Back in Moscow, the awful and exclusive Moscow of Ilya’s father’s friends, one needed three things to be a real person: money, status, and talent. Ilya’s father had no talent. Sveta’s had no status; Sasha’s, no money. The three of them made up two real people as long as they stuck together, so they did. 

Being real people meant they happened to the world; the world did not happen to them. Upon finding each other, they found they could get things, so they got some of everything. Enough to go around? No. But still everything, yes. Girls, yes; boys, yes; clothes, drugs, invitations, yes. Other worse things than those, yes. He was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old. It all changed and none of it stopped when they sent him to America.

Were people watching? Yes. Ilya-Sveta-Sasha were not anonymous and they were not invisible. Did the people watching see, then? Yes, they did. They do. Many people know that Ilya Rozanov has sex with men, in Russia and in America. There are many famous men about whom this is known. There are pictures of him high as a kite. There are semi-professional men and women and suppliers of PEDs who have his real cell phone number. There are snide and knowing comments on certain forums, mostly Russian-language. A random post on a celebrity sex encounters subreddit is completely accurate, to the best of Ilya’s memory. None of it matters, because Ilya is a real person, and for something to happen to him it must be because of another real person.

Here lies the fundamental divide, though Ilya can never tell whether it is one of culture or of temperament. Shane Hollander is a real person, the three cardinal virtues and many lesser delights united in one body, but Ilya suspects he would not understand how to act as one in Ilya’s father’s Moscow. He would lurk in the shadows, waiting for the world to happen to him. 

Shane Hollander is, despite his advantages, one of those men who has no idea how to get things. He got lucky one time with Ilya and beyond that seems unable to replicate his success. Ilya would help, has thought about doing so, but he likes finding Shane just how he left him each time. 

Besides, how would he explain it? When Ilya sees someone he knows what they have and how to ask for it in a way where it will be given. Ilya did this to Shane himself, intuitively. The only trick is to have no fear, and even less fear than that the more trouble one is in. He cannot teach that to a man who has directed his energies into becoming, not like a saint, but like a painting of a saint, all dripping in symbolism: the way the robe drapes here, yes, that is on purpose, and the angle of the light, the patron’s face in the crowd, the instrument of the martyrdom in his hand and the fruit in the bowl on the table, all arranged except when—

Ilya comes through the apartment door and is immediately crowded against the wall. For a moment, his face is below Shane’s by inches, a trick of posture in a relationship where they are of a height so long as neither bends. It is not an enduring state of affairs. Shane goes to his knees before even complaining that Ilya is late.

His mouth hurts Ilya’s dick, a little; Ilya is still sensitive from the girl from last night, who was enthusiastic, but not elegant. He considers pushing Shane off, but he knows from experience he will feel great once he gets going. 

This does not take long, with Shane. Shane is enthusiastic and these days, very nearly elegant. He wants to look good, to sound good, to make Ilya feel good. It is all extremely flattering. Ilya progresses apace from tender semi-soft dick to rock-hard dick ready to fuck, and only then does he pull Shane off by the hair, covering his mouth with Ilya’s own and backing him towards the bed.

“You’re fucking late, dude,” Shane says, and lies down on his stomach—like that, then. Ilya lies down on top of him, parallel, and bites into the places that no one can see: high up under his arm, the back of his neck just above his hairline. Shane loves this, and he spreads his legs just wide enough that Ilya can rock them together.

He doesn’t think Shane will stop him if he doesn’t stop himself to go and get a condom; in fact, he thinks Shane would like it if he didn’t stop, at least while it was happening. Ilya almost pushes straight in but then remembers again the girl from last night. Ilya read online that Shane doesn’t share water bottles, even the squeeze ones that jet water straight at the back of your throat without touching your mouth. He has his own special water bottle in its own special place at each practice and game, which sounds to Ilya like a guaranteed way to drink spit the first time he pisses someone off. Nevertheless, the girl. He gets up to rummage through his jacket pockets, and on the bed Shane twitches and then settles, like he was going to go somewhere but didn’t.

“Rozanov,” he says.

“So impatient,” Ilya says, clicking his tongue. “Like the fox.”

Shane turns his head, props himself with one elbow. “What?”

“A sick fox,” Ilya says, and snarls, gesturing at his own mouth to indicate foam. “Scared of water.”

“Dude, don’t call me rabid,” Shane says. When he is disagreeing with Ilya, he relaxes out of that posture that makes his ass look like the asses in pornography. He looks so good. He does not even have to try as hard as he does. 

“No, you are right, like the rabbit,” Ilya amends. “I am the fox.”

“Bite me,” Shane said, and puts his head back down on the pillow, curving his spine.

Ilya-Sveta-Sasha were both free and not free in Moscow. It did not matter where they were on any given minute, hour, day, or week, except when it did matter, and then it mattered very much. They were untethered but not unaccountable, like hunting falcons newly let off the line. Though they were alone, there were expectations and there were consequences. 

The result of this is that Ilya hates his father, but he returns all of his calls and always will. He does not, however, take them while he is having sex, or indeed while he is in the sex mindset, all the way from the very beginning of the mood until it is past time for him to be getting out of bed. He is someone’s bird, but he is still a bird and he flies free. 

Shane, on the other hand, will pick up the phone on the second ring unless he has Ilya’s hard dick actively inside him.

“Hey, Mom,” he says, scooting far away from Ilya across the warm, sweaty sheets. “Yeah, no, I have a minute. Yes, I have it, I can take a look at it right now.” He gets up and leaves the room to retrieve his laptop, returning with it to the bed. 

Ilya scoots in closer to Shane and peers over his shoulder. He can smell the cologne on Shane’s neck, which after sex can give him an odd, Percocet-type feeling. He seals his mouth over his shoulder briefly, then happily leans back to watch him type.

Over the years, he has seen many interesting documents by being in Shane’s apartment while Shane clicks about on his laptop. They are never hockey documents, and Shane does not seem to mind when he looks. According to the documents, the way that Ilya’s wealth is managed and the way that Shane’s is are not comparable. Their salaries are fundamentally equivalent, give or take their teams’ needs and the way that risk tolerance is built in, but the resulting numbers are not similar.

“It looks good,” Shane says into his phone. “I mean, it’s just what we talked about with them already, right?” The document in question is a proposal with a fancy letterhead, not from an investment bank, but from an investment banker. There is an extra zero compared to what Ilya thinks that Shane should have available. 

Shane’s mom says something else over the phone. “Okay, yeah, I see,” says Shane. “That’s probably fine. Yeah, I agree we’re probably comfortable with that. I’ll just sit with it overnight and probably sign— Yeah, before it opens. Yup. Love you too, Mom. Bye.” 

He hangs up. Ilya says, “Mr. Monocoly.”

“Shut up, dude,” Shane says. 

“Cannot enjoy the afterglow without signing business deal. Your version of smoking a cigarette.”

“What do you want from me?” Shane says. “You can’t build generational wealth by, like, meeting with your accountant quarterly.”

“What generation?” Ilya says, sardonic, while also thinking, quarterly? He talks to Kirill once a year, and only about whether the possible problems with his taxes have been realized.

“Like, the people after you. Grandparents, then parents, then you, then your kids, then your grandkids…”

Ilya knows this. He was commenting on Shane’s likelihood of success at achieving a next generation, the way that he and Ilya have been going about it. “You have a brother? Sister?” he asks, suddenly interested. 

“No,” Shane says. “My dad wanted more kids, I think. But if there’d been more than just me then Yuna wouldn’t have been able to focus so much on me, and like, supporting my career.” A pause. “Which would have been less good, obviously.”

“Ah,” says Ilya, at a loss for other words. “Sure.” 

Ilya has never been clear whether when Shane calls his mother her first name, it is antagonistic. It could just be part of being a Westerner, or Japanese, or due to the odd situation where she is his manager and he will let Ilya’s newly softening dick slide out of him to take her calls. 

“Is whoever your guy is trying to capitalize on the Portuguese bailout exit, by the way?” Shane asks. That is a question that Ilya genuinely does not understand. He lies back on the bed and arranges himself so that his chest looks good.

“I am going to buy a boat,” he decides. 

“Boats are annoying as hell,” Shane says. “I wanted one for a bit, but they’re the only asset that can just fucking sink. The insurance is terrible.”

Ilya nods thoughtfully. “You are right. Two boats.”

Years later, Ilya asks Yuna Hollander a glancing question about his own portfolio over dinner.

“The team that Carl put together for you isn’t bad, per se,” she says, correctly naming Ilya’s agent, who is brand new since his father’s death. Then, inexplicably, she begins talking about Ilya’s teeth. They are more crooked and yellower than Shane’s, which according to her is an expensive decision for him as a high-profile player in America. One of Shane’s canines is, apparently, a temporary crown, and he has never been photographed without it. Until this conversation, Ilya genuinely thought that Shane still had his original face. He suppresses the urge to cover his mouth with his hand and is irritated by it. Except for at these dinners he does not interact with people who feel entitled to comment on him anymore, except if they are specifically Shane Hollander and no one else. Shane is nodding like the conversation makes sense to him, though, so Ilya says nothing until they are in the car.

“You do not like my teeth?” he says, and Shane takes one hand off the wheel to turn the radio down.

“Your teeth?” he asks, sounding baffled. “Your teeth are fine. They’re teeth.”

“Your mother does not think so.”

Shane drives several hundred meters silently, thumb tapping against the gearshift. “I think she’s trying to treat you like a son,” he says eventually.

“Wrong approach,” Ilya points out. “Already had a mother.”

“I know. She knows, probably. She’s just…” Shane flicks the turn signal back and forth anxiously, although he is not turning. “I can talk to her,” he offers. 

“Do not,” Ilya says, and Shane looks relieved. “But you. Does it bother you? All of my ‘unrealized investment opportunity?’”

Shane is quiet then for long enough that Ilya, who was fishing for reassurance, becomes concerned. “I can sell one of the boats,” he offers, harried. 

“No, I was just thinking,” Shane says. “I actually, like, I was actually thinking that I don’t want you to be doing any of this stuff? Like, the hockey is one thing. The hockey works. But I don’t actually want to be dating Ilya Rozanov, Inc.”

With a sudden boost of confidence, Ilya says, “You know there are money problems.” The trust is not structured well, and over the years some of his tax issues have been realized. 

“Whatever,” Shane says. 

“Whatever?”

“It’s not like you can sink me,” Shane says. “I’m not exposed.”

“Ah,” Ilya says. “Fair enough.”

Shane takes a hand off the wheel again. He puts it on Ilya’s thigh. “Look, if you went out and bet it all on red, or, hell, on zero, knowing you, I’m not saying I wouldn’t be pissed off. But like, look at me. I’m good, dude. I don’t need you to take care of me. I don’t even need you to take care of you, really. I can do that myself.”

At this point, something very strange but unmistakable happens to Ilya. His rib cage feels like a balloon being slowly filled with warm honey. “Can you,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Shane, confident.

“Okay,” Ilya says, and turns his face towards the window.

The sex they have now has very little to do with the sex that they had then. They still do those things sometimes—the games, the performances—but it is like how other couples will sometimes go to the movies. It has little bearing on the inner core of their relationship.

When Ilya reaches for Shane in the morning, he is warm and soft. More often than not, Shane will simply sit in Ilya’s lap and make himself feel good, while Ilya lies back and experiences something close to religious ecstasy.

“I like this so fucking much,” Shane says, and Ilya thinks yes, please, see what I have. Tell me what you want and I will give it to you. No fear, no fear at all. 

Ilya learns the word ‘rabid’ after being bitten by a bat out on the lake by Shane’s cottage, the culmination of a series of several increasingly absurd and inelegant minutes. Shane drives them to the emergency room and then lurks in the parking lot while Ilya goes inside, where he quickly becomes the main character.

“Rabies symptoms can appear up to eight years after exposure,” Shane says, once they are back at the cottage with all the doors and windows firmly closed.

Ilya pauses in pulling the band-aid off of his shoulder. “You are saying this to me why?”

Shane shrugs. The printout from the hospital that he is clutching does not contain this very unsettling fact; Ilya knows this, having already read it. Shane obtained this information independently. “No reason,” he says.

“Shane,” Ilya says firmly. “I am not so irresponsible to get rabies. I will get shots. I will attend all five appointments for shots. I have, freaking flu shot every year. Rabies is much worse problem than influenza.”

“I’m just saying, if it doesn’t work—”

“One hundred percent, it works,” Ilya says, indicating the printout.

“—it could be a long time before we even know.”

“Well,” Ilya says, not wanting to think about this for long enough that it makes a home in his brain, “what can you do. We cannot be worried for ‘a long time.’”

“Promise me that if you get rabies, you’ll bite me,” Shane tells him.

Ilya’s eyebrows rocket to the moon, but Shane does not move to take it back. “No, I do not promise to bite you and give you my rabies on purpose,” Ilya says. This is the obvious course of action, but it only serves to make Shane look pissed off at him. “My love, this is not a real problem. Printout says one hundred percent. It will not happen.”

“If it won’t happen, one hundred percent, then you can promise me,” Shane says stubbornly, and Ilya sighs.

“If Hitchcock blonde moment gives me zero percent likely seven years delayed rabies, I promise to use my last moment of consciousness to bite dearly beloved Shane Hollander, who can then say ‘I told you so’ about bat,” he lies.

“You have to mean it,” Shane says, and Ilya pauses to take in his lovely face. The line of his nose, the loose eyelash high on his cheek casting a shadow in the sun.

“You are completely crazy for me,” Ilya says. “I promise.”