Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov/Original Male Character(s)

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Original Male Character(s)

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Violence, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug, Protective Shane Hollander, Graphic descriptions of abuse, Good Friend Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Good Friend Svetlana Vetrova, Hurt/Comfort, Shane Hollander Takes Care of Ilya Rozanov, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Trauma Recovery, Abusive Relationships, Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Re: Ilya’s mother, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Super implied not described at all, BAMF Shane Hollander, Not smut but there are sex scenes

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Across the Lake

Collections:

My anon fics

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-29 Completed: 2026-06-16 Words: 52,904 Chapters: 14/14

Across the Lake

Summary

Seven years after Ilya Rozanov's plan to make a move on Shane Hollander failed, he goes on a cottage vacation with his secret boyfriend. After a violent argument scares him into running for his life, he finds himself on the other side of the lake and in Shane's backyard.

Chapter 1

Ilya, predictably, starts the fight that ends it all. They’re having a nice dinner. Ilya is seated across from Cameron at the oversized dining table in their cottage rental. Cameron found the fancy dishware that their Airbnb host advertised and spent all evening preparing steak and a feast of sides. He pulled out Ilya’s chair and dished up his food, and it all feels so romantic and peaceful that Ilya momentarily loses all his sanity. 

“Did I tell you I saw Scott Hunter the other day? At the MLH awards.” Ilya says. 

“Oh?” Cameron asks. He’s buttering a roll calmly, and his face barely reacts, which Ilya takes as a good sign. “How is he doing? Okay?”

Ilya nods. He pushes cubes of steak around his plate with his fork. “Yes, he seemed very good actually.”

“I would be too if I just won the Stanley cup,” Cameron remarks. He takes a sip of his red wine. His big fingers curl clumsily around the thin stem of the glass. 

“Have you tried winning Super Bowl?” Ilya teases. 

Cameron rolls his eyes, smiling. “Fuck you.”

“Actually,” Ilya continues, “I think he was happy because reaction has been good to him coming out.” He pauses, gauges the temperature of Cameron’s posture, and decides to continue. “Does it make you think about it at all—coming out?”

Cameron stills. Ilya watches as his hands flex around his utensils. “No,” he responds, his voice tipping to a tone Ilya knows better than to push, especially on a nice night like this. “Does it make you think about coming out?”

Ilya looks down at his plate as he lies. “No. No, of course not.” When he tears his eyes up, Cameron is staring at him, his jaw working slowly as he chews. His eyes rove up and down Ilya, looking for his tells. 

Ilya reminds himself to breathe. He shakes his head and forces a smile. “I am just happy for him, is all,” he adds, like a bandaid on a sprung leak. 

Cameron still hasn’t moved. He sets his utensils down. Ilya watches his palms land flat on the table. “Ilya,” he says in a warning tone, “we spend a lot of time together. Publically. If you come out, I’m fucked. The football locker rooms are even worse than hockey.”

Ilya nods, and he hopes it doesn’t look as desperate as it feels. “I know. I know. Forget I said anything.” He tries to dismiss the topic with a wave of his hand.

Cameron relaxes minutely. He sits back in his seat, still studying Ilya, and then he smiles. “Steak okay?” he asks.

“Yes, is very good,” Ilya says immediately, recognizing the life ring Cameron is throwing at him. “Thank you.”

The rest of dinner is tense, and Ilya kicks himself the whole time. He tries to start a new conversation (“The hike you picked today was so nice.” “Are you excited for camp next week?”) but Cameron gives him little more than grunts and shrugs, powering through his meal. As soon as Cameron is done eating, Ilya volunteers to do the dishes and sweeps his plate away, keen to keep his boyfriend from sitting too long and ruminating over Ilya’s stupid fucking mouth. “Want to put on basketball game? I will join when I’m done cleaning up,” he suggests, and Cameron disappears wordlessly into the living room.

Once he’s alone, Ilya takes a deep, shaky breath. He gathers up the glasses and silverware remaining at the table and retreats to the kitchen. He washes slowly, probably too slowly, but by the time he’s stacked everything on the drying rack, his hands aren’t vibrating, and his chest doesn’t feel like there’s an emergency flare about to blow, so he considers himself ready to join Cameron on the couch. 

The game is tied and about to go to halftime. Before Cameron, Ilya didn’t watch any sports other than his own, but Cameron will watch anything that’s on ESPN, and Ilya has learned by now that whining won’t get him to change the channel. He’s just grateful that there’s still basketball to watch, which he at least knows the rules of and is fast-paced. Soon it will be all baseball, which, like all great American sports, is essentially three hours of standing around. At least when it’s football, his boyfriend has a stake in the game. 

Ilya lays across the sectional, setting his head in Cameron’s lap. Cameron has his feet up on the coffee table. He immediately sets his hand on Ilya’s head, as if from muscle memory, and scratches his scalp. They’re both quiet—aside from one muttered “Oh my God. How is that not a foul?” from Cameron—until the channel switches to commercials. 

“Have you thought any more about Buffalo?” Cameron asks, eyes fixed on the TV.

Ilya weighs his options. He could lie, and they could continue to have a nice night—or he could be honest and not hate himself. “I am not so sure it’s a good move,” he says, so he at least preserves his self-respect, “for my career.”

Cameron removes his hand from Ilya’s hair. Ilya doesn’t need to look to know that he’s frowning. “It’s not about your career. It’s about us.”

Ilya sits up. He fixes his hair, avoiding Cameron’s eyes. “It’s not like we could live together. And we would both be always traveling. I just don’t think it is such a good idea.”

Cameron’s jaw is tight again. He drops his feet from the coffee table and reaches for the remote. Ilya watches his hand mute the TV and set the remote back down. “Why are you so attached to Boston?” he grinds out. “There’s literally nothing for you there anymore.”

“I have a Cup there,” Ilya grumbles, his eyes averted toward the TV screen, where an advertisement is playing for the new EA Sports game—the one he did a photoshoot to be on the cover of, and Cameron called him eleven times while his phone was in his locker. 

“Wow,” Cameron says flatly. “Fuck. I get it. You win championships. Rub it in.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Ilya snaps. He reaches out to put a hand on Cameron’s knee, but Cameron smacks it away. Ilya pulls his hand to his chest. “I am Captain. And Buffalo probably could not pay me as much as Boston. I have my house. I have”—he almost says friends, but he stops himself before he pours liquor in the flame with a lie—“my team.”

“So those things are more important than me?” Cameron tests. 

Ilya knows this is his chance to backtrack. He should apologize and say he’ll ask his agent to look into it, but the steady burn in his chest is making his throat tight, and if he keeps his mouth shut, the smoke will be trapped and roast him from the inside out. “I can have more than one thing be important to me,” he says flatly. He doesn’t say, “Why would I move my entire life for another closet? At least the one I’m in now is familiar,” because Cameron has never had much appreciation for metaphor. He does say, “I can’t give up more of my life for you,” because he has no sense of self-preservation. 

Cameron stands, and Ilya is prepared for the shove against his chest before it comes. He falls back against the cushions, staring up at his boyfriend. “What the fuck do you think you’ve given up?” Cameron hisses. 

Ilya searches desperately for a safe response.

I stopped hanging out with Cliff because you were worried he would catch on, even though he has two brain cells on his best day. Not safe. 

I haven’t answered a call from Svetlana in a year since you hate that we’ve fucked. Definitely not safe. 

I haven’t said the word ‘bisexual’ in God-knows-how-long because it terrifies you. Absolutely the fuck not. 

Ilya’s been quiet for too long. Cameron grabs his jaw, his fingers pressing hard enough that Ilya worries he’ll have faint bruises in the morning. Ilya shoves him off and stands, pushing past Cameron toward the bedroom. “I need a minute,” he says. 

If he can just get to the other room—if he can get a door between them for long enough for Cameron to cool down—everything will be fine. They’ll have another nice day tomorrow, and then they’ll go back to Boston to volunteer at the children’s sports camp the next day, and it will be fun and peaceful—and they won’t even be a couple there, much less one who shoves each other around.

Cameron yanks Ilya’s wrist back. Ilya stumbles over his own feet and then over the coffee table. He hisses as he lands on his palms and knees on the hardwood floor. He flips to rest on his butt and puts his hands out, palms forward. “Cam,” he says placatingly. “Just—”

Cameron picks up the remote and lobs it. Ilya dodges, so it only grazes his chin. He scrambles to his feet, looking around for something to throw back, reversing until his back hits the wall next to the fireplace. He realizes as soon as he feels the stucco that he’s made a mistake.

Cameron cages him in with an arm on either side of Ilya’s shoulders. Ilya debates if it’s worth shoving one down and making a break for it. Probably not. His best shot for salvaging the rest of their time together is letting Cameron chew him out for a few minutes and looking sufficiently chastened. Still, Ilya tries a weak shove at Cameron’s chest, just to see if he’ll budge, but his boyfriend stays solid, glaring at him. 

Fuck.

“What the fuck is wrong with you tonight?” Cameron asks, his tone level and calm like he’s asking out of genuine concern. It makes Ilya’s stomach twist into nauseating shapes. 

“Yes, what is wrong with me that I don’t want to give up everything for more of this,” Ilya bites out. At least when the punch comes, he knows he deserved it. 

His head snaps back and hits the wall. He lashes out blindly before he’s even straightened his neck. He feels the back of his hand make weak contact with skin, but he knows without seeing that it’s a worthless hit. 

Cameron tangles a hand in Ilya’s curls and forces him to bend at the waist before letting go so Ilya tumbles back to the ground. He lets out a wheeze as he lands on his shoulder wrong. His vision whites out for long enough that he doesn’t register that Cameron is on top of him, knees on either side of Ilya’s sternum, until his hands have closed around his neck.

Panic shocks Ilya back into acute awareness. He grasps frantically at Cameron’s fingers. Cameron removes one hand long enough to bat Ilya’s away and slap him across the face. His grip tightens when both hands are back to Ilya’s throat. Ilya gives up struggling to focus on getting air. He wriggles around in Cameron’s grip, trying to find an angle that sneaks any amount of oxygen through. 

When that doesn’t work, he reaches up one shaking hand to touch Cameron’s face in a gesture of gentleness that has sometimes been enough to calm him down in the past. It doesn’t work. If anything, it makes Cameron angrier. He drops Ilya’s head against the floor once. 

Ilya’s vision goes dark at the edges, and his panic starts to transform into something he doesn’t recognize. This isn’t the “I ruined the weekend and now he’s going to be mad and Coach is going to look at me weird because I’m blaming bruises on a game where I didn’t even get in any fights” panic that he’s acclimatized to. This is the terror of “he’s going to kill me.”

Ilya’s chest burns. He can feel the chain of his necklace pressing painfully into his skin. The image of Cameron over him is gradually becoming a pinprick. He gathers all the strength he has left and bucks, kicking his legs desperately. He knocks Cameron off and scrambles to his feet, using the coffee table to force himself up. 

His vision hasn’t even fully returned, but he stumbles toward the front door, weaving like a drunk. He has the good thought to grab his hiking pack, mercifully still resting by the door, as he forces his feet clumsily into his slides. Then he yanks open the door and runs.

He heads for the trees. He ducks under branches and trips over stumps without pausing, singularly focused on the goal of getting as far away as fucking possible. He hears Cameron shouting behind him for a few hundred feet, but he must give up, because at some point Ilya realizes that all he can hear is branches cracking under his shoes and his own pounding heart. 

He stops to catch his breath. He’s nearly on the opposite side of the lake now. He can barely see the fuzzy outline of their cottage rental if he squints. He sits down on a log, gulping in deep breaths. 

He digs into his sweatshirt’s front pocket for his phone. The screen is shattered and completely dark. 

“Blyat,” he whispers. He drops his face into his hands and tries to force back the tears he can feel threatening. 

What the fuck is he going to do now? It’s pitch black out. His phone is unusable. He barely even knows where he is, since Cameron planned and booked their entire vacation—Cameron, who’s furious and genuinely seemed like he was ready to kill Ilya. 

He briefly considers going back and trying to smooth things over before Cameron’s had too long to stew. Ilya’s not too proud to make a walk of shame back around the lake and knock on the door, and hope that Cameron has calmed down enough to apologize and get him ice and let Ilya choose what they watch for the rest of the night. 

Ilya touches his neck. The skin burns. No, he can’t go back. That was different from any bad night they’ve had before. That was fucking terrifying. 

He’ll wait until it’s light enough that he’s not going to wander up a mountain, and then he’ll drag himself to the closest road and to the airport and to home—and he’ll worry about the fallout later. For now, he just needs to get back to Boston in one piece. 

Ilya rubs the crucifix around his neck and prepares for a long night. 

.~.

When Shane’s alarm goes off at five in the morning, it’s still dark outside. He shuffles up to sitting but stays under the covers and reaches for his phone. He spends the next half hour checking his email, responding to texts, and reviewing a contract from a cologne company that his mom sent him yesterday, until the sun starts to appear over the lake. 

Then he slides out of his sheets, changes into running clothes, and heads to the kitchen. He pulls out his food scale first—then the blender, and then a baggie of frozen, premeasured smoothie fruits. He weighs it to confirm he portioned it correctly before dumping it into the blender. 

When he’s turning back to the fridge for almond milk, motion outside catches his attention. He freezes and watches as someone in track pants and a hoodie skulks through the trees outside his kitchen. They head toward the water. 

Shane reaches into his pocket for his phone. He’s yet to have a fan—or another team’s fan—find the cottage, but he’s always known it was a possibility. He spared no expense on the safety system when he had this place built, so he has the option of having private security out here in a minute if he needs to. 

The person doesn’t seem particularly interested in the cottage though. They pause at the bank and crouch, reaching for water to scrub at their face. The hood of their sweater is up, so Shane can’t see much of the actual person, but their build suggests a man. They have a hiking pack over their shoulders. 

Shane returns his phone to his pocket. His neighbors around the lake have told stories about lost hikers wandering onto their properties, and he supposes it’s his turn. He opens his back door and leans his chest out. “Hey—are you lost?” he shouts. 

The other man pauses, his hands halfway to his face. He separates them so the water he was holding crashes back into the lake. He stands and turns stiffly. At his full height, he might be even taller than Shane. Now that they’re facing each other, Shane can see that the hoodie the other man is wearing has the Raiders logo on it. Shane’s hand returns to his phone, the option of this being a crazed hockey fan returning to the front of his mind. 

The other man opens his mouth like he’s going to respond, but before he can, a cough erupts out. He turns away for a moment to work through it, and when he turns back, he shoves frizzy blond hair out of his face. Even from a distance, Shane can see that half of his face is bruised. “Fuck, dude, did you fall down a hill or something?” Shane asks.

The other man shakes his head. He walks closer until he’s at the bottom of the steps up to the natural patio. He opens his mouth, pauses, and frowns. “Hollander?”

His voice is raspy, but the accent is unmistakable. Shane takes a subconscious step outside, closer to the other man, and tries to see past the puffy bruises and shadows from the hood. “Rozanov? What are you doing here?” It comes out tighter than he meant. He looks around the horizon, searching for other Raiders players hidden among the trees. 

Rozanov swallows hard before he responds. “I was on vacation. Got into fight. Got lost.” Every word sounds like a battle. 

“Well—shit—I mean, come inside, I guess.” Shane angles himself so Rozanov can get by him through the threshold. Rozanov approaches cautiously. He passes through the door, and Shane closes it behind them. 

Shane turns to look at Rozanov. Rozanov, in his fucking cottage—which is not particularly how Shane thought his day would start. He studies the Raiders player, who he realizes now is not in hiking shoes, but in aggressively European Adidas slides. They, along with the socks inside of them, are covered in mud and tracking it across his floors. Shit. “Let me get you something clean,” Shane says without thinking. He escapes to his bedroom, where he digs out house slippers from the back of his closet. After a moment of hesitation, he also reaches for sweatpants that are a little too big for him, and a Henley he hasn’t worn in ages. He returns to the living room, where Rozanov is still standing stiffly, exactly where he left him

“Here. The bathroom’s over there.” Shane points.

Rozanov puts his arms out robotically for the pile of clothes but stares down at them with confusion. “Uh”—he coughs and winces—“could you just call me taxi to the airport? My phone is broken.”

“Sure—okay—yeah.” Shane takes a step back and pulls out his phone. “When’s your flight? It can take them a while to get here.”

“Tomorrow. I will try to get on earlier one when I get there.”

Shane grimaces, his thumb halfway to his calls app. “Flights are usually sold out this time of year. You might be stuck. I can try to call your airline though, if you want.” He offers only because it seems like every word costs Rozanov. Shane wonders if he’s been shouting all night, trying to find someone to lead him to safety. He feels a pang of sympathy, remembering what it felt like as a kid to take one wrong turn in these woods and think you might never get back out. 

Rozanov’s face is dull. He takes a moment to think about it then nods.

“What’s your booking number?” Shane asks, and Rozanov’s eyes squint. 

He shakes his head. “I don’t have it,” he says quietly. He looks so worn down for a brief moment that Shane barely recognizes him. “Was Air Canada.”

“Okay.” Shane nods. “I’ll see what I can do, okay? Why don’t you go take a shower and change? There’s clean towels and stuff in the closet in the bathroom.”

Rozanov stares down at the clothes still on his hands. “Okay,” he whispers. He looks like he’s fighting himself about something, but then he nods and starts toward the bathroom. 

Once Shane hears the shower turn on, he calls Air Canada. They give him a concerning amount of information just for knowing Rozanov’s full name and birthday—both of which he finds easily on Google—but they don’t have any seats open earlier than Rozanov’s original flight tomorrow morning. He thanks them anyway and finishes making his smoothie while he waits for Rozanov to emerge. 

When Rozanov comes out, he’s in Shane’s clothes, and without the hoodie, the damage is much more obvious. Shane is drying out the blender pitcher and freezes with his hand inside, taking in the bruises down the left side of Rozanov’s face, and the blotchy ring of them around his neck. No wonder he’s been having such a hard time talking; he looks like he’s been strangled. “Fuck—was your fight with a boa constrictor?” he blurts out. 

Rozanov laughs. His eyes are red, but he looks like the shower revived him a little bit. “Yes, I found it in Canadian wilderness,” he responds. He sits at the barstool on the other side of the kitchen counter. 

Shane swallows and finishes his drying. “There’s no seats on any flights earlier than your ticket. I asked them to check other airlines too, but it’s the busy season.”

Rozanov puts his arms on the counter and drops his forehead on them. “Okay,” he says to the granite. “Hotels?”

Shane hesitates. He puts the blender away in its high cabinet before returning to the counter across from Rozanov. “Are you here with someone?” he asks. 

Rozanov sits back up. “No. I was, but… No, not anymore.”

Shane wonders about the fight Rozanov got into. His mind conjures up images of a married woman—someone blonde and young and beautiful—and a husband home too early. “Gotcha,” Shane says, looking down at the towel in his hands. “Well, I was wondering… if you hit your head in that fight?”

Rozanov crosses his arms across his chest. He nods.

“Look—we both know I can’t dump you alone in a hotel after a head impact,” Shane says, hating himself the whole time. “Just stay here. I can drive you to the airport tomorrow.” The idea of sacrificing some of his precious alone time to nurse Ilya Rozanov to health makes him want to vomit, but he’s a hockey captain before he’s anything else. 

Rozanov, to make this even harder, sneers. “I am fine, Hollander. I am not a baby. Can sit in hotel for a day without dying.” It hurts his point that his voice gets thinner and quieter with every word. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Shane snaps. “It’s that or I call someone to come get you. Your choice.”

Rozanov ducks his head. He glares holes into the counter. “Okay. I will stay.” He hesitates. “Thank you,” he forces out. 

“You’re welcome.” Shane huffs. He turns back to the fridge. “I’m assuming you haven’t had breakfast?”

Chapter 2

Ilya’s not convinced that this whole morning isn’t a hallucination made up by his oxygen-deprived brain. Though, it does seem like kind of a ripoff if he’s seeing Shane fucking Hollander in his dying moments instead of his mother. 

Hollander is buzzing anxiously around his own kitchen, like Ilya is going to bite at any moment. He’s in slutty little athletic shorts that make Ilya do an extra swallow whenever he turns. 

Ilya thinks about telling his seventeen-year-old self, who had a childish crush on Hollander, that someday he’d be sitting in Hollander’s vacation home, wearing Hollander’s clothes, while Hollander makes him breakfast. A smile presses onto his face at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, but then he thinks about telling his teenaged self that he let an American football player beat the shit out of him, and that sobers him. 

He looks down at his hands. One of his nails broke at some point last night, exposing his tender nail bed. He wonders if the missing section is in Cameron’s face or hand. He wonders where Cameron is right now. Sulking in the Airbnb? Headed back to the US? In the forest, looking for Ilya? 

“Spinach okay in the eggs?” Hollander asks, breaking Ilya out of his thoughts. His wide eyes are reflecting the sunrise spilling through the window. 

Ilya nods. “Yes. Fine. Thank you.”

Hollander is so nice that it makes Ilya feel tight in his skin. It has always has, even from the first time they met, when Hollander interrupted Ilya’s brooding to shake his hand twice, compliment him, and irrevocably endear himself to Ilya—all with no idea that Ilya had been standing there thinking about how he had to take Hollander down. Hollander is so diametrically opposite of Ilya that it’s probably for the best that his silly plan to make a move on him didn’t work out in the summer before their rookie season. He thought he would have an opening when they were alone in the locker room, cleaning up, but Hollander left immediately after the photoshoot, so Ilya lost his chance. He considers what Hollander would have done if Ilya did flirt with him. Run away? Filed a complaint? The concept of him reciprocating seems laughable now, with how deeply closeted Hollander is. Ilya has heard whispers, though, in recent years, that suggest Hollander has let the concept of him being gay go unargued at least—which is more than Ilya can say for himself. 

Ilya remembers telling Cameron that anecdote and Cameron responding, “Isn’t that guy, like, the golden boy of hockey? Even if he is gay, he can probably do better than you, Baby.” At the time, Ilya laughed and responded with something to the effect of, “What does that say about you?” but now, watching Hollander move gracefully though his clean, organized kitchen in his perfect, beautiful home, Ilya supposes that Cameron was probably onto something. 

Hollander slides a plate and utensils in front of Ilya. A steaming omelette stares up at him, reminding Ilya that he’s starving. He was too tightly wound last night to choke down much of his steak. The egg goes down easy in his damaged throat, and Ilya wonders if that was a conscious choice by Hollander. So fucking nice. 

Hollander turns away while he eats, washing the dishes he created to make Ilya’s food. Ilya pauses mid-chew. “I can wash,” he says, a nauseating instinct bubbling in his stomach. 

Hollander waves a soapy hand, his back to Ilya. “It’s fine. I’m weird about this pan anyway.”

After Ilya finishes eating, Hollander puts his plate in the dishwasher and leads him to a guest bedroom. “You probably need some sleep after wandering around last night,” he says, like he’s talking to a wayward rookie. “I’ll come wake you up in an hour though, just in case.”

“I don’t have concussion,” Ilya says, staring at a bed covered in an absurd amount of pillows. He’s had concussions before, and he knows what they feel like. He’s not dizzy, confused, or emotional. He’s just tired. 

Hollander rolls his eyes. “Says every player with a concussion.” He starts to walk away. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

Ilya falls asleep almost as soon as he hits the bed. He feels like he’s only just closed his eyes when he wakes to a hand on his shoulder. His eyes snap open, and he jerks away from it on instinct, taking in a sharp breath that stings his throat. Once his vision clears, Hollander materializes before him. Hollander frowns, pulling his hand back to his side slowly. “Hey—sorry. Do you know where you are?”

Ilya nods, resting his head back on the pillow. He knows the drill though and doesn’t let himself drift back into sleep yet. “Your vacation home,” he answers, forcing his eyes to stay open. “I wandered here after fight. I am in Canada. Year is 2017. I don’t know who your leader is, and I don’t care.”

Hollander laughs. “Alright, alright. You can go back to sleep.” Ilya’s eyes close before Hollander is even out of the room. 

The next time Ilya wakes, Hollander’s not there. He realizes that the sound of the doorbell is what roused him when he hears the front door open. 

“Hi, I’m staying in one of the other cabins across the lake,” says Cameron’s voice. Ilya shoots up, shoving the blankets to the side. He’s not sure, even as he rises to his feet, if he’s going to try to sneak out the back or go reunite with Cameron.

“Okay,” Hollander’s voice responds, in an impatient tone that Ilya has been on the receiving end of before. 

“My friend that I’m here with. He, uh, got kind of out of his head last night and ran off. I’m worried about him. Could I show you a picture and see if you’ve seen him around?”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Ilya stops at the closed bedroom door, his heart pounding. Helpful fucking Hollander is going to be absolutely thrilled to reunite Ilya with his lost party. 

Then Hollander says, “I haven’t seen anyone else in days, so you can show me, but I don’t think I’ll be any help. Sorry.” Ilya deflates, hanging his head in relief, one hand on the doorframe to hold himself up. He’s going to kiss Hollander. He’ll throw every game against Montreal for the entire next season if Hollander asks him to. 

There’s a pause where Cameron must pull out his phone and find one of the few pictures of Ilya he keeps in a locked album. Hollander says, “No, haven’t seen him, sorry.”

“Shit,” Cameron says. He sighs. “Thanks anyways, dude. Sorry to bother you.”

“All good. Good luck.”

The front door closes. Ilya takes a deep breath. He hears footsteps and backs away from the door just before Hollander cracks it open. 

Hollander’s eyebrows shoot up at the sight of Ilya out of bed. “Oh—you’re up.” He licks his lips and gestures behind him with a thumb. “Someone just came by looking for you, but I didn’t know if… If you wanted me to tell them you were here.”

“No.” Ilya sags on the edge of the bed. “That is good. Thank you.”

“Okay.” Hollander hovers in the doorframe. “Is that who beat you up?”

“He did not beat me up. I lost fight.” 

Ilya rolls his shoulder cautiously. It’s been bothering him since he landed on it last night, and it stiffened while he rested. 

Hollander’s head tilts. “Is your shoulder okay?”

Ilya freezes in the middle of rubbing his rotator cuff. “Is fine,” he answers, and Hollander looks like he might kill Ilya himself. 

He moves into the room. He lifts an arm toward Ilya then pauses, hesitates, and lowers it. “Can I take a look?” he asks, exasperated. “Please?”

“No.”

Shane visibly wrestles with himself. “Can you at least show me you can lift it over your head? And then I’ll back off.”

Ilya tries, but as soon as his arm reaches shoulder level, a sharp pain forces him to drop it back down to his side. He can’t stop the hiss that slips through his teeth. “I landed on it wrong. Just needs rest.”

“Let me get you some ice at least.” Hollander spins and escapes the room. 

Ilya trails after him. As he passes through the front of the house, he peers out the windows, looking for any sign that Cameron has lingered. Pausing by the front door, he suppresses the thought that he should go after his boyfriend, catch up to him, and make up. It would be the easiest thing—to smooth it all out now and not spend any more time looking over his shoulder. The longer he puts it off, the worse the guilt trip will be and the longer he’ll have to grovel when he finally gives in. 

“Here.”

Ilya startles. “Fuck.”

Shane is standing by him, holding out an ice pack that looks like it was stolen from a rink medic. His eyebrows knit together when Ilya pulls away. He opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything; he just shakes the ice pack a little like he thinks Ilya didn’t see it. 

Ilya takes it. 

He can’t convince himself to leave. The doorhandle is within his reach, but it might as well be on the other side of a gulley. It’s awkward to be in Hollander’s house, and Hollander won’t let him actually sleep, and he keeps fretting over Ilya like a hen—but every time Ilya thinks about going back to the cabin with Cameron, his mouth goes dry with the memory of Cameron’s hands tightening around Ilya’s throat. 

Ilya presses the ice to his shoulder, wincing against the cold.

He’s honestly not sure if he can ever face Cameron again after that. He could take a punch every now and again, and he could handle taking the blame for things that weren’t his fault to keep the peace, and he could grin and bear it when Cameron insisted that he shouldn’t talk to anyone whose name he ever saw appear on Ilya’s phone. All these things, Ilya is used to; he learned to handle them when it was his father, and when it was Cameron—with his pretty eyes and loud laugh and fantastic body—that was infinitely more bearable. 

Last night, though, was something Ilya knows he cannot handle again. What if it had happened during the hockey season and Ilya was off the ice for weeks with a fucked shoulder? What if he couldn’t get Cameron off of him next time?

“I’m gonna go play some video games,” Hollander says awkwardly. “You can hang out if you want. Or go back to sleep or whatever. I’ll make lunch in like an hour.” He walks toward the living room without waiting for a response from Ilya. 

Ilya follows him, his heart pounding into his throat. He’s tried to break up with Cameron before, and it’s never stuck. If he’s going to actually follow through this time, he needs a plan.

.~.

Shane feels unreasonably mortified to pull out the game case with Rozanov’s face on the cover. When he bought it, the cashier at Best Buy recognized Shane and ribbed him about it. “You don’t get enough of the guy on the ice?” she teased, handing him his receipt. 

Shane laughed and signed the back of it for her and tried not to think too hard about the way he wasn’t actually sure of the answer to that question. The thing is: Shane kind of likes Rozanov, in the weird, begrudging way his mom liked the elderly cat his dad brought home from the side of the road when he was a kid.

The league has always pitted them against each other, but there’s never been any actual bad blood between them. Rozanov is aggressive on the ice and obnoxious off of it, but he’s always been generally good-natured as far as Shane can tell. His chirps are at least funny, even if they cut a little too deep sometimes. He’s professional when they get shoved together for interviews or award shows. He was a good sport about playing wing for the All-Stars game. He even forced Marlow to go apologize in person after he laid Shane out this past season. 

Shane wouldn’t get a beer with the guy, but he doesn’t hate him enough to not buy a game he was looking forward to—and he definitely doesn’t hate Rozanov enough to turn him over to the angry, scorned husband who came looking for him.

Rozanov looks like hell. When he plops down next to Shane on the couch, he winces, probably from the way the motion jostles his shoulder. Shane’s guessing—hoping—that Rozanov has a minor rotator cuff tear and that it does actually just need rest. 

Shane holds out a controller. “Wanna play?”

“Oh, am I allowed to look at screens?” Rozanov grumbles, taking it from him. He immediately chooses his player, grinning wickedly to himself, and when Shane looks back at the screen, Montreal has been taken. 

“Hey!”

“I have always wondered what it would be like to be a Metro,” Rozanov says, shrugging and then wincing. Even with a banged up face, he still comes off incredibly charming when he should seem like an asshole. 

Shane frowns, trying to get himself together. A long time ago, he had a crush on Rozanov—long enough ago that he was still in denial about being gay and would never have called it a crush. He felt like his chest was going to explode the day they did a photoshoot together before their rookie season. They spent the whole time in fits of laughter, and Rozanov looked at him like he liked him—and Shane was so flustered that he left as soon as they were done, waiting to shower until he got back to his hotel. 

Now, he’s well past that. He’s comfortable being gay. He’s had sex with plenty of men—men who can be discrete and respectful and not expect much else from him. He’s told his parents and some of his teammates. The hockey world isn’t ready for him to come out, but he doesn’t deny it when asked. 

And he knows better now too than to like Rozanov, who’s infamous for having a different woman in every city with an MLH team. Shane has heard rumors though, just in the last few years, of some mysterious woman locking Rozanov down, who he refuses to introduce to the WAGs or claim publicly. Shane figures now that it must be because he’s been the other man this whole time. 

They’ve been playing in silence for fifteen minutes and have just finished a game when Rozanov says, “Can I borrow your phone?” 

Shane nods. “Yeah, for sure.” He pauses the game and pulls his phone out of his back pocket. He unlocks it before handing it to Rozanov, who nods a thanks and stands, shuffling into the other room. 

Shane tries not to eavesdrop, but the cottage isn’t that big, and Rozanov’s deep voice echoes through it. Shane listens as, first, Rozanov calls his airline and books a later flight (“yes, yes, economy is fine. You will just have to apologize personally to person sitting next to huge hockey player.”), and then he calls his security company and change his front door’s passcode (“What part of ‘I don’t have my phone to tell you code you just sent me’ do you not understand? Am I speaking English? Ask me security questions you made me fill out—fuck.”).

When Rozanov returns to the living room, Shane pretends to be absorbed in scrolling through the player avatars. “Can you take me to hotel whenever you are satisfied I won’t die from nonexistent concussion?” Rozanov asks, handing Shane his phone. “Or I can call taxi.”

“I told you, you can stay until your flight,” Shane says. He tries desperately to look casual while Rozanov picks his controller back up and sinks down onto the couch. 

“I booked different flight. Won’t leave until day after tomorrow now.” Rozanov says it casually, like that’s not the strangest choice he could have made in this situation. He looks at Shane in his peripheral vision and sighs. “I flew in with Cameron—guy who came to the door. Figured it was not good idea to sit next to each other on flight back.”

“Oh.” Shane tries to fit that fact into his married-woman-angry-husband theory and fails. Maybe they really are friends. It would explain why Rozanov felt the need to change his door code. He looks Rozanov over and tries to imagine doing that kind of damage to one of his friends. “Don’t call a taxi. I can drive you to a hotel. You could just stay here too—if you want.”

Rozanov’s mouth tightens. He stares at the TV. “Such Canadian hospitality,” he responds, which Shane isn’t sure is an answer. 

They play some more, exchanging occasional chirps but mostly sitting in comfortable silence, permeated only by the frantic clicking of controller buttons. A few times, Shane notices Rozanov turn to look thoughtfully through the huge windows, his eyes focused across the lake, his body taut. His mood shifts gradually as they play though, and by the time Shane announces that they should eat lunch, Rozanov actually smiles, follows him to the kitchen, and says, “Okay. I will help cook.”

“Absolutely not. I’ve seen the shit you eat,” Shane says, lightly pushing Rozanov toward the barstools. 

Rozanov laughs. “By ‘shit’ you mean carbs, yes?”

Shane rolls his eyes. “I’m making pasta, asshole,” He starts filling up a pot to boil water. “Do you want to go into town and get a new phone after we eat?” he asks, turning on the stove. 

Rozanov was looking down at his hands but whips his head up now to study Shane. “We don’t have to,” he responds. “But, yes, maybe, if you don’t mind.”

Shane nods. He peers into the pantry. “Penne or spaghetti? I’m gonna use red sauce.”

Rozanov doesn’t respond immediately. “Spaghetti,” he says finally. 

Shane nods, grabbing the packet of pasta. As he dumps it into the water, he says, “Okay. I should go grab a little more food anyway, so we can do both at once.”

Rozanov is looking at him like he’s just drawn out a particularly complex play. He looks away when Shane meets his eyes. 

.~.

As soon as Ilya has all his data transferred over to a new phone, it explodes with dozens of missed call notifications. Cameron has apparently been calling him constantly since last night. The most recent attempt was less than an hour ago. 

Hollander—polite and helpful Hollander, who offered to bring him here instead of making Ilya shelve his pride and ask for yet another favor—is seated next to him on a ridiculously low couch in the ATT store. He frowns at Ilya’s buzzing phone but doesn’t say anything.

Ilya navigates to his map app first. He turns off his location, hoping he was fast enough that Cameron won’t be able to see he was here. 

“Okay,” he says. “We can go now.”

Hollander drives them to a small grocery store next. Ilya watches Hollander shop absently while he considers his next steps. He has a new flight, so he won’t have to face Cameron tomorrow. He’ll miss the camp he and Cameron normally volunteer at, but there’s not much he can do about that. (He hates the idea of throwing more money at the foundation to make up for his absence, but it may have to do, just this once.) He changed the passcode for his door to one that Cameron doesn’t know. 

He thinks and thinks and tries to come up with any other bases he needs to cover, but the one upside of their relationship unfolding entirely in secret is that there aren’t that many connections to sever. In a matter of weeks, Cameron’s training camp will start, and he’ll be in New York and too distracted to even think about Ilya. Ilya just needs to steer clear until then. 

“Do you like strawberries?” Hollander asks, breaking Ilya out of his thoughts once again. 

Ilya blinks a few times. “Yes. Fine.”

“Fine? Or you like them?” Hollander holds up a basket of strawberries. “This is a good deal, but I’m not gonna get them if you won’t eat some, because they’ll go bad fast.” Hollander seems to be working under the assumption that Ilya will be around for the next few days, which shakes Ilya’s belief that Hollander only offered to be a nice Canadian boy.

“I will eat,” Ilya says.

Hollander pauses, his mouth open like he’s going to say something else. Then he snaps it shut, smiles tightly, and sets the strawberries in his basket. “I think I’ll get stuff to make burgers tonight. I never make them just for myself because it’s too much food,” he rambles, leading Ilya forward to the meat section. “I have this great recipe, but it makes eight burgers.”

On the drive back to Hollander’s cottage, his hands are tight on the steering wheel as he says, “Sorry—uh—did you want to stay with me until your flight? Because if you actually do want to be on your own, I can take you to a hotel after dinner. I do need help eating the burgers though, so…”

Ilya should give Hollander the out and insist on getting a hotel, but he’s guessing the hotel won’t have a bed as nice as Hollander’s, or a PlayStation, or homemade omelette and burgers, or Hollander. He moans dramatically and leans against the window. “Well, apparently I will die if left alone for too long,” he says. 

“Fuck you,” Hollander chuckles. “Sorry I don’t want you to die in my guest bedroom.”

“You ask so much of me.”

Hollander rolls his eyes. “So you’re staying?” he asks. 

“Yes, yes, I will stay,” Ilya says. He adds, “Thank you,” as an afterthought. 

“I think this is the most time we’ve ever spent together,” Hollander says. “Can you imagine what the fans would think?” His tone is conspiratorial. It’s the most playful Ilya has ever heard him sound. 

“Pike will be disappointed you didn’t kill me while you had the chance. You will regret this next championship.”

Hollander laughs. “When was your last Cup win again?”

“Does not matter. What matters is the next one, so don’t get hopes up for next season,” Ilya says just as they pull into Hollander’s driveway. 

“Fuck you!” Shane turns the car off. 

“Ah—you should be so lucky,” Ilya shoots back. He slides out of the car and circles back to the trunk. He reaches for a paper grocery bag. 

Hollander smacks his hand away. “Your shoulder!” he says. His face has gone a little pink, Ilya notices. 

Ilya waves his good arm around and performatively grabs a bag with it. Hollander rolls his eyes. 

.~.

Shane spends the rest of the evening watching Rozanov. He’s never seen him so… subdued. Rozanov's voice has recovered a little over the course of the day, but he’s still mostly silent unless Shane prompts him. It’s unnerving, since Shane is so used to a version of Rozanov who has a constant stream of chirps falling from his lips and bursts into every room like he owns it. 

Shane is starting to suspect that there’s something more to what happened last night than Rozanov is willing to share. Shane has seen him fight and come away grinning. He’s even seen him fight men on other teams and then go out for drinks with them afterward. He’s never seen Rozanov look so utterly defeated, even when after emerging from a tussle with a black eye and one less tooth. 

And he doesn’t just look defeated; he looks tense, like he’s waiting for the other guy—Cameron—to come back to the door for another round. 

Rozanov’s phone rings a few more times over the course of the evening, always showing the same name: Camille. Eventually, while they’re seated outside eating burgers, Rozanov mutters, “Oh my fucking God,” and Shane watches him snatch his phone up and block the number. 

For the rest of the night, Rozanov keeps staring outside, checking his phone, and getting lost in thought. By the time they part to go to sleep, Shane has started making extra noise as he moves just to stop startling Rozanov. 

As he washes his face for bed, Shane muses over the concept of telling his seventeen-year-old self that he would someday have Ilya Rozanov in his cottage and that Shane would be worried about him. Even twenty-six-year-old Shane can’t quite believe it. 

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

The next morning, Ilya calls the camp director, Collin, to break the news that he won’t be making his promised appearance today. “Damn, Rozanov, I’ve got some kids real excited to meet you,” Collin grumbles. Ilya can hear that he has a pencil in his mouth. 

“I know. I’m very sorry. You know I would not do this if it was not emergency.” Is this an emergency? Ilya questions himself suddenly. He’s overall fine. He wouldn’t be able to lift any kids onto his shoulders, and he would probably have to wear the highest neck Under Armor he could find—because the last thing these kids need to see is that—but he could still technically make an appearance for a cause he claims to care about, if he made some effort to pull himself together. 

He checks the time on the ornate wood-carved clock on Hollander’s wall. His original flight will be long gone by now and probably already landed in Boston—hopefully with Cameron on it. Ilya’s mind conjures up images of Cameron on the taxiing plane, glaring at the empty seat beside him, trying to call Ilya, and realizing he’s been blocked when it doesn’t connect. Ilya’s stomach flips. Or maybe, with confirmation that Ilya didn’t die in the woods, Cameron decided to stay in Canada until he found him. 

“I know, I know,” Collin says. “You okay?”

“Yes, fine. Tell me what number to write on check to make up for this, okay?” Collin chuckles.

“And, uh…” Ilya can hear Hollander starting to move around the house. He drops his voice. “Could you not say anything about this? Please. If anyone asks, say I had emergency come up, but don’t… announce anything. I do not want to draw attention.”

Collin hesitates for a second before saying, “Okay, I’ll try. You sure you’re okay?”

“I am fine. Thank you, Collin. Bye-bye.” Ilya hangs up before Collin can interrogate him any more.

He lays back down. His throat is even more sore today than yesterday, and he needs some time to rest after the phone conversation before he can even think about talking again. 

Not knowing where Cameron is or what he’s thinking—or how fucking mad he is—is starting to eat at him, so Ilya opens his text thread with Camille to read the messages Cameron sent and Ilya ignored before he finally blocked him last night. 

Okay, so Ilya definitely missed his window of opportunity to smooth things over while Cameron still felt guilty and before he circled back to being mad. Okay. Ilya tells himself that’s fine because they’re breaking up anyway, but his hand still shakes as he locks his phone. 

His chest feels shallow, his lungs bubbling over with anxiety. He needs to stop torturing himself before he has a panic attack. He drags himself out of the bed to join Hollander in the kitchen. He can only spiral so much with Hollander’s watchful eyes on him. 

Hollander is standing at the counter, pouring almond milk into a blender. He smiles at Ilya when he enters, and it makes Ilya miss half a step. Those freckles, currently highlighted by the early morning sun, are just as hypnotizing as they were almost ten years ago. Ilya realizes with a stuttered breath that his crush on Hollander might not be as dead as he thought. That’s definitely something Ilya doesn’t have time to interrogate. 

He swallows and winces. “Good morning,” he forces out.

Hollander grimaces sympathetically. “Is your throat worse today?” he asks. “Maybe you should get it checked out.”

Ilya shakes his head, sinking into a barstool. “Just is sore from snoring, probably. It will be okay.” 

Hollander places a lid on the blender, but he rests his hand on top of it for a long time without turning it on, studying Ilya. His eyes scrunch nervously as he says, “I feel like we should get you to a doctor today. Your throat and your shoulder for sure need to be looked at, and I don’t think it can wait until you’re back in Boston.”

“You are maybe too keen for biggest competition to be fixed, hm? You should hope my shoulder is not okay, Hollander.” 

Hollander’s lips press into a pout. “I’m serious.”

Ilya waves his hand lazily between them. “Am not one of your rookies, Hollander. I am fine. No doctor.”

“I really think—”

“I said no.” The words come out louder than Ilya meant, and they scrape at his throat. He forces himself to keep the pain from showing on his face. “Fucking back off, Hollander.”

Hollander blinks hard, recoiling. “Fine. Fuck. Sorry for giving a fuck.” He turns the blender on and stares hard into it while his smoothie emulsifies. Once it’s done, he yanks the pitcher off its stand, pours it into a glass, and stomps out of the kitchen. 

Ilya feels sickly regret immediately. His heart rate ticks up. 

He goes after Hollander and finds him sitting on the couch on the back porch. Ilya takes the chair beside him. Hollander stares stubbornly at the lake. Ilya tries to come up with an apology that won’t hurt his pride or seem like he’s giving in.

After a painfully long silence, Hollander says, “What do you want for breakfast?” His voice is hard, and he still won’t look at Ilya. “I could make you eggs again, but a smoothie bowl or something might be easier on your throat.”

“I can make myself breakfast,” Ilya says automatically. 

He presses the heels of his hands into his thighs, watching Hollander’s grip tighten around his glass. Something deep in Ilya’s gut whispers to get a few more walls between him and Hollander. He forces his hands to fold into each other on his lap. He wonders if he looks as pathetic as he feels. An apology nearly reaches his lips while he waits for a response. 

“Okay,” Hollander replies, surprising Ilya, who gets halfway out of his chair before Hollander continues, “Feel free to use whatever. I just need a minute to myself, and then I’ll come back inside, okay?” He looks up at Ilya with a nearly flat smile. 

Ilya nods and retreats. He makes himself plain eggs and eats alone at the kitchen counter. When he stands at the sink, Henley sleeves pushed up to his elbows, he pauses, remembering Shane’s comment yesterday about being weird about his pan. Ilya’s mouth goes dry.

He’s saved from having to figure out the safer option—between lazily leaving the dish for Hollander to clean or potentially ruining his pan—by Hollander stepping back inside, carefully clicking the door shut behind him. “You can just leave that, I’ll wash it in a minute,” he says, and Ilya does as directed, relieved.

Ilya prepares to apologize for snapping, but before he can get the words through the bramble of his throat, Hollander says, “I’m sorry for pushing. I was trying to help, but I overstepped.” He shrugs. 

Ilya takes a second to recalibrate. “Oh. It’s okay,” he says without thinking. “I should not have shouted.”

“Yeah, can’t have been good for your throat,” Hollander says sympathetically, moving into Ilya’s space so he can get to the sink. “I put some other clothes in the bathroom for you if you want to go get changed. I’ll wash those, and the ones you came in, today. I—uh—had an unopened pack of boxers from a brand deal a while ago, so I put those in there for you too.”

Ilya stands there uselessly, listening to Hollander ramble. He feels like he’s waiting for something, but he’s not sure what. He watches Shane’s hands move over the soapy pan. They move methodically. Ilya moves his gaze up to Hollander’s face, which is placid. 

It’s been probably too long since Hollander finished talking when Ilya finally gets himself to say, “Okay, thank you.” He goes to the bathroom and finds the clean clothes Hollander left for him. He frowns at the Metros sweatshirt on the top of the pile and wonders if Hollander chose it specifically to fuck with him—but he would love to have his neck covered, and his own Raiders sweatshirt is still covered in dirt, so he swallows his pride and slides into it. 

.~.

Shane has two theories. 

One: Rozanov is in the mob. While Rozanov is in the bathroom, changing, Shane dries his hands and Googles “Russian mafia”. He scrolls through the Wikipedia page for Bratva before dismissing his own theory as ridiculous. He has kind of a hard time imagining Rozanov participating in drug and human trafficking in his little free time.

Two: Rozanov owes someone a lot of money. Shane pictures a wild night at a casino, a string of bad decisions, and a loan shark absconding with Rozanov to the woods. Rozanov should have plenty of money, though. As first round draft picks, he and Shane’s contract amounts are probably very similar, and sometimes Shane isn’t sure he could spend all of his money if he tried. 

Shane shakes himself out of his thoughts before Rozanov can come back out and catch him hovering weirdly. He moves over to the couch, sinking down tiredly. The day spreads out before him, and the idea of keeping Rozanov occupied for the entirety of it is a little daunting. 

He turns on the TV and flicks through the channels with no real goal. He’s landed on ESPNews by the time Rozanov emerges, wearing Shane’s clothes. It shouldn’t make his heart skip a beat, but it does. Shane chastises himself for letting his eyes wander down from his sweatshirt to the strip of boxer peeking out from his joggers, which are a little too small for Rozanov. 

Rozanov frowns as he sits down next to Shane. “Why are you watching this?” he asks. 

Shane turns back to the screen. The segment title reads “New England athletes come together to create unforgettable sports experience for kids in need”. “Oh—it just came on,” Shane replies.

A reporter is talking to the camera. The volume is too low for Shane to hear what she’s saying—but behind her, Shane can see the man who came to his door yesterday, Cameron. He’s crouched down and talking to a few kids huddled around him. He points exaggeratedly offscreen, and they race off. Shane watches as Cameron stands, and then Cliff Marlow enters the frame and approaches him. Cameron and Marlow have a short, tense conversation. 

Rozanov’s eyes are glued to the screen. “I normally am there,” he says. “Missed it this year. Obviously.”

“Oh. Does Cameron play hockey?” Shane asks. He doesn’t recognize him, but there’s probably a lot of players with low ice time that he’s never actually come face-to-face with. 

Rozanov shakes his head. He’s watching Marlow stalk away from Cameron. “Football. NFL. The camp is for lots of sports, even fake American ones.” He pauses for Shane to laugh. “Marly got me into it, but we are usually only hockey players there.”

Shane realizes how little he actually knows about Rozanov outside of what he says in interviews—which Shane suspects is mostly lies and exaggerations—and locker room rumors. He grasps onto this. “So it’s for, like, poor kids?” he asks, to keep Rozanov talking. 

Rozanov presses his lips into a tight line and takes a second before responding. He doesn’t take his eyes off the screen, where the news has moved on to a debate about the MLB draft. “Is for kids who have been hurt,” he says finally. “Abused.”

“Oh. Is that a cause you… care a lot about?” Even Shane knows as he says it that he’s indirectly asking something horribly invasive. He remembers the one time he saw Rozanov’s father in person, at the draft; he was a severe man who scowled at Shane and who Rozanov seemed to draw away from subconsciously.

Rozanov nods stiffly. “Yes. Marly too.” He motions toward the TV. “And Cameron. That is how we met. At the camp.”

Okay, so Cameron’s not a loan shark at least. He and Rozanov really are friends, and they really did get into a fight on a vacation. Shane shouldn’t find that comforting, but he does. 

“I guess I know he is in US,” Rozanov says. His phone buzzes on the couch between them, and Shane looks down on instinct. The name “Marlene” flashes at him. Rozanov ignores it. 

Shane feels the urge to make Rozanov relax, unsettled by the tight way the Russian is holding himself, staring at nothing with a frown. Shane is suddenly desperate to see him loose and grinning like he is when they stand before each other for the faceoff.

“Want to play more PlayStation?” he asks.

.~.

Hollander seems keen to keep Ilya busy, like he can sense that Ilya’s mind will start to wander dangerously if he’s allowed to think for too long. They spend the day playing video games, cooking meals together, and gossiping about other hockey players. Ilya learns that Pike had another kid and starts brainstorming chirps about it. 

After they eat dinner—hot dogs that Hollander pulled out of the freezer and Ilya resisted making a sausage joke about—the sun is setting and Hollander suggests they sit by the fire for a while before bed. Ilya watches him gather firewood and carefully light kindling, fanning the flames methodically until they’re high enough to cast shadows. 

Hollander settles onto the long seat next to Ilya. 

Ilya stares at the fire until his eyes burn. “This is exciting,” he says sarcastically. 

Hollander huffs. “It’s not supposed to be exciting. It’s relaxing.”

“Ah. Yes. I am so relaxed.”

Hollander laughs. He picks up a twig from the ground and tosses it into the firepit. “You can go inside.”

Ilya considers it, but he’s gotten so used to Hollander’s company that he knows he’ll spiral miserably if he goes to sit by himself in the guest room. He would probably just stare at his phone, obsessing over all the missed calls from Cameron. A few more calls and messages have come in over the course of the day from Marlow—under the fake name Ilya used so Cameron wouldn’t know they still texted—and his agent, probably wondering why he didn’t show up for camp. Ilya has ignored those too. 

He needs to figure out his story before he talks to anyone, so he doesn’t accidentally contradict himself. The bruises on his face have darkened to the point that he thinks they’ll fade soon, but he isn’t optimistic for the ones on his neck disappearing anytime soon. People will ask, and he will have to give them some explanation. Not everyone will be so willing to accept vague non-answers like Hollander has been.

“When’s your flight tomorrow?” Hollander asks, eyes still on the fire.

“Nine.”

“Okay. We should leave here around five then. It’s about a two hour drive.”

“Okay.”

Ilya watches a moth nearly fly into the flame and divert at the last moment. He’s surprised by the heavy feeling in his chest that appears at the thought of parting with Hollander. 

“Thank you,” he says, “for everything.”

“Of course, dude,” Hollander responds, nodding enthusiastically. “Kind of crazy that you ended up here, huh? Like how lucky.”

“Yes, very lucky. Would have been very embarrassing to die in Canadian woods as a Russian.”

“Yeah, it would have been a pretty boring hockey season for me next year too.”

Ilya laughs. 

The warmth of the fire starts to get to be too much. He wiggles out of Hollander’s sweatshirt. He puts off pulling his bad arm out to last, hissing as he gingerly lifts it enough to slide the sleeve off. 

Hollander looks over at the noise. His mouth twists until he’s sucking nervously on his bottom lip.  “Will you at least let me put some KT tape on it?”

Ilya sighs and nods. He’s past the point of trying to deny that it really fucking hurts. 

Hollander goes inside and returns with a roll of athletic tape. He kneels in front of Ilya. The sight of Hollander on his knees before him does something to him that  Ilya knows better than to examine right now. 

Hollander’s hands are cold on Ilya’s shoulder. He’s careful and precise as he lays the tape, his fingers working slowly to pull it taut and smooth any ridges. When he’s done, he sits back on his heels, admiring his work. 

Then he looks up at Ilya, a satisfied smile on his face. His eyes are wide and inviting. 

Ilya doesn’t know who moves first, but then he’s leaning forward, and so is Hollander, and their lips meet. Hollander puts a hand on the unblemished side of Ilya’s face, holding him in place. He kisses Ilya like he’s starving for it. 

Ilya fists the front of Hollander’s shirt, pulling him up toward him. Hollander scrambles to his feet before setting a knee on either side of Ilya’s lap on the seat. His breathing is heavy, and he refuses to pull his lips even a few inches away from Ilya’s.

Ilya’s mind goes empty, all thoughts of getting his story straight and calling people back leaving his head so he can focus on the velvety feel of Hollander’s mouth. Kissing Hollander is exactly how he imagined it would be all those years ago. Hollander is so eager, and he’s solid in his lap, his thighs flexing rhythmically as he moves against Ilya. 

“Fuck,” Hollander whispers, moving his mouth to Ilya’s jaw. 

“Yeah,” Ilya agrees quietly.

“I didn’t know you were gay.” Hollander’s teeth nip at Ilya’s jawline. His fingers find Ilya’s hair. 

Ilya fights down the part of him that wants to deny it on instinct. “Bisexual,” he mutters. He can’t remember the last time he said that out loud. 

He’s moving his hand toward Hollander’s shirt, desperate to see the muscle he can feel, when the sound of a phone ringing startles them both. 

“Fuck,” Hollander says again. He sets his weight back, hands scrambling to his pockets. He silences his phone. “My fucking mom,” he grumbles and tosses it to the side. 

When he leans back toward Ilya, Ilya puts a hand flat on his chest, keeping him half a foot away. Sense is suddenly flooding back to his brain. 

Hollander’s eyes bounce between the Ilya’s hand and face. “Sorry,” he says quickly, sliding off of him. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, no,” Ilya says. He reaches weakly after Hollander. “It’s not— That was— Don’t apologize.”

Hollander sits next to him. His face is still flushed. 

“It is just,” Ilya continues. He stops to take a few measured breaths. He can feel that his face is warm too. “I… have a boyfriend. Technically.” Hollander’s eyes go wide. “I think we are broken up, probably—but not officially. Yet.”

Hollander nods heavily, staring at his own lap. “Okay. Okay. Sorry.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I just… You should know. If we are going to…”

Hollander launches himself back on top of him again as soon as he has permission. Ilya doesn’t stop him. 

“This is stupid,” Hollander says. His hand is gripping the hem of Ilya’s shirt. “We shouldn’t do this.”

“So stupid.” Ilya puts his hand on the back of Shane’s head. He moves his hips without meaning to, bucking against Shane, who moans. “What do you want?”

Shane moves his mouth down Ilya’s neck. He stops sucking desperately long enough to say, “I only bottom.”

Music to Ilya’s fucking ears. “Perfect,” he growls. He tries to lift Hollander and switch their positions, but his shoulder screams as soon as he tries to lift Hollander’s weight. 

“Whoa, whoa,” Hollander says calmly. “Don’t. Stay there. It’s okay. Just…” 

He tugs on Ilya’s waistband, and Ilya lifts his hips so he can shift his pants down enough to pull his dick out, and Hollander does the same before spitting in his hand. He strokes Ilya’s penis a few times before adding his own to his grip. 

“Oh, fuck.” Ilya drops his head back, lost in the sensation of himself rubbing against Hollander. “Fuck, Hollander. Fuck.”

Hollander comes first. He keeps his hand moving, gasping over Ilya, until Ilya comes too, another “fuck” falling from his mouth. They rest with their foreheads against each other. Ilya closes his eyes.

“I’ll go get a towel,” Hollander whispers. He slides off of Ilya, who resists the urge to pull him back. He returns with a hand towel from the kitchen.

Ilya takes it then looks down at his—Hollander’s—tank top. He laughs. “You may just need to wash this,” he says. 

Hollander chuckles a little too. “Yeah. Probably. Here. I’ll help you get it off.” He helps Ilya slide his arm through the sleeve without having to lift his bad arm. As he turns to take it inside, his phone buzzes again. He picks it up and takes it with him. 

.~.

“What, Mom?” Shane snaps as he throws the soiled t-shirt into his washing machine. 

“You’re trending,” his mother replies dryly. 

“Shit. Why?” Shane dumps soap into the wash and starts the machine. He pauses in the living room. He can see Rozanov sitting outside still, shirtless, staring into the fire thoughtfully. He swallows.

“Well—you appear to have been hanging out with Ilya Rozanov of all people, and he looks like hell.”

“Fuck.” The post-sex buzz in Shane’s brain is ripped away. “At the store?”

Yuna makes an impatient mhm sound. “Care to give me any context? Did you do that to him?”

“Of course not, Mom!” Shane says it loud enough that Rozanov turns and looks at him questioningly through the window. He drops his voice and turns away. “It’s a long story. Can I explain later?”

“Are you… hanging out with him?” Yuna asks delicately. 

“Mom.”

“Sorry. Sorry.”

“I’ll come over sometime tomorrow and explain, okay? Will you send me the post?” Shane offers. Yuna agrees, and he hangs up. 

She sends him a screenshot of a tweet before he’s even made it back outside. It’s a clear shot of him and Rozanov sitting in the phone store, looking bored. Rozanov’s bruised face is obvious. The caption says, “Hollander and Rozanov running errands together??? Girl what??? Mind if I start a rumor?”

Shane sits beside Rozanov. His heart jumps into his throat when Rozanov looks at him like he’s about to pull Shane back onto him. “Someone tweeted a picture of us together yesterday,” he says.

Rozanov frowns, and then his face drains of color. “Can I see?”

Shane shows him.

“Fuck.” Rozanov drops his head between his knees. 

“Hey—whoa. It’s okay.” Shane sets his phone to the side. He puts a hand cautiously on Rozanov’s back. “I mean, we’re a little old for this rivalry stuff by now anyway, right?”

Rozanov straightens back up. He tilts his head back, covering his face with his hands. His chest is working furiously. 

“Hey. No one’s gonna know that we… We’re allowed to be friendly without people thinking we hooked up.”

“No,” Rozanov says. He drops his hands into his lap, still staring up at the stars. He doesn’t look like Shane’s words have calmed him down at all. If anything, he looks more frantic with every breath. “Fuck.”

“Rozanov. I think you’re having a panic attack.”

“Fuck. He will know that I cheated.”

“Your boyfriend? How would he know?” Shane sets a hand on Rozanov’s arm, trying to draw his attention away from the sky, but it doesn’t work. 

Rozanov’s voice is flat when he responds, “I told Cameron. That I liked you before. When he sees… He’ll know.”

Shane’s brain takes a few seconds to process the phrase ‘I liked you’ before the rest of Rozanov’s words sink in. “Wait,” he says, his body going cold all the way to his fingertips. “Wait. Rozanov. Is Cameron your boyfriend?”

Rozanov doesn’t react aside from a tightening of his mouth. 

Shane’s stomach turns inside out. He goes dizzy with the horror of the entire picture suddenly coming together. “Hey. Rozanov. Hey.” He moves his hand on top of Rozanov’s own, which is curled into a fist against his thigh.  

Rozanov squeezes his eyes shut. He drops his head. Shane slides down to his knees on the ground, trying to get under Rozanov’s gaze to make eye contact. 

He’s so out of his fucking depth he doesn’t even know what he’ll say once he does have Rozanov’s attention. He feels sick as he replays everything that’s happened over the last few days with a new framing. 

“Rozanov. You’re broken up, right? Or you’re going to. It wouldn’t matter even if he did know.”

Rozanov shakes his head. He opens his eyes but avoids Shane’s gaze. 

“Rozanov. Please look at me.” No reaction. “Please. Ilya.”

Ilya’s eyes snap to his.

“Hey, there you are.” Shane slowly lifts a hand to rest on Ilya’s face. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Ilya huffs out a bitter chuckle. “He’ll fucking kill me. For cheating on him?” He shakes his head, a grim air of resolve to his expression. 

Something sharp and angry rips at Shane’s stomach. He looks at the collar of bruises around Ilya’s throat and resolves to ruin Cameron’s fucking life. Maybe it’s a little hypocritical; Shane himself has slammed Ilya into the boards with more ferocity than necessary, and he’s cheered on his teammates while they exchanged blows with Ilya—but Shane tries to imagine seeing the wide-eyed affection that Ilya looked up at him with only a few minutes earlier and then wrapping his hands around Ilya’s throat. He fights down nausea. 

Shane rubs his thumb against Ilya’s cheek as he wrestles to keep himself from looking furious. “Hey.” He shifts again until Ilya meets his eyes. “I’m not gonna let that happen, okay?”

“I have to go back to Boston tomorrow.”

“I’ll go with you,” Shane offers before he’s even fully considered it.

Ilya blinks hard and looks like he’s finally come back to Earth. “I can handle it. You don’t have to,” he says quietly, hopefully. 

“I will. I will.” Shane tries not to think about what it is that Ilya says he can handle. 

“There’s no plane seats.”

“I’ll drive you. We can go whenever you want, and I’ll go with you.”

Ilya studies his face like he can’t believe he’s hearing Shane correctly. He nods. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Ilya nods. He leans forward to catch Shane’s lips and kiss him slowly. “Okay.”

Chapter End Notes

guys I'm actually sticking to a chapter count for once. Thank you for all your kind comments! It is very motivating to hear how much people love this story. <3

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

ok FINE I increased the chapter count. We all knew it was coming.

I wanted to kind of slow down for this one and focus on their inner thoughts about each other and the situation. Thanks everyone for all your kind comments, they make me smile. I sit there and reread them while I'm motivating myself to write the next one :) <3

They decide to leave that night. Shane’s mind is racing too frenetically for him to even try to delude himself into thinking he’ll get any sleep—so taking on the long drive now, rather than laying in bed all night and anticipating it, feels like the better option. 

While Shane is alone in his room, folding t-shirts into a duffel bag, he pauses and pulls out his phone. He types “Cameron NFL” into the search bar. He tries to think if he has any more information than that, but he mostly comes up blank. He ends up searching “Cameron NFL camp for abused kids”. 

Cameron Pollard. The name accompanies pictures of the man that Shane recognizes. He’s a tight end, apparently, for Buffalo and was their first round draft pick four years ago after an impressive college career. His Wikipedia page shows a picture of him smiling on a football field’s sidelines, helmet under his arm. The early life section details a story of resilience through a difficult childhood and poverty—and the charity work he’s done since then to lift up other struggling kids. 

“How fucking admirable,” Shane mumbles bitterly as he tosses his phone onto the bed. Unfamiliar rage flickers in him. 

Ilya appears in his bedroom doorway. “I’m ready to go when you are,” he says quietly. His eyes trace Shane’s body down to his open bag. 

He has his hiking bag slung over his shoulder, and it occurs to Shane that that can’t be all he brought with him to vacation in Canada. “Do you have other luggage we need to go get?” Shane asks. 

Ilya shrugs. “I don’t know how to get back into Airbnb. It was just clothes. I can replace it all.” Shane adds “contact Airbnb host and get them to ship Ilya’s stuff—assuming it’s still there and intact” to his growing to-do list. 

Shane nods as he zips up his duffel bag. “Okay. I’m ready to go too.”

Before they leave, he makes sure the security cameras are running and sets the alarm. Then he loads up the car, swatting away Ilya’s attempts to help lift things into the back, and they start toward the border. 

Ilya is quiet while they speed down the country road. His entire body is tense, his jaw moving back and forth like he’s thinking deeply. Shane recognizes now that this is how he looks when he’s catastrophizing. 

Once they’re on the highway, the dark and empty road unfolding before them, Shane starts to overthink too. “Should we… talk about what happened?” he asks nervously.

Ilya, who has been slumped in his seat and staring out the windshield, straightens. “Okay.”

Shane twists his hands around the steering wheel. He tries to find the correct words to continue with. He knows that telling Ilya how much he loved jerking him off and watching Ilya’s face as he came is probably not the most tactful way to go about it—especially considering the very fragile situation he’s finally realized that Ilya is in right now. “What do you… How did you feel about what we did?” he lands on finally. 

Ilya snorts. “How did I feel about you touching my dick? Pretty fucking good, Hollander,” Ilya says bemusedly, and Shane’s face heats up. 

“I just meant”—Shane slows at a stop sign—“obviously things are… complicated. I don’t want to make things even more complicated for you.”

“It is not complicated. I liked hooking up with you. I want to do it again—if you do.”

Shane doesn’t try to hide the relief he feels. He nods enthusiastically. “Okay. Good. Me too.”

He knows this is stupid. He should cut it off here, do what he needs to to make sure Ilya is safe, and then close this chapter. He can’t even begin to imagine the fallout from any hint of an entanglement with his ‘rival’ getting out into the world. Shane is no stranger to discrete hookups, but this isn’t a guy who lives on the other side of the city and doesn’t even know who Shane is, who sometimes sends “you up?” texts; This is Ilya Rozanov. What are they going to do? Slip away from their teams to have sex whenever they’re in the same city? Sext like teenagers in the months in between? 

It lays itself out before him, in all its ridiculousness and impracticality. He shouldn’t let this get any harder to wrangle, but then he thinks about the way his heart speeds up when Ilya enters a room—the way it has for the past eight years, even though he hasn’t let himself acknowledge it. He thinks about how gorgeous Ilya looked when the sun spilled through the cabin windows onto him. He thinks about the hungry way Ilya grabbed him and stared up at him while Shane held his cock. 

Fuck. Shane wants more of that. If he has to be a little reckless to get it, fine. 

“Cool,” he adds, after probably too long of a pause, and Ilya snorts again. “Who else knows that you like men?”

Ilya picks at lint on the knee of his borrowed sweatpants. “Cameron, obviously. My friend from Russia, but I haven’t talked to her in a long time.” He wobbles his head. “I think maybe Cliff Marlow suspects, but it takes a while for his brain cells to fire, so I wouldn’t say he knows.” 

He starts to say something else then stops. He closes his mouth so hard his teeth click. Shane waits, but Ilya never continues. 

In the silence, a horrible thought occurs to Shane. “Do you think Cameron would out you?”

Ilya shakes his head immediately. “No. Not unless he thought of a way to do it without outing himself. He is even more scared of people finding out than I am.”

“Okay. Okay.” Shane merges onto the highway, his mind starting to move too fast again now that he’s allowed himself to think about Cameron. All thoughts of Shane and Ilya go to the back of Shane’s mind as he remembers the crisis at hand. “What do you think he’ll do?”

Ilya takes a moment to think about it. He sets his elbow on the window frame and rests his face on his hand. “I’m not sure. We have almost broken up before, but… I can be wishy-washy. Probably he will try to come to my house and talk me out of it.”

Shane suspects that’s an overly mild interpretation of Cameron’s behavior, given all that he knows now. “Do you want to go to the police?” he asks.

Ilya turns toward him slowly, frowning. “No? Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. I mean, you could get a restraining order, for starters.”

“I don’t need a restraining order. I just need to break up with him. I have chickened out before, but I will do it for real this time. I promise.”

Shane merges into the center lane. “I’m not… You don’t have to promise me. I just want to make this as easy, and as safe, as possible for you.” He runs his thumb nervously over the stitching on the steering wheel. “What made you chicken out? Before?”

“Cam can be… Very convincing, sometimes. Other times, very volatile.”

“So—he’s hurt you before, then? Before this?”

Ilya grunts when he nods. “Not bad like this before, but, yes, he has temper.”

Shane’s guts twist into ropes. “I really think we should go to the police. Get it on paper. It will help if you ever want to press charges or—”

“I am not doing that,” Ilya interrupts. “I am big fucking hockey player. I do not need to go to the police.” He waves an exasperated hand. “And it would out both of us, if I did that.”

Shane can’t really argue with that. He nods slowly. “Okay. I understand.” He chews on his bottom lip. “How’s the security at your place?”

“Okay. I changed the passcode for my doors.” He pauses. “I can see your mind working too hard, Hollander.”

“I know. I know. I just want…” To make this go as smoothly as possible? To protect you? To keep him from ever looking at you again? Shane sighs, unable to articulate the deep need he has to fix everything for Ilya. 

.~.

Whatever Shane wants, Ilya will give it to him. He will do anything, be anything, say anything to be able to touch him again. Shane clearly wants him to end things with Cameron, so he will, even though he’s under no illusions about Shane doing this because he wants to take his place or be anything more than a secret fuck. Shane—righteous and good Shane Hollander—can’t imagine letting Ilya be hurt again, and that is where his motivations end. It’s not right, so Shane has to put a stop to it. He probably saw some PSA with a cowering woman on it that said “this isn’t love” and really took it to heart. 

The thing that Ilya doesn’t know how to—and probably shouldn’t—explain to Shane is that Ilya does love Cameron. Or he did. He thinks he still does, but it’s different now, in a way that he struggles to wrap words around, in English or in Russian. 

He’s loved him, or at least been infatuated with him, from the moment they met. Ilya wasn’t paying attention while walking across the field at camp, excited to tell Marly about the batshit insane thing a kid just said, and he nearly tripped over a little boy sitting in the grass and making a daisy chain. He dodged at the last second and was about to fall flat on his face, only for two large hands to catch him under his arms and hold him solidly upright. “Whoa,” Cameron said, grinning. “Guess you’re not as coordinated on dry land, huh?” The way Ilya lost his words when he saw Cameron’s dimples must have told Cameron everything he needed to know, because he followed it up with, “Rozanov, right? Hockey? I’m Cameron. I’ve been meaning to learn about hockey now I’m living up North. Any interest in grabbing a drink at my hotel after this and being my tutor?”

They maintained professional distance and neutral conversations at the bar, but afterward, they stumbled back to Cameron’s room and had fast and desperate sex. Ilya thought they would part ways and never talk about it again, but Cameron held on tight, and they spent the next few years falling hard through clandestine meetups when they were in the same city and spending precious free weekends at each other’s homes. Ilya had never been in love before—he tried to be in love with Svetlana, and that’s probably the closest he ever got—but he found it incredibly easy with Cameron. 

He hardly noticed when the rest of the world slipped away. 

First, he cut off his family in Russia. He kept sending money, but Cameron looked at him sadly every time Ilya stepped back into the room after shouting at Alexei and asked, “Why don’t you just stop talking to them? They don’t deserve to hear from you,” and Ilya thought maybe he was right, so he hadn’t spoken to his brother or father in over a year by the time Grigori died, and he didn’t go to Russia for the funeral. He felt guilty about it, especially as his father’s health declined rapidly in the months before his death and he left increasingly frantic and confused voicemails—but the disappointed looks that Cameron shot at Ilya every time Cryillic names appeared on his phone kept him in check. 

Then, he gradually talked less to Svetlana to keep Cameron happy, and then it was Marlow—and those didn’t feel as good, but Ilya loved Cameron, and it was all worth it if he got to keep sneaking away with him and play wrestling on the bed and having kind words whispered in his ear while they hooked up. 

He kept loving Cameron, even after they got into their first real fight and Cameron shoved him so hard that he fell on the kitchen floor and then apologized all night for not knowing his own strength. A few months later, they argued over Ilya going to Svetlana’s birthday party, and Cameron hit him across the face for the first time. Ilya left; he turned on his heel and got the first plane back to Boston and ignored Cameron’s calls for two days—until Cameron showed up at Ilya’s door and fell to his knees and begged for forgiveness. “I’m so sorry,” he said, grasping at Ilya’s legs, pressing his face into his thighs. “I’ve never done something like that before. It will never happen again. I’m so angry with myself. I swore I’d never be like my father.” He forgave Cameron that time, and every other time. He stopped believing the apologies, but he still accepted them nonetheless because they kept coming. 

Looking back, Ilya sometimes wonders if his father ever apologized to his mother. If he did, he stopped by the time Ilya came around. Grigori never apologized to Polina in front of him, and he definitely never apologized to Ilya or Alexei, for anything, even when his mind was going. Then he chastises himself for comparing himself to his mother, who had no other family and none of her own money and children to keep safe, and who made her choices because of those things—unlike Ilya, who stayed with Cameron mostly out of desperation not to lose the only person other than her who ever truly loved him. 

If he’s honest with himself, that’s mostly what has kept him from ending it recently. He can say he’s still with Cameron because he loves him—and he could spend weeks dissecting if the feeling he has now when Cameron is in the room is still love—but it’s more than that. The chances of Ilya ever finding another man like that—funny, hot, willing to put up with Ilya’s shit, and just as incentivized as Ilya to stay in the closet—are astronomically low. For a while now, he’s known that Cameron is his only chance to be loved, and tolerating the few unsavory parts of him are the price Ilya pays for it. 

Now, though, Ilya would rather be unloved forever than go through again what he went through a few nights ago. The thought makes something scrape at his chest, but he tries to breathe through it. He becomes more aware of how sharp each breath still feels.

To stop a spiral, he reminds himself that he’s not alone in the car. Shane is next to him, driving him six hours home so that Ilya won’t be alone. Shane, who has tended to him carefully for the last few days, so patiently and kindly—and who looked like he saw God when Ilya came for him and suddenly became a man on a mission when Ilya freaked out. 

It shouldn’t surprise him. Shane Hollander, Canada’s Golden Boy, is known for being a nice guy. He doesn’t snap at reporters who ask stupid questions. His teammates speak highly of his humble leadership. It does shock Ilya a little, still, to be on the receiving end of such gentleness from Shane—gentleness that Ilya reserves for homesick rookies and starstruck kids holding out a shaking sharpie over the boards. 

It makes him feel a little less adrift, focusing on Shane’s solid presence beside him, though he knows it won’t last. At some point, Shane Hollander will realize what a mess Ilya is—that he’s mean and lazy and a little bit of a slut—and he’ll move on. Ilya will be prepared for that when it comes, and he won’t blame Shane for it, but for now, he soaks up Shane’s steady resolve.

Ilya reaches over the center console and puts a hand on Shane’s thigh. Shane freezes, and Ilya almost pulls away, but then Shane drops one hand from the steering wheel to rest on top of Ilya’s. Ilya flips his own and laces their fingers together. 

Shane’s face is tight, focused. He’s planning; Ilya knows, because this is how Shane looks when Montreal is down one point and about to make a comeback. 

“You are very good knight in glittery armor, Hollander,” Ilya says. 

Shane looks away from the road long enough to see Ilya’s smirk. “Shining,” he says, like a reflex. 

“Mm. No. I like glittery better.”

Shane laughs. He squeezes Ilya’s hand. “I promise I’m not trying to be a white knight,” he says in a low voice. “I care about you, probably more than I should. I always have.”

Ilya swallows. “Me too,” he admits. He considers telling Shane about his grand plan all those years ago but decides against it, thinking it might sound even more pathetic outside of his head than it does in it. “I… am glad you’re here with me. Even if you were not being gold knight.”

“Okay, you’re doing this on purpose, Rozanov,” Shane laughs, shaking his head. “I just said—”

Ilya squeezes his hand again, his heart skipping a beat at Shane’s smile. 

.~.

When they reach Boston, it’s nearly two in the morning. Ilya is asleep, his head tucked into his own shoulder. 

Shane follows the directions to the outskirts of a suburb and down a long private road. A looming, boxy house comes into view just as the navigation informs Shane that he’s arrived. 

Shane slows the car at the sight of a Jeep parked in front of the house, running. He sucks in a sharp breath, his heart picking up. He feels naive for not thinking that Cameron would be here waiting for Ilya to get back.

Shane parks twenty meters away and eyes Ilya, who is still knocked out, mouth open. He turns off the car, opens the door quietly, and locks the car behind him. He shakes out his limbs, trying to make himself feel big like he does with his pads on, and starts walking toward the other car.

When he’s only a few meters away, the Jeep’s driver’s side door opens. 

Chapter 5

Chapter Notes

Shane’s body is pulled stitch-tight as he watches the shadowed form of a man fold out of the Jeep, crunching gravel under his feet. Shane hitches his shoulders up, his hands tightening into fists at his waist. The humid air starts to feel claustrophobic. 

He’s never been much of a fighter. He prefers to grab onto another docile player and watch brawls unfold as they glide away. Still, he thinks he can hold his own in a fight better than the average person. 

The question is if Cameron falls in the category of average person. Is fighting sanctioned in American football? Shane doesn’t think it is, so maybe he at least has more experience fighting than Cameron does—specifically fighting with someone who hits back, Shane thinks bitterly. 

The man emerging from the car finally turns his face toward Shane. In the light that spills from the cab, Shane can make out a very distinctive jawline and slicked back hair. He relaxes immediately, his hands loosening at his sides. “Marlow?” he says.

“Hollander?” Marlow gapes, squinting at him. He slams his car door shut and approaches Shane. He looks like he’s still deciding if he needs to throw a punch.

Shane knows Ilya and Marlow are friends to some extent. They smack each other on the back more often than the other players on the ice. And he’s seen photos of them out at clubs together, loose shirts and beautiful women hanging off of their bodies. Still, Shane remembers seeing Cameron and Marlow chatting on the TV yesterday, so he tenses his muscles again. He swallows and asks, “What are you doing here?”

Marlow frowns deeply at him, his eyebrows dipping down like he’s trying to understand Shane’s words. “I’m looking for Roz. What are you doing here?”

Shane is hit with the reminder that, until a few days ago, he and Ilya were barely more than distant coworkers at best; rivals at worst. He tries to pinpoint exactly when that changed. Maybe when they hooked up on his patio. Or was it even earlier, when they were sprawled across opposite ends of the couch, snarking each other over a video game? When Ilya smiled at him across the kitchen and Shane realized he was enjoying having Ilya in his home and wanted to delay him leaving?

Shane motions toward his car, where Ilya is still asleep. Marlow’s anxious eyes land on the passenger seat, and he abruptly storms past Shane. He yanks on the locked car door, waking Ilya, who pulls away from the sound, blinking rapidly, before he fully registers Marlow and deflates. 

Ilya pulls up the manual lock and opens the door. The interior lights flash on and spill over him, illuminating the bruises down his face and neck. 

Marlow freezes. He stares open-mouthed for a few moments before putting his hands on Ilya’s shoulders. Ilya shakes his head, shrugging him off. He undoes his seat belt and fumbles out of the car. 

Marlow rounds on Shane. “What happened?” he demands. 

“Marly,” Ilya says in a warning tone.

“Did you do that?” Marlow shoves a finger into Shane’s chest, and Shane takes a step back.

“Of course not!” Shane stammers. 

“Marlow. Fucking chill,” Ilya snaps, slamming the car door shut. He rubs at his eyes tiredly. 

Shane sidesteps Marlow to unload their luggage from the back of the car. He won’t be able to relax until Ilya is behind a locked door again, so wrangling Marlow is very far down the list of his priorities right now. 

Marlow puts a hand on Ilya’s shoulder again. He ducks his head and says something so quietly that Shane can’t hear. Ilya rolls his eyes, but then he sobers and shakes his head. 

Shane gathers up their few bags in his arms. He meets Ilya’s eyes and tries to smile encouragingly. Ilya looks exhausted, like the few hours of rest in the car didn’t do anything for him.

“It’s too fucking late for this,” Ilya says to Marlow. “Do you want to sleep here? I still have your gross, green breakfast cereal.”

Marlow visibly wrestles with himself. He nods jerkily.

Ilya leads everyone to the front door. He types a code into the electric lock. It blinks red at him, and he swears under his breath then types in a different sequence. It makes a satisfied sound, and he shoves the door open. “Fuck. I know, I know,” he grumbles to himself, pulling his phone out of his pocket. He dismisses a notification that says “Wrong security code entered at ‘front door’. Open app for security options.”

Ilya doesn’t kick off his slides at the door, so Shane keeps his own shoes on. He hovers unsurely near the doorway, watching Ilya and Marlow move effortlessly through the modern living space. Ilya circles the living area, flicking on lights. He looks instantly more relaxed now that he’s back in his own home. Marlow flops down onto the low couch. He tosses pillows to the side like he knows exactly how to arrange them to be most comfortable.

“Uh… Where should I…?” Shane holds up their bags, feeling a little like an interloper. 

“Ah. Come.” Ilya leads him down a short hallway to a bedroom. It’s lived in; A half-full hamper peeks out of the open closet, and the bed is tightly made, but with wrinkled sheets. Shane guesses this is Ilya’s own room. Leggy lamps and abstract art decorate the space, giving it a more whimsical energy than Shane would have expected from Ilya’s home.

“You can leave here,” Ilya says. He puts a hand on his elbow. It makes him look small as he watches Shane set Ilya’s small hiking pack down on the foot of the bed. “I could have carried that.”

“You need to rest your shoulder.”

“Is like… two pounds.”

Shane puffs a laugh out through his nose. He clears his throat, forcing his eyes back to Ilya. “And where should I put my…” 

Ilya raises an eyebrow. He fails to suppress a smile as he says, “Does your bag need its own room, Hollander?”

“No, I just thought—I didn’t want to assu—” Shane huffs. Despite their conversation in the car and agreement to keep doing… whatever it is that they’ve started, he’s wary of accidentally pushing boundaries he can’t see. With what he knows now about Ilya’s ending relationship, he feels like there’s probably a minefield below his feet that he’ll only find through setting off explosions. 

“Put your shit down,” Ilya chuckles. He moves closer to Shane, pressing their chest together, eyes drilling into Shane’s. “Sorry about Marlow,” he says in a low voice. “I think he got confused when I didn’t show up for camp. I can get rid of him.”

“It’s okay,” Shane whispers. “He seemed worried about you.”

Ilya clicks his tongue. “He worries too much. Like you.” 

“I worry an appropriate amount, given the circumstances.” Shane sighs. “We should probably go back out there.”

“Probably.” Ilya leans forward and presses his lips against Shane’s. He waits a few beats before parting them and darting his tongue out. 

Shane automatically opens his mouth to taste it. He sets his hands on Ilya’s hips, holding him close. Ilya responds by moving in even tighter. He slots one of his legs between Shane’s.

Shane can feel a familiar heat growing in his sternum. He pulls back and watches Ilya’s face fall. “We really should go back out there. I can hear him pacing,” Shane says regretfully. 

Ilya looks like he’s going to say no, toss Shane down onto the bed, and pick back up where they left off—but then he nods once, jerkily. He pulls away. “Okay.”

When they go back into the living room, Marlow has risen and is wearing a path into the floor by the fireplace. He looks between Shane and Ilya with a confused scowl on his face. “Someone tell me what the fuck is going on,” he demands. “You don’t show up for camp. Fucking Pollard says you’re sick all of a sudden. You don’t pick up your fucking phone for an entire day.” Marlow scrubs tiredly at his face, looking older and more worn than Shane has ever seen him before. “And you look like this.”

Shane didn’t miss the disdainful way Marlow spat Cameron’s last name. He watches Marlow watch Ilya. 

Ilya’s mouth turns down. He looks around the house for a moment like a good answer will present itself to him. “It is a long story,” he says finally, “but clearly I am fine, so you can drop it.”

Marlow opens his mouth before he pauses and heaves out a sigh. Then he says, “Just… I thought, maybe, Pollard—that maybe he did something. I don’t know.”

Ilya bristles and crosses his arms across his chest. Shane can see the nearly imperceptible hitch in his back as his shoulder moves. “Why the fuck would you think that?” he grinds out, his voice dangerously close to the tone of an angry captain. 

Marlow looks warily at Shane before dragging his eyes back to the floor in front of Ilya’s feet. He seems to be thinking very hard about his words as he responds, “Just. I know… you guys… hang out sometimes, okay? And… I don’t know. It’s stupid. Nevermind. I’ll go.” He starts toward the door, his shoulders up to his ears. 

Ilya puts a hand out toward him and says, “Wait. Marly.”

Marlow turns back around. His eyes land on Shane again, inspecting him. Shane is starting to suspect that Marlow is smarter than Ilya gives him credit for. 

“You’re right,” Ilya says. It sounds like he’s forcing every word through his teeth, and Shane can tell that his throat is starting to get tired. “Pollard… Cameron is—was—my”—He pauses and takes a deep breath—“boyfriend.”

Marlow nods emphatically. “Okay. Yeah. I figured.” He clears his throat. “Which I’m totally okay with, by the way. Well—not totally, because I think Pollard seems like he kind of sucks, and you should date someone way cooler, like… the guy from Glee, or something. I don’t know.”

Ilya barks out a laugh that devolves into thin, wheezing giggles. He leans forward, putting his hands on his knees and dropping his head. “Marly,” he gasps out, “I am so glad that you are my friend.”

A smile nudges it way onto Marlow’s face too, and Shane relaxes a little bit.

Ilya straightens back up and shakes his head. “And you are right too,” he says, his voice and face stony again, “that Pollard… sucks. We got into fight and…” He motions jerkily toward himself and his injuries. “I ran into Sha—Hollander after, and he has been helping me… sort things out.”

Marlow studies Shane once more, eyes roving him up and down. He nods, apparently satisfied with whatever he finds. “Okay. I can help too.”

Shane takes a second to consider if there are any ways Marlow could be uniquely helpful. He is more familiar with Cameron, which could come in handy. Before he can come up with anything, Marlow shrugs and says, “I could just kill him.”

Shane starts to nod his head, but Ilya chastises, “Marlow!” so he turns it into a shake before Ilya can see.

.~.

For a cruelly brief moment first thing in the morning, when Ilya has woken but hasn’t opened his eyes yet, he forgets everything that happened over the last few days. He rolls instinctively toward the warm body beside him, swinging an arm over it. Then he realizes that the other person is leaner than he was expecting, and they make a low, happy, unfamiliar sound when Ilya’s arm lands on them. 

Ilya forces his eyes open. The sight of the back of Shane’s head—black hair instead of blond—snaps him back to reality. The cold stone of anxiety that has taken up residence in his stomach makes itself known again.

Then the unfiltered absurdity of Shane fucking Hollander in his bed, mewling happily in his sleep, makes him snort out a laugh. He bedded Hollander, he came out to Marlow, and he’s breaking up with Cameron—what a fucking week.

Shane stirs. He stretches, breathing in deeply, and turns to face Ilya. He smiles a little bit, still blurry in sleep. “Hey,” he says quietly. 

“Hello,” Ilya responds. Without thinking, he brushes hair out of Shane’s face. “Sleep okay?”

Shane nods. “Your voice sounds better.”

“It feels better.” He hesitates, remembering how Shane waited last night for Cliff to go to bed in one of the guest rooms before going into Ilya’s room. “Marlow will probably get up soon. We should be up before then.”

They go out to the kitchen, where Ilya is finally allowed to cook for Shane for the first time. “Sorry I do not have fancy smoothie ingredients,” he says as he yanks the coffee pot off the maker and grabs two mugs from the cabinets. “I would have more fruit normally, but since I have been out of town, not right now.”

Shane is seated stiffly at the counter, watching Ilya with sharp eyes. “Are you sure your shoulder is okay? I can cook.”

“Chill out, Hollander.” He lifts his arm a few inches farther than he could before. “Is fine. See?”

Shane rolls his eyes.

Ilya pours their coffee. He slides one across the counter before grabbing the creamer from the fridge. He waits for Shane to put a dash into his coffee and then adds it to his own. 

Shane tilts his head when Ilya puts the creamer away and pulls a carton of eggs out. “No sugar?” he asks.

Ilya frowns and closes the fridge. “Do you want sugar?” he asks. Shane didn’t put sugar in his coffee once over the past few days. He seems like he would turn his nose up at the mere idea of it.

Shane’s eyebrows dip down for a brief moment before he corrects them. “No, but you usually do,” he says. 

Something tightens in Ilya’s chest. Every time Shane made him coffee in the cottage, he put out a small ceramic sugar bowl and spoon with it, and Ilya took it as implicit instructions to use it. Now that he’s back in a familiar environment, making it for himself, he reverted to the habit of leaving it out. 

“You’re right,” he says robotically. He searches in his cabinets for his sugar bowl and finds it shoved in the back of his spices. He used to put sugar in his coffee—so much that Svetlana would grimace and complain of tooth pain when she stole a sip—but after dating for a few months, Cameron started making comments about it—“you’d think a peak athlete like you would take better care of your body” and “do you really need those extra calories?” For a while, Ilya laughed and rolled his eyes and continued to dump it in, but eventually it exhausted him, and he realized Cameron had a point, so he started forcing down bitter coffee every morning.

He adds sugar, takes a sip, and starts making breakfast.

He cracks eggs into a frying pan, and while they sizzle, he thinks about all the tiny ways his life molded around Cameron. The foods he stopped buying to make room for Cameron’s favorites. The team-bonding events he didn’t go to so he could spend time with Cameron instead. The friends he cut off—like Marlow, who, despite it all, sat parked outside his house for hours, waiting with a patience that he’s usually entirely incapable of, desperate for some sign that Ilya was okay.

He wonders how long Marlow suspected he and Cameron were together—and that things were not going well—and held his tongue, waiting for Ilya to come to him when he felt ready. Fuck—Ilya does not deserve the people he has in his life and in his house. He’s not sure what he did—surely something in a past life because it can’t have been in this one—to end up with two deliriously loyal hockey players ready to throw down for him.

The concept of people he doesn’t deserve forces Ilya to think about Svetlana. He sucks in a sharp breath.

Ilya grabs a plate and slides the cooked eggs onto it. He sets it in front of Shane. “Eat. I need a cigarette,” he says, forcing a smile. 

Shane makes a face like he’s about to argue. “You shouldn’t smoke,” he says, but he adds, “Okay. Want me to clean up? Or are you going to eat when you get back?”

“Leave it. I’ll make Marlow food too when he gets up.”

Ilya grabs a pack of cigarettes from his room and goes out to the back patio, settling into an adirondack chair. He lights a cigarette shakily then navigates to Svetlana’s contact in his phone. He changes the name back from Sven to Sveta. 

He hesitates before tapping the call button. He wouldn’t blame her if she ignores his call, or if she already has him blocked. Maybe she’ll pick up just to shout at him for ignoring her for so long. On the second ring, he nearly hangs up, but then the call connects. 

There’s a second of silence. Svetlana’s voice is trepidatious as she says, “Ilya?”

“Sveta,” he responds, his voice catching halfway through. He feels tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. He hasn’t heard her voice in close to a year, and the sound of it makes him wish he could reach out and pull her close. He clutches the phone to his ear so hard that it hurts. 

“Ilya,” she says again, frantic now. “Are you okay? Did something happen?” she asks in Russian.

“I’m breaking up with Cameron,” he chokes out. It feels so much more real with each person he tells, and it’s getting a little overwhelming.

He never told her explicitly that they were together, but he didn’t need to. She was smart enough to see what was right in front of her: the lingering glances between them, the way Ilya became glued to his phone, and the bruises he failed to hide from her. 

“Okay,” she says determinedly, “Where are you?”

Ilya abandons his cigarette onto the ashtray on the ground. “Home. Boston.”

“Is he there?”

Ilya can hear her mind working from here. Yet another person whose love in action he can’t believe he’s a beneficiary of. 

“Boston, yes. My house, no,” he answers. “Cliff Marlow and Shane Hollander are here though, so I have attack dogs.”

He meant it as a joke, but Svetlana doesn’t seem to take it as one. “Okay—good. I am coming over.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour, okay?”

“Wait. Sveta,” he says before she can hang up. “I—I’m sorry. For…”

“Stop,” Svetlana says. “Don’t apologize right now. I’ll chew you out later, but…” She takes a deep breath. “I am so glad you called me. I have missed you.”

“Me too.” Ilya’s throat is already so tired and so sore and, now, so choked up. “I have missed you so much.” A sob threatens to surface, and he knows she knows him well enough to hear it.

“I’ll be there soon, okay? I’ve got you. We’ll figure this out together.”

After they hang up, Ilya relights his cigarette. He stares out at the trees surrounding his house. 

He’s always known he doesn’t deserve Svetlana; She is relentlessly loyal, loving, and patient with him. She held him after his mother died. She hated his father and brother on his behalf when he couldn’t bring himself to. She tried, on several occasions, to gently nudge him toward breaking up with Cameron. She gave him so many opportunities to change course and salvage their friendship, and he rejected them all, and still, she is rushing to his side to support him now.

Maybe Ilya was a saint in his previous life. That would explain it. 

The glass door slides open. Shane steps out, holding both of their coffee mugs. He freezes when he sees the tears drying on Ilya’s face. “Oh. I… thought I’d join you for the fresh air.”

“Sorry.” Ilya scrubs at his face, trying to erase the evidence. He ashes his cigarette and motions to the empty chair beside him. “You can.”

Shane sets Ilya’s coffee on the table between the chairs. “I don’t have to. Would you rather be alone?”

Ilya reaches out a hand toward him, and Shane takes it after casting a careful glance inside. “Please, stay,” Ilya says, surprising himself. Normally he would prefer to licks his wounds in private, but the reminder of Shane’s stable presence makes him desperate for it.

Shane smiles. “Okay.” He sits beside Ilya, sipping his coffee and looking around Ilya’s yard curiously. The sun illuminates his face. “This is nice.”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees, because this is the most relaxed he’s felt in his home in years, “it is.”

Chapter End Notes

I've set a precedent of posting very frequently, and I enjoy doing that. I want to warn you that I'm not going to be able to keep up that pace for now and will probably have longer gaps between chapters in this story and my other HR fic for a while. I WILL keep posting as often as I can because I’m having a lot of fun writing these. Without going into details, I've got some health stuff taking up a lot of my energy and brain space right now. Relatedly, if anyone has ever had to go on a low-iodine diet and has tips for not hating your life the whole time, I would love to hear those.

Chapter 6

Chapter Notes

If anyone makes fun of me for the chapter count going up... yeah fair enough.

Thank you for all the kind words and comments last chapter. I'm really enjoying writing this and hearing people's thoughts :)

Ilya drops the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray beside him and says, “My friend from Russia is coming over.”

“That’s good,” Shane responds, and he means it. Another person on their team, especially one who knows Ilya well, is a very good thing.

It’s starting to set in on Shane this morning that he has no idea how to handle a situation this dire. Outside of “murder Cameron Pollard,” he doesn’t know what would actually help Ilya. Ilya already took all the obvious practical steps before Shane even knew what they were up against, and now he seems to be working under the assumption that ignoring the problem will eventually make it go away. Shane doesn’t know what the actual best strategy is, but he knows that’s probably not it. 

Ilya sets his head back on the chair, looking at the lawn instead of at Shane. “Yes, so if you want to go, you don’t need to feel guilty about leaving me in Marlow’s clumsy hands.”

“Oh.” Shane looks down into his coffee. He tries not to seem disappointed, but he knows he’s failing. “Do you… want me to go?” He takes a long sip from his mug, trying to control the suffocating feeling taking over his throat. 

“I do not want to keep you from your relaxing vacation.” Ilya’s voice is tight. He still won’t look at Shane.

Shane looks through the glass door to check that Marlow hasn’t materialized in Ilya’s room before he reaches slowly across the gap between chairs and sets a hand on Ilya’s arm. “Hey,” he says, “I’ll leave if you want me to, but I’d rather stay.”

Ilya looks down at the hand, his face frustratingly blank. He licks his lips. “I don’t want to drag you into my mess.”

Shane laughs despite the tension thrumming through him. “I’m kind of invested now, to be completely honest, so…”

“I’d rather you stay too,” Ilya admits. His muscles tense under Shane’s hand like he’s just confessed to a horrible crime and is waiting for Shane to react. 

“Then I’ll stay.” 

Ilya finally smiles at him. It’s tight, but it’s something. Then he ducks his head and pecks a small kiss onto Shane’s fingers.

Shane moves slowly, leaning over the arm of his chair to kiss him gently. Ilya lets out a small sound of satisfaction, making Shane’s chest stutter. He loves that sound. He’s going to make that sound into his alarm, his ringtone, and his running playlist. He’s going to do whatever it takes to hear it as often as possible. 

Shand pulls his mouth back enough to speak into Ilya’s chin. “Do you want to go back into your room?” 

Ilya nods, his unshaven chin scratching at Shane’s cheek.

They stumble inside. Ilya closes his bedroom door and the blinds while Shane waits stiffly by the foot of the bed. When Ilya turns back to him, Shane is relieved to see that his earlier uncertainty has disappeared. “Come here,” Ilya says quietly, hooking a finger to beckon Shane. 

Shane shoves his hands into his pockets. “No, you come here.”

Ilya takes one step. He raises his eyebrows in a challenge. 

Shane can’t remember the last time he flirted with someone like this. In the frantic heat of his covert hookups—arranged online with a photo-less profile—the magic tends to get a little lost. He can barely make conversation  long enough with some of his regular hookups to fill the silence while he puts his shoes on.

Ilya runs out of patience and dives at him. They collapse onto the bed, Shane on his back and Ilya over him. Ilya’s hands explore Shane’s sides while they kiss. His fingers find Shane’s waistband, and he pauses long enough to ask, “Can I?”

“Please,” Shane whines, making Ilya smile against his lips. 

Once Shane’s bottoms are off, Ilya kisses down his stomach until he reaches Shane’s cock and takes it in his mouth. He looks up to check Shane’s face before he starts moving. 

“Oh, fuck,” Shane gasps. He wraps his hands in Ilya’s curls. He remembers that Marlow is still somewhere in the house and slaps a hand over his mouth. 

Ilya sucks him hard and fast. His thumbs rub along Shane’s hip bones. When Shane finishes, Ilya swallows before pulling away to grin up at him. He sets his chin on Shane’s thigh. 

“Fuck, Rozanov,” Shane breathes out.

“Was good?” Ilya asks, still smiling like he’s accomplished some great trick. 

Shane rolls his eyes. He puts a hand on Ilya’s chin and pulls to guide him back up to Shane’s side. “Obviously.” He kisses Ilya, and he can taste himself. Fuck. “Your turn.”

As he starts to shimmy down the bed, his hands gripping Ilya’s thighs, Ilya says quietly, “You don’t have to. Svetlana will be here soon.”

Shane can immediately tell by the controlled tone of Ilya’s voice that they’ve found one of those landmines he was worried about. He lifts his weight off of Ilya, pulling his hands back to his side. “Do you want me to?”

Ilya sits up on his elbows. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, looking just to the left of Shane’s face. “Obviously I want your mouth on my dick, Hollander. I’m just saying, it’s whatever. I won’t be upset if you don’t want to.”

“I would hope not,” Shane says before he thinks better of it. 

Ilya winces and starts to pull his legs out from under Shane. “Right. So. No worries. I am going to brush teeth.” He rolls off of the bed onto his feet, avoiding looking at Shane.

“Wait, Ilya.” Shane swallows and searches for the right thing to say. He feels uncharacteristically desperate as he spins around on his knees on the bed to reach out toward Ilya, stopping his path to the bathroom. “I want to make you feel good. I want to. Please? Can I?”

Ilya’s eyes are hungry. He licks his lips and nods. He shuffles forward until his hips are at the edge of the bed. 

Shane lowers himself on to his chest. He pulls down Ilya’s sweatpants. “Okay?” he asks. 

“Yes. Fuck. Please suck my cock,” Ilya groans. He’s watching Shane intently. 

Shane has never been one to half-ass a blowjob. He loves giving head, and he always gives 100% at the things he cares about. This time feels especially important, and he thinks in any other situation he’d be a little embarrassed by his own earnestness as he grabs the back of Ilya’s thighs and wraps his lips around him, but he wants Ilya to see how badly Shane wants to do this for him. 

Shane looks up as much as he can from his laying down position, watching Ilya close his eyes in pleasure. Ilya’s hands lay on top of each other on Shane's head, holding but not pushing. He mouths ‘fuck’ and makes that sound Shane was chasing.

Ilya pulls back before he comes and finishes in his own hand. 

“Fuck, Hollander,” he whispers, leaning down to kiss Shane, who scrambles up to his knees. “You’re so hot.”

“Loved sucking your cock,” he responds, because it feels important, and because it’s true. 

Ilya looks like he might be about to shove Shane onto his back, and Shane certainly isn’t going to stop him, but the sound of the doorbell makes them both freeze. 

Ilya sighs. He sets his forehead on Shane’s. “That will be Svetlana,” he says regretfully. “We will pick this back up later.”

.~.

Svetlana wastes no time on dramatics. She introduces herself to Shane as she kicks off her heels. Then she hugs Ilya and kisses both of his cheeks before stomping over to the couch. She waits impatiently for Ilya to follow her, her lips pursed. 

“Is now where you chew me out?” he asks nervously as he lowers himself onto the couch next to her. 

Shane sits on his other side. Ilya resists the urge to touch him.

“Not yet. First, we make plan,” Svetlana says. “But that is coming.”

“Oh! Hey!” Marlow says from the hallway. He’s in his boxers and nothing else, like he’s only just been woken up by the doorbell. There’s a hint of pink in his face as he says, “I’m Cliff.” He clumsily slicks back his hair.

Svetlana smiles thinly at him and says, “I know who you are.”

“Go put some fucking pants on,” Ilya barks, and Cliff scuttles back down the hallway. 

Svetlana sets her expensive, oversized purse on the cushion beside her. She pulls two binders out of it. She opens one, setting it on the coffee table in front of Ilya. “You’re going to hate this, Ilyushka, but remember that this is how I show love, yes?”

Ilya stares down at a picture of himself. It’s a selfie he and Svetlana took together at a club in Boston, years ago. He remembers this night. It wasn’t the first time Cameron made a bitter comment about Ilya and Svetlana hanging out, but it was the first time he put hands on Ilya about it. In the blue club lighting in the photograph, the red mark near his mouth is visible. 

There’s more pictures as he turns the page: a collection of paparazzi shots where there’s a spot of purple poking out from his sleeve or on his jawline. Most of them he’s pretty sure are actual hockey injuries. 

There’s also notes written in Svetlana’s handwriting. They’re dated and usually detail her observations of Ilya’s behavior. “October 11, 2015 - Tried to tell me black eye was from the game last night as if I didn’t watch the fucking game,” reads one. Another says, “April 14, 2016 - Butt/drunk (?) dialed me last night. Could hear Cameron shouting at him. Not picking up my calls today.” Shame eats at his guts. 

Everything is arranged chronologically and organized to tell a very clear narrative that Ilya thinks is a little overblown. He’s starting to understand why Cameron was so threatened by her. 

“I think this is… a little bit creepy, Sveta,” he says, flipping through the laminated pages. 

He becomes hyperaware of the fact that Shane is beside him and also looking at each page as Ilya reveals them. Shane’s hands are on his knees, gripping tightly, and his mouth is partially open. 

Marlow reappears and approaches, standing over the coffee table to see what everyone’s looking at. Ilya tenses, feeling claustrophobic suddenly.

“Well, I imagine you did not bother to collect any evidence yourself?” Svetlana asks in a prickly voice, setting the photograph collection to the side and laying out the other binder to reveal official-looking forms. “I think we probably have enough to get a restraining order, even without any police reports. Or we can try at least. Did you take any pictures of these injuries when they were fresh?”

“Oh,” Shane chimes in quietly, “no. Sorry. I… I didn’t think of that.” Svetlana’s gotten to him. 

“Why would we even do that?” Ilya grumbling. “I do not need evidence. I don’t need a restraining order. Everyone is acting like I am battered wife. Is just a bad breakup that I have been too lazy to do before.”

Shane’s body jerks. Ilya turns to see that Shane is looking at him with a horrified expression. “Ilya,” he says in the flabbergasted tone that only someone as morally righteous as Shane can pull off, “he strangled you. That’s not…” He pauses and makes brief eye contact with Svetlana before returning his gaze to Ilya’s. “He abused you. For a long time, it looks like.”

Something feral in Ilya’s heart begs to snap at Shane—to tell him that Ilya knows what abuse looks like, and this isn’t it. He watched it wear his mother down to nothing. It’s an unbelievable insult to her memory to equate what she went through—over a decade of systematically being stripped down to nothing—and Ilya stupidly, constantly, knowingly tripping Cameron’s temper. 

“That’s not…” he tries. “Hollander, just… No.” He resists the urge to smack the binder off the table. He does flip it shut, unable to stare at his own face anymore. 

Svetlana sighs. “Okay. Well, I won’t force you.” She pulls the binder back toward herself and flips through a few pages. “I had a feeling you would be a hardhead about this though, so here.” She flips it back around, and a checklist stares up at Ilya. The header reads “Am I in an abusive relationship?” 

Ilya has never wanted to shout at Svetlana before, but now he feels angry words itching at his throat. He swallows them. “This is stupid, Sveta,” he says, fighting to keep his voice flat so it doesn’t rise in volume. “You know I know…” 

He can sense that Shane has frozen beside him. Ilya wants to crawl out of his skin.

He looks at the paper without meaning to. Am I afraid to disagree with my partner? Does my partner’s temper scare me? Does my partner cut me off from friends and family or try to control who I can see? Does my partner follow or check up on me? Do I hide things so as to not upset my partner? Am I scared to say no to—

Ilya slams the binder shut again. Svetlana has to snatch her hand away to keep it from getting pinched. 

He thinks about how by the end of his mother’s life, she was so nervous about accidentally staying out too long that she stopped going out altogether. How if a bit of food in the fridge went bad before she could serve it, she would shove it to the bottom of the trash can, cover it with other rubbish, and then take the whole bag out to the dumpster, all so his father wouldn’t find out that she had let something go to waste. How, when she was so depressed that her body wouldn’t work, Ilya lied for her, pretending she had washed the clothes he laundered and prepared the evening tea he brewed. “She just laid down for a minute. She said her head hurt,” he would say while his father grumbled about his day at work. 

He thinks about the time when he was sixteen, that he skipped an optional evening skate to see Sasha. It was the only time he ever missed one, but his father found out, and snarled, “Always so lazy, just like your mother,” before he told Ilya to go pick out a belt. Ilya went over to Svetlana’s house after that time, and she dabbed at his back with an ice pack and swore under her breath. She knows he knows. 

Ilya stands abruptly. “This is ridiculous. I need a minute,” he croaks out. 

As he climbs over Svetlana’s legs to flee the room, he can sense everyone looking at each other, deciding who’s going to go after him, like he’s an unruly child who can’t be left unsupervised for too long. 

Apparently, Marlow is the sacrifice. “Wanna go for my run with me? It’ll be a short one,” he says. 

Ilya’s pretty sure if he says no, Svetlana or Shane will take a shot, and they’ll probably want to talk, so he nods. 

He lends Marlow some running clothes, and once they’re both changed, they start on a route that they’ve run dozens of times together. For most of the first half, neither of them speaks. The only sounds are their panting breath, the morning birds, and the ground under their feet.

Ilya shoves down memory flashes of stumbling through the woods, slides flapping under his feet, cold air tearing at his throat. He stares at a tree a few hundred feet ahead and studies it, trying to keep his mind occupied. 

“What do you think Shane Hollander and your hot Russian friend are talking about?” Marlow asks suddenly, panting. 

A laugh bursts out of Ilya. He pictures Shane and Svetlana perched awkwardly next to each other on the couch. “Me, probably,” he admits. “They both think I am wilting flower.”

Marlow side-eyes him. 

They reach their turnaround point, and he slows to a walk, looking out over the reservoir. “Wanna sit for a while before we go back?” Marlow asks. 

Ilya nods, and they sink down onto a bench facing the water. “Maybe Svetlana is flirting with Hollander,” he says after a long silence. “She thinks he is very hot.”

“Is he?” Marlow asks, and Ilya laughs again. 

“Yes, he is.”

“I heard that he might be gay.”

Ilya can’t stop himself from smiling. He drops his head so he won’t meet Cliff’s eyes on accident. “Oh yeah?” he responds. Based on Shane’s wary looks this morning, he wouldn’t want Ilya to confirm anything. 

“Yeah.” Marlow picks up a stick from the ground and snaps it in half, studying it. “He seems nice, huh?”

“Oh my God, Marlow, please stop whatever you’re doing. He is boring Montreal captain.”

Marlow shrugs. He tosses the stick pieces to the ground. “Better than Pollard, at least,” he grumbles. 

Ilya scowls, still looking down. He wants to storm off, but that means facing Svetlana again, so he stays put. “He is not big bad wolf you all act like he is.” He searches for the right words to cast light on Cameron—to make everyone understand that he’s more than the monster they’ve created in their heads, and that Ilya is not the useless damsel in distress they seem to think he is. “I hit him too, sometimes,” he admits. 

“Yeah, and I punched my stepdad in the face a few times. What’s your fucking point?” 

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“Because I’m not a fucking kid!” Ilya regrets shouting immediately. He stands and kicks a rock. “I’m big, grown hockey player who should’ve...” Left him? Beat the shit out of him back? Not pissed him off so much?

Marlow narrows his eyes, studying him. “So you think it’s okay to hit when you’re both adults?”

“Obviously that’s not what I’m saying, Marly. Don’t be stupid. I’m a man. Big, strong man. It’s not like that.” Ilya kicks another rock and watches it arc far away into the water. He can’t hear the splash. 

“Right…” Marlow picks at the paint on the bench. “Okay, so you’re just saying, like, it’s not abuse if it’s gay guys.”

“Stop twisting my words.”

“I’m just trying to understand! I’m slow; you gotta explain stuff to me. You know how it is.”

“Fuck off.” Ilya picks up another rock and chucks it. It hits a tree and drops to the ground. 

“I’m just saying. A lot of buff-ass gay guys at my gym. You’re saying it’s fine if someone strangles them?”

Ilya’s ears are ringing. He can’t think of anything to say. “Fuck you,” he bites. It was supposed to come out angry, but he only manages a breathy whisper. Fuck—he’s crying. He wipes at his face clumsily. 

Marlow leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Bits of hair fall on his face. “I know you want me to pretend not to care about this but…” He heaves out a deep breath. “I know you and Pollard go on vacation together the week before camp every summer—yeah, don’t look at me like that; You guys aren’t as sneaky as you think.” He rubs his forehead. “When you didn’t show up this year, and his hands were all fucked, and you weren’t picking up your phone, I thought…” 

The fight goes out of Ilya’s body. Cold understanding settles in his chest. “You thought I was dead.”

“Yeah.”

Ilya sinks back down onto the bench. His limbs feel heavier than they did a few moments ago. “I don’t understand why you would think that.”

“Because you haven’t been yourself for like a year, and I don’t know. I should’ve said something, but you were already pulling away, and I didn’t want to push you away more.” He hesitates before he adds, “I mean. That’s what happens eventually, right? If no one does anything?”

Ilya fights down a wave of nausea. He drops his head between his knees, taking careful breaths. He considers telling Marlow that they got really fucking close to that. He’s been trying to convince himself that Cameron would have let go of him eventually, when he realized how long he’d been squeezing, but if Ilya’s honest with himself, he’s not entirely sure that’s true. 

“I’m sorry,” is what he ends up saying instead. 

Marlow sets a hand on his back. “Hey—don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your super hot friend.”

Ilya sniffs and says, “You are my super hot friend, Marly.” He sits up and stands, composing himself. “If you make a move on Svetlana, I will kill you.”

“Dammit!” 

Marlow rises too, and they start jogging home.

When they get back, Svetlana and Shane are in the kitchen, laughing about something. Ilya looks between them suspiciously. “What is so funny?” he asks.

They both smile innocently at him. Svetlana slides a mug across the counter. “Definitely not pictures of you with that horrible haircut when you were ten. Here—drink tea.”

The tea is exactly how he likes it—dark enough to make a purist cringe, with a lemon slice on the rim. His throat tightens as he reaches for it. 

He thinks about her carefully preparing it for him. 

He thinks about her sitting at the table in her fancy apartment, painstakingly arranging evidence and government forms into binders so she would be ready for the day that he wanted out.

He opens his mouth to apologize, but he struggles to find words strong enough. She watches him for a moment then nods, saving him from having to speak it out loud. 

“Drink,” she says, instead of chewing him out and calling him an asshole who does not deserve her. “It will be good for your throat.”

Ilya drinks.

Chapter 7

As soon as Ilya and Marlow close the door behind them for their run, Svetlana turns to Shane and says, “I wasn’t aware you two were friendly.” 

There’s an edge to her tone that Shane doesn’t think he’s done anything to deserve yet. He feels himself squirm under her gaze and straighten his posture. From the last half hour alone, he understands that Svetlana is an important person in Ilya’s life. Making a bad impression on her—which he thinks maybe he already has somehow—seems like a very quick way to add to Ilya’s stress. 

“It’s—uh—kind of a crazy story,” he says, and Svetlana raises an eyebrow. He explains about looking out his window and finding Ilya crouched by the lake. He tells her about the injuries, and Cameron coming to the door, and how the picture of them together sent Ilya into a spiral. “He said Cameron would be really mad if he thought Ilya cheated on him.”

“Mm. Yes. He is very paranoid about that,” she says bitterly. She runs her hands along her thighs to smooth out her unwrinkled jeans. There’s a tightness to her that reminds Shane of his mother. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you and Ilya cheat?”

Shane’s mouth drops open. “I—” He stops. He sees no point in trying to lie to her. He wouldn’t be surprised if it resulted in another scrapbook of evidence somehow. 

“I see,” she says, and her voice has gone even colder. “Do I need to explain to you what an astronomically bad idea that is? This is a very bad time to expect anything of him.”

Shane tries not to frown and tugs at his sleeves anxiously. “It’s not like that. I don’t want anything from him.” Svetlana purses her lips and looks away from him. “I don’t,” he insists. 

Svetlana turns to face him again. “I hope that’s true. I expect better of Canada’s Golden Boy than to take advantage of someone in a vulnerable situation.” 

Shane thinks Ilya would lose his mind to hear her say that. He can almost hear the accented ‘I am not vulnerable’ that Ilya would grumble. 

“I’m not,” Shane assures her. 

At least, he doesn’t think he is, but he hasn’t really stopped to think about it until now. Has he unintentionally taken advantage of someone adrift in a traumatic situation just to fulfill the fantasy he’s had since he was seventeen? Shane was the one to initiate both of their hookups. He insisted on coming and then insisted on staying after Ilya suggested he should leave. It’s entirely possible that he’s been forcing this entire situation—because he does want something from Ilya, doesn’t he? He wants his touch and his small satisfied noises and his playful grins. 

And he can’t deny that Ilya’s withdrawn demeanor when Shane offered to blow him this morning revealed that even the ostensibly casual, no-strings-attached sex they’re having won’t be as uncomplicated or as untainted by Cameron as Shane hoped. Fuck. Shane was pushy then too. 

Shane resolves to be better—to not ask anything of Ilya. If Ilya wants to initiate, Shane certainly won’t turn him down, but he’ll wait for that to happen without pushing. He’ll be uncomplicated and steady. He’ll be whatever Ilya needs.

“I would still be here if we didn’t hook up,” he says with conviction. “I just want to help.”

Svetlana studies him, her eyes narrowed. Then she sighs and sits back, her posture relaxing. “Good. If you do anything to make this harder for him, I will kill you.” 

“I believe you,” Shane says, a nervous laugh breaking through. 

“Okay. You will be helpful then?”

Shane nods immediately. “Yes, of course. I’ll do whatever.”

Svetlana turns her body fully to face him. Her face has relaxed and is now overcome by exhaustion. She blinks slowly, taking a deep breath. “I am very scared for him,” she says in the tone of someone admitting to a crime. 

Shane’s stomach tightens. “He keeps saying it’s like… not that bad,” he says. 

Svetlana shakes her head. “He is stupid. And stubborn. And…” Her mouth twists. “His frame of reference is skewed.”

“Oh.” Shane’s stomach hurts.

He’s not stupid. He understood the implication of Ilya admitting that the foundation for abused children was something he cared a lot about. Shane knows how these things work—someone who has been hurt once is much more likely to be hurt again—but still, something about the realization that, for the entire time they’ve known each other and shaken hands in suits and stared each other down on center ice, Ilya’s been carrying this kind of violence around with him, hits Shane in the gut. 

Svetlana looks down at her hands in her lap. “I don’t know that Ilya. The… hunched shoulders, you know?.” 

Shane doesn’t know this Ilya either. He knows the version of Ilya that glides out onto the ice with his arms wide, shouting a jab at whoever is closest to him. He knows sharp, calculating gazes and clattering sticks and tormenting captains. 

He gathered from Svetlana’s binders that Ilya and Cameron have been together for a few years, at least as far back as sometime in 2014. Shane tries to recollect if he’s seen a change in Ilya since then, but their face-to-face time has always been so low, confined to faceoffs and stiff, polite greetings at award ceremonies, that Shane’s not sure if he would have noticed. 

He does remember one night, last season, at a club that his friend Rose dragged him out to after a home game against Boston. Half of the Raiders were there, and Shane subconsciously scanned the crowd for Ilya without letting himself admit he was doing it. Shane found him leaning against the bar, watching his friends dance with a stormy look on his face. As Shane watched, he checked his phone, and his face did something twitchy that ended in a shuttered expression. Then he went out onto the dance floor long enough to put a hand on Marlow’s shoulder, mutter something, and then disappear entirely for the night. Shane assumed at the time that it was bitterness over the loss, but now he wonders if Cameron was on the other side of the phone. 

Ilya seemed normal enough at the All Star game only a few months later—but now that Shane thinks about it, he had almost no interaction with Ilya off the ice. Shane replays the entire weekend leading up to the game and comes up with no Ilya sightings—not at the bar or the pool or the gym or any of the other places where he normally appears to make Shane’s breath catch. 

That’s fucking weird. 

He’s about to agree with Svetlana, but then she pinches the bridge of her nose and says, “No, I do. I do know this Ilya.” She shakes her head. “I know I am not making sense, but I just… I believe that whatever I have seen evidence of is only what Ilya has allowed me to see, and that makes me scared of what Cameron is capable of.”

Shane nods, swallowing with a tight throat. “What can I do?” he asks. 

“The most dangerous time for someone being abused is when they try to leave,” Svetlana says somberly. “He needs people by his side who are going to protect him and support him. He won’t ask for help, no matter how much he needs it.”

“I can be that,” Shane says immediately. “I will. I’ll do whatever I have to to keep him safe.”

“Even if he won’t have sex with you again?”

Shane recoils a little. The implication makes him feel dirty. “Of course.”

Svetlana stands and nods contentedly. She makes an intentional rolling back motion with her shoulders that reminds him of what Ilya does too when he’s trying to keep his emotions in check. “Good. Tea?”

Shane follows her into the kitchen. Svetlana is silent as she navigates the cupboards with ease, like she’s made tea a thousand times before in this house. She pulls out four mugs, spreading them out on the counter. 

 “So you must have known Ilya for a long time. You’re friends from Russia?” Shane asks to fill the silence.

“Yes. Since we were children.” Svetlana fills the electric kettle to the max fill line.

“That’s cool,” Shane says uselessly. “What was he like, as a kid?”

Svetlana turns on the kettle and smiles to herself thoughtfully. “When we were very young, he was… silly. He was very funny, even then. And kind. When we were in primary school, I was being made fun of for my hair because”—she motions to her huge, coily ponytail—“and I was crying about it, and he took some scissors and just… absolutely butchered his own hair.” 

Shane barks out a laugh at the image. “So, what, he’d get made fun of too?”

“I guess? Or maybe just to make me laugh? I am not entirely sure.” She shakes her head, smiling, as she tears open tea bag wrappers and sets the bags into mugs. She looks at Shane from the side of her eyes. “Would you like to see pictures?”

While the tea steeps, Svetlana pulls up a picture on her phone of a physical photograph. A young blond boy is grinning at the camera. His hair is choppy—some pieces short and prickly, others long and curly. His bangs are cut all the way to his hairline. Behind him, a young woman is looking down at him fondly with a hand on his shoulder. 

“Oh my God,” Shane says. “This is amazing.” 

Svetlana chuckles as she slices into a lemon. As if she knew exactly when Ilya and Marlow would be back, the door opens just as she notches a wedge onto the edge of one of the mugs. 

When Ilya enters the kitchen, he’s holding himself with less tightness in his body than when he left. The run appears to have done him some good. Shane feels himself relax a little.

Ilya frowns suspiciously as he looks between them and says, “What is so funny?”

.~.

Once Ilya has finished his tea, seated at the kitchen counter, Svetlana takes the mug from him. She sets it in the sink. “Are you ready to listen to me now?” she asks in Russian. 

Ilya nods. “Yes, I will listen,” he responds in English. He looks cautiously at Shane, sitting beside him, and then at Marlow, who’s standing hunched over the counter eating stale cereal, but neither of them seems annoyed by the words they can’t understand. 

Svetlana returns to English when she says, “Good.” She stands across the counter from him. “If you want to break up with Cameron in person, you will do it in public, and one of your hockey bodyguards will go with you.”

“Svetlana—”

“I’m serious.”

“I could go talk to him myself,” Marlow suggests around a mouthful of cereal. 

“You think I am stupid?” Ilya asks, raising an eyebrow. 

Shane smiles down at the counter. “I could go with Marlow,” he offers. 

Ilya takes the bait. “Oh—you think I am very stupid?” 

Shane laughs, and Ilya throws his spent lemon slice at him. It lands on the counter with a splat, and he reaches instinctively to clean up the residue it left behind, but Shane beats him to it, still smiling faintly.

“I will break up with my own boyfriend,” Ilya says. He runs a thumb around the rim of his mug. 

“Okay,” Shane says seriously. “I’ll go with you then.”

Svetlana has many more ridiculous ground rules, but Ilya negotiates, and they land on Ilya being allowed to go into whatever public place he’s meeting Cameron alone, but Shane will wait outside and come in to save his pathetic ass if too much time has passed. 

Ilya feels a little like he’s arming a bomb when he unblocks Cameron’s phone number and sends him a text. 

Later, Ilya drives himself and Shane to South End. The car ride is mostly silent. It’s obvious to Ilya that Shane is searching for the right thing to say and coming up empty. Ilya can’t think of anything good to say either.

Once they’re parked on the street outside the cafe, Ilya finds himself delaying getting out of the car. The phone charger needs to be untangled. The dashboard needs to be wiped down. Shane’s boring choice of music needs to be made fun of. 

“I think I am nervous,” Ilya blurts out. He hasn’t even really admitted it to himself until he says it out loud, but there’s no other explanation for the way his hands are shaking and each breath he takes feels thin. 

Instead of mocking Ilya like he has every right to, Shane nods. “I would be too,” he says. “The offer still stands for me to go in with you.”

Ilya shakes his head, even as his gut wants to say yes. “It will just make it worse.” 

What does he even think is going to happen? Cameron does not lose control in public. He stews, and he scowls, until he can get Ilya alone to unload the litany of sins he needs to atone for. Cameron won’t have a chance to do that here. This isn’t a nightclub, where they will stagger their entrance to the bathroom, and Ilya will come out with Cameron’s drink down his front and blood in his mouth. This is a well-lit cafe in the middle of the day. Ilya will go in, break it off, and leave. And that will be that. 

Fuck. 

“Okay,” Ilya mumbles to himself and then shoves the car door open before he can stop himself. 

“Fifteen minutes!” Shane shouts just before Ilya shuts the door. Fifteen minutes—how long Svetlana said he’s allowed to talk to Cameron on his own before Shane has to go check on him. Like a fucking child. 

Ilya stomps down the street, relieved to let annoyance blanket over his anxiety. He forces himself not to hesitate before he shoves open the door to the cafe and steps inside.

It’s busy, loud with the sounds of people ordering drinks, making drinks, and chatting instead of drinking their drinks. A child darts dangerously in front of Ilya’s legs. Someone shoves past him to get to the exit. 

He looks around a few times before he finds Cameron sitting at a small table in the back corner. He makes for a pathetic image, slumped in a chair too small for him, hands wringing in his lap. There are heavy, dark bags under his eyes. 

Ilya takes a deep breath and shoves his shaking hands into his sweatshirt’s front pocket before weaving around people to cross the cafe and slide into the seat across from Cameron. There are two coffee cups and an untouched croissant on the table. 

Cameron forces a sad smile. When he pushes his greasy bangs away from his face, Ilya notices a deep gash down the front of his hand. Ilya thinks about his own broken nail and mentally lines them up. 

Cameron’s hands around his throat. Ilya grasping at them desperately. His lungs screaming for oxygen. The chain of his mother’s necklace digging sharply into his skin.

He winces. He feels like he’s underwater, experiencing the cafe through a filter. The muffled background sounds fade into nothing as he focuses on Cameron, who looks like he’s a mile away through a telescope instead of close enough to touch. 

“Hey,” Cameron says breathily. He shoves a coffee and the croissant toward Ilya. The screech of the plate against the table snaps Ilya’s world back into clarity. The din of the cafe is suddenly overwhelming. 

“I got you these. It was the last chocolate croissant, so I didn’t want to wait and it would be gone when you got here.” It’s a thoughtful gesture, one that Ilya would normally beam at and make a joke about being spoiled. 

“Okay. Thank you.” When Ilya picks up the disposable coffee cup, it wobbles in his trembling hand, and he knows Cameron sees it. 

He takes a sip. There’s no sugar. He sets it back down. 

A brittle silence falls between them. Cameron’s expression is unsure, and a little bit desperate. Ilya realizes that Cameron’s waiting for him to try the croissant, so he does. “Is good. Thank you,” he says unconvincingly. It could be the best chocolate croissant in the world, but all Ilya can taste is ash.

Cameron nods. “Good. Good. Listen—I…” He drops his voice, leaning halfway over the table. “I’m so sorry about the other night. I can’t believe I lost control like that.”

Ilya finds he can’t look up from the table. His mouth forms an ‘it’s okay’, but he cuts it off before he can say the words. “You could have killed me,” he says instead and braces himself, looking up at Cameron through his eyebrows. 

“Christ, Ilya, of course I wouldn’t have killed you. I love you.” Cameron’s eyes sweep across the restaurant for anyone approaching. “And I promise I’m gonna fix this,” he continues. “I found a therapist in Buffalo, and I made an appointment for when I get home.”

Ilya was expecting a more explosive response. He blinks a few times to recalibrate. “A therapist?” he asks, finally tearing his gaze upward. His eyes don’t make it up to Cameron’s face, settling on his hands. Right now, they’re flat on the table, palm down, not moving.

“Yeah, for anger management. This was a huge wake up call. I need help. I know that.” He motions toward Ilya’s throat. It’s covered by his sweatshirt pulled high, but they both know what’s there. “I don’t want to hurt you. It kills me to know how much I must have scared you.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Ilya lies for some reason. He tells himself not to be scared now either. He finally looks up to meet Cameron’s eyes. “And that is good that you’re… getting help.” Ilya’s stomach forms knots as he tries to force out what he needs to say. “But I think we should break up.” All his muscles tense in anticipation of Cameron’s reaction. 

Cameron’s face falls. His eyes widen, and he looks for a moment like he might cry. Then he pulls his shoulders back and folds his hands on the table. To Ilya’s surprise, he nods once. “That’s fair,” he says. 

Then his face twists in a way that makes Ilya’s heart speed up. “You have Shane Hollander now, right? Why would you want some stupid football player on a shitty team?”

“Cam, no, that’s not…” Ilya reaches out a hand across the table unthinkingly. Cameron draws back, his eyes darting around the cafe. Ilya jerks his hand down into his lap. “It’s not like that. I’m breaking up with you because”—his voice sticks in his throat—“I can’t keep doing this. You fucking strangled me.”

“Ilya,” Cameron hisses. “Sh!” He does another scan of the room. “Maybe we should go talk about this at your place, or my hotel, where it’s more private?”

Ilya can feel his shoulders curling and chin tucking. “We don’t have anything to talk about,” he says to the table.

“Ilya. Please. It was one time. It won’t happen again.”

It won’t happen again. Yeah, Ilya’s heard that before. He doesn’t respond. 

Cameron sits back in his seat, sliding his hands down from the table into his lap. “What do you want me to do? I’ll do it. I’ll spend every day in anger management.” He waits a beat before he adds, “I’ll come out.”

Ilya looks up abruptly. “What?”

Cameron nods empathetically. He slides a hand across the table toward Ilya. “If that’s what you want, I’ll do it. Please, baby. We could come out together. And we could get married so you never have to go back to Russia. And I swear I’ll be a better husband than the boyfriend I’ve been.”

Ilya stares at the hand. Tears start to prick at the corners of his eyes. Everything he has wanted for years is being laid out in front of him. The love. The commitment. The safety. 

Why couldn’t Cameron have done this a week ago? Why couldn’t he have made the effort to be better before he changed the way Ilya will look at him forever—before other people knew and would be disappointed in Ilya if he caved? He imagines Shane’s face falling when Ilya tells him that, actually, everything’s fine and he can go back to Canada because Ilya’s going to go get hitched. 

Fuck. 

Ilya puts his hands over his eyes, hyperaware of the tears starting to fall and the other people in the cafe. He pulls up the hood on his sweatshirt to try to block his face. “Cam,” he chokes out, his voice cracking, “I can’t— I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

Cameron sighs and takes his hand back. “Okay. I get it,” he says, sounding sincere. “I do. I’m still going to try though. I’m going to get better, and I’m going to show you that I can be someone you think deserves you. Just… please don’t block me again? Even if you don’t want me anymore, you’re my best friend and… This is gonna be really hard, so I could still really use your support if you don’t hate me now.”

“Of course. Of course.” Ilya finds himself nodding before he’s even fully processed what Cameron is saying. “Cam. I’m really glad you’re getting help. I think you’ll be a lot happier if you work through some of your shit.”

Cam nods again, and he’s smiling sadly. “Okay. Thanks, Ilya.” He sits back in his chair, watching Ilya. “Shit. I guess this is it then.”

“Yeah. I guess so.” 

Ilya stands, and Cameron does too. Ilya tenses, but then Cameron sticks out his hand to shake. Ilya takes it. 

“See ya around, Rozanov,” Cameron says jokingly.

“Later, Pollard,” Ilya teases back, and then—just like that—he walks out of the cafe, his legs shaking beneath him. 

When Ilya gets back into the driver’s seat of his car, Shane perks up and says, “That was fast.”

Ilya slumps on his seat and takes a long, deep breath before he answers. “Yes.”

“How did it go?”

“Fine.”

Ilya starts the car and begins to pull out of the parking space. The nerves are finally leaving now, and they’re leaving behind exhaustion.

“Fine?” Shane parrots. 

“Yes, it was fucking fine, Hollander,” Ilya snaps. He regrets it immediately as Shane draws back, looking hurt. 

Fuck. He’s being an asshole. 

“He took it very well,” Ilya adds, trying to adjust his tone to something softer. 

“Just like that?” Shane sounds incredulous. 

Ilya has to admit he’s surprised too. It almost doesn’t feel real. 

He’s tried to break up with Cameron twice before this. The first time ended with Cameron crying on his knees, begging for forgiveness, and the second ended with Ilya doing the same. “I just don’t know how I’ll live without you,” Cameron told him tearily that time, curled into a ball on his couch while Ilya packed his bag. “I’m scared of what I’ll do to myself when you leave.” Ilya saw flashes of cold hands and open eyes and empty pill bottles, and he stayed.

Fuck. 

Cameron is going to go to therapy now, Ilya reminds himself. He’s going to get help for the rage and the mood swings and the deeply ingrained self-hatred that Ilya has witnessed. He’ll be okay. He doesn’t need Ilya to stick around to keep him from being a danger to himself. 

He’s not Ilya’s problem anymore. He’s not. 

“Yes,” Ilya finally grinds out. “I was expecting more… arguing, but I guess he will be okay.”

“Are you okay?” Shane asks. 

Ilya nods automatically before he’s even considered it. His hands are still vibrating, and his chest feels cold, but he does feel a touch lighter, like he passed off some weight to Cameron when they shook goodbye. He looks over at Shane, who is watching him patiently. “Yes,” he says, reaching out a hand to rest on Shane’s thigh and tether himself to the human warmth, “I think I am okay.”

Chapter 8

Chapter Notes

hey everyoneeee. This like tripled in hits overnight so that's crazy. Did this fic hit twitter or something? Welcome to all the new readers and hello to all the returning ones. Love y'all

In Ilya’s nightmares, he’s at Shane’s cottage. He’s staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the trees. It’s dark outside, and he knows with impossible certainty that his mother is in the woods. He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he knows that if he searches hard enough, he’ll find her. 

He bursts out the back door and into the suffocatingly silent wilderness. He can hear only his own feet slapping in his slides and the swish swish of his mother’s nightgown moving past his childhood bedroom. He darts between tree trunks, stumbling over himself, for what feels like hours. 

He never sees his mother, but if he reaches out, sometimes he can feel the ghost of silk. It disappears if he tries to hold on. 

And then, with no warning, she’s gone. The sound of her movement, the warmth of knowing she’s near, Ilya’s certainty—they’re all gone. “Mama?” he tries to call out, but his voice won’t work. He tries to clear his throat, but it only closes up more violently, tightening until he can’t breathe. He gasps and scratches at his neck, and he thinks he might be crying, but he is sure that he’s dying. 

Then he wakes up. His eyes snap open, and he gasps in stale nighttime air. 

It never wakes Shane. After a few nights of this, Ilya finds himself glaring resentfully at the other side of the bed, resisting the urge to shake Shane awake and demand to know what he’s playing at—because Shane’s still here, still sleeping in Ilya’s bed and taping up his shoulder and laughing at Ilya’s derisive jokes, but he has pulled away from Ilya completely. He sleeps on the very edge of the bed, his arm dangling off like it’s trying to reach the floor. He dodges Ilya’s touches. When Ilya dares give him a secret, suggestive look, Shane smiles stiffly and turns away to find some task that suddenly needs doing. 

It’s driving Ilya insane because he can’t figure out what he did wrong. He started a day earlier this week sucking Shane’s dick and ended it with an ocean of king-sized mattress between them—and something during that day made Shane stop wanting him. Maybe it was the temper tantrum over Svetlana’s carefully curated binders. Maybe it was the binders themselves and all the proof of Ilya’s weakness that Shane saw. Maybe it was Ilya’s display of cowardice in the car as he worked up the nerve to end things with Cameron, or his misdirected meanness afterward. 

Maybe it was an accumulation of all these things. Ilya doesn’t know. All he knows is Shane hasn’t wanted to touch him in days.

Ilya rolls over to face the wall. He tries to go back to sleep, but he just stares at the abstract art he hates until the sun lights up the room. 

.~.

For the next few days, Shane continues to hang around Ilya’s house. Marlow and Svetlana come and go as much as their lives allow and they all wait for something to happen. Shane isn’t entirely sure what he’s expecting. Cameron bursting through the door? A threatening call on Ilya’s phone? 

Nothing even close to the catastrophic fallout that Shane was expecting comes about. What happens is they pass the time going for runs as a group—Ilya and Marlow race ahead, trying to beat each other to the halfway point—, watching movies—Ilya and Svetlana introduce Shane and Marlow to the best and weirdest of Slavic cinema—, and preparing meals together—Shane tries and fails to convince Marlow to try a tofu scramble. Their time together is nice in a way that Shane wasn’t expecting. He thinks this is probably what all the sleepovers that his classmates had growing up were like—the ones he either wasn’t invited to or couldn’t go to because of early morning practice or tournament travel. It’s a kind of easy-going companionship that he’s never had outside of the locker room before. 

It’s fun, for the most part, except for the moments when they all suddenly remember why they’re there—when Marlow slams a cupboard too hard and Ilya stiffens, his shoulders hitching up; or when Ilya gets a notification that the wrong code has been entered at the front door, and they all freeze with their breaths held, until Ilya’s house cleaner calls him to ask to be let in; or when Ilya reaches up to retrieve tea from the top cabinet and hisses, dropping his arm to massage his shoulder. 

By now, Ilya is mostly physically healed. He still winces if he lifts his arm too quickly, but Shane thinks it’s healing steadily enough that they don’t need to worry. The bruises on his face are gone, and the ones on his neck are faded to a sickly yellow that’s easy to miss. 

At the end of the week, Marlow has to travel to shoot for a commercial. “I’d cancel, but there’s gonna be a lot of models there,” he tells Ilya regretfully, “and also my agent said I’m not allowed.”

The next day Svetlana is called away to close a business deal. She hovers anxiously at the door, her hand resting on her suitcase handle. “I can tell them to try to handle it without me,” she says. 

Ilya shakes his head and reaches to open the front door for her. “It will be fine. Go do your job instead of babysitting me.”

Svetlana chews on her bottom lip, looking over Ilya’s shoulder at Shane. “He’s staying, yes?” she asks. 

Shane nods, but before he can speak, Ilya says, “Yes. Yes. Hollander will continue to stand guard like uptight Rottweiler. Do not worry.”

Svetlana gives Ilya a kiss on the cheek, dips her chin at Shane, and leaves, closing the door softly behind her. 

Shane and Ilya are left standing quietly in the entryway. Ilya watches Svetlana’s car crawl down the driveway then turns to Shane and says, “You do not actually have to stay just because Svetlana said so.”

Shane shrugs. “I don’t have a shoot until next week, so I could stay,” he says carefully. He tries to decode if this is Ilya’s roundabout way of telling him to get out of his house. “What do you want?”

Ilya frowns at him, his face hardening like that was an extremely unsatisfactory answer. 

Shane knows he’s probably on Ilya’s bad side right now, and he thinks maybe he should just go. For the last three nights, Ilya has tried to come on to Shane. It hasn’t been explicit, but he’s shifted his weight toward Shane and studied his lips in a way that Shane would have to be an idiot to miss. He knows that Ilya is waiting for him to take the bait and dive in, but Svetlana’s words keep bouncing around his head. 

“If you want to go, just go,” Ilya snaps. He pushes past Shane, back into the living room, and starts cleaning up the remains of having company. He stubbornly avoids looking at Shane. 

Shane watches him, stiff, and tries to find words. “I… I want to know what you want,” he says so quietly he’s worried Ilya might not have heard him—but then Ilya freezes in the middle of reaching for a crumpled napkin. 

Ilya’s jaw clenches, and his eyebrows raise testily. “What I want, Hollander, is for you to stop looking like the thought of touching me disgusts you.”

Shane is shaking his head before Ilya’s even done talking. “That’s not…” He replays the past few days while he watches Ilya carry a plate to the kitchen. “I didn’t mean for it to seem like that.”

Ilya slams the plate down hard into the sink. “For what to seem like that? For your disgust to be so obvious?” He spins around, glaring at Shane. “Did white-knighting get boring? Or did you finally realize I am not worthy of fucking Shane fucking Hollander?”

Shane takes a step toward the kitchen before stopping himself. “No. Rozan—Ilya, that isn’t fair.”

Ilya sucks in his cheeks, watching Shane silently for a few moments. “Fair?” he deadpans. 

“Yes! You don’t get to be mad at me for trying to… do the right thing! I do want you to touch me. Probably too much, more than is okay for me to be thinking about right now.”

“Okay for you to… What?” Ilya sets his hands on the counter, his face morphing from righteous anger into confusion. 

Shane approaches the other side of the counter. “I just…” He sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. A few weeks ago, he thought he would go to the grave never admitting that he ever looked at Ilya Rozanov twice, but he says, “I’m gay, right?”

Ilya scoffs. “Yes, I’m aware.”

“And you’re… you. So—I’ve thought about… wanting to have sex with you before this. And—I don’t want to be pushing something on you that I’ve wanted for a long time, when you’re in… a vulnerable time.”

Shane watches Ilya’s face as he processes each part of what Shane said. He waits. 

“A vulnerable time?” Ilya says finally. Of course that’s what he would fixate on, out of everything Shane just admitted. 

“I mean, yeah,” Shane sighs desperately. 

Ilya purses his lips. “Svetlana said something to you.” Shane nods, and Ilya rolls his eyes dramatically. “She thinks I have brain damage? That I cannot decide for myself if I want to suck cock?”

“She just—she’s worried about you. She said I should be careful, because of everything going on. Maybe if things were different, you wouldn’t have ever wanted to hook up with me.”

“Oh my God,” Ilya moans. He folds his arms on the counter and hunches to drop his head onto them. He grumbles something in Russian then rights himself. “Do you remember the night after our draft, in the hotel gym?” he asks exasperatedly.

Oh yes, Shane remembers. He remembers Ilya’s tilted smile, his sinewy hands shaking the water bottle at him, the way Shane’s heart responded to Ilya’s mouthed “more”. He nods. 

“I wanted you then, Hollander. I had to stop myself from pouncing on you right there on gym floor.”

Shane falters. He replays his memories of that night, and it makes him feel incredibly stupid. Nearly ten years of life experience later,  Shane finally realizes there was meaning to the way Ilya’s eyes fixated on him, taking in every detail of him, and the way Ilya winked at him. “Oh my God.” Shane rubs a hand on the side of his face. “I was so fucking oblivious, wasn’t I?”

One side of Ilya’s mouth tugs up into a smile. “You were checking me out too, then?”

“Yeah, I was. Maybe I didn’t really know it at the time, but I was. And when we did that shoot for CCM? I couldn’t fucking focus, because I was so into you.”

Ilya looks less enthused by that than Shane was expecting. He nods slowly, directing his gaze down at the counter. He opens his mouth, and then closes it. 

“What?” Shane prods. 

“Nothing,” Ilya responds, shaking his head. He smiles. “Now that we have established we were both horny teenagers for each other, can we have sex again?”

Shane swallows. Every nerve in his body itches to say yes yes yes. Ilya is watching him with slightly hooded eyes, and he’s wearing a sweater with cutoff sleeves so his arms are out, and Shane wants to touch him. 

“Okay,” Shane says finally, “but tell me how to… not be complicated. Tell me how to be what you need right now, and not more.”

Ilya tilts his head, inspecting Shane like Shane inspected the abstract art on the wall a few days ago. He huffs out a laugh. “We can have sex without being complicated, yes? It does not have to be anything more. Is what you want?”

Shane nods. “If you do, yes.” His heart is racing. His dick is pathetically twitching to attention just at the thought of it. 

Ilya grins now, and he pushes away from the kitchen counter. “Show me you want it.”

Shane doesn’t need to be told twice. He doesn’t even think before he’s rounding the kitchen counter and dropping to his knees. The satisfied smile on Ilya’s face spurs him on, and he reaches for Ilya’s waistband. 

.~.

It becomes a lot easier to not think about Cameron when Ilya is focused on fucking Shane Hollander in every room of his house. Having sex with Shane is simple: Shane begs for pleasure, touch, direction—and Ilya gives it to him. It’s exciting; it’s surprisingly natural; and most importantly, it’s new.

Every encounter, every surface that they touch, feels like rewriting the history of his house, which he realizes now has become a museum to some of the worst days of his adult life. When he hands Shane a glass of water to hydrate—after making him come untouched—he doesn't think, for once, of the loud shattering against the wall beside his head—the sound of a set of six becoming five. He bends Shane in half on the couch and memorizes the needy sounds he makes instead of thinking about the time Ilya said, “Wait, Cam, you know I don’t like—” and then just shut up and tried to relax against the cushions, because Cameron’s temper had been bowstring taut all day and was bound to snap at any moment. He forgets about how he stood in the shower for fifteen minutes afterward, face under the water so he couldn’t be sure if he was crying or not—and instead he commits to memory the image of Shane, hair dripping into his eyes, knees red from the stone flooring, eyes wide and eager. 

Ilya doesn’t think about Cameron—not when he has Shane fucking Hollander sitting next to him on the porch in his boxers, watching the sunset and wrinkling his nose sassily at Ilya’s cigarette. He doesn’t. 

The only downside of Ilya and Shane’s few days alone together, which they spend fucking more than talking, is that it can’t last forever. Shane has to leave eventually. He packs slowly, rambling about the commercial he’s supposed to do for Reebok, and the one after that for some cologne that Ilya’s sure Shane doesn’t actually wear or give a shit about. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to see if Marlow or Svetlana can come back?” Shane asks as he flips his suitcase shut and yanks at the zipper. 

Ilya watches him from the edge of the bed. “I will be fine.” He gestures toward the rest of the house. “If big bad ex-boyfriend was hiding in dark corner, I think we would have found him by now.”

He didn’t tell Shane that Cameron texted him—or that Ilya responded. He knows that Shane would overreact. Shane would see it as a direct threat, rather than Cameron genuinely needing support from the person who knows him best.

Shane shrugs and says, “Okay. Okay. Will you let me know if anything happens, though? I have a lot of stuff lined up before preseason, but I could try to come back.”

Ilya sighs dramatically. “You are just sad because you know you will miss my dick.” He leans forward and looks up at Shane from the tops of his eyes. 

Shane licks his lips. God—he is so easy that it drives Ilya insane sometimes. It’s a tragedy that he hasn’t been doing this for the last ten years. 

Over the last few nights, after he’s woken with his chest heaving and mind racing in the early hours of the morning, Ilya has let himself wonder what things would be like if he had followed through with trying to seduce Shane all those years ago. His confidence that Shane would have rejected him, which has been how he’s soothed the regret, is shaken now. Maybe they would have gone back to Ilya’s or Shane’s hotel room and had awkward, halting, inexperienced sex. Was Good Boy Hollander a virgin back then? Would Ilya have gotten to show him the ropes? 

And what would they have done afterward? Never spoken again? Continued to meet up in secret like Ilya would eventually do with Cameron. Fuck—would he ever have started dating Cameron?

Ilya shoves the thought down. Shane is climbing into his lap and pushing Ilya’s chest so he falls back onto the bed. Ilya reaches for his ass automatically, and Shane lets out a desperate whimper that makes Ilya forget that anyone exists but the two of them.

“How long until you have to leave?” Ilya asks. He doesn’t care about the answer. He’s already pulling at Shane’s shirt.

"Long enough."

Chapter End Notes

I wanted to have the texts in this chapter look nice so I did all the html stuff and OH MY GOD. I'm a backend developer and good god I have a new respect for all my frontend sisters. That was the most tedious thing I've ever done in my life

anyway, this is a shorter chapter but the next one is probably gonna be fat so bare with me. ALSO sorry I’ve been bad about responding to comments. I’m honestly overwhelmed with the response to this story but I’m gonna try to be better bc I love chatting (with yall and in general)

Chapter 9

Ilya glides to center ice with a playful grin on his face, and Shane has to swallow his own nervous smile as he waits for him. In the months since he last saw Ilya in person, Ilya’s bruises have all faded, and his shoulder is healed, based on the effortless way he’s holding himself. He looks like the version of Ilya Rozanov that Shane knew before this summer, and he has the mischievous energy of his usual self too. 

“Hollander,” Ilya says. It’s so close to the tone he normally takes with Shane on the ice, but there’s something a little softer there—or maybe Shane’s imagining it. 

“Rozanov.” 

“Have a good summer?” Ilya asks—the cheeky asshole. “Very relaxing?”

Shane rolls his eyes. He watches Ilya place his stick on the ice before setting his own down. “It was eventful,” he responds levelly, watching the referee hold out his arm. “Yours?”

Ilya smirks. “Mm. Mine was eventful also.”

They maintain eye contact as they both bite their mouth guards into place. The puck drops. Shane sweeps it first, and Ilya makes a dissatisfied grunt before propelling away. 

The game is like any other before he and Ilya hooked up. Ilya is relentless, and so are the rest of the Raiders. Something about the excitement of the early season, combined with the fact that this is the first time Montreal and Boston have been matched up on the schedule, has everyone’s energy amped up to eleven. 

The Montreal crowd is louder than usual too, reacting to every movement like it’s a gamebreaker. When Ilya slams Shane into the boards, smiling goofily at him, they ooh, and then it turns to boos when he slides the puck out from under Shane’s stick, races down the ice on a breakaway, and scores. 

Shane manages to match his point right before the end of the first period, but both teams’ defenses ratchet up their intensity when they return from intermission, and no one gets anything in the goal for the rest of the game. 

In overtime, Boston scores. It isn’t Ilya, but one of his wingers, who Ilya passes to without looking while his eyes are locked on Shane’s. As the buzzer sounds, Ilya pulls off his helmet and smirks at Shane for half a second. Then he winks before skating away to celebrate with his teammates. Shane swallows and forces his mouth to stay in a flat line.

Hayden approaches him, swearing. They drift toward the boards together.  “God—Rozanov wants to get under your skin so bad. I hate that asshole,” Hayden grumbles as they stumble into their locker room. 

Shane doesn’t tell him that the playful eyes said, ‘I’ll see you later,’ and not whatever offensive taunt Hayden interpreted them as. He doesn’t tell him that the wink made Shane’s breathing pick up. He definitely doesn’t tell Hayden that he’s already thinking about what he and Ilya are going to do later, alone in his apartment, and that he’ll probably drop to his knees in front of Rozanov at the first opportunity. 

There’s something about holding this secret that is more exciting than he expected. It’s terrifying, yes, but less terrifying than when he kept the fact that he’s gay locked away in a safe, convinced no one would ever be able to know and still want to play with him. That secret was soul crushing; This secret is, if he’s being completely honest with himself, fun. The rest of the Metros would be furious if they knew, and they can absolutely never find out—but if they did, and they hated him for it, at least it would be because of something he did, and not who he is. 

Shane nods as he pulls his skates off. “Yeah, he’s such an asshole.”

Later, Shane leads Ilya up the back staircase of his apartment complex, his heart pounding into his throat. He’s been looking forward to this all day—all week, all month—but now that it’s happening, and Ilya is in his home, he’s a little dizzied by the scandal of it. 

They haven’t seen each other in months, not since Shane drove away from Ilya’s house after a days long sex bender that he’ll probably spend the rest of his life trying to recreate the high of. They’ve texted a little in the interim, mostly light-hearted stabs at each other and sexting, but they haven’t really discussed what happened—at Shane’s cottage or afterward. 

“What? No congratulations?” Ilya asks once they’re inside.

“Fuck you,” Shane grumbles halfheartedly. 

Ilya laughs as he leans down to tug his shoes off. He seems good, Shane observes contentedly. He’s smiling for real, and his shoulders aren’t hunched in tiredly, and his eyes are soft as he looks around the apartment. It’s a stark contrast to the Ilya that showed up at his cottage, and it’s even an improvement from the last time they saw each other, when Ilya seemed mostly okay but still worn down. 

“Is that a request?” Ilya asks. He walks toward Shane, backing him up until Shane’s butt hits his dining room table. 

The awkward, trepidatious part of Shane, that has never brought a hookup to his place before, fumbles over what to do next. He considers offering Ilya an apartment tour before they get started, or getting him a glass of water, whatever pleasantries someone is supposed to do when the sex is casual but not anonymous. 

He’s saved from having to do any of that by Ilya kissing him. Shane lets out a surprised mmph sound before melting into it. Ilya lifts him to sit on the table. Shane separates his legs, and Ilya settles between them. Ilya wraps both arms around Shane’s back to pull him impossibly closer until their belt buckles clink together. “Where do you want me?” Ilya whispers into Shane’s ear. 

Ilya shifts his weight forward, tipping Shane backward a little bit so he’s dependent on Ilya’s grip to stay upright. His thigh rubs against the bulge in Shane’s jeans. “Fuck—I don’t care. Just fuck me,” Shane grinds out. He reddens when his voice trails off into a whimper. 

Ilya fucks him on the table. The legs wobble underneath them, sometimes so much that Shane’s breath catches with worry—but Ilya isn’t bothered by it. If anything, it seems to spur him on that Shane wriggles trying to stay in place, muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Ilya.”

After they’ve both finished, Ilya pulls out and folds his body over, resting his forehead on Shane’s chest. His warm, panting breath pulls goosebumps from Shane’s skin. “Fuck, Hollander,” he mutters. 

Shane sets his hand in Ilya’s hair, rubbing his scalp languidly. “I’m gonna have to bleach the whole table.”

Ilya laughs into Shane’s chest before standing. “Shower?” he asks, reaching out a hand to help Shane up.

They rinse off, make out in the shower, and then meander into Shane’s kitchen for dinner. Shane slides a Coke across the counter to Ilya before he pulls salad ingredients out of the fridge. 

“So—uh—how was the rest of your summer?” Shane asks. “You seem… good.”

Ilya sets an elbow on the counter and rests his face on his hand. “Yes, was good. It actually was very relaxing.”

“You didn’t play like someone who spent the last month relaxing,” Shane grumbles bitterly as he starts ripping up lettuce into a bowl. 

Ilya grins at him. “Ah—you will get me back next time, I’m sure.” He looks down at his hands. “But, no, I mean… there is much less to worry about all day as a single man, yes? So, relaxing.” He shrugs. 

“Oh.” Shane tries not to frown. He’s never been in a real relationship—the closest he’s probably ever gotten was his high school girlfriend—but he’s pretty sure they’re not supposed to stress a person out that much. His burning anger at Cameron, which ebbed from neglect during the time away from Ilya, reignites. “Well, that’s good. Cameron hasn’t bothered you at all?” 

Too much time passes without Ilya responding. Shane pauses and says, “Wait—has he?”

Ilya shrugs again. He looks around the kitchen casually and sniffs before he says, “He texts sometimes, but is not like that.”

Shane drops the lettuce he was holding into the bowl and turns his attention fully to Ilya. “Not like what?”

“He’s just…” Ilya waves a hand loosely like he’s searching for the right words. “He gets lonely. Football player in the closet—it’s hard to have many friends.”

“Yeah, and it’s even harder when you’re a violent asshole.” Shane lets out a deep breath and waits for Ilya to bite back, but he never does. Ilya is just frowning at the counter, sliding his unopened Coke can back and forth between his hands. 

“Have you seen him?” Shane asks, dreading the answer.

“Of course not,” Ilya snarls. 

“Has he tried to get you to see him?”

Ilya sighs dramatically, tossing his head back. “What does it fucking matter? I just told you I did not see him.”

“It matters if he’s…” Shane splutters. “Trying to reel you back in or something.”

Ilya shakes his head. He avoids Shane’s eyes. “Can we not talk about him?”

“Sure. Sorry.” Shane returns his focus to preparing dinner. 

He tries not to imagine what Cameron texts Ilya, but his mind writes out long, manipulative guilt trips anyway. Maybe he should talk to Marlow about that kill Cameron idea while he’s in town. 

“I can see you silently overreacting,” Ilya laments. He finally opens his Coke and takes a long gulp. “Jealous?”

Shane gets to work on chopping a carrot. He focuses his eyes on his hands. “You know that’s not what it’s about. I just don’t think it’s safe for you to have him in your life at all.” He gives Ilya a beat to argue, which he doesn’t take. “Besides, I’m not gonna… get jealous. It’s not like I don’t think you’re gonna take advantage of your new singleness. I heard what you used to get up to.”

Ilya chuckles, and it breaks the tension between them. “Yes, I have missed Florida women,” he says, and Shane scoffs. “But, ah, we will keep doing this, yes?” Shane looks up at him. “Fuck when we are in same city?”

Shane swallows hard and tears his eyes away. “Yeah, of course. I mean”—he scoffs—“it’s, like, ridiculously hot, right?”

Sometimes Shane wonders if he’s been having bad sex for his entire life without knowing. He has a few times, without a doubt. He’s had hookups that he walked away from feeling like he just wasted an hour of his life, but he’s also had hookups that had him moaning into the early hours of the morning—but none of it compares to sex with Ilya. There’s no competition to the way that their bodies move the same way, or how Ilya senses what Shane wants before he even knows he wants it.

“Mm.” Ilya nods, taking a slow sip of his soda and smacking his lips. “Yes. Yes, you are.”

.~.

Ilya can’t relax. His knee is bouncing up and down—up and down, up and down—like he doesn’t have any control over his own muscles. He messes up taping his stick and swears. He rips it off to start over. 

Marlow pulls the laces on his skates tight. He noticeably watches Ilya. 

“What, Marlow?” Ilya snaps. 

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing is wrong with me.” Ilya restarts the careful process of wrapping, wrapping, wrapping the tape. His fingers feel clumsy. He remembers Shane’s careful fingers as they pulled athletic tape across Ilya’s skin. Sometimes he wishes he had careful hands like that. 

Marlow scans the locker room for eavesdroppers then scoots close to Ilya. “Is it cause we’re in Buffalo?” he asks quietly. 

Ilya doesn’t say anything until he’s finished his task. Then he rips off the tape roll, sets it down—carefully—, and stares at his socked feet as he says, “He’s here.”

Marlowe’s entire body goes rigid. “What?” His voice is icy. 

Ilya needs to focus on something. He yanks his skates onto his feet and starts tugging methodically at his laces. 

“At the game?”

Ilya nods. 

“Why?”

“Is America. Free country.”

“Roz.”

Ilya sags, dropping his head, his fingers pausing mid-knot. “Can you not do this?” he begs. 

Marlow looks like he wants to crack skulls, but he nods and turns away.

Ilya spent most of the time in the locker room fantasizing about playing like a god, crushing Buffalo into the dirt, and showing Cameron that he’s doing fantastic without him—and then, in reality, he plays like shit. The problem is, Cameron’s buddy’s seats turn out to be right behind the net. It’s Boston’s in the first period, so Ilya doesn’t even realize they’re there until it’s almost over. It’s the only period where he plays even moderately well, because right before the buzzer sends them into first intermission, Ilya turns to check on his goalie and locks eyes with Cameron. He freezes, so dazed that he doesn’t even realize that Buffalo has sunk a shot in the last second. 

Marlow tugs him off the ice and drags him to the locker room, where he nudges Ilya onto the bench. “We can get him kicked out,” he says as he leans over Ilya. “This is bullshit.”

Ilya feels himself slinking backward before he remembers that he's the captain in this room. He shoves Marlow back and stands. “Drop it,” he says, just as the rest of the team starts to flow in. 

Marlow drops it. 

It’s Buffalo’s net in the second period. Every time Ilya turns, Cameron’s there, watching the game with a smile on his face. His hair has grown in long enough to tuck behind his ears. He’s drinking a beer from an absurdly oversized cup and keeps hitting his friend’s shoulder after good plays. Ilya shouldn’t know any of this; he shouldn’t be spending enough time looking at the stands to even know what color shirt Cameron is wearing (the red flannel that Ilya gave him last year), but he can’t stop himself, like he can never stop himself from nudging at a bruise. 

Ilya misses passes. He collides with his own teammates. He gets into a fight over an accidental hit to his goalie that didn’t even make the kid flinch. Through it all, he can feel familiar green eyes on him. 

His throat hurts. 

Coach pulls him from the third period. He blames it on Ilya taking too hard of a hit during his stupid fight, but Ilya knows that it’s because he’s fucking the game up. He spends the entire benched period watching Cameron. 

They go out, and Svetlana meets up with them at a two-storied club in downtown that Ilya used to find his hookups at, before Cameron. He brought Cameron here a few times when they both happened to be in Massachusetts. They would come together as the friends they publicly were and dance with women long enough that it didn’t seem strange when they eventually danced facing each other, chaste and platonic. “Leave room for Jesus,” Cameron would jokingly remind Ilya. 

Ilya tells himself that he’s going to have fun tonight. He’s not going to think about those nights that sometimes ended in the passionate, loving, exciting sex but also sometimes ended with him alone in the bathroom at home, dabbing blood off of his lip—but then he’s standing at the bar, waiting for the three shots of vodka that Svetlana will complain about, and his phone buzzes. His brain hopefully whispers Shane? but the screen says Camille. 

The shots arrive. Ilya slams one down and orders another to replace it. The liquor sits in his stomach like a stone. He realizes he never ate dinner; He was too busy wandering aimlessly through his house, cataloging all the evidence of Cameron’s time there that needs to be burned. 

Ilya wonders if Cameron realizes that the shoulder that took the hit’s impact—the one that wasn’t even that bad or exceptionally dirty—is the same shoulder Ilya landed on during their fight in the summer and couldn’t lift over his head for weeks. He takes another of the shots and holds up two fingers toward the bartender. 

By the time he’s returned to Svetlana and Marlow to do a ‘first’ round with them and slide onto the dance floor together, he’s already feeling a little hazy. It’s embarrassing for him to be feeling liquor that quickly, so he does his best not to show it and accepts the drink that Marlow hands him not long after. He dances with Svetlana and kisses the top of her head, and when she finds someone else to dance with, he catches the eye of a pretty redhead near the bar and pulls her close instead. 

Marlow hands him another drink. The music is vibrating in his chest, and his phone keeps buzzing in his pocket. He feels like his whole body is shaking as the girl at his chest shouts that she needs a shot, and he leads her to the bar. 

“Do you want anything?” she shouts at him over the music, like they both don’t know he’s paying. 

“Vodka, chilled,” he says to the bartender. 

The shot hits his throat like acid. He almost chokes on it, but he manages to swallow it down. He nearly stumbles on the nausea. He slams the shot glass down so hard he thinks he might have broken it, but he doesn’t have time to check before he’s stumbling through the crowd toward the bathroom. 

He’s halfway down the back hallway when Marlow catches up to him. “Whoa, dude. Are you okay?” he asks, but Ilya is underwater again. Marlow’s voice filters through insulation and reaches Ilya’s ears sounding like someone entirely different. 

He stumbles into the bathroom and falls to his knees at the toilet just before he can’t keep his stomach’s contents down anymore. While Ilya vomits, Marlow locks the door and crouches next to him. 

Ilya’s vision is blurred by his watering eyes, but he still knows it’s Marlow beside him. He knows that. He knows Marlow is here and that he’s concerned about him—but still, when Marlow reaches out a hand to set on Ilya’s shoulder, Ilya can’t stop himself from flinching away from it, the jerky motion slow and sloppy with intoxication. His back hits the wall, and he drops onto his butt.

“Whoa,” Marlow says, freezing.

“Fuck,” Ilya says, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Sorry. Sorry.” The room is spinning. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Marlow’s hand is still hovering in the air with no destination to land. “It’s okay,” he says carefully, like he’s comforting a street dog. “Maybe just—uh—try to slow down your breathing, okay?”

Ilya realizes he’s breathing so fast he’s almost panting. He lets his head fall back until it knocks against the wall. He tries to measure his inhales and exhales, but they’re so shaky that it feels like he’s not getting any oxygen at all. 

Fuck. No no no. He can breathe. He can. 

He brings his knees up and drops his head between them. 

“I’m gonna…” Marlow stands slowly, backing up as he does, and it makes Ilya feel pathetic. “I’m gonna call Svetlana. Do you think you’re done throwing up?”

“I don’t know,” Ilya responds miserably. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, dude. Stop… stop apologizing.” 

Marlow puts his phone up to his ear. The volume is loud enough that Ilya can hear the call ringing and then connect. He can hear Svetlana’s voice, but can’t make out what she’s saying. Marlow curls his shoulders, turning away from Ilya. “Uh—can you come to the bathroom? No, no. Roz threw up.” He listens for a beat. “He’s kind of… I think he’d rather have you here than me.” 

He looks over his shoulder to check on Ilya, who wishes he could disappear into the wall. Another wave of nausea sends him scrambling for the toilet to lose what was left in his stomach. He dry heaves a few times before settling back onto his heels. 

Someone knocks on the door. “Ilya?” Svetlana’s voice says softly. 

Marlow unlocks it to let her in, and then he retreats to the corner of the bathroom while she crouches at Ilya’s side. “Are you sick?” she asks quietly in Russian.

Ilya shakes his head. He doesn’t tell her about the rapid sequence of shots he took on an empty stomach when she wasn’t looking. “Just drunk. Sorry.”

He can feel Svetlana and Marlow looking at each other over his back. He wants to kick them both out, but he’s honestly not sure he can get himself home like this. 

He dry heaves again, and real tears start to prick at his eyes. 

He would feel better if Marlow wasn’t here to witness his breakdown. Svetlana has seen him like this, back when they were young and still finding their limits, when they would stay out drinking until the sun rose and their bodies rebelled. 

He drops his forehead to the toilet seat, uselessly fighting back the tears. 

“Do you want to go home?” Svetlana asks. 

“Yes. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. The bartender was looking at me weird anyway.”

“I’ll kill him,” Ilya slurs. 

“I know, Ilyushka. Is it okay if Marlow helps me get you up?”

Ilya nods, burning with shame. He tries to push himself up, using the toilet as leverage, but stumbles as soon as he tries to straighten his legs. He hasn’t been this drunk in a long time.

Marlow catches him with his arms under Ilya’s armpits. “Whoa, buddy. I gotcha.” He manhandles Ilya until he’s holding him up with one arm around his back. 

“I can walk,” Ilya protests. 

“I can see that.”

“Fuck you.” Ilya shoves Marlow off of him. He wobbles but manages to stay on his feet. “I’m not a fucking child.”

Marlow puts his hands up in surrender, looking desperately to Svetlana. She sighs and puts her hands on her hips. “Don’t be an asshole,” she scolds, and Ilya deflates. 

“Sorry,” he says again.

He manages not to throw up in the taxi on their way back to his house, but he bolts for the bathroom as soon as they’re inside to gag bile into the toilet. After a few minutes, Svetlana follows him in and sinks to the floor beside him. “Cliff told me that Cameron was at your game last night,” she says evenly in Russian.

Ilya heaves out a sob. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he moans. “I’m so fucking pathetic.”

Svetlana’s familiar hand runs slowly up and down his back. He tries to relax under it but can’t. 

“You’re not pathetic,” she says quietly. “Here—eat some bread.”

He looks up at her to see that she’s holding out a piece of white bread. He takes it shakily and forces down a small bite. “I feel pretty pathetic.”

“Cameron is the pathetic one,” Svetlana responds with a bite in her voice. “He cannot even let you move on with your life without clinging on. Showing up to your game? That was… cruel.” She hesitates then returns to rubbing his back. “I hate him for what he did to you.”

Ilya drops his forehead back to the toilet seat. “I want to go to bed,” he says instead of admitting that he doesn’t think he hates Cameron at all.

Svetlana looks like she heard what he didn’t say anyway. She nods, shoving away a sad look from her face. “Okay—brush your teeth first. I’ll meet you in bed.”

Ilya freezes. He’s so drunk—so, so drunk. “I don’t want to… I am too drunk to hook up. I will not be any good.” His mouth is dry.

Svetlana winces and frowns up at him before reaching up to push a limp curl out of his eyes. “I know, Ilya. I will do the head scratch thing that puts you to sleep every time, yes?”

Ilya falls asleep with dried tears still on his face, his body pressed up to Svetlana’s warmth, and his phone buzzing. 

Chapter 10

Chapter Notes

Shane isn’t proud of it, but he reorganizes his entire itinerary before answering the question. Montreal’s game in Boston will be the last one before the Christmas break, so Shane’s original plan was to fly home early the next morning, and then he would drive to his parents’ house later in the day to be home for Christmas Eve dinner. 

He thinks if Rose could see him now, she would accuse him of thinking with his dick, because, purely on the off-chance Ilya wants to hear that he can stay a long time—which might not even be true because maybe he’s hoping to hear that Shane will get him off and then get out of his hair—Shane rebooks to an afternoon flight directly from Boston to Ottawa. He rationalizes that it never made sense to make the extra stop anyway, no matter how much he loves taking time at home to unwind and recalibrate between being around people. 

When Ilya gets home, Shane is waiting nervously on the bed. He thought the idea of greeting Ilya naked and stretched sounded sexy, but now, as he listens to the sound of Ilya’s keys hitting the counter, he flushes with embarrassment and resists the urge to curl up and hide himself. As he hears Ilya’s feet shuffling quickly down the hallway, Shane gets onto his knees, facing the door, and lets them slide out on Ilya’s sheets so they’re spread just enough to be suggestive. Fuck—he probably looks ridiculous. 

Ilya peers in curiously. As soon as he lays eyes on Shane, his mouth breaks into an unabashed grin. “Well, well, well—you would think I won tonight with this prize I am getting,” he says as he approaches the bed, already shedding his shirt and reaching for his pants. 

“Consider it a consolation prize,” Shane responds. “For the truly devastating loss to a far superior team.”

Ilya somehow smiles wider, cracking his face into something softer than the man who was on the ice with Shane earlier. Once everything is off except his socks and necklace, he presses softly on Shane’s shoulders to push him onto his back, and then climbs over him. He smells like beer and cigarettes, and his hands are cold from the outside. They chill Shane’s biceps as they run up and down his arms, but Shane melts anyway. Ilya bites down softly on the shell of his ear, and Shane takes in a soft, sudden breath at the electricity it sends through him. He’s half hard already. 

“Always so easy for me,” Ilya says, sounding satisfied. “Turn over.”

Shane scrambles to flip onto his stomach. Ilya sets his lips next to his ear again as he palms Shane’s buttcheek. “Are you sure you’re ready? You have not been waiting too long?”

Shane nods, swallowing heavily. “Yeah, I’m ready. Please fuck me.”

Ilya presses his lips against Shane’s cheek and then pulls away. Shane twists to watch Ilya reach for the lube and condoms in the nightstand. He strokes himself hard and starts to press into Shane. “Okay?” Ilya asks, pausing. 

“Yes, oh my god.” Shane pulls his knees under his legs and pushes back against Ilya. Ilya chuckles, moving forward into Shane with a moan. 

Shane lets himself slide into the bliss as Ilya presses against Shane’s prostate at the angle he knows drives Shane insane. Shane allows his brain to forget for a moment that they’re opposing captains, and that Ilya chirped a Metro so meanly tonight that it started a fight that ended with three of Shane’s players in the penalty box, and that Shane’s chest caught shamefully as he watched Ilya guide each of his teammates of the ice—“I love you, I love you, I love you, I’m proud of you, I love you”—after the game. And Shane doesn’t think about Hayden’s overt suspicion when Shane told him he would be gone overnight, and or how stupid he and Ilya are for doing this. All he thinks about is Ilya’s hot breath on his back and accelerating thrusts. 

“So good for me,” Ilya grunts. “Let me hear you.” It’s only then that Shane realizes he’s been making restrained unh, unh, unh sounds. He lets himself moan, and Ilya says, “Fuck,” and speeds up. “How do I feel, Hollander?”

“So good,” Shane gasps out just as Ilya drags calculatedly across his prostate again. “So fucking good. Give me more. I need more.”

“Do you want to get on top?”

Shane nods. Ilya pulls out and lays back, pulling Shane onto his lap. Shane lowers himself onto Ilya, and once he’s fully seated, he grinds against him. 

Now that Shane can see his face, he can see that Ilya is staring at him with unabashed lust and awe. His eyes rove over Shane’s body, and then his hands do the same, and Shane can’t stop himself before he leans forward enough to catch Ilya’s lips. Ilya kisses him back slowly, dragging his teeth over Shane’s bottom lip. Shane closes his eyes.

Ilya’s hand wraps around Shane’s cock, stroking him. “You gonna come for me?” he asks as his hips jerk shallowly in a way that Shane recognizes as a sign that Ilya himself is about to finish.

Shane nods, pulling his lips away so he can focus on pushing himself up and down. They don’t speak again, engrossed in working each other over until Shane comes across Ilya’s chest, and Ilya moves his hands to Shane’s hips, guiding him while Shane is too floaty to focus, until Ilya comes a few moments later. 

Spent and panting, Shane settles into Ilya’s side. He rests his head on Ilya’s armpit. “Fuck,” he breathes. “I missed this.”

He realizes the unintentional weight of his words when Ilya snaps his head to look at Shane. His eyes dance across Shane’s face, looking for something. His eyebrows press down for a moment before he relaxes. Then he reaches across himself to run a thumb on Shane’s cheek. “Yes, me too,” he says quietly. “You are such good fuck, Hollander. Can’t believe we waited this long.”

Shane aches with relief. He shouldn’t miss fucking Ilya—and he definitely shouldn’t care if Ilya misses fucking him too. It should be something they do for fun when it’s convenient, but thinking about it when they’re apart—especially when what Shane’s thinking about is Ilya’s lips and his voice and the feeling of his callused thumb on Shane’s face, not just his cock—is strictly outside the bounds of a casual hookup. Still—Ilya doesn’t seem horrified by the idea, so Shane thinks maybe he’s not the only one who feels that this is different from his other casual hookups. This is something that Shane, in his not insignificant number of years of meeting up with men for no-strings-attached sex, has never felt before—which is probably dangerous, but it’s also so addictive. 

“How was dinner with your team?” Shane asks.

Ilya’s hand falters for a second before he continues his ministrations. “It was good. I… did not go to those kinds of things for a long time, so it is nice this season—that my team is still excited to see me there.”

The cold, angry tendril in Shane’s guts wakes up. He knows what changed this season. “You didn’t go because of Cameron?”

Ilya makes a noise of confirmation. He drops his hand from Shane’s cheek. “Is stupid. I mean… It’s not like he was always here. I could have gone—should have gone—but if he wanted to call, and I was busy because I was out with them…” Ilya runs his hand through his hair and sniffs. “I never knew if it would upset him or not. So.”

“I’m sorry,” Shane says, fighting to keep bitterness out of his voice. “It never should have upset him.”

“We didn’t get to talk much, so I would be disappointed too when I had time and he was busy.” Ilya is looking away now. He stretches his arm to grab a tissue from the side table and busies himself with wiping off his chest. 

“But you wouldn’t have been upset with him.”

Ilya stills for a second. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Shane can’t stop himself: “Does he still text you?”

“Sometimes. Not so much lately. He will be preparing for playoffs soon, so he is probably busy.” He doesn’t give Shane a chance to continue the conversation before he adds, “Shower and watch movie?”

Shane recognizes deflection when it’s performed so blatantly. He drops it. 

They clean up before going out into the living room. Ilya retrieves a ginger ale from the fridge and sets it in front of Shane on the coffee table without asking. Shane takes it. 

“What do you want to watch?” Ilya asks as he flops down onto the couch and turns on the TV. 

“Mm… Do you have a favorite Christmas movie?” Shane takes a sip of his soda before setting it back down and pressing himself into Ilya’s side. He rests his cheek on Ilya’s bare chest, and Ilya sets a hand in his hair. 

Ilya shakes his head. “Russians do not celebrate Christmas.” He opens Netflix and starts flicking through the categories with little pause. 

“At all?” Shane eyes the cross around Ilya’s neck. 

“Well, yes, is religious holiday, but it is in January, and is not big, consumerist thing like it is here.” He smiles a little, still scrolling mindlessly through the movie options. “When I was young, my mother would put me in a horrible, scratchy suit and take me to church for it, but that’s it.”

Shane laughs, remembering the year when he was in elementary school that they spent Christmas with his dad’s family in Kansas. They had to go to a Christmas Eve service to keep the peace, and Yuna spent half an hour coaxing Shane into his dress shirt. He thinks about how many times he's overheard his dad on the phone with his grandparents since then, saying, “Oh, yup, we’ve been trying to get to church as often as possible. Mhm.” 

“Do you tell her you still go?” Shane asks teasingly. 

Ilya’s lips flatten. His thumb pauses on the remote. “No, she is dead.”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry.”

Ilya resumes scrolling, staring resolutely forward at the screen. “It’s okay. I was young.”

Shane can’t think of a response that doesn’t sound insensitive, so he stays quiet, but he stretches out a hand to rest on Ilya’s knee in a gesture that he hopes is comforting. Ilya’s eye flick down to it briefly, and his face relaxes. He pecks a kiss onto the top of Shane’s head.  

Shane can feel his eyes starting to get heavy as he sinks into Ilya. The exhaustion of the game day is creeping in, and he yawns. 

“Tired?” Ilya asks, and there’s no hint of tease in his tone. 

“Yeah, but I think I can make it through a movie.”

“We will see about that.” He kisses Shane’s head again. 

Ilya’s phone rings. He digs into his pocket for it. Shane can see on the screen that Svetlana is calling, so he starts to pull away to let Ilya get up. “Tell her I say hi,” he says through another yawn. 

Ilya looks between his phone and Shane a few times. “You don’t mind?”

Shane shakes his head. “No, of course. I’m good here.”

Ilya nods jerkily. He answers the phone in Russian, setting the remote beside Shane before ducking out of the room. He doesn’t shut the door, so his words float back to the living room, but Shane can’t understand any of them besides a few dismissive sounding “da”s. Shane is starting to realize that Ilya and Svetlana always sound a little annoyed with each other, in the way that Hayden’s kids are always on each other’s last nerve somehow.  

When Ilya returns, he eyes Shane carefully. He flops down onto the couch. “Svetlana says hello,” he says, his eyes still darting around Shane’s face like he’s looking for something. 

Shane shifts in his seat to face Ilya. “How is she?”

Ilya suddenly switches to avoiding looking at Shane at all. He sets his feet on the coffee table and crosses his arms across his chest, staring at the TV. “She is good,” he says. “She just got back from a business trip to Russia.”

“Oh. Cool.” 

Ilya looks at him sideways. He almost looks like he’s pouting as he says, “You should know that we fuck. Me and Svetlana. Not in a long time, but… is not off the table.”

Oh. That makes sense, now that Shane thinks about it. He feels a little stupid for not realizing on his own. The comfortable familiarity with which they touch each other. The very tight and bitter tone Svetlana told him in that Cameron was paranoid about Ilya cheating. Shane can picture them coming-of-age together in Russia, curious and excited and probably not feeling the need to hide in the shadows—and he is hit with a bolt of jealousy that he knows is wrong. 

He wonders how Cameron dealt with that feeling, and Ilya’s tense posture suddenly has meaning. Shane realizes that he has to handle this carefully. He shrugs. “Cool.” He chokes on the single word. 

Ilya turns his head toward him fully. He frowns and repeats, “Cool?”

Shane takes a long sip of his ginger ale. “Yeah, she’s really nice—and, like, crazy pretty—so cool. Good for you.”

Ilya is silent for a long time. He continues to stare at Shane, bewilderment on his face. Eventually, he turns away and, resolutely facing the TV, says, “That doesn’t bother you?”

It does bother Shane, more than he’s willing to admit—more than it should bother him—but he’s not obtuse enough to miss that this conversation isn’t about him. He shrugs again, hoping it doesn’t look stiff. He turns his body toward Ilya, slinging an arm over the back of the couch in an attempt to seem relaxed. “No. I mean—it’s not like we’re together, so you could have sex with her as soon as I leave, and I couldn’t really say shit, right?” He hates it. He hates saying it, but it has to be said. 

“That’s true,” Ilya says flatly. 

“And even if we were, she seems like a really good friend. I’d trust you to… hold boundaries.” Okay—that probably sounded fucking stupid, but he hopes it got his point across. 

Ilya finally looks at him again. His mouth is screwed tight. He’s looking at Shane’s chest more than his face when he says, “Cam did not like for me to talk to her. He thought I would cheat.” His gaze moves to the coffee table. “He especially did not like when I talked to her in Russian. Or anyone. He thought maybe we were making plans to have sex, or we were talking about him—making fun of him.”

Shane’s hand on the back of the couch curls up. He loosens it slowly and says, “That’s really fucking shitty.”

Ilya huffs a surprised laugh. He looks like he might be about to roll his eyes and then stops himself. “Yes. It was. Sorry. You are probably sick of hearing about Cameron.”

“No, it’s okay.” Shane lays himself across Ilya’s chest again, looking up at him with eyes that he hopes read as earnest. “I think it’s good that you’re talking about it. I think we should do more stuff that Cameron would hate.”

A mischievous grin spreads slowly across Ilya’s face. He sets his hand on the back of Shane’s neck, massaging it. “I think he would really hate if you sucked my dick,” he says. His hand slides down to dive under Shane’s shirt. “If you’re up for it.”

Shane doesn’t need to be asked twice. He slides off of the couch and onto his knees.

Later, they stumble into the shower together, and then they stumble into bed, too exhausted from their game and post-game activities to pretend that they’ll eventually get to watching a movie. Shane falls asleep wrapped around Ilya, dreaming up more things to do tomorrow that would hopefully make Cameron cry if he knew. 

In the morning, Ilya is already awake and sitting up in bed when Shane wakes. He’s staring down at his phone, his thumbs hovering over the screen like he’s about to type up a message. He notices Shane stretching into wakefulness and sets his phone to the side. 

“Good morning,” Shane says lazily. His body gravitates toward Ilya’s warmth. 

“Mm. Good morning.” Ilya wraps his arm around Shane’s shoulders. He kisses Shane’s cheek. “You snored like jackhammer last night.”

Shane pulls away. “I don’t snore,” he protests. 

“Oh, yes, you do,” Ilya laughs. He slides out of bed and grabs his phone again, sliding it into his sweatpants pocket. 

Shane tries not to feel a little disappointed that Ilya got out of bed so quickly. Usually when wake up next to each other, they do so with their bodies tangled up together, and Ilya starts the day by sucking on Shane’s neck and letting his hands wander. Instead, Ilya goes straight to the bathroom, and when he emerges, he’s looking at his phone again. “Do you want gross smoothie with nothing good in it?” he asks without looking at Shane. 

“Yeah, sure,” Shane says, getting out of bed now too. He uses the bathroom and follows Ilya to the kitchen, where he’s already running the blender, staring into it like it personally wronged him. 

Shane sits at the counter across from him. “You hate it that much, huh?” he tries to joke, but Ilya just shifts his gaze up to look at Shane with the same scowl. 

“Is gross,” Ilya says simply, his expression not softening at all.

Shane feels his insides curl as he tries to understand why Ilya has suddenly become so cold. He can’t imagine how he’s managed to piss him off between sucking each other off, falling asleep together, and waking up. 

The blender clicks off. Ilya pours the contents into a glass and slides it across the counter toward Shane—but he shoves it with too much force, and Shane reacts too slowly, so it slides straight past Shane and topples onto the floor. The glass doesn’t shatter, but the smoothie splatters across the hardwood and splashes onto Shane’s sweatpants. 

“Shit!” Shane slides out the side of his chair away from the mess. He stares at the spreading puddle. “What is wrong with you this morning?” he snaps more intensely than he meant to. “Did I fucking—”

Shane’s eyes land on Ilya, and he freezes. Ilya is backed up to the fridge. His arms are crossed across his chest, which is heaving up and down as he breathes rapidly through his nose. He’s watching Shane, and as soon as he sees Shane see him, his expression shutters. His eyes go from wide and wary to half-lidded, almost bored. “Sorry,” he says flatly. “I will clean.” He peels himself from the fridge and yanks a towel from the oven handle. He never takes his eyes off of Shane as he rounds the counter. 

“Seriously, Ilya did I do something? I feel like you’re mad at me,” Shane says, peeling off his sullied socks so he doesn’t spread the mess. 

Ilya hunches over to wipe at the floor. He doesn’t respond. 

Shane looks around for another towel and finds one on the counter. He grabs it then reaches toward the mess. “Here—I can help.” 

Ilya jerks away, straightening up. His forcibly calm demeanor slips, and he looks startled. 

“Oh,” slips out of Shane’s mouth. He takes a step back. 

“Sorry,” Ilya grinds out, his eyes locked on Shane’s. “Was an accident.”

“Hey, I know that.” Shane keeps his voice strategically low and soft. “I’m not mad.”

Ilya seems to realize that Shane is softening himself. Embarrassment sprints across his face before he locks that away too. He crouches down and returns to sopping up the spill. “You should be,” he says. “I don’t have enough to make you a new one.”

“That’s okay,” Shane says, too fast. “It doesn’t matter that much. I’ll eat whatever.”

Ilya shoots him a disbelieving look. His shoulders have loosened a little bit, at least. 

“Well—I’m sure there’s something else here I’ll eat. I’m really not mad.” Shane squats so he and Ilya are at the same level. His brain plays Ilya pulling away from him on a loop. “And even if I was, I would just… go for a walk or something. I wouldn’t hit you. I would never hit you.”

Ilya’s hand freezes just long enough for him to look up at Shane and scoff, “Sure.”

Shane tries, and probably fails, not to look hurt. He shifts his weight back to sit with his legs crossed in front of himself. He sets his hands in his lap. He can’t think of any more ways to look less like someone about to strike. “I know we shove each other around on the ice, but that’s work, right? At home, that’s different. I wouldn’t…”

“Maybe you think that, but I will keep doing shit like this. You’ll see.” Ilya’s voice sounds so hollow Shane hardly recognizes it. 

“Ilya… No.” Shane finds himself wrapping his arms around his own chest to ground himself. “Did I do something? That made it seem like I… was upset with you? Like I would…”

Ilya sighs deeply. “Not everything is fucking about you, Hollander.” He wipes up the last of the smoothie and stands to toss his towel into the sink. 

Shane rises too, slowly. He doesn’t understand. He’s trying to. He really is, because he wants to know what eats at Ilya so he can fix it, and he needs to know why Ilya won’t trust him so he can fix that too. “Then what is happening, Ilya?”

Ilya stares straight past Shane’s shoulder, refusing to make eye contact with him. “You probably need to go soon, right? For your flight?”

"No, I still have a few hours."

"I think you should go soon."

“Wait, are you kicking me out?” 

“No, I am just saying, you should probably leave soon anyway.” Ilya turns away from Shane to stand at the sink, wringing out the dirtied towel. He stares down at his hands like it’s a task that requires great mental focus. 

“Wow.” Shane steps toward the hallway, tossing his hands up. “Fine. Fuck. I’ll get out of here, if that’s what you want.” 

Ilya doesn’t respond, so Shane scoffs and goes back to the bedroom. He changes into his clothes for the flight, throws everything else uncharacteristically haphazardly into his suitcase, and calls a cab. He waits on the bed until his taxi is outside. 

When he emerges back into the kitchen, carrying his suitcase because for some reason the sound of the wheels against the floor feels like it will heighten the tension of the moment, Ilya has both his hands braced on the kitchen counter. His head is dropped between his arms, and he’s breathing at a tightly controlled pace. Shane resists the urge to slide between those arms and rest Ilya’s head against his chest. “My cab is here,” he announces instead. 

Ilya looks up. His face is arranged into that blank, bored expression Shane hates. “Okay. Have nice Christmas.”

Normally, they would kiss goodbye. Shane doesn’t make a habit of it with his hookups, but with Ilya, it’s always felt natural. Now, Ilya makes no move to come out from behind the counter, and Shane takes the fucking hint. “Bye,” he spits and storms out to his cab. 

.~.

When Shane is gone, Ilya collapses into his couch and pulls out his phone. He opens his texts, already itching to apologize for acting so fucking bitchy. He should explain that Shane didn’t do anything wrong—that Shane has probably never done anything wrong—and that the problem is that Ilya is the master of misdirected rage and Shane was an easy target. 

He should beg for forgiveness and for Shane to come back so they can soak in the few remaining hours they were meant to spend together.

Ilya doesn’t let himself text Shane. He was getting too attached anyway, he reasons. He needed to throw down some spike strips eventually to stop their situation from spiraling into something Ilya could no longer keep a lid on—and it was getting dangerously close to that point. The softness and neediness that Ilya felt while Shane rode him last night—and looked down at him with unrestrained affection—is far past what Ilya can handle from casual. Just looking at Hollander in his living room, relaxed and laughing and reaching for Ilya, evokes a dangerous feeling in Ilya that he hasn’t felt since his early days with Cameron. 

It almost feels like more. And Ilya knows by now that he can’t have more, for a million reasons: He and Shane are rivals. They’re gay, and Golden Boy Hollander would never publicly date a man, and Ilya still has only a Russian passport. Ilya is a notorious asshole who ruins everything he touches, who doesn’t deserve Shane Hollander anyway.

No, he can’t text Shane. If he texts Shane, no matter the outcome—if Shane forgives him and turns the cab around or tells him to go fuck himself—he’ll dissolve entirely. Maybe he’s just a coward.

Instead, he opens his texts with Cam and rereads the messages from this morning.

They’re innocuous enough, but Ilya knows Cameron well enough to translate the threat underneath. I could come check in on you. You better not be with someone else. 

He can’t ask Shane to come back, even if Ilya was brave enough to face why he wants him here so badly. He’s definitely not brave enough for the fallout of Cameron showing up and finding Shane here.

Ilya checks that the door is locked.

Chapter End Notes

Thanks as always for all the kind comments and fun convos! We're nearing the end! I have radiation in a week, so probably no updates again until then while I prep, but I will have a lot of downtime after when I'm planning to try to write the rest, so we'll see if that works outttt. Love yall

Chapter 11

Chapter Notes

I lived bitch. Thank you all for your well wishes! I am resting and recovering :) V excited about this chapter

Ilya has done the math. If Cameron is playing the early afternoon slot, and he does actually intend to come over to Ilya’s house, he’ll probably arrive around dinnertime. Ilya has hours, nearly a full dayshift, between now and then—but still, he’s stuck where he is, perched stiffly on the couch, gnawing on his bottom lip. He should go for a run, train in the home gym he made a point of splurging on when he furnished this place, or call Svetlana to see if she wants to ignore Christmas together tomorrow like they used to do years ago. 

He won’t do any of those things. He knows, because this isn’t the first time he’s waited for Cameron to finish a Patriots game before making the drive up to Boston. Ilya will do what he’s in the habit of: he’ll neurotically clean the house, scraping it of any evidence that anyone other than himself has ever been here, and then he’ll watch the game, so he’ll know what kind of mood Cameron will be in by the end of it.

Ilya realizes he’s clenching his jaw painfully. He wiggles it to try to force relaxation back into the muscles. It doesn’t work.

This is ridiculous, he thinks. He and Cameron aren’t together. Ilya broke up with Cameron—and gave up his one shot at a real relationship—so that he wouldn’t have to do this anymore. He just got his home feeling like his again—he bought new sheets for the bed and hired someone to patch the hole in the kitchen wall and cleared out the gross, uniquely American condiments from the back of his fridge—and having Cameron inside of it again will undo all that work. 

Ilya pulls out his phone and stares at Cameron’s texts again. He types out and deletes a dozen responses. 

Don’t come over. 

I’m not home.

Can’t wait to see you :)

I don’t want you to come over. I don’t want you to text me anymore. Fuck off.

His thumbs are hovering over the keyboard, coming up empty on a message he can actually send, when the doorbell rings. He sucks in a sharp breath, turning toward the door so quickly that his neck muscles protest. 

Cameron never comes over before a game. With the gameday traffic, there wouldn’t be time. The one time Ilya dared suggest it, Cameron huffed and rolled his eyes and accused Ilya of not respecting his sport. He wouldn’t have come over now. Unless he wasn’t thinking straight. Unless he was so convinced he was going to catch Ilya with someone else, and so in a rage about it, that he simply couldn’t wait. 

Ilya swallows hard and runs the heels of his hands down his thighs then forces himself to his feet. He walks robotically toward the door, practicing the smile that he’ll use to show Cameron that he’s excited to see him. When he reaches the door, he takes a deep breath, surprising himself with how it falters in his chest, and shakes out his hands. 

Ilya opens the door. Shane stands on the other side of it.

“Hey,” Shane says anxiously while Ilya falters. Behind him, a taxi is driving away. “I’m sorry. I just…”

It’s Shane, Ilya tells himself. It’s Shane. It’s Shane. His heart isn’t responding though. It’s still tightening painfully, frozen without the oxygen that his lungs can’t seem to find. 

“I didn’t want to leave like that,” Shane continues. He puts his palms out in front of himself, pleading. “I don’t understand. It seems like there’s something wrong, and if it’s something I did, I want to know. If it’s not…” He hesitates for a moment and drops his hands. “Then I still want to know.” 

Ilya feels a rush of shame for the hopeless look that Shane has, a look that Ilya put there. “Hollander,” is all he can say. He can see that Shane’s resolve is about to crack. Shane has already swallowed his pride and turned his cab around for Ilya. He’s knocked on his door and pleaded his case, and now Ilya is still being a stony-faced asshole. Ilya owes him more than this, but he doesn’t know how to give it. 

He can at least give Shane an answer, so he wordlessly pulls his phone out of his pocket and unlocks it. It’s already open to Cameron’s texts. He holds it out to Shane. Shane reads the messages slowly, his hand absently finding the back of the phone but not tightening to take it. Ilya can see when he reaches the end, because his jaw tightens. 

“Okay,” Shane says, stepping back. “Thanks for showing me.” He turns away, and Ilya thinks for a moment that he’s going to leave and wash his hands of Ilya’s mess, but then Shane drops to sit on the edge of the porch, resting his elbows on his knees. 

“What are you doing?” Ilya asks. He takes a step out of the doorway. 

“I’m waiting,” Shane says plainly. 

“For what?”

Shane twists to look over his shoulder to look at Ilya. His expression is resolved, so determined that it’s endearing. “For Cameron. If you don’t want to hang out with me, fine. I won’t come in, but if Cameron wants to come by, I’ll be right here.”

Ilya can’t help the surprised laugh that bursts out of him. Shane raises an affronted eyebrow. “Hollander. It’s cold out.”

Shane turns back around to face the driveway. “So go inside.”

Ilya is reminded that Shane, who touches him gently and rolls his eyes goodnaturedly at his jokes, is still Captain Shane Hollander, disciplined and patient and steady. The Shane in Ilya’s bed is all earnestness and anxious energy, but Captain Shane Hollander is sure of himself and his ability to understand and defeat any opponent he goes up against. And, bewilderingly, he’s set his sights on Cameron. 

“Hollander, come inside.”

Shane is still for a moment, and then he stands, unfurling himself, and faces Ilya. “So you’re not mad at me?” he asks, some of the determinedness disappearing from his voice to make way for uncertainty. 

“No,” Ilya says, reaching out a hand toward Shane. Shane moves toward it so Ilya can rub his shoulder softly. “I am sorry for being asshole. I was just…”

“Stressed?” Shane supplies. 

“Yes, something like that.” Ilya guides him inside.

“Do you think he’ll—uh—actually come?” Shane asks, following Ilya to the couch. He sits down stiffly, watching Ilya with owlish eyes. 

Ilya paces. He wraps his arms around his chest and shrugs. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Probably it would be better if you were not here if he does.”

Shane scowls like he’s about to snap, but then his face crumbles and flattens. “Is that why you wanted me to leave?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Ilya stops his pacing and leans against the wall facing Shane. He fights desperately to seem unperturbed, so Shane won’t see how offkilter a text has him, but his heart is still skittering with It’s Shane It’s Shane It’s Shane. 

Shane opens his mouth a few times without saying anything. His hands are in his lap, nervously flexing against each other. His eyebrows are knitted together almost painfully. Ilya is struck by the thought that this must be what Shane Hollander looks like when he’s completely at a loss; it’s something Ilya has never seen before.

“I don’t know what to do,” Shane says finally. The words fall out of him and land heavily. 

Ilya knows it’s wrong, but he just shrugs again, “Nothing. You do nothing.”

“So I just leave and let him come over here?”

“I don’t see how that affects you,” Ilya responds, staring at a spot on the cushion next to Shane. 

He has the passing thought that he should buy a new couch, while he’s refreshing his house. He suddenly never wants to look at this one again. Irrationally, he wants to tell Shane to get up so he can drag it outside right now. 

“You said yourself,” Ilya adds when Shane makes an indignant face. “We are not together. I can fuck anyone I want when you’re not here.”

“Right, that’s what I’m worried about,” Shane says sarcastically. The volume of his voice is ticking up—not quite shouting but wanting to get there. Then he huffs bitterly. “It affects me because the thought of seeing you like you were at the cottage again keeps me up at night. It affects me because I give a fuck about you, you fucking asshole.”

Ilya wants to tell Shane that he has no idea what he’s talking about, but he’s stopped by the memories of their time at the cottage. Shane cooking Ilya’s meals. Shane taking him to replace his phone. Shane checking Ilya for a concussion, bringing him ice packs, and carefully taping his shoulder. Shane driving six hours in the middle of the night so Ilya wouldn’t have to go home alone. Shane knows what he’s talking about; Even Ilya can’t dismiss that. 

Ilya is horrified by the lump in his throat as he croaks out, “Why?”

“Why what?” Shane asks exasperatedly. 

“Why do you give a fuck?”

Shane draws back, looking hurt. “Because!” He gestures wildly, without much meaning. “Because I like you! Because I’ve known you for a decade, and you’re the only person who makes my career interesting? Because I like hanging out with you? Because he shouldn’t treat you like that?” Shane is actually yelling now, but he’s still sitting, bouncing his leg like he’s trying to get his energy out that way. He waits for Ilya to react, but Ilya is too caught up in turning over Shane’s words in his head—so Shane ducks his head and adds, “Because I wouldn’t treat you like that.”

It’s a cruel thing to say, Ilya thinks. It doesn’t even really need to be said. They both know it already. All Hollander has been is kind. He has softened himself for Ilya, smoothed out some of his—comparatively few—hockey-roughed edges, to be a safe place for Ilya to land over and over. 

Ilya lets himself wonder, sometimes, what Shane Hollander is like as a boyfriend. If Ilya gets his bags carried and his favorite sodas stocked and Shane turning his cab around, then what do the men who actually deserve Shane Hollander get?

Sometimes, with Cameron, things would be good for a few months. The stars would align, and Cameron’s moods would be stable, and Ilya would keep his mouth in check. Cameron would rent out restaurants to take Ilya on romantic dates. Expensive gifts would appear on Ilya’s doorstep. They would squeeze twelve-hour round trips into the middle of the season just to see each other for a night.

The first time it was like this, Ilya thought they had finally hit their stride as a couple. He foolishly hoped Cameron had finally decided Ilya was worth learning to keep his temper in check for. Then he came home from the last game of the season to all his dishes shattered on the floor and his MacBook open to his texts. 

It happened a few more times during their years together, and eventually these times stopped feeling like peaceful reprieves as Ilya came to see them for what they actually were: the calm before the storm. All the time without a fight, all the moments where Ilya froze and then nothing happened, just added to the ledger for when Cameron finally snapped. 

It was during one of these stalemates that Ilya last tried to end things, a useless effort that only ended with him groveling and more attached than ever before. He’s not even sure if he actually wanted to break up with Cameron when he did it or if it was just an attempt to end the anticipation because the peace had become unbearable—the waiting, knowing that at some point it would all come crumbling down. Ilya never knew what he would do to ruin it, but he knew he would do something eventually—and sometimes it was easier to just do it on purpose. 

If Ilya’s being honest with himself, every moment with Shane feels like that waiting. Except he’s not waiting for Shane to snap and hit him. No, even though Ilya can’t stop the broken part of his brain that screams to apologize flinch fix it now, the logical forefront of it knows that’s not coming from Shane. No, he’s waiting for Shane to realize that he’s wasting his time and effort on Ilya—that he should be with someone who deserves him and who he can actually be with. 

“Please don’t say that,” Ilya chokes out. He tries to blink away the tears gathering against his will, but they’re coming too fast. He looks up and angles his face away from Shane in a useless effort to keep him from seeing. 

Shane lifts himself off of the couch slowly. “Hey,” he says in a soft voice, like he’s talking to someone much more fragile than Ilya, as he approaches him. He sets one hand on Ilya’s jaw and nudges it back to face forward. Shane’s thumb wipes away a tear. “I’m sorry. That was— I shouldn’t have said that. Just… please don’t see him.”

Ilya shakes his head. He can’t get himself to speak. 

Shane moves his hand to the back of Ilya’s head and pulls him in until his face is nestled into Shane’s shoulder. Instinctively, Ilya wraps his arms around Shane’s middle. Shane runs a hand along Ilya’s back. It’s nice; it’s relaxing. Ilya grasps at Shane’s shirt with shaking fingers. 

“Do you want me to stay the night? I don’t think you should be alone here if he does decide to show up,” Shane says into Ilya’s hair. 

“No,” Ilya responds, pulling back just enough to stand face-to-face with Shane. “You are going to spend Christmas with your family.”

Shane tucks a piece of hair behind Ilya’s ear. “Then come with me.”

Ilya raises his eyebrows.

“I mean—I could get a hotel room or something, and you could hang out there while I see my parents.”

Ilya shakes his head, smiling despite himself, and says, “I can stay with Cliff tonight. Or Svetlana.”

“Okay. Okay.” Shane nods a few times. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” The plan seems to calm him, and he takes a few deep breaths. His lips loosen from the worried frown they’ve been frozen in. 

Ilya drops his arms so he and Shane are no longer touching, just standing nearly nose to nose, breathing in sync. 

“I still have some time before I do actually have to leave,” Shane says. “Can we start this morning over?”

Ilya nods, leaning in for a shallow kiss. “Yes, I would love that.”

.~.

Shane barely gets the door open before Ilya is bursting through it, wrapping himself around Shane and pressing them both deeper into the room. Shane lets him without thought, operating on a month’s worth of pent up desire, stopgapped only by a few phone calls that started as phone sex and ultimately devolved into talking about their days. 

They don’t speak at all now while they undress frantically, sloppily, pulling at each other’s clothes as much as their own, until skin is finally pressed to skin. Ilya reaches for Shane’s face with desperate hands and kisses him deeply, clinging onto Shane’s lips with his teeth. He stumbles a little as Shane pulls them toward the bed. 

“I need you,” Shane pants, and Ilya obliges.

Later, in the shower, Ilya sighs contentedly and scrubs at his face. Shane leans one shoulder against the glass wall and watches him. Ilya is loose and relaxed like he only ever is directly after sex or fast asleep, like he’s forgotten that he’s supposed to have a million worries boiling in the back of his mind. This is Shane’s second favorite version of Ilya, after the galvanized Captain Ilya Rozanov he meets on the ice—the one Shane will begrudgingly take direction from tomorrow. 

“Think you could get away with staying the night?” Shane asks.

Ilya hums, dipping his head back under the stream to wet his hair. “I don’t see why not,” he says, opening one eye to look briefly at Shane. “As long as no one sees me do walk of shame in the morning.”

Shane presses off the wall and slides his hands around Ilya’s hips from behind. He blinks away water that drips from Ilya’s hair into his eyes. “Maybe I just needed a little extra guidance from my captain,” he teases.

Ilya’s grin spreads through his body, as he twists in Shane’s grip to face him. “Call me Captain again please, Hollander.”

Shane smirks. “Is that really enough to get you going again already?”

“Are you questioning your captain?” Ilya responds into Shane’s ear. He presses his hand on Shane’s shoulder, guiding him down to his knees.

Shane obviously knows what Ilya wants from this position, but he bats his eyes innocently, trying to see past the dew drops gathering on his eyelashes. “What do you need me to do, Captain?” he asks.

Ilya’s smile is renewed. “I need you to suck my dick,” he says with mock patience.

“Is that, uh, part of our training plan?”

“Yes, is very important for team morale.”

“Well, if it will help us win this weekend,” Shane says as he reaches for Ilya’s dick. 

While Shane sucks him, Ilya gives him faux directions, like he’s guiding a rookie through a drill for the first time. A little more tongue movement, Hollander. It’s not worth the effort if you don’t take it all, Hollander. Better, Hollander, again. 

When Ilya’s about to finish, he pulls a little on Shane’s head—like he always does, like Shane is some blushing virgin—but Shane stays in place and swallows. When he pulls away and looks up, he takes satisfaction in the careless looseness of Ilya’s body. 

“I think it is time to test your stamina,” Ilya says seriously as he pulls Shane to his feet and lowers himself.

After their shower, they settle into bed. Ilya falls asleep quickly, facing Shane. His mouth is partly open, and he’s sending small puffs of air at Shane’s face with every breath. His face is lax. 

Shane resists the urge to reach out and stroke a finger down Ilya’s cheek. He’s never quite gotten the image out of his head of the first time he saw Ilya sleeping, when Shane tried to wake him for a concussion check, and Ilya, half conscious, jerked away from his hand like it burned him—so now Shane mostly sticks to his own side of the bed and lets Ilya gradually gravitate toward him in sleep. 

Shane knew so little at the time when Ilya first flinched from him that it just seemed a little weird, but now, the thought of Ilya’s reaction turns his guts. Shane can count on one hand the times he’s accidentally pulled that reaction from Ilya, and he intends to keep it that way. It’s so wrong to see the Ilya Rozanov, the man whose name strikes fear in half the league, shrink himself down. 

Each time makes Shane feel a little sick with himself, for not keeping his behavior controlled enough, but mostly it makes him furious with Cameron fucking Pollard. Cameron—who had someone so good in his hands and fucked with him and turned him inside out and still won’t leave him alone; who clearly didn’t understand how uniquely clever and talented and observant and loyal Ilya is, or he would have spent the last three years treasuring Ilya like he deserves instead of hurting him and tearing him down. 

Shane gives in. He rubs a thumb on Ilya’s face so lightly that he’s barely touching him. Ilya’s only reaction is a short glitch in the rhythm of his breathing. 

Once Shane has convinced himself Ilya remains asleep, he whispers, “I wish I got to you first. All those years ago. I wish I’d been braver.” He watches Ilya breathe for a few more moments. Then he turns the light off, pulls up the sheets, and waits for Ilya to come to him. 

Chapter 12

Chapter Notes

It’s another year of Hollander and Rozanov on the same line, so we can expect to see some fantastic hockey tonight, folks.

It hardly seems fair to have them on the same team, does it?

I’ll agree with you on that one. But as a spectator and an Atlantic division veteran, it feels like a pretty good deal for me.

.~.

“Alright, listen up!” 

Shane, who has been chatting lazily with a Buffalo player he knows from Juniors, turns automatically at the sound of Ilya’s raised voice. It pulls the attention of everyone in the room, chatter dying in half-finished sentences as his words bounce off the walls. 

Ilya stands in the center of the locker room, fully dressed, his helmet under his arm. He looks almost regal like this—fully equipped, excited, ready to lead his team. The harsh lighting illuminates his curls and cheekbones. He looks alive and confident and strong—the Ilya that Shane knew years ago and thought was the only version of him that existed.

“Obviously,” Ilya says with a gesturing hand, “we will all go have fun. Is fun weekend.” He looks around the room slowly, his gaze passing over each of the players individually. “But! We lost the Cup last year—to Metropolitan Division.” He spits the word metropolitan like it disgusts him. “So we must remind them why we have so many fucking cups in the Atlantic, and show them that we will get it back soon, yes?”

Ilya’s eyes land on Shane, eyebrows raised, as if to say, “One of us, yes?” Shane finds himself nodding, and a glance around the room shows him that everyone else is too. 

Even the players whose home teams dream about just making it to playoffs, much less winning a Cup, seem inspired to get it back to the Atlantic with their own hands. A rookie from Detroit, one who has probably never been in a locker room with Ilya before, is staring at him with such wide-eyed awe that Shane thinks maybe he’s even become a little desensitized to the force that is Ilya Rozanov over the years. 

The first time Shane and Ilya shared a room was last year’s All-Stars game. Looking back, Shane finds himself turning over that word again: subdued. Ilya was a good sport, played well, encouraged the other players—but he disappeared from the unstructured parts of the weekend, and he certainly didn’t give rousing speeches. Shane feels a familiar resentment at Cameron for keeping this Ilya tamped down for so long. 

“Now,” Ilya continues, “in my room, everyone gets little kiss on their head before we go out onto ice, so line up.” The players around Shane roll their eyes and grumble at the joke, returning to their final preparations while Ilya grins. 

The game is magic. Ilya was on Shane’s line last year, and they played well and won the game like everyone predicted, but this time is better than Shane could have even imagined. Playing together comes as naturally as having sex does. Just as Ilya can see Shane’s needs broadcasted before he can shout them into the pillow, he can read Shane’s plans in his eyes as he starts to form them. Shane lines up passes before even looking, trusting that Ilya will be there to catch them. 

They win, and Shane slaps Ilya on the back collegially, the most they can touch in public, and they look out at the crowd together. Shane is struck by the thought that if Shane had touched him like this a year ago, Ilya might have pulled away and slunk off the ice, to avoid text accusations from Cameron about trying to cuddle up with another man. Tonight, though, he leans into it, knocking his helmet against Shane’s as he says, “Good work,” and Shane replies, “Thanks, Captain.” Ilya grins wickedly.

In the evening after the game, Shane meanders down to the hotel bar, and finds Ilya sprawling in a booth seat with an empty beer bottle in his hand, chatting with Scott Hunter. He catches sight of Shane and waves lazily. Shane approaches them and perches on the edge of the booth. 

“I was just bragging to Scott Hunter about our much younger and superior team,” Ilya says. He takes a long swig from his beer, letting his gaze linger on Shane for a little too long. “He is being a sore loser.”

“I find that kind of hard to believe,” Shane says. He gives Scott a bemused look. “Good game today.”

“Pah! I need another beer. You want one?” Ilya asks, pushing Shane out of the booth so he can get out. Shane nods.

“Jesus, when did you two get all buddy buddy?” Scott asks when Shane sits back down, settling into Ilya’s inner spot so he won’t have to move again.

“It’s a long story,” Shane answers tiredly. He realizes he hasn’t had any sort of non-chirp conversation with Scott since he came out publicly almost a year ago. “How’s your season been this year?”

“You asking if I’m gonna get another Cup? Or if people are being homophobic?” Scott seems unperturbed by the question either way. He sips from his beer, maintaining eye contact.

“Both?”

Scott shrugs and says, “Guess it depends who you ask, for both.” He’s looking at Shane with an expression that Shane can’t identify.

Before Shane can respond, Ilya slides back into the booth. He sets a beer bottle in front of Shane. “Talking about me?” he asks playfully. “And my excellent performance today?”

“I got more points than you did,” Shane points out automatically. He looks over to see Ilya grinning widely at him.

“Ah, but I had more goals.” Ilya clinks the neck of his beer bottle against Shane’s.

Shane rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “Sorry I know how to pass the puck, asshole.”

“Oh,” Scott says quietly, and they both turn to him. His eyes are wide, and his mouth is partially open. He’s looking between them like he’s seeing them for the first time. 

Shane wonders if it’s really that strange to see them interacting. It feels so natural to him now that he’s almost forgotten how much space used to exist between him and Ilya.

Then Scott’s surprise wears off, and he smiles weakly at them. “I think I’m gonna turn in for the night. I gotta call my boyfriend. You guys try not to tear each other apart.”

“Goodnight, Grandpa!” Ilya calls after him, and Shane smacks his shoulder. 

Ilya smiles softly at Shane once they’re alone. “Want to go out onto the beach? Is not as crowded out there.” Shane follows him out onto the sand. They find a spot a few hundred yards from the bar entrance, away from most people, and plop down beside each other. 

“You’re a good captain,” Shane says, staring out at the waves. “Do you plan those things?”

“What things, Hollander?” Ilya asks, a laugh in his voice. He uses his finger to flick a teaspoon of sand onto Shane’s hand, which is pressing on the ground, holding him up.

Shane shakes his hand clean. “Your speeches. That was really good in the locker room earlier. Very rousing. And I’ve heard they’re really good in Boston too.”

“Mm. Yes and no. I think a little about it, but mostly I just say what feels right.” Ilya waves his hand in front of himself a few times as he thinks. “Is the passion of the moment.”

“I think about mine,” Shane admits. “A lot. I spend a lot of time on the way to every game thinking about it. I should probably work on not having to do that—less planning and more from the heart.”

Ilya tilts his head thoughtfully. “I think, from you, those are the same thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“For other people, to say what they mean, they need to not think about it too much. It’s the opposite for you. If you speak too fast, it’s what you think people want to hear. You take the time to choose the right words—the ones in your heart.” He looks over at Shane and must take his expression as offense because he adds, “It’s not bad. Just different from most people.”

Shane looks away, suddenly feeling like Ilya is looking right into his mind. It’s nice, he thinks, to have someone know him and his quirks, and talk about them like they’re a fact of life—not something to be mocked or fixed or even dwelled on. Ilya sounds almost fond. It makes Shane’s heart clench excitedly.

“How long do you have before you leave?” he asks hopefully.

Ilya looks apologetic. “I fly out in a few hours. Morning practice tomorrow.”

Shane tries not to look disappointed. He uses his pinky to rub against the side of Ilya’s hand, desperate for some contact, even if that’s all he’ll get. “We’ll see each other again in two weeks, right? When we play against each other next?”

“Yes,” Ilya responds. “You will come stay over?”

“If that’s okay.”

“Is always okay.”

Shane looks down at the sand between them, where their hands are so close that their pinkies are now pressed against each other. His heart skips a bit at the sight. He glances up at Ilya to gauge his reaction, but he’s staring out at the water, face mostly blank except for the soft crinkling around his eyes. 

“We should spend some time together this summer—again, but… on purpose,” Shane says, his voice coming out quieter than he meant for it to. “You could come back to my cottage. Or—or we could go somewhere else, if that’s… better for you.”

Ilya shifts his hand just enough that his pinky and ring fingers rest on top of Shane’s. He chews on his bottom lip for a few breaths before he says, “I would like that. I would like more time with you.”

“Me too. I want…” Shane reminds himself that he’s going to be brave this time around. “I want a lot of time with you, if that’s okay.”

Ilya turns away from the water to meet Shane’s eyes. His gaze is soft, and he’s smiling a little. It’s the kind of look that would normally precede Ilya rubbing a thumb along Shane’s cheek if they were in private. “Yes, that is more than okay with me,” he says. “You should know though—if we are going to be… spending a lot of our time together, I can’t be a forever secret again. I want to come out someday, when I know for sure I won’t have to go back to Russia. I want… to be out in the open. I need to be with someone who can do that with me. Not now—but someday.”

The thought terrifies Shane. He’s out, but he’s not sure he would say he’s out in the open. It’s a quiet fact, an open secret—and he has never even considered loving someone in public—not like Scott Hunter does.

But Shane is brave, he reminds himself, and he’s being brave now, because he can’t give Ilya everything he deserves if he isn’t. “Okay, I can do that someday. With you. Together.”

Ilya’s breath catches a little before he repeats, “Together.”

.~.

The picture drops a few weeks later. It’s clear despite the distance and dim lighting, like it was taken with a professional camera, not a phone. Ilya and Shane are facing away from the camera, watching the ocean, but it’s obviously them. 

Their hands are touching, as Shane knows, but there’s plausible deniability. It could be that they just happened to put their hands close and only the shadows are touching, or that the angle of the camera makes them look closer than they are. The Twitter post accompanying the photo reads “In honor of the Valentine’s Day Montreal v Boston game today, here’s a Hollander Rozanov moment I witnessed at a hotel”. 

Hayden shows it to Shane first, reaching across the space between their hotel beds to hand Shane his phone. He’s laughing about it, like he’s working under the assumption that it’s all a misunderstanding, which relieves Shane.

“It’s so weird that you guys are like friends now. What exactly happened when you hung out this summer?” he asks. 

“Long story,” Shane breathes, handing Hayden his phone back. 

Yuna calls him only a few moments later. “Alright, how do you want to angle this one?” she says with no preamble. 

Shane slumps down in bed, pressing the back of his neck against the headboard. He runs a hand down his face. He wishes he had his own room, so he wouldn’t have to worry about what Hayden could hear and interpret. He worries that even leaving the room would be too suspicious. 

“It’s literally nothing. They took it at that angle to make two teammates chatting on the beach look like something it wasn’t,” he says robotically. 

“Okay,” Yuna responds. She doesn’t believe him, Shane knows. She didn’t believe him that the picture of him and Ilya together at the store in Canada this summer wasn’t anything. She didn’t believe him that the weeks he spent in Boston afterward weren’t anything either—but she hasn’t pushed him about it. At least, not in a way he hasn’t been able to sidestep. 

“Can we just ignore it?”

Yuna’s voice is tight as she replies, “If that’s what you want to do. We may want to think about saying something, since this isn’t the first time we’ve… had something like this.”

“I want to ignore it. I’ve got a game in like an hour. I need to focus on that.”

It turns out to be impossible to ignore when Shane gets to the guest locker room in Boston’s home stadium. He’s hardly past the threshold when he senses conversations stopping and people turning. It’s not the respectful attention that Ilya drew a few weeks ago; it’s a cold, sharp plane of focus. 

“Something wrong?” Shane asks cautiously as he starts pulling off his street clothes.

“These idiots think you were holding hands with Rozanov without a gun to your head,” Hayden says from the side of his mouth. “I tried, but…”

Shane looks around the room at the players who are staring at him. J.J. pipes up. “That’s not what I said. I’m just trying to understand why our captain is suddenly so friendly with the enemy.”

“The enemy?” Shane snaps. “How old are we? We’re coworkers. I played on the same team as him two weeks ago. We all have friends on other teams.”

“Yeah, but not Rozanov!”

Shane huffs and turns away to start putting on his pads. 

“I’m just worried about your affections getting in the way of the game.”

“My aff—” Oh. Shane does another sweep of his teammates’ faces. They’re glowering at him. Oh, he thinks with horrified detachment, this is because I’m gay. 

“J.J.!” Hayden snaps when Shane trails off. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What? You’ve seen how he’s been looking at him lately! We all have!”

Shane listens to their exchange absently. They sound far away through the ringing in his ears. 

Someone else speaks now. “Just tell us you don’t have a crush on him, and we’ll drop it.”

This is because I’m gay. He turns to see that it’s Comeau, who is glaring at him with his mask clenched in his fist. Oh my God, they hate me. There’s no way they got this angry this fast from just an ambiguous picture on Twitter. How long have they been harboring this? Waiting for the moment they had a defensible excuse to turn on him?

He glances at Hayden, who’s looking around, baffled. At least he still has Hayden on his side—but maybe he just hasn’t caught up, Shane thinks bitterly.

His first instinct is to lie and say, “I don’t have a crush on Rozanov,” but then he remembers Ilya telling him on the beach that he wouldn’t hide forever. If Shane wants to be with him, he’s going to have to be open about it eventually, and lying about it now isn’t a great start to that. The only reason to lie would be to assuage his immediate fear of the hatred simmering in this locker room—and he’s already decided that he’s going to be brave for Ilya. 

“Fuck you guys,” Shane bites. He finishes changing and storms out the room to be the first one on the ice.

He wins the game for them, because he has to. Even Ilya seems surprised by the tear that Shane is on, studying him wide-eyed across the aisle when they’re both on the bench. It doesn’t bring Shane any satisfaction though—even when the Boston fans boo the third goal of his hat trick.  

After the game, there’s no celebration in the locker room. Shane changes as quickly as he can, leaves without saying goodbye to anyone, and goes back to the hotel to get his things. 

He doesn’t have to stick around and wait for more interrogations from men who have apparently been waiting for him to trip up. He has someone who knows him and likes him and makes him feel good for being himself—someone who Shane refuses to continue pretending to hate. 

Chapter End Notes

Next chapter will be what I think a lot of people have been waiting for, see you all soon

Chapter 13

Chapter Notes

There’s something wrong with Shane. He plays like a man possessed for the whole game, even more obsessively focused than he normally is, and he barely acknowledges his teammates when he’s not actively passing them the puck.

Montreal wins 3-1, which would normally have him beaming smugly across the ice at Ilya, but Shane doesn’t even crack a smile. He just glides off the ice almost as soon as the game is over, so Ilya hustles to his own locker room. He sends Shane a ‘you ok? See you soon’ text before showering quickly and heading straight home.

When Ilya gets to his house, Shane still hasn’t responded. A small part of him worries that Shane is mad at him for something he doesn’t realize he did, and that Shane isn’t actually coming over at all, but Ilya shoves the thought away to prepare for Shane’s arrival. That’s not Shane’s style; if Shane was mad at him, he’d be in Ilya’s texts calling him an asshole. He would’ve glared at Ilya at center ice and spat next to his feet. Shane may not always have the words for what’s bothering him, but he doesn’t bottle things up and wait to unload until too much time has passed and the ledger is too long for Ilya to fix anything.

Ilya figures that, no matter what’s wrong, there are few things more comforting than coming home to warm dinner, so he starts working on the lentil bowl recipe he found online that he thinks will fit into Shane’s macrobiotic diet.

He’s just pulling the lentils off the stove to stir them up when his phone buzzes, alerting him that the wrong code has been entered at the front door. He chuckles a little at Shane’s habit of entering his own code and shuffles toward the door, spoon still in hand, to fling it open. “Oh my God. Do we need to change my code to be the same as yours, Holl—”

That’s not Shane, his mind supplies unhelpfully. A single tense second later—after he’s processed Cameron standing before him, dressed like he came straight from a meeting, with his lips pressed into a rueful smile—it adds, Close the door. Ilya tries. He takes a half step back and swings the door shut, but Cameron catches it with both hands and shoves it wide open. Cameron passes stiffly through the threshold before shutting the door and locking it behind him.

Ilya is frozen as Cameron turns toward him. “Cam,” he gulps out, forcing himself not to move away. He adjusts his sweaty grip on the spoon handle. “Hey. I… didn’t know you were in town.”

Cameron tilts his head, forcing a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. He sheds his peacoat and rests it on the rack by the door. “Yeah, I was interviewing some volunteers for this summer. You’d know that if you weren’t ignoring me. Expecting someone else?” he asks, and Ilya’s stomach swoops. “Shane Hollander?”

Ilya shakes his head. He searches for words to defend himself, but Cameron is still approaching him, and Ilya retreats automatically until he feels the kitchen counter behind his back.

Cameron puts one hand on the marble beside Ilya’s waist and uses the other to grab Ilya’s jaw. His rough thumb presses into Ilya’s cheek. “No?” he asks. His tone is mockingly sweet; it’s one that Ilya is familiar with and is never a good sign. “I saw the picture, asshole.”

“Cam, what are you talking about?” Ilya can’t breathe. His heart is beating too close to the surface of his chest. His hands feel useless at his side, and he’s hyperaware of Cameron’s hand on his skin. He waits for it to crawl down and wrap around his neck.

Ilya only realizes his own hand has released the spoon he was holding when he hears it clatter to the ground. The sound breaks whatever brief stalemate they were in. Cameron shoves Ilya’s face to the side. While Ilya is off-balance, Cameron grabs the hair on the back of his head and shoves him face down on the counter. He leans over Ilya as he presses his cheek against the countertop and speaks into his ear. “So you’re a slut and a liar.”

“Cam,” Ilya says urgently. He makes a stunted effort to shake Cameron off, but Cameron’s fingers tighten painfully in his hair, holding him in place.

“Don’t lie to me, Ilya. I fucking know you.” He presses his weight down on Ilya’s back. “You led me on for months. You made me think I still had a chance with you. Fuck, Ilya.” Cameron’s voice is strained with something on the periphery of sadness.

Ilya wants to speak, wants to grovel or lie or something, anything to no longer be claustrophobically pressed between the hard, cold countertop and Cameron’s warm, heavy body. He sucks in a few desperate breaths. “Can, I didn’t mean to… to lead you on. I just wanted to—to be there for you.”

“Oh, please, like I need you.”

Ilya shuts up. He recognizes that they’re circling the drain now, and that everything he says will be a point of contention. He’s not going to salvage the situation. He just has to get through it or get out. Preferably get out.

Cameron is silent for a moment. Then his teeth scrape the shell of Ilya’s ear as he asks, “Do you let him fuck you?”

Cameron’s weight suddenly feels suffocating. Ilya squeezes his eyes shut, which Cameron seems to take as an answer that it wasn’t. “Wow. Shane fucking Hollander,” he spits. He rises suddenly, lifting off of Ilya’s body so abruptly that Ilya gasps and realizes he’s been holding his breath.

Ilya takes this opportunity to spin around and move away from the counter. Cameron is between him and the front door, so he turns to the back door. He makes it only a few steps before Cameron catches up and shoves him. Ilya tumbles to the floor, his side catching the fireplace ledge.

He lands on side, groaning at the sudden, sharp pain in his ribs. “Cam. Please. Can we just… talk,” he wheezes out. “Is not what you think.”

“It’s not?” Cameron asks, his voice flat and hard. When Ilya looks up, he steps close to Ilya’s face and crosses his arms across his chest. Ilya has to crane his neck up to see that Cameron’s face is red. “Because what I think is you ran straight from me into your fuck buddy’s arms, and then you lied to me about it.”

“No, no.” Ilya presses himself up onto his knees. He debates trying to stand, hating how Cameron looms over him in this position, but he suspects he’ll just be shoved back down anyway. “No. It was coincidence,” he explains desperately. “I didn’t—He wasn’t…”

Cameron raises one eyebrow. His expression is coldly detached. “So you didn’t cheat on me?”

Ilya hesitates.

Cameron’s jaw twitches. “You did,” he says with certainty.

It’s too late to backtrack. Ilya’s stomach turns over as he takes a shaky breath and tries to figure out an explanation that might placate Cameron. “It was after I left the cabin. I already knew I was going to break up with you. And I… It was just once. I didn’t plan it. It just… happened.”

Cameron’s face barely reacts. He’s still just staring down at Ilya, his face tight and his hands in fists at his chest still.

Then he steps one foot robotically forward, rests the heel of his dress shoe on Ilya’s pinky and ring fingers, and presses down. Ilya cries out, crumpling forward until his forehead hits the floor. He tries to yank his hand back, but Cameron’s foot pins them in place.

Ilya stares at the floor a few inches from his face, tears of pain falling and splashing back on his cheeks. He’s not sure how much time has passed when he feels Cameron’s foot leave his hand and he jerks it under his chest protectively. He knows he must look pathetic, curled up on the floor, breathing raggedly through the pain in his side, and he hates himself for it.

He remembers telling Shane at the cottage that Cameron would kill him if he knew that Ilya cheated. At the time, the fear had been very real, but the more logical side of his brain didn’t really think Cameron would kill him. Hurt him, yes. Make him wish he was dead, maybe. But not kill kill him. Now, though, as he braves a glance up at Cameron, and sees that his face is still arranged into a tight, resolved expression, he thinks maybe he knew something instinctively then that he hadn’t consciously admitted to himself.

Ilya has the brief, horrifying thought that if Cameron leaves his dead body here, Shane will be the one to find it—cold, stiff, and open-eyed. He has to get out of here.

He forces himself not to think about the pain as he lunges for Cameron’s legs and knocks him off his feet. Cameron lands on his elbow and makes a sound that brings Ilya a half second of satisfaction. Ilya forces himself to his feet, his ribs protesting, and makes another dash for the exit.

He gets as far as his hand on the backdoor’s handle before Cameron catches up to him. He yanks at Ilya’s shoulders sloppily, and they both go down to the floor.

“God—you fucking bitch,” Cameron grunts, climbing on top of Ilya. His thigh jostles Ilya’s ribcage, and Ilya gasps. He punches Ilya once, leaving his cheekbone aching. “You think he actually wants you? I’m the only one who’s ever going to love you, and you threw it all away.”

Ilya writhes under Cameron, lashing out. He manages to land a blow to Cameron’s mouth before Cameron grabs the wrist of Ilya’s one good hand and pins it to the ground.

“He’ll see eventually that you’re just a lazy, stupid asshole. And he’ll move on to something better, and you’ll come crawling back to me, and maybe you’ll fucking appreciate me next time, for putting up with all your ungrateful bullshit. Maybe I won’t even take you back, and you’ll be left all alone.”

The next punch has Ilya tasting blood. He spits it onto the ground, screwing his eyes shut. He feels Cameron’s weight lift off of him, but he’s too disoriented to make another attempt to get up and away. He curls up protectively, waiting for the another hit.

.~.

While Shane is in his Uber from the hotel to Ilya’s house, his team is making plans to go out drinking. He watches the messages light up his phone from the group chat like they always do after a game. His teammates are congratulating each other on the win, with no mention of Shane or what happened in the locker room. Maybe they’ve gotten over it already; or maybe they just don’t give a shit about his noticeable absence.

He briefly considers responding to Ilya’s you okay? text by saying that he’s going to be late and then showing up at the bar the team has chosen, just to see what would happen. Would they backtrack now with the evidence that Shane still played like Ilya was the enemy? Or would they double down and completely ice him out?

With how wired Shane is feeling, it’s not unlikely that the night would end in a fight. He barely recognizes himself like this.

Before he can reply to Ilya with something a little more reasonable, Hayden calls. “What?” Shane answers.

“Hey, dude, are you okay? That was shitty.” It’s loud in the background, and Shane suspects that he’s still making his way from the arena to the hotel.

“It’s true,” Shane says on a whim. He stares out the window, watching the streets become less metropolitan and more suburban.

Hayden makes an aborted sound. After a beat, he says, “What?”

“It’s true. What they accused me of. I haven’t told anyone, but you deserve to know, since you were defending me against it.” Even as he says it, Shane knows he’ll regret it ten minutes from now, but he can’t handle that the only person on his side is the one who thinks he would never, ever touch Ilya Rozanov. “So be mad at me too, if you want. Go out and party with them over the win I won, and I’ll see you and everyone else at practice.”

“Wow. Okay. Um…” Hayden doesn’t sound angry at least, just flabbergasted. “That’s… weird.”

Shane scoffs.

“No! Not like that! Just… Rozanov. That seems… surprising. Does he like you back?”

“Yes, he does. We haven’t… told anyone, so…”

“I won’t say anything,” Hayden responds quickly. “Listen. Do you want to hang out at the hotel tonight? Eat rabbit food and watch TV or something?”

Shane takes a moment to be touched. He’s honestly surprised by how little grief Hayden is giving him about this. Maybe he’s still feeling too guilty about the team’s actions to press Shane like he normally would. Regardless, Shane is particularly grateful for his best friend right now. “No, I’m—uh—going to see him.”

“Oh. Okay. Weird. I’m gonna let you go then. You’re okay though—actually?”

“I’m fucking pissed.”

“Yeah, but aside from that.”

“Yeah, I’m okay. I gotta go, Hay. Bye.”

The car pulls up in front of Ilya’s house. He notices absently as he thanks the driver that there’s an unfamiliar car in the driveway, but it doesn’t trigger the alarm it normally would—maybe because he’s so distracted by his own latent anger, or maybe because he’s learned that shiny, new cars in Ilya’s possession aren’t abnormal.

He enters his own door code from muscle memory, swears, and then puts in the correct one. He shoves the door open, mouth already open to bemoan the Metros’ behavior, but snaps it shut when he hears an unfamiliar voice: “—and you’ll be left all alone.”

Shane freezes. While he processes the words, he notices a spoon on the floor and, a bit further away, a small spatter of blood by the fireplace.

Oh no. Oh God.

Shane drops his bag and rounds the counter, finding Ilya and Cameron by the backdoor just in time to see Cameron punch Ilya hard in the face. Ilya, lying on his back with one hand pinned over his head, makes a subdued, pained sound and spits blood onto the floor, eyes shut like he doesn’t have the energy to see anymore.

The rage that’s been simmering for months at a low level in Shane’s gut flares. He feels all at once the fury of his hatred for Cameron, of his sudden disillusionment with his own team, of the ferocious protectiveness he feels for Ilya. His chest is red hot as he stalks toward them and pulls Cameron up by his shoulders.

Shane is a little surprised by his own strength as he slams Cameron up against the sliding glass door. Cameron makes a surprised grunt. His hands scramble to pull Shane’s off of him, and he looks Shane up and down frantically. Shane notices with pride that his lip is already split.

Before Cameron has fully registered his new position, Shane punches him. There’s a gratifying crunching sound from Cameron’s nose.

“Fuck! What the fuck?” Cameron’s hand flies to his nose, coming away with blood. He shoves hard at Shane’s chest, successfully pushing him back. He charges, shoving Shane again.

Shane stumbles but stays on his feet—until Cameron hits him in the face, and he trips, landing on his hands and knees. As soon as he feels the floor, Shane launches himself back up. He grabs Cameron’s shirt and pulls him down.

On top of Cameron, Shane hits him, and—God—it feels good. He’s been waiting for the chance to do this for months, not sure if it would ever actually come. He punches Cameron again. Again. Again. Until the fight goes out of Cameron’s muscles and Shane’s knuckles ache.

When Shane finally stops, resting his weight back as he takes in Cameron’s gasping form, he feels moisture on his chin and wipes it away with the back of his hand. It’s blood, he realizes lazily. He’s not sure whose it is, but based on the metallic taste in his mouth, it’s possible that it’s his. He spits blood onto the ground next to Cameron.

Cameron is glaring weakly at Shane, one hand on his crooked nose, bloody mouth agape. He twists like he’s going to try to get up, but Shane places a hand firmly on his shoulder and shoves him back down. It doesn’t take much force, with how beaten down Cameron is.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Shane snaps. He pulls his arm back like he’s going to throw another punch, but Cameron goes limp again so he doesn’t have to. Cameron’s eyes close halfway, and his exhausted breaths shudder enough that Shane thinks even if he did get up, he wouldn’t make it far.

Fuck. Shane really did a number on him, he realizes, pausing long enough to take in the mess of Cameron’s face that he’s created. This isn’t him. Shane doesn’t do this kind of thing—on or off the ice—but then he looks up to the corner of the room where Ilya has backed himself against the far wall and is watching them with wide, urgent eyes. Shane takes in the full picture of his injuries—split skin on his cheek, a hand cradled close to his chest, damage to his ribs based on the way he’s holding his side. Shane resists the urge to throw another punch anyway.

Shane looks down to lock gazes with Cameron and says, “I should fucking kill you.”

Cameron’s eyes go wide, and he struggles again.

Shane puts a hand on each of Cameron’s shoulders to hold him down. “I’m not going to. Not right now, at least.” He leans forward, putting their faces close enough that he can feel the warmth of Cameron’s shuddering breath. “But if you ever touch him again—if you ever look at him again—I will end your life. I’ll beat you into the dirt like you deserve until your lungs are so deflated that you suffocate, and even that will be better than you deserve.”

Cameron blinks hard. He looks like he can’t decide if he should sneer or not.

“And then I’ll take your body out into the woods,” Shane continues, “and I’ll bury it where no one will ever find you. And you won’t even be missed. Your shitty football team will find another shitty player to fill your place, and the world will move on, better off without you in it.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” Cameron says. It’s clear he’s trying to sound big still, but he just sounds nervous.

“Maybe. And I’ll get away with it too, because I’m Canada’s fucking golden boy. They’ll ask me if I know anything about your disappearance, and I’ll say, ‘why would I know anything about a loser like that?’ And they’ll believe me. And you’ll just be rotting in the woods. Do you understand?”

Cameron doesn’t respond. He twists his head toward Ilya, trying to get a glimpse of him.

Shane grabs Cameron’s chin and forces his head straight again. “Do. You. Understand?”

Cameron stares up at Shane, his eyes darting around nervously.

“Say, ‘I will never look at Ilya Rozanov again, because I don’t want to die.’”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Cameron hisses.

“I could do it now,” Shane threatens. He can sense Ilya jerk at that, but he maintains his focus on Cameron. “Say it.”

“I will never look at Ilya Rozanov again,” Cameron grinds out, “because I don’t want to die.”

“If I get up, are you going to leave and go back to your sad little life without ever bothering Ilya again?”

Cameron nods stiffly.

Shane stands up. His legs feel like jelly underneath him, but he does his best to maintain the bravado that’s been carrying him through this.

He watches as Cameron rises shakily to his feet. Cameron seems to have taken Shane’s threat seriously, because he doesn’t so much as glance in Ilya’s direction as he sluggishly moves toward the door. “Fucking psycho,” he shoots at Shane before he leaves, slamming the door behind him.

When Shane hears his car start outside, he spins and rushes to Ilya, dropping to his knees. “Are you okay? What’s hurt?” Shane asks. With Cameron gone, the rage goes out of his body, and instead he’s buzzing with panic.

Ilya stares at him, mouth agape. He doesn’t reply right away, instead looking Shane up and down.

Shane pulls back. Ilya just watched him beat someone until they went limp, right after being attacked by his abusive ex-boyfriend. He probably doesn’t want to be touched by someone who still has blood on their knuckles. “I’m sorry,” Shane starts. “I’ll…”

Ilya blinks a few times and says, “Where the fuck is that Hollander on the ice?”

“What?”

“That was…” Ilya motions to the spot where Shane crouched over Cameron. “Insane.” He blinks slowly again and some of the daze seems to slip away. He smiles. “It was hot.”

A blush creeps at Shane’s cheeks. “Really?”

Ilya reaches for him, and Shane lets himself be pulled forward. Their lips meet. The kiss is soft, but punctuated by the smell of blood.

Shane pulls back. “Are you okay? What’s hurt?”

“I am fine. Are you okay?” Ilya asks, reaching out a hand to hover over Shane’s split lip.

“I’m serious. You’re holding your ribs.”

Ilya shifts uncomfortably, like Shane’s reminded him of the pain. “Just bruised, I think.” Shane motions for him to go on, and Ilya holds out the hand he’s been keeping close to his chest. Two of his fingers are at discomfiting angles. Shane has the absent thought that at least it’s Ilya’s left hand.

All in all, it’s not great, but it’s not as bad as it could be. Shane sags in relief. He’s careful not to jostle Ilya’s ribs as he settles in next to him and pulls him close. Shane doesn’t say anything when Ilya’s face is wet against his chest.

.~.

The nurses at the urgent care side-eye Shane, but they confirm that Ilya’s ribs are only bruised, splint his fingers, and hand him an ice pack for his face. Based on the sheer number of times they ask if Ilya would like to speak to them alone, they don’t buy the excuse Ilya gives them of a bar fight, but Shane is too caught up in the irony to be offended.

“You should tell them,” Shane whispers when the nurse has stepped out to grab supplies and left them alone. “We should get it documented, so he doesn’t feel like he can keep doing this.”

Ilya chuckles a little too casually. He presses the ice to his face, wincing. “I think you took care of that one, Hollander.”

“I don’t think I scared him that much…”

“I am surprised he didn’t piss his pants. You looked like a fucking animal.” Ilya says it affectionately, like he’s in awe of Shane’s unrestrained violence.

Shane blushes and focuses on typing out a text on his phone. “Still.”

Ilya shakes his head and grumbles, “I don’t want to.” The residual panic is poking through his strong front now. He manages to keep his voice level and his face arranged into something agreeable, but Shane can see how shaken he is by the curl of his shoulders and the way his eyes move around the room continuously.

Shane can’t bear to put Ilya through any more than he’s already dealt with today. He sighs and says, “Okay, Ilya. If you don’t want to.” He finds he can’t care about much aside from getting Ilya patched up and home and fed and into his warm, comfortable bed.

“What are Svetlana and Marlow saying?” Ilya asks. He takes the melting ice pack off of his face and holds it in his lap. The moisture spots his jeans.

“How do you know I’m texting them?”

Ilya raises an eyebrow at him.

“They said they’ll come over after they take care of an errand.”

At home, Shane forces Ilya into bed before going back out into the kitchen to scrub the floor and put away the abandoned pot of lentils still sitting on the counter.

Then, finally alone, he sinks into a barstool and rests his head on the counter. The events of the day rush back to him and he feels all at once the devastation of knowing he’d lost the camaraderie of his team that he started the day with, and the exhausting, terrified anger that he took out on Cameron’s face. His eyes burn.

“Shane?”

Shane lifts his head to see Ilya standing at the mouth of the hallway, frowning, with an ice pack in his hands.

Shane scrubs at his eyes. “Why are you up? I’m serious about not having sex with you until those ribs are healed, so I’d think you’d be trying harder.”

Ilya holds up the ice pack. “I needed a new one. Are you okay?”

Shane nods as convincingly as he can. “Just… crazy day,” he says, and it sounds dull even to his own ears. “I… Here. I’ll get you ice.”

Before Shane can reach the freezer, Ilya grabs him softly from behind. He sets the melted ice pack on the counter before turning Shane around to face him. “You really shouldn’t be up,” Shane says lamely before Ilya pecks him softly on the corner of his mouth.

“Mm, then come lay down. Tell me what was wrong at the game.”

Shane sighs. Only a few hours ago, he was itching out of his skin to rant to Ilya about what happened in the locker room, but now he feels too wrung out and worried about Ilya for it to even matter anymore. “I think you’ve got enough to worry about right now.”

Ilya’s eyebrows dip. He studies Shane’s face worriedly and says, “We handle things together now, no?”

And yet again, Shane finds he is helpless to argue, so he lets Ilya lead him to bed. He waits for Ilya to carefully arrange himself into a position that doesn’t bother his ribs with his head resting on Shane’s chest, and then he starts, “Okay, so there's this picture of us circulating on Twitter today.”

"Do I look good?"

"Of course you do, but shut up, I'm telling a story."

Chapter End Notes

No black holes or volcanoes but I hope you guys enjoyed. Last chapter/epilogue shouldn't take me too long. I added this to a series because I have a sequel in the works, so keep an eye out for that.

Chapter 14

Chapter Notes

Ilya spots Shane after a few visual sweeps of the parking lot. He’s in the same practical SUV he was driving last summer, looking around the parking lot like he hasn’t noticed Ilya yet. He has his sunglasses on, and his hair is tousled like he’s been running his hands through it nervously. Ilya smiles to himself before he hustles over without waving, keeping his head down. 

He tosses his bag into the back before climbing into the passenger seat and admires the sunlit freckles across Shane’s face instead of kissing him. That will have to wait until they’re away from the airport. “Hello.”

“Hey.” Shane smiles down at his lap and  puts the car in drive. “How was the flight?” he asks as he navigates the car out of the parking lot. 

“Fine.” 

“And your ribs? The flight didn’t aggravate anything?”

“Oh my God, Hollander. They are fine,” Ilya says for what feels like the hundredth time. He wants to be annoyed, but it makes something warm flicker on his chest. “They have been healed for months. I played in playoffs!”

Shane doesn’t say anything immediately. “Sorry, I just worry.”

Ilya judges that they’re far enough away from the airport density of people that he can touch Shane. He puts a hand on Shane’s knee. Shane’s eyes flick down at it. “Those fingers don’t look splinted to me,” he remarks. 

Ilya tosses his head back and groans. 

“How did your contract negotiations go?”

“Good. I signed for two years. They will announce it tomorrow.” Ilya finished out his season in his coach’s office with his manager, breaking the news that he wouldn’t take the seven year renewal they planned to offer him. He explained the barebones context to LeClaire: Ilya wants to keep his options open for personal reasons, and he’ll be in the doghouse if he commits to seven more years in Boston, but he isn’t ready to leave yet. LeClaire didn’t like it, but he’s surely heard the rumors about Ilya’s Montreal girl, and in the choice between losing his star center now or later, he eventually took the obvious choice. “He thinks I’m crazy.”

Shane laughs as he merges onto the highway. “It seems crazy, from the outside. Boston’s been good to you.”

“Mm. So has Canada.”

Shane smiles and drops a hand from the steering wheel to hold Ilya’s. Ilya is reminded suddenly of the last time they were driving down this road—in the middle of the night, both of them nervous and awkward and caught up in the stress of the moment but still mindlessly grounding each other in a touch like this. 

“Not Montreal though,” Ilya adds. “I hope they all get blade to the neck.”

Shane rolls his eyes playfully. “Except Hayden and J.J.”

“Mm, fine only Hayden can live because he stood up for you, and he has giant family to support. The rest of them should fall through the ice.” 

“It took J.J. like twelve hours to feel bad and apologize. It barely counts.”

Ilya thinks that’s twelve hours too long, but he just shrugs and accepts it. He knows finishing out the season with the Metros was hard enough on Shane without Ilya digging in too deep about it. Shane hasn’t talked about it much, but Ilya could see the sadness in his face when they FaceTimed after practices—and at their final game against each other of the season, he saw how Shane’s teammate’s eyes either bore into him or passed over him completely. 

“Did Theriault say anything else about a trade?” Ilya asks. Shane brought up the idea to his coach a few weeks before the end of the season. Ilya had gently suggested it after Shane spent the entirety of a two-hour call releasing tears he’d been restraining for months. The tension in the locker room was at a point that it could no longer be ignored and was impacting the quality of their play. 

Shane’s face rearranges itself into something carefully controlled. He won’t say it out loud, Ilya knows, because Shane can’t deny that leaving is the only reasonable option he has left, but Ilya can tell Shane is tortured by the idea of leaving the team he built up from the ground, no matter how miserable they make his days. 

“He threatened to send me to Buffalo at first, but they can’t afford my contract,” Shane says. “He mentioned Ottawa too. They need a star center.”

“Your hometown,” Ilya says hopefully. “Maybe that could be nice, to go to Ottawa.”

“Ottawa sucks,” Shane says in a breathy laugh. “I don’t think he’s going to trade me anyway. They need me. He doesn’t give a shit if I’m miserable.”

Ilya squeezes his hand. “Mm, yes, they are nothing without you.”

Shane doesn’t respond, so Ilya lets the topic drop, and they chat lazily about things that don’t matter for the rest of the drive. 

At the cottage, Shane buzzes around nervously as soon as they’re through the door. “I got some Cokes, so those are here in the fridge. And there’s chips—here. I got a ton of firewood for the pit out there.” He motions toward the back patio, and Ilya can’t stop himself from smirking. “And here—I can show you to my room.” 

“I have been here before, Hollander,” Ilya says, following Shane in his anxious lap around the living space. 

Shane pauses in the kitchen. His hand, out to try to take Ilya’s bag from him, drops, and he looks sheepish. “No, I know. I just—I want this time to be different than last time. Better.”

Ilya sets his bag on the floor and catches Shane gingerly by the arm. He nudges him toward the counter. When Shane can’t back up anymore, Ilya catches his lips in a kiss. Shane’s hitched muscles relax instantly as he sinks back against the cupboards, reaching for the back of Ilya’s shirt. 

Ilya nearly goes weak at the knees himself. They’ve been apart for even longer than normal with playoffs, so the return of Shane’s scent and panting breaths make Ilya’s head rush. He runs his hands down Shane’s back and over his butt, and then be grasps the back of his thighs. He lifts Shane up onto the high counter and settles between his legs. 

All the anxiety has gone out of Shane’s expression. Instead he’s watching Ilya’s every move hungrily. 

“This is good, Hollander,” Ilya says into Shane’s collarbone, pulling the neckline of his button shirt to the side. “It will be a perfect vacation.” He reaches for the button on Shane’s jeans and hears his boyfriend’s breath pick up. Ilya grins to himself as he undoes the button and zipper before pulling his hand away dramatically.

“Ilya,” Shane whines. He grabs clumsily for Ilya’s jaw and brings him back into a kiss. 

“This is is something I didn’t get to do last time.” Ilya shimmies Shane’s jeans and boxers down. He hunches over to mouth at Shane’s inner thigh, ignoring his half-hard cock. 

Shane twitches under him. He grabs onto Ilya’s shoulders to hold himself up. “Ilya.”

“Yes?” Ilya switches his focus to the other thigh. He breathes out onto the soft skin.

“Please.”

Ilya kisses down Shane’s leg to his knee. “Please what?”

Shane hunches over Ilya. He practically reeks of desperation. He cups Ilya’s head and brings it back to his crotch. “God—please suck my dick.” He’s completely hard now. 

As he wraps his mouth around Shane, Ilya takes a moment to marvel at how easily he can completely undo his boyfriend. Shane, who is so steady and composed and goddamned helpful, can be reduced to a begging mess with barely more than a few well-placed breaths. It makes Ilya feel simultaneously powerful and helplessly infatuated. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Shane mutters, grappling at Ilya’s back. He breathes out a moan as he turns his face to the ceiling, eyes scrunched tight and mouth wide open. A perfect picture. 

“Fuck.” Shane’s fingers curl into a claw as he comes. “Fuck, Ilya,” he pants as Ilya pulls away and grins, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Your turn?”

Ilya shakes his head. “No, I’m going to fuck you properly out on the patio like I should have last time.”

Shane’s eyes light up again, and he looks like he might overcome the physical need for a refractory period just to get hard for the idea. “It’s light out,” he says unconvincingly, but he’s already scrambling off the counter. 

“So you don’t want me to?” 

Shane swallows. 

Ilya grins. “But first I need real tour, yes?” he teases. “Since is all different now?”

Shane yanks his pants back up and pulls at Ilya’s hand to lead him through the rest of the house as fast as possible. 

.~.

It takes three days and a loon for Shane to realize why Ilya seems different than Shane is used to.

They’re sitting outside, watching the fire like they’ve done every night since Ilya arrived. Shane has his head in Ilya’s lap, and he’s briefing Ilya on his parents’ interests. “Are you sure you’re okay with meeting them tomorrow? They’re excited, but we don’t have to do it this time if it’s a lot.”

“They’re excited to eat dinner with Ilya Rozanov?” Ilya laughs, carding his fingers through Shane’s hair. “They have been hoping to get my thoughts on Canadian economy?”

“They’re excited to get to know my boyfriend—or they’re trying to be at least.” 

Ilya opens his mouth to respond, but then he jolts, pulling his hand up to his chest and looking frantically around in the dark. “Is that a fucking wolf?” he whispers urgently. His arm falls protectively over Shane’s body. 

“What?” Shane sits up halfway before realizing that a loon called out for its flock just before Ilya startled. “No it was a loon,” he says, trying not to laugh. 

Ilya blinks at him a few times disbelievingly then stares back out into the trees again. 

“It’s just a bird,” Shane insists. Despite his effort, a giggle bursts out. 

It’s then that he realizes this is the first time he’s seen Ilya startle since he got here. Ilya has been relaxed, and the thought takes Shane’s breath from him.

Already, Ilya’s shoulders are relaxing as he turns slowly back to Shane. “A bird? It sounds like that?” he asks. He doesn’t sound like he’s questioning Shane so much as he’s asking for reassurance. 

Shane nods, reaching out to gather Ilya up to his side. “I promise. It’s just a bird.”

A bird, Shane thinks with wonder. The thing that made Ilya flinch on their vacation was a bird that, apparently, sounds like a wolf. Not Shane moving through the room too quickly, or Ilya snarking and then suddenly worrying that he’s pushed Shane too far. A bird—something that could have made anyone who didn’t know better nervous. And until now, Ilya has been calm and happy and horny. There hasn’t been any hint of the fear or the exhaustion that he was almost entirely composed of when he was last at the cottage. 

Shane doesn’t realize he’s tearing up until Ilya looks at him worriedly. Ilya reaches out to wipe away a tear with his thumb. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Shane chokes out. “I think I’m just happy.”

Ilya’s face softens. He wipes away another tear before kissing Shane softly. “Me too.” 

.~.

On Ilya’s last night at the cottage, he can’t sleep. He lays in bed for as long as he can, arms wrapped around Shane, until he can’t keep still anymore. The air in Shane’s small room always gets a little stuffy at night, but it feels so suffocating tonight that Ilya becomes singularly focused on getting fresh air. 

The stove glares 2:42 at him as he passes through the kitchen toward the back door. 

Outside, he pads across the grass and settles onto a rock just at the water’s edge. Across the lake, he can barely make out the faint outline of the cabin he stayed at with Cameron last year. There are lights on inside. 

Ilya rarely allows himself to engage in the self-destruction of thinking about Cameron for more than a passing thought, but he can’t help it with such a blatant reminder taunting him from a few kilometers away. He hasn’t heard from Cameron in close to five months—not since Shane put the fear of God in him.

For a while, Ilya kept waiting for Cameron to reappear in some way. He checked his phone obsessively. He kept his head on a swivel everywhere he went, even in his own house. But Cameron never reappeared. He had walked out of Ilya’s house and Ilya’s life for good, slamming the door behind him. 

The backdoor opens. Ilya turns to see Shane step out onto the porch with his glasses on, squinting at Ilya blearily as he walks over. He’s carrying a blanket, which he drapes over Ilya’s shoulders before curling up next to him.  

“Did you have a nightmare?” Shane asks. 

Ilya frowns at the reminder of the nights that he’s woken into a gasp, hands shaking and heart racing—or the ones when he hasn’t woken himself, and has instead come to consciousness with Shane’s hands shaking his shoulders and his wide, worried eyes floating over Ilya’s face. Shane is looking at him with that same concerned expression now. 

Ilya forces his face to relax. “No. I just needed some air,” he says honestly. “I never really fell asleep.”

Shane doesn’t say anything in response. He just crinkles his nose worriedly.

“I think… I think I just don’t want this to end,” Ilya admits. “That is why I couldn’t sleep.”

Shane’s expression rounds out into something soft and affectionate. He presses his body up against Ilya. “We’ll do this again. Next summer. And we’ll spend time together whenever we can this season, right?”

As much joy as it brings Ilya to think about the nights they’ll steal away together this year, it’s accompanied by a pang of how few and far between those nights will be. “You could take a trade to Boston, and we would have all the time in the world,” he says lightly, like the joke that it halfway is. 

Shane makes a scandalized face. “And play on the same team as you?”

“What—you wouldn’t want to be my winger?” Ilya jabs. He reaches an arm around Shane’s waist to pull him close. 

“Fuck you,” Shane says with no heat. 

It could be fun, Ilya thinks, to someday play on the same team as Shane—to feel that perfect cohesion they play with during All Stars games every day. They would have to come out as a couple; there would be no hiding their obsession with each other from people who saw them together every day.

“I don’t think it would be too bad to play on the same team someday,” Shane says.

Ilya nods seriously. He flicks one last look across the lake before tearing his gaze down to meet Shane’s eyes. He runs a thumb along Shane’s cheek gently. “Not too bad,” he parrots wryly. 

Shane blushes. “I mean—I think it would be cool. To play together. Someday. We could figure something out.”

They could do it. With the right team—which Boston probably isn’t, if Ilya’s being honest. 

“Yes,” Ilya says, pressing his lips to Shane’s forehead. “We will figure it out together.”

Chapter End Notes

Thanks so much for reading, everyone! I have been honestly a little overwhelmed by the response to this story, and am so honored and thrilled by how much people love it. And I've had so much fun chatting in the comments. So overall, just thank you.

The prologue for the sequel is up. It's not much, mostly just timeline establishment, but enjoy. The first real chapter is about 2/3 done. It's going to be a lot of hurt/comfort, make sure you read the tags and take them seriously before reading. See y'all over there <3