Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Character:

Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau

Additional Tags:

Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Ilya Rozanov is Bad at Feelings, Character Study, POV Shane Hollander, Good Friend Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Late Night Conversations, Texting, Emotional Intimacy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, late night

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-16 Completed: 2026-03-24 Words: 23,650 Chapters: 4/4

Give You Up

Summary

Shane watches Ilya shove a hand through his hair, waits for him to meet his eyes. “You pretend to want things, pretend I can have things that we both know you won’t let me have,” he says, his newfound self-esteem carrying him past the point of no return. He wishes he’d never discovered it, because it’s making Ilya’s face do something awful.

“Oh, you mean I hurt your feelings?”

Close enough, Shane supposes, his chest aching again. He goes to lift his hand again, sees Ilya zero in on the movement, doesn’t. “I guess so.”

Ilya scoffs, mean and sharp. “So sorry, Hollander, I didn’t mean to make you get so emotional about a casual fuck.”
Asshole. So many times he has lobbed the word at Ilya in exasperation, reluctant affection and disbelief, but now he thinks it with vitriolic anger. “I think you should go.”

Shane finally decides that Ilya's ability to weaponise sex isn't enough for him anymore. Ilya doesn't take it well, but Shane holds firm. Then they start to text about it. Sort of.

Notes

Title from Late Texts by Darren Kiely.

Chapter 1

It’s like a drug, Shane thinks, the way Ilya makes him feel. He presumes, anyway, given that he’s never actually done that. Drugs, that is. He’s done enough Ilya to light up a blood test, if there was one that measured such things, and he will be forever grateful that there’s not. It’s bad enough that he can never quite forget the feeling of Ilya’s fingers pressed into his hips, the dull ache his teeth leaves in his throat, the way Ilya’s heart beats hard enough against Shane’s chest after they fuck that he thinks it might be strong enough to work for them both. He wishes he could hate it, resent it, but he can’t, so he feels resigned to hating himself a little instead.

Anything less than enthusiastic consent is an automatic no, he remembers from high school sex ed, and from the NHL’s primer on How Not To Disgrace The League that every rookie was required to complete. It was a comprehensive workshop on all things social and sexual, and Shane remembers the other rookies he came up with laughing and tossing ribald asides to each other throughout the dust-dry powerpoint sessions. He paid attention, of course, but to this day he wishes there had been a section like Enthusiastic Consent Can Still Be Harmful, or Just Because You Enthusiastically Consent Doesn’t Mean You Won’t Get Hurt, or Don’t Do it, Shane Hollander, Just Simply Do Not. But there wasn’t, and at the time he and Ilya had started whatever this fucked up thing between them was he’d known better, only he hadn’t really, and so here he was, hopelessly in love with someone he suspected was simply incapable or unwilling - or hey! Both! – to love him back.

He lets himself be pressed back against his hotel room door, ‘lets’ being the operator here because consent is crucial, guys, and willingly tips his chin up, failing immediately to hold onto his defiance when Ilya is right there and magnetic and beautiful, pinning Shane’s hips in place with his huge, possessive hands. Those hands that never fail to make Shane feel entirely singular in Ilya’s attention but that then take pieces of his feeble heart with him when he leaves. It hurts every time, god knows that it does, but in for a penny, Shane supposes, because he’s consenting to that too if it means he can have this. Ilya’s mouth is hot against his neck, demanding and taking and giving in equal measure, and that swoop is back in Shane’s belly like cresting a rollercoaster, the thrill of the puck finding the back of the net when he’s not sure it will. Shane wants him, aches for him, can’t get enough of it, even though he knows it’s going to leave marks long after the ones on his skin have faded.

Weirdly, he’s not ashamed of what they do, he muses with hopeless resignation as his body sparks alight from every point of contact, nor of who he’s doing it with. But he is ashamed of his desperation, of how readily he submits to the overwhelming want he knows he shouldn’t feel, not with the example of love and devoted partnership his parents have modelled so effortlessly his entire life. That’s what he should want, he thinks, what he should be striving to emulate. Not this twisted, fucked up thing he and Ilya have, this thing that takes and takes and leaves Shane feeling confused and hollow, stained in a way that has nothing to do with the physicality of their meetings.

Ilya’s fingers bite into his jaw for a moment before gentling, thumb stroking over Shane’s lower lip to burn a trail for his own lips to follow. “Where have you gone, Hollander?” he asks softly, his beautiful eyes direct and unrelenting, demanding honesty no matter what it costs Shane.

Nowhere safe, Shane thinks. Certainly nowhere far away enough to escape this, or to ever find peace again. So he tries to lie. “Nowhere,” he says, knowing better than to try and let his eyes close to avoid the way Ilya can read him like no one has ever been able to or cared enough to do before.

He watches as Ilya hears the lie, the way he lights up with delight at catching Shane out, and it fucking kills Shane that he can’t even hide this much from him. “You are not being honest, I think,” Ilya says, as though he has any right at all to chastise Shane for his honesty when that asshole has never said a single emotionally honest thing to him.

“Maybe you should think less, then,” Shane suggests, a lot smaller and a lot less acerbic than he’d intended, but it seems to strike a chord, because Ilya’s brows dip down momentarily, and Shane thinks that the only benefit to this thing they have is that for as easily as Ilya can read him, Shane can read him just as well.

It’s such a slap in the face that Ilya is the one person he really gets. He’s spent his whole life hearing that he’s intense, and the ‘too’ is always unsubtly implied. Shane Hollander: hyperfocused, asocial/antisocial/socially inept, weird, robotic, peculiar. A big part of that is because he just doesn’t get a lot of what other people seem to pick up naturally. He’s not good with people, not in the way that someone like Ilya seems to be, skimming effortlessly over swirling social eddies that Shane is sort of aware of, but has no idea how to parse. He hates that he can see where he’s lacking, but that he can’t… fix it, can’t apply his focus to solving whatever the problem is.

With Ilya, it’s different. Maybe because he’s also as singularly focused as Shane, his brain works the same way about a lot of things. Shane can look at him and read his desire, his anger and frustration, his sly, clever humour, the too-big smile when he’s being insincere and the anticipatory smirk when he’s about to say something cutting or cruel. Shane may not always understand the motivation behind it, but he can read it just the same. He thinks that maybe he doesn’t want to understand the motivation behind the ways he interacts with Shane, thinks that it would only make things hurt worse, further highlight the ways he refuses to be the only thing Shane has ever wanted to have outside of a rink.

“Maybe you should talk less,” Ilya counters, and Shane thinks distractedly that it was meant to be more cutting, but Ilya’s hands cradling his face and soft, gentle kiss against Shane’s mouth take a lot of the sting away, more than he meant them to.

Shane kisses him back because the only alternative is to not, and that’s not an option at all. Not for Shane, never where Ilya is concerned. He slides his hands up underneath the loose dark tank top Ilya is wearing, spreads his fingers to rest in the spaces between his ribs. He digs his fingertips in to try and mark Ilya as indelibly as he has marked Shane, knowing all the while that it’s a wasted effort. Ilya shudders a little, a seismic ripple that startles Shane, makes him wonder if Ilya is ticklish, but then Ilya has an arm wrapped around his waist as the other cradles the back of his head and the kiss changes.

The softness and gentleness are still there, but Ilya is suddenly not pressing Shane back against the door, instead holding him close against his own body. He uses his size and strength to hold Shane, to wrap him up as though he is something precious, something of value, and it’s… he’s… it’s not right, it’s so fucking unfair that he can make Shane feel like the only person in the world who matters to him in moments like this, only to leave an hour later, leaving Shane with nothing but scraps to subsist on until Ilya deigns to feed him more affection when it suits him to do so. There’s a kind of emotional whiplash he doesn’t like, that puts his back up like an irate animal and it throws him solidly out of the lust-induced haze he usually feels whenever he and Ilya share space.

Ilya doesn’t seem to notice, getting his hand down the front of Shane’s sweats to cup him firmly, possessively, long, clever fingers wrapping around his cock to stroke with mind-melting familiarity as Shane’s brain kicks into a gear he hadn’t known it even had. 

“No,” he murmurs.

“No?” Ilya repeats, gently amused. He follows it up with something murmured that Shane can’t make out.

“No,” Shane sighs, and he hates this, fucking detests how weak Ilya makes him, how easily he can read that Shane doesn’t mean it, not really.  

Ilya says something else in Russian, and he could be calling Shane a fencepost for all he knows, but the way he says it, the little drag of the rounded vowels at the end make it sound like an endearment, and Shane would rather be fucked through the mattress in absolute silence than whatever the fuck is happening right now.

“Ilya, stop,” he says, still soft, still almost unsure he wants to say it, even though a giant warning klaxon has started flashing in the back of his head.

For all his faults, Ilya has never once made Shane fear for his safety. Pushed him? Sure. Made him uncomfortable? Like it’s his reason for getting up every morning. But not once has Shane ever thought that Ilya would be anything other than absolutely respectful of a hard drawn, clearly defined boundary. Not that Shane had ever managed to find one he wouldn’t happily pole vault over for their mutually assured pleasure, a fact Ilya has no qualms weaponising. His hand pauses, still but not letting go yet, drawing back just enough to look at Shane’s face.

“Stop?” he asks, something of a tease in his voice, but clearly looking to elicit clarification.

Shane stares at him, trying to decide if this is the line he wants to draw.

Ilya’s searching expression relaxes back into something self-assured, and his fingers grip Shane a little more firmly as he leans in to kiss him again, eyes open and creasing at the corners, warm and happy and lovely.

“You’re hurting me.”

The reaction is immediate, almost violently so. It wasn’t what Shane meant to say at all, but the second the words are out he acknowledges to himself that they’re right, though not in the way Ilya probably thinks given the way he’s suddenly three feet away from Shane, his face frozen into an expressionless mask. “I hurt you?” he asks, the words blunt and overly-loud.

“Y- no… yes,” Shane finally settles on. He lifts his hand to unconsciously press the heel of it to his sternum, Ilya’s eyes narrowing slightly as he follows the movement, clearly connecting dots Shane isn’t sure he can follow. He’s so fucking beautiful in the low lamplight, his curls a golden halo that Shane can still feel beneath his fingertips.

“I hurt you how?” Ilya demands, his eyes still fixed on Shane’s hand.

Shane drops it, watches Ilya shove a hand through his hair, waits for him to meet his eyes. “You pretend to want things, pretend I can have things that we both know you won’t let me have,” he says, his newfound self-esteem carrying him past the point of no return. He wishes he’d never discovered it, because it’s making Ilya’s face do something awful.

“Oh, you mean I hurt your feelings?”

Close enough, Shane supposes, his chest aching again. He goes to lift his hand again, sees Ilya zero in on the movement, doesn’t. “I guess so.”

Ilya scoffs, mean and sharp. “So sorry, Hollander, I didn’t mean to make you get so emotional about a casual fuck.”

Asshole. So many times he has lobbed the word at Ilya in exasperation, reluctant affection and disbelief, but now he thinks it with vitriolic anger. “I think you should go.”

“Is that so?” Ilya demands, taking a step towards him again, eyes alight with something Shane doesn’t recognise. Something he isn’t afraid of but that he really doesn’t like. He steps back a little, his heels making contact with the door, a soft thud that makes Ilya pull up short and stare at him, his face shifting through a range of expressions Shane doesn’t have time to read. “Jesus, I’m not going to fucking hit you, Hollander,” he says, voice hollow.

“I know,” Shane tells him, and it’s true; if nothing else, Shane can trust that Ilya is not a bad man. But I also know that if you touch me I’ll let you just drag me back under, he thinks to himself. Still, saying that out loud would give Ilya the ability to hurt him even worse, so he says nothing.

They stare at each other for what feels like a thousand years until Ilya throws up his hands, the movement sudden and startling, and Shane actually flinches this time, pure reflex.

Ilya looks stunned, and then he just looks fucking mad. “I so don’t need this,” he snaps, lip curling up in a way that is so far from sexy that Shane wants to look away, but he can’t, won’t, forces himself to watch. “Fucking move, Hollander.” Even now he won’t step closer to Shane, won’t bully him out of the way. Instead, he waits for Shane to move away from the door before disappearing through it so fast Shane can barely track his departure. 

It’s a long time before Shane can look away from where the Do Not Disturb hanger has fluttered to the floor.

Ilya thoroughly ignores Shane for the next seven weeks.

They play against each other once, Montreal scraping the win, and Shane allows himself one look at Ilya before the game. When he is very pointedly ignored, he gets it, doesn’t look again. Ilya doesn’t say anything to him during the faceoff, checks him once into the boards and once on open ice with enough force to rattle Shane’s teeth, doesn’t so much as glare at Shane when Shane hooks him twice, stealing possession of the puck both times.

And it’s… fine. The contact still makes something zing through Shane’s blood the way it always has, but he understands the rules now: it’s just hockey. It’s not foreplay, it’s not a prelude to something infinitely more intimately physical, it’s just hockey. Shane loves hockey, loves the rules, the structure, the way it rewards hard work and is never anything more than it pretends to be. He knows it’s different for him than it is for Ilya, has never really understood how Ilya can be as good as he is, can understand the game as well as he does, can breathe it the way Shane does, but still not have it be everything to him the way it is to Shane.

It’s not a surprise when there’s no room number sent to his phone after the game.

Shane goes out for drinks with his team, lets himself be photographed with an achingly beautiful blonde woman in a bar, and goes home alone.

He misses Ilya.

I would never hit you, Ilya messages two weeks later, late at night, apropos of nothing.

Shane reads the message when he wakes up the next morning. I know that, he sends back, because it’s true, and not for a second did he think otherwise.

He gets no reply.

A week after that Ilya messages him again. Boston had won against Detroit 3-1, but it hadn’t looked like an easy win, and the Bears hadn’t played as cohesively as he was used to seeing. Ordinarily, before, Shane might’ve messaged Ilya, asked him about it or made a bitchy comment about failed leadership to encourage him to vent if he wanted. But they didn’t do that anymore, so he lets his mom call him instead, lets her commentary of the game wash over him. He loses time before bed just lying on the couch and staring at his silent phone, face down on the coffee table, until his eyes start to burn a little with fatigue and he hauls his body up to get ready for bed.

Sleep has been harder to come by in the last two months, something he’s not looking too closely at thanks to his well-honed instincts for self-preservation. He checks in with his body as he focuses on relaxing, feels good but somehow less, and just drifts, waiting for sleep to come. He thinks about nothing in particular, and he definitely doesn’t think about Ilya, or the tired but triumphant smile he wore at the buzzer.

He must actually fall properly into sleep at some point, because the sharp zzt-zzt of his phone vibrating on the bedside wakes him in the early hours of the morning, the world half-formed beyond the dark windows of his bedroom. He reaches out for it and winces when the screen brightness assaults his eyes.

What is that thing where you know you’re a failure and you’re just waiting for everyone to notice?

Shane is confused, but responds immediately, only belatedly realising how it will seem to Ilya that he’s awake at 0430 and instantly replying to a contextless message. Imposter syndrome?

Yes, Ilya replies immediately. How do you make that go away?

Jesus, what a question for bullshit o’clock on a Tuesday. Still, he’s clearly got something on his mind, and Ilya has never been the kind to accept empty platitudes as an attempt at reassurance. If I ever figure it out, I’ll let you know, Shane tells him, too honest in the small hours.

The little dots bounce, pause; bounce, pause. Please, the reply eventually comes. What would a perfect hockey boy like you know about failure.

It’s not punctuated as a question, and Shane can hear the dismissal, accented so familiarly that Ilya might as well be in the bed beside him. He bites his lip, considering how to reply. He could laugh it off, make a joke of it. He could be brutally honest in the way that Ilya always seems to elicit from him, allow himself to be laid out for emotional flaying. He could lie, but no, he couldn’t. He settles for something kind of in between. You’ve taught me plenty, he texts back eventually, and it’s too real, too honest, but he thinks Ilya won’t realise that, will think it’s self-deprecating half-joke. It really isn’t.

I certainly have, comes the reply. You like it when I teach you things, yes?

He’s not wrong, but Shane refuses to be drawn back in. He stares at the words before exiting out of the message, puts his phone on Do Not Disturb, rolls over and falls straight back into sleep.

Difference between misdemeanour and felony?

The question is concerning enough for Shane to immediately drop out of the conversation he’s having with his dad over lunch, frowning at his phone as he sends an immediate reply. Did you mean to send this to me, or search it online?

You are the most boring person I know, I presumed you would know the answer.

God, he’s such an asshole. Why are you even asking? Am I going to have to front bail?

When the reply comes it takes Shane a moment, but it makes him actually laugh out loud. It’s a photo of a dog on the street somewhere, an obviously well-loved shaggy mutt with a sparkly green bandanna tied around its neck, and what is clearly Ilya’s hand scratching beneath the blissed-out creature’s chin. Do not steal that dog, Shane sends back, wondering if this means Ilya’s a dog person.

Such a buzzkill.

Shane huffs another laugh and pockets his phone, reaching for his glass for a drink and catching his dad’s indulgently amused smile. “What?”

“You look like your mom when you smile like that,” he says without prying any further, and Shane just loves him.

I miss the way you look on your knees, Ilya sends him at nine a.m. Shane stares at his phone, trying to figure out what he could possibly be doing at that hour that would make him send a message like that.

He doesn’t answer it, even though he misses being on his knees for Ilya just as much. His newfound self-confidence carries him through the rest of the day, the next four days until Ilya tries again. Shane thinks maybe he gets it now, a little bit, how much Ilya enjoys the control Shane hands him, because while what he’s doing is to protect himself he kind of likes the way Ilya is still offering overtures, still reaching out in spite of Shane’s refusal to engage. There’s a power to it he’s unfamiliar with, and he’s not unhappy to explore it like this, curious to see where it leads.

Number one thing I will not miss about staying in hotels when we retire is the horrifically bad coffee, Ilya later messages.

Shane ignores the way his stomach flips over the ‘we’ in the message, knows logically Ilya means the royal we. He flicks back through his mental calendar and realises Ilya has probably landed in Tampa for tomorrow’s game. The only place worse for coffee than the Delta is the Hyatt in Buffalo.

You’ve clearly never stayed at the Marriott in Detroit, Ilya sends back. Like it’s been strained through a dirty sock.

His distaste makes Shane smile. Disgusting mental image, so thanks for that.

I aim to please. Shane stares at the phone, waits. What are you doing?

He looks down at the dumbbells on the floor, takes a photo of them and sends it.

Better not be skipping leg day.

It could be innocent, but Shane remembers Ilya biting the inside of his thighs, encouraging Shane to wrap them around his head as he sucked his cock sloppy and slow, telling him to do your worst, Hollander, I can think of worse ways to go when Shane raised concerns about smothering him. Still, he decides to allow Ilya the benefit of the doubt. That was yesterday, he responds carefully. DOMS will have me laid out tomorrow, I’ve increased my squat PB.

Send me photos, Ilya texts back immediately.

Shane just sighs and mutes his phone, goes back to working out. At least there’s one good thing to come from missing Ilya like he was missing a piece of himself: his gains have never been so good.

I had a dream about you last night.

Shane feels his face flush, is glad he’s removed his pads post-game so they don’t worsen the heat lighting up his cheeks. He’s just about to stow his phone when it vibrates in his hand with a follow-up message.

We were arguing about faceoff positioning. Even in my dreams you are boring.

It’s so unexpected it makes him laugh. Me being boring is old news. I think this dream says more about you than it does about me.

It says you are perfect soporific.

Shane’s eyebrows shoot up. Been reading the dictionary in your spare time?

Ilya sends a photo of a word of the day desk calendar on his bedside table, a yellow post-it tucked in the back that says GET EDUCATED ASSHOLE, LOVE FROM MARLY in blocky print with a whole bunch of crooked love hearts drawn all over it.

Shane laughs again, can’t help it. Did you actually dream that, or does it just suit your new word of the day to pretend?

This time it’s Ilya who doesn’t reply, not until a lot later.

I dream about you most nights.

And that’s it. There’s no follow up, no joke to turn something that could be considered sweet into something else that stings, just a simple statement of fact. For the first time since drawing this particular line in the sand, Shane feels his grasp of the situation slip. He decides to try something. I don’t remember my dreams, he tentatively texts back.

And Ilya’s final message for the night is equally as confusing. Lucky you.

On Monday the next week Ilya sends an opening message that effortlessly draws Shane into a days-long text conversation that is equal parts hilarious, snarky and mundane. They share screenshots, asides about their teammates and competitors, bitch about training and their coaches, trade mundane photos, and Shane suspects he’s becoming pathologically conditioned towards excitement whenever he sees a dog on the street for the opportunity it provides to interact platonically with Ilya.

You should share this one on Instagram, Ilya suggests when Shane sends one to him of a big gangly puppy with a happy lolling tongue doing his best to sit on a Montreal sidewalk, tail a blur, the message explaining that the pup managed two seconds of obedience before he was too excited to sit anymore and threw himself at Shane’s legs for a pat.

The internet just about melts down when Shane does and Ilya likes it, comments the best boy <3 on it.

Shane has a sneaking suspicion the comment is less about the dog than it is about Shane following his instruction, but he just likes the comment, ignores the warm glow that fills his chest and doesn’t text Ilya about it at all. 

Is Berkes suddenly blind?

The message is waiting for him after Montreal’s loss against Tampa Bay, and it startles Shane into a laugh as he drops down onto the bench in front of his visitor cubby. I think he wears glasses for reading, Shane replies, pretending to misunderstand, as the rest of his team commiserates about their loss around him.

You could skate blindfolded, in the dark, with a hand tied behind your back and miss less passes than Berkes did tonight.

Everyone has off days, but Ilya’s not wrong; tonight hadn’t been Berky’s best work, and he makes a mental note to check in with him before the end of the night. Still. Careful, that sounded almost like a compliment. There’s no reply to that, so Shane puts his phone away and hits the showers. The reply comes as he’s letting himself back into his apartment after a quiet dinner with Lane, Berkes, JJ and Hayden.

It is.

Shane freezes halfway through toeing off his shoes. He waits for the slap that usually comes after something like that from Ilya, but there’s nothing, no bouncing dots, no follow up condition, nothing. His mind races as he thinks back on the last however many years they’ve been entangled, trying to remember a time when Ilya had ever handed him a compliment without Shane having had to earn it. He comes up distressingly blank, and feels like he’s been set adrift. Thank you, he replies, just barely managing to keep from adding a question mark to the end.

They’re due to play against each other in two days. It will be the first time they’ve seen each other in almost thirteen weeks.

Later that night, much later, Shane is in the hazy twilight of pre-sleep when his phone buzzes on the bedside table. He knows before picking it up that it will be Ilya, squints at the screen and swipes the brightness down before opening the text.

What is that word for when feelings are only going one way?

Shane frowns, still fuzzy and relaxed. Unrequited?

Yes. Shane waits, dots bouncing for a very long time, starting and stopping as unease finally starts to creep through his belly. Now your feelings have changed, this is how you want me to feel for you, yes? More power for you, maybe?

Shane feels like he’s been punched in the gut. Ilya, the way I feel about you has never changed. His reply is too fast, is too honest and gives too much away, but not for a second can he stand for Ilya to not understand.

All my brain thinks about now is that it has been four months since we fucked, Ilya replies.

If the previous question had been a gut-punch, this statement is like being hit by a fucking car. Shane stares at the blue message bubble and touches the screen twice to prevent the screen from fading off as he gnaws absently on his thumbnail. He hates that he can’t see Ilya, or hear his voice. Because trying to garner context from a text message is impossible, but Shane thinks that maybe this isn’t just Ilya trying to reset their status quo, but he can’t be sure, and he’s spent actual months trying to wrest back a fraction of his soul he’d unwittingly surrendered to Ilya when they were both nineteen.

This is where you ignore me now, right? Because I message you about fucking?

For the first time Shane feels guilty for the way he’s been ghosting Ilya without explanation. He’s not surprised that Ilya’s figured it out, but he absolutely is surprised that it’s taken him this long to call it out; Ilya has never been the shy and retiring type.

Well joke’s on you, Hollander, because I miss your idiot fucking laugh more than I miss having you on your knees for me.

It’s maybe the most honest thing Ilya’s ever sent him, and it’s devastating. The back of Shane’s eyes begin to burn and he decides that midnight is simultaneously too late and too early to try and figure out what Ilya’s angle is. He powers his phone entirely off for the first time in weeks and stares into the dark of the room until his brain is so overwhelmed that it also shuts off, and he falls asleep sometime before dawn.

“Hollander.”

Shane’s head snaps up at the vaguely familiar voice hailing him as he exits the dep, ginger ale in the canvas bag he has hooked in his elbow. “Marlow,” he says after a beat, thrown by the American appearing out of Shane’s context for him here in front of his local dépanneur in a thick coat and dark sunglasses. It takes a moment for him to realise the Bears must’ve flown in a day early before their game. He hasn’t heard from Ilya.

“How are you?” he eventually manages after a too-long pause. “How was your flight?”

Marlow smiles like he noticed it, but isn’t the kind of asshole to call it out. “Quiet,” he says, then holds out his bag of cheese curds.

Shane hesitates, thrown by the oddity of the situation. He takes a couple of curds, satisfyingly squeaky when he chews. Marlow watches him, makes a vague gesture for Shane to lead the way and then just… ambles along beside him for a bit when Shane confusedly turns towards his apartment. Marlow offers him the bag again, which Shane waves off, but Marlow grins and shows Shane the contents of his own reusable bag, filled with more bags of the white cheddar curds. Shane huffs a surprised laugh and accepts another small handful of cheese. He’s not sure what to say, what Marlow expects of him, but the silence between them as they walk isn’t strained.

“Been a while since we’ve played against each other,” Marlow eventually observes.

Nearly thirteen weeks, his brain supplies unhelpfully. “Yeah.”

“How’ve you been?”

The question is innocuous, but Shane feels he has to swallow down something that isn’t quite normal laughter bubbling up the back of his throat. Well, Cliff, he imagines saying, I’ve been trying to emotionally distance myself from your best friend in an attempt to rescue what’s left of my shredded heart because he won’t allow me to be in love with him, which I can’t exactly help. Turns out it’s not going so well, because despite having not seen him for three months he’s all I think about, and will probably be all I ever want for the rest of my life. “Yeah, not bad,” he says instead.

Marlow sighs, just a soft little sound, and startles the hell out of Shane by gently grabbing his elbow to draw him to a halt on the empty sidewalk as he shoves his sunglasses up onto his head. The day greys out as a thick cloud passes in front of the weak sun, and the slightly metallic scent that precedes snow in the city whirls past on a cold and wet breeze. Shane looks up at him, waiting and unsure.

“Look, Hollander, I like you, man. But if you’re not into my boy, then you need to cut him loose, okay, because he’s properly fucked up over you, and you seem like too decent a guy to string him along like this.”

Shane freezes, or maybe the entire world does. He knows he should be laughing right now, pretending he has no idea what Marlow’s talking about, offering up a confused denial. For some reason he can’t, though. “How do you know that?”

Marlow looks confused. “He told me?” he states simply, and there’s a very obvious ‘duh’ in there that even Shane can hear.

Shane finds that very hard to believe. “Rozanov told you he’s fucked up about me?”

“Oh,” Marlow says, his confusion clearing a little as he laughs. “No, god no; I think Roz’d rather drop dead in the street before talking about anything that actually matters to him. He told me you and him had a thing, but given that that’s been going on for literal years now, I figured out pretty quick that it’s not a casual thing. Not for him, anyway.”

The insinuation isn’t subtle, and despite the fact that Shane wants to correct Marlow that it’s Shane who is desperately not casual about Ilya, he pulls his focus back to what really matters about this surreal conversation. “So how do you know, then?” he presses.

The look Marlow shoots him is a complicated mix of disbelieving, incredulous and pitying. “I know my boy. The last few months he’s been properly obsessed with his phone, like he’s living and breathing for a text from Jane.” He levels a look at Shane. “You guys are not subtle, by the way.” He shakes his head a little and repositions his scarf to cover more of his throat. “He’s been off for the last couple of weeks, distracted, snappy. He’s sad, too, I think. Talks about you the way he talks about his mom, sometimes.”

All Shane knows about Ilya’s mother is that she died when he was young, but he suspects he still misses her like he’s missing a piece of himself just from the way Ilya doesn’t speak about her. “It’s complicated,” he offers, and it’s weak, but it’s also the god’s honest truth. It’s the most complicated thing in the world.

“No shit,” Marlow laughs again, but again it’s a nice laugh, not mean or condescending. “Doesn’t help that you’re both idiots who lack basic communication skills, either.”

He’s not wrong, but he says he knows Ilya so he should also know better. “Fuck off,” Shane tells him without heat. “When was the last time you got Ilya to talk about anything that actually matters to him?” Then a horrible thought occurs to him. “He… did he ask you to tell me this?”

Marlow’s expression darkens. “Are you fucking kidding me? He’d murder me to death if he knew we were talking about this.” He sighs. “He’s my best friend, Hollander, and I want what’s going to make him happy. That’s it.”

Shane chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment, debating whether or not to confide in Marlow, if he can be trusted. Marlow seems content to wait him out, at ease on a random Montreal street in a way Shane has never been at ease anywhere in his life. “If I tell him…” He hesitates, swallows hard. “The things I want to tell him, the… the way I feel. About him, I mean. If I tell him, he’s not going to want to hear it.” And there it is. Shane’s biggest, most profound fear laid out at Marlow’s feet. He feels like he’s eviscerating himself, but also that evisceration might actually be less painful.

“Of course he’s not,” Marlow says immediately. “That kid believes he’s terminally unlovable, and that he doesn’t deserve to have nice things.” He shrugs and levels an insistent look at Shane. “I guess it’s up to you to decide whether or not it’s worth your time and effort to convince him otherwise.” Shane stares at him, turning the words over and over in his mind.

Marlow watches him do that, nods once, then reaches out and claps his hand to Shane’s shoulder. “Think about it. And maybe never, ever, ever mention to Rozzy that we had this chat, yeah?” He grins once more, teeth shockingly white against his dark stubble, then turns back the way they came. “See you tomorrow night, Hollander.”

“Bye,” Shane manages weakly as he watches him go, then pulls out his phone as the first soft flurry of snow swirls down from the sky.

23:14 is the timestamp for Ilya’s last message to him. It’s 11:14 now, and Shane wills the symmetry to be a good omen. I miss everything about you, he finally replies. His heart is thudding in his throat and he feels vaguely ill, so he locks his phone, puts it back in his pocket and finishes his walk home, delaying the inevitable check for a reply by stowing his shoes, brushing the light dusting of snow from his coat before hanging it up, and stowing his drinks in the fridge.

I don’t know what you want from me, the first reply reads.

I don’t know what this means.

I don’t know anything anymore.

I need you to tell me.

As a kid, when he was particularly overwhelmed, Shane used to climb into bed and pull the blankets up over his head to minimise the amount of things he had to interact with, whether by sight, scent or sound. He does this now, waiting for the bed to warm before opening their conversation. He thinks about Marlow’s advice, his assessment of Ilya’s sense of self-worth. Decides that for this, to try and give Ilya this nice thing, if Shane can be considered that, he can be brave. He wants to be deliberate with each press of the letters, but his anxiety gets the better of him and he has a whole paragraph typed out before he can really think it through.

I’m scared that if I tell you what I want that you won’t want the same thing. I’m scared that if I say that I feel more for you than I’ve ever felt for anyone, if I tell you that I live for your messages and the moments we steal for ourselves, that if I admit that I’m starting to fall in love with you that I’ll never hear from you again. I’m terrified that I could admit that ‘starting to fall in love with you is a lie’ because I’ve actually been in love with you for years. I’m terrified that if I let you fuck me again that that’s all you’ll ever allow us to have, and I am so tired of trying not to admit to myself that I’d let that happen if it meant that I got to have some small part of you. I could tell you that when I think about you I think of words like future, and forever, and mine. I could tell you that you can have anything, everything of me, and I could tell you that you can have it all in hacked-off parts if that’s what it takes to keep you. I could tell y

His flying thumbs stop. His stomach is fucking writhing and his eyes are prickling; his skin feels too tight and his own useless heart is unbearably heavy. He doesn’t reread what he’s typed out, just highlights and deletes it all, in part because it’s the most frightening thing he’s ever admitted to himself, let alone Ilya, and also in part for the fact that he doesn’t want it to be too much for Ilya to understand without the massive burden of translation.

I want more from you than I think you’re willing to let me have, he settles on. Rereads it twice before sending it. It feels like a million years before Ilya replies, which the time stamp lies about and suggests is actually only two minutes.

What more can I give you? How is everything not enough for you?

Shane stares at the plain letters in disbelief. It takes him a moment to realise that he’s angry. Everything? he shoots back. I told you I wanted more than just hooking up and you called me a ‘casual fuck’.

The dots bounce for a long time, then stop. Shane slaps his phone down onto the mattress after ten minutes of waiting for a reply and wonders if he could get away with murdering Marlow during tomorrow night’s game.

His phone vibrates again and is in his hand and unlocked before the vibrations are finished.

You’re right. I’m sorry. I was a coward then, because I was scared. You scared me with being honest and saying the things that I wanted to say too. I am not good with being honest like this, like with feelings. I am scared of many things when it comes to you.

That… it’s a lot. Certainly more than Shane had thought he’d get, and he can barely allow himself to begin to hope before another message comes through as he’s reading.

Can we talk maybe? I worry I don’t have good English for texting the things I want to say to you.

Shane shoves the blankets down so his head is free, and it feels like surfacing from deep water, air finally filling his lungs again. Of course, he sends back, and wriggles up the bed. His phone starts vibrating and he can’t help the nerves that tear through him at the generic call screen with Lily appearing in the middle of the screen.

He takes a deep breath and slides his thumb across the bottom of the screen to accept the incoming call.

Chapter 2: Love's Not A Competition (But I'm Winning)

Chapter Summary

If there’s one thing Ilya hates, it’s being made to do anything.

And not in the way that LeClaire seems to find it hilarious to make them train until they’re all wobbling off the ice at the end of the day; that’s Coach’s job and that’s instruction that Ilya has chosen to follow. It’s more in the way that Shane Hollander, specifically, seems able to make Ilya Think About His Actions. It’s bullshit, and to quote the dodgeball movie that Marly and the boys seem to love, nobody makes Ilya bleed his own blood, so Ilya ignores Hollander until he can’t anymore, until the way he misses him is less theoretical and more like a physical ache. A really fucking stupid ache.

 

Ilya is forced to actually get to know Shane. He's not comfortable with that at all.

Chapter Notes

This chapter is an Ilya POV parallel to the previous chapter, and is dedicated to everyone who wanted more- especially to c_m_li, foxinsox81, DragonflyLady77, so if this is bad, you all know who to blame... <3

Title from the Kaiser Chiefs song of the same name.

If there’s one thing Ilya hates, it’s being made to do anything.

And not in the way that LeClaire seems to find it hilarious to make them train until they’re all wobbling off the ice at the end of the day; that’s Coach’s job and that’s instruction that Ilya has chosen to follow. It’s more in the way that Shane Hollander, specifically, seems able to make Ilya Think About His Actions. It’s bullshit, and to quote the dodgeball movie that Marly and the boys seem to love, nobody makes Ilya bleed his own blood, so Ilya ignores Hollander until he can’t anymore, until the way he misses him is less theoretical and more like a physical ache. A really fucking stupid ache.

He holds out for seven weeks after their catastrophic attempt at sex, the longest seven weeks of his life, it feels like, and ignores Hollander when they play against each other in Boston, furious afterwards with the loss. He’s savagely smug about not sending an invitation to hookup when the Voyageurs are in town, and doesn’t look too hard at the way he feels about not receiving one, either. His life goes on as it had before: training, home games, training, drinks with the boys, training, not thinking about Hollander, away games, training, attending the Grand Prix with Sveta in Texas, training. He keeps busy because he’s a busy guy, and if that has the added bonus of facilitating the not thinking about Hollander portion of his life, well. He’s not thinking about it, is he?

Still, in the soft, liminal place between wakefulness and sleep he keeps seeing Hollander back up, flinch, and the stone that sits on his chest all the time now feels just a little heavier each time. He messages Hollander about it once, because whatever else has happened between them, Ilya is not that kind of monster, and it becomes of utmost importance to him that Hollander knows it.

I would never hit you.

It’s honest, and more than he might otherwise be willing to give if it were anyone else, but thinking that Hollander might not believe him makes him feel physically sick.

I know that, he gets back the next morning, simple and declarative. Without Hollander’s ridiculously expressive face to read, though, it’s a hollow assurance.

Detroit finally figures out what their D-men are for, and it’s bad timing because Schneider and Andropov are both out on IR and Gagnon gets gastro, so the Bears aren’t playing at their best. They manage to win by two but it’s a slog, and Ilya doesn’t feel good about it. He gets this sneaky little suspicion, sometimes, that if his stupid rivalry with Hollander wasn’t a thing that made the NHL as much money in merchandise and advertising as it does, that he would be stripped of his captaincy and laughed out of the league for being generally useless. He knows he’s not the worst captain out there- looking at you, Hunter- but he’s realistic about his skills and his strengths, and he knows there are far better. It kills him to admit it, not that he’d ever actually say it out loud, but Hollander’s quiet competence and insistence on leading by shining fucking example means he’s up there with the best, evidenced by the fact that he’s actually dragged the Voyageurs of all teams up and into excellence by sheer determination and force of will.

Vegetating on the couch later, ice wrapped around his knee, he half expects to hear from Hollander after the Detroit game; chirpy little fucker is always keen to stick the knife in.

He doesn’t.

Sleep has been elusive the last few weeks, so when he starts to drift off on his sinfully comfortable couch by midnight he just lets it happen, doesn’t bother getting up to go to bed and risk waking himself up instead. Unfortunately he wakes up again at half three, insanely, indistractibly hungry, decides he doesn’t want anything he has in the house and instead throws on his jacket and boots and walks twenty minutes to the best taqueria in Boston to order a burrito as big as his head.

“Hola, Gael,” he greets the guy behind the counter, making his accent extra thick while intentionally butchering the Spanish greeting because he likes the way the old man smiles with his eyes when he does.

“Hola, Ilya,” Gael grins back, already up and making Ilya’s order. “Good game tonight, very sneaky wraparound in the second.”

“Bah,” Ilya grunts, waving his hand dismissively and settling onto one of the bar stools at the counter. He nods his thanks when Gael supplies a frosty beer not actually available on the menu but somehow always ready when Ilya shows up, tosses the cap into the bin through the little basketball net attached to the wall. Nothing but net. “Detroit’s goalie is apparently triple threat: dumb, blind and slow. Is not a great achievement to exploit this.”

Gael laughs, eyes Ilya for a moment, adds extra meat to the burrito. “Still, a win is a win.”

“Technically, maybe,” Ilya sighs, drops his elbow to the counter and rests his chin in his hands. “How are your girls?” he asks, spotting a new photo of Gael’s dark haired twin granddaughters pinned to the board on the back wall. Ilya is treated to a story about Julia and Lizzy headlining their ballet recital, and he listens eagerly to the love Gael makes no effort to hide when he speaks of them. Wonders if his father ever spoke of him the same way, then mentally berates himself for wondering when he knows the answer is no.

The burrito is excellent, as always.

Gael gets busy making a mountain of tacos for a group of hollow-eyed college kids who ignore Ilya to set up textbooks and laptops on one of the nearby picnic tables, and Ilya hears them miserably discussing upcoming exams. He thanks god he was too dumb to go to university before playing hockey. Ilya quietly pays for his burrito and their tacos, finishes his beer and waves goodbye to Gael before heading back home. During his walk he wonders why Shane never went to college. He’s clever, and his parents- what little Ilya knows of them- seem the type to encourage him to do that. Ilya’s mother wanted him to study, always said he was too smart to waste his talent with concussions. He wonders if she would have been proud of him, or disappointed in his wasted potential.

What is that thing where you know you’re a failure and you’re just waiting for everyone to notice? he texts Hollander on a whim, maudlin and lonely as he makes his way up the quiet street, watching curiously as his shadow shortens and then lengthens and slides away as he moves through the puddles of streetlight. He’s not expecting a reply, but is oddly pleased when he gets one just the same.

Imposter syndrome?

Yes, he sends back, because of course Hollander knows the answer, knows what Ilya is asking. How do you make that go away?

 If I ever figure it out, I’ll let you know.

Ilya stares at the message, surprised by what it means. Hollander is the golden boy of hockey… Ilya had once given him so much shit for having actually been called that in an article once that he had shoved his own fingers into Ilya’s mouth while giving Ilya the most aggressive blowjob he’d ever received just to make him shut up. As if, he starts to type. Deletes. Shut the fuck up, he tries again. Deletes. Please, he eventually settles on. What would a perfect hockey boy like you know about failure. He doesn’t add a question mark, because he wants Hollander to know he sees through his bullshit.

The reply he gets makes him laugh. You’ve taught me plenty, it reads, and Ilya can so easily picture Hollander’s stupid face, imagine the little scowl he’s probably wearing as he thinks about all the times Ilya has beaten him at something.

I certainly have, Ilya sends back, smirking to himself as he now begins to imagine that scowl underlaid by a pretty blush at the innuendo. You like it when I teach you things, yes?

He doesn’t get a reply this time, but it’s almost 0500 now, so Hollander’s probably getting ready to go for a run or adopt some orphans, or something else equally as wholesome.

Ilya finds him ridiculous, and goes to bed on principle.

It’s just sitting there.

Ilya glances around, sees no one paying attention.

He wanders closer.

The dog watches him, its tail beginning to thump a happy rhythm on the sidewalk.

“Hello,” Ilya says in Russian, beyond pleased when the mutt stands up and strains at its leash to get closer to him. “My, my, aren’t you a darling?” He holds out his hand, palm down, for the dog to sniff, which it doesn’t. Instead, it headbutts his shins in search of a pat. Ilya is helpless to do anything but oblige when asked so politely, pulling out his phone to snap a photo before devoting his attention to loving on the shaggy creature with its ridiculous glittery bandana. He goes down on one knee to do the job better, absurdly pleased when the dog parks its butt on his lap. It makes him laugh, and he checks the collar for a name. “Rufus,” he reads, rolling the unfamiliar name around his mouth before deciding it’s absolutely perfect. He’s never seen a dog who better embodied its name in his entire life. “Hello, Rufus,” he murmurs. “We’re friends now, yes?”

Rufus seems to agree, if the way he bunts his head up underneath Ilya’s chin is any indication. God, he wants a dog so badly.

Difference between misdemeanour and felony? he asks Hollander as he hugs Rufus and begins planning to move to this particular street corner for the foreseeable future so they can be best friends forever.

Did you mean to send this to me, or search it online?

Ilya laughs and deliberately doesn’t think about why he hadn’t even thought to do so. You are the most boring person I know, he needles Hollander. I presumed you would know the answer.

The response is almost instantaneous, possibly because Hollander had been typing it already. Why are you even asking? Am I going to have to front bail?

The idea of him having to show up to a Boston police station to bail Ilya out for dognapping is oddly hilarious; he can picture it so clearly. He sends the photo of Rufus he’d taken as explanation, unsurprised when Hollander understands immediately.

Do not steal that dog, Hollander tells him, and Ilya is sorely tempted to send a selfie back of himself flipping the bird.

Such a buzzkill, he sends back instead, only to get distracted by a warm chuckle coming from behind him, and Rufus doubling the speed at which his tail can wag.

Ilya glances back over his shoulder and up, and up and up as he takes in the incredibly tall, incredibly lovely individual laughing at him from where they’ve come out of the cafe Rufus has been waiting out the front of. He can tell the moment he’s recognised by the surprised arch of heavy brows and reluctantly lets Rufus go. The poor boy looks torn between the love he knows and the love he’s recently found in Ilya and it makes Ilya grin. “Very dangerous to leave such a beautiful boy unattended,” he chides Rufus’ owner. “Who knows what kind of unsavoury character could come by and just…” he snaps his fingers to indicate exactly the kind of unsavoury character he could be… the kind who would steal an innocent dog. In response, Rufus drops his butt into an obedient sit. “Oh my god, I love you,” Ilya tells him, and rewards him with a double-handed scratch down Rufus’ sides until his back leg begins kicking involuntarily.

“Do I need to call the authorities?” the newcomer asks, watching Ilya reduce their dog to a happily panting pile of frizz on the sidewalk.

“No, no,” Ilya says reluctantly, getting up from his crouch, his knee protesting. “Would not be fair to perfect Rufus, I work away from home too much to give him the life he deserves.”

“Well, Rufus and I are here most afternoons, if you’d ever like to join us for coffee, maybe?” They smile a little, dark eyes glittering in the afternoon sunlight. “I’m Kai, by the way.”

“Ilya,” Ilya replies with a friendly but non-committal smile. Kai is willowy and gorgeous in that nebulously androgynous way Ilya has always found fascinating, but their eyes are a little too dark and their musculature a little too lean to be Ilya’s type. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Do,” Kai smiles again, leaning down to untie Rufus who looks expectantly at Ilya, as though expecting him to come along, too.

“Bye, baby,” he murmurs with one last pat before continuing on his way without even thinking to look back and check whether or not Kai is watching him go.

After that day Ilya loses his mind or something, because from then on he’s the one to message Hollander first, every time, and that’s not his MO at all. It makes him uncomfortable so he tries to limit himself, but he sees the looks Marly casts his way when he’s sat staring at his phone sometimes, waiting for Hollander to reply. He thinks maybe if he’s the only one not getting what he wants from doing so that it’s possibly a waste of his self-control. Still, sometimes Hollander texts back right away, typically earnest and honest and unintentionally funny, and on those days they can message back and forth for ages about nothing in particular, or about really specific things that Ilya’s never given a lot of thought to before. Then other days he never replies at all, and Ilya has to sit alone with that silence until he can come up with another semi-plausible reason to reopen the conversation and try again.

It’s the morning of an optional skate before an away game against Tampa when Ilya starts to get it. He’s been feeling pretty beat up for the last two weeks, what with the fucking five away games and LeClaire’s current experimentation with their first line meaning that Ilya’s been copping it left and right. His troublesome left knee has been twinging more often than not for the last two weeks, and he’s definitely downplayed the discomfort in his bruised ribs, so he’s taking the morning for himself, even though it’s bad form as captain. He suspects LeClaire’s aware of how much he’s- well, not struggling exactly, but maybe how flat he feels, and had replied to Ilya’s message last night with a rest up, Rozanov, it’s been a week. He’s grateful for it, and decides to do just that, guilt-free.

He drifts in and out until nearly nine, the longest he’s slept in in weeks. When he does finally wake for the day he’s face down in bed in his single room, half-smothering himself with the pillow, tired and a little sore but not so much that he’s dreading getting out of bed. He stretches, toes pointing hard enough to cramp his calves and thighs, and slowly acknowledges that he’s half hard, grinding lazily into the mattress for a beat before sighing and rolling onto his back. He idly palms himself and his dick wakes right the fuck up, so he settles in to properly jerk off for the first time in longer than he’s willing to admit, and gets most of the way to orgasm before thinking about Hollander, which may or may not be the reason he’s been kind of avoiding masturbating of late. He never stops himself from thinking about him, because the noises Hollander makes when he’s getting railed are sexy as fuck, but Ilya always feels like shit afterwards, so it’s just easier not to.

He’s caught up in how good he feels for a change, and sends a message to Hollander before he can really think about it. I miss the way you look on your knees, he sends, which is fucking unhinged for nine in the morning, he knows, but fuck it- maybe he’ll get lucky and Hollander will get the message while he’s at training. The thought of his innocent, overwhelmed blush makes Ilya’s cock jerk in his hand. He keeps it languidly stroking as he waits for a reply, allowing himself to think of Hollander in a kind of mental highlight reel: various flashes of memory of him flushed and sweaty mid- or post-game, his gorgeous eyes alight with the joy of a hard-fought win, the way his composure relaxes and then evaporates when Ilya spends generous time taking him apart until he’s shaking, the ridiculously attractive way he narrows his eyes at Ilya when he knows he’s being teased but can’t quite figure out why.

Ilya groans and comes over his own tight fist, and as good as it is it isn’t good enough to make up for how shitty it feels to realise in the afterglow that Hollander never actually messages him back. Still, with nothing but a day to himself apparently Ilya’s lost the ability to think about anything but Hollander and, like a god damn masochist, he tries again that afternoon.

Number one thing I will not miss about staying in hotels when we retire is the horrifically bad coffee, Ilya later messages.

The only place worse for coffee than the Delta is the Hyatt in Buffalo, Shane responds instantly, which makes Ilya huff a laugh from his nose because he’s not wrong.

You’ve clearly never stayed at the Marriott in Detroit, Ilya offers. Like it’s been strained through a dirty sock. Which is the truth, and he’s right for saying it.

Disgusting mental image, so thanks for that, Hollander says.

I aim to please, Ilya sends back, which is also not a lie, at least not where Hollander’s concerned. He doesn’t get anything back right away, and a suspicion begins to form in the back of his mind. He shoves it away and tries again, easier this time. What are you doing?

It’s meant as an invitation to keep Shane replying, but as he waits for an answer Ilya is significantly discomfited to realise he actually cares about the answer. What is Hollander doing? Is he at home? With friends? With a girl.. a guy? Is he eating? Is he comfortable and warm? Is he frustrated? Relaxed? At ease? Why does it even fucking matter? Ilya receives a photo this time, a set of dumbbells on a gym floor somewhere, the black mats and white walls telegraphing ‘hotel room’ to Ilya’s well-travelled eyes.

Better not be skipping leg day, Ilya sends immediately and he means it, because Hollander’s thighs are a masterpiece of repetitive human effort. There’s not much he enjoys more than getting them over his shoulders or around his waist, the dense muscle strong and masculine and capable. The give of them beneath his teeth is especially delicious.

That was yesterday. DOMS will have me laid out tomorrow, I’ve increased my squat PB, and Ilya’s never wanted anything more than to watch him fucking do it.

Send me photos, he demands immediately, and then… nothing.

Nothing. 

Once is an incident, Ilya thinks, and twice is a coincidence, except Shane doesn’t work beneath the auspices of coincidence. He’s one of the most intentional men Ilya’s ever met.

…Fuck.

The Voyageurs win against the Admirals, and it’s been a few days since Ilya’s messaged Hollander, since he figured out what the hell was going on. He’s still pissed, hates that Shane’s manipulated him into thinking about him constantly and done so by refusing any kind of sexual overture. But right now Ilya’s tired, has had the worst sleep he can ever remember having had over the last three days, and he’s feeling a bit vulnerable, all right? His defences are non existent low and last night’s dream was so stupidly mundane that he’s actually angry at himself. Which obviously means he needs to make it Shane’s problem, too.

I had a dream about you last night, he begins. He keeps it vaguely suggestive on purpose, unsurprised when the message is read but remains without a reply. We were arguing about faceoff positioning. He hates that that’s true. Even in my dreams you are boring. He hates that that isn’t.

He’s sure that will have made Shane grin. Sure enough, Me being boring is old news, Shane sends. I think this dream says more about you than it does about me.

It says you are perfect soporific, Ilya snipes back, means it.

Been reading the dictionary in your spare time?

And to think Hollander has the nerve to call Ilya an asshole. Still, he’s not far off the mark so Ilya snaps a photo of Marly’s secret santa gift from last year, a word of the day calendar, and sends it in response.

Did you actually dream that, or does it just suit your new word of the day to pretend?

Ilya had been a teenager when he’d discovered that most people didn’t experience full colour, high definition, feature length film dreams like he did. Between the ages of eleven and fifteen he often had weeks at a time where he would dream like this for nights on end, waking up even more exhausted than he’d been before falling asleep and feeling like he’d been running for hours. The shape of his dreams varied wildly from mundane repetition of everyday chores to being pursued by nameless, faceless horrors hellbent on destroying him. He had been a creative child, all kinds of stories springing fully-formed from his fertile imagination.

His dreams about Shane are something else entirely. Gone are the dreams of mundanity, replaced instead by what feels like hours of crystal-clear moments where he and Shane do nothing but spend time together. Just sitting. Reading, doing word puzzles, doing dishes together in a kitchen he’s never seen before, and one that keeps repeating where Ilya is literally just watching Shane’s hands as he fucking knits something with soft red wool. Nothing chases him anymore, either; instead, the wordless terror gradually rises when he searches through room after identical room without finding Shane as he cries out Ilya’s name, desperate to be found but forever out of reach.

He’s beyond tired, a headache always present these days, but the risk sleep now poses is worth it for the possibility of spending a few hours with a dream-Shane folding a never-ending pile of compression shirts in shades of black, white and grey as they trade soft smiles across a bed he somehow knows is theirs. That can be the only excuse for telling Shane that he dreams of him most nights, and he’s so fucking horrified that he actually sent those words, those exact fucking words, that he just drops his phone in the cutlery drawer and goes for a run, without music like a god damn psychopath, until his legs throb in time with his brain and he has to return home before he collapses somewhere horrifically public and needs to be carried home.

I don’t remember my dreams, he finally reads, hours later, when he doesn’t feel like he’s trying to swallow his own heart quite as badly anymore.

Lucky you, Ilya tells him, and means every single letter of his reply.

That night he doesn’t dream at all.

Would you rather fight one hundred duck-sized horses, or one horse-sized duck?

Ilya grins when Shane’s reply comes through, pleased for the distraction from the borderline-migraine he’s currently enduring. Respectfully, are you drunk right now?

It’s seven a.m. Monday morning, of course not, Ilya says. I am very hungover, though. Head is pounding. He gets a cry-laughing emoji for his confession, but honestly? It does help a little with the headache. So?

So what?

So, what is your choice? His laugh echoes loudly through his empty apartment when it takes Shane approximately twelve years to reply, and Ilya knows with absolute certainty that he’s taking the time to consider every variable before he replies.

Somehow the conversation meanders into a mutual whinge session about training when it’s late enough in the season that everyone’s fucked and everything hurts. From there it turns to ranking team and player performances, which then segues naturally into gossip of the kind that the various WAGs couldn’t ever hope to match. Ilya delights in the fact that Shane is actually kind of a bitch about the people he really doesn’t like, but in a clever way rather than being mean for the sake of it. Ilya spends the better part of Monday night egging him on once he’s back in Boston. Some of them Ilya barely knows, but that doesn’t matter when Shane is offering up pithy observations like he’s been saving them up for Ilya’s entertainment.

Tuesday morning opens with a message from Shane first. Ilya doesn’t even care that it’s still dark outside when the alert wakes him, because it’s the first time in actual months that Shane has instigated contact first. It’s a photo of an enormous grilled cheese, thick slices of bread toasted to perfectly golden, cheese melted and oozing out from between them, with a mountainous side of crispy bacon, jammy fried eggs and sauteéd mushrooms. Then comes a link to a restaurant, and you should try this place out next time you’re in MTL, I think you’d enjoy it.

Fuck right off, Ilya sends back blearily. Who are you with, because I know YOU aren’t having that for breakfast.

Fuck you, I could be, Shane replies.

Ilya can actually hear the petulance. Sure, Hollander, whatever you say. He rolls over and takes a photo of the days-old mug and mostly-empty packet of cigarettes still on his bedside table, sends it to Shane. Breakfast of champions. Well, most recent Stanley Cup champion, anyway. He fully expects the middle finger emoji reply he gets as if on cue, and spends the rest of the day grinning to himself as they pick up where they’d left off last night, trading hundreds of messages over the course of the day.

In the afternoon Shane responds to a wyd? text with a photo of a big mastiff-type puppy, all enormous head and legs, its tail a blur as it hover-sits on a frozen sidewalk.

He tried to sit for approximately two seconds before he had his lead tangled around my legs when he tried to get a pat.

You’d better have patted him so good, Hollander, or I swear to god, Ilya replies. You should share this one on Instagram.

Have you seen @weratedogs? Shane replies instantly, and then they spend a fucking hour of their lives screenshotting their favourites to send back and forth, laughing at the funniest comments that go with them.

Shane posts the photo late that night.

the best boy <3, Ilya comments, and hopes it doesn’t make Shane stop replying again, because at this point Ilya honestly isn’t sure whether or not he means Shane or the puppy, but he’s right on both counts, so he stands by it.

His comment goes viral, but that might also be because right after he posted it, Ilya took a deep breath, tapped the little follow button next to Shane’s name, then turned his phone off for the night and went to bed. Neither of them mention it when Shane follows him back.

Montreal loses 2-1 to Tampa Bay which is an embarrassment. For Shane, particularly, and if it’s not if fucking should be. Ilya’s two hefty drinks into a quiet night at home, but even that’s not enough to dull his surprise at Montreal’s loss. Is Berkes suddenly blind? he messages at the end of the game, and Shane must reply from the locker room because Ilya’s phone vibrates almost right away.

I think he wears glasses for reading, he says, and Ilya’s ninety percent sure at this point that Shane is deliberately literal just to fuck with him.

He scoffs quietly to himself as the post-game breakdown plays quietly in the background and he rolls onto his back on the couch to reply. You could skate blindfolded, in the dark, with a hand tied behind your back and miss less passes than Berkes did tonight. 

It’s only when Shane replies with careful, that sounded almost like a compliment that Ilya realises how sincere his message must have seemed. Which, you know, it was, but it was more intended to be a jab at Berkes, because was the dude asleep on the ice or what?

Ilya spends a full ninety minutes debating how to reply. On one hand, it might have been hyperbolic, but Shane really is that good, and for reasons unknown to man or science he seems to be the only person in existence hesitant to believe it.

On the other hand…

Well, on the other hand he is Ilya Rozanov and that’s Shane Hollander, and it’s Ilya’s god-given responsibility as the only player of skill enough to beat Hollander to keep the asshole humble, so.

It is, he settles on eventually, sending it and trying to pretend like it didn’t cost him anything to risk saying it.

Thank you, he eventually gets back, and it makes Ilya ache, suddenly, with the desire to be close enough to read Shane’s face and body instead of having to guess at his reaction.

Ilya drops his phone onto his chest and scrubs a hand over his face, tries really hard not to think about the fact that they’ll be seeing each other in two days for their next scheduled game, the first time in three months. He fails, thinks about it constantly instead.

By eleven p.m. he’s a few more drinks in, and positively flush with bad ideas.

What is that word for when feelings are only going one way? he asks, because he doesn’t bother searching much on the internet anymore, not when he can just ask Shane instead.

It takes a few minutes, but as soon as unrequited? comes through, Ilya mentally matches it up to the Russian, Безответная, and feels drunken resentment crawl across his skin. He’s frustrated, lonely and careless, and he’s peripherally aware that something can be both a good idea at the time and still ruin everything later, but doesn’t have the capacity to reason through all that and keep his fucking hands off his phone.

So he types, says the thing he knows he shouldn’t. Yes. Now your feelings have changed, this is how you want me to feel for you, yes? More power for you, maybe?  God, this is going to catch him some serious hell come morning, and sobriety. He ignores his phone when it vibrates in his hand, for all of fifteen seconds or so because it turns out that ignoring Shane isn’t really a thing Ilya is capable of anymore. So he reads the reply and feels like he’s been kicked full in the chest.

Ilya, the way I feel about you has never changed.

And… what does that even fucking mean? Seriously. Fuck Shane Hollander. Fuck his stupidly beautiful everything, and his gentle affection and intense sincerity and his inability to lie with perfect Canadian politeness to spare Ilya’s emotional fucking breakdown. Fuck Ilya’s whole entire life for tricking him into catching feelings for someone so anti-Russian-stoicism that he can literally bring Ilya to his knees with forehead kisses and softly-spoken denials and big glassy eyes. But he can’t say that, wouldn’t even know where to start in English, in a text message, so he tries to force Shane to end the conversation, make it his decision instead.

All my brain thinks about now is that it has been four months since we fucked.

Because he gets it, right? He knows that this isn’t what Shane wants from him anymore, so this is how Ilya makes it happen without having to claim responsibility for having been the one to do it. It can be a clean break, because Shane doesn’t really instigate their conversations anymore, and certainly not when Ilya’s confrontational like this. They won’t have to do this anymore, and Ilya can get on with getting over him, and it will be done.

This is where you ignore me now, right? Because I message you about fucking?

He stares at his phone in mild shock, unable to comprehend that he’s betrayed himself this way by interrogating the situation further. He grits his teeth, finishes the last of his drink and thinks of that stupid American idiom about pennies and pounds, sends a last message.

Well joke’s on you, Hollander, because I miss your idiot fucking laugh more than I miss having you on your knees for me.

He all-but passes out after that, and there’s no return notification to disturb him.

He’s too stubborn for a hangover and too disgusted at himself to open Jane’s thread the next morning. He packs for Montreal instead and grunts a greeting to Marly when his car pulls up to where Ilya’s waiting to go with him to the airport.

“Feeling alright, brother?” Marly asks him as he waits for him to buckle up like a square, but he hands Ilya a takeaway coffee from the place around the corner from his apartment that Ilya likes before he pulls back out into traffic, and Ilya is so exhausted that he’s uncharacteristically honest.

“I think the thing with Hollander is over,” he admits as he stares out the passenger window. He pretends his voice doesn’t sound as thick as he knows it is. “I don’t want to talk about it. At all,” he says with emphasis when he sees Marly’s head swivel around to stare at him in the reflection on the glass.

He didn’t regret sharing the barest of details about Shane with Marly, about the damaging, foolish thing they’ve had for so many years. Marly had been surprisingly good about it, just a few pointed questions and some private, good-natured teasing from time to time around their games against Montreal. Marly is the best kind of friend, and while Ilya had taken great joy in referring to him as a himbo for a few weeks after learning the word, he knows that still waters run deep where Marly is concerned, and that he probably knows, or at least suspects, a lot more than Ilya has ever actually told him.

Marly proves once more that he’s the best thing to happen to Ilya since coming to Boston, just reaches across and drops a heavy hand to Ilya’s thigh and squeezes once, firm and grounding, before returning it to the steering wheel and letting Ilya choose the music. It’s small consolation, and he’s so fucking tired of travelling he fantasises about just opening the door and tipping himself out onto the Pike as they drive. Briefly. Jokingly, mostly. It probably wouldn’t work anyway, because it’s not really the travelling that’s making him feel like shit. It’s not even the vodka. Probably.

The airport is as familiar as his apartment at this point, and the flight is uneventful. Customs is delayed because Olsson has bananas in his bag again, but they’re through and all checked into the hotel by ten. Ilya plans on taking a nap, levelling a disparaging look at Marly when he suggests joining him to go and find his weird bags of squeaky cheese that he likes so much. Marly just shrugs and leaves, and instead of sleeping Ilya half-watches Men In Black as a distraction for his tired brain.

His phone vibrates in his backpack then the movie’s about halfway through, and he debates ignoring what it almost certainly a lost Marly. But he really should plug it in to charge, so he rolls over on the bed and reaches down to where he’d dropped his bag at the end of the bed and fishes it and his charger out, only to experience a cardiac event in real time when he sees a message from Jane.

I miss everything about you, it says, and five words have no business being as damaging as those five are.

Ilya is so lost, and he’s so, so tired. His screen fades out, but the words are burned into the back of his eyelids when he lies back on the bed and closes them. Is Shane’s message an opening, an invitation? Is it a tease? What response is he expecting? What response is going to make him disappear again, where are the landmines Ilya can stumble upon and detonate to blow this up so completely that they will actually, completely, definitively be done this time? Is that actually what he wants? It might be, because he’s starting to think that this isn’t tenable, that as much as he has enjoyed getting to actually know Shane over the last few months… and he has, god, he really has… it’s just not enough.

In the quiet of the hotel room, the aircon a bit too cold and the sharp winter light a bit too bright, Ilya swallows hard enough for the click of it to be audible. He wants more. He wants everything. He doesn’t want to fuck this up. So again, this time with trust rather than resentment, he makes it Shane’s decision.

I don’t know what you want from me.

I don’t know what this means.

I don’t know anything anymore.

I need you to tell me.

The bouncing dots will be the death of him, he’s certain, and he desperately hopes he won’t have to translate an essay, because this is hard enough when they’re face-to-face speaking the same language, let alone if he’s being provided with opportunities to misinterpret meaning and intent via text. What he gets, though, is simple.

I want more from you than I think you’re willing to let me have.

His startled laugh is soft and incredulous, but honesty seems to be today’s bad choice, so he asks what more can I give you? How is everything not enough for you? and hates himself for it because he’s never been able to hate Shane, even though he’s tried.

Everything? I told you I wanted more than just hooking up and you called me a ‘casual fuck’, Shane replies, and he’s right. Ilya had said that. He’d never told a larger lie in his life, and he’s so retrospectively furious at himself for having made this whole fucking thing so much worse than it had to be that he has to put the phone down and pace around the room a bit, shaking his hands out as though he can physically shake the irritation loose. When he’s a little more settled, and his heart no longer feels like it’s running at a gallop, he sits on the side of the bed and continues with the bad choices.

You’re right, he sends back carefully. I’m sorry. I was a coward then, because I was scared. You scared me with being honest and saying the things that I wanted to say too. I am not good with being honest like this, like with feelings. I am scared of many things when it comes to you. His calm begins to fritter away again, and rather than wait for a reply he just forges onwards. Can we talk maybe? I worry I don’t have good English for texting the things I want to say to you.

Of course, Shane replies almost right away, because he’s always been braver than Ilya in the ways that count. If five words can be damaging, Ilya doesn’t have enough of them in any language to describe the impact that two can have. 

He takes a deep breath in and makes the call.

Chapter End Notes

I am firmly of the opinion that Shane would prefer to fight one hundred duck-sized horses:

('at best they would be a numbers-based inconvenience, but it would be like fighting off a hundred puppies, right? A few good swings of the stick, and they wouldn't be a problem anymore')

whereas Ilya would prefer the horse-sized duck:

('it's big, sure, and has the advantage of flight, but you only need to exploit a single moment of opportunity to cripple it, and I have the skill for that. Besides, I think you underestimate how many 100 of anything is, Hollander- they would flank you and kill you. Besides, if you had to slaughter a hundred little ponies you would have to think long and hard about yourself as a person, and I don't think you have the fortitude for that')

Chapter 3: Good On The Inside

Chapter Summary

Shane and Ilya have a long-overdue conversation.

It's not easy.

Chapter Notes

Guysssss, this was supposed to be a one-shot.

 

Title from Clare Bowditch's You Make Me Happy.

Shane takes a deep breath and slides his thumb across the bottom of the screen to accept the incoming call.

“Ilya,” he says on a half-breath.

There’s a moment’s pause filled with the silence of someone occupying space. Then, just as soft, “Hollander.”

No. Absolutely not. He’s not letting Ilya get away with that, distancing them, keeping a barrier up, not now. He swallows hard, throat thick and head overfull. “Shane,” he corrects, gentle but firm. “You call me Shane, and I call you Ilya.”

It sounds like Ilya breathes out the breath caught in Shane's own chest. “Okay, yes. Shane."

The vowel is long, the ay sound dragged out into an ey sound, and Shane mouths around the pronunciation, a new way of making them fit. “Thank you,” he says, polite. Neither of them speak for a bit, and it’s fucking awkward, truly awkward and not sexy-awkward like so many moments between them have been. “How are you?” Ilya's answering laugh is sudden and rough, makes Shane startle a little even as an unintentional smile curls the corners of his mouth up.

“Busy. Exhausted,” Ilya admits, and Shane can so easily picture him, probably at the hotel by now, eyes tired and tight around the corners the way Shane’s only ever seen in glimpses post-sex when Ilya had relaxed enough to truly let his guard down. “You?”

He debates how honest to be, but that’s the point of this call, right? Honesty with an attempt to ameliorate misunderstanding? He supposes that, one way or another, they’re going to know where they stand by the end of it, so he may as well start as he means to continue. “Lonely,” he says, and it feels like he’s thrown the word into an abyss. Ilya’s end of the line is silent but Shane just waits. He’s had plenty of experience with waiting over the past few months. Ilya breathes in a little like he’s about to speak, then stops. Does it again, stops again. It makes Shane smile a little, and he’s a little relieved that he’s not the only one so out of his depth. He’s holding the phone against his ear hard enough for his knuckles to ache.

“Me too,” Ilya finally says, soft and unsure.

Good, Shane thinks savagely, a little meanly. You did this to me, to us, you should feel lonely. As soon as he has the thought, though, he’s ashamed of himself. He knows all the reasons Ilya’s been so… Ilya, not that that makes it sting any less, but his reasons are valid, even if Shane hates them. “I’ve been here,” he reminds Ilya.

“Conditionally,” Ilya says instantly, confrontational.

And that’s… well, both fair and not. “As conditionally as you’ve been since we started this,” Shane says, keeping his tone level.

“Yes? Because we agreed that this could only ever be casual.”

It feels like a slap and Shane’s first instinct is to slap back. “When you told me that’s all it could be, and I didn't know any better, and we were nineteen, you mean?”

Ilya’s sigh is explosive this time, loud and probably deliberately antagonistic. “Christ, Hollander- Shane, sorry- that’s all it could be, and you know why.”

He bites back his automatic snap, does a slow five-fount in his head, and considers that. The way Ilya had corrected himself with Shane’s name had been sincere rather than a dig, and something about it made his stomach twist. And could. All it could be. Not can. “I do,” he says honestly.

“Do you?” Ilya demands. “Do you really? You talk about the years we’ve been doing this, but you know how many years I think of? Twelve. Spent in prison for ‘extremist activities’ such as being gay in public. And that’s presuming I didn’t disappear before making it to prison. Or fifty years, or sixty, maybe, the rest of my life not allowed to go back home to the place where my mother is buried, where I-” he breaks off and mutters something in distracted Russian, “-where I came to being? I do not know English word for this.”

There’s a brief crackle and Shane pictures Ilya running his hand over his face as he shakes his head, the way he does when he’s frustrated at his inability to convey his thoughts the way he wants. “I’m not suggesting we start wearing rainbow flags and fucking in the street, Ilya,” Shane says, his own frustration rising because he isn’t a fucking idiot, he knows the risks they’ve been taking-

“Моя ха́та с кра́ю — ничего не знаю,” Ilya cuts across him, the words harsh. “Is saying in Russia, means person who doesn’t care about things happening in world around them, and their place in this world. Sometimes…” He bites back what he was going to say, but Shane hears it all the same.

“Sometimes what? Sometimes you think this is me? That I don’t know or care about anything but myself?”

Ilya groans, soft like he’s taken the phone away from his face to do it. “Not exactly, not like you’re thinking now.”

Shane nods, mouth turned down disdainfully. “Then what, exactly? Because you’re smart, Ilya, one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and I’d hate to think you’re slumming it with my ignorant ass because the sex is convenient or whatever.”

“Fuck you,” Ilya snaps before he’s even finished speaking. “Are you even- you are misunderstanding on purpose, I think, when I’m trying to say that there is big risks here in ways that sweet, well-loved and protected Canadian boy cannot possibly comprehend. Is not personal-”

“Well, it feels pretty fucking personal,” Shane says angrily, his gut churning. 

“-and our sex has never been convenient,” Ilya continues bitterly.

It drops into the argument like a rock pitched into a still pond, and there’s a weight to the statement but the sharp cut of it steals his breath and it’s all just too much.

Shane hangs up.

He drops the phone into his lap and stares at the call summary on the screen, frustrated and hurt and angry and hurt.

Shit.

He cradles his face in his hands, pressing his fingertips against his eyes until neon white blooms hazily. His head is a whirling mess and he’s physically nauseated. He doesn’t know what to do. His phone begins to vibrate against his thigh but he ignores it until it rings out, only to start up again almost immediately. He denies the call but sends Ilya a message.

I’m angry right now, and I want to calm down and think about everything you said before I call you back. Half an hour?

I didn’t mean it the way you heard it, Ilya replies immediately, but I will wait for you. Half an hour.

Somewhat relieved but still feeling pretty fucking awful, Shane gets out of bed, goes to find his shoes and leaves the house.

“God, Shane, thank god,” Ilya gasps when the picks up before the first ring has even finished, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for saying it like that, I promise-”

“Whoa, stop, hey,” Shane says, back in bed thirty minutes later with his headphones in and the blanket pulled up again. He’s startled by the barely-controlled panic in Ilya’s voice, the rapid staccato breathing he can hear, the dropped articles and rough wording that only appear when Ilya’s seriously pissed off or seriously exhausted. Or seriously upset, apparently. When he speaks again he makes sure his words are clear and a little slower than normal, hopefully making it easier for Ilya to understand him through his own stress. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m here, I know. And you have nothing to apologise for; I’m sorry, I was hurt and you were right, okay? I was deliberately misunderstanding you so I wouldn’t have to think too deeply about it.” He listens for a long time as Ilya’s breathing slows. “I’m sorry, Ilya,” he eventually adds. “That was unfair of me, and I’ll try not to do it again.”

They both sit with that for a long time, not speaking, just holding on to their tenuous connection.

Ilya is the first to break that silence. “I have lived with these fears for a long time,” he says, calmer now but with more tension in his voice. “I have spent most of my life knowing that the home I love does not- will not- love me back just because of who I am. This is,” he stops and Shane hears him swallow. “This is a terrible weight to carry.”

Shane’s heart aches at the sadness Ilya doesn’t seem to be trying to hide. “I can’t even imagine.”

“And I am glad for that,” Ilya tells him, honest, and Shane thinks he can hear a smile in his voice. “That… that is what I meant when I said ‘protected Canadian boy’.”

“I know,” Shane says instantly. “I do know that.”

He hesitates, and Ilya hears it. “But?”

Shane almost hates how well Ilya knows him, and the power over Shane that it gives him. He suspects Ilya doesn’t even realise it. “Nothing,” he says, making the decision to let it go, to carefully set down the grenade he has been considering dropping right into the middle of whatever this messed up, angrily tangled thing between them is and walk right away from it. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s never nothing with you,” Ilya disagrees gently, and it should be condescending but instead it just sounds fond. “Tell me?”

Shane sighs. “I’m going to say something, but I think it might sound dismissive, and I don’t want you to think that.” Ilya makes a questioning sound and Shane frowns. “Dismissive? It means to, like, reject what someone says, or a point they’re trying to make, like it’s not worth thinking about or taking seriously.”

“Ah. Okay, I will think of this when you tell me the thing.”

That makes Shane laugh a little, the unexpected levity cutting away some of the tension, and takes a moment to collect his thoughts. “You talk about the risk, the, the Russia of it all, I guess.” He pauses, waits for Ilya to make another little noise of encouragement. “And I understand it, logically, even if I can’t necessarily understand it emotionally.” He shifts on the bed, pulled his legs up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, rests his cheek on his knees. “No matter what happens I want you to be safe. Do you believe that?”

“I do,” Ilya says instantly, gratifyingly.

“So with all due respect,” he says, taking in a deep breath and digging his fingernails into his own calves, “your point is kind of bullshit.” He winces and closes his eyes, listening so carefully to the solid silence that follows his statement.

“Explain.”

The demand is harsh, and the earlier warmth that had been in Ilya’s voice has disappeared. Shane’s already-cold apartment suddenly feels positively fucking artic. “I understand the risks, okay? But that isn’t what I’m asking you for.”

“It is not?” Ilya demands. “You say you want more, ‘more than I’m willing to let you have’ is your words, I think?” His voice wavers a little and Shane thinks he’s maybe up and moving around now, one hand probably waving through the air in agitation. “But what I give you is what I can afford, safely,” he continues, his words clipped, tone firm.

“There’s nothing safe about this, about us, as it is,” Shane argues immediately. “For either of us, though yes, I will fully acknowledge the risks for you are much higher than the risks I face.”

“Then how-”

Shane turns his face so his forehead is to his knees, holding himself in as tightly as he can, trying to stop himself from shaking apart as he finally says the thing he has been so scared to say for what feels like years now, even though he’s only been able to admit it to himself over the last few months. “I don’t want whatever of you that you’ll let me have, Ilya… I want everything that I can have.” He swallows, keeps his eyes squeezed closed against the burn he refuses to give in to. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Am I making it clear what I mean?” It’s suddenly the most important thing in the world to him that Ilya does, and he needs to make sure of it like he needs air to breathe.

“I- maybe not,” Ilya admits, oddly hesitant. “Say again, slower maybe?”

Shane nods, so beyond grateful that Ilya is willing to hear him, to allow them to work through his clumsy thoughts. “Ever since we’ve been doing this you’ve been the one making the rules, whether or not you say them out loud.”

“No photos, Rozanov; use the back entrance to the apartment, Rozanov; don’t speak to me when we’re together in public, Rozanov,” Ilya counters immediately.

“Don’t stay the night, Hollander,” Shane says bitterly. “I’m allowed to ignore you when it suits me, Hollander. I’ll let you have a little affection if you do what I tell you in bed, Hollander.” He feels sick, and his eyes will not stop stinging, so he keeps them closed. “The rules I made were the ones that kept us safe. The ones you made were the ones that kept you safe. Kept… kept your heart safe, I think.” He stops, Ilya silent on the other end of the line. “I took what you gave me because that’s all you let me have, but Ilya…” He trails off. “I want more.” It detonates out of him without his explicit permission, desperate and broken. “I want everything of you, everything that I can have and still keep you- us- safe. Not the little bits you hand out when it suits you, not the short hours you decide to let me have, not the hookups when you’re in town with nothing in between for weeks at a time.”

“Shane-”

“No.” Shane unfolds suddenly, kicks back the blanket, needing the crisp bite of the cold to steady him. “No, you listen; you asked, now you listen.” He gets up, stares unseeingly out the window, and the floor is freezing beneath his feet. “I still want privacy. I still need to keep what we do, what we are a secret. But I want you. Completely. I want phone calls at night. I want text messages every day. I want you in my bed when you’re in town for games, and I want to be the only one in yours. I want your good days and bad days, I want to know when you’re hurt, I want to know about your life when I’m not with you. Do you understand?” It’s only when he gasps that last that he realises it’s now his turn to panic, because it’s all out there now, and he needs Ilya to hear this, to understand exactly what he’s asking for.

“You did this, you asshole,” he says shakily, rubbing at his eye and somehow both shocked and not to discover that he’s crying, actually, properly crying for the first time in years. He doesn’t think Ilya can hear that, though, for which he will remain eternally grateful. “You made all these rules about how I couldn’t have any of it and then you held me like I fucking mattered to you and it broke my brain.” He huffs a sad little laugh. “And then you go and say that you’ve given me everything, but you haven’t, we both know you haven’t, and it kills me because… because I think we could have something really good, Ilya, and I honestly don’t know if that’s even something you want.”

Silence sits uneasily between them again until Ilya clears his throat and Shane knows immediately that he’s crying, too.

“I think maybe I need half an hour now,” Ilya says.

Fear lances through Shane’s chest. “You’ll call back though, right?”

“Half an hour,” Ilya says again, and it’s not a yes, but then he’s gone and it’s all Shane’s got.

He damp dusts the bookcase, folds a load of laundry and puts it away, turns the fucking heat on.

He stands in front of the fridge for too long before deciding that if he eats anything he’ll be sick, closes it.

He contemplates throwing himself off the top of the building to make this god damn day end, then remembers he has a game in a few hours and he’s committed to showing up for that.

He packs his game bag in preparation and leaves it at the door.

He looks in the fridge again.

It’s forty minutes later that his phone rings again, and his headphones have stayed in this whole time in preparation, but his hands are still unsteady when he accepts the call and drops down onto the couch.

“You said thirty minutes,” he says at the same time that Ilya says, “I’m sorry, I know it’s been more than thirty minutes.”

They both stop, and Ilya laughs shakily. “Marly came back, I had to explain to him why… well, I had to make him leave. He didn’t really want to.”

“Sorry,” Shane says, and he is. “We don’t have to do this now, maybe after the game-”

“No, I don’t want to do this anymore,” Ilya says, and Shane’s heart fucking stops, just grinds to a miserable halt and desiccates on the spot. “No! Stupid fucking English-” a burst of bitter Russian- “I don’t want to do this cross-speak anymore. No more confusion, no more misunderstandings. We fix this now.”

Thank god he’s an elite athlete, Shane thinks, otherwise he would not be even close to cardiovascularly robust enough to survive this man. “Is that what you want?”

“What?”

“To fix this?”

“I,” Ilya begins. “If.” He stops. There’s a long pause. “Yes,” he sighs, and he sounds so petulant about it that it makes Shane smile, but that could also be the way his heart has started working again, which is nice.

“Are you sure?” he tries as a gentle tease. “Because it doesn’t sound like you’re that excited about it-”

“Oh my god, Hollander,” Ilya grates out, and Shane laughs for real without correcting him because it’s so Ilya, so reassuringly Ilya that he feels like his lungs are working again properly, too. Nice.

“Sorry,” Shane says again, still smiling.

“This is what being your boyfriend is going to be like? All ‘sorry’ and Canadian politeness?”

Shane freezes. “Boyfriend?”

Ilya inhales sharply. “Wh- yes? Is what you are asking for, no?”

Shane’s breath hitches. “I don’t know,” he says with kneejerk honesty. “I hadn’t really thought about it.” He scowls at the rude noise of disbelief that Ilya makes. “I haven’t,” he insists. “I never thought… well, I never thought it would be an option. I honestly didn’t think we’d ever get here, talking about stuff, let alone any further.” He shrugs. “I didn’t think you liked me that much.”

“Shane.” His name is infinitely precious in Ilya’s mouth, softened to Sheyn the way he’s come to love, but it sounds sad.

“What?” he asks, the shape of Ilya saying his name bouncing around in his head and causing his belly to swoop.

“I have caused you much hurt.”

He’s ripped from his happy musing by how distraught Ilya suddenly sounds. “You what?”

“You say this thing and I didn’t realise I make you feel like this.”

Shane mentally rewound their conversation. “That I didn’t think you like me?”

“Da.”

He laughs. “Well, apart from the inconvenient sex, it’s not like I’ve been able to offer you much, is it? I’m boring, remember?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Ilya says, still sounding quietly devastated. “Is emphasis thing. Not ‘sex with you is inconvenient’; more like, ‘sex with you has always been more’. Not inconvenient, more than that. Better than that.” He hesitates. “You understand?”

Shane thinks he might be starting to. “Yeah, I understand.”

“And boring is a nice thing, for me at least,” Ilya adds, and when Shane doesn’t continue. “I like that you are boring. You are safe place for me, even when I don’t want you to be.” He mutters something that Shane suspects is a curse in Russian. “That is not right way to say.” He thinks for a moment. “Even when I am scared about what that means you are to me.” He hums with satisfaction. “Da, this is better, I think.”

God, Shane feels like he’s been gutted. 

“All those things you tell me, the things you want,” Ilya continues blithely on, just casually shredding Shane to pieces, “I want these things too. You are very brave, much more than me, to say them out loud first.” He hesitates. “This is boyfriends, yes?”

Shane has to swipe at his face again. “Yeah,” he says, soft and shaky, "that's boyfriends.” He bites the inside of his cheek. “Well, I don’t know, actually. But that’s what it would be if we were. You and me. Boyfriends.”

“Ah,” Ilya says, and Shane can definitely hear the smile now. “You like saying this word? Boyfriends?”

“I like hearing you say it,” Shane admits.

“Because you’re my boyfriend,” Ilya rewards him, and Shane’s head spins a little.

They’re quiet together, but it feels so much easier than it had an hour ago.

“Can I ask for something?” Ilya asks suddenly.

“Of course,” Shane tells him. Anything. Everything, even if it destroys me.

“Tonight, after the game,” Ilya says tentatively, and Shane knows where this is going, isn’t sure how he feels about it. “Can I see you?”

He wants to say yes. Shane has never wanted to say yes to anything more in his entire life, and that includes getting signed to Montreal. But he knows where seeing each other leads, and he while he wants that, wants Ilya with a desperation that frightens him to think about, he’s not sure he can fuck Ilya and still manage to be honest about everything he needs to be honest about.

Ilya adds, “I don’t want to fuck you.” It’s stunning, and it’s a fucking lie, and Ilya sighs because he knows it too. “Of course I want to fuck you,” he corrects, “I always want that. But tonight, no. Tonight, I want to talk about things that mean something, and I want to see your face when I do it. I want to be together with you to figure out what comes next.”

Shane’s breath catches. “Thought you said you weren’t brave,” he manages.

“This is not brave, this is selfish,” Ilya says. “Is just for me, to see your beautiful freckles again.”

His blush is stupid and Shane fucking hates it, but he loves that Ilya can do this to him. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Okay,” Ilya says, breathes out in a soft whoosh.

“Want to talk about something else?” Shane asks. “We can pick this up again tonight?”

Ilya laughs. “I think that would be good,” he says, and they both fall silent again. “Sooo,” Ilya draws out. “Seen any good dogs, lately?”

It’s more than a little tinged with relief, but Shane laughs right out loud and feels warm for the first time in days.

He’s gearing up before the start of the game when the message comes through, a photo of a sheet of paper with an address written on it and a nondescript brass key lying beneath it. ??? is all the accompanying text says.

My address, and a key to my apartment, Shane sends back.

You’re giving me the key to your home?

Shane’s heart is in his throat. Well, I’ll be back late tonight, after going out for celebratory drinks when we win. Thought you might want to let yourself in and wait for me.

Those cursed little dots bounce, and he gnaws on his thumbnail as he waits for the reply. It had definitely been a risk leaving the envelope with the concierge at Ilya’s hotel, but he thinks it will be worth it.

Nice to know that becoming my boyfriend hasn’t made you less of an asshole, Ilya eventually replies. I’ll make sure I’m quiet when I let myself in after WE celebrate our win.

It makes Shane grin like an idiot and he’s helpless to stop it, probably wouldn’t even if he could. They get the two minute warning and he looks back at his phone.

See you soon, he types, and Ilya’s reply is instantaneous.

Can’t wait.

Chapter 4: Last Leg

Chapter Summary

“Oi dickhead, can you cut it the fuck out?” is what Cliff says, panting and sweating like a motherfucker while Oregan might actually be stroking out, flat on his back in front of the goal. Could’ve been more subtle, but it gets Roz’ attention, wild eyed and terrifying as it is.

“The fuck did you just say to me?” Rozy demands, and Cliff catches LeClaire about to step out from the bench to intercept, but he shakes his head.

“I fucken said cut. it. the. fuck. out,” he enunciates clearly. “We’ve trained hard, we’re fucked, and whatever you’ve got going on needs to be sorted off the ice.” Rozy looks fully ready to go him to work out some of whatever he’s in his head about, but Cliff squares up, presses his height advantage and prepares to take it on the chin. “If this is what you need, Cap, you know I’m always down for a donnybrook. But leave the rest of the boys out of it, alright?”

Rozy is Cliff's best friend, and he's Going Through Some Shit. Cliff figures it out. Eventually.

Chapter Notes

Okay, absolutely most definitely the last chapter, I REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME YOU GUYS.
(This was straight up for me, because I love SupportiveFriend!CliffMarlow, almost as much as I love outsider POVs of these two idiots. This way I get both.
 

Title from Frightened Rabbit's The Modern Leper.

From the first day he shows up in the Boston locker room, fresh off the high of being the number one draft pick, Ilya Rozanov is a fucken weird dude. Not, like, interpersonally, or whatever, because he’s charismatic as fuck even when he only has heavily accented and overly-suggestive English to work with as a cocky rookie. No, he’s weird in that absolutely none of the Bears knew anything about him for the longest time, but none of them notice. Cliff’s mom had once referred to his dad as having a cult of personality, but it’s not until Rozanov comes to Boston that Cliff understands what that means, how someone can make you feel like you know them without ever actually giving you anything real.

He’s never been the brightest bulb in the box, but Cliff knows people, is good at people. He’s a boy’s boy, knows how to tease and chirp and joke without taking it too far, but he’s also a mama’s boy and was raised right, so girls have always liked him too. He likes being a confidant for the rooks, prides himself on being a sounding board to the veteran players, and has never once broken a confidence. Rozanov is a whole other beast, though.

As a rookie, he’s nothing special. Well, that isn’t entirely true; as a player, he’s fucken phenomenal: fast, lethal, aggressive and can read play like he’d been born to do it. But he’s come to the Bears as a brash, mouthy, overconfident little shit, and had thrown himself bodily into the shitty side of hockey culture with a recklessness that startles senior players and management alike. There’s been booze, girls and fast cars, nights out and bar fights, a life lived fast and loose. Cliff’s experience with people like that is that they tend to burn bright and burn out just as fast, but Rozanov has always been different. The self-destruction has just… continued, but never quite to the point of tipping right over into full-blown catastrophe. A lot of that can be attributed to Svetlana, Cliff suspects. She’s as wild as Rozanov but without the bitter edges, always able to drag him back from the precipice. Cliff knows they hook up semi-regularly, and he’s glad Rozanov has her. But then that starts to change, too.

It’s no secret that Rozy has a girl in Montreal. Almost right from the start he slips away after a game with a wink and smile, refusing to answer questions or respond to the good-natured teasing with anything more than feigned ignorance. He’s back by morning, rumpled and smiling, red marks fading from his throat and chest. He’ll be languid and loose-limbed at breakfast, trading easy quips and jokes with the boys. He spends more time on his phone, smirking down at the screen for hours at a time when they travel, huffing soft laughs beneath his breath as it vibrates with yet another incoming text.

Then he’s made captain, and his obsessive devotion to the game kicks up into an even higher level of intensity. It similarly increases the drinking and sleeping around, and heightens the edgy, competitive side of the guy. The thing with Montreal Jane continues, and Rozy gets even more intense about that, too. Oh sure, there are girls in other cities, something Rozy swears Jane knows about and doesn’t have a problem with, and for all his faults Rozy would never fuck around with someone else’s woman, or around on his. Cliff presumes, because apart from Jane and the semi-casual thing he has with Svetlana, Rozy doesn’t actually have a woman, not in the traditional sense. He asks about it once, a little disapproving when Rozy and Jane hook up post-game on the Monday, and Rozy then takes home a gorgeous husband and wife duo on the Tuesday.

“Is just a little fun, Cliff, relax,” Rozy grins at him, finger hooked in the front pocket of the husband’s designer jeans, his wife between them in a dangerously short dress with an arm around each of their waists. “My Jane fucks who she wants, I fuck who I want-” this makes the husband grin, dark and hot, “and we fuck each other when it’s convenient. What you Americans say? No sad feelings?”

“No hard feelings,” Cliff corrects, still mildly concerned, but somehow warmed beneath the weight of Rozy’s regard.

“No hard feelings,” Rozy parrots, then flashes his own insanely perfect grin. “Well, feeling something hard, uh?” he adds, winking when the wife’s hand drifts down from his waist and slides out of view. 

“Fucken beauty, Roz,” Cliff laughs, watches him lead his company for that night from the club, the three of them clustered together as close as they can be without a public indecency charge.

That’s on Tuesday. There’s a socialite on the Friday, who comes out again on Saturday. The following week is Sveta, and later an ‘influencer’, which as far as Cliff can tell is someone who posts half-nude photos on Instagram, not that he or anyone else minds. After that it blurs: pretty puck bunnies across both Canada and the U.S., actresses in Tampa and New York, then back to Boston and what from all reports sounds like an orgy with the Boston College coed cheerleading team. It absolutely blows Cliff’s mind that Rozy can casually fuck dudes, or at least fuck adjacent to other dudes without anyone on the team so much as batting an eyelid, but the questions are explained away with a laughing round of Gay or European? which, given the whole Rozanov of it all, generally comes down to European.

The pattern continues over years, and the list of shit Cliff knows about Rozy stays oddly short: he was eighteen when he was drafted to the Bears, he’s from Moscow, he has a semi-regular secret girl in Montreal, he’s borderline-obsessed with American steakhouses, he’s only mostly straight, he’s a monster on the ice, his appetites for all things pretty and dangerous are insatiable, the dude always hugs like he means it, and he fucken talks in his sleep- worse when he’s tired or stressed, and always in Russian. That’s it. For the first five or six years that they work together, that’s it. Sure, there are the odd little things like favourite songs, changing tastes in clothing, television, women and food, but Rozy is a slippery sucker, and has a knack for turning personal questions back on the asker, making them feel flattered to be interesting enough to warrant his attention. All the tabloids and formal interviews use the same words: charismatic, sexy, playboy, elusive, flirtatious, womanising, non-committal. Much is written about the constant bevy of beautiful women in and out of his apartment or any given nightclub or bar, and nothing at all, ever, about the men. There’s constant amazement at the amount of energy he manages to bring to the ice after these nights of debauchery, and the boys love to share articles to the group chat of his international exploits while on summer breaks.

But eventually, gradually, and only if you’re paying attention, little things start to slip through. The odd phone conversations in angry Russian, often late afternoon, that end with Rozy storming off and returning an hour later in an absolutely filthy mood. The way his English improves month by month but gets worse after Montreal games- win or loss. The way his visits back to Russia get progressively shorter each time, and he’s so much more unsettled upon each return, taking longer and longer to get back to his usual cocksure self. The way the sleeptalking gets worse on the same schedule, no longer random muttered words but full sentences, sharp and pleading or… frightened, maybe. Those are the nights that Cliff discovers a new clumsiness, stumbling into Rozy’s bed hard enough to jostle him awake, or to drop something noisy on the bathroom tiles to unfortunately wake his buddy up.

And progressively, so slowly that it’s surprising when Cliff does eventually notice it, Rozy’s use of his phone goes from convenient to… well, not obsessive, exactly, but intentional. Rozy starts waiting on it, staring at a sleeping screen, casually flipping it face down when in company, and answering with a weird eagerness that fades to a vague disappointment the majority of the time. Sometimes, though. Well, sometimes that eagerness is followed by a smile, a soft, gentle thing that Cliff never sees anywhere else. It’s strange the first time he notices it, but Rozy just mutters something about a niece which implies he had a fucken sibling somewhere. It’s a shocking one-two punch, and Cliff feels like the worst kind of friend. He knows, logically, that Rozanov hadn’t sprung out of a frozen Russian pond somewhere, fully formed with a stick in his hand, but he’s never asked, has never thought to. God, he knows more about fucken Liam Vogler, and he only spent a season on the Bears’ bench three years ago. Still, Roz is squirrely as fuck about personal questions, so Cliff just files this new information away in his mental Facts About Roz box.

They make the playoffs but narrowly miss the cup, and life is sweet, all fun times and parties and celebrities and headlines, and Rozy is disappointed but he looks happier, more settled than Cliff is used to seeing him. The new season starts back up and the team is dialled in, ready to bring the cup to Boston this season. Then something happens around Sochi, something bad. He comes back… still, completely pulled into himself in a way Cliff’s never seen before, and he’s almost quiet when he forgets to be loud. He’s weird up to the NHL awards, and despite winning he still can’t seem to shake his funk. Then six months later he goes on an absolute tear, and if the boys had thought him wild before, what comes after the awards is an order of magnitude worse.

He’s never been choosy beyond his hookups being mind-bendingly hot, but there’s been a pattern that Cliff hasn’t thought about too hard, has chalked up the way he turns down offers whenever they’re in Montreal to whatever Roz has going on with Jane. Which, in hindsight, is kinda weird, because for a guy who never shuts the fuck up about how hot someone is, Rozy has never once described her. Not her hair, not her legs, not a single filthy detail. Just… Jane. Like that’s supposed to cover it. And his Montreal social disinterest is never in a ‘not interested’ kind of way, but more of a ‘better offer’ kind of way, and given that Jane is the closest to a regular thing in Rozy’s life, that seems within his particular brand of normal. After Sochi, though, Cliff’s pretty sure Roz fucks half of Montreal out of spite for something, barely sharing a drink with the team before he’s off to get his dick wet, completely ignoring curfew only to stumble back to the hotel with just enough time to shower and make an airport transfer, reeking of sex and perfume and smoke in a way that’s less playboy and something much more desperate, like he’s trying to overwrite something.

Cliff had been to an intervention once, had sat in his sister’s living room to confront one of Janey’s best friends about a prescription drug addiction. It hadn’t gone well. Cliff didn’t know much, but he sure as shit had known it wasn’t going to work from the get. Which it hadn’t; Candace had said some of the most vile, horrific things Cliff had ever heard, on or off the ice, screamed until her face was almost purple, unrecognisable from the sweet girl who had helped Cliff with his english homework in school, and trashed half the living room in her effort to escape it. She’d died of a fentanyl overdose a couple of months later, and the pain of it had never really left Janey after that.

So he’s determined not to make that mistake with Roz, instead dragging him out and getting him absofuckenlutely hammered on shitty vodka and shittier tequila shots. Roz goes so hard Cliff is legitimately concerned they’re going to need the hospital, but Roz is made of tougher stuff, and while he’s paralytic to the point of requiring a heavy assist he’s able to talk. He admits to fucking up his thing with Jane, ghosting her and missing her and catching feelings in spite of trying desperately not to. Cliff laughs in his stupid face.

“You can’t honestly be that dumb,” he says, knowing full well that guys are always stupid where girls are concerned, himself included.

Roz narrows bleary eyes at him. “I could be, asshole,” he slurs, almost tipping back into the George Robert fountain.

Cliff grabs the front of the customary black tank and holds him steady. “You’ve been in love with this bitch forever, what do you mean you tried not to?”

“Do not call her that,” Roz snarls, immediately ferocious in a way that makes Cliff wince and think of Candace. “She is… she is everything.”

“Okay, man, sorry,” Cliff says, at the same time thinking gotcha. As Boston cap, Roz has pretty quickly stamped out that kind of talk, and the boys have willingly followed where he’s led. “So… she’s everything, huh? Why have you been ghosting her, then?”

Even as fucked as he is, Rozy’s walls remain up. “Is complicated.”

“No shit, brother,” Cliff laughs, bracing against all two hundred and some pounds of weight swaying back towards the water. “Uncomplicate it for me.”

Roz squints up at him, suspicious and wary. “What you care?”

And that… hurts, a surprising amount, actually. “Because I love you, you cunt, why do you think?”

The laugh that follows is definitely not a giggle, and Cliff will testify to that.  “Ah, you are good man, Marly, I-” Then he trails off into a stream of unintelligible Russian, including several curse words Cliff recognises, others with particular emphasis, and, bizarrely, Hollander, twice. 

Cliff blinks at that, files it next to all the other weird Rozanov shit that doesn’t quite add up, and decides he’s too drunk to play detective. He just sighs, waits until Roz is done and then pulls him to his feet. If he’s fucked enough that he’s devolved to cursing out Hollander, the night is a wash. He bundles them both into a cab, makes a mental note to hit Rozy up for the five hundred bucks pays the cabbie for the puke Roz mostly managed to get out the window but down the paint job, and drags him up to his apartment to put him to bed.

They don’t talk about it after. Looking back, that probably should be the moment it clicks, but hindsight’s a bitch like that.

 By a minor miracle Roz has maybe remembered enough to have some thoughts about it, and he eventually pulls himself together and goes back to… well, not normal, but closer than where he’s been recently. After that, Rozy gets quieter about Montreal. Not in a way anyone else notices; he still chirps, still plays like a man possessed, still disappears after games sometimes. But the bragging stops, and for Rozy, that’s loud as fuck. For a while things are better than they have been, and that has to count for something. Even if that means Rozy is rediscovering his obsession with his phone.

Cliff knows Shane Hollander the way most people know Shane Hollander: from a distance as a near-mythical figure in hockey, a borderline-savant with the stereotypical Canadian good-boy pleasantness that the press eat up. He’s the polar opposite of Rozy, the light to his dark, and Cliff likes him well enough. He’s a demon on the ice, a perpetual thorn in Boston’s side, and particularly capable of getting beneath Cap’s skin. He’s beautiful to watch in motion, an economy of movement that speaks to his innate understanding of how the ice and the game work, and insanely, ridiculously, impossibly fast.

Outside of their games against Montreal Cliff hasn’t had much to do with Hollzy- the odd awards ceremony, All Star games, fundraisers. He’s quiet and intense, and oddly watchful, taking in the movement of bodies in a room the way he watches players on the ice, tracking exits like pucks, smiling at all the right moments with shoulders stiff as boards. No one else seems to notice it, but again, Cliff is good at people. He sees shit, notices things early. It’s part of what makes him a good forward, and how he’s so good at creating playmaking opportunities. He might not know what Hollander’s tension means, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice it.

With retrospect, there’s a lot to notice about the way Hollander notices Roz, and how he’s never surprised by him. Not on the ice, not in a room, not even when Rozy comes in loud and late like a fucken storm system. Hollander’s eyes will flick over, quick as anything, like he already knows exactly where he’s going to be. And Hollander is polite with everyone, the same small smiles, same measured responses, but every now and then Cliff catches something slip when Roz gets involved. Not a reaction, exactly. More like… a correction, his shoulders stiffening a little more, his jaw setting for a half second before he intentionally relaxes it again. It’s almost like he’s bracing for something that never seems to come.

Sometimes Cliff thinks that Rozy clocks it too, but if he does he’s uncharacteristically silent about it. Which is its own kind of peculiar given the whole Rozanov-Hollander rivalry thing the league loves to jerk off over. There should be more… something between them off the ice. Chirping, tension, whatever. But even when Rozy does take a crack, Hollander never bites, not really. He’ll take it, sure, give a little back sometimes, but never in a way that escalates, never in a way that sticks. Roz also sticks it to him in a weirdly controlled way, only ever up until a point- whatever that might be- and for a pair of guys that competitive, that’s also weird as fuck.

So for years there’s just a random collection of half-noticed and uncategorised moments noticed on both sides of the Hollander-Rozanov equation, nothing concrete and nothing to really make the puzzle-solving part of Cliff’s brain kick into gear. Then once, after a particularly nasty collision, Roz stays down a beat too long and Cliff sees Hollander take a step forward. Not toward the play, toward Roz. He catches himself almost immediately, pivots, gets back into position like nothing’s happened, and Cliff figures it’s just good sportsmanship. All very above-board, very normal captainly concern, and whatnot. But the way Hollzy looks at Roz is not good sportsmanship at all; that game, he’s the only person who reacts to Roz like he matters… and Cliff finally realises that Roz is the only person Hollander ever loses control over. After that it’s all ones and zeroes, Matrix-style, as six years of observed data comes flooding in, and holy fucken jesus, Shane fucken Hollander is Rozy’s Montreal Jane.

It honestly rocks Cliff to his foundations, but after a couple of days sitting on the biggest scandal to never make NHL history, it actually… makes sense? Hollander is to Rozy as structure is to chaos: the only thing that gives it shape. And, now that he really turns his brain to it, isn’t everything Roz is as a person and a player shaped by who Hollander is to him? What their competition has turned him into? It’s a hell of a thing to realise. It also probably explains whatever the fuck’s been going on with Rozy, and knowing Rozy even the tiny amount that he does, Cliff suspects the fuckup was his, and equally suspects that Hollander is now making him pay for it. What else- who else?- but Hollander would have that kind of power over Ilya Rozanov?

Three days of mulling it over and Cliff’s had enough. He shows up unannounced to Rozy’s place with the lasagne from the sketchy looking place by the subway stop closest to the barn, walks in when Rozy steps aside as though he’d never doubted his welcome even though he absolutely had, reheats the pasta and dishes them up an enormous plate each. They sit opposite each other at the table, and Roz looks tired.

“Tell me,” Cliff says, calm and as gentle as he’s capable of being, and he almost chokes in shock when Roz does.

“I’ve been fucking Hollander,” he announces, calm as you please. “For nearly seven years.”

And yeah, Cliff had connected some of the dots, but even he can count back by seven and- “Rookies?” he asks.

Roz nods. “He’s Montreal Jane.”

Cliff nods. “Yeah, I figured,” and doesn’t that get a response.

“You what?”

He looks panicked, and Cliff just shakes his head. “I don’t think anyone else could figure it out, I just know you, is all. And I see shit.” He shovels in another mouthful of lasagne and waits for Roz to relax enough to do the same. “You’re in love with him?” Rozy doesn’t look up, just nods and keeps his eyes on his fork, hanging loose in his hand. He looks like he’s been slapped, hectic colour high in his cheeks but otherwise pale, looking for all the world like he’s braced for another. “You fucked it up, huh?”

He flicks a rapid little glance up at Cliff, assessing, before he nods.

“You gonna fix it?”

Rozy sighs, sounding all kinds of things, but mostly regretful and exhausted. “I’m trying. He is… he’s making it very difficult to feel like I deserve the second chance.”

“Of course you do,” Cliff says instantly, with absolute certainty, and that makes his friend smile. “You guys’ll be good together.” He pretends not to see Rozy scratch his face to brush away the tear that absolutely isn’t there, another thing he’ll testify to.

They eat in silence for a while, until Roz eventually straightens his shoulders and looks Marly right in the eyes. “That’s it?”

Marly shrugs. “You got this, brother. And if you need anything, I’ve got your back, like always.” He can tell his response isn’t what Rozy’s expecting, but he holds his intense stare because he fucken means it, and his Cap should know that.

They get wasted after that, because something needs to lighten the heaviness of their conversation, and Cliff stays the night. Before bed, though, Roz hesitates after saying goodnight, then turns and walks straight into him, trusting that Cliff means what he says. Cliff just hugs him close, good and tight the way his mom always does, just sort of holding the guy in the dark hallway, a little bit awkward but with a lot of love.

“‘Night, Cap,” he says, only after Rozy’s gotten what he needs and steps away first.

“Goodnight, Marly,” Roz replies, soft as anything, and slips silently away.

Cliff wishes shit magically improves after that, but it actually seems to get worse. Rozy’s quiet sadness gives way to confusion and frustration, and wild swings of anger that come out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere, out of his phone, it seems, and everyone is so fucken tired of bag skates they’re considering an uprising. They go to Cliff before it gets to that point though, and even though he’s the A, he’s not looking forward to the chat he and Roz need to have.

“Oi dickhead, can you cut it the fuck out?” is what he says, panting and sweating like a motherfucker while Oregan might actually be stroking out, flat on his back in front of the goal. Could’ve been more subtle, but it gets Roz’ attention, wild eyed and terrifying as it is.

“The fuck did you just say to me?” he demands, and Cliff catches LeClaire about to step out from the bench to intercept, but he shakes his head.

“I fucken said cut. it. the. fuck. out,” he enunciates clearly. “We’ve trained hard, we’re fucked, and whatever you’ve got going on needs to be sorted off the ice.” Rozy looks fully ready to go him to work out some of whatever he’s in his head about, but Cliff squares up, presses his height advantage and prepares to take it on the chin. “If this is what you need, Cap, you know I’m always down for a donnybrook. But leave the rest of the boys out of it, alright?”

Roz is properly about to spit nails, but then he deflates all of a sudden, the breath gusting out of him and he drops his shoulders, his head, then his stick. “Go home,” he tells the team, and they may not know what’s going on, but they love their captain almost as much as Cliff does, and instead of filing off the ice like they should they huddle around him instead, pressing in close and holding him safe for a moment, slapping his back and messing up his sweaty hair. There’s a chorus of ‘love yous’ and ‘here if you needs’ and ‘fuck you I can’t feel my legs, hope you’re okays’, and Cliff loves them all. He meets LeClaire’s eyes once more, sees his own concern mirrored there and nods once, short and sharp. He’s got this, and it might be his job first, but it’s Rozy most importantly.

He passes Rozy his stick and they skate silently while passing a puck back and forth, up and down the ice, nice and easy at first but getting faster and faster until Cliff careens around the back of the net and his skates slide out from beneath him, sending him crashing down and fouling Rozy’s legs, too.

“The bag skates were mostly for you,” Roz pants, the asshole, and Cliff just laughs as ice water seeps through his jersey, catches his breath with Rozy’s head pillowed uncomfortably on his bad knee, the little prick.

“You good?”

“Probably not,” Roz sighs, but Cliff has faith.

“We’ve got a game in a couple of days,” he says. Against Montreal, and Cliff is… concerned.

“Yes.”

“You going to be alright?”

Roz shrugs.

“Probably not, eh? Hollzy’s been looking real cute lately.” It’s a gamble, fuck is it ever, and he freezes horribly for a second, just long enough that Cliff’s heart rate quadruples and he calculates whether or not Rozy’ll be too cooked to catch him before he leaves the ice at a dead sprint. Then he starts to laugh, a godawful hiccuping thing that sounds more distressed than it should, until Cliff drops his gloved hand down onto Roz’ face, which irritates him enough to stop whatever the hell the noise had been and start bitching instead.

Roz looks rough when Cliff pulls up to collect him on their way to the airport.

“Feeling alright, brother?” he asks, waiting for the seatbelt to click in and hand Roz a coffee from the place he likes, extra large and extra hot.

“I think the thing with Hollander is over,” he says, his voice thick and strange. “I don’t want to talk about it. At all.” 

Cliff glances over at him but he’s staring out the passenger window, and Cliff lets him be, just squeezes his thigh above his knee in solidarity, feels the tension in the muscle there. He passes his phone over so Rozy can choose the music- a rare privilege in a Marlow vehicle- and focuses on not committing vehicular manslaughter because the I-90 is homicide inducing in the morning.

Fucken Olsson has bananas, again, and if he keeps fucking them up at customs Cliff is going to have him benched for the rest of the season, and ensure his name isn’t engraved on their cup. Still, they’re checked into their hotel by ten, the same one they usually stay in, and Cliff’s not wasting any time getting his hands on some fucken cheese curds. Those squeaky little things are the best thing about Canada, and he won’t hear different. Roz’ stuck in his own head again and needs to sleep off the residual hangover, and Cliff pretends he doesn’t see the way he’s curled around his phone as he channel surfs to find something to fall asleep to.

He walks for longer than he’d planned, needing to shake off some of Rozy’s second hand misery, and it’s actually a little shocking to have Montreal Jane himself almost walk right into him where he’s opening his curds. He looks about as good as Roz, which is to say not at all, all purple shadows beneath his eyes and a frown that looks carved into his forehead.

“Marlow,” he says, clearly as thrown by their meeting happening somewhere so out of place. There’s an awkward pause. “How are you? How was your flight?”

He’s awkward alright, but he had been right during training, Hollander was actually pretty cute. He smiles. “Quiet.” They both pause, and to smooth over some of the awkwardness, Cliff just holds the bag of curds out, curious to see what Hollzy does. He takes a couple, sticks one in his mouth, looks less stressed. Cliff’s got nowhere to be, and knows how to exploit Canadian niceness, so he just makes a vague gesture at Hollzy and he begins walking, presumably back in the direction of his home, Cliff following.

He offers more curds, shows Hollzy his stash when Hollander looks like he’s about to refuse. He laughs, brief and soft, and takes more. They keep walking, and the weather slowly starts to turn.

“Been a while since we’ve played against each other,” he finally says.

Hollzy sighs. “Yeah.”

“How’ve you been?” He’s genuinely curious, because he’s only seen Roz’ side of things, and it’s… not great.

Hollander looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry or puke, and takes far too long to answer. “Yeah, not bad,” he lies, badly.

Christ, they’re as bad as each other. Cliff sighs, decides to just go for it and say the thing. He shoves his sunglasses up and grabs Hollzy’s elbow to get him to stop. “Look, Hollander, I like you, man. But if you’re not into my boy, then you need to cut him loose, okay, because he’s properly fucked up over you, and you seem like too decent a guy to string him along like this.” It’s a phenomenal breach of trust, but hey, if he can manipulate the innate Canadianness Hollander has to go for a walk and share some cheese curds, maybe he can use his powers for good in other ways, ways that benefit Cliff’s best friend.

Hollander looks hunted, but to his credit he doesn’t try to deny it. “How do you know that?”

Maybe he doesn’t know that Roz and Cliff are friends. “He told me?”

“Rozanov told you he’s fucked up about me?” Hollander clarifies.

“Oh. No, god no; I think Roz’d rather drop dead in the street before talking about anything that actually matters to him. He told me you and him had a thing, but given that that’s been going on for literal years now, I figured out pretty quick that it’s not a casual thing. Not for him, anyway.” Once he’d figured it out, that was more or less the truth.

 “So how do you know, then?”

Because I have eyes in my fucken head? he wants to say, but settles instead on, “I know my boy. The last few months he’s been properly obsessed with his phone, like he’s living and breathing for a text from Jane.” He shakes his head, embarrassed to think about how long it took him to figure it out. “You guys are not subtle, by the way. And he’s been off for the last couple of weeks, distracted, snappy. He’s sad, too, I think. Talks about you the way he talks about his mom, sometimes.” Another thing they’ve never talked out loud about, but Cliff knows what the shape of a person long gone looks like.

“It’s complicated,” Hollander says eventually, sounding just like Roz.

It makes Cliff laugh. “No shit,” he says, echoing himself, and laughing a little because he likes the parallel. “Doesn’t help that you’re both idiots who lack basic communication skills, either.”

 “Fuck off,” Hollzy says, but it’s not combative the way it might have been. “When was the last time you got Ilya to talk about anything that actually matters to him?” Ilya, Cliff thinks, then watches as Hollander’s expression doesn’t change so much as it just gets reeeal neutral. “He… did he ask you to tell me this?”

Cliff feels his own face tighten, wonders if Hollzy would trust a threat from him right now. “Are you fucken kidding me? He’d murder me to death if he knew we were talking about this,” he said, attempting menace and missing by a mile. “He’s my best friend, Hollander, and I want what’s going to make him happy. That’s it.”

Hollander watches him, then nods once and Cliff suspects Rozy will never know about this conversation, whichever way the mess ends up going. He waits patiently as Hollzy works through some things, and marvels at the risk Roz must’ve taken in approaching him- which he’s certain is how it went- because Hollander’s face doesn’t give away shit.

“If I tell him… the things I want to tell him, the… the way I feel. About him, I mean. If I tell him, he’s not going to want to hear it.”

Oh, that’s love. Like, love-love, forever love, Cliff realises suddenly. And he knows that’s not always enough, knows that Hollzy and Roz are up against it bad enough that even a fucken miracle might not be able to save them. Still. “Of course he’s not,” he says, because that’s the biggest truth he’s figured out, even bigger than Montreal Jane. “That kid believes he’s terminally unlovable, and that he doesn’t deserve to have nice things. I guess it’s up to you to decide whether or not it’s worth your time and effort to convince him otherwise.” Cliff might not know much, but he knows that love is a choice you have to keep on making. He suspects that these two idiots might be able to do it.

He reaches out and pats Hollzy’s shoulder. “Think about it. And maybe never, ever, ever mention to Rozy that we had this chat, yeah?” He grins, hopeful for them, and turns back the way they came as snow starts to fluff down around him. Fuck, he’s so lost. “See you tomorrow night, Hollander.”

It’s quiet, but Cliff thinks Hollzy’s, "bye,” sounds maybe just a little more hopeful than the rest of the conversation had gone.

Yeah, this could go real bad. There’s a good chance he’ll wind up scraping Rozy’s heart up off the floor, but he just pops another cheese curd in his mouth and decides that’s a problem for future Marly.