He thought Shane was supposed to ride one of these waves that lap on shore. Then, there’s a moment, a pause where a swell comes and Shane starts paddling with it. It starts to break, tall and wide, and Shane is up on the board.

Niko chews furiously as Shane drops down the side of the wave, for a moment he wavers, cutting along the side, then his knees twist. He drives the board up and down, carving zigzags, torso twisting in tight movements that looks exhilarating, all core and knee driving the board. Shane drops once more down the white top of it and then rides down inside of it. His hair is plastered down and the giddy grin on his face is clear ever from here. Her swerves up, cutting the top once more before gliding down and then through the crashing swell.

Shane swipes the hair from his eyes with an exhilarated grin lighting up his expression.

It’s fucking badass.

“Cowabunga!” Papa yells through cupped hands and Shane does this awkward, happy half-wave back. They are so advanced in age to be such fucking morons.

Shane lets the tide take him most of the way back, then paddles and then stands, collecting the board with him. He unlatches his ankle lead and plants the board. He goes to Papa as if magnetized.

“Hi Sweetheart.” Papa and Shane kiss, and it’s sweet, hungry.

He thinks about the way Shane and Papa are anytime they’re in a room. Like they notice each other first and the setting, music, and other people like and afterthought. As if they were two points in a universe. Niko thinks of his father and his mother, draping over each other, the way she would hang her head over his kitchen chair to kiss Papa and whisper to him, Papa’s hands cupping her neck. Then she’d slide away, grinning, even as she came to Niko to cup his face and tell him lovingly and in detail all the ways to get his shit together.

He thinks, hopes, she felt loved and admired.

And whether that morning in the kitchen he’s thinking of happened before or after she had sex with another person besides Papa, Niko will never know. He doesn’t want to know actually. Some things shouldn’t be discussed.

Niko blinks, and realizes Shand and Papa are still kissing. Niko remembers once again that he’s for sure interrupting their honey moon so he can crash out. Even so.

“Will you teach me that?”

Shane has a smirk on his face. “Oh, you wanna surf now, huh? What about your ferry.”

“It’s off season,” Niko says. “Don’t I get a vacation too?”

“I love you more than anything in the world, Nika. You cannot rob me of my honeymoon,” Papa says. Shane laughs and Niko pouts.

“You’re the one who told me to come down! You’re really sending me packing right away?”

Shane and Papa converse without words and Niko works really, really hard not to notice his Papa’s hands absently on Shane’s ass. Does he even notice he’s doing it? They need to take classes on how to act in public.

“Maybe we could take you by to introduce you to my cousins. They might be able to teach you.”

“The cousins, really?” Papa teases.

“Shut up,” Shane says, but his tone is too bright.

“Uh, I don’t really know them.”

“Yeah, but you’re my stepson. You’re family,” Shane’s face is a little pink and maybe Niko’s is too for the shit eating grin on Papa’s face.

Shane calls ahead and then charters a plane, because of course he does. And they are on the main island in no time. Shane eats two breakfast burritos on the plane and Niko ignores the game of footsie he and papa seem to be playing. He does think about going to the pilot and yelling let me off this fucking thing!!!

“Have I said I’m sorry for crashing your fucking honeymoon?” Niko asks, agonized.

His papa mercifully removes his foot, grinning. “It’s okay. I blame Hunter anyway.”

“And I blame Ilya for inviting you,” Shane adds. And Papa is back to trying to sneak his toes under Shane’s. Yeah, Niko’s just gonna shut his eyes, or look out the window. Fucking Hawaii, wow. Gorgeous.

When they arrive at the house, Niko was expecting like, three people maybe. A small tight group like Shane’s family. He is not expecting twenty people inside and outside of the backyard.

“Shane!” an older woman says, pulling him in for a hug. Shane’s shoulders are up tightly, even as he returns the gesture.

“Mika-obaachan,” he says. “I thought you said this was a good time?” He looks with bewilderment at the party.

“Well, my cousin from the mainland is coming by, and you have a lot of fans. You know I brag about you to everyone.”

Is there even a hockey rink here?! Niko resists a guffaw. This is definitely a loose excuse for a party and rubbernecking at the rich asshole family member with a house on Lanai.

Mika goes up to Ilya and is treated to a bearhug that makes her burst into laughter.

Shane clears his throat, his arm twitches a little, then settles over Niko’s shoulder. “This is my stepson, Niko.”

Mika is fucking delighted. “Niko, let me introduce you to your cousins.” She misses the ‘in-law,’ and Niko can’t decide if it’s on purpose or not. Nika meets three dudes about his age and a girl a couple years younger and they size him up. When he mentions he plays for the MLH the teen girl says, football? And he has to laugh. Yeah, Mika was lying about hockey having any cachet here.

Still, Niko likes meeting new people, and they do know about Shane who they have heard ad nauseum about. Grandma Mika won’t shut up about him.

Seems bragging runs in the family.

They find out Niko’s dad is super Russian when he brings drinks by, and ask if Niko speaks Russian because Leilani actually studied there for college.

Niko is the Russianest nonRussian they will ever meet and tells them so. He talks to Leilani who is thrilled to flex her language skills. Halfway through their conversation he catches her wrinkling her nose, and he knows she’s clocking to his way of speaking. He wonders what she would say if he mentioned that his diminutive is Nika.

His name is feminine, or rather his diminutive is. He only remembers noticing when he realized every other Russian speaker called him Kolya and not Nika and frowned or laughed when he corrected them. Of course, his parents told him the story, laughingly, like this inside joke between them about his feminine name is the peak of comedic achievement.

At seven, he demanded of his mama, So you ruined my life so you could be right??!

And she looked at him. Your life is a travesty, isn’t it? Flat and undemanding, and neither of them stopped calling him Nika. Of course, outside of talking to him, his papa always uses Nikolaj, full sentence, no shortening it. As if that was his attempt to make up for the injustice of his family diminutive. To put more masculine syllables out there and attach them to Niko. Of course, by seven Niko just wanted to be ‘Niko’ nice and short and easy for North Americans to get without adding a ‘J’ sound to his name because his parents even cursed him with the spelling!

He'd always felt strangled by his father's looming, hyper-masculine legacy. Of course he tried to live up to it for all that he looked like his mama and had fine bones and a feminine diminutive name. He was starting from the back but he thought he could overtake his papa. The goal moved though when Niko found out his papa was bi. Found out that for all his rolling aggressive maleness there was an equal queerness, a feyness he affected when he was feeling very droll. His Papa never hid that, but Niko could never see what it was-- proof of his papa's expression of masculinity and not an exception. 

His father is the only one to call him it, the feminine name, the inside joke, his mother’s one mistake. And he’d had a thought that once his Papa died there would be no one to say it… But Shane joined the family. And Niko was just trying to make him look less terrified at the act of talking with Niko like family, it came out naturally, the request to call him Nika. Shane did, and the group doubled, and Niko realized maybe he can do the same one day.

He kinda likes the idea of, later on, meeting a girl (hopefully a Russian speaking one) and telling her the whole embarrassing story of his mother cursing his life with uniqueness, a sense of inbetweenness that he’s come to relish the more he’s straddled cultures, races, and borders. Besides, if his papa somehow snagged Shane Hollander, then Niko should aim for the stars— he’s much better looking than his papa, to say nothing of having a superior personality.

Leilani does eventually say, You have kind of a feminine talking style.

Niko bites back a smile, his mother’s phrasing lilts in his mouth, says, Growing up, I was always trying to copy the smartest person in the room. Well, it was my mama and not my papa.

She chortles at that, and Niko grins.

WHACK

His hips wobble forward, a soccer ball hitting the meat of his ass. Niko scowls, and as he suspected, it’s his papa with a shit-eating grin on his face. It’s aggravating but in his colorful shirt, Papa does blend in better with the people here than Niko does in his all black.

Niko takes the ball and shoots it back to scrimmage, and Leilani follows (she’s actually pretty hot, you know. But she’s a cousin, so). When Shane gets involved shit gets real and his papa is soon panting after battling intently for the ball up and down the yard. Shane is outpacing some of the twenty year olds and Niko won’t admit to being tired, he’s a fucking athlete.

Papa gripes. “Weren’t you supposed to learn surfing? Why are you playing soccer? This is the wrong sport, obviously!”

Mika quickly champions that she taught Shane to surf. Yuna apparently used to bring him by every other year. Papa will later tell him that the oldest daughter leaving her family to move to Hawaii because she liked the vibe was more than unforgivable. She and Yuna lost contact for many years, but eventually reunited and it was like no time passed.

And so Shane, awkwardly, has family here too. Even if they are as loud as he said.

Mika insists that the teens teach him and Niko bristles that they might feel forced, but they roll their eyes. All four of her grandkids get their boards, lending Niko one, and have a great time watching him fall off. He only manages to stand once, which he’s told is pretty good for his first time out. Still, not quite the epic shreddage he saw from Shane earlier.

Leilani tells him the waves suck at this time of day anyway as she helps him rinse off and then offers him… a shirt that is so bright and colorful he could wear it on his mother’s death anniversary. Wow.

Still, he’s not going to back down.

After he changes, he gives Leilani a shaka sign and says, “Cowabunga.”

She laughs, and rather than this proving the word is good, it mostly proves that anything his papa does, Niko can do better.

Surfing does rack up an appetite and they’re all starving. The sun has gotten lower and a real cookout is on at the house, music playing. Niko is thinking about chirps for his father when he comes after Niko for his shirt.

Papa is busy dancing with Mika. She is infatuated with him, the way all older women are. It’s kind of ridiculous and someone is going to report him one day. Shane is watching from a chair with a drink and a smile. When Mika leaves, Papa goes to Shane and holds out his hand. Shane’s easy confidence breaks a little and he hesitates until Papa gently yanks him up, gripping his waist and lifting him two steps, as if to carry him to the dance floor. Shane laughs, wild and unrestrained. He wiggles free.

Shane might be a little drunk, or maybe he’s just happy because he has the dumbest smile on his face. Everyone around them is dancing better. Shane is hardly swaying, just looking at Papa who pulls him close.

They didn’t have a wedding dance, Niko realizes.

Shane not knowing how to dance is probably why. Also, because they do absolutely everything out of order. Just trying to get whatever good in that they can, regardless of how it comes to them.

To Niko, they look like the happiest people on the floor, and maybe, Niko chooses, he can let that be what matters to the here and now. He rubs his ring and lets it go.

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